Ashur, on the banks of the Tigris, was the first capital of the Assyrian Empire, and big parts of its city gate and ziggurat temple still stand. But with Iraq facing ongoing drought, authorities want to finish the Makhoul Dam first planned by Saddam Hussein 20 years ago. - ARTnews
Russia, for instance, is attempting to wipe out a separate Ukrainian culture; as Ukraine's artist at the Venice Biennale says, "If it has no culture, Ukraine does not exist." Same with China and Uyghur culture. ISIS certainly understood culture's importance. Even Boris is using culture as a weapon. - The Guardian
Crikey, collecting the lingo that makes Strine Strine is a hard yakka that can leave a poor bastard with a head like a half-sucked mango. - The New York Times
"The Lavender Bay home of Wendy Whiteley will be sold after her death and her collection of Brett Whiteley artworks donated to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in an 'extraordinary' cultural gift to the state of NSW." - The Sydney Morning Herald
Paramount CEO Bob Bakish: "By definition, you have some things that were made in a different time and reflect different sensibilities. I don't believe in censoring art that was made historically, that's probably a mistake. It's all on demand – you don't have to watch anything you don't want to." - The Guardian
"A vast new arts hub called Plateforme 10 has opened in the Swiss city of Lausanne with the aim to revitalize the surrounding area through culture. Poised to become a new 'arts district,' Plateforme 10 spans 25,000 square meters, the equivalent of five football fields." - Artnet
Beneath Twitter's reputation as a shitposter's heaven, art lovers often prefer it to platforms that promote other forms of content (like Instagram), and artists use it as a portfolio and work-in-progress platform to showcase everything from drawings and pixel art to vector-based illustration and video game development. - Wired
The frustration has become a persistent meme: that Google Search, what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is dead or dying. For the past few years, across various forums and social-media platforms, people have been claiming in viral posts that Google’s flagship product is broken. - The Atlantic
The increase in online buying has meant a reduction in the number of physical outlets, but those that remain have a beadier eye for bargains unsuspected by their owners. The trade has lost much of its charm and romance, and the number of eccentrics has dwindled. - The Critic
If a writer is to be rejected on grounds of style, it might as well be done stylishly. One publisher brilliantly mimicked Gertrude Stein’s experimental prose with “Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one”. - The Critic
For thousands of years, global wealth – at least our best approximations of it – barely budged. But beginning around 150-200 years ago, everything changed. The world economy suddenly began to grow exponentially. Global life expectancy climbed from less than 30 years to more than 70 years. - BBC
It's really "the near-total inability of post-World War II America and Europe to produce more than a small number of classical works that any normal person would want to hear. That failure is slowly killing classical music." - Wall Street Journal
People in publishing are increasingly nervous of causing offence. I have been told that some books are being rejected not because the publishers don’t think the books have an audience, but because they don’t want to upset an online mob. - Prospect
In theory, artists can indicate that a file containing their work, whether it is digital art or a reproduction of a physical piece, belongs exclusively to them by registering it with a time stamp on a blockchain, a tamper-resistant database. - The Globe & Mail (Canada)
