Excellent sheephood is inherently competitive. Its purpose is to vault you into the ranks of society’s winners, to make sure that you end up with more stuff—more wealth, status, power, access, comfort, freedom—than most other people. This is not a pretty project, when you look it in the face. - Bari Weiss
Beyond Alaska's few cities, APR's stations are sometimes the only local ones available, "mixing Morning Edition with all flavors of music, emergency announcements, swap-and-shop shows and personal announcements for family members in remote, roadless villages. ... The station managers and engineers who keep it running are the unsung heroes." - Current
"Pembroke Dock town councilor William Gannon, age 58, was just elected earlier this month, but he couldn't quell rumors about his supposed illicit artistic activities in January, which he believes may have been started by his political opponents." - Artnet
"These latest thefts are in keeping with Putin's attempts to erase Ukraine's independent history and promote his own expansionist model of a new Russian empire. ... These works have been chosen to undermine Ukraine's national identity. Paintings by western European artists have not been targeted." - The Guardian
"For more than a decade, Imagineers — Disney designers and researchers — have been looking into LARPs and interactive theatre, and running 'playtests' in the (theme) parks." On the Galactic Starcruiser, the current state of the art, Disney World gives Star Wars fans an immersive LARP experience two nights long. - The New Yorker
"British prosecutors said Thursday they had authorized police to charge actor Kevin Spacey with four counts of sexual assault against three men, an announcement that came as the actor was in court in New York testifying in a different case." - AP
The charges against Jean-Luc Martinez, who stepped down last year, concern five antiquities allegedly taken illegally from Egypt and sold to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. - Artnet
Best known for Something Wild, Field of Dreams, and Goodfellas, "in a decades-long, genre-spanning career, Liotta played criminals, cops, a baseball star, a preacher and even Frank Sinatra." - MSN (Los Angeles Times)
Lawmakers in Denmark have agreed global TV streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Disney, must pay a levy of 6% of their revenue in the country to support local TV production. - Reuters
Robert Ainsley succeeds Francesca Zambello, who led Glimmerglass, a summer festival of opera and theater, for more than a decade. In an interview, Ainsley said he was committed to building on Zambello’s efforts to “make this an art form for everyone.” - The New York Times
Perched in a helicopter some 650 feet up, scientists used light-based remote sensing technology (lidar) to digitally deforest the canopy and identify the ancient ruins of a vast urban settlement around Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon that was abandoned some 600 years ago. - Smithsonian
John McWhorter: For example, the pathway from “crippled” to “handicapped” to “disabled” to “differently abled.” New words ultimately don’t leave freighted ideas behind; they merely take them on. - The New York Times
Pre-COVID, Boston’s arts organizations had a pragmatic approach—they prioritized ticket sales over experimentation. As a result, Boston’s arts sector produces fewer new works than its peer cities. Without new sources of funding, this innovation disparity will likely increase. - Commonwealth
The record is an unusual proposition: A rare fusion of pow wow—an Indigenous culture of music and dance—and experimental electronic production. Holding it all together are sampled live recordings of pow wow singing and drumming stretching back decades. - Pitchfork
