The quality of stupidity is just, sort of, there; and there’s lots of it. Could you write a history of happiness, or bad luck, or knees? - The Guardian

We tend to think that we perceive reality as it is, with cameralike eyes that objectively log the light that hits them. But as information from the eyes flows into the brain, it becomes more abstract and subjective. - Scientific American

“In recent years, Americans have drifted away from many of their once-beloved sources of pleasure: drinking, throwing parties, having sex, making friends. Yet they keep coming back to theme parks.” - The Atlantic

Hopwood DePree "grew up listening to stories of the family’s ancestral home in England, but believed them to be fairytales, until he began researching his family tree online, and discovered his Manchester roots.” - The Guardian (UK)

“Paris, the centre of French gastronomy, has never been in more need of a great restaurant critic. Today, the Parisian food media scene has become a never-ending circle of new restaurants hyped for a couple of weeks before the next ones come in.” - Vittles

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion, is a type of cognitive bias where, once you learn about something – such as a word, person or concept – you start to notice it more frequently. - Psyche

We are again confronting a massive attack on the very foundations of democratic education and, this time around, the stakes feel even higher. In the 1950s, the targets were individual teachers—communists, progressives, liberals—and their left-wing unions. Now the target is the system itself. - Boston Review

This year, it will present over 700 shows across its stages, from pop music to Broadway musicals and seemingly everything in between. In recent years, it’s earned more revenue than Seattle Opera, Seattle Symphony and Pacific Northwest Ballet combined. - Seattle Times

Teacher evaluations are a big part of how higher education got to this point. The scores factor into academics’ pay, hiring, and chance to get tenure. But maximizing teacher ratings is very different from providing quality instruction. In fact, those aims are largely opposed. - The Atlantic

Although some devil’s advocates might say that AI use democratizes the ability to create high-quality promotional materials, Agan feels like the aesthetic just isn’t in line with the club’s ethos. - SFGate

“The company claims that the AI Overviews that often appear at the top of search results leave users with little reason to click through to the source, hurting traffic and illegally benefitting from the work of its reporters.” - The Verge

Paramount "sharply denounced a proposed boycott of Israeli film institutions by a group that calls itself Film Workers for Palestine and is supported by dozens of Hollywood luminaries.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

The whole place exudes the ethos of Pärt, whose music demands love and dedication from its interpreters yet almost nothing of its listeners, offering a timeless sound redolent of both the Renaissance and modern Minimalism, and capable of touching casual audiences and avant-gardists alike. - The New York Times

Sadly, “if you put one of the new tapes into an old-fashioned Walkman, it won’t produce any meaningful sound, because the DNA cassette doesn’t use the magnetic signals of its predecessor.” - New Scientist (Archive Today)

Apparently, it’s never too late to live your musical dreams. - NPR

“In the last decade, after academics at the University of Southampton in England digitized the sheet music collection of Austen and her family, more and more people are turning to the music for new perspectives on her life and work.” - The New York Times

“The truth is that the vulgar poptimist ideal of letting people like what they like is also the preferred state of affairs for capitalism — cultural value collapses into market value, so that the amount of money something makes is the only necessary judgment of its worth.” - Jude Doyle

“Despite music in general having long since assimilated the daring qualities of Gymnopédie No. 1, the original piece still catches our ears — in its subtle way — whenever it comes on.” - Open Culture

Herzog & de Meuron has designed a deliberately “irrational” exhibition space, set largely below the Parkway and sheathed in reflecting steel, so that the building vanishes into air (as architects like to say), mirroring the gardens around it rather than asserting its own profile. - The New Yorker

A nonprofit, the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, received a tip that the art was on the auction block in Ohio, and went into action. - The New York Times

And gosh, maybe it can even start to include a fair number of women artists. - The Guardian (UK)

The Trust “said it wanted to increase the average eight-second viewing time for an artwork, as a way of reducing stress and developing emotional resilience.” Great in theory, possibly a huge challenge in practice in front of any popular painting or sculpture. - BBC

From the street, it certainly looks like Kapoor’s work; coming up from the train platform, it looks like something by James Turrell. - Dezeen

A decision to tear up an agreement between the National Gallery and Tate, which has prevented the National Gallery from collecting works created after 1900, could create “bad blood” and a situation in which the two galleries are “at each other’s throats”, according to senior sources. - The Guardian

For one thing, “the real challenge isn’t technology itself, but how technology has evolved to actively compete with the very cognitive processes that reading requires.” - LitHub

"Dictionary content is expensive. … The cost of lexicographers—people are expensive, and the output is low. It is very difficult to justify that just for the sake of completism. You will never have enough staff to keep up. People are too productive in the creation of language.” - The Atlantic

“After 50 years of publishing, Munsch told me, his ability to come up with new stories seems to have vanished. ... Plots used to just appear to him, all the time and almost fully formed, as if they were limitless. But now they don’t.” - The New York Times

But this author wants the settlement money anyway. - Wired

Or actually: “Books about books, or bookstores, or people who work in bookstores, or in publishing, or in libraries, or anything book-adjacent.” - LitHub

Many more now have signed deals with the AI companies which commonly include the use of their content as reference points for user queries in tools like ChatGPT (with citation back to their websites currently promised) as well as giving them the use of the tech to build their own products. - Press Gazette

What changed it all? Chariots of Fire. - CBC

Is a showing of Back to the Future or Jaws something like a ballet company’s Nutcracker - dependable money for a theatre, with a nostalgic gloss for audience childhoods or young adult lives? - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

“The film, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, is about how grief, following the death of son, Hamnet, may have inspired Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, Hamlet.”- Seattle Times (AP)

"In her typical unfiltered, brainy and self-deprecating fashion, Stewart made the audience laugh as she admitted that she actually struggles to watch entire movies.” But the ones she does watch are pretty solid. - Variety

The Vulture post will load if you click this headline, but here is the Los Angeles Times live chat, The Hollywood Reporter’s live stream of the winners, and The New York Times’s live take on the Emmys. - Vulture

"I guess what I’m saying is, you could watch the Emmys, or you could watch some of the other things that were on TV in the last year (and change).” - Reactor

Universally, there is an urgent call for dance’s back offices to approach funding with the same creativity, vitality, and care that goes into artistic decision-making. - Dance Magazine

“Many from the Ballet Nacional are quietly choosing to leave behind difficult conditions: Blackouts that make rehearsal spaces and exercise rooms swelteringly hot. Scarce medical supplies. Pointe shoes stuck in customs for months.” - The New York Times

Choreographer Joshua Beamish is the founding director of Ballet Vancouver, which, like Ballet BC and Goh Ballet, will focus on contemporary choreography. The company will present a home season and tour internationally. - Vancouver Sun (Yahoo!)

Earlier this year, the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), which administers the grant, announced that a lead funder, the Mellon Foundation, would no longer support the grant after this year. - NPR

“I was at the Schauspielhaus Zürich … as the new artistic director. I didn’t have to write a proposal for a piece, and I had a lot of resources. I went into the studio with the dancers with no theme. … What does it mean to have this kind of artistic freedom?” - Dance...

“I don’t feel like I’ve got anything to prove. I’m slightly less wired and my life doesn’t depend on (performing) anymore. It’s like when you listen to an album and discover a bonus track. A Single Man is my bonus track. It’s a nice extra thing that I’m really excited to do.” - Pointe Magazine

Many of the TikToks “deliberately portray as a stereotypical bad boyfriend or spouse with wandering eyes. Some are more explicit, like one in which Hamilton appears to be taking a sexy selfie when interrupted by Eliza.” - The New York Times

“The new-play results nationwide and in New York are very close to parity after all, while the all-play results, which include all the Shakespeares and Dickenses, are closer to the old 60/40 divide we were used to seeing about a decade ago.” - American Theatre

The only truly good news from the report: Performing arts was “the sector with more increased attendance over the past year than libraries, community, and educational organizations.” - American Theatre

Two years ago A24 bought the Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan’s West Village for $10 million; following a thorough remodeling, the house has reopened this week. A24 plans to keep programming theatrical productions in the 166-seat theater, alongside music and a film series with talkbacks hosted by Sofia Coppola. - The Hollywood Reporter

Troubadour Theatres, which already has locations at Wembley Park and Canary Wharf (opening next month), is building the Troubadour Greenwich Peninsula Theatre, which will contain two 1,500-seat auditoriums and is expected to open next fall. - WhatsOnStage (UK)

Opening Night (based on the John Cassavetes film) was directed by Ivo van Hove and starred Sheridan Smith — yet it tanked so badly that it became a theatre legend. Rufus says, “It was really devastating. … But there is something to be said for really going through the mill.” - TheaterMania

Sure, he said that, but what he meant was that he "just stopped doing that particular type of work so could do some other work.” - The Guardian (UK)

“King’s improvisational skills were formidable, even by the standards of a music built on improvisation. ... She would rearrange songs on the fly, and she often slipped from lyrics to scat singing. Her range was equally impressive.” - The New York Times

Rugoff is most famous internationally for his 2019 Biennale, which saw the 79 artists included—a relatively low number for the world’s biggest art festival—each show at least two works in two different locations. - ARTnews

“It just seems like such grandiose gibberish to talk about. I never intended to retire, really. I just stopped doing that particular type of work so I could do some other work. … Looking back on it now – I would have done well to just keep my mouth shut.” - The Guardian

André Breton’s official reason for expelling Dalí was that he was racist and fascist, but Breton also despised the Spaniard’s flamboyant bravado and unapologetic appetite for money. Indeed, to mock Dalí’s mercenary streak, Breton and his fellows made an anagram of Dalí’s name that, today, would surely be his drag name. - Artnet

Matthew Christopher Pietras, a former employee of the Soros family, was found dead in his apartment the day after the Metropolitan Opera learned that his pledged $10 million donation was not his to give. New York City’s Chief Medical Examiner’s office ruled that Pietras died from an overdose of pharmaceuticals. - The New York...