To many Latinos working in Hollywood, it seems that every gain is soon followed by a loss, a continuous ebb and flow that never feels rectified. – The New York Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Penguin Random House To Buy Simon & Schuster In Publishing Mega-Deal
Penguin Random House, the largest book publisher in the United States, is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Adding Simon & Schuster, the third largest publisher, would create a book behemoth, a combination that could trigger antitrust concerns. – The New York Times
Theatres Are Becoming Media Companies
As the theater’s biggest commercial motor, Broadway, has languished, resourceful artists and producers are making work that incorporates video, gaming and interactivity into hybridized digital-theater forms that, rather than serving as mere stopgaps, stand poised to endure even after the return of theater as we knew it. – Variety
Simon & Schuster – A “Bargain” At $1.7 Billion?
The sale of S&S will be the largest acquisition in North American trade publishing since HarperCollins bought Harlequin in 2014. It will also be one of the few recent transactions in which the revenue of the target company is public and the purchase price may also become public. – Publishers Weekly
La Scala Cancels Staged Opening Night, Will Do Gala Instead
The gala will star Placido Domingo, Roberto Alagna and Jonas Kaufmann on the night of its traditional Dec. 7 season-opener, instead of the planned staging of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” in keeping with restrictions imposed to stop the coronavirus’ deadly spread. – AP
Of Long-Gone Jazz Clubs And Race
Oral histories suggest that jazz musicians have related to each other with more ease than can be found in other parts of the culture. At the same time, there’s no doubt that venues in general were hostile to racial mixing. So the degree to which jazz — the music and the business — contributed to a progressive model of race relations is an open question, one that generates many different opinions. – ArtsFuse
Boundaries: Our Brains Are Wired For Personal Space
Peripersonal space exists in various forms across the animal kingdom, from fish and fruit flies to wild horses and chimpanzees. The neuroscience behind it sheds fascinating light on how humans and other animals conceive of themselves and their boundaries. Where is the dividing line between you and the world? – Aeon
A Breakthrough In Artificial Intelligence Is Surprising Its Creators
It generates tweets, pens poetry, summarizes emails, answers trivia questions, translates languages and even writes its own computer programs, all with very little prompting. Some of these skills caught even the experts off guard. – The New York Times
A Grand Unifying Theory Of Culture?… (Meh)
“In the same way that Darwin’s theory explains how life follows pathways of adaptation via natural selection, cultural evolution proposes that human cultures develop and transmit deep understandings and values across generations. There are many pathways of cultural evolution, Henrich contends, and no single human culture. To better understand the world and Europe’s influence on it, we need to recognise that European culture is, in Henrich’s key acronym, “weird”: western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic.” – The Guardian
Why Do So Many Books With Trump In Them Not Name Trump?
Why are novelists not naming this man? The reasons will naturally vary author to author, but it is not fear or superstition, as far as I can tell. – The Guardian