They are imbued with grandeur precisely because of their superb indifference to mundane human concerns. Having knowledge is practically useful, but why would we also need the concept of knowledge? - Aeon
It feels as if there has been a dendrocentric turn in culture recently; a new sensitivity to the arboreal and, more broadly, the botanical. - The Guardian
Why do people pronounce words differently, why does pronunciation change, and why does so-called mispronunciation upset some people to the point of making it possible (and interesting) to compile a top ten list? - The Conversation
"Today, artists like Toor, 31, are changing the way that bhangra and other Indian dance genres are seen, creating dances meant to be consumed online in productions that resemble professional music videos. … reflects a new wave of Indian diaspora dance, a wave that has been enabled by platforms like YouTube and TikTok, and intensified during the pandemic...
Gay Angelenos like to remind their counterparts to the north and east that L.A. played a crucial, perhaps decisive, role in gay-rights history. Five men sat together on the hillside in the late afternoon, imagining a world in which they did not have to hide. - The New Yorker
"Desert In is an operatic experiment. Co-produced by Long Beach Opera and by Boston Lyric Opera, which commissioned the work, the eight-episode streaming miniseries is the brainchild of LBO Artistic Director … James Darrah, composer Ellen Reid and peña. … Episodes," each with a different composer and scriptwriters, "are just 15 to 20 minutes long, but each packs...
In reality neoliberalism has depended on huge levels of government support for its entire existence. The global neoliberal economic order could easily have collapsed into a 1930s-level Great Depression multiple times over in the absence of massive government interventions. - Boston Review
"It's hard to make sense of what the NFT creative landscape might mean for otherwise underpaid writers. At once, it's a place for writers to experiment with form, publish and earn money directly and instantly without any traditional publishing gatekeepers. It's also a brand-new subculture with no reliable routes to financial success or readership, cut off from a larger...
"They perfectly embody the circumstance of generations of Italians stuck in precariato (‘precarious work’), unable to work year round, to start a family, to buy or even just to rent a flat on their own." - Hyperallergic
"John Locke is regarded today as one of England's greatest philosophers, an Enlightenment thinker known as the 'father of liberalism'. But a previously unknown memoir attributed to one of his close friends paints a different picture – of a vain, lazy and pompous man who 'amused himself with trifling works of wit', and a plagiarist who 'took from others...
“Everyone agrees that the Pompidou is an extraordinary asset for Jersey City. But we just raised a levy on homeowners because we didn’t have the money for school funding. How can we then bring more financial debt to the table for a museum?” - Hyperbeast
Laurent Le Bon, 52, faces a challenging term. The Paris museum is scheduled to close from 2023 to 2027 for renovations to deal with its antiquated heating and cooling system, escalators that frequently break down and asbestos in the structure that needs to be removed. - The New York Times
“My life has been about reclaiming that nomadic spirit. All the festivals we’ve taken part in over the years are really just an echo of what happened when nomadic tribes came into the valleys in summer and partied.” - The Guardian
Oboist Nicholas Daniel: "This week, singer Andrew Watts and I will make our fourth attempt to give the world premiere of Sir John Tavener's La Noche Oscura. The most surprising part of this is not that three scheduled performances have been cancelled over the last 12 difficult months, but that the work is getting its first performance ." -...
The 932-mile railroad project, connecting cities, historical sites, and beach resorts in the Yucatan Peninsula, has turned up more than 13,000 Mayan artifacts so far, and it's still early in the building process. The central government says it has hired 80 archaeologists and is spending millions to identify and preserve whatever historical material is discovered, but "the Mayan community...
