Well, it has issues with women, aging women, of any type, but nevertheless: "40-something actresses rarely lead action films—even though Jolie is 13 years younger than Tom Cruise, and 23 years younger than Liam Neeson. She is also the same age as Charlize Theron, one of the few female A-listers who’s managed to maintain a steady presence in the...
When WhatsApp - for years, owned by Facebook - asked users to agree to a privacy update for something that had been true since 2016, the service engendered a revolt and a massive uptick for the more private, not owned by Facebook service Signal. Why? Unclear, but "'When your users have made it clear that they would rather not...
Paris has lost 30 percent of its independent bookshops in the last 20 years, despite a lot of government intervention: "Small shops qualify for subsidies. And rents are stabilized in pricey areas of the city. To keep book prices from dropping too low, the French parliament passed a law restricting Amazon from offering free delivery and a 5% discount...
Staples once compared the Staple Singers' "effect on ecstatic church audiences to 'a miracle or the hand of God.'" Pervis Staples "attended grammar school with the future singing stars Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls. After class, Pervis and his friends would practice singing under street lamps and in Cooke’s basement." - The New York Times
Hollie McNish, who once changed her name to "Hollie Poetry" - what she now calls "a search engine name" - says that sex and writing are linked: "All energy drives are linked. I’d call it an orgasm drive – an urge to make something specific from a dream inside your head or skin." - The Guardian (UK)
The tale of Artur Rodzinski is not a charming one, and yet, "arguably no man had more of a hand in turning American orchestras into the technical marvels they became in the mid-20th century — whether through those he led himself, or through the example he set. He jolted up the standards of some of the great ensembles of...
A massive government redevelopment plan - funded and touted by Prime Minister Narenda Modi - will demand "the demolition and relocation of iconic Indian institutions: the National Museum of India, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), and the National Archives Annexe." Photographer Ram Rahman: "The suspicion of altering history by removing archival documents is something many...
The company - which was one of the first to jump on the podcasting train, providing podcast sourcing through iTunes in 2005 - is now figuring out how to get podcast creators paid, which could be a game-changer for podcasters. - Fast Company
An errant sentence in a New York Times article (since reworded) led to a lot of participation from actors via social media. They're fed up with the sizeism and lack of body diversity on Broadway - and everywhere else in theatre. "The infamous ideology of a 'Broadway body' — a term that assumes a stage performer’s castability is specifically...
Two geology professors built a 3D replica of Sardinia, and it worked so well (including providing a vital connection for lonely, isolated students to socialize) that one of the profs then "spent three weeks in the Scottish Highlands, driving around and taking loads of drone shots, which he used to recreate the landscape around the village of Kinlochleven, another...
It's not great, as we all know. Here's the detailed story of Samantha Ofole-Prince, who was invited in 2013 to become a member, sponsored by several other members - and then had her application tanked, apparently because some other members (all white at the time) were worried about "territorial competition." Now, Ofole-Prince says, "They’ve had decades to address the...
Her newest book is a deliberate picture of how America wasn't ever really great at all for quite a few people. And what's she considering now? She thinks we're all in recovery from the former president. "This is a person who colonised our brains for years. I don’t think there was a day in the last four years when...
Koester funded his recording company by selling jazz and blues records at his store. He "was a pivotal figure in Chicago and beyond, releasing early efforts by Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton, Jimmy Dawkins, Magic Sam and numerous other jazz and blues musicians. He captured the sound of Chicago’s vibrant blues scene of the 1960s," among many other achievements. -...
The one thing movie crew members - at least the vaccinated ones - can give up is face shields. One guild member says, "As the studios have negotiated the way forward with the unions and there are still insurance risk factors for studios and production companies, it’s not really up to us as individuals — if we want to...
