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kevinng.bsky.social
kevin
@kevinng.bsky.social
10K followers 2.9K following 700 posts
I write about science, music, and culture.
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kevinng.bsky.social
kevin @kevinng.bsky.social · 23d
On Giorgia Meloni’s favourite conductor, for @vanmagazin.bsky.social

van-magazine.com/mag/beatrice...
Is Beatrice Venezi’s Appointment Really Based on Merit?
Everywhere you look, politics are seeping into opera. In New York, Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb, accompanied onstage by Democratic senator Chuck Schumer, gave a rousing opening-night ...
van-magazine.com
Reposted by kevin
kevinng.bsky.social
The new music I've been listening to this week:
New music of the week - Nov 28 — Kevin Ng
Baroque trios with Chinese mouth organ, a new Medea, and Aya Nakamura
www.kevinwng.com
November 28, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by kevin
mattheweadie.bsky.social
BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university

Full statement from NU below:
November 29, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Reposted by kevin
mehr.nz
New in Science, Macaques tap to the beat.

Very cool study for its main result and its null one: consistent with nearly every other comparative study of music, monkeys don't differentiate beats by their relative strength—which even young children do innately. Monkeys have rhythm but not meter!
Monkeys have rhythm
Synchronizing movements to music is a hallmark of human culture, but its evolutionary and neurobiological origins remain unknown. This ability requires (i) extracting a steady rhythmic pulse, or beat,...
www.science.org
November 28, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Reposted by kevin
jtannenwald.bsky.social
RIP Robert A.M. Stern, one of the greats of American architecture who designed some of Philadelphia's most famous modern buildings.

www.inquirer.com/obituaries/r...
Robert A.M. Stern, renowned architect whose designs included the Comcast Center and the Museum of the American Revolution, has died at 86
The final Robert A.M. Stern Architects design in Philadelphia is nearing completion, a massive life sciences research building at Drexel University.
www.inquirer.com
November 28, 2025 at 10:07 PM
kevinng.bsky.social
The new music I've been listening to this week:
New music of the week - Nov 28 — Kevin Ng
Baroque trios with Chinese mouth organ, a new Medea, and Aya Nakamura
www.kevinwng.com
November 28, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by kevin
sternbergh.bsky.social
I love this essay by film critic emeritus Lisa Schwarzbaum on seeing Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding” 24 years ago — and being reminded of it anew during the joyful mayoral campaign of Nair’s son, Zohran Mamdani:

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/o...
Opinion | Mamdani, His Mother and a Movie of Prescient Grace
www.nytimes.com
November 28, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by kevin
aaup.org
We launched a PAC!

“This PAC is an extension of our fight to ensure a future for American higher ed through bipartisan legislation that recognizes that college can be tuition-free, debt-free, welcoming to all, conducive to academic freedom & offer jobs with dignity.”

- Todd Wolfson, AAUP President
Professors Launch PAC to Fight Back Against Trump’s Attacks
The American Association of University Professors, a union whose members are fighting policies from the Trump administration and GOP Congress, launched a PAC this week to spend in federal elections.
news.bgov.com
November 26, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by kevin
thebaffler.com
The student loan system—made up of banks, loan servicers, universities, and the federal government—profits from the desperation of its borrowers. @kwistent.bsky.social reviews a new book that describes how it can shape every aspect of a person’s life.
The Family Loan | Kristen Martin
The American student loan system assumes and reinforces familial financial entanglement.
thebaffler.com
November 28, 2025 at 3:41 PM
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michaelbarenboim.bsky.social
Ahead of our Make Freedom Ring concert in Munich on 30th November, I speak to BR-Klassik about the situation in Gaza, the silence of the classical music industry, the responsibility to speak out as a German citizen, and the question of justice for Palestine

www.br-klassik.de/aktuell/news...
Michael Barenboim zu Gaza-Konflikt:
Am Sonntag gibt Michael Barenboim ein Benefizkonzert für Gaza-Hilfen. Im Interview spricht der Geiger über die Gründe für sein öffentliches Engagement und darüber, warum Konzerte Orte der Solidarität ...
www.br-klassik.de
November 27, 2025 at 3:45 PM
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zackpolanski.bsky.social
Maybe they should consider changing the name of the party..

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Labour ditches day-one protection from unfair dismissal in U-turn
The right will now be introduced after six months, in a breach of Labour's election manifesto.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 7:24 PM
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harikunzru.bsky.social
Remembering the time I was in Türkiye and the hotel welcomed me with an effusive press release and one of the all time great pull quotes
New Article Page 5 A Literary Luminary at Swissotel Büvik Efes izmir: Welcoming Hari Kunzru At Swissotel Büyük Efes izmir, we are proud to host extraordinary individuals whose talents and achievements inspire the world. Today, we shine the spotlight on one such remarkable guest: Hari Kunzru, literary icon, journalist and champion of artistic freedom What if the reasonable reaction to the world is endless horrified screaming?
November 27, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by kevin
theguardian.com
Pam Hogg obituary
Pam Hogg obituary
Fashion designer whose idiosyncratic mix of glam and DIY couture was worn by Björk, Siouxsie Sioux and Taylor Swift
www.theguardian.com
November 27, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by kevin
nightafternight.bsky.social
I didn’t know Reg Bloor was running a Kickstarter campaign to fund an important Glenn Branca archival recording with Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo in the band until Robert Fripp (!!) shared the news on Facebook. Get yourself a piece of the action here. www.kickstarter.com/projects/reg...
Release of Glenn Branca's Symphony No. 4 (Physics)
Much anticipated release of a long lost recording.
www.kickstarter.com
November 27, 2025 at 1:55 AM
Reposted by kevin
joshuajfriedman.com
For the masochists
bgrueskin.bsky.social Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 2d
While there are often some ethical issues with making free PDFs of paywalled content, in this case it seems entirely justifiable, given the author, the subject, and the journalistic imperative to provide the widest possible audience for the verb "Michael Wolffed"

gofile.io/d/Ap4v35
November 27, 2025 at 1:38 AM
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coelasquid.bsky.social
Canada made weird tv shows because it was all being done with government funded art grant money so they fell in this wacky middle ground between “shoestring budget” and “no expectation to generate shareholder value” which is really the best way to make art
November 26, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by kevin
nikostratis.com
I think if Canada wants to have a strong cultural identity we need to go back to doing what we're best at, making the weirdest fucking TV shows you've ever seen
November 26, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Reposted by kevin
unbreaking.org
Unbreaking will be taking some downtime for the rest of November, so you’ll see our next briefing in December. In the meantime, you can catch up on our Data Security, Immigration, Medical Research, and Equality at Work work: unbreaking.org/blog/this-we...
This week at Unbreaking, November 20 — Unbreaking
This week's update covers what the immigration crackdown is doing to our communities, the ongoing exploitation of our personal data, and what's going on with federal workers and medical research fundi...
unbreaking.org
November 26, 2025 at 10:28 PM
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nytpitchbot.bsky.social
Pediatricians say vaccines do not cause autism. A bear-eating heroin addict who fantasizes about sucking his own semen out of his lovers' orifices says they do. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.
November 26, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by kevin
miamidsa.org
Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷
November 26, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by kevin
publichealthguy1.bsky.social
critically important 👇
World AIDS Day is when the State Department sends data to Congress from the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, which provides money for H.I.V. programs worldwide. The program's budget was sharply cut back earlier this year, and the administration is reported to be planning to end. It's unclear whether the department still plans to send the data, as it is mandated to do, but on a different day. The department did not respond to questions about whether that was the case. "We have been waiting for those data for a year," said Emily Bass, a public health expert who first reported the administration's decision not to commemorate the day in her Substack column, "To End a Plague ... Again." "It's unclear whether we will see them, and they're really important, because this is the year in which all of these disruptions to PEPFAR happened," Ms. Bass said.
November 26, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by kevin
sabs.bsky.social
this might be the saddest story I've ever written, about a seal that I will be thinking about for a long, long time.
defector.com/why-wont-nor...
Why Won’t Nora The Leopard Seal Abandon Her Dead Pups? | Defector
In the fall of 2021, Renato Borras-Chavez, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Rhode Island, spotted a leopard seal on an ice floe. Borras-Chavez was on a research expedition to a glacial f...
defector.com
November 26, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by kevin
benwritesthings.bsky.social
signora dubbiofuoco 🤌🤌
November 25, 2025 at 9:18 PM
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vmywang.bsky.social
It's been three (!) years since I last posted something on my blog, but you still gotta love cells, as they say... so here's a little piece discussing philosopher Talbot Brewer's talk/essay "What Good Are the Humanities?"
lovecells.wordpress.com/2025/11/25/w...
#philsky 💙📚
What Good Are the Humanities?
This is the title of a recorded talk (2017) and essay by Talbot Brewer, professor of philosophy at the University of Virginia. He proceeds to answer this question by first elucidating what the huma…
lovecells.wordpress.com
November 25, 2025 at 9:52 AM
Reposted by kevin
karenho.bsky.social
A new kind of rapid Chotining. Please appreciate the alt-text.
Isaac Chotiner: "You would have to be brain-dead to read this piece and not immediately wonder who is funding Semafor Gulf." Quote post of Ben Smith saying: "Fascinating @msergie piece on covering a monarchy" about a Semafor article on Saudi Arabia's crown prince Smith responds to Chotiner: "That's a hell of an allegation/implication, Isaac. To figure out the literal answer to your question, you'd either have to look and see who the sponsors are in the email (I haven't checked today!) or read our publicly disclosed list of investors. I believe you're trying to imply that it's the Saudi government? Have you read more of our coverage, or just this tweet? My impression — correct me if I'm wrong — is that you're working on zero information and smearing us in general, and an experienced journalist @msergie whose work I suspect you're totally unfamiliar with in particular." Chotiner responds:"I’m not making any allegation. I’m making a simple point about how an average reader—myself included—might respond after reading this ridiculous piece" Ben Smith: "Just asking questions! Come on. You genuinely know better. Or read Mohammed's long career of work covering the Gulf and the Syrian war before you imply he's some kind of stooge." Noah Kulwin: "The point is not about who funds your reporting/if your colleague is a “stooge”. Isaac’s comment is that the reporting is so bad so as to make a reader wonder who is funding it" Smith: A reader, sure. A journalist who can do very basic homework, kind of lame. Chotiner: "You are right, I’ll do some homework now by perusing Jay Solomon Semafor pieces, and reading Jason Greenblatt Semafor columns. In the meantime, I will formally say that I am making no accusation and was just astonished at how inane the piece was" Chotiner quote-posts with "I see Semafor loves running column after column by this guy (https://semafor.com/author/faisal-j-abbas), who also publishes pro-Saudi conspiracies about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi https://arabnews.com/node/1386291" Ben Smith's post says "I hope I'm not overreacting, but it makes me crazy when people I think of as reporters do this "just asking questions" stuff. Feel free to report it out by googling/asking me/reading our various scoops and reports about the region — these two just now" and links to two Semafor articles Chotiner quote posts Ben Smith: "You might have heard that the UAE is helping destroy Sudan, but at the next Semafor event, all is well." Screenshot says "Held at Abu Dhabi Finance Week, Semafor will spotlight insights from the Global Findex 2025 report and the Global Digital Connectivity Tracker, translating global research into actionable, locally relevant conversations. As the third stop on The Next 3 Billion Tour, this edition explores how the Gulf's growing investments in Africa can accelerate digital connectivity and financial inclusion. With Abu Dhabi's focus on sustainable finance, digital transformation, and cross-border collaboration, it offers a strong platform to examine how technology and capital can work together to expand access and opportunity." Ben Smith's post says "Just asking questions! Come on. You genuinely know better. Or read Mohammed's long career of work covering the Gulf and the Syrian war before you imply he's some kind of stooge."
November 25, 2025 at 1:09 AM
Reposted by kevin
theguardian.com
UK charity records original music by people living with dementia
UK charity records original music by people living with dementia
Project aims to unlock memories and sensations for participants while creating nine-track CD, recorded at Glyndebourne
www.theguardian.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:43 AM