Category: issues

This does not bode well for international artists coming to the U.S. The band “was traveling under ESTA (also known as the Visa Waiver Program), which allows citizens of nearly 40 countries to travel to the United States without having to obtain a visa.” But border agents decided not to believe that they weren’t working for pay.

No, that’s not a joke. Marie Myung-Ok Lee: “When I saw the ad promoting a residency at the Mall of America, my first impulse was ‘I must apply!’ See, a bunch of scenes in my novel take place in the freaking Mall of America! It had a nice honorarium ($2,500) for 5 days in residence at a connected mall hotel, plus a $400 food stipend, which is a lot of Cinnabons. But a quick look at the terms reveals the horrifying things the artist gives up in the for-profit residency: her art.”

We are. We just are. “We’ll get a flood of dopamine that makes us feel wonderful in the short term, though in the long term you build a tolerance and want more.” The answer? Look to the 1950s.

The report “notes that although the vast majority of visitors to the capital reportedly come because of ‘culture and heritage’, 35% of London’s grassroots music venues closed from 2007-2015 and 3,500 artists are likely to lose their places of work by 2019. It argues that rising rents ultimately price people out of areas and cause tension between old and new resident communities, and that the resulting marginalisation of certain groups adds to a homogenisation of residents and culture in the area.”

“Here, climate change is a government-sponsored hoax, fluoridated water is poisonous, cannabis can cure cancer, and airplanes are constantly spraying pesticides and biological waste into the air. Genetically modified food is destroying humanity and the planet. Vaccines are experimental, autism-causing injections forced on innocent babies. We can’t trust anything that we eat, drink, breathe, or medicate with, nor rely on physicians and public health agencies to act in our best interests.”

“The black press flourished in the United States during these years, providing rich, varied reporting on political and cultural happenings that mainstream press outlets distorted or ignored. Critics and reporters on the arts beat not only brought to light the creative output of black artists, but also investigated the role the arts played in the long struggle against oppression, as well as the economic and cultural impact of the arts on black communities and the United States as a whole.”

“After brushes with extinction in the 1980s and 1990s, along with a three-decade wait to be launched after the McCarthy-era’s relentless attacks on artists, police are describing the NEA’s demise as ‘totally preventable, but oddly, both a homicide and a suicide.'”

The University of California, Berkeley, will cut off public access to tens of thousands of video lectures and podcasts in response to a U.S. Justice Department order that it make the educational content accessible to people with disabilities.

With an audience that’s “polarized as f***,” Nashville has an attitude summed up by one country DJ like this: “Politics is the hottest potato around right now. I think a lot of artists are saying, ‘You know what, I’d rather not catch this son of a bitch; I’ll pass it to somebody else.'”