Category: issues

“Underlying each of the disagreements in the letter is not just a matter of historical fact but a conflict about whether Americans, from the Founders to the present day, are committed to the ideals they claim to revere. … Americans need to believe that, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, the arc of history bends toward justice. And they are rarely kind to those who question whether it does.” Adam Serwer looks into the reasons historians felt strongly enough to write the letter and the reasons that a number of historians asked to sign it declined, as well as which criticisms the project’s leader accepts. – The Atlantic

“Ded Moroz today is about what you would expect. He has a long white beard, wears a fur-lined hat, has an animal-towed sleigh, and delivers presents to well-behaved children when it is cold outside. But Ded Moroz’s last hundred years have been violent, political, and full of massive social upheaval. This, for Santa, you would not expect.” – Atlas Obscura

From Zadie Smith to Christian Marclay’s clock to Beyonce and Clive James – the decade was a series of flashes. The New Yorker

The DOJ investigation found that Live Nation had repeatedly violated the 10-year consent decree signed after the merger, in which the company agreed to refrain from monopolistic practices such as withholding valuable shows from venues in order to force them to contract Ticketmaster for ticketing services. – Pitchfork

The organizers of the festival, almost all women, had to come up with Plans C and D after the Belarus KGB said no to showing films in the theatres or bank buildings. “The confidence to cover the screen in black, to ask such serious questions about liberty and cinema. Compared with this, most film festivals look meagre and transient.” – The Guardian (UK)

Indeed: “The catastrophe of climate neglect, the toxic politics, the tangible sense of so many things worsening in your own lifetime, along with a sense of your obscure or outright complicity, all combined to make the idea of any possible happiness seem at best childish, at worse willfully blind.” – The New York Times

A US Department of Agriculture spokesperson said the Kingdom of Wakanda was added to the list by accident during a staff test. The department’s online tariff tracker hosted a detailed list of goods the two nations apparently traded, including ducks, donkeys and dairy cows. – BBC

The country’s first parliamentary inquiry into its arts funding system concluded the Government should aim to commit at least 1% of its £425bn national budget towards culture. “Public funding of Scotland’s arts and culture will only become sustainable if artists are at the centre of policy and paid the fair wage they deserve.” – Arts Professional