"Try to imagine a mashup between a communist Kraftwerk and an authoritarian Abba." Classic "hits" include "Let's Defend Socialism", "Peace Is On Our Bayonet", "Longing for the General", "Pyongyang Cold Noodles Are the Best", and "Potato Pride". - Mental Floss
The high-profile departures come on the same day that BuzzFeed released its fourth-quarter earnings report, which showed a 12% drop in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. - New York Post
In Australia, "measurement provider GfK began rolling out its MediaWatch, a wristwatch that uses audio matching technology to identify what stations participants are listening to, when and for how long." - Inside Radio
Revenues surged by 18.5% to $25.9bn (£19.5bn) in 2021, the highest level since records began in the 1990s. The growth was driven by streaming, with 523 million paid subscribers, up from 443 million in 2020. - BBC
In the decade before the pandemic, male choreographers were getting three times the number of commissions female ones got from major companies in the country. That's one issue that was looked at carefully during the pandemic, and we're starting to see results. - The Age (Melbourne)
Lauren Hough's Leaving Isn't The Hardest Thing was a nominee for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Memoir — until this week, when Lambda disqualified her for defending a fellow author being attacked on Twitter for alleged transphobia. Laura Miller looks into the matter and points out the lesson. - Slate
In 1980, an art thief known as "Erik the Belgian" stole a set of half a dozen Flemish tapestries, created by a follower of Rubens, from a small-town church in northern Spain. Within two years, all six were retrieved, except for one 2'x2' fragment, now recovered and reintegrated. - Smithsonian Magazine
The Trojan War and siege of Troy are the subject of The Burnt City, the latest environmental theatre piece from the creators of Sleep No More. Charlotte Higgins pays a visit to the company's new permanent performance space in London. - The Guardian
"Putin's distortion of history and second-guessing sovereign states is a direct threat to our country also," said one Latvian arts executive. "Aside from experiencing palpable fear of being the next target ..., the cultural scene is pretty much paralyzed at the moment. This all hits too close to home." - Artnet
Says one official at the IBEW union local, "We've had a contract with WTTW since 1955 and we've never had a problem of this magnitude." The strike was called last week; the union's contract with the parent of WTTW (and classical radio station WFMT) expired last July. - MSN (Chicago Tribune)
The G12 school is the second cultural institution in the besieged city of Mariupol to be attacked in a matter of days. On March 16, Russia shelled Mariupol’s Donetsk Regional Theatre of Drama, where as many as 1,300 Ukrainians had been hiding in basement shelters. - Artnet
"What I soon discovered was that none of them had much idea how to make an argument in any context. Nor were they particularly skilled at analysing the arguments of others. They didn’t know how to read; they didn’t know how to write; and they didn’t know how to think." - Unherd
My Russian training prompted a question: How could a situation where everyone was morally bound to agree help overcome a collectivist mindset? Freedom and democracy, after all, depend on legitimate differences of opinion. - First Things
Most of the time, when we translate something, we think about the act of translation as changing the meaning that comes from one language and conveying it in another language. But the act of translation, particularly in writing, becomes complicated if there is technically no written equivalent of ASL. - LitHub
