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So-Called “Wicked Bible” Or “Adulterers’ Bible” Turns Up In New Zealand

The 1631 printing of the King James Bible gets its nicknames, and its fame, from a typo: the printers omitted the word "not" from the Seventh Commandment, rendering it "Thou shalt commit adultery." Only about 20 copies now remain; this is the first discovered in the Southern Hemisphere. - The Guardian

Are Big Stars Still A Draw On Broadway?

You bet. The relationship an audience has to a Broadway star is all the more intense for being in-person. Knowing a body in space, the parabolas of certain gestures, the side angles of expressions, the timbre of a wisecrack, the mood of a certain strut lend an illusion of kinship. - Los Angeles Times

Immersive Van Gogh Shows Are Old Hat. The New Hotness Is Immersive “Bridgerton” Experiences

"The Queen's Ball: A 'Bridgerton' Experience" is one of several costume parties quasi-theatrical pop-up events based on famous media franchises (Star Wars and Game of Thrones, for instance) to materialize recently in downtown spaces left vacant in the wake of COVID. Kriston Capps pays a visit. - Bloomberg CityLab

Something New In Hollywood: The 50-Something Female Lead

It’s been a slow burn, but Hollywood is finally recognizing a trend corporate America long ago seized upon: The spending power of the 50-something woman. This is the largest demographic, according to a 2018 Forbes report, earning annual salaries of over $100,000. - New York Post

Meet Frankie Light, “YouTube Polyglot”

A handsome young Black man surprising Chinese immigrants with fluent Mandarin can amass quite a following on social media. Frankie Light is one of several people who pick up various languages (or, at least, phrases), spring them on native speakers, and post the video on YouTube. - The New York Times

Smithsonian Announces New Policy Of Ethic Returns Of Art

“My goal was very simple: Smithsonian will be the place people point to, to say ‘This is how we should share our collections and think about ethical returns,’” Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said in an interview. - The New York Times

Bolshoi Theatre Cancels Operas And Ballets By Directors Opposed To Ukraine Invasion

"The theatre gave no reason for dropping Timofey Kulyabin's production of the opera Don Pasquale and Kirill Serebrennikov's ballet Nureyev, which will be replaced by productions of Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Aram Khachaturian's ballet Spartacus," the latter a piece of patriotic populism from Soviet days. - The Guardian

Netflix’s Stumbles And Layoffs Have Employees Nervous And Angry

"Bleak subscriber numbers and the company's response have stirred a mix of angst and uncertainty among many rank-and-file workers. Some are worried that the streaming heavyweight may have hired too fast and grown complacent as subscriber growth skyrocketed in the early days of the pandemic." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

Is It Possible To Run An Orchestra As A Publicly-Traded Corporation?  This One Is Trying

Japan National Orchestra Co. was founded and is led by 27-year-old CEO Kyohei Sorita, a concert pianist convinced that his band (for now, really a chamber orchestra) can make a profit.  JNO has even issued stock, 70% of which is owned by a manufacturer of high-precision machine tools. - Bloomberg

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cinderella” Posts Closing Notice, And Some Cast Members Found Out Only Through Social Media

The West End run of ALW's latest musical will conclude on June 12. But the company was told after the Sunday matinee on a holiday weekend in Britain, and many who weren't on that day — including star Carrie Hope Fletcher — got the news the wrong way. - BBC

Russian Soldiers Remove Art From Mariupol Museums And Take It To Donbas

The city council of the occupied, now-largely-destroyed Ukrainian city says that more than 2,000 works, including paintings by the renowned 19th-century artists Arkhip Kuindzhi and Ivan Aivazovsky, were taken by Russian forces to Donetsk, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014. - The Guardian

Russians Steal Ancient Scythian Gold From Ukrainian Museum

Russian soldiers and intelligence officers, along with "a Russian-speaking man in a white lab coat" and a film crew, entered the Melitopol Museum of Local History and stole an entire collection, which had been carefully hidden, of 2,300-year-old Scythian gold ornaments, plates and weapons. - The New York Times

A New CEO At Hay Literary Festival Following Founder’s Forced Resignation

"Julie Finch, … the former CEO of the Cheltenham Trust, … has been appointed CEO of the Hay festival and will succeed founder and former director Peter Florence, who resigned from his role after a bullying claim was upheld last year." - The Guardian

Is Historic Preservation Hurting Our Cities?

As many cities today grapple with unprecedented housing shortages and cost-of-living issues, the degree to which historic-preservation laws can function as a pretext for preventing change entirely is clearer than ever. - The Atlantic

A Military Expert Defines What A Coup Is

January 6th was an extreme attack. But it was not a coup d’état. Because a coup d’état is not a demonstrative action, where you go around shouting obscenities and doing noisy things. It’s a thing where you have figured out the control levers of the system and how you can physically dominate them. - The Point

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