“YouTube has postponed a controversial plan to block certain record labels from its video platform, following an outcry from the creative community and growing scrutiny from European regulators.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
San Diego’s Timken Museum Ousts Director
“‘Basically, it was a difference of opinion over the direction of the museum,’ [now-ex-director John] Wilson said late Tuesday.’The board had a model of the Timken that is similar to when [predecessor] John Petersen was here. So it’s time for a change.'”
Authors’ Incomes In Britain Are Falling To ‘Abject’ Levels: Study
“‘Shocking’ new statistics … show that the number of authors able to make a living from their writing has plummeted dramatically over the last eight years, and that the average professional author is now making well below the salary required to achieve the minimum acceptable living standard in the UK.”
Darkness Laughable: The Comic Genius Of Cormac McCarthy
“As one of our greatest living writers has his work lifted into the ivory tower, let’s reflect on how it’s the light, not the darkness, that keeps us going back for more.”
What Will Happen To English As More And More People Worldwide Speak It?
“Interestingly, about two-thirds of English-speakers are not first-language speakers of English. … What happens to a language when it becomes everybody’s? Shaped by the mouths of billions of non-native speakers, what will the English of the future look like? A look into the past can give us an idea. English is of course not the first language [to have been] learned by lots of non-natives. When languages spread, they also change. And it turns out, they do so in specific directions.”
You Are The Product Of A Mass Atrocity
Philosopher Peter Atterton explains why virtually no one who is alive today would be alive had some horrific large-scale crime – be it the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Opium Wars, Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, the Crusades, Tamerlane’s wars, or what have you – not occurred.
Russian Parliament Takes One More Step Toward A Closed Internet
“Russia’s parliament passed a law on Friday to force Internet sites that store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so inside the country, a move the Kremlin says is for data protection but which critics see an attack on social networks. The law will mean that from 2016, all Internet companies will have to move Russian data onto servers based in Russia or face being blocked from the web.”
Spike Lee On The Black Audience
“I understand that the black audience is not monolithic. There are many different types of films that black people want and I’ve never had a feeling that all my films would appeal to all black people. Never, ever, ever.”
To Help Revive Itself, San Diego Opera Makes Deep Budget Cuts
A change of office space (saving about $400,000 annually), layoffs of 13 staff members (about one-third of the total), pay cuts for remaining employees, and other measures have reduced the upcoming fiscal year’s budget to $10.5 million, down from around $15 million in earlier years.
The World’s Most-Used Musical Sequence (It Has A Very Odd Name)
“What do Beethoven, David Bowie, Green Day, Mozart, *NSYNC, Pete Seeger, Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, The Supremes, Rihanna, and many others all have in common? The Andalusian Cadence!” (a/k/a the Diatonic Phrygian Tetrachord). David Garland has assembled ore than 50 (short) examples as evidence. (audio)