I'm increasingly uncomfortable with attending concerts "interpreted by these internationally-touring orchestras when I realize that at least 80 people took a plane for a single concert; particularly when I know that I can listen to a similar interpretation of the same piece by a more local orchestra. - Van
Print books are in trouble: "Trucks are more expensive, containers are more expensive, labor is more expensive. ... It used to be that you would place a purchase order, and it would just arrive two weeks later. Now, it’s 10 touches and 15 emails." - The New York Times
A science fiction trope becoming real, "It doesn’t necessarily exist . It’s partly a dream for the future of the internet and partly a neat way to encapsulate some current trends in online infrastructure, including the growth of real-time 3D worlds." - The Verge
"There are eerie similarities between pre-1948 Hollywood and today’s streaming market. ... The top five streaming companies dominate." And Amazon would like to be more dominant. - The New York Times
The interconnected world can be a real pain when TV subtitles and audio transcriptions just disappear into the smoke - and Deaf and blind audience members aren't happy. - BBC
The hip, fannish crowd is almost the same as it was at shutdown, with a large fillip of relief joining the giddy thrills. "The color pours down your eye holes right into your serotonin receptors — all that warmth without heat triggers something deep in your lizard brain." - Vulture
"Welcome to the life of a 21st-century activist artist, whose work is as likely to be exhibited at an international human rights tribunal as it is a museum, and in which death threats and cyberattacks are all in a day’s work." - The New York Times
Serious choreographers, pandemic, cruise ship? Yes: "The creative team has plunged into the challenges of making a work at sea as part of a large corporate enterprise." - The New York Times
And cultural workers need the money, and purpose: "Creative jobs dropped 53% between late 2019 and mid 2020, recovering only halfway since then, and the prolonged pandemic continues to threaten re-openings of art spaces." - Hyperallergic
"It is hard to get perspective on your surroundings when your face is being ground into the dirt, or as Van Peebles might have put it, when the Man’s foot is stuck in your ass." - The Atlantic
The prize was supposed to be populist, but now, and for the past few years, it seems to be idealist instead. " The traditional criteria for judging the prize... seem to be out of the window. - The Guardian (UK)
After trying for a month, "more than 100 young artists, teachers and their relatives affiliated with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, a celebrated school that became a target of the Taliban," finally escaped, heading for Portugal. - The New York Times
