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Thank The Pandemic For Architectural Digest’s New Must-See Status

Home ownership is just a dream for many, and so "the cliche of dog-eared magazine pages crammed with antique chandeliers and Louis XV chairs has been replaced by media empires chasing a young, video-oriented audience." - The Guardian (UK)

Ronald Lauder Reaches Agreement With Heirs Whose Relative Owned Disputed Klimt

Lauder will continue to own The Black Feather Hat, "after agreeing to the restitution and repurchase of the work from the heirs of a Jewish woman who had owned it before World War II." - The New York Times

The Psychology Behind The So-Called Worst Super Bowl Ads

"Many Super Bowl ads aren’t actually trying to be good. They’re just out to shock us awake, to sizzle our brains, to spike our dopamine. And in this effort, a bad ad can serve quite well—especially if it’s truly, exponentially, off-the-charts bad." - Slate

The Oscars And Grammys Thrive On Many Lies About Meritocracy

"If words like 'nuanced,' 'subtle,' 'circumspect' or 'introspective' garner leading men Oscar attention (how else do we explain Colin Farrell’s nod?), female protagonists are often lauded for falling apart." - The New York Times

Online Shopping Was Supposed To Improve The Experience. Instead, It’s Getting Much Worse

 The search results are full of ads. You can’t come up with the right string of words to get more useful results. The reviews, both on the retailer’s site and on third-party websites you’ve mostly never heard of, seem fake. - The Atlantic

Canada’s Indigo Books Hit By Ransomware

Indigo says it can't process electronic payments, accept gift cards or deal with returns. But at one location in Toronto on Friday, the store was able to process credit and or debit transactions, but gift cards were still not operational. - CBC

Of Institutions And Colonialism

It is hard to think of any human institution enduring for centuries of which it can seriously be said it was all good or all bad. If the British Empire was all bad, then it stands almost unique in the three millennia of recorded human barbarism. - Literary Review

Buckminster Fuller’s Greatest Talent? Self-Promotion

As Inventor of the Future reveals, “Bucky” had a penchant for claiming sole authorship over projects within his orbit, even when they were largely realized through the diligent labor and intellectual rigor of others. - The Nation

Morton Subotnick At 90: New Music Isn’t Possible

 possible. We’re not geared to it, because music is part of us—we get it so early in life that we’re not geared to something new. When I started “Silver Apples,” I began to make new metaphors for music, and I said, A piece of music is not a piece of music, it’s a record. - Van

Why Legislation To Force Big Tech Platforms To Pay For News Stories They Link To Is A Dumb Idea

Journalists don’t particularly like to hear it, but news stories make up only 2% to 3% of the average user’s News Feed on Facebook, and they are less engaging than friends-and-family content. People use Google to search for news, sure, but Google usually doesn’t put ads next to those search results. - NiemanLab

In Cambodia, A Circus Helps Rescue Traditional Arts And Traumatized People

The Phare Circus, founded in 1994 by an art therapist, provides education and training for young people, many poor, and a livelihood for artists with a performing arts school in Battambang (Cambodia's second city) and a professional circus troupe in Siem Reap, near Angkor Wat. - The Christian Science Monitor

Dance On Film Is A Tricky Business

Call Me Dancer represents the strongest slice of the films on offer: works that engage the politics and economics of the dance world. These films often include talking as well as moving; they stretch the genre, the performers, even the audience. - Village Voice

This Prominent Woman Conductor Isn’t All That Interested In The Gender Issue

Simone Young: "What does being a woman have to do with conducting? My tits don't get in the way. ... And it is maestro, not 'maestra'. But try just 'Simone', it's easier." (And by the way, "I found Tár fascinating ... but it's a work of fiction.") - The Guardian

Appreciating Burt Bacharach

Bacharach may have been a uniter, not a divider, but surely it’s easy to hear the complexity underneath that ease. The unpredictability and the equally wondrous rightness of so many of his key melodies are what keep them evergreen. - Chicago Tribune

A Second-Day, Six-Point Look At Australia’s New Cultural Policy

"1. It is a truth universally acknowledged that democratic governments who produce National Cultural Policies sound decidedly naff. Sorry, but there's no escaping it. If they aim for the high ground, they come across as pretentious. If they focus on deliverables, they seem venal." - ArtsHub (Australia)

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