To me, it sounds like alcohol—a social lubricant that can be delightful but also depressing, a popular experience that blends short-term euphoria with long-term regret, a product that leads to painful and even addictive behavior among a significant minority. - The Atlantic
The plays are arriving at an existentially challenging moment for Broadway, when theaters have been closed for a year and a half, when the Delta variant has set back the nation’s recovery from Covid, when tourism is way down. - The New York Times
Although great progress has been made in developing sophisticated models and explaining phenomena such as circadian rhythms, jetlag and details of EEG recordings of the sleeping brain, these advances are belied by the difficulty of developing a general quantitative theory for why we sleep. - Aeon
“Diversity applies to pretty much everybody except fat people,” opera critic Uwe Friedrich tells me. The pressure to conform to a societal ideal of beauty has “increased enormously” in recent years. - Van
“You really don’t know whether this person making a good-sounding argument is really smart, is really educated, or whether they’re just reading off something that they read on Twitter.” - NiemanLab
Osita Nwanevu: "The morsels of rage and misery we offer might not have much political effect, but they do feed an online writing economy that rewards speed, quantity, and deference to algorithms designed for the profit of three or four tech companies." - Columbia Journalism Review
Usually, our work requires a year or two in advance planning. But now we’re building the plane as we’re flying. So it’s really shown us that we can be nimble. - Christian Science Monitor
Just as there really were African-Americans in the Old West, Westerns with Black casts (first shown to segregated audiences) were made from the 1930s through the Blaxploitation '70s and beyond. The latest example, The Harder They Fall, is fiction but depicts real historical figures. - The New York Times
The two-cave system is nestled within a 43-acre stretch of land in Missouri, about 60 miles west of St. Louis. Scholars have called it “the most important rock art site in North America” because of a collection of 290 prehistoric glyphs on its walls. - Hyperallergic
The BBC interviewed half a dozen musicians who have had instruments smashed, relatives killed, and threats issued since the extremists took over Afghanistan last month. They now all in hiding in Pakistan, hoping to find refuge in another country. - BBC
The artwork was part of a 2016 project to place murals around the campus. Two years later, the Wilshire Community Coalition, a group led by Korean Americans, spoke out against the sun rays that prominently radiated from Ava Gardner’s profile. - Los Angeles Times
"The report ascribes a goal of erasing traces of their cultural presence on the peninsula and weakening 'the fundamental role of the indigenous Muslim people in the history of Crimea' as a mean of 'historical justification for its occupation.'" - The Art Newspaper
In recent years the dogmatic mode of thinking, in which uncritical commitments are enforced by mechanisms involving public humiliation, no-platforming, and attempts to have scholars fired, has become to seem like it has become endemic. - Harper-Scott
"People are focused on survival … and caring for their loved ones," says one artist in Yangon. Adds another, "It's dangerous to do a good show now, since … it is impossible to speak about the present in Myanmar without putting yourself in danger." - The Art Newspaper
Director Na Gyi and his wife (and leading actor) would be in hiding even if their latest film weren't about a lesbian romance: they gave financial help to people striking against the coup. Here's a Q&A he gave from a safe house. - The Hollywood Reporter
