It boils down to two concepts that sound simple but have profound implications: First, shorter distances are healthier than longer distances for commerce and human interaction; second, diversification — one farmer growing a dozen crops, for example — is healthier than monoculture, which is what globalization tends to create, whether it’s bananas or mobile phones. – The New York Times
Blog
American Museums Are Being Challenged On All Fronts
In a year marred by forced shutdowns, decreased revenue, deaccessioned artworks, staff cutbacks and canceled exhibitions, many art institutions have been rocked by a national moment of reckoning and increasingly vocal calls to acknowledge their racist histories and adopt anti-racist practices. Some activists have even suggested completely dismantling museums, echoing demands to defund or abolish the police. – Washington Post
A Book Finds A New Audience In The Last Place On Earth It Hadn’t Gone Before
John Hersey’s Hiroshima, first a 30,000-word article in The New Yorker, became a book almost immediately, and has sold millions of copies in many different languages since. But “one of the few places Hiroshima did not appear in the year after its initial publication was Russia. That changed this past August.” – The New York Times
The Endless Hours Of Architecture Are Bad Enough, And Now There’s Constant Surveillance
From architecture firms that demand their employees log into webcams at 8:30 am and not log off until 10 pm to firms that fired pregnant workers and those who didn’t want to be exploited, architecture is starting to face a reckoning. “The pandemic has finally pushed it into the kind of extreme, exploitative territory where we must all stand up together and say enough is enough.” – The Guardian (UK)
How Is Hollywood Still Getting Paris So Very, Very Wrong?
It’s as if writers from the U.S. can’t see the city as anything but a backdrop for old clichés, narratives long grown stale. “Many of the misconceptions about the city swirling around in the US imagination are not really misconceptions at all – it’s just they are 100 years out of date.” – BBC
In Paris, Fashion Mavens Wonder If Their Art Can Provide Hope In A Dark Time
Another lockdown may be looming as the virus spikes in Paris again, but Fashion Week still had about 20 in-person runway events. Designer Andrew Gn: “We have to project ourselves towards better times. We, designers, are the core and the driving force of the whole fashion ecosystem. The weavers, printers, embroiderers, ateliers, all depend on our creative work. We must keep on.” – NPR
Hard To Believe, But Roddy Doyle Wrote A First Book That He Describes As ‘Shite’
The author of The Commitments misses Dublin pubs, says Ireland is nicer now – he doesn’t miss being denounced from the pulpit, for instance – and worries about what will happen to his writing, usually set in the present moment, if the present moment keeps changing rapidly due to the virus. – Irish Times
Soviet Spies Targeted George Orwell And His Wife As They Fought In The Spanish Civil War
Depressingly, while fighting Franco – or not being organized enough to fight Franco – “George Orwell, whose book Homage to Catalonia became a celebrated account of fighting in the civil war, and his wife Eileen were spied on in Barcelona at the time of a vicious internal conflict on the Republican side of the war in May 1937.” – The Observer (UK)
Why British Police Shows Are Better Than Those Produced In The US
Basically, take away the guns – and you get a lot more interesting content. But there’s more: “The tonal contrast with American police series reflects a very different law-enforcement reality. Specifically, in the British shows, closed-circuit television surveillance is everywhere, and handguns are nowhere to be found.” – The Atlantic
The Irish Criminal Who Was Supposed To Reveal Where The Gardner Stash Might Be Has Disappeared
It’s more intense than any spy novel: “Martin ‘the Viper’ Foley, a well-known convicted criminal who has operated on the fringes of gangland political violence in Ireland for half a century, has suddenly dropped out of negotiations, according to Charles Hill, a leading art sleuth. And Foley’s promise to reunite the public with these great works, including Vermeer’s The Concert, the most valuable missing artwork in the world, has vanished with him.” – The Observer (UK)