A record-breaking 3841 Fringe shows were registered in 2019, consequently, like many in Edinburgh I enjoyed having ‘my’ city back in the summer of 2000; seeing it in all its breathtaking glory, while wandering through empty streets, soaking in the history. - The Scotsman
The redesign, led by the firm’s founder, Annabelle Selldorf, has gracefully unified a jumble of buildings from various eras, added 30,000 square feet of gallery space and reoriented the entire structure to the stunning feature it had long turned its back on: the Pacific Ocean. - Los Angeles Times
Globally Netflix announced it expected to add only 2.5 million new subscribers in the first three months of the year, well down on the 4 million in the first quarter of 2021. The news has helped wipe almost $45bn (£33bn) from its value as investors worried Netflix’s glory days were over. - The Guardian
For governments, the quip that "a language is a dialect with an army and navy" is more-or-less true — so Czech and Slovak, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian are different languages. For linguists, dialects are mutually intelligible and languages are not. So what of Cantonese — or Ukrainian? - The Conversation
Few places now seem to epitomise Russia’s cultural decoupling from the west better than the large, empty walls of GES-2, created as Moscow’s answer to Tate Modern. - The Guardian
Jeremy Gerard: "There are so many reasons to mourn its passing, but I will dedicate my Kaddish to this: We critics tend to be solo fliers. ... We rarely play well with others. But the Festival was an exception, demanding collegiality." - American Theatre
Joseph F. Kahn, currently managing editor (the number-two position in the newsroom), and previously Beijing bureau chief and then international editor, will succeed Dean Baquet as executive editor this summer. (Kahn is the oldest son of Leo Kahn, co-founder of the Staples office supply store chain.) - The New York Times
"The story is old, the steps are old, and that's all part of Swan Lake's endurance – it's a classical ballet. So how does a ballet company make their Swan Lake different from the Swan Lake next door?" Here's how four prominent choreographers have differentiated their versions. - New York Observer
“There’s no way I could ever be in denial of what is happening in Ukraine,” he said during a series of interviews over the past week. “Russia is not a place where I want to raise my son. It’s not a place where I want my wife to be anymore. It’s not a place I want to be anymore.”...
Andrés Rubio, travel editor at El País, has just published a book arguing that Spain's natural beauty and historic cities and towns have been blighted by hasty, often chaotic real estate development with architecture that's often hulking, dull and even downright repugnant. - The Guardian
Lucas Mann, an English professor at a UMass branch campus: "For a professor at a school like mine, ... the trick isn't convincing students to drop their dogmas. It's convincing them that the stuff we're talking about could matter in lives already complicated by many other things." - Slate
"428 in all are closed, half of which are publicly owned. ... The (Ministry of Culture) has financed €420 million for performances in 2022, but nothing for infrastructure. The separate Reconstruction and Resilience Plan in Italy has not allocated anything for theatres, and many are waiting to collapse." - Gramilano (Milan)
The orchestra's board made the surprise decision — the stated cause being breach of contract — after Lang-Lessing announced that he will conduct the San Antonio musicians, who have been on strike since late September, in two benefit concerts next month. - Texas Public Radio
"Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries' governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures." - MSN (The Washington Post)
