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Major Italian Baroque Painting Turns Up At Ordinary Suburban New York Church

An art history professor happened to be in the Church of the Holy Family in New Rochelle when he saw a painting that made him do a "double take." It turned out to be Cesare Dandini's Holy Family with the Infant St. John, dating from the 1630s. - Artnet

The Rivals: As The Delta Variant Rages, Sydney Reopens Its Theatres While Melbourne Stays Closed

The difference is not in case numbers; it's in state government policies. New South Wales (Sydney), governed by the conservative Coalition, has relatively laissez-faire rules (and higher COVID caseloads), while Victoria (Melbourne), governed by Labor, has been unusually strict with lockdowns, masking rules, etc. - The Guardian

Long-Delayed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi At Last Has An Opening Date (And It’s Not Soon)

The Frank Gehry-designed museum, one of several starchitect-designed brand-name cultural institutions planned for the Emirati capital's Saadiyat Island, is expected to be October of 2026, 16 years after the originally planned opening and a full two decades after the project was announced. - Artnet

France’s Top Book Prize Has A New Conflict-Of-Interest Scandal

One of the finalists for this year's Prix Goncourt, The Children of Cadillac, was written by François Noudelmann, the romantic partner of one of the 10 jurors, Camille Laurens. What's more, Laurens recently savaged a competing book on the shortlist in a review for Le Monde. - The Guardian

Why Podcasts Are So Popular (As A Medium)

 New research finds that of all media, podcast content generates the greatest degree of consumer concentration. - Inside Radio

It’s A Weird Time To Be A Critic

The instinct to abuse critics is justified by the idea that it is “punching up” at elitist gatekeepers. But unlike Siskel and Ebert, modern critics are neither famous nor wealthy nor powerful. - Unherd

The Next Era: The “Exponential Age”

The Exponential Age is challenging our assumptions about globalization. A car can be designed in Guiyang and assembled in California with remarkable ease. But it also represents an inversion of globalization—a return to the local. Strategy + Business

More Governments Are Censoring Online Content

Governments are limiting or banning applications, content and connectivity itself — and Big Tech companies, rich and powerful as they are, can't or won't fight back. - Axios

The News Shared On Facebook Gets Smaller And Smaller

The percent that are about news — defined broadly, including sports and entertainment — is now somewhere less than 4%. It’s something of a niche interest for Facebook users. - NiemanLab

Pennsylvania School District Bans Children’s Books On MLK And Rosa Parks

In a clip from a meeting aired by CNN, which reported on student protests of the ban, members referred to the list of reading and educational material as “divisive” and “bad ideas.” - Miami Herald

Pathbreaking TV Writer Irma Kalish Dead At 96

Most female scriptwriters in the 1950s and '60s had to churn out proto-Hallmark-Channel movies, but Kalish thrived in comedy. Her biggest mark was in Norman Lear's sitcoms All in the Family and its spinoff Maude; she co-produced the Maude spinoff Good Times. - The New York Times

Clearing Up Simplicity: The Fallacies Of Occam’s Razor

Cited widely in science, but often misunderstood, for some it’s invaluable, hinting at profound truths about the nature of knowledge. For others it’s worse than useless. - Prospect

Someone Thought Putting The Bible, The US Constitution, And Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA” In One Book Was A Good Idea

"Big-name Christian authors penned a letter blasting it as 'dangerous,' and more than 900 people signed a petition decrying the decision to print it. The advertised publisher, part of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, disavowed the book and denied it ever planned to print it in the first place." - Slate

Free Artistic Expression In India Is Being Gradually Strangled

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, "censorship (is) no longer about nudity, gore, or promiscuity. It (has) firmly set its sights on whether (a) narrative matched the right-wing Hindu nationalists' narrative." - Slate

Scientists Have Created The Whitest White Ever

Their original goal was to create a paint that would effectively reflect sunlight away from a building, which required producing an extremely white pigment. - Hyperallergic

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