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What It Costs To Have Fun (Ticket Prices Across Arts, Sports, Spectacle)

A comparison of price data across entertainment categories throws up a few surprises. Those who claim that a night at the opera is only for the elite should know that attending a top-of-the-range gig is nearly as pricey: an average opera ticket in London costs £81 ($103), compared with a global average of $96 for the 50 most-lucrative music tours. And the Royal Opera House in London boasts that 30% of its seats go for £35 or under – but good luck finding that sort of deal for Bruce Springsteen or Jennifer Lopez. – 1843 Magazine

We’re In A Golden Age Of Advice Columns. Why Is That?

John Paul Bremmer (who writes the column “¡Hola Papi!” for Out): “This advice renaissance might seem paradoxical: Why hasn’t distrust in the media as a whole negatively affected advice columns, where you would think that trust is paramount?” His answer: “a growing desire among the public for members of the media to express moral clarity.” – Columbia Journalism Review

Let’s Delve A Bit Deeper Into How To Undermine Things You Think You Know (How Fake News Works)

“Suppose you think, as I do, that knowing that something is the case (e.g. that the MMR vaccine is safe) requires being reasonably confident that it’s the case and also having the right to be confident. In that case, anything that effectively undermines my confidence or right to be confident is a threat to my knowledge. So, for example, getting me to doubt the safety of the MMR vaccine by spreading spurious but convincing stories about links between MMR and autism can prevent me from knowing that it’s safe.” 3AM Magazine

Thomas Krens Says Museums Should Be More Like Theme Parks (Seriously)

In a speech in North Adams, Mass., which he wants to transform into “the number one cultural destination in the country,” the man who tried to plant Guggenheims all over the globe argued that museums should become experience destinations with “a for-profit model based on private investment; integrated use of technology like digital modeling and augmented reality; and the ability to draw from ‘deep pools of content’ with ‘huge narrative potential.'” (Oh, and they should maintain “impeccable aesthetics.”) – Hyperallergic

John O’Neal, Who Brought Theater To Southern Blacks Who Had None, Dead At 78

“Mr. O’Neal was still in his early 20s in 1963 when he, Doris Derby and Gilbert Moses founded the Free Southern Theater, which presented free productions throughout the South. The troupe often performed in small towns to largely black audiences with little access to the theater.” As he told an interviewer, “In the South it has been very hard for a Negro to look at and see anything but a distorted view of himself.” – The New York Times

A 20th Century Book That Foresaw Our Questions About AI

Nearly 70 years later, The Human Use of Human Beings has more to teach us humans than it did the first time around. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the book is that it introduces a large number of topics concerning human/machine interactions that are still of considerable relevance. Dark in tone, the book makes several predictions about disasters to come in the second half of the 20th century, many of which are almost identical to predictions made today about the second half of the 21st. – Slate

The Incredibly Tangled History Of The Verb ‘To Be’

“The most commonly used verb in the English language (and indeed many other languages) has a strange history. The fact that it has so many more forms than other verbs, which are quite unlike each other (be, being, been, is, was, were, am, are) gives us a clue as to its Frankensteinian origins.” (And plenty of languages don’t even use it.) “It’s what some linguists have called ‘a badly mixed up verb.'” – JSTOR Daily