The Age of Instagram Face
“The rising popularity of plastic surgery is more than a little horrifying” (Paul Kafasis).
/ in English
Why do some Eastern European and Scandanavian countries celebrate Christmas on the 24th of December?
“Because a Christian lithurgical day always starts and ends at sunset. In Southern Scandinavia, the lithurgical day on which Christ was born by tradition starts at 5 PM the 24th and ends on 5 PM the 25th. Celebrating Christmas on the 25th would imply having Christmas dinner the day after the event, as the lithurgical day ends on sunset the 25th. Christmas eve is therefore celebrated on the 24th while Christmas morning is celebrated on the 25th” (Sturla Molden, Quora).
No, sharing your Spotify year-end artist stats is not a good idea – here’s why not
No. I do not have a Spotify artist account. Nevertheless, if I had, I am not sure I would agree with the sentiment that streaming services screw artists. On the one hand, yes, it seems extremely difficult to make any (meaningful) money by (only) streaming your music. On the other, no one is forced to stream their music and with its rich history of subcultures, bootlegs, fanzines, t-shirt sales, club gigs, etc it seems, to me, the music world provides an as good opportunity as ever for aspiring musicians to get their music out there, and maybe even earn a buck or two. Also, people don’t play football expecting to be professionals, so why should music publishing be any different? Most people tend to get paid for doing things they don’t like. That’s why it’s called work. Thus, it seems reasonable that playing at a wedding should be work and something you only do if you get paid for it. Writing music, however, seems more like writing books: Lots of people do it out of love for the art, very few expect to earn money from it but a few lucky do.
‘The Mandalorian’ composer explains his process for creating 8 distinct scores for the 8 episodes, and how he made the show’s theme
The Mandalorian is the best Star Wars I have seen in a long while and the music is no small part of it.
The Top Songs, Artists, Playlists, and Podcasts of 2019—and the Last Decade
I am so out of touch. I don’t know a single Drake, Malone or Grande song. But I do know Shape of you, so maybe there is still hope. Honestly though, probably not.
New agreement with Elsevier – 100 percent Open Access
“A new agreement has been reached with the scientific publisher Elsevier. The agreement covers university wide reading rights to about 2,000 scientific journals from Elsevier and allows researchers affiliated with Stockholm University to publish Open Access at no extra costs” (Stockholm University Library).
About time! But kudos to the libraries for their patience. 18 months without Elsevier articles was not as painful as I had imagined.
“This is a step in the right direction to achieve the goal of 100 percent pure Open Access. This agreement in combination with other transformative agreements implies almost 90 percent Open Access publications at Stockholm University in 2020. In addition to these agreements, we will continue to finance article processing charges in all fully Open Access journals, says Wilhelm Widmark, Library Director at Stockholm University Library and vice Chair of the Bibsam consortium’s steering committee, who negotiated the deal” (Stockholm University Library).
Woman Wins 50K Ultra Outright, Trophy Snafu for Male Winner Follows
“When Ellie Pell took first overall, the surprised race organizers realized they had no trophy for the first place male” (Runners World).
Why do people believe the world is flat?
“I have an op-ed in today’s Globe and Mail, “Why do people believe the Earth is flat?” wherein I connect the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise in actual conspiracies, in which increasingly concentrated industries are able to come up with collective lobbying positions that result in everything from crashing 737s to toxic baby-bottle liners to the opioid epidemic” (Cory Doctorow).
