The video-sharing social media app said in a blog post Wednesday that it will give creators in the U.S. over $1 billion in the next three years, and more than double that globally. – CNBC
Author: Douglas McLennan
Defending Kitsch
Kitsch is a conflicted term—hard to strictly define, but as with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s joke about pornography, one knows it when one sees it. For the purchasers of kitsch in nineteenth-century Munich, reproductions of elaborate and intricate decoration were a means of class ascension. But they also signaled a type of bourgeoisie cluelessness concerning taste, discretion, and style. – JSTOR
Internet Archive Responds To Publishers’ Copyright Lawsuit Over Lending
Controlled Digital Lending’s essential position is that it’s fine for a nonprofit like the archive or a library to scan a print copy of a book it owns, then lend that digital scan out on a one-copy-per-one-user basis. The print copy is to be unavailable while the digital copy is loaned, meaning that only one copy is out at a time in any format, and an author or publisher has the right to opt out of this by asking. Many rights holders have, indeed, asked to opt out because, as they see it, the user of a loaned digital copy of their book has paid nothing for that loan and this means copyright revenue has gone unpaid. – Publishing Perspectives
Why Racism Is Deeply Built Into Arts Institutional Structures
David Balzer: “Here, I want to go beyond critiquing institutional messaging and superficial pledges towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. Instead, I want to use my experience as the former co-leader of a cultural nonprofit — a white, cis-gender queer who attempted, not always successfully, to change that nonprofit’s relationship to colonialism and white supremacy — to explain why such statements were doomed to fail.” – Hyperallergic
Classical Music’s Social Media Racism Wars
Controversies broke out on a few fronts this week. – NPR
Rethinking Dance Performance
“We don’t have to remain in our Brady Bunch squares. It was great to walk by and see the dancers sweating and breathing. We still do that. We are all choreographers now. People are starting to think more spatially.” – Dance Magazine
Booker Prize Longlist Announced
On a longlist packed with surprises and debuts, chosen from 162 novels, Mantel is up against major literary names including US author Anne Tyler, picked for Redhead by the Side of the Road, a work judges called “a very human tale of redemption”, as well as the Irish-American author Colum McCann, longlisted for Apeirogon, about a Palestinian and an Israeli, both of whom have lost their daughters. – The Guardian
New York Is Getting Loud Again
“The pandemic offered a temporary reprieve from sound, both in cities and in oceans, giving scientists a once-in-a-lifetime (we hope) chance to study the sudden onset of quiet. The lockdown created a deeply unsettling soundscape, like the hush after an explosion, which extended on week after week. The quietude was revelatory, but not serene. Birds in neighborhood trees assembled into a network of local choirs, and the bated traffic let them be heard. The nights were laced with sirens, but devoid of laughter, arguments, and music.” – New York Magazine
Where Are The Thousands Of Musical Instruments Looted By The Nazis?
There has been a lot of research into the Nazis’ plunder of Jewish-owned artwork in Europe during World War II, though far less attention has been paid to the looting of instruments. But a number of scholars have been focused on bringing this facet of Nazi crimes to light. – NPR
Why It’s Important To Learn A Poem Right Now
Robust poems committed to memory can counteract the corrosive effects of self-pity. They can offer a different way of viewing the world, particularly to generations that did not suffer the buffetings of the early and mid-20th century, and are now bewildered by the calamities that seem to arise from nowhere, and leave them powerless. – The Atlantic