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Where Bad Statistics Come From

And why they just keep chugging along. (For the record, no, you don'tlose 80 perncet of your body heat from your head.) - The Atlantic

The Hardcore, Non-CGI Way HBO Made ‘The Last Of Us’ So Creepy

"To achieve the specific sense of degradation, ... the team would build sets then wear them down, wreck them, or, as Paino refers to the process, 'desiccate them,' as if 20 years had truly passed." - Fast Company

Visiting The Grave Of Raymond Carver

"I read her 'Cathedral' while she rested her head in my lap. It was 'really something' as you had said. Your story, I mean, and this life too. There were times when I wasn’t sure I’d be able to say that and mean it, but I felt it that day, and I feel it now." - The Smart Set

A British Survey Finds Workers In The UK’s Public Arts Sector Are Massively Exploited And Underpaid

The survey "exposes how many artists, especially those from less privileged backgrounds, have to sustain multiple additional jobs to subsidise poorly paid commissions in the public sector. Some told of deciding to leave the art world entirely to protect their mental health and financial security." - The Guardian (UK)

All The Oscar Winners, In One Place, All At Once

A compact little list instead of a 3.5+ hour event? You're on. - Los Angeles Times

The Oscars Need To Revamp The Best Song Category Entirely

"Just in case you're only feeling partially exercised at the evening's pending legit controversies and fashion disasters, let me give you one more reason to sharpen your hashtags. I'm here to argue the obvious: The Academy is getting its best song category all wrong." - NPR

What Should Have Won Best Picture, And The Very Few Times The Academy Has Gotten It Right

The updated list from Washington Post's critics, who started the article in 2016 but, as the writers say, "they just keep on handing out Oscars to the wrong movies." (The 1980s, yikes. But then Crash, oh no.) - Washington Post

Minnesota Premieres Its, And Maybe The, First Hmong Opera

"At first, the Minnesota Opera planned to adapt The Song Poet as a youth opera—part of a program then called Project Opera. But in 2020, that changed with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and a racial justice uprising that challenged representation in the arts." - Sahan Journal

SNL Crew Says Everyone’s Ready To Strike In A Couple Of Weeks

What do they want? Health care! When do they want it? In the contract for the future. And pay: "By offering annual increases that lag behind industry standards, pushing for a deal that ignores the soaring cost of living.” - Los Angeles Times

New York’s Mayor Wants To Cut Library Funding, But Three New Libraries Show Their Value

"With the pandemic seemingly in the rearview mirror but the city still seeking its new normal, New York’s recovery depends on fortifying, not diminishing, tent-poles like parks, streets and libraries." - The New York Times

As Fraudulent Indigenous Art Floods The Market, Actual Indigenous Artists Suffer

Fake Indigenous art is a global market, and stamping it out "is like playing Whack-a-Mole." - CBC

How Hollywood Tried To Erase Anna May Wong, Its First Asian American Star

"She continued to be typecast as dragon ladies and China dolls ... always envisioned an alternative future for herself: 'Some day someone will write a story demanding a real Chinese girl — then perhaps I’ll have my chance,'" she said nearly a century ago, in 1928. - The New York Times

Meta Mehta On His Sound, Mahler, And More

"Shortly after becoming music director of the L.A. Phil and not long before her death in 1964, Mehta visited Alma Mahler, the composer’s widow and a composer in her own right. 'I didn’t know her well, but I speak Viennese, ... so we got along very well.'" - Los Angeles Times

Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Writer Suzy McKee Charnas, 83

"In an epic that began with Walk to the End of the World (1974) and concluded 25 years later, ... Charnas conceived a dystopic world in which an escaped female slave, Alldera, leads the rebellious Free Fems to brutally conquer and enslave their former male masters." - The New York Times

Oh No, Chris Rock, Why?

"He and his peers have achieved immense success, but still don’t know how to cope with the cultural shifts that naturally occur over a long career. Instead they want to keep the conditions that gave rise to their success forever preserved so they can say whatever." - The New York Times

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