Pleasure activists believe that, by tapping into the potential goodness in each of us, we can generate justice and liberation, growing a healing abundance where we have been socialized to believe only scarcity exists. - Boston Review

There are two kinds of things in the world: the good and the indifferents. Note that the first is singular, the second, plural. For there is only one good. ‘What is it?’ you may well ask. - 3 Quarks Daily

The better approach is to cultivate an appreciation for our ignorance, get comfortable with it and look at it very closely, disentangling it as much as possible from our ego to see what’s really there (or not there). - 3 Quarks Daily

Just ask the writers of the 18th century like Coleridge and Shelley (perhaps not Mary Shelley, whose experience was, well, different). - The Guardian (UK)

Fangirls aren't frivolous - or, even if they are, it's in the service of creativity. "A handful of books, documentaries, films and memoirs are celebrating the fizzy, dizzying heights of female obsession and what it offers teen girls and women." - The Guardian (UK)

And that's good: "The human body is both beautiful and fragile, and inflicting so much carnage on it is deeply unsettling." - Wired

Few places in the country host a professional show-business destination as quirky and expansive as this Missouri mountain town a few dozen miles north of the Arkansas border. Singer Andy Williams opened a theater here. So did comedian Yakov Smirnoff. - Washington Post

In an era when chess engines entirely dominate the game—when they’ve so monopolized human players’ thinking, strategy, and preparation that chess has, in certain ways, come to resemble poker—is it really possible to disentangle creativity from computing? - The Atlantic

The concentration of arts institutions around Broad Street south of City Hall transformed that portion of the city, but the street north of City Hall has lagged behind.  Now, with the Philly Pops joining PAFA, the Met Philadelphia and Philadelphia Ballet in expanding there, North Broad could catch up. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

What is the arts writer’s beat? Are we still on it when we take a stand about something happening inside a major arts institution, and platform its workers instead of those at the top? Philly’s smaller, independent arts publications say yes. - Broad Street Review

The rate of the decline has slowed this fall, with college enrollment dropping 1.1% since last autumn. Over the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, enrollment fell about 6.5%. About 1.5 million fewer students are enrolled in college than before the pandemic. - The Wall Street Journal

The Court’s grappling with Warhol’s cultural criticism may end up being its most revealing comment this term on the nature of its own role in contemporary culture. - The New Yorker

The trip would have marked the 50th anniversary of when the Philadelphians became the first US orchestra ever to visit China. The stated reason for canceling is the country's strict COVID quarantine rules, which would require anyone infected to quit the tour and remain in place for weeks. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

There are more English songs to be discovered, past, present and future. Seams of gold run through those blue remembered hills and our modest three-day festival will carry on mining them. - The Guardian

For instance, this season the Philadelphia Orchestra has four Black guest conductors in its main subscription series — and, in Philly and elsewhere, they're finally getting to do programs that aren't for MLK Day or Black History Month.  But few people yet trust that the change is permanent. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

The latest Orchestra Repertoire Report shows a 638% increase in music by women at our symphony halls in the past six years. The numbers for women composers of color — which started at next to nothing — is up a whopping 1425%. - NPR

"(The Czech conductor), 41, will begin his tenure in September 2025. He succeeds Antonio Pappano, who steps down from the post at the end of the 2023-24 season after 22 years in the role – making him the Royal Opera's longest serving music director." - The Guardian

Hebrides Redacted successively removes notes from the 10- to 11-minute overture in proportion to the decline in humpback whale populations over many decades. A short film about the project (embedded above) was released today as part of the Cambridge Zero Climate Change Festival. - Ars Technica

"School district officials and a high school student in Michigan have drawn the ire of parents who allege that a painted mural contains LGBTQ propaganda, a depiction of Satan and a message of witchcraft. The painting covers a wall inside a teen health center (in southwestern Michigan)." - NPR

"Archaeologists excavating the Church of St. Nicholas in Demre, Turkey, have uncovered the original stone mosaic floors where the saint ... would have stood during mass, and where his tomb was first located within the house of worship." - Artnet

It is easier to understand objects created during the current downfall of Columbus and those who followed him, if you can see the art created before they arrived and while they reigned. - The New York Times

Stable Diffusion’s AI allows users to create images from other pictures, drawn on the spot. That’s right: Input your napkin doodles and half-sketched masterpieces and AI will produce a complete image. (Well, sort of.) - Hyperallergic

The Louvre mother ship in Paris will lend Leonardo's Saint John the Baptist to its Gulf outpost for two years beginning next month, just as the museum is celebrating its fifth anniversary. - The National (Abu Dhabi)

Less than a year later, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, it has become a symbol of the cultural death knell of the country. - The Art Newspaper

Certainly a book can cause a temporary change, which was all that most researchers had thought of measuring with fMRIs.  Dr. Gregory Berns wanted to learn if the changes that reading a powerful book caused might remain after the book had been finished and the stimulus was gone. - Literary Hub

"'I know this woman!' she kept thinking. 'Angered by my inability to summon suitable language,' she writes, 'I threw my pencil on the floor, sucked my teeth in disgust.'  Sth.  'So that's what I wrote' she says, and it became the novel's first line." - T — The New York Times Style Magazine

It turns out that the strategy of exploitation prevails in fiction at large. Knowing the topics of just a few books by an author, fairly accurate predictions can be made about the rest of their books. - Psyche

"I began to enjoy its warmth and inclusivity, the way everyone was equally gathered under its umbrella. I had to admit: It didn't feel sexist, racist or classist. It felt friendly and — most of the time — genuine."  Maud Newton's paean to the second-person plural pronoun. - The New York Times Magazine

The unionized journalists — well, most of them — voted to join their colleagues in other departments to protest what they say is the owners' refusal to negotiate a contract.  But the vote to join the strike won by only two votes and up to 40% of the newsroom continues to work. - Poynter

It’s a common misapprehension that “editing” is a synonym for “deleting.” Yes, by all means trim away what I call the Throat-Clearers and Wan Intensifiers. But I have learned that prose often benefits from the cushioning of a few extra words — for rhythm, for sense. - Washington Post