“If the base salary in our field is $0, then it’s no wonder that the next step up is not much higher. We know what working for free does to the chances of truly diversifying or addressing equity within any intersection of art and museum labor.” – Hyperallergic
Blog
Alfa-Bravo-Charlie — All About Spelling Alphabets (And Why We Might Need A New One)
“As mobile phones have replaced landlines, call quality has, strangely, gone down. The general connectivity of the world — including the ease of international video calls and the use of foreign call centers — means that spelling out a name or word is an increasingly common practice. A modern, updated, globally friendly English spelling alphabet would be pretty useful right now, but getting people to use one might be harder than you’d think.” – Atlas Obscura
Orange County’s New Age Crystal Cathedral Becomes A Catholic Cathedral
Cost savings may have been a motivating factor for the purchase. As cathedrals go, the diocese picked it up for a song, just $57.5 million. Some see the deal as an act of architectural preservation, if not devotion. – Washington Post
The British Ballet Legend Americans Don’t Know: Beryl Grey At 92
“[She] danced her first Swan Lake on her 15th birthday, … went on to be the first western ballerina to perform with Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet in 1957 and became director of the London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet) in 1968, rescuing the company from crisis.” And she dealt with Rudolf Nureyev, as difficult a divo as ever there was. – The Guardian
Alaska’s State Arts Council Has Shut Down After Governor Kills Budget
That makes the state the only one in the US not to have an arts agency. Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican who took office in December, used a line-item budget veto to eliminate the council’s funding of $2.8 million. Alaska lawmakers fell short last week in attempts to override the vetoes. – Anchorage Press
‘Even Science Isn’t An Exact Science’: On The Art Of Science Journalism
Randi Hutter Epstein: “Nothing in science is 100 percent certain. Scientists talk in probabilities. That’s why doctors never say ‘guarantee.’ They say things like ‘chances are.’ … How do I convey discovery without sensationalizing? How do I convey the murkiness of the scientific process without killing my story?” – Literary Hub
Everyone Thinks They Can Do A Podcast. But Can They?
There are hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there, and it’s amazingly difficult to determine how popular any of them really are (popularity can be purchased). But there are an awful lot of really bad podcasts, and the form may be waning. – The New York Times
Why Everyone Is Scared Of The Disney Juggernaut Devouring Hollywood (And Why They Shouldn’t Be)
“It’s not just, or maybe even primarily, the size of the company that is giving people the shakes. It’s the fact that a single film corporation now seems to own everything worth having — at least, in stark capitalistic blockbuster terms. … Viewed according to the logic of 21st-century fantasy culture, Disney doesn’t just suddenly own all the properties. It owns all the mythologies.” Yet, argues Owen Gleiberman, “in the concern over the new company’s monolithic import, a couple of key issues have been lost.” – Variety
Chimpanzees, Like Humans, Bond By Watching Movies Together
“A study of apes watching videos suggests human social bonding may have deeper evolutionary roots than previously thought. … Researchers said they found that the animals approached their partner faster, or spent more time in their company, [after watching a video together] than when they had attended to something different.” – Yahoo! (Press Association UK)
More Sexual Misconduct Accusations Against Opera Star David Daniels Emerge
A new court filing in the lawsuit by former student Andrew Lipian against the countertenor and the University of Michigan (where he is tenured faculty) “cites a handful of witnesses who spoke to the UM Office of Institutional Equity, tasked with investigating on-campus sexual misconduct, indicating they were aware of or had experienced sexually inappropriate conduct by Daniels.” – MLive (Michigan)