One singer: "We have the power to uplift someone. ... It’s something I hope fellow musicians realize, appreciate and that they don’t forget, even if we’re in a very challenging time. The worst thing that can happen is for you to stop." - Los Angeles Times
But that's not the point: "Pushing media companies to live up to their ideals about inclusion and equality is a long game, requiring sustained pressure and constant scrutiny — a much different notion than so-called 'cancel culture.'"- NPR
Playwright Al Smith says he didn't mean one of his characters - a zillionaire Silicon Valley bro meant to represent Elon Musk - named "Hershel Fink" to read as Jewish, but after protests, Britain's Royal Court theatre has changed the name. - The Observer (UK)
And not just her love for opera, but her love for operatic style. "She did so much for our art form by speaking about it publicly and encouraging people to attend — we should all be incredibly grateful." - The New York Times
Daniel Heath Justice's "podcast, which will be peer-reviewed before its release—a first in North America—is part of a bold new take on research that treats new media as scholarship, defying the traditionally rigid informational hierarchies in academia." - MacLean's (Canada)
"The lives of buchonas, their flamboyant styles and their taste for plastic surgery are regularly chronicled in Spanish-language media outlets. Vloggers do roundups devoted to top buchonas. And internationally, people have adopted the style." Then there's the music. - Los Angeles Times
The authors nominated for the Giller who have kids say they write whenever they can. Another: "COVID has helped me let go of a pernicious late capitalist drive which cast reading as unproductive leisure time, as opposed to an integral part of the writing process." - CBC
Sounds like a horror novel, but this was real. "The man got into a crawl space in the building. ... He was in the hiding spot for two days before he fell into a space in the wall of the men’s bathroom and became trapped." - Syracuse Post-Standard
King George III in New York, the Buddhas in Afghanistan, a traitorous general in Virginia - "scrutinizing monumental statuary is an integral part of what open societies do as they reassess past values and seek new ones to guide their futures." - Washington Post
For $30 a month, maybe. But it lacks nuance, and can be "downright self-serving," making suggestions, for instance, to call itself an "excellent" service instead of a "nice" one. Clever, but no. - FastCompany
That's a normal budget for an indie, but it does bring home grim realities of the industry. "The producers of the movie Rust earmarked $650,000 to pay themselves, $7,913 to pay their armorer and $350,000 as a contingency in case anything went wrong." - The Hollywood Reporter
Green "planned to paint the meals until capital punishment was abolished, or until she had made 1,000 plates, whichever came first. In September, she painted her 1,000th plate." - The New York Times
Boo from the Guild to the proposed Penguin Random House takeover of Simon & Schuster: "Consolidation doesn’t just stifle competition, it also makes acquisition editors less willing to take risks," the Guild says. And that's bad for consumers, er, readers. - Los Angeles Times
