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  • The National Mall In DC Is Getting Too Full, And The Reason Why Is Not A Happy One

    “The sylvan landscape around the Lincoln Memorial is a mess, and it will only get worse. … A landscape that was meant to symbolize peace and reconciliation after the Civil War is becoming cluttered mainly with memorials devoted to war” — too many to fit in this one place. – The Washington Post (MSN)

  • The Ethics Of Entertainment Values

    “Is the value of my experience at Disney World undermined by the fact that it is, at the end of the day, a production of the Walt Disney Company? Can I trust a profit-hungry corporation to teach my children universal values? – Psyche

  • “Art Is The Great Democrat”

    “Art is the great democrat,” wrote Kennedy, “calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color.” He saw art as a means of transcending difference, as both a product of democracy and a contributor to its flourishing. – San Francisco Classical Voice

  • Anime Could Become Japan’s Number-One Export Industry — If Its Business Culture Can Manage It

    The international demand for anime is certainly big enough, and the struggling Japanese economy could really use the extra earnings from abroad. But the country’s corporate culture is not exactly known for nimbleness, and it may not be able to reallocate resources quickly enough to meet demand with supply. – The New York Times

  • The Trap Of Optimization

    We usually assume that more of it must be better. But we can become so focused on improving one thing that we lose sight of the others. You can try to arrange your calendar so that every minute is accounted for, but you’ll soon start running over and end up behind.  – The Guardian

  • Canadian Government Announces New Investment In Books

    The new budget released by the government of Canada last week permanently increased the Canada Book Fund by CDN $5 million annually. This increase, the first since 2001, will bring the Canada Book Fund’s total annual budget to approximately CDN $43.4 million starting in 2027–28. – Publishers Weekly

  • Skydance, Looking To Cut More Than $6B, Offers Big Staff Buyouts

    One of the company’s highest priorities is to get its balance sheet in order. The company has more than $80 billion in debt, and Ellison has promised investors that he and his team would eliminate $6 billion in expenses within three years. On Monday, the executives signaled they were looking to exceed that sum. – Los Angeles Times

  • Should Non-Equity Touring Shows Be Playing L.A.’s Flagship Nonprofit Theaters?

    A non-Equity production of The Music Man is currently running at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre, and quite a bit of SoCal’s theater community is unhappy about that. But a cast member says they’re treated well, and CTG artistic director Snehal Desai he didn’t have much choice in this case. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)

  • America’s New Movie Capital: New Jersey?

    At a time when filming in Los Angeles has plunged to historic lows, New Jersey has soared, becoming one of the nation’s hottest film destinations and squeezing into the limelight of its bigger neighbor across the Hudson River. – Los Angeles Times

  • Aquaterra: The Vast Lands Of Civilization We’ve Not Yet Explored

    To understand where—and what—Aquaterra is, you have to think about how sea levels fall and rise during an ice age. As the planet cools, ocean water becomes locked up in continental ice sheets, and sea levels fall by hundreds of feet. – The Atlantic

  • The Louvre’s New Director On The Museum’s Many Challenges

    The new challenges in recent weeks come at a time when Mr. Leribault has had to deal with everything in his brief tenure from the threat of staff strikes and a perennial shortage of visitor bathrooms to a whopping funding drive to finance the museum’s planned refurbishment and reorganization. – The Wall Street Journal

  • Paul McCartney Is Now Officially A Billionaire

    “Paul McCartney has joined the ranks of the world’s billionaires. Forbes has valued the former Beatle’s net worth at $1.4bn (£1.04bn), making him the world’s third richest musician behind Jay-Z at $2.8bn (£2.01bn) and Taylor Swift at $2bn (£1.49bn).” – The Guardian

  • CBC/Radio-Canada To Get $300 Million In One-Off Extra Funding

    “CBC/Radio-Canada will receive an additional $300 million in federal funding over the next two years, providing the Canadian public broadcaster with additional resources for news coverage, digital programming and Canadian-produced content.” – Inside Radio

  • Britain’s BalletBoyz At 25

    “Let’s dispel the myth about BalletBoyz — it’s not an all-male company and never has been. There were women in their first shows 25 years ago, in this show and others in between, while the ensemble’s lineup can change every year.” Founders William Trevitt and Michael Nunn never liked the name, anyway. – The Times (UK)

  • Chicagoans Vote To Create Permanent Site For Rock Festivals. But …

    “The (non-binding ballot) measure, meant to gauge public interest, arrived after pushback in recent years from some Chicagoans who oppose privately run festivals taking place in the city’s public spaces, from Lollapalooza in Grant Park to Riot Fest in Douglass Park. But despite electoral support, there are no clear next steps.” – WBEZ (Chicago)

  • Ancient Petroglyphs In Utah Vandalized, Damage May Be Permanent

    “The Bureau of Land Management announced on November 6 that it was investigating vandalism at two ancient rock-art sites near Moab, Utah, where someone carved names into petroglyphs, leaving damage that may be impossible to remove.” – Outside

  • Former CFO Sues Philadelphia Museum Of Art, Claiming Her Severance Was Withheld

    “Valarie McDuffie has accused museum director and CEO Daniel H. Weiss and board chair Ellen Caplan of withholding nearly $150,000 in severance out of ‘spite and retaliation.’ But the museum has countered with allegations of its own, claiming that McDuffie breached her severance agreement.” – ARTnews

  • The $900,000 Plug Hiding in Your Balanced Budget

    Every budget is a set of promises.

    Most boards treat a budget as a forecast, a test of how good or bad management is at predicting the future. But when a board approves next year’s budget, it is also approving a list of commitments the organization says it will keep: pay these people, fix that roof, raise this much from these donors by these dates. The bottom line comes out to zero, everyone exhales, and the minutes record a balanced budget. That zero says very little about whether the promises above it can be kept, and in budgets that later fail, the promises that break tend to be the same three: positions frozen on paper while the work is still expected, maintenance pushed into a later year, and a contributed-revenue line set by the size of the gap rather than by the donors in the pipeline. This fall, the Phoenix Symphony gave the field a public lesson in the third.

    What Happened in Phoenix

    On October 20, the Phoenix Symphony’s board announced that it would suspend the 2026–27 season after its November 1 concert and begin laying off its full-time musicians (66 of them, by the musicians’ count) the next day. The orchestra cited ongoing operating deficits and said ticket sales and giving had both grown but that anticipated contributions fell short of what it needed, and in a message to subscribers, CEO Peter Kjome wrote that the Symphony projected it would be unable to meet essential obligations beginning in November. At the end of October the story got more complicated, when local outlets reported that attorneys for the trust of Glenn and May Tansley had asked a Maricopa County judge to vacate an October 14 order awarding the Symphony a $6.5 million bequest. The Symphony says it disagrees with the trustee’s account and will respond in court, that it asked for the gift to go to its separate support foundation under its gift acceptance policy, and that neither organization has received any of the money. The court had not ruled as of this writing. Then, on November 6, the board reversed course. It said a small group of donors had pledged enough to resume performances on November 12 and carry the season through December 31, that continuing into 2027 will take more fundraising, and that a new 11-member commission, including two musicians chosen by their union, will rework the orchestra’s finances and operating model. The Symphony hasn’t said how much was raised, and it did not respond to my request for comment on the figures in this post.

    Nashville got its own rescue on October 4, when Oracle gave $10 million and brought back the season the orchestra had suspended for lack of cash. Gifts like these buy time, and without a plan for what changes, they kick the can down the road to next year’s budget. For an orchestra, that plan has to include a complete restructuring of the collective bargaining agreement, which is the largest fixed cost center, because you cannot turn around a business model that is fundamentally broken. In Phoenix, the musicians’ contract expired November 1, so the commission’s work and the next negotiation will be happening at the same time.

    I wrote about the balance sheet on LinkedIn (the line of credit, the board loans, a support foundation that sent the orchestra $10,600 last year), so I won’t repeat that here. What I want to do instead is read ten years of the Symphony’s Form 990s the way a board should read a budget, as a record of which promises held.

    Ten Years of Filings

    The Symphony’s fiscal year ends June 30, and the surplus and deficit figures below are total revenue minus total expenses as filed, which means they include restricted gifts. They aren’t the operating results a board would see, and they don’t show the budgets the board approved, so I can’t tell you which of these years were presented as balanced.

    Start with the good news, because there is real good news. From FY2023 to FY2025, total revenue rose 49%, from $8.29 million to $12.35 million, while expenses rose 27%, from $11.28 million to $14.36 million. Contributions climbed from $4.21 million to $7.32 million and program revenue from $4.03 million to $5.09 million. Very few orchestras grow revenue by half in two years, and the deficit did narrow, from $2.99 million to $2.01 million.

    But the deficit never closed. The three years from FY2023 through FY2025 lost a combined $7.98 million, and net assets fell from $7.89 million in June 2022 to $264,590 in June 2025, a 97% drop. Net assets without donor restrictions were negative $3.5 million. Total liabilities rose $2.03 million in FY2025 alone, to $4.72 million.

    The longer view is harder still. Net assets were negative at the end of every fiscal year from FY2016 through FY2021, bottoming out at negative $2.94 million in June 2020. FY2022 then brought $16.6 million in contributions and a $9.8 million surplus, which pulled net assets above zero for the first time in the decade these filings cover. Three years later that cushion was almost entirely gone. KJZZ reported losses “nearly every year for the past decade,” but the filings show deficits in five of the last ten years, and the ten-year total from FY2016 through FY2025 is a surplus of about $990,000, all of it from FY2022. Take that one year out and the decade lost $8.8 million.

    So this is an orchestra that spent most of a decade with no cushion, had one very large year (including $7.5 million in government grants, almost certainly federal pandemic relief, on top of $9.1 million in private gifts), and then ran three budgets that each needed $2 million to $3 million more than came in. That pattern is easier to see in a budget than in a tax return, so let me build one.

    Three Promises in a Composite Budget

    The organization below is invented. It’s a composite I’ll call Orchestra X, roughly Phoenix’s size but not Phoenix, and every number is made up to show the mechanics.

    Orchestra X needs $14.0 million to run next season. Earned revenue (tickets, fees, rentals) is budgeted at $5.5 million, which leaves $8.5 million to come from contributions, grants and the endowment draw. Last year that line brought in $7.2 million. The budget balances, and the board approves it unanimously.

    Now look at three things inside it. First, three open staff positions (a major gifts officer, a finance associate and an education coordinator) are held vacant all year, which books $270,000 of savings. The work those people would have done is still expected, so it lands on the remaining staff or doesn’t happen, and one of the three is the person who was supposed to help raise the gift line. Second, the $400,000 replacement of the hall’s HVAC system gets pushed to next year. That money is still owed, and it shows up in a future budget that also has to balance, usually at a higher price and sometimes after an emergency repair. Third, the development office’s own pipeline (renewals at last year’s retention rate plus weighted new asks) supports, at 90% confidence, about $7.6 million in contributions, a 6% increase. The budget says $8.5 million, an 18% increase, because $8.5 million is the number that makes the bottom line zero. That $900,000 difference is a plug.

    Add them up and $1.57 million of Orchestra X’s balanced budget, about 11% of expenses, rests on promises the organization either has no plan to keep or no evidence it can. If contributions land where the pipeline says they will, the year ends $900,000 short, with $400,000 of deferred cost already waiting in next year’s budget and three jobs’ worth of work undone.

    The Questions That Expose a Plug

    None of this is hidden. It’s in the budget packet, if the board asks for it. Which positions are frozen, and who is doing that work? What did we defer, and what will it cost when it comes back? How much of the contributed-revenue line does the pipeline support today, and how much is there because we needed it to be? And if the answer to that last question is a large number, what do we cut in March when the money hasn’t come in?

    The third question matters most, because the gift line is the one that can fail all at once. At Orchestra X, contributions are 61% of revenue. At Phoenix in FY2025 the figure was 59%. When most of the budget depends on giving and there is no reserve behind it, a miss on the gift line goes straight to cash.

    Reading Phoenix Against the Three

    The filings can’t show me Phoenix’s budgets, but they do show where the pressure sat. Contributions were 59% of revenue in FY2025, and net assets of $264,590 covered less than a week of the orchestra’s $14.36 million in annual expenses. The Symphony’s own explanation this fall is that its current budget assumed about $7 million in contributions, a figure it says was consistent with recent fundraising, and that the money didn’t arrive at anticipated levels. That makes the point more sharply than a plug would, because even a gift line built on history breaks when there is nothing behind it. Growing revenue 49% in two years took real work from the staff and board. Growth on top of no reserve still leaves a board with no room for a single promise to break.

    The Tansley bequest makes the same point from another direction. By the Symphony’s account, its intention was to preserve the principal in a memorial fund and spend only the interest and dividends. At a typical 4% to 5% draw, $6.5 million produces $260,000 to $325,000 a year, roughly a tenth of the FY2024 deficit, between an eighth and a sixth of the FY2025 deficit, and about a third of the $926,000 the Symphony says it lost in FY2026 (its own figure, not yet audited or filed). That is a proper way to honor a donor’s wishes, and it is also a reminder that an endowment gift, however generous, can’t close an operating gap of that size.

    What a Board Can Ask For

    The fix fits on one page. Ask management to send the budget with a promise schedule attached: every frozen position with its savings and who is covering the work, every deferral with its estimated future cost and the year it lands, and the contributed-revenue line split into the part the pipeline supports (90% confidence) and the part that closes the gap. Then the board votes on the gap number by name.

    Two standards follow from that page. If the gap is larger than the organization’s unrestricted operating reserve, the budget isn’t balanced, and the minutes should say so. And as Mike Batts argued in “The False Comfort of a Balanced Budget,” the budget should plan for a surplus that moves the organization toward a stated reserve target, so that balance means money set aside rather than an organization holding still.

    A board that asks for the promise schedule will still approve a budget with a plug in it some years. It will know how big the plug is, and it will have decided that in October instead of discovering it in March.

  • For The First Time, The Booker Prize Goes To A Bona Fide Sci-Fi Novel

    “Eighty-one-year-old M John Harrison has won the Booker Prize for The End of Everything, a postapocalyptic novel set on a near-future Kent coast, becoming the oldest winner in the award’s history.” Booker Prize Foundation CEO Gaby Wood called it “the first Booker winner to have emerged from the bona fide SF world.” – The Guardian

  • Director of Marketing

    The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) seeks a Director of Marketing to lead the strategy, execution, and optimization of integrated marketing initiatives that support student recruitment, performance attendance, institutional visibility, advancement, and other organizational priorities.

    The Director is a hands-on marketing leader who translates institutional priorities into measurable campaigns, combining strategic planning with direct execution and oversight of SFCM’s web and social media functions. Working closely with editorial, creative, and institutional partners, the Director ensures marketing efforts are coordinated, audience-focused, and effective.

    Principal Duties and Responsibilities

    Integrated Marketing Strategy & Campaigns

    • Develop and execute integrated marketing strategies supporting SFCM’s priorities, including student recruitment, performance attendance, institutional awareness, and community engagement.
    • Translate institutional goals into actionable marketing plans, identifying target audiences, messaging, channels, budgets, creative requirements, and timelines.
    • Lead coordinated marketing initiatives across paid, owned, and digital channels in partnership with Admissions, Advancement, and artistic and academic leadership.
    • Own the institutional marketing calendar, coordinating campaign timelines, priorities, and resources across departments.
    • Lead, mentor, and support marketing staff, establishing clear priorities, accountability, and opportunities for professional development.

    Paid Media & Advertising

    • Personally plan, execute, and optimize paid advertising campaigns across Google Ads, YouTube, Meta, digital display, print, and other relevant channels.
    • Manage media buying, audience targeting, budget pacing, creative testing, campaign trafficking, and performance measurement.
    • Manage advertising vendors, media partners, and external agencies, negotiating placements and evaluating performance.

    Email & Direct Marketing

    • Lead institutional email marketing across recruitment, performances, advancement, and audience engagement.
    • Plan, build, execute, and optimize email campaigns, including audience segmentation, list strategy, testing, scheduling, and performance analysis.

    Digital Experience & Social Media

    • Oversee SFCM’s website and social media functions, managing staff and establishing priorities aligned with institutional marketing objectives.
    • Lead website marketing strategy, including content priorities, landing pages, user journeys, SEO, calls to action, and conversion optimization.
    • Direct social media strategy, establishing priorities for audience growth, content development, platform engagement, and performance measurement.
    • Collaborate with editorial, design, and content teams to ensure coordinated messaging, creative assets, and campaign execution across digital channels.

    Marketing Analytics & Audience Insights

    • Establish KPIs and analyze performance across advertising, email, web, social, and other marketing channels.
    • Translate campaign and audience data into actionable recommendations that improve conversions, engagement, and marketing effectiveness.
    • Conduct or oversee audience research, including surveys, focus groups, and message testing, to inform marketing strategies.
    • Provide regular performance reporting and recommendations to the AVP and institutional leadership.

    The incumbent will perform other duties as needed.

    • 7+ years of experience in marketing, including managing staff or leading marketing teams.
    • Demonstrated ability to develop marketing strategies and personally execute campaigns from planning through measurement.
    • Hands-on experience managing paid search and social advertising, particularly Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager, including targeting, budgets, testing, optimization, and performance reporting.
    • Strong experience with email marketing, audience segmentation, testing, and analytics.
    • Strong analytical skills and experience with digital marketing measurement, web analytics, conversion optimization, and audience journeys.
    • Experience managing external agencies, vendors, freelancers, or cross-functional teams.
    • Strong project management skills with the ability to manage multiple campaigns and institutional priorities simultaneously.
    • Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to communicate strategy and results to colleagues at multiple levels of an organization.
    • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.
    • Experience in music, performing arts, higher education, nonprofit organizations, cultural institutions, or other mission-driven environments preferred.

    Salary and Benefits

    This is a full-time exempt position, and the starting annual salary is between $110,000 and $130,000, depending on experience. Employee benefits include paid vacation, sick leave, personal days, and holidays; health, long-term disability, and life insurance; and a voluntary 403(b) retirement plan.

    How to Apply

    We prefer to receive applications through our website. This position will be posted until filled.

    SFCM seeks employees who bring both the qualifications needed for the position and a genuine interest in the Conservatory’s mission. Please submit a résumé and a cover letter describing your interest in SFCM and how your experience would contribute to our work.

    Application materials should accurately reflect your qualifications, experience, and interest in SFCM. You are responsible for reviewing and approving all materials submitted on your behalf. Assistance from others or the use of AI tools does not relieve you of this responsibility. SFCM reserves the right to reject applications containing material misrepresentations or submitted without meaningful applicant involvement. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request.

    About Us

    SFCM’s mission is to transform our students: artistically, intellectually, professionally and individually. Through the study of music at the highest level, our students learn to seek achievement in every endeavor, to convert challenges into opportunities, to understand the nature of excellence, and to pursue their dreams with vigor and determination. We believe that inspiring the imagination, cultivating the artist, honing the intellect, and developing the professional are the keys to launching innovative graduates who excel in any field. SFCM is located in the heart of one of the world’s most innovative and diverse cities, and is home to a vibrant academic community of students and faculty who achieve excellence in their fields.

    Equal Opportunity Employer

    SFCM is a fully committed equal employment opportunity institution and welcomes applications from all qualified persons. SFCM will not discriminate against applicants for employment and employees because of race, color, religion, marital status, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition (including cancer and genetic characteristics), status as a Vietnam-era veteran or special disabled veteran, age, citizenship, or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state and local laws.

    Apply Here: https://www.click2apply.net/1gJrlQhAX16jOHP51CMVGd

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  • Macklemore Says Nine Arenas Rejected Palestine Benefit Shows

    Good Morning,

    Macklemore says nine U.S. arenas, including Madison Square Garden, offered dates and then withdrew them once they learned his shows would benefit Palestinian relief (The Wrap). MSG Entertainment says he is “not an arena level act.” The other eight didn’t respond.

    Seven legal-pad pages of Martin Luther King’s handwritten draft for the March on Washington turned up in a desk drawer of his aide Edward Clayton, and Christie’s expects more than $10 million at a January 22 sale (The New York Times). The words “I have a dream” aren’t in it; he added them from the podium.

    The Times ended its contract with romance columnist Olivia Waite after she reposted a critique of its coverage of rape allegations against Trump. She says the Book Review’s editor cited her Bluesky posts, which she says it admitted monitoring (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books).

    Hollywood is having a strong box-office year, yet the share of film budgets spent in the U.S. has fallen from 74% to 42% since 1999, while Disney and Netflix cut staff (El País).

    Canada’s budget proposes a tax credit on up to $45,000 of artists’ income, but never defines who counts as an artist; that waits for a 2027 update (CBC).

    All of our stories below.

  • Google, Meta And TikTok Sue To Block California Law Aimed Against Platform Addiction

    The law prohibits social media platforms from offering children things like personalized feeds and autoplay for videos. It also requires the deletion of children’s accounts with those features. – KQED

  • Many Of DC’s Memorials Are In Darkness As Park Service Maintenance Lapses

    The lapse in upkeep and repairs at some of the most prominent memorials in Washington and at the more than 400 national park properties across the country comes as the Trump administration has reduced the agency’s staff by roughly 25 percent and withheld millions of dollars in funding. – Washington Post

  • When AI Transfers Into The Physical World

    “With a world model, you give it a visual state of the world, an image, and it will then predict the next visual state of the world.” These 3D generations can be used as digital training grounds. “They’re simulations, but they look and feel real.” – Wired

  • Restoration Of London’s Parliament Buildings Could Take 61 Years And Cost £40B

    The Commons public accounts committee this week warned it was “crunch time” for the ailing building’s restoration, which could cost up to £40bn and take 61 years. – BBC

  • Macklemore Says Major Arenas Are Refusing To Book His Concerts

    “After weeks of reaching out, nine major American arenas have turned us down,” he wrote. Macklemore went on to name the specific venues that have allegedly turned him and his team away, despite having availability in the coming months. – The Wrap

  • When Writers Lose Confidence In Free Speech

    If democracy is the political system that allows the fullest human flourishing, the novel is the literary form that most fully cultivates our understanding of human possibility and tragedy and endurance. – The Atlantic

  • Everything You Need To Know About Life You Can Learn From “Sound Of Music”

    I would argue that everything you need to know about life can be found in “The Sound of Music.” Quite an expansive claim, but I have good credentials for making it. As a child actress, I played the bookish Brigitta von Trapp for three years in a touring production of the musical. – Washington Post

  • A Long-Lost, Supposed Destroyed, Handwritten Draft Of MLK’s ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech Has Emerged

    “Like the typed version, it does not include the words ‘I have a dream,’ part of the ringing second half of the speech that King famously improvised.” – The New York Times

  • Can Authors Ever Use Enough Tools To ‘Prove’ They Didn’t Use AI?

    Especially since a lot of LLMs are trained on those authors’ words already? Well, that’s the hope – that’s there’s a way to prove a negative. – Wired

  • A Not Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

    In the new Canadian federal government budget, a non-refundable tax credit worth up to $45,000 of net income is proposed for artists, to be called the Canada Creative Credit.

    Some tax policy jargon: a tax credit is not the same as a tax deduction. For a tax credit, calculate your income tax owing based on revenues minus eligible expenses. Once you have figured out that amount, subtract the credit. Non-refundable means the credit can reduce the amount you owe all the way down to zero, but no further – you can’t use it to get a payment from the government.

    The budget says it will likely take the form of a non-refundable tax credit that would “provide tax recognition on up to $45,000 of annual qualifying net business income derived from original and creative artistic works.”

    What’s wrong with this? I’d say two things.

    First, an old, common-place principle of equity in taxation is that a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, regardless of how you earned it. Two people who each earned, on net, sixty thousand dollars last year, and have identical family circumstances, should pay the same amount in income tax, and it shouldn’t matter if one works as a mortgage loans person in the local credit union and the other works as a furniture maker. This budget proposal would say the novelist who, after expenses, earned sixty thousand dollars last year should pay less in income tax than the credit union employee or the furniture maker. It is not fair.

    Second, suppose we said “ah, but there is something special about the arts to our national well-being, beyond what the artist earns in the market, and as a consequence we should subsidize the arts.” This is generally expressed in pretty vague terms, but for the sake of argument let’s accept it. Then the next questions are: What art in particular? Are there certain genres of art that matter more to the commonweal? Does it matter if the art is, respectfully, any good?

    But that’s the question no one wants to answer any more. From “culture passes” that tell young people “just go buy something creative with it”, to “guaranteed income for artist programs,” that just say “you call yourself an artist, and that’s good enough for us,” the very idea of saying that the disbursement of public funds to the arts ought to involve the judgment of some group of people who know something about art, and should be selective, is long past. Any content will do, whatever. I don’t see what public good that serves.

    Cross-posted at https://michaelrushton.substack.com/

  • Wait, Why Is A 77-Year-Old Judge In Virginia In Charge Of The Titanic?

    Maritime law means Judge Smith oversees “the remains of a ship that was built in Belfast, sailed from England, was heading to New York City and sank off the coast of Canada in international waters more than 1,000 miles from Norfolk.” – The New York Times

  • Sometimes It Takes A Film A Little While To Find Its Way To Audiences

    After a friend-funded release, the actors of Pyre “have met teary-eyed people at multiple screenings – many wanting to touch their feet and hug them, many who said the film reminded them of their own parents and grandparents who are waiting in villages.” – BBC

  • Who Betrayed The Photographer Who Secretly Captured Nazi-Occupied Paris?

    “It is a story of betrayal, set against the turmoil of wartime France under German occupation. At the center of the suspicion is a couple.” – Le Monde English

  • Making A TV Show At Negative 39 Degrees Isn’t Exactly Simple

    “Wherever possible, materials were sent by sea during the annual short thaw to avoid expensive airfreight. For example, building materials and boxed water — which, Arnaquq-Baril says, was chosen over plastic bottles to leave ‘less toxic garbage in the Arctic’ — were shipped by sealift.” – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)