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James Baldwin On Fire Island

He had two stays in the gay community of Cherry Grove, neither during high season, during which he worked on Another Country (May 1959) and Blues for Mister Charlie (September 1963).  It wasn't a comfortable place for him, and not only because the Grove was, back then, very white. - Literary Hub

Russia’s Cultural Brain Drain, In The Words Of The Brains Who Have Drained

Actress Renata Litvinova: "I suddenly realized that maybe I'm never going back." Director Kirill Serebrennikov: "I continue to allow myself the illusion that my departure was not a permanent escape." Scientist Ilya Kolmanovsky: "With time, people will come to understand that Putin's invasion was also an attack on Russia." - GQ

New AI Breakthrough Makes Startling Pictures, Raises Questions About Creativity

It's leaps and bounds ahead. It raises immediate questions about how these technologies will change how art is made and consumed. It also raises questions about what it means to be creative when DALL-E 2 seems to automate so much of the creative process itself. - The Daily Beast

How Did Stanley Kubrick Ever Get Away With Making A Hollywood Movie Out Of “Lolita”?

"Forced to excise or elide some of the book's thorniest elements for the sake of (the film's) being allowed to exist at all, ... Kubrick flirts with bad taste by recasting sections of the movie as a dark comedy – a contrast that make its sadder moments all the starker." - The Guardian

How Much Responsibility Do You Have To Be An Informed Citizen?

There are two reasons why it is unclear whether positing a personal responsibility to be informed improves our information practices. - Psyche

Jaron Lanier: A Non-Obvious Way To Fix Social Media? Groups!

The point is that the people in the groups know one another well enough to take on the pursuit of trust and quality, and to rid their groups of bots. Perhaps the size limit should be in the low hundreds, corresponding to our cognitive ability to keep track of friends and family. - The Atlantic

Is It Telling, In This Age Of Mistrust, That Tom Hanks Is Playing A Bad Guy?

"At the end of the day, the only people who care about your image in a movie is the marketing department."  Hanks discusses finding his way into Col. Tom Parker (in the upcoming Elvis) and working with "a particular countenance that I carry into any movie." - The New York Times Magazine

Donor Run Amok: A Museum Sells Its Soul

Welcome to Long Beach. Here at Cal State University, Kleefelds in the Kleefeld at the Kleefeld are the new norm. Disturbingly so. It’s a train wreck, and a serious disservice is being done to students. - Los Angeles Times

Discovery Of 13,000 Ancient Artifacts Sheds Light On Lost Culture Of Sanxingdui

The find, which includes bronze, jade, gold, and ivory pieces, many intact, is at the Sanxingdui Ruins in Sichuan province.  The site was the center of an advanced Bronze Age culture that flourished over 4,000 years ago and disappeared around 1100 BCE, leaving no writing behind. - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

How Pixar Grew From A Little Experimental Studio Into A Global Gold Standard For Animation

"Going back to its earliest days, Pixar was always a place where some minds succeeded by solving intractable problems with vim and whimsy, and others by tackling existential issues with cold, hard code. And all these years later, it still is." - The Ringer

Voguing — Dance, Subculture, Liberation Movement

The hybrid of dance, costuming, satirical mimicry and other ingredients that has provided community to several generations of Black and Hispanic queer people is featured in a new HBO Max competition show, Legendary, that hopes to do for voguing what RuPaul's Drag Race did for drag. - The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Talking About “The Book Of Mormon” With Three Guys Who’ve Been In Its Cast For All 4,000 Broadway Performances

Graham Bowen (dance captain and swing), Lewis Cleale ("all the old white guys"), and John Eric Parker (Mutumbo) "joined a reporter at the theater one afternoon last week to discuss the musical's staying power, and how it's changed with the times." - The New York Times

After 110 Years, “Poetry” Magazine Has Its First Black Editor

In a Q&A, Adrian Matejka, a multiple award-winner who holds an endowed chair at Indiana University and was the state's poet laureate from 2018-19, talks about his plans for the magazine and diversity and equity at its parent, the Poetry Foundation. - MSN (Chicago Tribune)

Norway’s New National Museum Looks Like A High-Tech Fortress.  What Is It Protecting?

"This is a building that says 'No': after years of delays, here is a complex of enormous hard-edged boxes clad in dark gray slate with few windows and zero funky details. ... On a satellite view, it would look like Google obscured the building for security reasons." - Artnet

The Head Of London’s Royal Opera Writes About Race, Representation, Black- And Yellowface, And Typecasting

Oliver Mears: "Notwithstanding their subject matter, these operas are masterpieces. Instead of cancelling them we should find creative ways to live with them. ... Vigorously diversifying across the board, rather than ghettoising particular singers in particular totemic operas, feels like by far the best way forward for the art form." - The Guardian

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