He channels his audience into extended conversations with famously smart people who are willing to give them hours of attention. Through him, they feel like the world is a little bit less incomprehensible and their lives are a little bit less uncontrollable. - Post Alley
Today, of course, technical perfection is an overriding concern. But there are other aspects of performance practice today, some of which are wonderful but others I find distracting after comparing them to recordings of certain of my favorite musicians of the past. - Nightingale Sonata
The new Taliban governor of Bamiyan province somehow heard a rumor that there's buried treasure under what used to be the large 6th-century statues (destroyed in 2001, the last time the Taliban were in power). He's having the site dug up and refused orders from Kabul to stop. - Artnet
Linguists have dubbed it Multicultural London English (MLE); it has developed organically among young people in a city where hundreds of languages are spoken, borrowing vocabulary and syntax from several of them, most noticeably Jamaican English. Rebecca Mead writes about watching her teenage son acquire it. - The New Yorker
“Thinking about the Getty Villa, the Getty , Dodger Stadium, the cliffs in Malibu or Laguna,” shaped the way the team thought about SoFi. - Los Angeles Times
Jason Brown, a 27-year-old American, probably won't get an individual medal at these games because he doesn't have a consistent quadruple jump. Yet, writes Laura Cappelle, the quality of his movement is extraordinary: "Every step is three-dimensional, … perfectly timed to either the melody or the bass line." - Dance Magazine
Netflix’s proprietary approach— based on sole control of intellectual property and intense hostility to all other players—is destined for long term failure. - Ted Gioia
No voice was so completely associated with the music of Bollywood movies as that of Lata Mangeshkar: she sang on the soundtracks of more than 1,000 films and recorded more than 25,000 songs (a figure exceeded only by her younger sister, Asha Bhosle) over a 60-year career. - The Guardian
QA testing doesn’t involve leisurely trying out different video games, but is instead an intense and often tedious process of making sure that every single aspect of a game is up to snuff. - Slate
"For years now, opera has been in a sort of cocoon-like transition period as it explores new works and ways to move beyond its exclusionary history. Companies large and small around the country are emphasizing newer works and new ways of performing old works." - San Francisco Classical Voice
Playing the last Plantagenet king will be Arthur Hughes, 30 years old and born with radial dysplasia. (He identifies as "limb-different".) The production opens at Stratford-upon-Avon in June. - The Guardian
The site — at Zhangjiakou, where most of the skiing and snowboarding events are being held — is believed to be the Taihe Palace, summer home of the late 12th-century emperor Zhangzong. Finds so far include walls, foundations, a moat, and a number of high-quality ceramics. - Artnet
"Spearheaded by the Mellon Foundation, ... the $125 million initiative, Creatives Rebuild New York, will issue monthly, no-strings-attached payments to up to 2,400 artists with financial need over the next three years. The program will fund the salaries of an additional 300 artists (to be hired by) community-based organizations." - Hyperallergic
"The CEO of the Canadian video-sharing platform Rumble (tweeted) … 'How about you bring all your shows to Rumble, both new and old, with no censorship, for $100 million bucks over four years? This is our chance to save the world.'" - The Hollywood Reporter
