Why Do People Commit Violence? Not Depravity, But Morality

“Across practices, across cultures, and throughout historical periods, when people support and engage in violence, their primary motivations are moral. By ‘moral’, I mean that people are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory. They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should.

China Has Hollywood-Sized Ambitions

“Cashed-up Chinese companies have grander ambitions than the domestic market, making investments in US studios, signing co-production deals with other countries and seeking global box office success. In the biggest deal of its kind to date, a unit of state-backed Hunan TV in March announced a $1.5 billion agreement to fund the movies of US studio Lionsgate.”

In TV: A Built-In Fan Base Is Great, But They’re Pretty Demanding

Genre properties dominate TV’s most popular adaptations, and genre audiences — typically science-fiction, fantasy and horror fans — are typically the most vocally devoted to their sources. “One is very aware of the devoted following to the books, and one wants to do right by that fan base while at the same time obviously taking advantage of the built-in constituency for the story.”

Dudamel Sidelined By Ailing Back

The spokeswoman for Gustavo Dudamel said via mail that the cancellations were due to “intense lower back spasms which have not been alleviated by prescribed medical treatment. His doctors have now ordered him to temporarily cease all work, get immediate further treatment, and rest.”

Maybe We’re Supposed To Hate Poetry? (But That Might Just Be The Point)

“What if we dislike or despise or hate poems because they are – every single one of them – failures? The poet and critic Allen Grossman tells a story (there are many versions of the story) that goes like this: you’re moved to write a poem because of some transcendent impulse to get beyond the human, the historical, the finite. But as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms. So the poem is always a record of failure.”