Aaron Shulman’s collective biography of the Spanish Panero family, The Age of Disenchanments — just out from Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins — has a cast of dramatic characters that is nothing less than stunning. – Jan Herman
Blog
Recent Listening, In Brief
Daniel Szabo, Visionary (Fuzzy Music)
Szabo’s work reflects influences of jazz, classical and modern European music. But more striking is that the music has coherence and — for lack of a more exact term — a distinct personality. – Doug Ramsey
Should Spotify Ban Michael Jackson And R Kelly From Its Platform?
There’s a big difference between no-platforming and not promoting. I know that’s obvious, but it feels like this distinction isn’t stressed enough in debates about free speech. Spotify was right to remove Kelly from its featured playlists because that equals promotion. And it was right not to ban his songs altogether because that gets you into really dangerous territory: it turns the likes of Spotify into a moral arbiter and opens up a can of worms about who deserves to be banned next. – The Guardian
Why Are So Many Ancient Egyptian Statues Missing Only Their Noses?
It isn’t just the normal wear-and-tear of millennia; too many figures have their other features intact for that. In fact, it’s because of a particular set of Egyptian beliefs, and a particular type of iconoclasm that resulted. – Artsy
The YouTube Movie Critic Who Has Become A Breakout Star
Lindsay Ellis has recently emerged as one of the medium’s breakout stars. She earns more than $10,000 a month on Patreon, the crowdfunding site that’s her primary source of revenue. It helps pay for a small staff of mostly part-time employees and allows her to turn out video series like last year’s three-part deep-dive into the Hobbit trilogy, which cost nearly $20,000. Ellis and some of her team went to New Zealand as part of the production, which she feared her supporters would find excessive; instead, the videos gave her the biggest Patreon boost ever. And in the last year, the number of her YouTube subscribers and Twitter followers has doubled. – Wired
Louisville Ballet Did A Piece With A Same-Sex Relationship — And Got Even More And Nastier Mail Than They’d Expected
“We knew by promoting a love story between two men we would make some people uncomfortable,” said company officials of Human Abstract, “but we were not prepared for this grotesque display of hate.” (They say that positive response outweighed the negative.) One particularly vicious email got its author, a research cardiologist, fired from editorship of a science journal. – The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
We’re Trying To Teach People That Failure Is Just An Opportunity To Improve. But What If It Isn’t?
According to the theory, if students believe that their ability is fixed, they will not want to do anything to reveal that, so a major focus of the growth mindset in schools is shifting students away from seeing failure as an indication of their ability, to seeing failure as a chance to improve that ability. As Jeff Howard noted almost 30 years ago: ‘Smart is not something that you just are, smart is something that you can get.’ – Aeon
A Dance Company For Black Women, Without Mirrors, Music, Or Body-Shaming
“Incorporating four components into their practice: dance, discussion, writing and American Sign Language, dance company BLAQ works to give black women a space where they can be free of the stereotypes and discrimination they experience in daily life and heal through the unfiltered expression of dance.” Reporter Becca Most visits the Minneapolis studio with BLAQ founder Deja Stowers. – AP (Minnesota Daily)
Once Again Trump Proposes Killing PBS. Congress Won’t. So Why Keep Trying?
There are a few reasons. A presidential budget is essentially a messaging tool these days, a way to show your supporters that you’re addressing their priorities; Congress has to actually decide where real money will go. Just about every member of Congress has a public radio or TV station in his or her district; any transition from rhetoric to reality would be felt back home. But it’s also because public broadcasting is actually pretty popular and pretty trusted by Americans. – NiemenLab
Why English Won’t Be Replaced As The World’s Lingua Franca Anytime Soon
The reason is inertia, basically: “[English] got there first, and there is no major expansion of globalization to shift the balance to another language. Today there are far more non-native English speakers than native speakers, and this means that English isn’t about the USA or the UK, but instead about its international use across cultures.” – Quartz (Quora)