At the French film festival, women are required to wear heels on the red carpet, for one thing. Portman: "The expectations are different on you all the time. It affects how you behave, whether you are buying into or rejecting it. You’re defined by the social structures upon you." - Variety
But it's all about persistence, not fairy dust: "The serial-order effect applies to tasks that last minutes or days, but creativity also improves across years, decades, and even careers." - The Atlantic
Don't stress, artists: "What the majority actually had problems with — what the decision was mostly about — was the Warhol Foundation’s failure to pay Goldsmith a licensing fee in 2016." - The New York Times
Kate Levy says she loves "to tear into hypocritical institutions or political actors who rely on oppressive yet hokey, family-first, nice people, I’m-just-doing-my-job narratives. Calling out and satirizing corny, offensive propaganda is one of my greatest pleasures." - Hyperallergic
"I love Puccini’s auspicious score, its bustling crowd of little melodies that converge and mature into themes that seem to hold a whole life. I love its clutter of everyday sentimental stuff: Mimi’s lost key, Musetta’s pawned earrings, Colline’s surrendered coat, Marcello’s unfinished painting." - Washington Post
Sinking it. "The researchers estimated the weight of all of New York City’s buildings to be around 842 million tons," and there's some soil that cannot handle it. - The Verge
That's what Google's new chatbot can be, at least according to one author, who let it write some wedding-related emails. And it's really, really good at consumer complaints. - Wired
For one thing, "sports will lead the TV marketplace this year, especially if advertisers can’t get the audiences they want in a strike-hampered prime time." - Los Angeles Times
"Wanting to write ... made me unintelligible to my mother. I couldn’t explain how I would survive on a career in words, and she couldn’t fathom why I would squander the chance at prosperity my parents had contorted to give me." - The Atlantic
A former top lobbyist says that he thinks the future for cinemas is actually kind of bright. "I think the existential challenges — the pandemic, the streaming wars — are gone. I’m really the most optimistic I’ve been in 30 years about the future of the business." - The New York Times
Amis "was among the celebrated group of novelists including Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes, whose works defined the British literary scene in the 1980s." - The Guardian (UK)
This is the paradox of sad music: We generally don’t enjoy being sad in real life, but we do enjoy art that makes us feel that way. Countless scholars since Aristotle have tried to account for it. - The New York Times
What I find most fascinating about the lawsuit, though, is the glimpse it offers into how national and state-level political dynamics empower the most fanatical members of a community to impose their will on everyone else. - The New York Times
Many of the more recent changes in local arts organizations were sparked by the pandemic, which shone a spotlight on society’s inequities, as well as by the 2020 protests and the increased attention to diversity, equity and inclusion. - Seattle Times
