Tag: 02.06.19

A Sense Of Doom In The Air (What, Me Worry?)

“Since the financial crash of 2008, across Europe and in the United States, there has been (to borrow a phrase from Frank Kermode) a “sense of an ending”. Liberal orthodoxies have fallen into radical doubt. Populist movements are arrayed against the political and economic order that has stood in place for the past fifty years. Electorates have leaped into unknown futures. The grounds of civilization won’t break up under our feet so much as recede under melting ice caps and rising seas, while the indices of progress – life expectancy, equality, happiness and trust in political institutions – have gone into reverse in many parts of the world.”  – Times Literary Supplement

Criminalizing Drill Rappers For Performing Their Work Is Dangerous

“As a letter signed this week by human rights organisations, lawyers, academics and musicians argues, criminalising artists in this way is both unjust and ineffective. It is unjust because it denies the basic freedoms of those who are attempting to creatively, if distastefully, expose their experiences of subsistent life in the bleakest urban pockets of British society. And it will be ineffective at achieving any reduction in violence because it simply does nothing to address its root causes.” – The Guardian

‘MoviePass Does Still Exist. They’re Just A Little Harder To Find These Days.’

A reporter finds — after a lot of walking around, and behind a very inconspicuous door — the current offices of “one of the most glorious burnouts in corporate history.” The execs, he finds, are quite aware of their mistakes but determined to keep going, because they proved that “there is a massive group of people — into the millions — who are interested in moviegoing subscriptions.” — The Ringer