Effervescence is generated when humans come together to make music or perform rituals, an experience that lingers when the ceremonies are over. The suggestion, therefore, is that collective experiences that are religious or religious-like unify groups and create the energy to sustain them. – Aeon
Author: Douglas McLennan
Washington DC Is Getting A Museum Devoted To Language
Planet Word isn’t the first to tackle language and reading in a museum format — there’s Mundolingua in Paris, as well as language museums in Toronto and the Netherlands, among others — and it’s not the first to use high-tech games and displays to engage visitors in its subject. But it’s the rare museum that combines both. – Washington Post
Like Your Netflix? It’s Not Going To Be Like This Much Longer
The vast majority of Netflix’s viewers (upwards of 80 percent, according to him) watch licensed content (“Friends” and the like) and in order to create a library of programming audiences will pay for, they’ve gone massively in debt: “Netflix is currently in the hole for about $20 billion in debt and obligations and still operating at a loss.” – Washington Post
Want To See The Sistine Chapel Without The Crowds? It’ll Cost You
For just $76 per person, you can take a guided tour through the halls of the Vatican after the crowds have gone home. Tour groups now arrange affordable, intimate nighttime visits to the heart of Vatican City. – Artnet
Cleveland Orchestra: First Balanced Budget In Three Years, Endowment Up To Record High
For the first time since 2015, the orchestra this year is in the black. On a budget of $53 million supporting everything from concerts and touring to outreach and special presentations under music director Franz Welser-Most, the orchestra in fiscal 2019 reported a surplus of $24,000. – The Plain Dealer
Employees At LA’s Marciano Art Foundation Gave Notice They Were Unionizing. Two Days Later They Were Laid Off
A tersely worded email sent to employees at 6:13 p.m. Tuesday stated that attendance was low and that the museum would be closing its current exhibition effective Wednesday. – Los Angeles Times
Time To Take Down The Mona Lisa And Put It In Storage?
“The Louvre is being held hostage by the Kim Kardashian of 16th-century Italian portraiture: the handsome but only moderately interesting Lisa Gherardini, better known (after her husband) as La Gioconda, whose renown so eclipses her importance that no one can even remember how she got famous in the first place.” – The New York Times
BBC Panel Makes A List Of “100 Books That Changed The World”
The works have been organised into themed categories, such as identity, adventure and love, sex and romance. – BBC
The Slow Impacts Of Literature And Gaining Knowledge
Karl Ove Knausgaard: “I’m not thinking of how long it takes to read a book but of how long its effects can be felt, and of the strange phenomenon that even literature written in other times, on the basis of assumptions radically different to our own and, occasionally, hugely alien to us, can continue to speak to us—and, not only that, but can tell us something about who we are, something that we would not have seen otherwise, or would have seen differently.” – The New Yorker
London Review Of Books – A Clique To Be Part Of
“It’s not gossipy, cosy or cliquey,” observes long-time contributor Alan Bennett. But, in a mostly productive way, it is cliquey. It has always had favourites and has nurtured them. With pages catching the work of writers including Lorna Sage and Jenny Diski, this celebratory volume looks like a justification of that habit. – The Guardian