The ubiquity of overwork is a serious obstacle for many of the ideas about how we might reshape our professional lives in the months ahead. - The New Yorker
"Their work is just as dangerous and exciting as the bull riders they're employed to protect. Working in teams, their job is to distract an enraged bull from attacking the rider who's just been catapulted to the dirt." - Texas Highways
“They don’t want me because I won’t follow orders and I won’t do the kind of Muppets they believe in,” he continued. Just how does Oz describe the new version of the Muppets? “The soul’s not there,” he said. - Deadline
John McWhorter: "The grand old four-letter words seem to be used as punctuation, … (and) Twitter is full of people being recreationally nasty. Yet when I listen to America talking in our times, I hear an encroaching sweetness, a flowering of deference." - The New York Times
As near as I can figure, when I claim to know something, I am only announcing to myself or to others that henceforth I am going to act and speak as if that something is true. I am going to adopt that claim as a kind of policy guiding my future actions. - 3 Quarks Daily
Just over the past year, the record price for a copy of a game has risen by a factor of almost 20, from $114,000 to $2 million, with the most in-demand items being versions (preferably sealed) of the Super Mario Bros. franchise. - Artnet
Gamers aged below 18 will be limited to one hour of online game play, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in normal weeks. They will also be allowed to play on statutory public holidays. - Variety
The state has been working to revive French for decades — but the language taught in schools has been the standardized variety, very different from the dialect local elders actually speak. Now a school for adults in a small town is teaching proper Cajun. - National Geographic
"A group of performers from the shuttered Aspen Santa Fe Ballet company have founded the new contemporary company DanceAspen and will debut new work at the Wheeler Opera House next month." - The Aspen Times
He attracted national attention in the 1970s for his waggish style hosting NBC’s Weekend, where he was joined by the equally irreverent Linda Ellerbee. They later co-anchored NBC News Overnight, an admired but little-watched show that lasted only 17 months in 1982-83. - The New York Times (AP)
The tech giant will take Primephonic offline next week and, it says, work on integrating the service's catalog and specialized search engine, with a new Apple classical app launching next year. Current subscribers will get a refund and six free months of Apple Music. - The Hollywood Reporter
Graffman, now 92 and formerly the music school's director and president, had been its leading piano teacher, with Yuja Wang and Lang Lang among his students. Higdon, a Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer, cited musical and family commitments for her departure. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Little Amal, a 20-foot representation of a nine-year-old Syrian refugee girl, is being walked by her handlers from Gazantiep, Turkey to Manchester, England. A local council in Greece is the first, and probably not the last, to ban her from town. - The New York Times
The Museo de Arte Contemporâneo Atchugarry, now under construction in the exclusive seaside resort town of Punta del Este, is being built and funded by Pablo Atchugarry, perhaps Uruguay's most prominent living artist. Opening is planned for early January. - Artnet
A vibrant, educated, outward-looking civil society formed, and many Afghans facing Taliban 2.0 have no memory of the shockingly brutal Taliban regime that fell in 2001. Kabul may not be governable by the old Taliban methods. - Washington Post
