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The Internet As An Idea (That We’re Trapped In)

The crisis really heats up when the algorithm’s structuring power bends back upon us and constrains us into thinking of ourselves as if we were algorithmic systems. - Los Angeles Review of Books

A National Geographic Brief History Of Hula

How a sacred Hawaiian dance and music ritual was canceled, commercialized, and finally, revived. - National Geographic

How Much Of Their Work Should Choreographers Post Online?

It’s a complex calculus, asking artists to become experts in marketing, video editing and budgeting, in addition to dancemaking. But when it comes to curating your digital dance footprint, finding the sweet spot between too much and too little can yield a huge payoff, allowing for all kinds of new opportunities. - Dance Magazine

Even With The Will Smith-Chris Rock Bitch-Slap, There Are Two Americas

Jemele Hill: "By that I mean: Black people and white people aren't necessarily talking about the incident in the same way. … I can't help but notice the disproportionate outrage that many people in white America — and many in the Hollywood elite — are showing." - The Atlantic

The Music Catalog Business Is Booming

Catalog valuations have shot up in recent years. In 2021, investors paid multiples equivalent to around 22 times the net publisher’s share of royalties—a standard industry measure of income—up from 11 times in 2015, data from investment bank Shot Tower Capital shows. - The Wall Street Journal

RT America, The Russian State Broadcaster’s DC Bureau, Was Just Weird

"But its weirdness is much harder to explain if you can't look at any of its deeply weird clips," most of which have vanished from the Web. "From the start, the channel was staffed by has-beens, oddballs, and extremely young people." - The Atlantic

Aaron Sorkin Is Writing A New Script For “Camelot”

André Bishop, chief of Lincoln Center Theater (where the show debuts next fall) and director Bartlett Sher asked Sorkin to consider the project. "It was the fastest I've ever said yes to anything." Among the changes he's making is removing everything magic or supernatural from the script. - The Hollywood Reporter

Post-Sacklers, Museums Are Adding “Morals Clauses” To Donor Agreements

"When a wealthy donor agrees to support an institution in return for naming rights, the lawyers increasingly draw up contracts with carefully worded 'morals clauses'. Such clauses 'allow an institution to protect themselves in the event of a donor falling from grace.'" - The Art Newspaper

Archaeologists Discover 9,000-Year-Old Shrine In Jordan

"Located in the Khashabiyeh Mountains …, the shrine features two large standing stones carved with anthropomorphic figures, as well as an altar and hearth. The team also found almost 150 marine fossils and a small-scale model of a 'desert kite' trap used to capture and slaughter wild gazelles." - Smithsonian Magazine

Did Target Yank A Bunch Of LGBTQ Books From Its Website?

"On March 25, word started to spread on Twitter that a multitude of LGBTQ books — many of them by debut authors — were inexplicably missing from Target's website, despite a number of the titles having previously been listed for pre-order." - Publishers Weekly

New York City’s New Mayor Suggests Cutting $72 Million From Arts Budget

In February "the mayor released a preliminary budget for fiscal year 2023 that proposes slashing one-third of the city's culture budget. So how does the mayor's grandiose rhetoric about New York's cultural comeback match up with his budgetary policy?" (Poorly.) - Hyperallergic

Putin Suggests Merging Bolshoi And Mariinsky Theaters Under Valery Gergiev’s Direction

After Bolshoi director Vladimir Urin signed a petition for ending Russia's war in Ukraine and one of the Bolshoi's star ballerinas abruptly emigrated, the Russian president reportedly asked Gergiev, artistic director of the Mariinsky and longtime Putin friend, to consider bringing both houses under his management. - MSN (The Washington Post)

Supreme Court To Rule On Fair Use In Warhol Work

The case will test fair use defense to copyright infringement and how to assess if a new work based on an older one meaningfully transformed it. The black-and-white image that Warhol used was taken in 1981 by Lynn Goldsmith, whose work has appeared on more than 100 album covers. - The New York Times

Second-Lowest Oscar Ratings Ever

The early results showed a 56 percent improvement on the 9.6 million people who watched last year’s event, according to ABC, though Sunday night’s show was still the second least-watched Oscars ever. - The New York Times

Why Do We Still Need Religion?

Part of the reason people are attracted to religion is that its rituals – the standing, sitting and kneeling in unison, the singing, the listening to emotionally rousing sermons – trigger the brain’s endorphin system. - The Guardian

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