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People Who Make Moral Claims In Public Are Not, For The Most Part, Merely Signalling That They’re Virtuous

In other words, there’s little hypocrisy to be seen – and the accusation of “virtue signalling” itself might be a signal from those who make the accusation to like-minded others. That’s because “the accusation does exactly what it accuses others of: it moves the focus from the target of the moral claim to the person making it. It can therefore be used to avoid addressing the moral claim made.” – Aeon

Artist Agnes Denes Still Has Hope That Humanity Can Change, And Alleviate Climate Change

Denes, who has a new show up at the (oft-maligned) Hudson Shed, says that “Environmental art spreads like wildfire and now everybody wants to partake in its production. It’s okay, but do some good, make people think and act effectively. … We are becoming robots. I would like to make people think and feel good about themselves. Inside, even in a misguided fool, lurks a good person. My art touches on that secret spot.” – Fast Company

It’s Been 20 Years Since Britain’s Millennium Dome Was A Big Bust

Do you remember ‘Cool Britannia’? If you don’t, or if the idea makes you cringe, that might partly be because of the PR disaster of the Millennium Dome’s opening night. “For a government famed for its supposed mastery of spin, it was about as bad as it could get. It crystallised the doubts that floated around the New Labour project: this spectacular container of not very much made an easy emblem of the government’s preference for style over content, its attachment to vacuous statements of modernity, its use of messaging and focus groups to deliver meaningless platitudes, its tokenistic approach to regeneration.” – The Guardian (UK)

How Music Made Its Way To The Soviet Union On X-Rays [VIDEO]

Evading state censorship made some music extra cool – and risky: “Bans on Western genres such as boogie-woogie, jazz and, later, rock ’n’ roll, as well as other styles deemed threatening to the political order, extended not only to public radio waves, but to private listening too. This prohibition, and the subsequent demand it created, gave rise to a black market of banned records carved into used X-ray film – contraband items colloquially known as ‘ribs’ and ‘bone music’.” – Aeon

The People Behind The Puppets At The Revived Bob Baker Marionette Theater In LA

The puppeteers, volunteers, board and donors all got together to save the Marionette Theater after Baker died in 2014 – and after the theater was evicted from its space in 2018. Now, explains one of the puppeteers, when the show goes up in the revamped theatre, she’ll be “worried about the manipulations of the puppet in hand, but my fear goes away when I see the audience’s reaction. Everything becomes muscle memory. All you hear is your own breathing and comments from the audience, and you feel the warmth of the lights.” – LAist

Musicians Are Finding That Streaming Doesn’t Pay

Musicians get paid 75 percent less – yes, 75 percent, not a typo – for playing on soundtracks and songs for streaming services. And they’re fed up. They get a base wage for playing on streaming shows, “but residuals generally account for 50 to 75 per cent of a musician’s overall compensation for performing on a score. Actors, writers and directors, even singers, all currently receive residuals on streaming projects. … Score musicians and the AFM aren’t upset with their creative partners; they’d just like to be considered on a similar level, as fellow creatives.” – CBC