‘In answer to the question, “Who do you make work for?” people will say, “I make work for everyone – for anyone.” But when you say, “Well, what are you doing to ensure that outcome?” the answers start to narrow considerably. - ArtsHub
Half of all public and private grants now pay administrators’ salaries – only a quarter fund arts production. Even if many are wonderful, managers are collectively the greatest obstacle to balancing budgets. - The Stage
The root is simple: The internet is broken because the internet is a business. While the issues are various and complex, they are inextricable from the fact that the internet is owned by private firms and is run for profit. - The New York Times
The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have exercised direct editorial control over more than 2,500 films and television shows. These discoveries raise questions about the government’s reach at a time when deciphering propaganda from fact has become increasingly difficult. - Los Angeles Times
He was born into the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in 1879; his grandparents had survived the Trail of Tears. "Despite his consistent and very vocal pride about being Indigenous, his image did not fit with the public's assumptions of what a Native American ought to look like." - The Criterion Collection
Studying the imagination is the most exciting and accurate way to heal the terminal divide between the sciences and the humanities. But, more importantly, Imagination Studies, or imaginology, also promises to reunite the body and the mind, reintegrate emotion and reason. - Aeon
John McWhorter: For example, the pathway from “crippled” to “handicapped” to “disabled” to “differently abled.” New words ultimately don’t leave freighted ideas behind; they merely take them on. - The New York Times
How low has Putin driven Russian culture? Here are two indications. Thousands of scientists and other intellectuals along with hundreds of ballet dancers and other artists are leaving or trying to leave Russia, ashamed of Putin’s wars and immobilized by his repression. - Hedgehog Review
"They serve as field reporting, pleas for weapons, arias that glorify Ukraine. But the videos have done more than win Ukraine moral and military support. They have created a serialized manifesto — one that makes the case for liberal democracy over oligarchic autocracy, ... clarifying, day by day, democracy's reason for being." - Wired
"It must be close to the Capitol, close enough to implicate and shame those inside it on a daily basis. ... After every mass shooting, turn on the lights and the microphones, and let no political leader who makes the symbolic pilgrimage escape speaking actual truth on the site." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Philanthropists rarely make the large, unrestricted gifts that the receiving institutions really want, and so the two parties bargain: over the purpose and the control of a gift, over the form of credit, over how much the institution has to raise from other sources as a condition. - The New Yorker
We can at least say of the oil economy that its environmental damage, and consequent destruction of the human world, is only an epiphenomenon, whereas for the internet, the destruction of the human is itself the source of value. - LA Review of Books
I too grew up imbibing common technotopian fantasies of the late-20th Century zeitgeist, of a belief in humanity’s manifest destiny of multi-planetary spread and dominion. I just didn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together until I tried to understand climate change. - 3 Quarks Daily
Research from the University of Canberra found that heavy news use dropped from 69% in April 2020 to 51% in January 2021, while those expressing high interest in the news fell from 64% in 2016 to 52% in 2021. - The Guardian
"Susan Jaffe, who recently turned 60, has in mind such steps as opening up artistic processes to the public and soliciting views from balletgoers and other stakeholders on the delicate task of updating thorny works from the classical canon. It's an audience-first approach." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Rather than the “death of the author” heralded by French novelist and philosopher Roland Barthes in the 1960s, are we now witnessing its counterpoint—a cultural sphere where nothing remains but a cult of celebrity being played out on digital platforms? - LitHub
Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Victor Garber, Jayne Eastwood, Andrea Martin, and Paul Shaffer all walked into a theatre. This is a (rollicking) oral history of the experience. "Jesus starts his narration, and we look up and Andrea has a dinner roll in her mouth." - Washington Post
Memorizing can become a highly specialized act, based on regular practice and rehearsal. A singer, though fully capable of performing the role of say Aida, is unlikely to be able to memorize an epic poem that is similarly long. - The Baffler
How can immunotherapy cure a 65-year-old, newly retired man of Stage IV lung cancer, restoring the promise of his golden years with his family, but do nothing for the 55-year-old woman whose cancer robs her of decades of life? We do not know. - LA Review of Books
Many of us find ourselves in the alienating position of using (even relying on) technology companies we distrust and hate, knowing that they are bad for us and for society, but somehow being unable or unwilling to escape. - New Statesman
