This is an entirely new concept for many researchers. "For more than a century, researchers who study sleep have looked for its purpose and structure in the brain. They have explored sleep’s connections to memory and learning. They have numbered the neural circuits that push us down into oblivious slumber and pull us back out of it. They have recorded...
Well, A Quiet Place II's boffo box office seems to indicate that people are sick of their living rooms and, one hopes, fully vaccinated and ready to go to the movies. - Variety
"In the early and mid-1990s, working primarily for The Source magazine, at the time the definitive digest of hip-hop’s commercial and creative ascendance, Mr. Modu was the go-to photographer. An empathetic documentarian with a talent for capturing easeful moments in often extraordinary circumstances, he helped set the visual template for dozens of hip-hop stars. The Source was minting a new generation...
A top-secret project made the Medici Chapel gleam anew: "In the months leading up to Italy’s Covid-19 epidemic and then in some of the darkest days of its second wave as the virus raged outside, restorers and scientists quietly unleashed microbes with good taste and an enormous appetite on the marbles, intentionally turning the chapel into a bacterial smorgasbord."...
How'd the dry run for the YOLA concert hall go? "It would be hard to imagine a less proper acoustic assessment, or a better real world one. The ensemble of student string players spent the pandemic practicing at home and taking instruction via Zoom. Yet their assignment, on only their third time back together, was the tricky first movement...
It's not a simple no, however: "The port authority, which owns the site of the proposed museum, gave the green light but the council has objected on the grounds of location and fears the scheme will provide little value to local residents." - The Guardian (UK)
Honestly, among fans, the food is famous. "HBO is aware of the series' reputation, and continues to tweet things like 'The Mare of Easttown food pyramid: fries, peanut butter, spray cheese, vitamins, and beer' while legions of fans have taken to kicking back on Sunday nights with Rolling Rock and cheesesteaks." - Salon
Leslie Cuyjet has recently created a dance "so conceptual and personal. Moriah Evans and Yve Laris Cohen — who curate Dance and Process, an incubator that affords choreographers the space and time to develop work — were impressed. Evans said she admired the nuances of seemingly simple gestures in the piece, as well as its 'delicate shifts,' which 'contain...
To be fair, the Skagit Valley Chorale (the one where 52 of 61 singers eventually got COVID from a single rehearsal in March 2020) is singing together now - over Zoom. But a planned return in the fall looks bumpy, thanks to politics around vaccine requirements. - NPR
It takes extraordinary measures to deal with the thieves. "Looters have been plundering Italy’s cultural sites for decades, but since 2012 their trade has not been as fruitful, owing to an intensified crackdown by Italy’s art police. ... In 2020, the squad found 24 illegal digs, arrested 68 thieves and recuperated 17,503 archaeological artefacts. The unit carries out controls...
Rovère's character "Arlette has struck a chord as everyone’s ideal disreputable aunt with a repertoire of outrageous stories that she just might tell if the burgundy is flowing. She is the sly, sharp-tongued doyenne of top Paris talent agency ASK, who knows where the bodies are buried, and just when to dig them up." But her character is more...
And this didn't happen once, bad as that would have been. The company says "two black dancers had people scream racial epithets at them while driving by, and it happened on two separate occasions last week." - KSL
We don't avoid telling stories about difficult topics. "There have been numerous movies about slavery, about Jim Crow, about the Vietnam War. There have even been movies about America’s inaction to the genocide in Rwanda, a story whose national footprint is likely much smaller than that of the Tulsa massacre’s. Yet when it comes to the more than 30...
Author Valeria Luiselli just won the Dublin literary award. She says that she, her daughter, and her niece have been reading out loud to each other since the pandemic began. "I can say, without a hint of doubt, that without books – without sharing in the company of other writers’s human experiences – we would not have made it...
