“It’s an ideologically pure, dependably crowd-pleasing position to take. Its naiveté also makes me want to start throwing large objects long distances out high windows.”
Tag: 07.31.17
HBO Confirms It Was Hacked; Hackers Say They’re Posting Unseen Shows To The Web
Hackers claimed to have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the company. So far, an upcoming episode of Ballers and Room 104 have apparently been put online. There is also written material that’s allegedly from next week’s fourth episode of Game of Thrones. More is promised to be “coming soon.”
USC Study: Hollywood’s Huge Gender Imbalance, In Numbers
“At USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab (SAIL), Shrikanth Narayanan, the Niki and C.L. Max Nikias Chair in Engineering, and a team of researchers used automated software to analyze the sophistication of language and character interaction in nearly 1,000 scripts, poring over 53,000 dialogues between 7,000 characters. What they found was a whole lot of men — 4,900 male characters to 2,000 female characters — doing a whole lot of talking — men participated in 37,000, the women got only 15,000.”
Police Seize 2,300-Year-Old Greek Vase From Met Museum
“For decades it was proudly displayed in the Greco-Roman galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art … Today it sits in an evidence room at the district attorney’s office in Manhattan after prosecutors quietly seized the antiquity last week based on evidence that it had been looted by tomb raiders in Italy in the 1970s.”
Philippe Jordan Named Music Director Of Vienna State Opera, One Of The Toughest Jobs In The Business
“Mr. Jordan, 42, a well-respected, charismatic second-generation conductor who is music director of the Paris Opera and the Vienna Symphony, will succeed Franz Welser-Möst, who abruptly resigned in 2014. Mr. Welser-Möst was the most recent in a long line of eminent musicians who left the post early, whether by choice or not – a roster that includes Mahler, Richard Strauss and Herbert von Karajan.”
Italian Cities Are Banning Everything Clueless Tourists Like To Do
Milan has just banned bottles, cans, food trucks, and selfie sticks in one of its most popular neighborhoods; Florence now forbids sandwiches or picnicking in its cathedral square; Rome will tolerate no toe-dipping in or eating near its historic fountains or drinking outdoors after dark; several cities are trying to chase kebab vendors out. Why? As Feargus O’Sullivan reports, the laws are “part of a larger nationwide struggle over the future of Italy’s urban centers – not just clamping down on trash and petty crime but also attempting to control who does and doesn’t have rights of access to key parts of the city.”
Misty Copeland Lands Another Big Endorsement Deal (And She’s Not The Only Ballet Star Doing It)
“The ballet world took notice on Monday when Estée Lauder announced that the public face of one of its fragrances would be Misty Copeland, the American Ballet Theater star. … [And] just last week Tiffany & Co. announced that it would feature another Ballet Theater star, David Hallberg, in its fall advertising campaign.”
68-Year-Old Writer Files Age Discrimination Complaint Against Iowa Writers’ Workshop
Workshop officials deny that age is used as a factor in the consideration of any application, according to the university’s emailed responses to Thomson. All applicants, instead, are evaluated based on their writing samples. Dan Thomson, however, maintains that application statistics collected by the university show that, over the past five years, none of the 105 applicants age 51 or older were accepted into the workshop’s fiction program. Nearly half of the 135 fiction students accepted from 2013 to 2017 were between the ages of 18 and 25.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.31.17
Kurt Weill in 2017
“Wherever I found decency and humanity in the world, it reminded me of America.” That this observation – recorded by Kurt Weill in 1947 – rings hollow in 2017 does not diminish the fascination … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2017-07-30
The NYC Influence
Over time, various cities emerge as strongholds of finance: Venice, Zurich, Edinburgh, Singapore, Hong Kong. These cities, though they have many other characteristics, have been known for taking a leadership role at some point in … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-07-31
Not too long, please
Back when I lived in a snug one-bedroom apartment not far from Central Park, I used to get my hair cut at Antonio’s, an unpretentious three-chair neighborhood barbershop with a Spanish-speaking staff and clientele. I … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-07-31
Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler On Net Neutrality, Monopolies And The Need For Regulation
“If the reality is that somewhere between 50% and 75% of all households in America have one or fewer choices for high-speed broadband–defined as 25 megabits per second–and 95% of all households in America have one or fewer choices for 100-mbps service, there is no competition. And when there is no competition, who makes the rules? The rules are made by the monopolists. So the job of the FCC should be to stand up and protect consumers and promote competition and innovation in a non-competitive market.”