It has become a cesspool for scammers and con artists and crackpots of every kind. Worse, it even helps promote racist supremacist views. What can be done? – ProPublica
33 Years Ago, This Novel About A Pandemic In 2020 Got A Lot Right
In 1987 Israeli science fiction writer Hamutal Shabtai wrote a book about a mysterious virus that engulfed the world in 2020. The scary part is that she got many of the details of what is now happening, right. – Ha’aretz
The University As Intellectual Factory (We’ve Been Warned)
The transformation of the university into a capital-intensive, bureaucratically organised enterprise was not simply an effect of academic specialisation. More than a century earlier, Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant had observed how some universities had begun to function as factories and organise themselves around the division of intellectual labour. – Aeon
Broadway’s Obie Awards Go Virtual
The annual celebration of stage work was originally scheduled to be held at Terminal 5 in Manhattan on May 18. Instead it will be postponed until a later, as yet unannounced, date. In an interview with Variety, Heather Hitchens, president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing, one of the organizations behind the awards, said the show will include some form of performances, but cautioned that details are still being worked out. – Variety
Sad: Pictures Of The Demolition Of The Old LACMA
The work that began Monday focused on the museum’s 1965 Leo S. Bing Center, a 600-seat theater designed by architect William L. Pereira that has been used for film screenings, musical performances, talks and other events. Interior demolition of three other buildings — Pereira’s 1960 Hammer and Ahmanson buildings as well as Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates’ 1980s Art of the Americas building — is underway as well. – Los Angeles Times
Montreal’s Franglais Rap: Multi-Culti Creativity Or Threat To The Survival Of French In North America?
“To their legions of fans, the groups give voice to the bilingual vernacular of a multicultural city, marinated by its past French and British rulers, the forces of globalization and successive waves of immigration. … But they have also spawned a backlash in Quebec, … where critics have castigated them as self-colonizers who are ‘creolizing’ the French language and threatening its future.” – The New York Times
Fenway Park’s Organist Is Playing The Games Even Though Baseball Has Been Canceled
Normally, Josh Kantor is in a perch at Boston’s venerable baseball park, churning out tunes as the home team’s official organist. In late March, with the season put on pause due to coronavirus concerns, he decided he would try a single video stream from behind his Yamaha Electone and leave it at that. But the online response convinced him to come back the next day. And the next. Kantor is now pledging to continue the “7th-Inning Stretch,” as he calls his 30-minute show, until baseball returns or people get sick of it. – Washington Post
Archaeologists Open Egyptian Mummy’s Coffin And Discover 3,000-Year-Old Paintings Inside
At the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Scotland, conservators working to preserve the remains of an ancient priestess or noblewoman named Ta-Kr-Hb opened her sarcophagus and found two paintings of a goddess in a red dress called Amentet. – Smithsonian Magazine
Say Goodbye To The Cleveland Plain Dealer As Owners Dismantle It
“The paper’s remaining staffers are now faced with a devastating decision: they can either leave and let the state’s largest paper, (and the country’s first News Guild), die, ceding victory at last to the Newhouses of Advance Publications who’ve been ruthlessly and methodically busting the PD’s union for years; or they can stay on, suffering the indignities of filing low-stakes stories on distant locales that haven’t been part of the paper’s regular coverage area for years.” – Cleveland Scene
Another Landmark Postmodern Dance Piece You Can Perform At Home
Last week it was one by Yvonne Rainer. This week it’s Trisha Brown’s 1971 Roof Piece, in which “dancers scattered themselves across the roofs of SoHo and played a dance version of the game Telephone.” Recently members of the Trisha Brown Dance Company got together on Zoom to do an adaptation they call Room/Roof Piece — and they recommend that you get some friends together and do the same. Here’s how. – The New York Times
Seattle Is Boarded Up. Seattle’s Artists Are Painting Murals On The Boards
Plywood started going up about two weeks ago after vandals began smashing windows of closed businesses. That led to more plywood from store owners who feared they might be next. Things were starting to look bleak all over town. Already artists are out and about, painting murals to combat the growing blight as the novel coronavirus pandemic forces continued closures of local businesses and restaurants. – Seattle Times
‘Tiger King’, The Most Watched TV Show In The U.S., Is An Ethical And Moral Dumpster Fire
“[The series is] the latest and most acute iteration of a Netflix trend toward extreme storytelling; the more unfathomable and ethically dubious, the better. The point is virality — content so outlandish that people can’t help but talk about it. … America right now, in the midst of a pandemic, is reliant on collective behavior, adhering to rules, and taking sensible precautions to avoid danger. Tiger King is the TV equivalent of licking the subway pole.” – The Atlantic
Williamstown Theatre Festival Finds Alternative To Canceling This Summer’s Season
“In a bold attempt to salvage its shows, the festival … has decided to develop, rehearse, and record all seven of its planned productions and release them in audio form on Audible … [with] the same performers that would have appeared onstage.” – The New York Times
Pulitzer Prizes Postponed, Will Be Livestreamed In May
The announcement of this year’s awards had been scheduled for April 20, but, as administrator Dana Canedy said in a statement, “The Pulitzer board includes many high-level journalists who are on the frontlines of informing the public on the quickly evolving Coronavirus pandemic.” – Poynter Institute
Kennedy Center Rescinds Furlough Of National Symphony Musicians
“The deal [with the musicians’ union] includes immediate pay cuts until early September, a wage freeze and a delayed pay increase and extends the current contract for a year, to 2024, according to the arts center. It avoids the open-ended furlough that was supposed to have started Monday.” – The Washington Post
New York Philharmonic Players Fired For Sexual Misconduct Reinstated
“The Philharmonic dismissed the players — its principal oboist, Liang Wang, and associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey — in September 2018. Both men denied wrongdoing, and the players’ union filed a grievance challenging their dismissals. The case was heard by an independent arbitrator, who found that the players had been terminated without just cause and should be reinstated.” – The New York Times
London’s West End Theatres To Remain Closed At Least Through May 31
“London’s theatres first shuttered their doors on March 16 in the wake of the escalating coronavirus pandemic. The mass closures, in an effort to curb the spread of the virus, mirrored those on Broadway on March 12. … While theatres in New York were initially scheduled to re-open April 13, an update from the Broadway League is expected to arrive in the coming days.” – Playbill
Singer-Songwriter John Prine Dead Of COVID At 73
“A onetime Army mechanic and mail carrier who wrote songs rooted in the experiences of lower-middle-class life, Mr. Prine rose to prominence almost by accident. He was at a Chicago folk club called the Fifth Peg one night in 1969, complaining about the performers, when someone challenged him to get onstage, saying, ‘You get up and try.’ … Within a year, he released his first album and was hailed as one of the foremost lyricists of his time, even as a musical heir to Bob Dylan. He went on to record more than 20 albums, win three competitive Grammy Awards and help define a genre of music that came to be called Americana.” – The Washington Post
With Everyone Else Avoiding Museums, Will Thieves Stay Away, Too?
Recent thefts of van Gogh and van Dyck paintings indicate that the answer is no. “Alarm systems and uniformed guards are still in place, of course, and the sale of museum-famous stolen art has never been easy. But … cavernous floors are now largely empty throughout the day, not just at night. Police departments in many places are stretched thin by illness. Social distancing has meant that the many people who might once have witnessed a burglary are now tucked in at home.” – The New York Times