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I’d like to kick off this Linkage post with a hearty thank-you to the folks I follow on Twitter. There are 932 of you as of August 2 and you’re doing an amazing job of helping me keep up with the world. You make me laugh a lot, too. Big hug.

Speaking of Twitter, Talking Points Media ran an interview recently with Anthony De Rosa, social media editor at Reuters. David Taintor asked De Rosa excellent questions and De Rosa gave Taintor great, focused answers. Also:

The Guardian ran an article about subeditors.

The New York Times ran an article about a place where pianos go to die.

At a hotel restaurant in Toronto, Tracy Letts, William Friedkin and Ben Kenigsberg had a chat.

Brain Pickings gathered “the most compelling and profound of [Susan] Sontag’s thoughts on writing, arranged chronologically.”

Gore Vidal died and Salon collected seven of his memorable appearances on television.

“That’s me, talking to me, six years ago,” said Lupe Fiasco, after rewatching an old interview he gave about his Chicago neighborhood for MTV News. He was crying. “And that stuff is the same. You just feel like— You feel hopeless, you know? It’s a terrible thing, and I see it everywhere.” Fiasco continued: “If you stay here, you’re gonna die, and you’re not gonna die for anything heroic. You’re not gonna die for anything meaningful. You’re gonna die for something that’s worthless, and nobody’s gonna remember your name.”

Four troupes were selected for DanceMotion USA, a program that “sends American dance companies overseas to connect with audiences and communities, especially underserved youth, through dance workshops, lecture demonstrations, public performances and other arts education activities.” In 2013, NYC’s Doug Varone and Dancers will visit Argentina, Paraguay and Peru; Hubbard Street Dance Chicago will visit Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia; Philadelphia’s llstyle and Peace Productions will visit Russia, Belarus and Ukraine; and Seattle’s Spectrum Dance Theater will visit Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. DanceMotion USA is “designed and funded by the [U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs] and produced by [the Brooklyn Academy of Music], with additional support from the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.” [Source (PDF)]

“Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, said, ‘In more than 15 years of investigating political corruption, I’ve never seen a more suspicious set of facts.’ ”

Thanks to a post on the Comic’s Comic, I learned that Montréal comedy festival Just for Laughs includes a keynote address. This year, it was given by Patton Oswalt, in the form of two open letters.

Thanks to a post on BuzzFeed Sports, I learned about the 20 openly gay athletes at the 2012 Olympic Games.

New York City Ballet member Justin Peck had a big July. The young dancer-choreographer received a positive review from Alastair Macaulay and, ten days later, was the subject of a profile by Claudia La Rocco, both in The New York Times.

“Brace yourself: Freelancing is not for the faint of heart,” warned Amy Brandt in an article for Pointe magazine.

“Should artists have to work or should they be supported by the state?” asked Elizabeth Day of London’s The Observer. Over on this side of the pond, Megan Stielstra assessed her situation, beautifully and frankly, as a working writer, wife and mother.

My French is bad and Google Translate isn’t much better, but I can gather why this Observateur story about Brigitte Lefèvre, director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, caused such a stir online.

An estimated 32,000 people protested in Hong Kong over the “coming introduction of Chinese patriotism classes,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung doctored a photograph of a family reportedly fleeing the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo to make it look even worse. Not that the situation in Aleppo — Syria’s largest city, with a population of more than two million — isn’t bad enough, as shown by a report by the BBC’s Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway, and an update today in The New York Times.

An unidentified Australian newspaper got creative on one of its pages, in differentiating between North and South Korea.

The parents of Aly Raisman, an Olympic gymnast representing the United States, were moved while watching her compete from the stands.

“I drew the line at endorsing books with condescending remarks about my own work,” noted A. J. Jacobs in his confessional about penning blurbs.

I saw some photos of what might be the world’s hiddiest house, built for an Indiana “cigar king” in 1995.

An episode of You’ve Cott Mail focused on cultural criticism and an article in The Hedgehog Review went in-depth on a current “master term,” sustainability.

“Are we a sector defined by our permanently failing organizations?” asked Diane Ragsdale.

Dimensions Dance Theater member Laura E. Ellis contributed a post to Dance/USA’s eJournal, From the Green Room, that begins what the service organization says will be “a conversation on diversity in all its forms.”

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