It is obvious that “not everyone is born with the same academic gifts,” deBoer writes, but among teachers and educational officials there is a “prohibition against talking plainly about differences in academic talent.” The “cult of smart”—deBoer defines his title on page five—is “the notion that academic value is the only value, and intelligence the only true measure of...
Zachary Horwitz collected $690 million from investors for movie deals authorities say were fictitious. The HBO and Netflix contracts he used to convince Russell and others that his business was legitimate were forgeries, the government says. - Los Angeles Times
Among adults 18 to 49, the demographic that many advertisers pay a premium to reach, the Oscars suffered an even steeper 64 percent decline, according to preliminary data from Nielsen released on Monday. Nielsen’s final numbers are expected on Tuesday and will include out-of-home viewing and some streaming statistics. - The New York Times
The contradictory impulses about pop’s progress and possibilities at its heart make The Who Sell Out sound like a perfect snapshot of music at a moment of flux: poised between pop and the more serious business of rock, between pirate radio and prog. Meanwhile, what it has to say about music and advertising seems eerily prescient and thoroughly modern:...
According to the museum, an unknown person “protected” the Cosimo II artwork before it was plastered over. “Maybe this unknown savior wanted it to be preserved for the future generations,” the spokesperson said. “Obviously our researchers are already trying to figure out the story behind this.” - Artnet
"Yat-Sen Chang, 49, has been charged with 12 counts of sexual assault and two counts of assault by penetration against a female aged 16 or over. The alleged offences are said to have taken place at the English National Ballet and Young Dancers Academy in London between December 2009 and March 2016. Chang, who lives in the German port...
“We view it as a second stage,” said Ian Derrer, the Dallas Opera’s general director and CEO. “And it has accessible on-ramps for many more people globally.” - Dallas Morning News
Says the curator of a new exhibit on the Roman monarch at the British Museum, "Nero's memory was contested after his death, and that really was divided along class divisions. You have a very hostile elite, but we also know that the common people in Rome, the plebs urbana, honored his memory for decades after his death. Already, you...
As a Hollywood writer friend of mine said after she watched “Nomadland”: “That was not entertainment. That was Frances McDormand having explosive diarrhea in a plastic bucket on a van.” Not a crop of movies that make you reach for the Junior Mints. - The New York Times
Over the past seven years, "this scandal — now known as 'the Ruffini affair' — has engulfed figures ranging from curators at the Louvre to leading auction-house executives. It has also given rise to an endless litany of conflicting and sometimes changing opinions, both technical and connoisseurial. … Now, he has decided to tell his side of the story."...
"I've had a terrible year trying to keep on as many people as I can, but our job is to try to put a show on that can run and be brilliant," he said. "Am I sorry? I'm sorry they're upset, but I do find it odd why musicians would want to keep doing the same thing year after...
Not everything in Anna Leonowens's memoirs about her time at the Siamese court is a lie, but quite a lot is untrue, especially about Anna's own mixed-race, plebeian origins. (For instance, she'd never even been to Britain when she went to Bangkok.) Thence come many of the problems in the musical, like the white-savior narrative. David Henry Hwang's rewrite...
"Systemic polarization, as it is usually told, is a basically symmetrical story. Polarization arises from a social dynamic that afflicts almost everybody. The social forces at play—social mobility, online media bubbles, algorithmic filtering—are pervasive, and their effect is nearly universal. Like-minded individuals naturally clump together and end up boosting each others’ confidence unreasonably. Conservatives and progressives are approximately as...
"A website called #allesdichtmachen ('close it all down') was launched on Thursday night, featuring 53 to-camera clips in which high-profile actors sarcastically boast of the lengths they have gone to restrict their social contacts and appeal to the government to lock down the country even harder." Mein Gott, did they get dragged. One television host who's been working...
The repeated, record-setting acqua alta events of late 2019 caused an estimated €300 million in damage to the Byzantine-style landmark — and floods are expected to get more frequent and severe as sea level rises. What's more, the long-delayed MOSE floodgates in the Venice lagoon aren't enough to protect St. Mark's, which lies at one of the lowest points...
