“Throughout the major U.S. tech hubs, whether Silicon Valley or Seattle, Boston or Austin, Tex., software companies are discovering that liberal arts thinking makes them stronger. Engineers may still command the biggest salaries, but at disruptive juggernauts such as Facebook and Uber, the war for talent has moved to nontechnical jobs, particularly sales and marketing. The more that audacious coders dream of changing the world, the more they need to fill their companies with social alchemists who can connect with customers–and make progress seem pleasant.”
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People Are Moving Out Of London – And The City’s Culture Is Eroding
“All of this points to a process that sociologist Saskia Sassen calls “deurbanisation”. Numerically, this means haemorrhaging residents, while metaphorically it relates to the increasing hollowing out of the social and cultural vibrancy of the city. The very things that make up its fabric – the messiness, unpredictability and diversity of urban life – are stripped away. All that’s left is Costa Coffee, Pret-a-Manger and hoardings advertising buy-to-let investments, illustrated by white couples laughing and sipping champagne.”
A New Generation Of Super Fans Reinvents A Version Of Criticism For The Digital Age
“They are superfans — sophisticated ones — using visual aids to break down shows and movies for superfans. And their handiwork makes the audience for these pop-culture spectacles even bigger and more engaged.”
For Those Kissing Scenes Onstage, Who Ya Gonna Call? The Intimacy Director
“Perhaps because of the successful staging of intimacy by some directors, many still struggle with the idea of needing special techniques for staging intimacy, even though they almost always recognize the need for other specialists, like fight choreographers. Onstage intimacy and fighting have a lot in common. In fact, many intimacy directors started in stage combat.”
A Violinist Has Become The Face Of Resistance In Venezuela. But He’s Gone Silent
“As the political crisis worsens day by day in Venezuela, the forces of resistance have found an unlikely symbol in a slight-framed 23-year-old violinist named Wuilly Arteaga. Dressed in the colors of his country, he plays his violin at the front lines of pro-democracy protests, often floating, with a pure tone and a classical vibrato, the notes of the Venezuelan national anthem while armored vehicles fill the streets and fires rage nearby. Yet as his public stature grew this summer, so did the danger facing him.”
Chuck Close, Marina Abramovic, Kara Walker And Others Condemn Calls To Cancel Dana Schutz Show In Boston
The National Academy artists wrote in response to Boston protesters asking the ICA to cancel the Schutz show because of her painting Open Casket, which is of the open casket and broken face of Emmett Till and was roundly criticized at the Whitney Biennial. The painting is not in the ICA show. The artists wrote, “It is also of the utmost importance to us that artists not perpetrate upon each other the same kind of intolerance and tyranny that we criticise in others.”
Aphra Behn, Playwright And First British Woman To Make A Living Through Writing, Was Also A Spy
The playwright was wildly successful, but “beyond her successes on the stage and in fiction, Aphra Behn was a Royalist spy in the Netherlands and probably South America. She also served as a political propagandist for the courts of Charles II and his unpopular brother James II.”
Britons Will Get The Right To Be Forgotten Online Just In Time For Brexit
In addition to the right to having any site, including Facebook, delete all trace of personal data, people will find that “companies will also have to ask people for permission to collect personal data rather than rely on pre-selected tick boxes.”
Two Members Of The Band Pussy Riot Have Been Detained (Again)
The Russian feminist punk band members had been protesting another artist’s prison sentence in Siberia when they were detained by police. One of those detained, Maria Alyokhina, was convicted of “religious hooliganism” and sentenced to two years in prison for performing a “punk prayer” in Moscow in 2012.
Ty Hardin, Who Carved A Niche Playing ‘Bronco,’ Has Died At 87
Long after Bronco, Hardin got in trouble with the I.R.S., and then, “while living in Prescott, Ariz., he formed an anti-tax, anti-government protest group that evolved into the Arizona Patriots militia movement, which was accused in 1986 of planning to blow up an I.R.S. complex in Utah.”