Commonly known as ‘pickup’ or ‘game’, the seduction industry first took shape in the United States in the early 2000s. What began as a few online forums and meetup groups soon gave rise to commercial products and services. Some of those with a personal interest in seduction began to style themselves as professionals, offering practical training and personal development for heterosexual men who wanted greater choice and control in their intimate lives. – Aeon
The Mindfulness Industrial Complex Comes To The Museum
“At its best, the mindful museum might awaken in us a dim memory of a more collective way of being. As Cage wrote, not every contemplative act needs to improve creation—but together we can do better with the creation we’ve inherited. The new temple, though, asks only that we publicly perform our wellness, that we be productive even in our moments of rest.” – The Baffler
The Joys Of Old English (The Secret Is The Kennings)
New Republic cultural critic Josephine Livingstone: “Kennings are essentially portmanteaus, Old English words made of two nouns that have been mashed together to create a new one. … For example, hron means ‘whale.’ Rad means ‘a road,’ or ‘a path.’ Put them together … and you get hronrad, or ‘whale-road,’ which means ‘the sea.’ The ocean is not an empty space, hronrad says — it belongs to the whale.” — The New York Times
It’s Official: Met Museum Had Record 7.36M Visitors In 2018
The 5% increase over last year seems to indicate that the museum’s adoption of a mandatory $25 admission charge for out-of-state visitors didn’t discourage attendance. Even revenue from New York state residents, who may pay whatever they wish, is up by around 15%. — Crain’s New York Business
“Jazz Is Dying” As Metaphor For The Larger Culture
Matthew McKnight examines Jazz At Lincoln Center: “While the obituary writers may have been right—something’s dying—they have been preoccupied with the wrong thing. By looking for signs of vitality in measures of jazz’s popularity, it becomes easier to ignore what the music, according to Marsalis’s definition, is: a refinement of empathic listening, a model for improvisation, and an embodiment of meaningful time perception. If this is right, then the supposition that jazz is dead carries meaning beyond itself. What if we are witnessing the death, or suffocation, of a society that values careful listening, serendipity and, like a jazz ensemble, the dedication to finding common ground?” – The Point
An Increasingly Algorithmic Culture Threatens Our Relationship With Creativity
We’ve gone from having individual experiences and relationships with the objects around us to slaves of algorithmic calculation and formulas in which the actual things themselves are only considered pieces of larger systems. This is a huge challenge to creativity. – The Point
Is There Any Point To Conspiracy Fiction When Conspiracy Theories Have Become Political Weapons?
“[Today,] conspiracy theories are customized to achieve desired political outcomes and then injected into the news stream via social media. … No, with swiftboating, birtherism, voter fraud, anti-vaxxing, Pizzagate, crisis actors, false flags, and alternative facts, the conspiracy theory has clearly been weaponized in the most cynical and partisan way. So where does this leave conspiracy fiction? Well, sort of in the lurch.” — Vulture
A Parliament Of Owls; A Bloat Of Hippos. Where Do These Nouns Of Assemblage Come From?
“While terms like herd, swarm, and pack seem more or less reasonable, others are downright ridiculous — and that’s probably because they were never meant to be taken seriously.” — Quartz
‘Trust-Based Philanthropy’: The Long, Fruitful Relationship Between The Alvin Ailey Company And Prudential
“What makes this partnership special is not just its longevity, but the nature of support that has allowed Ailey to grow into a stable, globally recognized organization. Unlike many grantmaking organizations, in this case at least, Prudential has not only made significant, sometimes unrestricted financial commitments, they have leveraged their own relationships and knowledge for Ailey’s benefit.” — Nonprofit Quarterly
Cornelia Street Café, A Hub Of Greenwich Village’s Artistic Ferment, Shuts Down
For almost 42 years, the café’s basement performance space had offered a stage and support for jazz, theatre, and other offbeat and experimental artists, from the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra to Suzanne Vega to Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. But the rent is now literally 77 times what it was in 1977, and proprietor Robin Hirsch says he just can’t afford that much. — The New York Times
Somebody Tried To Shame Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez By Posting A Video Of Her Dancing In College. Really?
Dance Critic Sarah Kaufman: “Perhaps, somewhere, there exists a small, sad sliver of the human population that still believes, 17th-century style, that dancing is sinful, that having fun is wrong, that music is corrupting, that a young woman playfully noodling around with her hair down must be some kind of wild, out-to-get-you Medusa. I guess the Puritan prejudice against a good time hasn’t entirely disappeared. Otherwise, how could anyone think that publicizing a video clip of a beautiful, college-age Ocasio-Cortez dancing with her friends could harm the Democratic congresswoman from New York?” – Washington Post
Honoring – And Keeping Alive The Music Of – A Composer Who Died Too Young
Matt Marks, composer, vocalist and French horn player, one of the founders of Alarm Will Sound, died suddenly at the age of 38 in May of 2018. Many of his works were intensely personal and intimate, but his friends and fellow musicians want to keep them alive. It’s not easy on the emotional level – or the musical one. – The New York Times
Even Harvard Can’t Afford Academic Science Journals
Seriously, it’s time to reform the academic journal – especially in the sciences, where colleges are being priced out (and if colleges are priced out, who’s buying the journals?). – Wired
This Artist Was Arrested As Soon As He Left The One – Yes, One – Corner Where It’s Legal To Protest In Singapore
Seelan Palay’s Singapore isn’t the overwhelmingly rich, lush fantasy of 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians. Instead, it’s a place where protest, including performance art protest, is limited to one place, Speaker’s Corner. Step out of there? Hm. Palay: “I took a few of the objects used in the performance: the book, mirror, drawings, and banner that I used at Speakers’ Corner. I showed them to the arresting officer and asked him what meaning he derived from the objects. He admitted that he didn’t understand what they were trying to say.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
A Choreographer Creates An Homage To Fluidity, Biculturalism, And A Classic Third-Wave Feminist Book
That’s right, choreographer Miguel Gutierrez titled his new dance after the classic anthology This Bridge Called My Back – but with the word “ass” instead of back in his title. “‘What underlies ‘This Bridge,’ Mr. Gutierrez said, is a consideration of something that has long piqued him: ‘the perception that artists of color are always doing content work’ — dealing with identity politics — ‘and white artists are only doing form and line.'” – The New York Times
Keeping Track Of What You See Can Lead To Eye-Opening Statistics
Howard Sherman kept track of statistics about his theatregoing in 2017, and didn’t like the numbers he came up with. Did he see more plays by women and nonbinary folks and more plays by people of color in 2018 – and what will change in 2019? – The Stage (UK)
This Weekend, A Play Challenging ‘Hamilton’ Is Having Its Day
Ishmael Reed’s The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of several strands of recent work critiquing the narrative of one of the defining musicals of our age. For one thing, Hamilton wasn’t an abolitionist – and the musical utterly fails Native Americans, Reed and many academics have said. The play is about “‘a playwright who is misled by a historian of white history into believing that Alexander Hamilton was an abolitionist,’ and his path to learning Hamilton’s true story.” – The New York Times
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Historian Of Black Suffragists, Has Died At 77
Terborg-Penn didn’t let history departments get away without telling a fuller story than the one they had, for decades, been telling. Her work successfully “challenged the existing narrative that was dominated, and framed, by white activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.” – The New York Times
What’s Behind The Explosion Of Merchandise From Hogwarts?
What was a joke in 2001 is a reality in 2019: You can buy a Harry Potter egg cup and toast branding set or a Hedwig lip balm (really? Owl lip balm?). That’s because “everything changed last March, when Warner Bros announced a new brand: WIZARDING WORLD™.” In other words, the books and movies might be a decade old, but marketing is evergreen. – The Guardian (UK)
Ballet Isn’t Only Women – It’s Also Trans, Nonbinary, And Genderqueer Dancers
At least, that’s one push for 2019 from the dancers themselves, who are ready, whether the classical ballet world is or not, for more than just partner training for male-identified dancers and pointe training for those who identify as female. – Pointe Magazine
If You Throw A Choose Your Own Adventure, But There’s No Actual Adventure, What’s The Point?
Dear Netflix: What are you doing with Bandersnatch? (Of course, Netflix’s goal is simply to have more time spent on Netflix, which a meandering choose-your-own-adventure Black Mirror movie accomplishes quite well.) One critic: “I wanted either more control or less. I didn’t want just to declare the outcomes, I wanted to influence the motivations. Otherwise the outcomes have no grounding, no purpose.” – The New York Times
When Artists Tried To Spark A Television Revolution
Television was a revolution in the way people accessed information and entertainment. We forget now, but artists were intrigued not just by by the medium’s possibilities but also by its limitations. And they experimented with what it could and couldn’t do. – LitHub