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Why Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla Is Stepping Down In Birmingham

If this period of enforced home life made her reassess her priorities – she lives in Salzburg with her husband and their two children – she was not alone. - iNews

A Sharp Rise In Demands To Ban Books In Libraries

“We’re seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges. I’ve worked for ALA for 20 years, and I can’t recall a time when we had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis.” - Time

Why Did We Organize Time Into Seven-Day Weeks?

The development that really established the seven-day week as insurmountable, David Henkin contends, came in the middle of the twentieth century: the television schedule. - The New Yorker

Why Does Sad Music Make Us Feel Better?

It can act as a social surrogate. Sad music can be experienced as an imaginary friend who provides support and empathy after loss. - The Conversation

The Scheme That Saved Classical Music In Melbourne Is Expanding To The Rest Of Australia

Melbourne Digital Concert Hall streamed 430 performances, with over $1.6 million going to musicians during one of the longest, strictest lockdowns in the world. In 2022, as the Australian Digital Concert Hall, it will transmit 200 programs by performers from Perth to Brisbane to Hobart. - The Age (Melbourne)

Education As A Class Indicator (But Maybe Not How You Think)

Historically, in America, the true strength of the Classics and of a Classical education has not been among the elite but among the rising middle class. - Los Angeles Review of Books

Climate Change Is Damaging Australia’s Ancient Aboriginal Rock Art

Veteran archaeologists have noted visible changes just over the past half-century or less. Much of the rock art is painted on sandstone, which absorbs water from rains that are getting heavier; some of that stone is collapsing as salt expands and contracts in more variable weather. - The Guardian

Technology Is Promising Boosts To Your Enlightenment

Technoboosts include brain stimulation, which uses electric currents or other means to directly target certain brain areas and change their behavior, and synthetic psychedelics, which are lab-created versions of drugs such as ayahuasca. - Vox

Zadie Smith Never Meant To Write A Play. A Press Release Made Her Do It.

First of all, when her neighborhood submitted a bid to be London's Borough of Culture, she agreed to participate, thinking it wouldn't win. Then it did. So she had to come up with an idea. And she did — whereupon something entirely different (a play) was announced. - BBC

Why We Sleep

Sleep’s benefits extend far beyond the brain, and that muscles, the immune system, and the gut can all have a say in when and how sleep occurs. That work “might change our focus from studying sleep’s role in complex cognitive processes to how it impacts basic cellular function.” - Science

Jimmie Durham, Native American Artist And Activist (Or Was He?), Dead At 81

"(He was) celebrated for incorporating traditional Native American imagery and materials into lively, unconventional sculptures before his claim of Cherokee ancestry was widely challenged, setting off an intense art-world debate over his authenticity." - The New York Times

Students And Teachers Of The Afghanistan National Institute of Music Flee

The school became known for supporting the education of girls, who make up about a third of the student body. The school’s all-female orchestra, Zohra, toured the world and was hailed as a symbol of a modern, more progressive Afghanistan. - The New York Times

How Children’s Radio Grew Popular And Then Faded Away

"Back in April, the only real player in the kid-centric terrestrial radio space, Radio Disney, which started life on the airwaves 25 years ago this week, quietly wound down. … Today's Tedium looks back at the many attempts to sell kids on radio." - Tedium

Finally, A Creative is Suing Over A Hollywood Studio’s Creative Accounting Of Profits

Studios have long had a reputation for promising actors or writers a percentage of a movie's profits, then using accounting tricks to show that the film made no profit, no matter how large the grosses. Bohemian Rhapsody screenwriter Anthony McCarten has had enough. - The Hollywood Reporter

One Of New York’s Biggest Collections Of Antiquities Is In The Manhattan DA’s Office

"The Antiquities Trafficking Unit is very much a victim of its own success. Set up in 2017 … to curb the smuggling of cultural heritage, it has seized 3,604 illicit items." 2,281 of those are still there; here's a look at eight of them. - The New York Times

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