"Sinkholes are appearing in its small streets, and nearly half its 1,700 bridges are rickety and need repairs, frequently requiring trams to cross at a snail’s pace. As a huge project to shore up the canal walls gets underway, the city is beginning to look like one gigantic construction site." The New York Times
Now work conducted in our laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that baseline pupil size is closely related to individual differences in intelligence. The larger the pupils, the higher the intelligence, as measured by tests of reasoning, attention and memory. - Scientific American
Haring painted the mural inside a nightclub in 1989. The nightclub turned into a billiards hall, and the mural was preserved, but now the building is slated for demolition. What should, what will, happen to the mural? - The Guardian (UK)
Cinque, founded by Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, and Norman Lewis in 1969, showed more than 450 artists of color during its 35-year existence. "The fact that Cinque sustained itself for more than three decades attests to an indisputable fact: the existence of at least two art communities, which were separated along color lines." - Hyperallergic
One might even call them all lies. "The author variously claimed that vaccines were a 'software platform that can receive uploads' and that 'the best way to show respect for healthcare workers if you are healthy and under 65 is to socialise sensibly and expose yourself to a low viral load.' In her most recent post, she argued that...
During what we might call "the long 2020," choreographer Kyle Marshall experienced quite a bit of change. "In this next step of his career, he said, he’s more focused and more comfortable making decisions. But the pandemic made also him realize something else: Just how exhausted he was." Now he's trying to be more intentional, working more carefully with...
Author and illustrator Jansson found her dream island when she was in her '50s. "Klovharun in the Finnish archipelago is tiny – some 6,000 sq metres – and isolated, 'a rock in the middle of nowhere,' according to Jansson’s niece, Sophia. It has scarcely any foliage, no running water and no electricity. Yet for Jansson, it was an oasis....
When Twitch entered the picture 10 years ago, most creators - writers, artists, makers, eaters of food on YouTube - weren't yet earning money through digital patronage. That has changed, and dramatically. Co-founder Justin Kan says "he and his cofounders spent years ruminating on how to make people interact online and give each other money. Should they have...
Wada wrote and performed music that "was characterized by dense, sustained sounds that could create mind-bending acoustic effects. He borrowed widely from different musical traditions — Indian ragas, Macedonian folk singing and Scottish bagpipes — all while supporting his musical life by working in construction" - which meant that sometimes, tools of the trade (like plumbing pipes) became instruments....
Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You did win two awards - best mini-series and leading actress, which Coel dedicated to the production's intimacy director: "Thank you for your existence in our industry, for making the space safe for creating physical, emotional, and professional boundaries so that we can make work about exploitation, loss of respect, about abuse of power,...
The show, whose third season, and run, ended on Sunday night, was set at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the gay and trans subcultures in New York. And yet, it wasn't about Capital-T Tragedy. - Slate
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's new L.A. museum was delayed, and delayed and delayed again - the last delay coming from the pandemic - that worked in its favor for staying up-to-date: "While the 300,000-square-foot, $482 million museum, designed by Renzo Piano, has been under construction, the movie business has been going through a process of deconstruction,...
Happy Pride Month! Um: The author of the groundbreaking Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and many other experimental, daring works wrote on Twitter, "“Absolutely hated the cosy little domestic blurbs on my new covers. Turned me into wimmins fiction of the worst kind! Nothing playful or strange or the ahead of time stuff that’s in there. So I...
Just look to Hong Kong, where by the time a group of University of Hong Kong academics gathered in a town hall meeting in May. "The assembled faculty pressed on whether HKU would provide legal assistance if they were arrested for allegedly violating the law while working, what to do if students reported professors on a government tip...
Or so says Zakiya Dalila Harris, the author of The Other Black Girl. The book is a combined thriller and social satire that was indeed inspired by Harris' experiences. "Part of me enjoyed editing and I felt I was good at it, but it’s also an exhausting job for an entry-level person in terms of the pay. I was...
