Haven’t critics freaked out about the brain-scrambling power of everything from pianofortes to brightly colored posters? Isn’t there, in fact, a long section in Plato’s Phaedrus in which Socrates argues that writing will wreck people’s memories? - The New Yorker

Broadly, Project Liberty is part of the movement toward a decentralized social Internet, where no single network controls users’ data and users can instead move their online identities and communities from one network to another without having to start from scratch. - The New Yorker

In a lot of awards-discussion movies from 2024, "The directors are using the moments to explore complex power dynamics between characters. These scenes are meant to engender discussion, not arousal.” - The New York Times

Let’s stop complaining about the Oscars. “Awards season is an intrinsic part of the Los Angeles economy, and keeping the major events in place will do more to help those in need than a statement-making cancellation ever could.” - Vulture

Like every major platform in 2025, X has become more like TikTok, prioritizing recommended content from accounts from people users follow. You can still follow people on X, but its new influencer economy demands viral engagement, and viral engagement comes through the For You page and especially video. - Intelligencer (MSN)

For a large swath of the country, the idea of DEI has become a catchall insult. DEI is part bogeyman, part always-there scapegoat for some combination of bureaucracy, overreach, or mediocrity. - The Atlantic

“The main takeaway from this study is that LLMs, while impressive, still lack the depth of understanding required for advanced history. They’re great for basic facts, but when it comes to more nuanced, PhD-level historical inquiry, they’re not yet up to the task." - TechCrunch

But not everyone agrees. “Workers at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema collected just over 1,000 signatures in an ongoing petition requesting the theatre chain pull the film. ... The petition cites the film as being complicit in "manufacturing consent" for actions taken against Palestinian people.” - CBC

“The idea that blandly macho host would become one of the most influential figures in American life would have seemed as ridiculous as, well, Donald Trump getting elected president. Twice.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

“This will be the first time that News Group Newspapers has had to defend itself against allegations that its journalists and executives across the whole organisation were involved in or knew about unlawful newsgathering techniques.” - BBC

“‘Marvel Snap’ players were shocked to wake up on Sunday and find themselves unable to access the speed-battle card game. They were greeted instead with a brief message about the game’s future when they opened the app.” - Washington Post

One fan’s contribution: “Whenever allegations come out about an artist whose work is important to me: I see the moment I learned of them as an inflection point. From that very instant, it's on me.” - NPR

“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. And I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend...

Classical music has long been wandering in the desert of its own identity crisis, and 2016 was an unexpected checkpoint. Overnight, it seemed that artists had sprung into creative overdrive, making works to comment on the moment - Van

No, this is not The Onion: “A group of Bradford City fans will go from singing on the terraces to performing as a choir for a BBC programme called ‘Bantam of the Opera.’”- BBC

Her neuroscientist friend Daniel Levitin believes "that music is a golden thread in the fabric of identity” - and that music therapy could help many other stroke survivors. - The Guardian (UK)

The group was formed out of the ashes of the San Antonio Symphony in 2022, and things looked rosy. But “bitter disputes have erupted among board members and donors. And financial strains have forced the orchestra to make last-minute trims to its season.” - The New York Times

The global music industry hit 4.8 trillion streams in 2024, a new single-year record, Luminate’s 2024 Year-End Report found. That’s up 14% from 2023, which held the previous record. - APNews

Because now, of course, artists and the arts really need money. And then there’s hope. “It’s an important moment to give people a sense that we’re rebuilding, that there’s something to show up for. … It’s crucial.” - Hyperallergic

“Both activities involve storytelling. Both involve putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. And both depend on properly balancing evidence and emotion, comprehensiveness and concision, provocation, and restraint.” - Fast Company

And not just with The Brutalist, either. Recall: “There was a time, in the 1980s, when a writer in a national newspaper demanded that practitioners of brutalism be ‘taken out and shot.’”- The Observer (UK)

“It was an improbable place. An artist collective known as JJU, or John Joyce University, hidden in the foothills of Altadena, resembled a 1960s fever dream of communal living.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

University of Georgia students did not like this sculpture: When it was “extricated from a concrete pad in a cornfield outside Athens for conservation, it was missing 32 pieces and bore decades-deep scars of etching and graffiti, and a bullet wound in its neck.” - The New York Times

“The lawsuit accuses the Broad of failing to take 'reasonable steps to prevent retaliation and wrongful termination against Walker who opposed discrimination in the workplace.’” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

About 63 percent of us read at least one book last year, an improvement from the 54 percent we saw in 2023.Other sources don’t point to a seismic shift in reading habits, so this may be a refined estimate rather than a trend. - Washington Post

The continent doesn’t need the West to “discover” writers. Instead, “a radical shift is underway, transforming the region’s literary landscape from within and opening up possibilities unimaginable to previous generations of writers.” - The New York Times

“A game’s popularity often depends not on quality, Ingold said, but on the whims of the biggest Twitch streamers or the algorithm that drives Steam, the main distribution platform for computer games. Independent studios struggle to break through. Many close.” - The New York Times

As author Brandon Taylor noted on social media, it’s a little disingenuous for The NYT to publish this article since it’s a whole newspaper that could focus more on books. Still, BookTok was special, and the BookTok goodbyes were intense. - The New York Times

Students in Texas are lobbying their state legislature, and one says, "Student voices have been silenced far too long in decisions affecting our educational realities. Our declaration is the product of diverse student perspectives across Texas coming together to envision a future that serves all of us.” - Book Riot

“'It would be a travesty,' he said. 'What is most entrancing in the book cannot be translated into another medium. People keep forgetting that it’s very…. literary.’ And repeated: 'Ni muerto!'” - LitHub

Los Angeles is facing a loss of artists, producers and executives ranging from sound to visual effects. Musicians, and the players behind them, are a vital aspect in that. - The Hollywood Reporter

Is it inherently bad to cater to people who may prefer their viewing on the more casual side? Is it snobbery to believe that TV must demand all of our attention all of the time? - The Guardian

You can praise (or blame) a saleswoman in Kansas City who "built a concession empire in the middle of the Great Depression.” - and changed popcorn’s status from banned in cinemas to practically synonymous. - NPR

Those watching the movie should “expect to see a film that displays the city in a way it has never been seen before — a place where the official languages are Farsi and French ... and the local Tim Hortons serves up its hot beverages in a samovar.” - CBC

In the past thirty years, there have been two - possibly three, if you include Waiting to Exhale. - HuffPost

Netflix made a deal with Imax to release Greta Gerwig’s Narnia only in those theatres for two weeks before the movie heads to the streamer. That’s a bit delicate for Netflix, as its primary audience is, of course, online. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

"Rhythmic beats echoed through the Tunis Opera Theatre stage as dancers faced off at the first-ever edition in the Arab world of a street dance tournament originating in Paris. This year's Juste Debout is hosted in eight cities including London, New York, Beijing and Tokyo, as well as the Tunisian capital." - AFP (Barron's)

The metro Pittsburgh-born Graham spent her teenage years in Santa Barbara and saw her first dance performance — featuring her future teacher Ruth St. Denis — in Los Angeles in 1911. "She talked about how intoxicating the light in Santa Barbara was to her, and she would just run and spin." - Orange County...

Since its founding in 1996, the regranting program has played a crucial role, supporting the creation of new dance works, funding touring, and fostering relationships between artists and presenters. As the Mellon Foundation concludes the program's funding arc, NDP's final grant cycle will support works touring from 2026 through 2029. - Dance Magazine

Gretchen Wollert McLennon, a former student at the company's school who succeeded company founder Dororthy Gunther Pugh in 2020, will depart at the end of the current season. She saw Ballet Memphis through the pandemic and increased main-stage ticket sales year-over-year. - Memphis Flyer

Azara addresses a gap in the dance world: the need for spaces where people who have autism, A.D.H.D. or other conditions that fall under the broad term “neurodivergent” can freely experience the art form. - The New York Times

Several past studies and subsequent clinical experience have shown that dancing can help with the physical symptoms of the incurable neurological disorder. A new study indicates that dancing can also help alleviate the depression suffered by many Parkinson's patients. - The Washington Post (MSN)

So began “a ludicrous journey to making one of the weirdest versions of one of the most performed pieces of literature: a staging of Shakespeare’s Hamlet entirely within the universe of Grand Theft Auto.” - The New York Times

"We would love to put Emilia Pérez on Broadway," said co-composer Clément Ducol. "At the start, (director) Jacques (Audiard) mentioned he was thinking of it as an opera." Added the other co-composer, Camille Ducol, "We’d love a live version, and there have been talks. More to follow." - Broadway Buzz

It doesn't necessarily seem all that improbable, but no, this isn't really a thing. It is, however, the concept of the play Hamlet Camp, which has just opened in Sydney — starring, yes, three actors who have played Hamlet. - The Guardian

Timothy O’Connor, former chief executive of the Harvest Rain Theatre Company in Brisbane, Australia, faces charges from seven accusers aged from 12 to 29; alleged offenses include rape, attempted rape, sexual assault, indecent treatment of a child, recordings in breach of privacy, fraud, common assault and indecent acts. - ArtsHub (Australia)

Writing theatre’s obituary based on misinformation or dismissing the entire art form as a turn-off on the basis of a single theatre visit (nobody writes off all literature because they didn’t enjoy Pride and Prejudice when they read it aged 17) is easy pickings, but is damaging when so regularly repeated. - The Stage

Greg Nobile's Seaview Productions, which was behind such notable shows as Slave Play, Romeo + Juliet, Sea Wall/A Life (starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge), and the upcoming Good Night and Good Luck starring George Clooney, is taking the former Tony Kiser Theater, which will be called Studio Seaview. - The New York Times

"Now 56, she is fresh off a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as Babe Paley in Feud: Capote vs. the Swans. In March, she’ll star in the movie The Friend,” and she also has a new book coming out. - The New York Times

The choreographer of exuberant musicals said, “My goal as a dancer and choreographer is to be understood. … Dance should not be a cerebral experience that the dancers have and the audiences watch. I want dancers to communicate something and have the audience receive the same thing.” - The New York Times

Van Kampen, married to actor Mark Rylance, not only "was the first female musical director at both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre,” but she also composed original scores for Broadway musicals and British productions alike. - BBC

In Farewell to Manzanar, Houston “recounts the more than three years and about 10,000 other Japanese Americans endured at the camp until the war ended. Given its location, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, the weather could be fiercely hot or freezing cold.” - The New York Times

Sánchez primarily worked in "an era when Latina and lesbian artists — she was both — were largely confined to the shadows.” - The New York Times

Until late in life, her fame as the wife/widow of Laurence Olivier obscured from the wider public (though not from colleagues) her own extraordinary achievements on film and, especially, on stage. - The Washington Post (MSN)