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Cuba Is Cracking Down On Street Artists. Here’s How They’re Keeping On

Authorities who accepted street art just a couple of years ago are now whitewashing murals, harassing artists, and having them turned out of their studios. Yet they keep on, painting on everything from fallen chunks of concrete to bicycle taxis to El Paquete, the Cuban “internet” that’s passed from house to house on external hard drives. – Pacific Standard

Rijksmuseum Begins Talks With Sri Lanka And Indonesia About Returning Art Looted Art In Colonial Era

“‘It’s a disgrace that the Netherlands is only now turning its attention to the return of the colonial heritage’, Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbets [said]. ‘We should have done it earlier and there is no excuse.’ … The Rijksmuseum has around 4,000 colonial objects, not all of which, Dibbits says, were stolen. All objects are owned by the state so museums cannot take the decision to return an object on their own.” – DutchNews.nl

Jewish Theater Is A Real Thing In The US — Why Not In Britain? (There’s No Shortage Of Jews In Theatre There)

“Jewish theatre artists have been central but often unidentified.” (Harold Pinter, Janet Suzman, Antony Sher, David Lan, Tracy Ann Oberman, Nicholas Hytner, …) “Is this an immigrant people’s anxiety around unwelcome attention? ‘We’re a self-effacing community,’ says playwright Samantha Ellis, ‘we’re afraid to put our heads above the parapet.'” – The Guardian

Our Academics Are Trapped In Academia. Can You Help?

On every campus, I meet scholars eager to share what they know outside the walls of their institutions. They find themselves stalled by three factors: lack of knowledge on how media works as an industry, fear of being scorned by their colleagues, and the realization that, in the chase for tenure or promotion, such public work rarely counts toward academic credibility or formal metrics. – Pacific Standard

Spotify Accuses Apple Of Unfair Business Monopoly Practices

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says that if Spotify pays this cut it has to “artificially inflate” its prices “well above the price of Apple Music.” But if it doesn’t pay, Apple applies “a series of technical and experience-limiting restrictions” that make Spotify an inferior experience. Ek also notes that Apple “routinely blocks our experience-enhancing upgrades,” including locking Spotify and other competitors out of Apple services like Siri, HomePod, and Apple Watch. – The Verge

Jill Lepore On The Animating DreamS Of American Democracy

The history of the United States is a history of bias and brutality and hubris, but it is also a history of idealism and hard work and soaring optimism. What emerges is an invitation to regard these tessellated truths and conflicting motive forces with an equanimous understanding that can inform a juster, more beautiful, and less conflicted future. – Brainpickings

Does Listening To Classical Music While You Work Help Your Productivity? Study Says It Depends

For instance, on the simplest task, if someone was generally not prone to boredom, they tended to perform better when listening to the most complex form of music than with either simple music or complete silence, albeit when the volume of the music was relatively low.  If the volunteer was prone to boredom however, the opposite was the case, and silence was the best condition. – Forbes