In a look ahead at a week of Cambridge and Somerville events, there’s the premiere of “Role Playing Game,” a new opera; the 44th sci-fiction film festival ends with its 24-Hour ’Thon; Longy starts a monthly residency at Lilypad; Jill Abramson reads; and much more.

What’s going on here, sadly, is the slow erosion of artistic merit. The Academy is watering down (if not dumbing down) the significance of an Oscar as a mark of cinematic excellence.

The spectacle of President Donald Trump denying collusion (if not outright treason) with Russia might be pretty well illuminated by the seventh episode of “Seinfeld” from all the way back in 1991, when America was introduced to Kramer Syndrome.

Street food is supposed to be sold in the street, prepared fast and eaten immediately, and it’s not cool for restaurants to suggest they’re doing street food when they’re not – locally, they’re just serving street food in a restaurant setting. And that’s just food.

There’s been furor online – of course – about the Friday arrest of a Harvard student on hallucinogens who was naked in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue, much of it directed at the mayor for a statement about the arrest. Like so many outrages today, it’s unworthy.

With this year being the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, commemorations honoring the man will be taking place across the country. Who would think this is the time for a Super Bowl ad to use a King voice-over to sell pickup trucks?

Responding to an opinion article in Tufts University’s student newspaper, Anthony Scaramucci proves he isn’t done embarrassing himself.

The &pizza chain may have won the yearlong regulatory war for a space in Harvard Square, but neighborhood group resistance hasn’t gone away. Now it’s a short video ad and a couple of marketing tactics shown in it that has a few people agitated.

In this political climate, hate speech is becoming common. And there has been an uptick of the use of the N-word, even from the mouths of people one would not expect.

The rules of how to be the press in Cambridge haven’t become any more clear since Monday, when Mayor E. Denise Simmons spoke vaguely of rules that sounded unlike any traditional understanding of government-press interaction.