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Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth Biography, Withdrawn By W.W. Norton, Picked Up By New Publisher

The acclaimed but controversial bio was dropped by its original publisher after several women came forward with serious allegations of sexual misconduct on Bailey's part. The book is now in the hands of Skyhorse Publishing, which picked up Woody Allen's recent memoir after Hachette cancelled it and has also released titles by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, political dirty...

Co-Host Bob Garfield Fired From Public Radio’s ‘On The Media’

The longtime co-anchor was dismissed by New York Public Radio "after two separate investigations found he had violated an anti-bullying policy. … Mr. Garfield said he was not yet able to speak fully about the circumstances surrounding his firing but defended his behavior as yelling." - The New York Times

World’s Oldest Cave Art Is Being Damaged By Climate Change

"Researchers examined 11 caves and rock-shelters , which feature art dating from 45,000 to 20,000 years old. … The scientists found that the art, which is made with red and mulberry pigments, is being physically weathered by a process known as haloclasty — when salt crystals form as a result of repeated changes in temperature and humidity." - CNN

Amazon In Talks To Buy MGM For $9 Billion: Report

"Chatter that Amazon (and other tech giants) have been sniffing around MGM has circulated for some time. But sources indicated that Amazon's interest in acquiring the studio has taken on a new tenor beyond the usual rumor mill." - Variety

It’s Official: AT&T Is Spinning Off WarnerMedia To Merge With Discovery

"Under the terms of the deal, AT&T will spin off entertainment arm WarnerMedia and combine it with Discovery, creating a TV, film and streaming powerhouse. AT&T's WarnerMedia owns the likes of the Warner Bros. studio, HBO and streaming service HBO Max, as well as the Turner cable networks, including CNN, TNT and TBS. Discovery's reality TV-heavy properties include Discovery...

Radio City Music Hall Set To Reopen At 100% Capacity, No Masks Required

The first scheduled event is the finale of this year's Tribeca Film Festival on June 19. Only vaccinated people will be admitted. And how will management ensure that patrons are telling the truth about their shots? Said CEO James Dolan, "That's a really good question, I have no idea." - The New York Times

A Design Challenge To Densify Los Angeles

"The challenge is a conversation starter and design exercise. It’s also a needed counter to commercial real estate developers, whose ideas of density tend to be based on a single principle — how many dollars they can squeeze out of every square foot — with little regard for green space or other community needs. (Case in point: those sad,...

Despite Best Efforts, We’re Still Terrible At Predicting The Future

"When you aggregate hundreds of predictions, the result is a special, concentrated kind of wrong. Everyone was trying their best, and everyone missed. And these 40-year-old predictions don’t seem wrong in the fun, steampunk way that, say, late Victorian predictions of personal blimps or hot-air-ballooning robots might seem wrong. They’re just saggy middle-aged predictions." - Wired

Can The Golden Ratio Predict Hit Musicals?

You can imagine my astonishment when, early one morning, my calculations revealed that within Les Miserables, the principal characters of Fantine, Eponine, Gavrosche and Valjean all died on or very close to a golden ratio point. Further analysis revealed that major changes in the story line (matching to within less than 1%) coincided with all 16 golden ratio points....

The Guardian Newspaper Was Founded The Year Napoleon Died. It’s Been A Singular Enterprise Ever Since

Its history is peppered with financial crises and near-death experiences. Perhaps it was placed on earth to make “righteousness readable” (in the centenary words of Lord Robert Cecil), but the paper has nearly always struggled to make it remunerative. - New York Review of Books

At The Ballpark, In The Concert Hall, A Crowd Feeds Off Itself. But At 25% Full?…

“You don’t feel part of a crowd,” said Michael Howell, a season ticket holder for 40 years. “It’s more like a movie theatre where you’re all watching the same event. But you don’t feel a common purpose like you do when a sports crowd is really excited.” - WBGH

Why Workers At The Walters Museum Are Organizing A Union

The goal is to form a wall-to-wall union representing workers in nearly every aspect of museum operations. “We’ve got conservators, we’ve got people working in security who are on the floor, we’ve got frontline workers, educators, administrative staff,” says Elizabeth Norman, an Assistant Manager of Gallery Experience in the visitor experience department, one of the organizers. “There’s just a...

It’s A Golden Age For Chinese Archaeology. Why Isn’t The West Paying Attention?

Chinese archaeology has a very different history from Egyptian archaeology. It has largely been done by local, Chinese archaeologists, for one thing; it was not an imperialist project. And it was also tied, early on, to nationalist claims of identity. - Washington Post

How The Golden Globes Brought On Its Own Demise

"The association has long been considered corrupt by critics and other members of the press, but that’s not what people are really mad about. The HFPA now faces the most serious crisis in its 77-year history because a bunch of separate Hollywood factions led by a lightning brigade of entertainment publicists finally decided to call out the organization they’ve...

How The Met Opera’s Telemarketing Strategy Backfires On Itself

"Dialing for dollars may be a skill that some sellers of products and services profitably employ. But when it comes to deepening a level of patron loyalty that would get a major cultural institution out of a pandemically induced shutdown, it’s done more harm than good." - David Rohde

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