Several black actors, writers, and others working in the New York theater have come forward to share the stories of the racism embedded in the industry. Many of them described hearing subtly or overtly racist language from powerful white people within the industry and described their frustration with producers and theater owners currently issuing boilerplate statements (like many brands) about the Black Lives Matter movement. – New York Magazine
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The Reggae Producers That Changed The Way We Record Music
Perhaps no innovations have been as far-reaching as the set of boundary-smashing experiments that a small group of producers performed on multi-track recording machines and mixing desks in a handful of Jamaican studios throughout an astonishingly creative period almost 50 years ago. These pioneers created not just a vast trove of still-exhilarating recordings, but completely reinvented how a recording studio could be used, what a producer was able to do, and what listeners expected from music. – BBC
We Revere The Renaissance – But It Lacked A Few Things
The uncomfortable truth is that the age of the Renaissance contributed very little to innovation in science. This was largely because the revival of classical learning and languages concentrated attention on what was called humanitas – literary and rhetorical accomplishment (hence our designation of some academic subjects as “humanities”) – rather than on empirical observation or technical skill in logic and mathematics. – New Statesman
Why Our Sense Of Time Is Messed Up Under Lockdown
Our internal clocks and external cues have fallen out of sync, explains Anthony M. Tobia, associate professor of the Division of Consultation Psychiatry at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The external cues we’d process without really thinking about it pre-pandemic “just don’t exist anymore, so we’re not automatically doing the things we usually do,” he says. “Therefore, there’s a loss of time perception.” – Mic
Bruce Jay Friedman, Satiric Author, Playwright, And Screenwriter, Dead At 90
“Mr. Friedman, who also wrote the screenplays for the hit film comedies Stir Crazy and Splash, was an unusual case in American letters: an essentially comic writer whose work skipped back and forth between literature and pop culture. … [His] early novels, short stories and plays were pioneering examples of modern American black humor, making dark but giggle-inducing sport of the deep, if not pathological, insecurities of his white, male, middle-class and often Jewish protagonists.” – The New York Times
Why Is The Human Brain So Efficient?
So why is the computer good at certain tasks whereas the brain is better at others? Comparing the computer and the brain has been instructive to both computer engineers and neuroscientists. – Nautilus
Religious Art Belongs In Churches, Not Museums, Says Director Of Italy’s Most Famous Museum
“Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi gallery in Florence, told the press [last week] that he thought many religious works of art currently in Italy’s museums and stores should be returned to the churches from which they came. … This idea is part of the Uffizi’s reaction to the coronavirus crisis, in which it is thinking about diversification and the distribution of its works of art in order to create a ‘wider’ [diffuso] museum beyond the immediate premises of the gallery.” – The Art Newspaper
How Did Shanghai Become China’s Literary Hotbed?
Believe it or not, writes Dr. Jin Lee, it was a by-product of the First Opium War, after which Shanghai turned from a little river town into a huge, prosperous international port city. – Literary Hub
How Those Mosaic Music Videos Are Made
The clap serves the same purpose as the clapperboard used on TV and movie sets. You, too, will be editing the audio and video separately; the clap creates a visual and sonic marker that helps you realign the two later. It also lets you align all the players’ videos with each other. – Wired
France’s First Professional Theatre Performance Since The COVID Shutdown (It Wasn’t In A Theatre)
“Last week in [a small] city in eastern France, the residents and staff of a nursing home watched from a safe distance — some from windows and balconies — as five actors appeared in the building’s courtyard in front of a makeshift red curtain” to perform Cabaret sous les balcons (“Cabaret Under the Balconies”). “While most live events in Europe and the United States remain on forced hiatus, the relief of the cast was palpable as they performed.” – The New York Times