Less than a week ago, it looked like the endlessly troubled festival was saved, with a move to Maryland from upstate New York (where no one would give them a permit). But within a day of the location change, the scheduled bands (who’d already been paid) started pulling out. – Rolling Stone
Blog
Bankrupt Billionaire’s Major Modern Art Collection Seized By Portuguese Government
“The 75-year-old [José Berardo], who has been described as the ‘Portuguese Charles Saatchi,’ used his 900-piece collection — which includes works by Picasso, Bacon, and Basquiat, among others — as collateral for bank loans of nearly €1 billion … The majority of the works are on loan to the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, one of the country’s most visited art museums.” – Artnet
The World’s Tallest Public Artwork Is Coming (To A Belgian Highway)
“Arc Majeur, an imposing 250-tonne steel structure [that will be 60 meters tall], will stand over the busy E411 between the city of Namur and Luxembourg, a spot chosen partly on the basis that a driver’s view will be unencumbered by any lampposts.” – The Guardian
Spotify Adds 8 Million Users, Now Has 108 Million
Spotify expects to add between 2 million and 6 million premium subscribers in the third quarter, and hopes to reach between 120-125 million paid users by the year’s end. The company also said the audience for its podcasts — a primary target for future growth, in which is has invested hundreds of millions of dollars — has grown 50% over the first quarter of 2019. – Variety
Breakout Hit: Lil Nas X Breaks 23-Year-Old Record For Most Weeks At The Top Of The Billboard Pop Charts
The breakthrough rapper smashed the record this week when the track spent its 17th week on top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart – the only song to do so since Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s duet One Sweet Day set the record in 1996. – The Guardian
Why Learning Is Declining In Our Classrooms
The combination of computer use, Internet, and smart phone, I would argue, has changed the cognitive skills required of individuals. Learning is more and more a matter of mastering various arbitrary software procedures that then allow information to be accessed and complex operations to be performed without our needing to understand what is entailed in those operations. This activity is then carried on in an environment where it is quite normal to perform two, three, or even four operations at the same time, with a general and constant confusion of the social, the academic, and the occupational. – New York Review of Books
David Brooks, Art Critic, Weighs In Again: This Time On Definitions Of Greatness
For most people, creativity is precisely the ability to pursue multiple interests at once, and then bring them together in new ways. “Without contraries is no progression,” William Blake wrote. – The New York Times
UK’s Creative Industries May Face Labor Problems After Brexit
“The prevalence of freelance workers in the sector – 50% of companies surveyed had used freelancers in the past year – and EU workers among them, meant that ‘one in ten businesses in the creative industries employ a freelance worker who might be unable to gain continued access to the UK workforce’ after Brexit.” – Arts Professional
Ancient Tablet Recording Homer’s “Odyssey” Discovered – Maybe The Oldest
It is engraved with 13 verses from the poem recounting the adventures of the hero Odysseus after the fall of Troy. The tale was probably composed by Homer in the late 8th Century BC. – BBC
Unknown John Steinbeck Short Story Discovered
“The author … lived in Paris in the mid-1950s, where he wrote a weekly column for the French daily Le Figaro called ‘One American in Paris’. One of his pieces took the form of a short story, ‘Les Puces sympathiques‘. Published in French on 31 July 1954, … [it’s being published] in English this week [in The Strand magazine] as ‘The Amiable Fleas.'” – The Guardian