Category: issues

Why Lists Of “Best” Or “Most Livable” Cities Are A Dumb Exercise

By using data as a driver, such rankings present themselves as dispassionate and impartial, as if they are simply removing the lid on a machine to reveal objectively how the engine beneath is functioning. They nonetheless represent a worldview taken from a highly specific angle, one that is full of scarcely acknowledged assumptions about who the imaginary citizen they address is. – CityLab

Arts Council England Plans To Include “Relevance” In Funding Criteria

“Most of us already lead creative and cultural lives: we join book clubs, we take craft classes, we stream music,” the strategy document says. “The task for the Arts Council is to enable more people to take advantage of more opportunities to develop and express their creativity, and to support them to engage with the widest possible range of culture.” – Arts Professional

Beta Blockers (And How I Became Utterly Hooked On Them)

Shannon Paulus discovered them in college and found them a sort of miracle cure for pre-performance anxiety, just as so many performers have. Then she learned the hard way about the dangers of dependence on them. She recounts how she got herself hooked and unhooked — and looks into a company that’s making it way too easy to get a prescription for them online. – Slate

In Times Like These, Are Jewish Jokes Still Funny? Let’s Ask The Comics Who Tell Them

“As anti-Semitic rhetoric and hate crimes resurge, is it still funny for us to be our own punching bags? Is it safe? In joking about money, neuroses, and the demasculinized Jewish man, are we subverting stereotypes or playing into them? We spoke with 13 Jewish comedians about telling Jew jokes in the age of Trump and how to turn cultural punch lines into sources of power.” – Vulture

What Is America’s Culture?

Encouraging distinctly American artistic habits stands a chance of making art more accessible without making it unserious or “middlebrow.” The arts are so irrelevant to most Americans’ lives in no small part because they have diverted so sharply from that tradition. Without reconnecting to the “soil” of the life experience of most Americans, the art world exists with and for the Hamptons. – National Affairs

That Queer Sex Video Jair Bolsonaro Tweeted? It Was Guerrilla Performance Art, Say The Men In It

In March the Brazilian president posted a video clip shot at a gay street party during São Paulo’s Carnival, tweeting, “We have to expose the truth so the population are aware of their priorities.” Now the pair caught on the video have spoken to the media for the first time since Bolsonaro’s tweet: they say they’re part of a six-person queer art collective called Ediy. “We want to perform in public places. Places where this sort of thing is not expected. We refer to it as ‘hacking the imagination’.” – The Guardian