By the mid-aughts, starting a blog was easier than ever. Streaming hadn’t yet taken over our listening habits, but Web connections were speedy enough that, if a blog posted an MP3, a reader could be hearing the song a few minutes later. It was exciting, hopping from blog to blog. - The New Yorker
The 1960s were Stan Lee’s most astonishing decade, during which he came up with ideas and scripts for the first appearances of such heroes as the original X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Black Panther, Daredevil and Doctor Strange. - The Conversation
The Artist’s Studio describes how a noisome cockpit of lust, crime and virtuosity produced innovations in how art gets made, and by whom. - The Guardian
Peter Brooks’s fear is that we are so over-saturated with story that we have become undiscerning consumers, slipping too willingly into the familiar rhythms of plot, even when scepticism – of where information is coming from and of who is delivering it – would be more appropriate. - New Statesman
One of the animating principles of modern civic life is to make public resources increasingly inaccessible in order to prevent public resources from being used in the wrong way, or used at all by the wrong people. - Mother Jones
"A book by Thorvaldur Fridriksson, an Icelandic archaeologist and journalist, argues that Gaelic-speaking Celtic settlers from Ireland and western Scotland had a profound impact on the Icelandic language, landscape and early literature." And also, as it turns out, the Icelanders' DNA. - The Guardian
When asked why, participants’ responses included how "theatre direction just doesn’t pay a living wage", with another claiming "the pay and hours are terrible". The survey found one in 10 jobs was unpaid. - The Stage
A Japanese, that is, who has lived and worked in Kyiv ever since he arrived there as an 11-year-old dance student. Nobuhiro Terada went on to dance with the Kyiv Ballet (as it was called before the war) for two decades and then directed its ballet school. - Euronews
In a city where tree shade is unequally distributed and half the surfaces are dark asphalt or concrete, the solution to increasing temperatures could lie in design. - The Guardian
Rosemary Tonks was suceessful critically, commercially, and socially. Then a series of life crises in the 1970s led her to convert to fundamentalist Christianity, destroy her manuscripts, forbid further publication of her work, and even check out her books from libraries and burn them in her backyard. - The New Yorker
Modest as the festivities have been, I am certain that in 100 years there will be no poem whose centenary is the object of comparable celebration. This seems to me true for the simple reason that poetry is dead. Indeed, it is dead in part because Eliot helped to kill it. - The New York Times
Sordid? Squalid? That's pretty much how a lot of critics reacted to the play when it was new. Yet for decades it has been getting high-profile, star-powered revivals every few years. Why? Not just for its meaty roles, writes Michael Billington, but also for "its air of tantalising ambiguity." - The Guardian
Relying on her own keen sense of how classical music should sound, she developed a plan that would bring together the finest musicians, outstanding business leadership and a shared organizational goal of world-class stature. - Fort Worth Business Press
"Arts groups need to make institutional changes to support these new leaders, according to women leaders of color at these groups. They say solutions often seem obvious, but tend to be overlooked." - KERA (Dallas)
