The Oscars maintain a "strange aura ... as a gold standard of cinematic achievement: For several months a year, people fret and discuss and strategise about them, while companies expensively campaign for them, only to spend the rest of the year complaining that they don’t mean anything." - The Observer (UK)
Yes, partly because the film absolutely bombed at the box office. "Wonder Boys succeeds. It succeeds because it failed, and because at heart it’s about failure. And writers are connoisseurs of failure." - LitHub
"Spotify has a responsibility for what it’s amplifying. Does that mean that it has the only responsibility? Does that let the producer, the content creator off the hook? No. Does it let the audience off the hook for their need to engage in critical thinking, critical listening?" - Slate
Sure, "we like stories about education that feel true" - but this one simply isn't. And keep in mind that "those who want us to forget (or mis-remember) the past are very much committed to our giving up hope." - Hack Education
"For a few days this week, a new firm called HitPiece sold nonfungible tokens, or NFTs — pieces of code asserting ownership over a digital object — associated with thousands of musicians’ catalogs" - and, it seems, without permission. - Los Angeles Times
Epstein was the editor of Philip Roth, Jane Jacobs, and W.H. Auden; one of the founders of The New York Review of Books; and the masterful pusher of the trade paperback. "His major publishing achievements owed much to an uncommon mix of literary and marketing instincts." - The New York Times
Doesn't need regulation ... for now, anyway. "It’s often the case that there are larger underlying issues at play, like the abuse of shell companies or the participation of complicit professionals, so we are tackling those first." - The New York Times
The erasure of collaborators - and the sometimes terrible behavior to others - is just the tip of the iceberg. See: A new novel about Erik Satie for something a bit more balanced. - The Atlantic
"The situation circles, perhaps conveniently. It’s not up to the government, it’s up to the trustees. And yet it’s not up to the trustees, because of the law. And it can’t lend to the Greeks, because the Greeks don’t recognise the British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures." - The Guardian (UK)
The art fair was online only in 2021, and then it was going to be in-person in the, er, winter, and now it's planned for April. The executive director: "There is nothing as good as seeing artworks in person." - The New York Times
"The elimination of Maus from a Tennessee county language arts curriculum does not live up to its more hysterical billing. It is not a ban, and it does not seem to be motivated by outright bigotry." However: There's something far more sinister on the horizon. - Slate
