What if businesses become too good at selling nostalgia? Research I carried out with colleagues suggests that digital technology is changing nostalgia itself. Ironically, by making the past permanently available, companies may be weakening the very notion they are trying to sell. - The Conversation
I call this point in a novel its volta. The term comes from poetry, where it denotes a shift that sonnets exhibit between their opening octave and concluding sestet or between their first 12 lines and final couplet. - Public Books
Nine PBS in St. Louis filed a lawsuit against information management corporation Iron Mountain Data Centers July 28, seeking to recover over 50 terabytes of archival materials stored in one of the company’s Denver-based data centers. - Current
"There are so many kids growing up in our city for whom Broadway feels as if it is a world away, like something that only belongs to other people. We are together today to prove differently, to make it possible for kids from Sheepshead Bay to Morrisania (no matter how much money their parents make) to...
Given how thoroughly Trump’s leadership has destroyed the center’s viability as a presenting organization, that is probably the best of a slew of bad options. - Washington Post
The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use—and fears about who might be next—are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship, the relationship between writers and publishers and the industry’s long-term survival. - The Wall Street Journal
“Our children are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. For nearly two centuries, the west experienced steady generational progress. Each new cohort of children grew up, on average, healthier, happier, and better educated than the last. Until now.” - The Guardian
RuntimeWire has been operating since May, publishing nearly 2,000 stories that it sources by crawling the internet, including court databases, web forums, traditional and new media, company filings, social feeds, and more. - Wired
During the most foundational period of brain development, social interaction of the sort that AI can now emulate isn’t entertainment for the developing brain. It’s nutrition. Once you see it that way, the right parallel snaps into focus. A more apt comparison than social media is food—more precisely, processed food. - The Atlantic
Search can no longer pretend to be a neutral gateway to a stable body of knowledge. While the web has always been organized around intermediaries that shape what survives online and who sees it, the internet’s archival function is today breaking down under relentless pressure from stakeholders with very different—and often conflicting—priorities. - The Walrus
“Most telling is Claude’s branding, incorporating hand-drawn illustrations and details that attempt to tell the world, ‘Hey, we’re the more human AI.’” - Fast Company
Wow, OK, way to be just obviously evil. “The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands." - 404 Media
In one British McDonald’s, a hot spot for fighting and generally antisocial behavior, “measures were brought in including a playlist of classical music in the evenings.” - BBC (Yahoo)
The 47th president shared "a series of seemingly AI-generated images ... and a short video in which Trump and Washington stroll through the still-unbuilt ballroom. ‘Thank you, George, for some of your brilliant ideas on this great Military Complex/Ballroom!’ Trump captioned the 10-second video.” - Salon
The man who created Maus has some worries: “The media are struggling with how to convey the stakes in this post-truth era, he explains, the courts are packed with Trump appointees, democratic norms have been destroyed, and there is no effective opposition.” - The Guardian (UK)
The booksellers are wondering how they’re supposed to feel. Tey’re "are “uncomfortable with the idea of books being destroyed - even if they admit not every title needs to be saved.” - BBC
“No one wants more uncertainty, and certainly no one wants this chaos. And let’s face it, no one really wants to move from Beverly Hills to Nashville.” - The New York Times
That’s because the Firewerks are dancing in the Moda Center, the home of the new WNBA team the Portland Fire. "I don’t think any of us really knew what we were walking into. We were just excited about this new dance opportunity in Portland,” says one Firewerk. - Oregon ArtsWatch
What if businesses become too good at selling nostalgia? Research I carried out with colleagues suggests that digital technology is changing nostalgia itself. Ironically, by making the past permanently available, companies may be weakening the very notion they are trying to sell. - The Conversation
“Our children are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. For nearly two centuries, the west experienced steady generational progress. Each new cohort of children grew up, on average, healthier, happier, and better educated than the last. Until now.” - The Guardian
During the most foundational period of brain development, social interaction of the sort that AI can now emulate isn’t entertainment for the developing brain. It’s nutrition. Once you see it that way, the right parallel snaps into focus. A more apt comparison than social media is food—more precisely, processed food. - The Atlantic
Search can no longer pretend to be a neutral gateway to a stable body of knowledge. While the web has always been organized around intermediaries that shape what survives online and who sees it, the internet’s archival function is today breaking down under relentless pressure from stakeholders with very different—and often conflicting—priorities. - The Walrus
“Most telling is Claude’s branding, incorporating hand-drawn illustrations and details that attempt to tell the world, ‘Hey, we’re the more human AI.’” - Fast Company
Well, from Apple, in any case: "The pay-as-you-go plan would see publishers paid only when Siri AI uses their content,” which is similar to the Apple News+ model for print (er, digital). - Nieman Lab
Given how thoroughly Trump’s leadership has destroyed the center’s viability as a presenting organization, that is probably the best of a slew of bad options. - Washington Post
Wow, OK, way to be just obviously evil. “The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands." - 404 Media
The 47th president shared "a series of seemingly AI-generated images ... and a short video in which Trump and Washington stroll through the still-unbuilt ballroom. ‘Thank you, George, for some of your brilliant ideas on this great Military Complex/Ballroom!’ Trump captioned the 10-second video.” - Salon
“No one wants more uncertainty, and certainly no one wants this chaos. And let’s face it, no one really wants to move from Beverly Hills to Nashville.” - The New York Times
“The trauma of the Holocaust has lived beneath the surface of daily life for decades, too painful to confront. But now second- and third-generation family members are getting access to archives of collaboration. In some cases, it’s opening old wounds.” - The New York Times
Wow: "Administrators later warned teachers there were a ‘LOT of mistakes’ on pages 19 through 36 and instructed students to tear the pages out of their planners before taking them home.”- Salon
In one British McDonald’s, a hot spot for fighting and generally antisocial behavior, “measures were brought in including a playlist of classical music in the evenings.” - BBC (Yahoo)
A Nick Jonas concert “reminded me of an obscure phrase coined by a 19th-century sociologist – Émile Durkheim’s ‘collective effervescence.’ … Individuals who are normally preoccupied with their personal concerns get swept up into a kind of electric, communal intensity.” - The Guardian (UK)
Soprano Asmik Gregorian: “This feels very strange and empty. … It was planned by Markus Hinterhäuser, and we are all here because of him. It feels a bit like a boat without a captain.” - The New York Times
The oldest known brass instruments in existence are two smallish trumpets found inside the tomb of the boy pharaoh in 1922. Seventeen years later, for a live BBC broadcast from Cairo, a modern musician played one. Bad idea. - CNN
BMG is the first significant rightsholder to ink a licensing deal with Suno since Warner Music Group announced an alliance with the AI company nine months ago. - MusicBusinessWorldwide
Scores are more available than ever: in multiple published editions, online in public domain collections, in libraries and elsewhere. But a manuscript, music written in a composer’s hand, has the almost magical power to make even the most distant giants feel near and alive. - The New York Times
In the morning, good news about an art theft from March. Then came the evening. “Thieves got past the alarm system at Messina's Museo Interdisciplinare Regionale (MuMe), and broke open a security case. They soon left with four wooden panels.” - NPR
“The recovered works are Cézanne’s Still Life with Cherries, which authorities said was valued at about $7m (£5.2m), Renoir’s Fish, valued at $3.5m, and Matisse’s Odalisque on the Terrace.” - The Guardian (UK)
In Chicago, a lone statue of George Washington is now surrounded by “Other Washingtons,” which take the form of blue flags bearing the faces of Black Americans who bear the same last name. - CNN
Of international bodies, Unesco is active in keeping a record of the fate of cultural heritage worldwide, but a record is just a record. Its listing of Russia’s and Israel’s devastation of their hated foes is like watching a historic tragedy unfold in real time. - The Guardian
The Matisse illustrations, made for a limited-edition art book, were taken last December from the Biblioteca Mário de Andrade, where they were part of an exhibition presented jointly with the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. Also stolen were five engravings by Brazilian artist Candido Portinari; they have not yet been located. - BBC
The Carabinieri have regained possession of Renoir’s “Fish,” Cézanne’s “Still Life with Cherries,” and Matisse’s “Odalisque on the Terrace,” which were stolen from the Magnani Rocca Foundation near Parma this past March. - AP
I call this point in a novel its volta. The term comes from poetry, where it denotes a shift that sonnets exhibit between their opening octave and concluding sestet or between their first 12 lines and final couplet. - Public Books
The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use—and fears about who might be next—are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship, the relationship between writers and publishers and the industry’s long-term survival. - The Wall Street Journal
The booksellers are wondering how they’re supposed to feel. Tey’re "are “uncomfortable with the idea of books being destroyed - even if they admit not every title needs to be saved.” - BBC
From the editors: “Rather than translating existing work from The Rumpus, El Alboroto will commission and publish original Spanish-language writing spanning cultural criticism, personal essays, interviews, fiction, poetry and comics.” - LitHub
Nine PBS in St. Louis filed a lawsuit against information management corporation Iron Mountain Data Centers July 28, seeking to recover over 50 terabytes of archival materials stored in one of the company’s Denver-based data centers. - Current
RuntimeWire has been operating since May, publishing nearly 2,000 stories that it sources by crawling the internet, including court databases, web forums, traditional and new media, company filings, social feeds, and more. - Wired
For instance: “There’s a seven-minute ... tale of a mountain biker who rushes straight from a race to support his wife who’s giving birth, only to get killed by the very ambulance carrying her—all narrated from the POV of his bike.” - Slate
And now, after an improbable path whose twists and turns even the Roadrunner would have a hard time navigating, it’s a feature film. - The New York Times
"Games on Netflix have had mixed results,” but the plan is to focus on kids and sports, or so it seems. So much for narrative synergy. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
That’s because the Firewerks are dancing in the Moda Center, the home of the new WNBA team the Portland Fire. "I don’t think any of us really knew what we were walking into. We were just excited about this new dance opportunity in Portland,” says one Firewerk. - Oregon ArtsWatch
Claire Salinda: “They finesse, they practice and pretend. And from their tinkering comes their version of right and good. ... It seems not so different from the fiddling I do in my own mirror … in an effort to more accurately portray who I wish to be perceived as that day.” - Los Angeles...
“The past year has seen an explosion of dance on the big screen. Behind some of (the) more technical sequences are dance doubles — professional dancers who step in for the actors and execute the choreography. But what does being a dance double actually entail? And how do performers book these roles?” - Dance...
“(For) this year’s NOW evening of world premieres at Vail Dance Festival, tap dancer/choreographer Michelle Dorrance … is creating a work with … Chelsea Hoy, co-artistic director of Chicago’s Trinity Irish Dance Company, for a cast that includes top New York City Ballet dancers” — who, says Dorrance, “are blowing everyone’s minds.” - Dance...
The drama which nearly derailed the company began in April 2024, when the company members voted to unionize and the then-executive director fired them en masse. That boss has now retired, the dismissed dancers moved on, and their successors — with no resistance from management — have joined AGMA. - The Dallas Morning News...
“A perusal of the archives shows how rich the Dance Division’s history has been, with a roster of teachers and students that reflects the arc of American dance in the 20th century. And the curriculum, a mix of ballet and modern dance, once seen as eccentric, now is the norm.” - The New York...
"There are so many kids growing up in our city for whom Broadway feels as if it is a world away, like something that only belongs to other people. We are together today to prove differently, to make it possible for kids from Sheepshead Bay to Morrisania (no matter how much money their parents...
The production, which had been scheduled for next February and March at Stratford-upon-Avon, is being postponed to a yet-to-be-announced date while the 60-year-old Clarke undergoes treatment for cancer. - The Guardian
“The comedians behind some thoughtful shows (this year) are exploring the vexed problem with a mixture of droll wit and intuitive wisdom." One of them created an AI replica of himself and interacts with it onstage; another recounts how he became convinced AI software was deliberately sabotaging his career. - The New York Times
This past season saw only six new musicals, the fewest in 25 years; the coming season will have at least eight, roughly the post-COVID normal. The shows have eight-figure budgets, and some have music by superstars (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dolly Parton, Prince), while others have familiar IP (Paddington, Benjamin Button, Black Swan.) - Broadway Journal
“When a show becomes a meme, the meme becomes the story, eclipsing the show itself. This phenomenon is here to stay. Thankfully, we’ll always have satire.” - The New York Times
Cell phones are the least of it. Yes, of course they occasionally find people having sex in the auditorium or restrooms, but they've encountered things even worse. - The Guardian
The man who created Maus has some worries: “The media are struggling with how to convey the stakes in this post-truth era, he explains, the courts are packed with Trump appointees, democratic norms have been destroyed, and there is no effective opposition.” - The Guardian (UK)
Perry was “a depth-defying scuba diver and underwater stuntwoman whose reverence for the oceanic world was deepened by tripping out on LSD in a research study that included Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper.” - The New York Times
Heilmann, emblematic of women artists of her generation, “was in her 60s when she belatedly achieved wide acclaim for her ebulliently colored, loose-limbed, often lopsided abstract paintings.” - The New York Times
“Hensley made a clear distinction between a fiddle and a violin, even though they are essentially the same instrument. ‘If you can read music, you play the violin,’ she told The Tulsa World in 1982. ‘I can’t read music, so I just play the fiddle.’” - The New York Times
Admired for both beauty of voice and acting skill, she was also notably brave, handling boa constrictors as Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, appearing briefly topless at Covent Garden in Tippett’s The Knot Garden, and simulating oral sex as the Duchess of Argyll in Adès’s Powder Her Face. - The Telegraph (UK) (Yahoo!)
Theater, dance, and live music artists: how is generative AI affecting your work, income, and creative practices? SMU DataArts and artist Annie Dorsen want your voice in the first survey of its kind. Anonymous, open to all roles and career stages, through Sept 8, 2026. Take it here
New York Theatre Ballet seeks an Executive Director to lead the organization’s strategic direction, drive fundraising and revenue growth, and oversee operational and artistic functions.
The Department of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego http://theatre.ucsd.edu invites theatre artists to apply for a tenured faculty position within the Ladder Rank
The Vice President of Marketing & Audience Development is a key member of the senior leadership team responsible for executing statewide strategies and organizational goals.
Wow, OK, way to be just obviously evil. “The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands." - 404 Media
A Nick Jonas concert “reminded me of an obscure phrase coined by a 19th-century sociologist – Émile Durkheim’s ‘collective effervescence.’ … Individuals who are normally preoccupied with their personal concerns get swept up into a kind of electric, communal intensity.” - The Guardian (UK)
Soprano Asmik Gregorian: “This feels very strange and empty. … It was planned by Markus Hinterhäuser, and we are all here because of him. It feels a bit like a boat without a captain.” - The New York Times
According to the resolution approved by the Trump-allied board, the inscription underneath the institution’s name would read: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” - The New York Times
On Instagram, the composer wrote, "Maybe the show’s closing just might be remembered as the moment that caused everyone involved with Broadway to come to their senses and address the unsustainable cost of producing and running any new show now.” - Variety
No, not by watching Tár. “The very act of conducting—waving a wand to summon ravishing or ethereal or earsplitting sounds—can look like either inexplicable magic or embarrassing nonsense, a kind of tuxedoed air guitar.” - The Atlantic
“I want to see the eyes of the actors, I want to get closer to the emotion - which is what theatre can’t give you. It’s a different thing,” says the Hadestown pro-shot director. - NPR
And then … it was canceled just before the 16-day fest was set to begin. "By Friday, the LA Jazz Fest website had been scrubbed, with only a cryptic message that said, ‘August 22-23. Updated event info coming soon.’” - Variety
Justin Davidson on New York’s Perelman Arts Center and The Shed: “Now the boldest experimenters can take advantage of walls that move at the touch of a button, precision lifts, rooms that shrink and expand, projected images (on) moving surfaces. … Yet the revolution, now that it’s here, feels anticlimactic and overpriced.” - Curbed...
“When a lot of people make a percentage off the earnings of one famous individual, the capacity for denial is vast” — and now there’s a huge, “well-oiled anti-accountability machine” that cranks up as well. - The New York Times
For instance, in one video clip that surfaced after Geno Segers was announced as Hades, "Segers likens transgender people to people pretending they are service animals in hopes of receiving discounts on airfare.” - The New York Times
