How does such a tiny group dominate what we think of as normality? With meticulous research, Sarah Chaney traces the history of such narratives back to the year 1800, when the word “normal” was simply a mathematical term designating a line at a right angle. - The Guardian
Pseudo-monopolies of this type cannot last forever. The past decade has been good for these social-media giants, but the sudden ascent of TikTok might turn out to be the disruption that finally ends their reign. - The New Yorker
This uneven division of the revenue was originally calculated to account for the expenses that labels incurred in the manufacture and distribution of vinyl, CDs and cassette tapes. That lopsided split may or may not still make sense in the streaming age, depending on whom you ask. - Variety
What we haven’t figured out how to make sense of yet is the fun that many Americans act like they’re having with the national fracture. - The New Atlantis
“Our art has become exhaustively political, but it is no longer discernibly subversive,” observed the writer Greg Jackson about the literature of the Trump years, “It is what major cultural institutions, foundations, and media organizations find congenial.” - Liberties Journal
Key to Conversation Radio's success is the higher level of interaction between hosts and the audience. “The hosts skilled in storytelling, the life of a party but not the center of attention – the audience is always the center of attention.” - Inside Radio
The decree has generated conversations in the tourist-heavy, gentrifying borough about history, art, and the effects of globalization: How should a city balance the need for a general sense of cleanliness and order with calls to preserve tradition and culture? - Christian Science Monitor
"The 52-year-old Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård succeeds — and bears some resemblance to — Osmo Vänskä, a Finnish conductor who, at age 48, arrived in Minnesota by way of Scotland with a history of Sibelius recordings, a lively podium presence and unruly hair." - The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
The demand to “stay informed” creates and nurtures that feeling of helplessness. By now, it’s common knowledge that social media is exquisitely crafted to make people feel terrible, but it’s also being increasingly recognized that mainstream news media is just as bad. - 3 Quarks Daily
"(It's) a powerful exploration of the harshness of the rural landscape, with an ecological message that still resonates. ... In many ways, it defined a particular branch of US cinema – one that became particularly popular in the 1970s, and expressed an abject fear of those who lived outside of cities." - BBC
Oldenburg had his avant-garde moment. One of the three saints of the first rise of Popism in the United States, alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, he was, in a way, the odd man out among them. - The New Yorker
Authorship as we know it — that is, singular, capital-A Authority — will become narratively obsolete. It won’t die, or disappear, but merely get integrated into a massive hive mind, a great narrative-making machine (“The newspaper is the sea; literature flows into it at will”). - LA Review of Books
Stefan Soltesz, an Austrian conductor, was near the end of the first act of Richard Strauss' The Silent Woman at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich when he fell from the podium. One opera director collaborator said, "In a world of dilettantes, he was the real thing." - The New York Times
Plantation workers there earn twenty or thirty dollars a month; as artists, they make much more. The collective has brought in more than a hundred thousand dollars since its creation, and it has had shows in cities including Berlin, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Tokyo, New York, Copenhagen, and Jeddah. - The New Yorker
Jonathon Heyward, now 29 and chief conductor of the Northwest German Philharmonic, will be (after the late James DePreist of the Oregon Symphony) the second African-American music director of a major US orchestra in history. He begins his initial five-year term in the fall of 2023. - Yahoo! (The Baltimore Sun)
I went to a therapist. She told me (ready?) to stop consuming the news. That felt wrong. Wasn’t it important to be informed? Quitting the news felt like quitting the world. Then one day a journalist friend confided that she was avoiding the news, too. - Washington Post
Mahler and Beethoven left several tantalizing blueprints of their 10th Symphonies behind. Now, computer scientists are developing algorithms for artificial intelligence (AI) to lift the “curse of the ninth” and complete the unfinished works of these classical masters. - Mental Floss
In number of subscribers, Vox is fourth, behind the BBC, ABC News, and CNN. But in average number of views per video, Vox racks up more than 2 million, four times the tally of the runner-up, The Economist (and more than 14 times that of Fox News). - Press Gazette (UK)
The notion of participatory creativity has major implications for any person or organization concerned with the creation of innovative ideas or artistic expression. It means recognizing and putting in place the means to foster creativity as a collaborative process. - The Conversation
Mr. Oldenburg entered the New York art scene in earnest in the late 1950s, embracing the audience-participation “Happenings” then in vogue and expanding the boundaries of art with shows that incorporated things like street signs, wire-and-plaster clothing and even pieces of pie. - The New York Times
