Comparing data from the appendix of the economists’ study with data from the SUSB Annual Data Tables put out by the Census Bureau, I estimate that more than 20 percent of auto dealerships in America have an owner making more than $1.58 million per year. - The New York Times
An NFT has value because the buyer and their community believe it has value—which is true for all art and collectibles. And as time goes by, an NFT gains more of its own character, based on factors like who’s owned it and how they’ve used it. - Fast Company
"There are cultural, financial and emotional gaps between working-class creative people and the affluent, networked and mostly private school-educated gatekeepers of Australia's arts ... leading to an entire creative culture that, to an outsider, looks largely monolithic: a lot of white, wealthy people who seem to already know each other." - The Guardian
Does it register, for example, that for every $1 billion turned over in the arts, around 4,300 new jobs are created? Compared to the construction industry where for every $1 billion, just 1,200 new jobs are created? - ArtsHub
"Russian culture is about the fragility of life," says the award-winning stage and film director. "It's about people who are under oppression. Who are fighting for truth or justice. That's real culture. Not ideological culture. Not propaganda. I think it's not good to boycott this kind of culture." - Variety
While the level of deaf visibility may feel new to most, we need to understand that scores of talented deaf writers and creatives have always been there, and have always deserved to be heard. What’s changing now is the hearing world’s willingness to listen. - The Guardian
"It's easier than ever to steal a motif or a craft technique and transfer it on to a piece of clothing that is either mass produced or appears on a runway without credit or compensation to their original communities." - BBC
The Australian Labor Party "has pledged more transparent funding to arts and cultural institutions, an examination of a national insurance scheme to protect the live performance sector from further shutdowns, and a plan to boost Australian content on multinational streamers." - The Guardian
In what looks like a reaction - some might call it an over-reaction - to the employee walkouts over Dave Chapelle's transphobic jokes, the streamer changed its "corporate culture" memo, saying employees "may have to work on content that they 'perceive as harmful.'" - NPR
"The characters in the showdown were as colorful as any drawn on the studio's animation cels: union activists, gangsters, communists and anti-communists, and, not least, Walt Disney himself, who, dropping his avuncular persona, played a long game of political hardball." - Salon
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, "Oral arguments were held on Monday this week, and the judges 'seemed to struggle with basic tech concepts.'" The tech companies will likely appeal. - Wired
Look at 2007's Knocked Up. It's "a self-consciously edgy movie that declines, again and again, to say the word abortion out loud. It has much to say about Roe’s looming tragedy—precisely because, so often, it opts to say nothing at all." - The Atlantic
The Belgium-born, Amsterdam-based director, known in the US for his Broadway stagings of A View from the Bridge, The Crucible, Network, and West Side Story, will be artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale, one of Europe's largest interdisciplinary arts festivals, for the 2024-26 cycle. - M-Festival.biz
A review, commissioned by the British branch of Actors' Equity, of 111 academic studies performed over 20 years found (among other conclusions) that, in addition to the depression figures, performers are from four to ten times (depending on the particular genre) as likely as regular folks to suffer anxiety. - The Guardian
As one director of a presenting venue puts it, "It's like, we're driving straight up (to) the cliff ... but we're swerving and bumping and jogging, and there's still a cliff there. We know it's coming, but we have no idea when we're gonna get there." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
