“When Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury, and Women’s Voices dropped earlier this month, it was poised to become an instant hit. The anthology, a mix of recipes and essays about baking as an outlet for women’s political rage, is the latest in a series of books that address the organizing power of female anger, including Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad and Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her. However, Rage Baking is now on the receiving end of women’s anger over a controversy about who owns — and profits from — the concept of ‘rage baking.’ Here’s what you need to know.” – Slate
Tag: 02.27.20
Jennifer Higdon’s New Opera Will Have Three Different Endings
Woman with Eyes Closed, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia for its O20 festival this September, has a plot inspired by the 2012 theft, from the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, of seven paintings now thought to have been burnt in Romania by the mother of one of the thieves. Jerre Dye’s libretto and Higdon’s 80-minute score, written for five singers and 11 instruments, will have three alternate endings; the choice of which one to perform will be made the day of each performance. – Yahoo! (AP)
DC’s National Symphony Cancels The Rest Of Its Asia Tour
Three weeks ago, due to the coronavirus epidemic, the orchestra cancelled three concert dates in China that were part of a planned eight-concert tour of East Asia March 3-12. Now the orchestra has withdrawn from the remaining five dates, all in Japan. – The Washington Post
We’re Recreating The Nature Around Us With Technology
Under the rubric of “ubiquitous computing,” “smart dust,” and the “Internet of Things,” computers are melting into the fabric of everyday life. Light bulbs, toasters, even toothbrushes are being chipped. You can summon Alexa almost anywhere. And as life becomes computerized, computers become lifelike. Modern hardware and software have gotten so complicated that they resemble the organic: messy, unpredictable, inscrutable. – Nautilus
Eight Trends That Are Changing The Non-Profit Sector
There has also been unprecedented leadership turnover across the classical performing arts sector. “Furthermore, the pipeline for leadership is not there to meet the demands. Changing tastes, an oversupply of product and the delta between the availability and demand for leadership will lead to bankruptcies and dissolutions of many of the classical arts organizations.” – Hunt Scanlon Media
While We Weren’t Looking The Robots Became Our Bosses
The robots are watching over hotel housekeepers, telling them which room to clean and tracking how quickly they do it. They’re managing software developers, monitoring their clicks and scrolls and docking their pay if they work too slowly. They’re listening to call center workers, telling them what to say, how to say it, and keeping them constantly, maximally busy. While we’ve been watching the horizon for the self-driving trucks, perpetually five years away, the robots arrived in the form of the supervisor, the foreman, the middle manager. – The Verge
Roman Polanski, Saying He Fears ‘Public Lynching’, Withdraws From French Academy Awards
When the director’s latest film, An Officer and a Spy (about the Dreyfus Affair), was nominated for 12 César awards, many people in France and beyond were outraged and threatened a boycott, and the entire board of the César Academy later resigned. While Polanski hasn’t pulled his movie from consideration (the awards ceremony is tomorrow night), he says bitterly that “we know how this evening will unfold already” and he will not attend. – Yahoo! (AFP)
Having Realized That His Apology Included A Confession, Plácido Domingo Tries To Walk It Back
“On Tuesday, [he] apologized to women who had accused him of sexual harassment. … But on Thursday, as some of Europe’s leading opera houses considered canceling future engagements, Mr. Domingo said he wanted to ‘correct the false impression’ his statement had created.” – The New York Times
Plácido Domingo Starts Losing Engagements In Europe — And In His Birthplace, No Less
The continent had been resistant to the accusations of sexual harassment that ended Domingo’s U.S. career, but following the AGMA report, Spain’s Culture Ministry cancelled his invitation to perform in Luisa Fernanda at Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela in May, following which Domingo withdrew from La Traviata at the city’s Teatro Real the same month. (Meanwhile, news of the AGMA report has inspired another accuser to come forward publicly.) – Yahoo! (AP)
What Do We Want From History?
What might I want history to do to me? I might want history to reduce my historical antagonist—and increase me. I might ask it to urgently remind me why I’m moving forward, away from history. Or speak to me always of our intimate relation, of the ties that bind—and indelibly link—my history and me. I could want history to tell me that my future is tied to my past, whether I want it to be or not. Or ask it to promise me that my future will be revenge upon my past. Or warn me that the past is not erased by this revenge. Or suggest to me that brutal oppression implicates the oppressors, who are in turn brutalized by their own acts of oppression. Or argue that an oppressor can believe herself to be an oppressor only within a system in which she herself has been oppressed. – New York Review of Books