Ladies and gents, the equitable art criticism

Plus, Canada's prestige literary magazine has thoughts about the Middle East

IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON THE SUBSTACK APP: Check your Newsletter Delivery settings. I have discovered that a number of you stopped receiving my emails some time in April. It appears that around that time Substack made “receive app digest” the default setting on the app. If you prefer emails, here’s what to do: click the profile icon in the upper-right corner, and then click settings at the bottom. From there, select Notifications and then update the Newsletter delivery section to the desired settings. I don’t even use the app—I don’t enjoy reading anything longer than a few hundred words on my phone—but Substack probably wants us all to be more active on it. There’s a lot of liking and retweeting there, and I’ve got some “followers” (readers who only skim you on the app/Substack website) there who also “follow” 600+ other Substacks. That kind of social media approach to growth—and not really readership growth—is different from what Substack originally set out to do. We shall see how things develop.

But onwards with today’s topics:

As of this week, there’s a free course by a group of theatre writers available to anyone in search of self-improvement: https://youareacritic.com/ If this feels like the summer of 2020 called and it wants to peer inside your 23andMe results again, I don’t blame you. While in the rest of the Anglosphere the wokeness’ grip is getting a little less tight, Robin DiAngelo’s worldview still gets the thumbs up and, crucially, funding in Ontario.