Fewer people than back in The Time Before will be able to swing by the theater or concert hall after leaving the office. Will they come in from home? In no American city does the question loom larger than in San Francisco. - The New York Times
The acquisition of audiobook platform Findaway lets Spotify "quickly bring a large catalog of audiobooks to its massive user base … in the way the company jump-started its push into podcasts with the acquisitions of Gimlet, Anchor, Parcast and The Ringer." - Variety
"The membership of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees has voted to ratify a new three-year agreement, ending the threat of the first national strike in the union's history. The vote was unusually close." - Variety
"More than 96% of the union, which represents public-facing staff, library workers, educators, curators, conservators, and administrative and professional workers, voted to picket outside the museum (on November 17). … Workers are concerned about pay, safety, workplace diversity, requiring union membership and job growth." - AP
No, La MaMa in New York didn't burn down. But La Mama in Melbourne did. Founded in 1969 and an important venue for developing new Australian plays, La Mama was destroyed by fire in 2018, just short of its 50th anniversary. Here's how it got rebuilt. - ArtsHub (Australia)
Whether or not a certain line of work is shameful or honorable is culturally relative, varying greatly. Farmers, soldiers, actors, dentists, prostitutes, pirates and priests have all been respected or despised in some society or other. - 3 Quarks Daily
Users who look at videos and pictures of bodies deemed attractive by broader society will be shown more of those images, potentially feeling worse about their own looks by comparison. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The famous animal paintings in the Chauvet cave, of France, are dated at around thirty-five thousand years old; the Sulawesi warty pig outdoes them by roughly ten thousand years. - The New Yorker
In contrast to the simplistic idea that all we need to do is implement a set of technological and lifestyle changes, they offer a new way of understanding and relating to nature. - The Conversation
A cursory review of Western literature and fiction suggests that the instinct to render fictional heroines “hot” has both a long history and one which continues to this day. - LitHub
Colour has a life beyond any individual perception. It exists as both the quality of a thing as well as an approach to that thing, or “a dance between subjects and objects, mind and matter.” - Prospect
Professionally, Steven Klein created logos and slogans for hotels and restaurants. But he belonged to no agency. Instead, as an independent consultant, he was a walking encyclopedia — and booster — of pop culture from the 1970s. The New York Times
Within the state and between the state and those it governs, personal relationships are much less significant than they used to be after a centuries long effort to redescribe them as ‘corruption’. But they are merely down; not out. - 3 Quarks Daily
Patrons attending A Christmas Carol were seated and ready for the 7:30 p.m. showtime when a woman began screaming in the crowd. According to social media posts from witnesses, the woman ranted for upwards of 30 minutes. - Bring Me The News
At year’s end, Tony will step down as The Times’s chief classical music critic. It is a position he has held since 2000, giving him the longest tenure in the role since Olin Downes. - The New York Times
