“I have now been ‘in line’ on @Ticketmaster for over 4 hours just for the privilege of registering to buy @taylorswift13 tickets. Not even but the tickets, mind you, just register to buy them. How can this company be so consistently awful, yet still exist?.” - Los Angeles Times
Uncertainty about an artist’s intentions—including, but not limited to, which way she intended the picture to be top and which bottom—is not a sign of what a certain man would call a “hoax”; it is a sign of originality of purpose and a tolerance for open-ended inquiry. - The New Yorker
We spoke to a total of 33 people in the UK, all of whom had felt “called” to music in early life but then abandoned it in favour of other work, only to return to their music later. Rather than being singers, violinists or ukulele players they became IT managers, civil servants and pharmacists. - The Conversation
As a lot of the current people leave and a lot of new people who are there because of what they think Elon is going to do join, that’s going to significantly change the culture of the platform.” - The Atlantic
One ongoing effort to pin down the instable entity that is translation involves finding metaphors or analogies for it. This epistemological parlor game has resulted in a list that is long and still growing. The examples are instructive even if limited. - Hudson Review
Should we study the distant past to explore its strangeness—and jolt ourselves out of easy assumptions that the world we know is the only possible one? Or should we study the more recent past to understand how our world came into being—and thereby learn lessons for the future? - The Atlantic
"Forget Hollywood images of lithe women in coconut bras and grass skirts. ... Real hula is primal, archetypal, esoteric and ever- evolving. And it's now shared digitally all over the world." - Dance Magazine
To pull in viewers, HBO’s early executives dreamed up a network that ended up reflecting contemporary culture — its policing and crime, politics and industry news — better than many newspaper sections devoted to those topics. - Washington Post
The film, headlined by Viola Davis, about the female warriors of the old kingdom of Dahomey (in present-day Benin), has been running at the Canal Olympia in Cotonou (the nation's largest city) for a month — and it's still sold out. - The Guardian
She was famous for a kind of glamorous hauteur, which the bedraggled dining critics of today, with their furtive TikTok feeds and constantly buzzing phones, can only imagine. She was famous for her taste, which was considerable, and her work in the restaurant community. - New York Magazine
"But here and now: non-Black people of color mad that they weren't consulted about Black American slavery? ... Calling it an affront to mental health to have white bigots use the N-word in a play about the Freedom Riders? Folks, this is less antiracism than performance." - The New York Times
It is a well-worn cliché that the practical person scorns aesthetic value. But there’s reason to think that it is the only way in which we can draw final positive value from the entire world. Thus, to the extent that we care whether or not we live in a good world, we must be aesthetically sensitive. - Aeon
That word, chosen by Collins English Dictionary in the UK is "permacrisis." Among the other top choices are "vibe shift," "Partygate," "quiet quitting," and "splooting." - CBS News
This is a survey of the rising writers, actors, directors, architects, thinkers, musicians and other artists who are shaping the culture you are living in now and certainly the culture you’ll be living in tomorrow. - Los Angeles Times
He wrote for the Glasgow Herald, the Sunday Times of London, "the Observer and Vanity Fair before joining the team that created the Independent on Sunday, which he edited from 1991 to 1995. From there he moved to the editor's chair at literary magazine Granta, where he remained until 2007." - The Observer (UK)
