Today’s Stories
We Still Don’t Know How Gravity Works
We can calculate what gravity does — whether to a cup elbowed off the edge of a table or the disk of light bent around a black hole — but we still don’t have a clue what causes it. – Washington Post
Placido Domingo’s Response to Accusations Lands With A Thud
“I think that to him, in his head, he was just a big star and everyone wanted him. And to the rest of us he was just, you know, this creepy guy that could make or break your career.” – Los Angeles Times
The Segment That Cost Jimmy Kimmel Live! A Huge FCC Fine
Jimmy Kimmel Live! was fined $350,000 by the FCC for a sketch about the presidential alert system. – New York Magazine
Beethoven’s Revolution (But What Kind?)
Beethoven’s political engagement is indisputable, but whether it finds direct expression in his work – aside from dedications and commissions – is a sticky topic. – New Statesman
Beware The Literary Scammers
“He would reject work, but praise the writing. His form rejections included a note: “It happens that I am both the editor of the Blue Moon and also the head of a critical revision business. If you have your manuscript revised I, as editor of the Blue Moon, shall then be glad to consider your story for publication in the magazine.” More than 30 writers agreed. Jessup took their money, and kept their stories.” – Literary Hub
San Diego Symphony To Break Ground On Year-Round Outdoor Venue
The project reached its crescendo, transitioning from theoretical to actual, last month when the Port of San Diego agreed to lease a 3.68-acre site on Embarcadero Marina Park to the symphony for up to 50 years. The agreement was the last regulatory action needed for the symphony’s long-planned outdoor facility, which will serve as the permanent home of the Bayside Summer Nights concert series. – San Diego Union-Tribune
So Now We Have Augmented Reality Art In Real Spaces. What’s It Like?
“What mobile AR adds is the ability to changefocus by actively moving around a simulated object in real space. The technology wants you to do that. So it may just not be the ideal way to experience anything that requires any degree of sustained focus, like a poem or a performance.” – Artnet
How Napoleon Used Theatre To Legitimize Himself As Emperor
From one year to the next, he manipulated the Comédie-Française, selecting plays and scheduling performances on or around his birthday (which fell, conveniently, on a major Catholic feast) to give himself (born into minor Corsican nobility) the aura of a divinely appointed monarch. – History Today
This Public Radio Station Created A Journalism School… For Its Listeners
Roughly 100 people, most of them St. Louis Public Radio members and supporters, paid $120 to attend. They visited St. Louis Public Radio’s community room in the city’s downtown Grand Center neighborhood to participate in evening sessions hosted by journalists from outlets across the region. Topics included serious issues like media literacy and libel law and lighter fare like food reporting and TV weather coverage. – Current
Mini Cardboard Theatres: How The 19th-Century English Bourgeoisie Staged Plays At Home
“The characters were laid out on sheets of paper, frozen in dramatic poses … [and] the sets [were] storybook illustrations of extravagant palaces and howling wildernesses, to be slotted in and out of the back of the theater, behind the cavorting characters. The scripts that came with them were as miniaturized as the stage.” – JSTOR Daily
Detroit Art Is Hot. And With It Come The Challenges
“Artist studios get filled up pretty quickly,” he said. “And people are getting priced out.” – Artsy
Lee Bennett Hopkins, America’s Unknown King Of Children’s Poetry, Dead At 81
“[He] dedicated a lifetime to writing and anthologizing poetry for children, amassing troves of verse” — 120 volumes by the time he died — “to help young people navigate the unknowns of life, from why stink bugs stink to how to survive a divorce.” – The Washington Post
Is English In Decline? Please! Worrying About That Is Dumb
Linguistic decline is the cultural equivalent of the boy who cried wolf, except the wolf never turns up. Perhaps this is why, even though the idea that language is going to the dogs is widespread, nothing much has been done to mitigate it: it’s a powerful intuition, but the evidence of its effects has simply never materialised. That is because it is unscientific nonsense. – The Guardian
She Had Trouble Finding Dance Classes Online — So She Founded A $600 Million Startup
Payal Kadakia, New Jersey-born daughter of two Indian immigrant chemists, got a degree from MIT while setting up one Indian dance group and worked a professional job at Bain & Company while launching and running another. In a Q&A, she recounts how, as a way to address one of her biggest frustrations as a New York dancer, she built ClassPass. – The New York Times
What Happens When You Have To Cancel A Festival
In the enduringly expensive world of the multi-day music jamboree – where power bills alone can reach £100,000 for a 10,000-capacity event – ticket refunds are just one problem. – The Guardian
Trending
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Placido Domingo’s Response to Accusations Lands With A Thud
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The Poem On The Statue Of Liberty Has A Rather Complicated History
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The Segment That Cost Jimmy Kimmel Live! A Huge FCC Fine
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Gustavo Dudamel Has Led The LA Phil For Ten Years: What He’s Done And Will He Stay
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San Diego Symphony To Break Ground On Year-Round Outdoor Venue
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The Squares Who Saved Woodstock
A big part of the 1969 festival’s legend is that no one involved had any idea how big it was going to get and how many people would show up, and the organizers were utterly unprepared. “Woodstock was saved at every step of the way by decidedly non-groovy regular people” — from Max Yasgur, the law-and-order Republican who rented his farm to the festival at the last minute, to the citizens of Bethel, NY who hard-boiled hundreds of thousands of eggs and sent canned goods when organizers ran out of food on the second day. – The Washington Post
‘I Love Staring At One Spot For Six Hours!’ Life-Drawing Models On The Trials And Joys Of Posing Nude For Art Students
The person who gave that quote actually meant it. Tim Jonze talks to three professional figure models about the worst and best parts of their jobs. – The Guardian
The Poem On The Statue Of Liberty Has A Rather Complicated History
“The New Colossus” (“Give me your tired, your poor, …”) was not mainstream American sentiment when Emma Lazarus wrote it in 1883 (one year after the Immigrant Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act). Indeed, it was somewhat radical, and she was inspired by the work she did with the despised refugees who were flooding the U.S. in her day (Jews from the Russian Empire). Slate history maven Rebecca Onion talks with Lazarus biographer Esther Schor about the poem and how its reception has changed over the decades. – Slate
For The First Time, A Telenovela Is Centered On A Gay Couple
El Corazón Nunca Se Equivoca (“The Heart Is Never Wrong”), produced and set in Mexico City, is a spinoff of the popular Mi Marido Tiene Más Familia (“My Husband Has More Family”): two young men in that series have fallen in love and go off to university together — with the full support of one of their families. And with the power of telenovelas in Mexico’s machismo-filled culture, the new series is a major development. – The Washington Post
Latinos Aren’t Visible Enough In American Popular Culture. Trump And El Paso Show Why That Matters
Carolina Miranda: “If ever there were an urgent moment for the various culture industries — film studios, theater companies, art museums and TV production companies — to act on issues of diversity and inclusion, that moment is now. And not because diversity is some feel-good thing that makes for a nice talking point during Hispanic Heritage Month, but because rendering an entire segment of the population invisible makes the cultural arena complicit in a marginalization that is entering increasingly dangerous” — literally dangerous — “territory.” – Los Angeles Times
Owner Of Pulse Nightclub Wants To Put Up Museum To Massacre There. Survivors Are Not Having It
Says one who was wounded in the 2016 shooting, “They’re talking about a theme-park environment where you buy memorabilia.” Of the club’s owner, who runs a foundation (which pays her a six-figure salary) to build and operate the proposed museum, the mother of one victim said, “These [young survivors] can’t afford their co-pays, they’re not getting PTSD therapy, and meanwhile you’re profiting and you want an admission-charging, souvenir-selling, tour-bus-visiting hate museum.” – Orlando Sentinel
Berlin’s Oldest Boys’ Choir Sued By Parents Of Girl Who Was Rejected
“The State and Cathedral Choir of Berlin, founded in 1465 by the ruler of Brandenburg, Fredrick II, promotes ‘free musical education for boys.’ … Since then, the choir, now part of Berlin’s University of the Arts, has grown into a public institution that includes more than 250 singers in 11 ensembles who undergo rigorous [musical] training and perform around the globe.” The family of a nine-year-old girl who was rejected three times has sued, and a ruling is expected on Friday. – The New York Times
Abandoned Sketch Found Beneath Leonardo Painting
“Why Leonardo abandoned this first composition still remains a mystery. Handprints resulting from patting down the priming on the panel to create an even layer of more or less uniform thickness can also be seen, probably the work of an assistant – but perhaps even by Leonardo himself.” – The Guardian
The Biology Of Art (and Its Many Connections)
So many of the metaphors which we use to describe art are biological in nature, from calling a work “my baby” to William S. Burroughs’ contention about language’s viral nature. How some people describe biological creation is reciprocal in its metaphors, such as thinking of a child as a “masterpiece.” – Nautilus
Unlike Previous Presidents, Donald Trump Seems Not To Care About Music
The one art form that interests Mr. Trump is the art of the deal, though the book about it published under his byline was ghostwritten by someone else. Its only reference to music is hostile: “I punched my music teacher,” Mr. Trump recalls, “because I didn’t think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled.” – Baltimore Sun