Bookshop.org was launched in the US a year ago and in the UK in November. Pitching itself as a socially conscious way to buy books online, it allows booksellers to create a virtual shop front. For books ordered directly from these online stores, booksellers receive 30% of the cover price from each sale without having to handle customer service...
With the disclaimer that this wave of the research reflects current expectations about the pandemic, based on anxieties about vaccine distribution and the spread of COVID variants, and that theatregoers may adjust attitudes if they see prospects improve, the findings are unavoidably bleak for theatres. - American Theatre
“Our entire industry is in the worst crisis since World War II,” says Thomas Lengfelder, chief executive of the Berlin Hotel and Restaurant Assn. (DEHOGA Berlin). “Even today, there is still no telling where the pandemic will lead us. Unfortunately, political leaders are still not giving us any prospects.” - Variety
"There have been two great catastrophes.The first has been the abandonment of freelancers, many of whom work in the arts. A whole swathe of them – about a third – have fallen through the cracks of the income support scheme and are ineligible for loans that have helped many others. The final debacle has not had anything to do...
"Our information crisis can and should be treated like a virus. Responding to fake stories or conspiracy theories after the fact is woefully insufficient, just as post-infection treatments don’t compare to vaccines. Indeed, a growing body of social science suggests that fact-checks and debunkings do little to correct falsehoods after people have seen a piece of misinformation (the unintentional...
Sometimes Grammarly doesn’t do what it should, and sometimes it even does what it shouldn’t. These strengths and failings hint at the essence of language and the peculiarity of human intelligence, as opposed to the artificial sort as it stands today. - The Economist
"If you follow a superb screenplay, the language is a road map, and so you don't have to act.. … When you learn that language you pack that into the suitcase of your brain, and those words inform your body. They move you around the set. … It's there for you, all written down. But we tend to make...
"I am hopeful that we will see a generation that has built a confidence and competence of cognitive flexibility. That is the ability to shift how one thinks about things, and use their own internal and external resources to figure out a solution to an otherwise difficult problem." - Dance Magazine
In those days before mass-produced envelopes, important letters were intricately folded and then sewn shut; until now, modern-day scholars couldn't read such items without cutting open the stitching and damaging the delicate old paper. MIT scientists have now developed a way to do digital x-ray scans of the letters and use virtual reality software to derive images of what...
Little Island completes the transformation of the Meatpacking District, where for decades freight cars delivered animals to slaughterhouses that lined and bloodied the nearby blocks. Now it’s a high-end neighborhood of sleek apartment towers, unaffordable art galleries and fashion retail. The long-abandoned freight viaduct has become the iconic High Line park, while the Whitney Museum of American Art sits...
"The biggest revelation, though, is that while a computer's imagination touches, somewhat randomly, on themes of love, loneliness, clowning and performance, it is most often obsessing about sex, which may not be surprising, given the prevalence of internet pornography." - The Guardian
The protocols these countries have developed the past year to permit some live performances depend greatly on the magnitude of the pandemic and the efforts by government to contain it. South Korea, for example, has operated some theater almost completely uninterrupted since the coronavirus manifested itself, and Australia has been inching back to widespread theater openings since the fall....
"Called Meidum Geese, the painting was discovered in the 1800s in the Chapel of Itet at Meidum. Itet was the wife of the vizier Nefermaat, who ruled Egypt from 2610 to 2590 B.C. The powerful couple was able to commission works from the most sought-after artists of the day." - Artnet
Who votes for these things? The members, currently totaling a scant 87 compared to the nearly 10,000 eligible Oscar voters, of the LA-based group of entertainment writers and photographers, working for media outlets overseas, known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. THe HFPA currently has no Black members, and hasn’t for 20 years. - Chicago Tribune
"The cultures of public media (nonprofit, built around broadcast, sometimes a little sleepy) and digital news startups (often for-profit, built around text, real-time and a little frenetic) are not the most natural media match. Public media outlets — typically the larger and better-financed partner — often enter these deals specifically in hopes of injecting that digital DNA. But the...
