All-divas Rock Hall induction in 2022? Would be nice but not likely

With each passing year, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gets more ridiculous.
This year’s 17 nominees illustrate some of the problems with the institution. The hall casts a wide net in terms of what music qualifies for induction. But it remains stingy about the number of artists it lets in each year.
It usually lets in five to seven artists a year, but thankfully it added 12 groups and individual artists in 2021. Hopefully it will add more than usual this year to reduce its sizable backlog of worthy artists.
For the past three years, I’ve been pushing for Pat Benatar to get inducted. She was nominated two years ago, snubbed last year, and is on the ballot again this year. But the nomination committee is pitting her against five other celebrated female artists: Kate Bush, Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick, and the Annie Lennox-fronted Eurythmics.
While I’d love to see an all-divas induction class and ceremony. I don’t see that happening. It’s more likely voters will split their votes among those artists.
This year’s Rock Hall ballot has a bunch of rockers, but it is diluted with artists from the country, adult contemporary, Afrobeat and rap genres.
Even country singer and American treasure Dolly Parton was surprised by her nomination. “I’ve never thought of myself as being rock and roll in any sense of the word,” she told Billboard.
I don’t have a problem specifically with broadening the Rock Hall tent to include all types of music that had a “profound impact on the sound of youth culture.” But the hall needs to induct more acts than the usual half dozen. The list of Rock Hall snubs is embarrassingly long.
In addition to the six female artists mentioned above, other nominees this year include Beck, Devo, Duran Duran, Eminem, Judas Priest, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Rage Against the Machine, Lionel Richie, and A Tribe Called Quest.
Inductees will be announced in May.

Related reading:

Rock Hall: How about a little bit of ladies first? (Populism; Feb. 11, 2022)

The Worst Snubs in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame History (So Far) (Vulture; Feb. 2, 2022)

Curious choices among Rock HOF inductees. Dolly Parton, Dionne Warwick? What about Styx and Foreigner? (Niagara Gazette; Feb. 10, 2022)

Pleasantly Disappointed: The 2022 Ballot (Rock Hall Monitors; Feb. 6, 2022)

Here Are the Country Artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Billboard; Feb. 2, 2022)

After two years of Covid, live events are finally happening again

With the omicron wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the rear-view mirror, people are ready to get out and attend live events again. That includes sporting events, concerts, conferences, and other activities.
In the U.S. at least, the public has been educated and has access to vaccines. Whether they choose to believe the experts and get vaxxed is up to them. The benefits and risks are well known at this point.
Government mandates and masking requirements have become politically unpopular after two years of the pandemic. People just want to get on with their lives unfettered by rules set by hypocritical politicians.
With serious illnesses and deaths from Covid limited to the unvaccinated, people are ready to treat the virus like they do the annual flu.
Live music venues near me, such as Capital One Arena, Jiffy Lube Live and the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, have a full slate of summer concerts planned.
Even music festival Coachella will be back after a two-year absence this April in Indio, California.
We’re likely to see an end to events being canceled or rescheduled because of the Covid pandemic.
The CES 2022 consumer electronics show went ahead with a live conference in Las Vegas in early January amid much hand-wringing about the omicron wave. But the show didn’t turn out to be the Covid superspreader event that many feared. (Attendees had to be vaxxed and masked.)
The Chicago Auto Show, the nation’s largest and longest-running auto show, opened Saturday Feb. 12 and will run through Monday Feb. 21.
Live conferences coming up include the SXSW conference, aka South by Southwest, in Austin, Texas, March 11-20. The last two in-person SXSW shows were canceled because of Covid.
Disney is holding its D23 Expo, called “the Ultimate Disney Fan Event,” in Anaheim, Calif., Sept. 9-11 after a two-year absence because of the pandemic.
Two awards shows delayed because of the omicron wave are coming up as well.
The Critics Choice Awards will be held March 13 after being pushed back from its original Jan. 9 date.
The Grammy Awards will be held on April 3 in Las Vegas after being postponed from the original Jan. 31 date in Los Angeles.

Photo: Covid pandemic word cloud by EpicTop10.com via Creative Commons.

Late predictions for 2022: Facebook metaverse flops; Roku buys Vizio; CBS Evening News canceled

Some prognosticators wait until the new year has already begun before releasing their predictions for the year ahead.
What follows are some predictions in the media and technology arenas that came out after I wrote my last roundup of 2022 predictions in December.

Facebook’s metaverse will be the biggest tech fail of 2022

Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, predicted that Facebook’s push into the metaverse will be a colossal failure.
First, few people want to strap on a headset to hang out in a virtual world, he said. And second, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook parent company Meta Platforms, has shown that he can’t be trusted with people’s personal data.

Metaverse mania will wane in 2022

Research firm ARtillery Intelligence predicted that exuberance and investment around the metaverse will recede in 2022.
“Though the metaverse is a legitimate principle with ample promise, its fully actualized arrival is years or even decades away,” the firm said. “Any metaverse outcomes in the next year can’t possibly live up to the hype.”

Bumpy year ahead for streaming services in U.S.

Bloomberg writer Lucas Shaw predicted slower growth and higher churn for subscription video-on-demand services like Netflix in the U.S. in 2022. He also said Roku will have to decide soon whether to become or buy a media company.

Roku will buy Vizio instead of a studio

LightShed Partners believes Roku will buy smart TV maker Vizio to expand its hardware offerings and user base in streaming video. Roku is looking for a bigger footprint of users for its advertising service. It is less likely that Roku will buy a content studio, LightShed said.

Europe cements its position as world’s most important tech regulator

Casey Newton, editor of Platformer, doesn’t see much significant U.S. regulatory action to rein in Big Tech in 2022. Instead, Europe and the U.K. will take the lead in antitrust action against tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Meta and others, he said.

ViacomCBS will cancel its CBS Evening News

TDG analyst Rob Silvershein said ViacomCBS will cancel its CBS Evening News in 2022. The company might announce a more aggressive streaming news initiative, he said. “If it does, however, it will be too little too late,” Silvershein said.

Peloton merges with Garmin

The Motley Fool made several predictions about mergers and acquisitions in 2022. One writer predicted Peloton will merge with Garmin. Another predicted Etsy and Pinterest will merge.

Photo: Mark Zuckerberg discusses his vision of the metaverse. (Meta)

Dude with Sign, Cats of Disneyland, and other interesting websites

Some clever folks have made names for themselves with shticks they perform on social media.

Dude with Sign

For starters, there’s Dude with Sign. Seth Phillips started an Instagram account with photos showing him holding pretend protest signs. (See article by Washingtonian magazine.)

Emily’sTikTok.edu

Emily Zugay earned fame for her hilarious TikTok videos where she does terrible redesigns of corporate and product logos. She pretends she’s using her college design education to improve the logos of corporations and brands. (See articles by PRWeek, AdAge and UW-Stout.)

Jake Thumbs Up Emoji

Another TikTok user, Jakie62, does videos where he figures out when globes were designed based upon historical map changes. (See article by Laughing Squid.)

What follows are some other interesting websites.

Cats of Disneyland

There’s a niche Instagram account that posts photos of the feral cats that roam Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. It is called Cats of Disneyland. (See article by Insider.)

Nineteenth century videos. Back to life.

A YouTube site called “Nineteenth century videos. Back to life” posts cleaned-up and colorized newsreel footage from the early 1900s and late 19th century. It includes film from the Titanic before its doomed voyage in 1912 and from the 1918 influenza pandemic. (See article by BGR.)

Public Domain Review

Readers of this website know that I’m a big supporter of the public domain and reasonable copyright laws. A good resource is the Public Domain Review.
Founded in 2011, The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to exploring works of literature and art that have gone off copyright and are now in the public domain.
Every year it publicizes new works that have entered the public domain. Works entering the public domain in 2022 included A.A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh,” Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.”

SorryAntivaxxer

The website SorryAntivaxxer documents the many antivaxxers who have spread misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and then died of the disease. Spoiler alert: there are many. (See article by the Los Angeles Times.)