"The dull gray masses which popular imagination associates with twentieth-century totalitarian rule were never really unified, Arendt tells us. Mass movements were created out of isolated loners and democracy’s losers." Well. That sounds familiar. - LitHub
"After a years-long search process, the festival announced that Jos van Veldhoven, the longtime artistic director of the Netherlands Bach Society, and Conspirare artistic director Craig Hella Johnson will be the festival’s new 'artistic partners,'" along with not one, but four other "artistic partners." - Oregon ArtsWatch
The best children's books aren't meant for teaching, and "aren’t advertisements for anything—not even the important things. They’re an advertisement for reading itself; for the entertainment value of the world itself." - The Paris Review
We can, partly, blame social media. "One of the requirements for fun is that you be completely present and that your inner critic is silent. And if you're performing, then you're not fully present and you probably have your inner critic on." - NPR
This time it's Sports Illustrated, which had been gutted but not completely demolished. The layoffs of what may be the entire staff "come after Sports Illustrated’s owner, Authentic Brands Group, revoked another company’s publishing license." - Los Angeles Times
Diana "is still too blazingly alive to be dragooned into trauma porn, mauled with the excuse of reincarnating her." But the last few years have been relentlessly Diana-focused. Why do we think we own her? - The New York Times
"It is bleak on so many levels, first and foremost the job losses during a straitened time for media. Pitchfork was one of the last stable music outlets going – where else are the former staff, and the site’s hundreds of freelancers, meant to work now?" - The Guardian (UK)
"The list identifies what UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, calls 'fragile' nonphysical elements that play a crucial role in 'maintaining cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization.'" - The New York Times
The Great Wave Of Consolidation is coming for all of our favorite streamers. Why? "Investment bankers are wishin’ and hopin’ for more of these deals in 2024, and marriages seem likely." - Wired
"Prague doesn’t want to be put into anyone’s story; so many people have come and tried to make it part of this or that empire, and it hasn’t worked. ... I felt almost at my limit with how much and how rapidly I was inventing." - The Guardian (UK)
Users create lyrics, and then TikTok "pairs the lyrics with the pre-saved music, based on three genres: pop, hip-hop, and EDM." (Results aren't great so far, but it's early days.) - The Verge
Why did the Parliament Building need so much work? "Earlier attempts at restoration work had used different materials – sometimes even concrete – to patch up the stonework, which in part had been held together by wire, coat hangers and in one section a car aerial." - The Guardian (UK)
The board chair "said that in an effort to cut its legal costs, the institution would focus its case solely on its former executive director, Aaron De Groft, whom he said had been responsible for 'handpicking' the paintings." - The New York Times
Baldwin was originally cleared of charges in April of 2023 because of testimony that claimed he didn't need to pull the trigger for the gun to go off, but the "grand jury was convened following retesting on the gun’s trigger" proving he had needed to pull it. - Vulture
Rie Kudan "won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize this week for her sci-fi novel Tokyo-to Dojo-to (Tokyo Sympathy Tower), which centers around a high-rise prison tower and contains themes surrounding AI." The reaction to her news has not been positive. - Vice
