"Recently, I was playing guitar and singing a cute little country ditty that required no vocal skill. My sister-in-law, who was listening, exclaimed, 'That was so beautiful. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard your real voice.' She’s been hearing me sing for 40 years." - The Atlantic (MSN)
Quibble with its gaucheness all you want, but a huge number of people have formed an opinion about Comic Sans, in the same way someone might form an opinion about art. - Slate (MSN)
"If I look at the internet, I found that I got quite depressed," the 66-year-old said. "It scared me because I started to go down a dark hole. So I try to avoid it, because it doesn't make me feel good." - BBC
"Because publishers can’t rely on surprise bestsellers like Hillbilly Elegy, they find themselves playing a game of 4-D chess every fourth fall: How can they schedule their busiest season in an attention vacuum? And more confoundingly, what should they publish in the face of an uncertain outcome?" - Esquire
A survey of 1,500 young people across the U.S. aged 10 to 24 — identified going to see a film on opening weekend as adolescents’ No. 1 preferred pastime when cost, transportation and other barriers are removed from the equation. - Los Angeles Times
“A country is only the stories it tells itself about itself.” It’s James Graham's contention that, since the 2008 financial crisis, the West has struggled to tell a coherent story about itself. We’re all living in our own realities; everything is fractured through the digital world. - The New Yorker
One of the most significant shifts has been the rise of DIY artists. These independent musicians take on roles traditionally held by record labels and managers, such as producing, recording, promoting and distributing their music. - The Conversation
Writer-producer/adapter Armando Iannucci (Veep), director Sean Foley, and actor Steve Coogan (playing all of Peter Sellers's roles) are brave and perhaps foolhardy, but they find that the comedy about nuclear war is now more timely than when they first decided to adapt it. - The Guardian
Travel writing, historically, has followed suit in expressing everything from performative adoration and exoticization to sheer racism and erasure. But at its best it can offer a sobering portrait of human folly, bias, humiliation, and desire for connection—those endlessly conflicted feelings that come with the experience. - JStor
As the war nears its third year, a cohort of Italian curators, artists, and art historians, including Luca Tomìo and Alessandro Romanini, have bucked the trend of that isolation to participate or curate exhibitions there. - ARTnews
Operas deal with all of life’s big issues, from unrequited love to the death of a loved one. They address social issues too: political rivalries, malign power, toxic male violence. Listening to opera can be highly cathartic, a way of making sense of your own emotions and the world’s problems. - Psyche
"In 1905, Morgan’s bibliophilic nephew recommended a co-worker in the library at Princeton: Belle da Costa Greene. … She would remain at the helm of Morgan's library for nearly the rest of her life, and after Morgan’s death in 1913, she led the effort to make his vast private collection accessible to all." - Smithsonian Magazine
Art made on Paint is often amateurish, but amateurish in a way that celebrates human flaw. Struggling to make something out of nothing — to pull an image from the mind, to represent it externally in a way that is even halfway decent — is as quintessentially human as speaking a language. - The New York Times
"Since last summer, Lemon8 has more than tripled its user base, hitting 12 million downloads in the US (less than a tenth of TikTok's reach). But several users (are) skeptical that the pictures-and-video social app — which focuses on lifestyle content like beauty, food and travel — will have much staying power." - TheWrap (MSN)
