Stories

In what looks like a reaction - some might call it an over-reaction - to the employee walkouts over Dave Chapelle's transphobic jokes, the streamer changed its "corporate culture" memo, saying employees "may have to work on content that they 'perceive as harmful.'" - NPR

Marcuse ran several bookstores, but Common Concerns, in Dupont Circle during the Reagan and (H.W.) Bush years, was the most important for a community looking for a home. His (Ed) "Meese is a Pig" T-shirts and posters were top-sellers. - Washington Post

Saotome, a novelist who has died at 90, compiled six books of survivors' testimony and founded a museum as well. - The New York Times

Why an entire bookstore and café devoted to scary things? "Imagine your problems were a ghost, a monster, a serial killer — that the thing stealing your power could be punched or séanced or set on fire. That you could kill it, that you could triumph. Horror is cathartic." - Toronto Star

Twin Cities spoken word artist and musician "SUNAH hopes to replace negative language some in the Hmong community use to describe LGBTQ people. There is no known word for queer or gay in the Hmong language." - Sahan Journal

After the sale of the Chicago Reader "was nearly derailed over a co-owner’s column opposing COVID-19 vaccine requirements for children," and after a lot of protests and work, the sale to a nonprofit is expected to work. - Seattle Times (AP)

"The characters in the showdown were as colorful as any drawn on the studio's animation cels: union activists, gangsters, communists and anti-communists, and, not least, Walt Disney himself, who, dropping his avuncular persona, played a long game of political hardball." - Salon

Co-founder of Bitch Magazine Andi Ziesler says that "the thing that made us stand out in an increasingly digital marketplace was the fact that we also had a print magazine. But the print magazine became increasingly hard to sustain because the cost of printing kept going up." - Slate

This should not surprise you, because it's also the best place to get free physical books, music, and movies. - Fast Company

"If the very essence of Blaxploitation films to challenge the world order, the creative marriage between Kung Fu and Blaxploitation offered global imagery of resistance." - Black Film Archive

Look, this wouldn't really be a news story, but the energy trader who bought it said, "I’m walking away with the treasure while everybody is fighting over a Warhol or a Monet." The painting, by Ernie Barnes, also appeared as the cover of a Marvin Gaye single. - Los Angeles Times

Probably what happened is streaming. "Perhaps it's no longer possible to amuse all of the people all of the time." - BBC

"This protest was beautiful; we used our own craft and creative responsibility as artists to advocate for social change. From stenciled shirts to embroidered banners, from hand-printed posters to cardboard sculptures — our strike was a creative act." - Hyperallergic

Yeoh, on Everything Everywhere All at Once: "When we were doing the butt-plug fight sequences, I was on the ground, laughing my head off, going like: 'Oh my God! Would I have ever thought that one day I would be doing this kind of martial arts?'" - The Guardian (UK)

"There were impassioned statements on Ukraine, the killing of the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, social media polarization, climate change, the deluge of disinformation and the global decline of democracy." Writers might not be able to solve it all. - The New York Times