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Category: Entertainment Industry
👓 SiriusXM to Acquire Pandora, Creating World’s Largest Audio Entertainment Company | Pandora
You may have noticed that big things are happening at Pandora. Earlier today, we announced that we’ve entered into an agreement to be acquired by SiriusXM, in an all-stock transaction, valued at approximately $3.5 billion. Here’s what this means for our listeners, and why we’re excited: First...
👓 Cinematic train wreck, “The Room”, is now on YouTube in its entirety | Tech Crunch
The Room has been ranked with Plan 9 From Outer Space as a strong contender for the “best” worst movie ever made — and it’s now available in its entirety on YouTube. Written, directed, and starring Tommy Wiseau, The Room belongs in the same category as Plan 9, and Coven (whi…
👓 David Boies Pleads Not Guilty | New York Times
The superlawyer in such cases as Bush v. Gore and the fight for gay marriage rights makes no apologies for representing Harvey Weinstein and Theranos with zeal.
👓 Putting the Talmud online | Kottke
Sefaria is a free online resource for Jewish texts, specifically the Talmud, which (amazingly) wasn't previously easily availabl
👓 Bob Greenblatt stepping down as NBC Entertainment chairman | Los Angeles Times
Bob Greenblatt has spent nearly eight years running NBC Entertainment, a period that saw the peacock network return to prosperity.
🎧 Analysis, Parapraxis, Elvis, Season 3 Episode 10 | Revisionist History
"The one song The King couldn’t sing."
Elvis Presley returned from his years in the army to record one of his biggest hits, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” But he could never quite get the lyrics right. Why? Revisionist History puts the King of Rock and Roll on the couch.
👓 Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed? | Timothy Gowers
Update to post, added 11th September. As expected, there is another side to the story discussed below. See this statement about the decision by the Mathematical Intelligencer and this one about the…
I will say that far more people have now either heard about or read Hill’s paper than would have ever otherwise been aware of it had it actually gone ahead and actually been published and kept up. This is definitely an academic case of the Barbara Streisand effect, though done somewhat in reverse.
👓 Academic publishing is a mess and it makes culture wars dumber | Boing Boing
In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal suspected that cultural studies lacked academic rigor. So he wrote an intentionally nonsensical paper, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, and submitted it for publication in the respected academic journal Social Text. It was accepted. Sokal exposed the hoax, the embarrassed academics made their excuses, and the paper was retracted. The imbroglio was posed largely as a story of flimflam and imposture in postmodernism.
🎧 Face the Racist Nation | On The Media | WNYC Studios
An investigation into the media's coverage of white supremacist groups.
For more than a year, Lois Beckett [@loisbeckett], senior reporter at The Guardian US, has been showing up at white nationalist rallies, taking their pictures, writing down what they say. And she finds herself thinking: How did we get here? How did her beat as a political reporter come to include interviewing Nazis? And what are the consequences of giving these groups this much coverage?
In this week's program, we revisit this deep dive into what the news media often get wrong about white supremacists, and what those errors expose about the broader challenge of confronting racism in America.
1. Elle Reeve [@elspethreeve], correspondent for VICE News, Anna Merlan [@annamerlan], reporter for Gizmodo Media’s special projects desk, Vegas Tenold [@Vegastenold], journalist and author of Everything You Love Will Burn, and Al Letson [@Al_Letson], host of Reveal, from The Center for Investigative Reporting, on the pitfalls and perils of covering white supremacist groups. Listen.
2. Felix Harcourt [@FelixHistory], professor of history at Austin College and author of "Ku Klux Kulture," on the history of the Ku Klux Klan in the press in the 1920s. Listen.
3. Anna Merlan, Elle Reeve, Al Letson, Gary Younge [@garyyounge], editor-at-large for The Guardian, and Josh Harkinson [@joshharkinson], former senior writer at Mother Jones, on how individual identity impacts reporting on discriminatory movements. Listen.4. Ibram X. Kendi [@DrIbram], professor of history and international relations at American University and author of "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America," on the enduring myths surrounding the perpetuation of racist ideas and whose interests these misconceptions serve. Listen.
I particularly liked the Ibram X. Kendi portion of the interview and am ordering his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which was a National Book Award Winner.
👓 What really happened when two mathematicians tried to publish a paper on gender differences? The tale of the emails | Retraction Watch
Retraction Watch readers may be familiar with the story of a paper about gender differences by two mathematicians. Last month, in Weekend Reads, we highlighted an account of that story, which appea…
👓 How David Lynch Got Creative Inspiration? By Drinking a Milkshake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Single Day, for Seven Straight Years | Open Culture
"It is no secret that David Lynch, the writer-director-composer-painter, has an unusual relationship with Bob's Big Boy," begins a 1999 Los Angeles Times article on the auteur of films like Eraserhead and Blue Velvet. "For seven years in the 1980s he ate lunch there every day, ordering cup after cup of over-sweetened coffee and a single chocolate milkshake while scribbling notes on Bob's little square napkins." He took pains, notes reporter Amy Wallace, "to arrive at Bob's at precisely 2:30 p.m. each day. The reason: It increased the odds that he would encounter perfection."
👓 Sorry, Sony Music, you don’t own the rights to Bach’s music on Facebook | Ars Technica
Public shaming forces publisher to abandon ridiculous claim to classical music.
👓 Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals | New York Times
A senior official at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has received millions of dollars in payments from companies that are involved in medical research.
I’m kind of shocked that major publishers like Elsevier are continually saying they add so much value to the chain of publishing they do, yet somehow, in all the major profits they (and others) are making that they don’t do these sorts of checks as a matter of course.
👓 Why Le’Veon Bell Might Make More Money If He Ends His Holdout Now | Five Thirty Eight
Last weekend, Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell sat out the first game of the regular season rather than play under the NFL franchise tag. Slated to earn $14.5 million in guaranteed money in 2018, Bell loses out on $855,529 each week he fails to report. The franchise tag would make Bell the third highest paid running back in the NFL this season — but only if he actually plays. Around the league, there is a wide range of speculation on how long Bell’s holdout will last. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that his sources believe Bell could be back by the end of September, while others note his holdout could conceivably last through Week 10.