Values are promoted through cultural strategies where buzzwords chime loudly. Terms like networking, collaboration, common good, connection and cooperation promote an ever-closer union with culture, while the arts are deployed for soft power and propagandist tactics. - The Critic
"Are there more types of fake blood than there are of real blood? Oh, positively. ... As a prop master for the last 30-odd years, I've had to navigate my way through some truly inspirational and some pretty disastrous blood special effects ideas posed by directors and actors." - American Theatre
Rubbing shoulders with strangers is considered both a pleasure and a pain of urban life. Density can be an endless source of social possibility, of chance encounters in city streets. - Aeon
"It turns out the crossword industry really does consist of earnest wordplay lovers donating their time to unpaid mentorships, generally as part of an industry-wide effort to bring new and underrepresented people into crosswords. Unfortunately, the end result might be even more exclusive than a pay-to-play scheme." - The New Republic
Here’s the thing about the wisdom of crowds – it only applies when those individual decisions are reached independently. Once we start influencing each other’s decision, that wisdom disappears. - MediaPost
"A Yayoi Kusama pumpkin, Rashid Johnson mosaic, and a monumental Jeff Koons sculpture — in the likeness of an endangered marine mammal — are among the 40 new and commissioned public artworks to be installed throughout (the capital)." - ARTnews
New programming initiatives mean musicians are rehearsing more unfamiliar works, and, come curtain time, standard repertoire sometimes ends up underrehearsed. Shutdown-induced layoffs mean remaining administrative staffers do the work of two or more people. They're burning out, and management's biggest concerns seem to be elsewhere. - San Francisco Classical Voice
"Storytellers have to do more than spin a satisfying yarn; they must contend with fans who are so involved, they're practically racing them to the finish line. ... Knowing that their audience is watching so intently has become an occupational hazard when plotting mysteries and lore-driven tales." - MSN (The Atlantic)
"It is too easy to call it a conservative show. Like its audience counterpart, Yellowstone thinks it is at war with progress when it is really at war with itself." - The New York Times
"His production company, Zentropa, ... said it released the information in order to avoid speculation about his health leading up to the premiere of his series The Kingdom Exodus at the Venice Film Festival next month." - AP
"Dancing Times was established in October 1910 ... and has been published continuously every month for 112 years. ... The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the rapid increase in costs over the past year, means the magazine is no longer financially viable in its current form." - Gramilano
The as-yet-untitled sculpture, to be placed near the library at King's College, is, like the one planned for Imperial College, London, made of stacked steel rectangles. But while the London statue looks like a LEGO man with an enormous erection, the Cambridge one appears entirely G-rated. - The Art Newspaper
Some of the bikes may have ended up in the canal by accident. Cyclists lost in the dark or disoriented by fog steer bikes off towpaths into canals. Drunk cyclists fall from bridges. Thieves fleeing police by bicycle swerve into the river. - The Guardian
More than 100 years after all the -isms in modern art, art lovers, art buyers, and masses of museumgoers throughout the world wholly accept the presence of most abstract modernism cheek by jowl with contemporary figural and representational works. So what happened to 20th Century music? - American Scholar
Asked about Mark Zuckerberg, the bot told BuzzFeed’s Max Woolf that “he is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes!” - The Guardian
