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Has Amazon Really Changed Literature?

Spotify-like Kindle Unlimited subscriptions have made fiction into an “‘always on’ utility” that prioritizes “serial plenitude over singular encounters.” - The Baffler

Turns Out Poland Is A Hotbed Of Sacred Choral Music

Paweł Łukaszewski, now his nation's leading living composer, has written a lot of good music for choir. So have his Polish colleagues and predecessors going back centuries, he says, and he's started a festival in London to bring the rest of the world's attention to it. - Bachtrack

Media Companies Believe The Blockchain Will Transform Their Businesses

With crypto and blockchain, the movie and entertainment industry is poised to reinvent its business functions, facilitating secure, transparent, and traceable transactions across the market. - Fast Company

Victorian “Penny Dreadful” Pulp Novels Actually Contributed To Improving British Society (No, Really)

The cheap, cheesy horror stories became so popular, especially among older children and teens, that they were arguably a bigger factor in spreading literacy than was the introduction of mandatory public education. - Atlas Obscura

Why Have 17,000 People Lost Their Jobs In Australian Universities?

Before it happened, we in the sector viewed the prospect of such an outcome as intolerable: a Rubicon we would never allow to be crossed. - Sydney Review of Books

James Ivory, Still Working At 93, Says His Life As A Gay Man Has Been Too Easy

The director half of the Merchant Ivory filmmaking duo (and the oldest person ever to win an Oscar) says he and Ismail Merchant weren't public about their coupledom because of Merchant's Indian family but had little problem in their industry. (Ivory's also unusually frank about sex.) - The Guardian

Seven Rules For The Culture Wars

In culture wars, both sides like to refer to self-evident sources of ‘the truth’ – such that ‘every sensible person must surely be able to recognize’. But... the formerly reliable solid ground is being replaced by quicksand. - Eurozine

When Rudy Giuliani Tried To Shut Down The Brooklyn Museum

In a new memoir, Arnold Lehman, who was director of the museum at the time, looks back at the culture-war media circus that broke out over the 1999 exhibition Sensation, and especially over Chris Ofili's painting The Holy Virgin Mary. - ARTnews

COVID Killed Quite A Few Dance Companies, And The Survivors Are Scared

As dance companies are returning to the stage, the ghosts of those that no longer exist haunt the field. … Dance advocates see the vanished organizations as troubling signs that the art form, routinely under financial stress, may be shrinking, its structures drastically changing. - MSN (The Washington Post)

Why People Really Cancel Their News Subscriptions

The Nieman Journalism Lab asked its readers who had cancelled to tell them why, and hundreds did. Ideological or political bias was cited, but it was by no means the primary reason. - Nieman Lab

The Behemoth Of Broadway Licensing Companies May Be Up For Sale

You may not know of Concord Theatricals, but in the past five years, it has bought up Samuel French, Tams-Whitmark Music Library, and rights to the shows of Rodgers & Hammerstein and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Its majority owner — for now — is Michigan's state pension fund. - Forbes

Off-Broadway’s Leading Awards Eliminate Gender From Acting Categories

The Lucille Lortel Awards will honor outstanding lead performer and outstanding supporting performer in a musical and in a play, thus cutting the number of acting awards almost in half (a single category is being added for outstanding ensemble). - The Hollywood Reporter

“Utterly Astounding”: Well-Preserved Roman Statues Found On Route Of Britain’s Planned High-Speed Railway

"Statues of a Roman man, woman and child have been uncovered by archaeologists at an abandoned medieval church on the route of the HS2 high-speed railway." - The Guardian

NBCUniversal Loses Half A Billion Dollars On Its New Streaming Service

"Comcast on Thursday reported $230 million in revenue and a $520 million adjusted loss related to NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock in its third-quarter earnings report. That compared to $41 million in revenue and an adjusted loss of $233 million in the comparable year-ago period." - The Hollywood Reporter

Study: Sell An Idea By Focusing On “Why” Or “How”?

Should she focus on why her idea is useful or should she instead promote a more concrete focus on how the idea works when pitching to an audience of investors? - Harvard Business Review

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