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Hollywood Is One Step Closer To A Writers’ Strike

"The Writers Guild of America has set a strike authorization vote to begin on April 11. While this marks the first step toward a potential writers strike, ... a work stoppage would not actually be able to begin until the current contract expires May 1." - Variety

Australia’s National Cultural Institutions Get Big Funding Boost After A Decade Of Neglect And Disrepair

"The arts minister, Tony Burke, and the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, will make the $535m pre-budget announcement on Wednesday, throwing a financial lifeline to beleaguered institutions such as the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia and the National Museum of Australia." - The Guardian

Ontario’s Stratford Festival Reports Modest Surplus

Stratford "reported total revenues of $66.2 million for the year, with a surplus of $638,711 after expenses. The results, credited to strong ticket sales, donors and government support, improved on a 2021 surplus of $553,058 during a smaller, mostly outdoor season." - Toronto Star

How Architecture Has Become A “Hollowed-Out” Profession

Greater specialisation had become necessary and appropriate as construction grew in complexity, and they felt this compartmentalisation of roles would allow all aspects of architectural work to be carried out more skilfully. The logic is understandable, the outcome disastrous. - Dezeen

Reimagining Rave Culture

There’s no strict definition for what constitutes a rave, but in the past the word connoted an underground gathering, usually at some kind of repurposed space, such as a warehouse, a skate park, or a farmyard. Raves were often illegal in the sense that they violated licensing rules. - The New Yorker

The Privilege of Anger

Arguments for anger tend to frame themselves in terms of empowerment: in the face of oppression, we should not feel grief, sadness, or fear—we should feel anger. Anger motivates action. Anger is empowering. That seems clearly true. - LA Review of Books

Cory Doctorow: Why I Don’t Produce My Audiobooks On Audible

None of my audiobooks are. Audible, the Amazon division that controls about 90% of the audiobook market, won't carry them because, if you want to sell your audiobooks on Audible, you have to let them add Amazon's Digital Rights Management (DRM) to them, and I refuse. - Publishers Weekly

Why Remote Work Won’t Kill Cities

There’s this long history of certain people seeing urban life through the lens of decline. If you look at contemporary usages of this idea of “urban doom,” it’s actually very similar to the way a lot of people in the ’70s and ’80s were talking about cities. - Curbed

Bill Zehme, Dead At 64, Was The Absolute Master Of The Celebrity Profile

"(His gift was) to elevate the formulaic celebrity profile with humor, a literary voice and the polish of a short story. That was the only way Mr. Zehme … could accept his fate performing what many writers consider one of the lowest forms of journalism." - MSN (The Washington Post)

Fifty Years After He Died, This Is What Picasso Has Become

It’s no longer necessary that he connect in people’s minds with any actual art. It’s enough that he stands for that bigger thing: unfettered creativity. In fact, it’s better. A clear line connects Picasso’s description of his pictures as “a sum of destructions” and the capitalist mantra of “creative destruction.” - Washington Post

A New Program To Get More Literature From The Indian Subcontinent Onto English-Language Bookshelves

Almost all of the South Asian books known internationally were written in English, but there's an extremely vibrant literary scene in the subcontinent's own languages. The University of Chicago's SALT project (South Asian Literature in Translation) aims to make that literature accessible to the wider world. - The Guardian

The Painting In The TV Room (AKA The Breughel) Sells For $850K

Yes, the family had long called it “The Bruegel,” but it was an affectionate dig at a painting that was clearly a fake. Turns out, the family joke was a hidden masterpiece, a genuine work of Pieter Bruegel the Younger, a 17th-century Flemish artist. - Washington Post

Every Year There Are Big New TV Shows During Ramadan, And Every Year There Are Arguments Over Them

"It may partially be due to the fact that Ramadan is a religious holiday, which makes associations with socially controversial subjects, and standard soap opera fare, more sensitive. It may also be that so many more people are paying attention. But mostly it's the increasingly intense competition." - Deutsche Welle

Giant 225-Ton Landscape Art Relocated Across Washington DC

Six years ago, the National Geographic Society, decided that the sculpture, known as “Marabar” and designed by the artist Elyn Zimmerman, was in the way of expansion plans for its headquarters, and later agreed to help find it a new home. - The New York Times

Choreographing Dance Scenes For Movie Stars Who Maybe Can’t Dance

"Leading industry choreographers Chloé Arnold, Marguerite Derricks and Mandy Moore share their experiences on what it's really like to create dances for the stars." - Dance Magazine

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