Stories

A science fiction trope becoming real, "It doesn’t necessarily exist . It’s partly a dream for the future of the internet and partly a neat way to encapsulate some current trends in online infrastructure, including the growth of real-time 3D worlds." - The Verge

"There are eerie similarities between pre-1948 Hollywood and today’s streaming market. ... The top five streaming companies dominate." And Amazon would like to be more dominant. - The New York Times

The interconnected world can be a real pain when TV subtitles and audio transcriptions just disappear into the smoke - and Deaf and blind audience members aren't happy. - BBC

The hip, fannish crowd is almost the same as it was at shutdown, with a large fillip of relief joining the giddy thrills. "The color pours down your eye holes right into your serotonin receptors — all that warmth without heat triggers something deep in your lizard brain." - Vulture

"Welcome to the life of a 21st-century activist artist, whose work is as likely to be exhibited at an international human rights tribunal as it is a museum, and in which death threats and cyberattacks are all in a day’s work." - The New York Times

The sketches below the surface show all the ways it could have gone wrong. - The Observer (UK)

Serious choreographers, pandemic, cruise ship? Yes: "The creative team has plunged into the challenges of making a work at sea as part of a large corporate enterprise." - The New York Times

And cultural workers need the money, and purpose: "Creative jobs dropped 53% between late 2019 and mid 2020, recovering only halfway since then, and the prolonged pandemic continues to threaten re-openings of art spaces." - Hyperallergic

Six point one million dollars says he did not (and a company that owns the rights to his likeness also did not). - The New York Times

Imagination, hard work, and a big dose of luck propelled Richard Antoine White's career, he says. - Baltimore Sun

"It is hard to get perspective on your surroundings when your face is being ground into the dirt, or as Van Peebles might have put it, when the Man’s foot is stuck in your ass." - The Atlantic

The prize was supposed to be populist, but now, and for the past few years, it seems to be idealist instead. " The traditional criteria for judging the prize... seem to be out of the window. - The Guardian (UK)

After trying for a month, "more than 100 young artists, teachers and their relatives affiliated with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, a celebrated school that became a target of the Taliban," finally escaped, heading for Portugal. - The New York Times

And we can even find it pleasurable - once the cravings for instant responses from our phones wear off. - Psyche

Smith, who backed Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick, formed his own quartet, and collaborated with hundreds of others, said the organ was "sunshine, rainbows, the rain, the wind, the storm, the flowers. ... It’s like sitting in a spaceship and you don’t know where you’re going." - Washington Post