What If The Tech Revolution Was Just An Illusion Of Progress?

Ross Douthat: “What if the feeling of acceleration is an illusion, conjured by our expectations of perpetual progress and exaggerated by the distorting filter of the internet? What if we — or at least we in the developed world, in America and Europe and the Pacific Rim — really inhabit an era in which repetition is more the norm than invention; in which stalemate rather than revolution stamps our politics; in which sclerosis afflicts public institutions and private life alike; in which new developments in science, new exploratory projects, consistently underdeliver?” – The New York Times

Here’s How Hard It Is For Musicians To Make A Living From Streaming (Spoiler Alert: You Really Can’t)

For example, Taylor Swift’s song “Shake It Off” had a whopping 46.3 million streams in 2017 and earned between $280,000 and $390,000, according to one report. Swift, one of the world’s biggest pop stars, will generate more streams with one song than most musicians can accumulate in a lifetime. Another study by Digital Music News found that Pandora had the highest per-play royalty rate. At Pandora’s 1.68 cents per play, a musician would need about 114,149 plays to earn the U.S. monthly minimum wage ($12 per hour) of $1,920. – Seattle Times

Trump Versus Architecture Is Really Trump Versus Experts

The proposal would allow Trump to create a “President’s Committee for the Re-Beautification of Federal Architecture” which would enforce this design mandate, and this panel would exclude “artists, architects, engineers, art or architecture critics, members of the building industry or any other members of the public that are affiliated with any interest group or organization” involved in architecture. Speaking as an architecture critic, this is insane and borderline-totalitarian. – The New Republic

How Did Margot Robbie Change The (Sexist Hollywood) Narrative About Her?

When journalists tried to pigeonhole her as a “new hot blonde” on the scene, well, Margot Robbie took control. “Robbie has refigured the terms of her agreement with the media. She’s done it gradually, without flash or announcement. … She’s simply refocused the public’s attention away from her body, and the image prefabricated for her in her breakout role in Wolf of Wall Street, and toward her talent and her work, which is shaped by the three goals she and her production team discuss at regular check-ins every month: quality, variety, longevity.” – Buzzfeed News

England’s Arts Council Forgot One Major Discussion In Its Ambitious Plan: Women

The women of English theatre are not happy. Sphinx Theatre artistic director Sue Parrish: “All along we’ve been given assurances that our concerns were being taken very seriously and being addressed, and that is clearly absolutely not the case. … I think they think that women’s progress will happen by osmosis, that it doesn’t need direct support, but all the research shows that is not the case.” – The Stage (UK)

The Academy Might Not Honor These Black Actresses, But Alfre Woodard Sure Will

Woodard invites Academy Award nominees from past and present – and, she says, “those who, in a perfect world, should have been.” She also says the Oscars don’t have an impact on good acting. “You know, it’s something entirely separate from what we do. … I liken it to the baby contests back in the Southwest when I was growing up. It was kind of a hilarious thing: ‘Look at this baby with the nice plump legs!’”- The New York Times

A New, Very Well-Funded Book Award For Women

The award is called The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, named after the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Stone Diaries, and starting in 2022 will award $155,000 Canadian to a woman or non-binary author. “It is a sum that dwarfs the prize money for literary awards such as the Booker Prize (50,000 pounds, roughly $65,000), the Pulitzer Prize for fiction ($15,000) and the National Book Award ($10,000). The Nobel Prize for literature is one exception, with laureates receiving nearly $1 million. ‘We wanted to go big on it so that people paid attention.'” – The New York Times

The Director Of The Cooper Hewitt Has Resigned

Caroline Baumann’s resignation was abrupt on Friday, February 7, and the Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan would give no reason for her departure. “During her tenure as director, she oversaw the $91 million renovation of the museum’s home at Fifth Avenue and East 91st Street, which aimed to make its Gilded Age mansion more inviting to modern-day visitors.” – The New York Times

Working To Broaden, And Subvert, The Story Of Overlooked People In Hollywood

Frieze Los Angeles goes up in the Paramount Pictures backlot, opening on Valentine’s Day. Sounds cozy. But, says a Frieze co-curator, “Going into 2020, we didn’t simply want to go back to the backlot and be purely celebratory.” That’s why “the curators have commissioned artists to engage the histories that Hollywood frequently overlooks.” – Los Angeles Times