“Making stories was how Nichols coped with the world. The biographical question is: why was there a need to cope? The answer is not mysterious. Nichols was unusually self-aware, and he liked to talk about his life. To some extent, the Mike Nichols story is a story by Mike Nichols.” – The New Yorker
Dante’s Descendant Wants Poet’s Conviction On Corruption Charges Reversed
In 1302, caught on the wrong side in one of Florence’s perpetual factional struggles, Dante Alighieri was fined and banished on a probably trumped-up charge of corruption in political office; summoned home from Ravenna the following year, he refused to come, and his sentence was commuted to death by burning. Now Dante’s great-great-many-times-great-grandson, astrophysicist Sperello di Serego Alighieri, is working to get his ancestor exonerated. – The Guardian
Why Men Should Spend Less Time Watching Porn And More Time Reading Erotica
“Finding your thrills in erotic literature, rather than in video scenes, might take a little longer, but it means caring more about the characters involved, which brings more meaning to the sexual scenes,” says totally unbiased erotica author Max Sebastian. “I’m not sure than any other literary genre or visual media honestly appreciates male sexuality the way that erotica can,” says the (female) host of a podcast about the genre. – InsideHook
AI Robot Recommends ‘The 67 Best Books To Give A Woman’
“On its face this list is a little concerning — in a few years, robots might render humans’ book-recommending jobs obsolete. I, a human with a book-recommending job, am indeed a little concerned. [Ed. note: Call me when the robots can write a good coherent sentence.] But if humans aren’t stepping up to do the necessary work of recommending 67 books to give a woman, I’m not going to tell a robot they shouldn’t.” – Literary Hub
South Africa’s Most Versatile, Most Beloved Singer, Sibongile Khumalo, Dead At 63
“[She was] a virtuoso vocalist whose ease of motion between opera, jazz and South African popular music made her a symbol of the country’s new social order after the end of apartheid. … [President Nelson] Mandela famously referred to her as the country’s ‘first lady of song,’ and the title stuck.” – The New York Times
How Theatre Works As A Political Force
“In my research, it became clear how the techniques used in theatre are used in politics, which further cemented my opinion that theatre artists have the capacity to deeply understand the political machine and work toward dismantling the status quo, creating a more equitable and community-based iteration of governing.” – Howlround
Twitter Doesn’t Work – As A Network Or A Business. But It Could Be Fixed
Trafficking in misinformation is wrong. Trafficking in misinformation with a structurally unsound business model is wrong and futile. But there’s an upside here: Twitter’s financial weakness is what gives it a chance for redemption. – New York Magazine
Dynamic Groundbreaking TV Exec Jamie Tarses, 56
By age 32, Tarses was the first woman to head a network entertainment division — and one of the youngest execs ever to lead a Big Three — in her role as ABC Entertainment president from 1996 to 1999. During her tenure, she oversaw popular series including Aaron Sorkin’s “Sports Night,” David E. Kelley’s “The Practice,” “Dharma & Greg” and “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.” – Variety
Why Telling The Truth Inside Organizations Is Difficult
“Think of something… mundane: ‘How are you?’ Virtually no one expects to hear anything but: ‘Good, thanks. And you?’ Withholding information has become the norm. Even when there is no direct question to answer, our interactions are replete with curated comments. The truth can be so hard to come by that many of us believe that our workplaces, and the people we encounter in them, are awash in bullshit.” – Psyche
Man Banned From Library For Life Because He Left Anti-Trump Poem There
A 68-year-old retiree in Seymour, Indiana was a regular visitor to his local branch library and had become friendly with some employees there. In November, he brought a political poem he had written to give to a staffer he thought might like it; the person wasn’t in that day, so he left the poem at the circulation desk. He got home to find a voicemail from the police saying that he was permanently banned from the library’s premises and would be arrested if he ever returned. Why? As the Circulation Manager put it, “We don’t do politics at the library.” The ACLU has taken the case. (includes complete text of the poem) – Literary Hub
Permanently Lock Down The Capitol? What Good Is A Symbol If It’s Behind Razor Wire?
“What happened on Jan. 6 had nothing to do with fences or barriers or bad security infrastructure at the Capitol. It was a human failure, not an infrastructure failure. Investigations are ongoing, but it’s already clear this was a tragedy of incompetent leadership, failed intelligence and a giant mess of missed or crossed communications. And yet some of the people involved in the debacle may be instrumental in deciding on security measures.” – Washington Post
What Some 1930s Scientists Knew: Public Engagement Is Essential
In other words, modern science became possible only once scholars began to talk with craftspeople. Science began with public engagement. – Aeon
Meet The Choreographer Behind The Viral Stars Of The UCLA Gymnastics Team
Bijoya Das was a gymnast herself from age 6 until an injury in college led her to switch to dance; she’s now a successful commercial dancer and choreographer in the popular music industry. She is also the one who creates the dances for the gymnasts at UCLA whose routines keep becoming hits on YouTube — and that’s a job she willingly does for no pay. – The New York Times
Portland’s Classical Radio Station Will Be Recording And Releasing Music By Nonwhite And Women Composers
When the staff at All Classical Portland was looking at how to add more diversity to its playlists, they found that the biggest limitation was how little recorded music by composers from historically marginalized communities is actually available. The station’s “Recording Inclusivity Initiative” aims to start fixing that. – Current
She Was Fired From ‘The Color Purple’ And Is Suing. But She Would Probably Have Quit The Show Anyway.
Actress Seyi Omooba had been engaged to play Celie in the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel in Leicester, England in 2019 — but she was let go when a 2014 Facebook post of hers containing anti-gay comments became public. She’s suing for breach of contract. But testimony before a tribunal revealed that Omooba had previously told her agents that she would never play a gay role. (The character Celie has a same-sex affair.) – BBC
Spain Will Pay $7.8 Million A Year To Keep Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection In Madrid
The Spanish government has concluded what is, in effect, a 15-year rental agreement with Baroness Carmen Cervera, the widow of Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza: in exchange for an annual payment of €6.5 million, she will allow her collection of 400 artworks — which range from Rembrandt and Caravaggio through van Gogh and Monet to Roy Lichtenstein, and estimated to be worth $1.2 billion in total — to remain alongside the 775 works that Spain purchased from her late husband in 1993. All this art is on view at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, where her collection was first loaned to join his in 1999. – ARTnews
Figuring Out The Writers That Figure Out The Future
“The most important promise underlying much of the canon inaugurated by Future Shock is that with the right foresight, readers can not only prepare for what’s coming, but also profit from it. This whiff of insider trading presents the future as a commodity, an exercise in temporal arbitrage in which knowledge of new developments yields a financial edge.” – The Atlantic
DC’s Duke Ellington High School For The Arts Is Unique. So Why Is It Being Abandoned?
It has been educating future artists and entertainers for 47 years. It also ranks in the top 7 percent of U.S. schools in challenging its students academically. Few campuses nationally have students as enthusiastic about their school. Yet Ellington officials say the people who run D.C. public schools have failed to honor promises they made in 2017 to put the school on sound financial footing. – Washington Post
Why Big Superstar Cities May Be In Trouble
Derek Thompson: “Last year, I wrote about how even a modest remote-work revolution—no more than 10 percent of Americans working remotely full time after the pandemic is over—could affect the U.S. labor force (e.g.: fewer hotel workers) and party politics (e.g.: more southern Democrats). But the more I researched remote work and spoke with experts, the more I realized I had only scratched the surface of its implications for the future of the economy, the geography of opportunity, and the fate of innovation. Here are four more predictions.” – The Atlantic
Swedish Film Festival Takes Social Distancing To Extreme — Plays To One Viewer
“Over the course of the coming week, it will hold screenings in two urban venues for just one festival attendee. And it has also sent a single viewer to a tiny, barren island in the North Atlantic to watch the 70 films in competition — alone.” – The New York Times
How To Write About The Internet
A book critic considers. “Relative to the amount of space it takes up in the collective and capitalist imagination, the internet has had less of an impact on contemporary fiction than one might expect. It is increasingly acknowledged in novels, but it seems oddly difficult to represent well. I don’t know whether that’s because most of us have been raised on books that have absolutely no Instagram in them, or whether it’s because the internet has become such a constant and derided part of daily existence that writing about it can feel like writing about pooping.” – LitHub
Israeli TV Is Having A Global Moment
Hollywood, in search of the next Shtisel, a hit show for Netflix. Apple TV+ and HBO Max are also trying to cash in, both by buying shows already in existence and funding new Israel-focused shows and storylines. – Los Angeles Times
If One Could Only Read Samuel Beckett’s Thoughts On His Best-Known Phrases
“All in all, the oracular quality of these lines, their sheer wisdom, makes of Beckett, much against his will, no doubt, something of a sage.” – The Irish Times
Lessons For Us From China’s Cultural Revolution
Trump failed to purge all the old élites, largely because he was forced to depend on them, and the Proud Boys never came close to matching the ferocity and reach of the Red Guards. Nevertheless, Trump’s most devoted followers, whether assaulting his opponents or bombarding the headquarters in Washington, D.C., took their society to the brink of civil war while their chairman openly delighted in chaos under heaven. – The New Yorker