“Imagine a scene, set in the future, where a child in Burning Man-style punk clothing is standing in front of a yurt powered by solar panels. … Welcome to solarpunk, a new genre within science fiction that is a reaction against the perceived pessimism of present-day sci-fi and hopes to bring optimistic stories about the future with the aim of encouraging people to change the present.”
Tag: 01.21.18
The Condescension Of Calling Something Out
When is the last time you heard someone say outright that someone else is watching wrong? These days, to call out wrongness or falseness or badness is to risk being accused of condescension. The desire to make such accusations is taken as a mark of unacknowledged privilege. It’s understood as likely to hurt someone’s feelings. People prefer to play it safe. They hesitate to make such critical judgments.
Pacifica Radio Gets $2 Million Loan, Dodges Bankruptcy
Last fall, a judge ruled that the Pacifica Foundation was in default for $1.8 million in unpaid fees for New York station WBAI’s use of transmitters on top of the Empire State Building. Scrambling to keep the creditors from seizing Pacifica’s assets, the foundation has essentially mortgaged the building of its Los Angeles station.
Jack Whitten, Abstract Painter And Sculptor Discovered Late In Life, Dead At 78
“As with many painters whose style matured during the late 1960s and early ’70s, Whitten’s career wasn’t widely recognized until the past few years. But today, when Whitten’s visually seductive paintings appear in major museum shows, it has become difficult to imagine a history of abstract painting without his work.”
Cellist Pulls Out Of New Concerto Premiere With Three Days’ Notice, And L.A. Phil Comes Up With Daring Solution
“There are said to be only three [other] cellists on the planet who have played [Bernd Alois] Zimmermann’s incredibly demanding concerto, all in Europe. I’m not sure any other orchestra would have dared, or even could have dared, to go on. But management turned to three local musicians with exceptional new music chops – L.A. Phil associate cellist Ben Hong, Calder Quartet cellist Eric Byers and Lyris Quartet cellist Timothy Loo – to divide the solo part. They got their scores Wednesday morning. Rehearsals were Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.” And, writes Mark Swed, they were “utterly convincing.
The Guy Who Helps Hollywood Celebrities Resemble Professional Ballet Dancers
Kurt Froman trained Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman for Black Swan, and more recently he’s been training Jennifer Lawrence for the upcoming Red Sparrow. “One of the biggest things, I think, for a non-dancer is just understanding dancers hold their arms from their backs. … When I was working with Jen, as well as with Mila and Natalie, getting them used to holding their backs that way and understanding that their arms are an extension of their backs, that’s the first thing that I need to instill in them and I have to remind them of that the entire time.”
Did This One Dance Change History?
Well, Netflix might have exaggerated a little bit in the second season of The Crown. “Well, that’s nice. … It’s a lot of bulls**t.”
How Sundance Is Recovering From Harvey Weinstein
Very well, partly because of Amazon and Netflix. “This is no longer Mr. Weinstein’s freewheeling festival, the one he blasted into the public consciousness with eye-popping deals to bring male-gaze entries like Sex, Lies and Videotape and Reservoir Dogs to theaters. Sundance is now a prime showcase for women — films directed, produced and written by women; films with female protagonists; special events focused on female empowerment. And most of the distribution deals involve TV sets.”
Why The Art-Selfie App Caught The Internet By Storm
“What’s great about the art selfie craze is that it efficiently harnesses other, less blatant, but still very zeitgeisty tributaries to the culture: irony in the face of high art; camera-conscious vanity; the obsession with statistical measurement (each match is given a percentage rating); online flirtation (if Google says you look like a Titian, you’re texting your love interest with the news, I guarantee it — and it’s safer than sexting); digital excavation (the Internet’s startling ability to unearth hidden treasures); and, of course, the naughty thrill — truly, a hallmark of our time — of signing over some crucial piece of your identity to a corporate behemoth, purely on trust, and for the most frivolous of reasons.”
Peter Mayle, Whose ‘Year In Provence’ Drastically Changed How Britons Vacation, Has Died At 78
The book also opened Provence up to the world – but first to Britain. “Mayle’s relaxed amusement with the French villagers appealed to traditional British frustrations at dealing with their neighbours, and more important, it linked into what the writer George Mikes once described as the English love of enduring hardship: the lavender-scented pleasures of Provence came only at the cost of adapting to life among the locals.”