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A New Factor In Writing TV Scripts: The Online Superfans Scrutinizing Every Line Of Dialogue For Clues

"Storytellers have to do more than spin a satisfying yarn; they must contend with fans who are so involved, they're practically racing them to the finish line. ... Knowing that their audience is watching so intently has become an occupational hazard when plotting mysteries and lore-driven tales." - MSN (The Atlantic)

A Conservative Version Of Prestige TV?  Considering “Yellowstone”

"It is too easy to call it a conservative show. Like its audience counterpart, Yellowstone thinks it is at war with progress when it is really at war with itself." - The New York Times

Filmmaker Lars Von Trier Diagnosed With Parkinson’s Disease

"His production company, Zentropa, ... said it released the information in order to avoid speculation about his health leading up to the premiere of his series The Kingdom Exodus at the Venice Film Festival next month." - AP

After More Than A Century, Britain’s Dancing Times Magazine Is Shutting Down

"Dancing Times was established in October 1910 ... and has been published continuously every month for 112 years. ... The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the rapid increase in costs over the past year, means the magazine is no longer financially viable in its current form." - Gramilano

Meanwhile, Anthony Gormley’s Memorial To Alan Turing In Cambridge Has Been Approved With Little Incident

The as-yet-untitled sculpture, to be placed near the library at King's College, is, like the one planned for Imperial College, London, made of stacked steel rectangles. But while the London statue looks like a LEGO man with an enormous erection, the Cambridge one appears entirely G-rated. - The Art Newspaper

From China To Amsterdam, Why Do So Many Bikes End Up In Urban Waterways?

Some of the bikes may have ended up in the canal by accident. Cyclists lost in the dark or disoriented by fog steer bikes off towpaths into canals. Drunk cyclists fall from bridges. Thieves fleeing police by bicycle swerve into the river. - The Guardian

Audiences Accept Modern Art. Why Not Modern Music?

More than 100 years after all the -isms in modern art, art lovers, art buyers, and masses of museumgoers throughout the world wholly accept the presence of most abstract modernism cheek by jowl with contemporary figural and representational works. So what happened to 20th Century music? - American Scholar

Facebook’s New AI Chatbot Bizarrely Dishes On Its Corporate Overlords

Asked about Mark Zuckerberg, the bot told BuzzFeed’s Max Woolf that “he is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes!” - The Guardian

New UK Guidance For Museums On Art Restitution

While cases regarding repatriation may be complex, the authors say, “they often present rich opportunities for enhancing understanding for all involved” by allowing the full histories of certain objects to come to light. - ARTnet

Fan Obsessions Are Changing The Ways TV Is Made

Audiences have begun to more actively engage with what they watch. They analyze, turning ambiguity into clarity, forging connections with fellow fans. As a result, storytellers have to do more than spin a satisfying yarn; they must contend with fans who are so involved, they’re practically racing them to the finish line. - The Atlantic

Archaeologists Rebury Important Ancient Villa

“It may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes burying excavated ancient art and architecture is the best way to keep it safe from environmental and human threats,” writes Alexandria Sivak on the Getty Foundation’s website. - Smithsonian

Too Phallic: London Students Are Loudly Objecting To Anthony Gormley’s Planned Sculpture Honoring Alan Turing

The 20-foot-tall memorial, titled ALERT and planned for the South Kensington campus of Imperial College, London, is a stack of rectangular volumes intended by Gormley to represent a person squatting.  Well, that's not what comes to mind for most folks when they see it. - ARTnews

Moral Grandstanding? Virtue Signaling? So…

“Moral grandstanding” and “virtue signaling” are slurs. They are variations on the charge of being “woke”, “politically correct,” etc., going at least as far back as Tom Wolfe’s 1970 essay on “radical chic.” These are all ad hominems, attacking the person, not the argument or cause. - 3 Quarks Daily

Behind The Scenes At Bayreuth’s Other Opera Festival

The Bavarian town has, in fact, two opera houses: Richard Wagner's famous custom-built theater and the Margravial Opera House, an opulent 18th-century venue seating 600. For two weeks every summer, it's home to Bayreuth Baroque, whose director is the countertenor Max Emanuel Cenčić. - Bachtrack

Are We All Just Living In An Artificial Simulation?

This idea is surprisingly popular among philosophers and even some scientists. Assume that in the far future, civilisations hugely more technically advanced than ours will be interested in running “ancestor simulations” of the sentient beings in their distant galactic past. - The Guardian

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