Style, as I see it, is much more idiosyncratic and manifests in scientists who may practice in the same field and utilize similar methods, but who nonetheless differ in the way they conduct and produce their work. - Undark

Put simply: Once established institutions lost the privilege to control the public conversation, they acquired an obligation to participate within it, which, so far, they have mostly failed to do. - Conspicuous Cognition

If an AI system were sentient, then the alignment paradigm, whereby AI activities are circumscribed entirely by human goals, becomes untenable. It would be ethically impermissible to subject the interests of a sentient AI system to human-defined goals. - 3 Quarks Daily

Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a number of scholars and political figures have warned of a coming collapse, by which they tend to mean the destruction of the basic elements of society. - The Atlantic (MSN)

While I agree that leaning on a cliché might be a prosaic get-out-of-jail-free card, I do think they get a bad rap. The general criticism is that clichés are lazy, which I can understand. Yet sometimes I feel like this feedback itself is lazy or one-dimensional. - Sydney Review of Books

While liberal arts institutions do have intrinsic value, that doesn’t mean they are entitled to be socially favoured or economically exceptional for ever. A particularly stubborn myth is that liberal arts education has a monopoly on cultivating critical thinking. - The Guardian

The now-former vice president of education and programs at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center is suing the institution and its CEO, Perri Irmer, alleging misuse of public funds, harassment and retaliation. - WBEZ (Chicago)

Performing arts organizations experienced sharper drops in revenue and staffing in 2024 than museums or community organizations. - SMU Cultural Data

Kanal, on the edge of central Brussels, will feature a large museum, multiple performance venues, and an architecture center. It’s 95% complete and scheduled to open this time next year. Yet, thanks to widely expected budget cuts and a particularly Belgian kind of political dysfunction, Kanal’s prospects are in doubt. - The Guardian

“Russia's prosecutor general opened a case against the feminist art group on Friday, November 28. The ‘extremist’ label, commonly deployed by the government as justification for stifling political opposition, would officially ban the collective's activities in Russia.” - Hyperallergic

Arts and humanities scholarship is not an ornament, it is the record of what human minds have made, imagined and endured. To let those worlds fall quiet is to diminish what it means to be human. - Arts Professional

“Based on the available evidence, the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI era—creative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysis—are precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.” - The Atlantic

Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia will boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, after Israel was allowed to compete. - BBC

A soloist was forced to carry her 1782 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin in her arms through the Helsinki airport security and onto a flight to Germany after Lufthansa refused to let her bring the case as hand luggage. - The Daily Beast

I cannot remember a time when there was so much political meddling in music and so little resistance. - The Critic

The conductor joined the company back in 1982 and helped build it into an impressive operation for a city of Sarasota’s size and a company known for having produced every opera Verdi wrote. When DeRenzi departs next May, general director Richard Russell will take on artistic leadership as well. - Observer (Sarasota)

Cellist András Fejér has been with the famed string quartet since its founding exactly 50 years ago. As of next September, Fejér will retire; replacing him will be Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica. - Gramophone

During nearly two hours of argument, the court appeared to be leaning toward the internet companies – perhaps on narrow grounds. - CNN

“More than a decade after his death, the Indian Modernist M.F. Husain is getting the monumental tribute he long imagined. Qatar” — where he lived in exile after repeated death threats from Hindu nationalists — “has unveiled a new museum dedicated entirely to the artist, … cementing his place in global art history.” -...

An avid carver, Décure turned the Catacombs into his private workshop. Outside of working hours—during lunch breaks and before and after his shifts—he snuck off into a side-tunnel to chisel away at three small yet highly detailed sculptures. - Artnet

The Zayed National Museum, designed by Norman Foster’s architecture firm, is one of the five museums planned for Saadiyat Island, the emirate’s purpose-built cultural district. The Natural History Museum, designed by the Dutch firm Mecanoo, features everything from meteorites to dinosaur skeletons to “Lucy.” - The Art Newspaper

The Dallas city government has voted to explore relocating and selling the brutalist city hall designed by architect IM Pei, placing the building under increased threat of demolition. - Dezeen

All in all, an exhausting year. But—if you’ll permit me—a bit of hope? For every gallery that shut down or closed a location, another seemed to open. And, as art dealers reminded me all year, when the world gets dark, artists rise to the challenge, leading the way forward. - ARTnews

The Nativity scene by artist Victoria-Maria Geyer (herself a practicing Catholic) is the first new one on the Grand-Place in 25 years, and she made the human figures without faces so that people of any background could identify with them. Alas, that’s not how the assemblage was received. - Euronews

Researchers studied Taylor Swift’s voice as a way of exploring a phenomenon called “second-dialect acquisition,” or the way people learn a new style of speaking. Moving from place to place is the most obvious circumstance that might cause someone’s accent to change, but people’s voices can also evolve when they enter into new relationships. - The...

The State Library of Victoria in Melbourne is Australia’s busiest, yet a restructuring is eliminating 39 jobs — including reducing the number of public-facing reference librarians by 60%. Meanwhile the SLV has worked on “digital experiences” like a rotating 3D model of legendary outlaw Ned Kelly’s helmet. - The Guardian

Oddly enough, the collection —well, the cuneiform clay tablets, not the papyrus — has come down to us today precisely because the Babylonians and Medes conquered and down Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, in 612 BC. - Artnet

I first visited the Northern Arapaho people on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1999. At that time, there were hundreds of speakers of the Arapaho language. Today, there are less than 100, and all are over the age of 70. - The Conversation

His plays were produced and his books were read all over the Western world, and he won the Nobel for literature in 1943. How is it he’s disappeared from our bookshelves and stages? (His enthusiastic fascism certainly didn’t help.) There are still worthwhile, albeit depressing, lessons in his work. - The Nation (MSN)

I learned about close reading when I asked them to take their own thinking seriously—to take themselves seriously. Doing so, I found, forced me to take my job more seriously. - Boston Review

Both restrictions are part of an accelerating clampdown on foreign tech platforms: In the case of FaceTime, Russian authorities allege it is being used for criminal activity, while Roblox was accused of distributing extremist materials and "LGBT propaganda." - CBC

As more shows switch to a weekly release schedule, it gives viewers a chance to watch the episodes as they become available and take part in the same cultural moment, but experts suggest what's happening is more of a happy middle ground between appointment viewing and binge watching. - CBC

“It has become increasingly clear, through media reporting and otherwise, that WBD appears to have abandoned the semblance and reality of a fair transaction process, thereby abdicating its duties to stockholders, and embarked on a myopic process with a predetermined outcome that favors a single bidder. - Deadline

Hedge fund manager Arki Busson is hoping to ride a wave in production studio construction generated by state-government subsidies. His goal: 1888 Studios, the largest such facility in greater New York, on 60 abandoned acres across an inlet from outer Staten Island. - Curbed (MSN)

Netflix showing strong interest in WBD's assets, including making a mostly cash offer to acquire them, coincided with reports that the White House had antitrust concerns, while Comcast, which also submitted a bid, still has to deal with the challenge that President Donald Trump loathes CEO Brian Roberts. - The Wrap (MSN)

None of the late-night hosts Trump repeatedly attacks have said anything nearly as outrageous as what the animated series does, depicting the President having an affair with Satan and siring the Antichrist. Why does Trump never lambaste South Park? Because it has two things he respects more than anything else. - The Hollywood Reporter

Mack, who did two stints as a principal dancer with the company (and got a master’s degree in-between), says her vision is to balance between Alvin Ailey’s own “powerful, visceral” choreography and new pieces by Fredrick Earl Mosley, Matthew Neenan, Jamar Roberts, and Urban Bush Women founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. - NPR

“As with other artistic attempts to track the mind more accurately — like the stream-of-consciousness of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce — O’Connor’s coexistence-of-everything choreography can appear off-putting and abstruse. But O’Connor isn’t trying to be difficult, he said.” - The New York Times

August Bournonville directed the company in the mid-19th century, and his works and style became thoroughly identified with the institution. Yet for some years the RDB turned away from Bournonville toward contemporary ballet; new artistic director Amy Watson is bringing his works and style back to the company’s heart. - The New York Times

“As AI technologies proliferate and become an increasingly inescapable fact of modern life, choreographers are not only experimenting with AI tools, but they’re also creating works that grapple with the potential repercussions of artificial intelligence and the existential questions it raises.” - Dance Magazine

Toronto-based Ballet Jörgen had just begun its annual December tour of Ontario with the holiday favorite when the rental truck containing its sets and backdrops was stolen around 3:30 am Monday morning. - CBC

“Biosensors are devices designed to measure real-time processes and responses within the body, like a person’s heart rate, blood oxygen level, and sleep quality. … Here are a few ways biosensors have been used to expand research in dance medicine.” - Dance Magazine

“The (Times) has been publishing reviews by a number of writers since predecessor Jesse Green was reassigned earlier this year. That list notably did not include Shaw, who joins the Times after a stint as theatre critic for The New Yorker, and a tenure as chief theatre critic at New York magazine prior.” - Playbill

The property was born in the French capital, first as a play, then as a hit film (followed later by the big US remake). But the American musical version had flopped in France — until the director of the Théâtre du Châtelet, Olivier Py, took it on. - The New York Times

Company management expects to reduce its base expenses by £2.8 million ($3.7 million) annually with layoffs as well as pay cuts for some remaining staffers. - The Stage (UK)

Erik Piepenburg: “This year at least six theater productions have used “f*****” in their titles. … Why is a slur that a stranger hurled at me now waving hello from my playbill?” On the other hand, famously gay Black playwright Jeremy O. Harris told Piepenburg to stop pearl-clutching. - The New York Times

“We wrote something, you know, with very open hearts and no political agenda. We just wanted to tell this amazing story, and look what has happened.” - NPR

“He loved his words to the point of mania and yet fretted over their inadequacy, making the mere act of speech seem somehow both heroic and doomed. He caused words to explode like fireworks, dazzling us with their bright, multicolored patterns.” - The New York Times

On Monday, while in New York to accept three Gotham Awards for his latest film, It Was Just an Accident, Panahi was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for “propaganda activity against the state.” Nevertheless, he said today, he’ll return to Iran after his current Oscar campaign wraps up next spring. - AP

Toni Pierce-Sands, a featured soloist in some of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s most iconic suites and a co-founder of celebrated Twin Cities company TU Dance, died Tuesday in Minneapolis. She was 63 and had been battling cancer. - The Star-Tribune

June Squibb made her Broadway debut in the Ethel Merman-led production of “Gypsy” as a replacement for one of the strippers. What would she have said if someone had told her back then that she’d eventually get a starring role on Broadway, but that it wouldn’t happen for another 65 years? - Los Angeles...

While he called the reporting of the allegations “unfair,” Adjaye didn’t address directly the substance of the charges (which he denied when the first reports came out). Rather, he spoke about the effect the accusations had on him and what he sees as the media’s motives in reporting the story. - Dezeen

The actor, who was artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 to 2013, was acquitted on nine sexual assault charges in the UK in 2023. Now he faces three civil lawsuits, two of them by accusers in the criminal cases. - BBC (MSN)

A man of consummate urbanity who lived like a country squire, he was a sportsman (cricket was his game) and a connoisseur of ideas, which he treated with a cricketer’s agility and vigor. - Los Angeles Times