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

Imagination of a sort is central to all experience. We construct our perceived world from incomplete information, interpreted via inner representations of our environment, that generate predictions of what is actually out there and how it will respond to our actions. - The Guardian

The unique conditions of the Village produced an environment in which genius could make sense of itself and wheat could be separated from chaff. The mid-century Village was a layered, organic, seething society: multiethnic, multigenerational, transclass, ideologically open and experimental. - First Things

My colleagues and I have been looking into what we call the ‘self-insight motive’ and we’ve found it might be more accurate to see it as akin to a personality trait that varies in strength between individuals – some people have more of it than other. - Psyche

Heaven knows there's a ton of social media videos purporting to show that the answer is yes. What do animal-cognition scientists think? - The New York Times Magazine

“The Oscars are a big show that will be seen by millions of people and will bring national attention to Los Angeles. That can be made to be very useful, and it’s worth thinking clearly about how to do that." - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

The renowned music school outbid Temple University for the former Arts Alliance building, very near Curtis's home on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, after an interested real estate developer dropped out. The final auction price was $7.5 million. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

Similarly in San Francisco, hundreds of music and theater organizations (the latter in major decline recently) are struggling to survive despite the well-established fact that they have a beneficial economic impact on the city and the Bay Area. - San Francisco Classical Voice

Criticism can oppose; it can also cajole, provoke, consider, inform, and suggest. More than being punitive or dismissive, public criticism can provide an opportunity to collectively look at a thing differently, and writing such a piece can be a collaborative venture. It can also be interrogative. - Hyperallergic

How do you evaluate something as subjective and mercurial as billboard art? - The New York Times

The city government is facing possible bankruptcy due to a £52 million budget gap over the next five years. Among the drastic measures being seriously considered are winding down and ending the Cultural Investment Programme (which distributes funding grants to arts institutions) and closing three local historic sites. - The Guardian

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

"Daniels, 58, was hired as a voice professor in 2015 and granted tenure three years later in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He was fired in 2020 after an investigation found he had solicited at least three students and shared a sexually explicit video with one." - AP

"Left open are questions of access to and care of the instrument, as well as how often it would be played after the expected mid-March departure of Macy’s from the Wanamaker Building’s retail spaces. Macy’s has contributed toward upkeep of the enormous instrument." - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

What a lot of these criticisms seem to miss is the crucial element: that we can still choose what we listen to. No one is making you stream the lowest common denominator playlists and you’re not forced to let the algorithm direct what you listen to. - Spectator

European Union Youth Orchestra director Marshall Marcus, who's seen a lot of El Sistema's educational work up close, argues that those who denounce the program, its flagship orchestra and its most famous alumnus for providing window-dressing to the Maduro regime are missing the point — and overlooking the good El Sistema does. - The...

The composer’s son, now 83 years old, stored over 100,000 of his father’s scores at Belmont, in addition to photographs, letters, books, posters and more. The scores were held in a digital back-up, but this was also destroyed in the fire. - ClassicFM

"The Center, which houses a sprawling collection in a modernist building, is described on the Getty website as a 'marvel of anti-fire engineering.' The Villa, which focuses on ancient Greek and Roman art, has a well-tuned anti-fire protocol that kept it intact amid the devastation (in) Pacific Palisades." - The Washington Post (MSN)

Same with Bing and DuckDuckGo; the bogus AI images are crowding out Picasso and Braque in the results. The stuff comes from CubismArtwork.com, which also features bot-written artist bios and how-to-paint-cubism-yourself instructions and (because of course it does) sells wall posters of AI-generated faux-Cubist art. - Artnet

Bonnie Brennan, a 51-year-old Michigan native, succeeds Guillaume Cerutti, a 58-year-old Frenchman who is stepping down after an eight-year run. Cerutti plans to continue as the house’s board chairman. - The Wall Street Journal (MSN)

"Normally, a paid version of the service operates at 290 museums across Italy. One of the company Bauadvisor's dog-sitters meets the owner outside the museum and takes the dog for a walk. … This promotional, free version of the service will take place for one day every month … in a different Italian city."...

VR brings clarity to architectural design. While traditional blueprints and 3D renderings can mainly convey spatial relationships, lighting conditions and material finishes, VR immerses users in a realistic simulation of the space. - The Conversation

Fire extinguishers in hand, the museum said, the Getty’s staff scours the sparse ground beneath their boots as well as the canopies of oak trees overhead. They look for embers. - The Wall Street Journal

There's the guy who wrote a love letter to Anne Hathaway and some poems and passed them off as Shakespeare. The guy who faked documents and Teddy Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, and Amelia Earhart. An entire rogues' gallery of Abraham Lincoln forgers. And, of course, the epics of "Ossian." - Literary Hub

"Throughout the study, writers expressed concerns about audiences' reactions to their use of AI assistance for their writing," the authors note. However, the survey results indicate readers didn't find that much difference in the writing samples. - ZDNet

“She’s an actor” simply phases out “actress” and sends it on its way, along with Studebakers, Koogle peanut butter and Red Skelton. It creates no new word poised to inherit the potentially dismissive air that “actress” implied. - The New York Times

He embraced all the stylistic quirks, choppy sentence fragments and run-ons, either darting from point to point like a distracted squirrel or leaning heavily into declarative statements. His voice is overly casual, conversational. - Cleveland Review of Books

The abolition of most forms of censorship, declining paper costs, railway expansion and universal primary education triggered a newspaper boom that saw total daily circulation rise from around 1.5 million in 1870 to nearly 10 million by 1914. - Aeon

The bookseller expects to open over 60 new bookstores in 2025, including five this month. - Geekwire

TikTok’s rapidly approaching deadline represents the end of an era in online life and a strange moment for many—even those who don’t consider themselves ardent users. - The Atlantic

Guilds like the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild under-estimated just how quickly Netflix would take over the industry. Suddenly, most of the work in Hollywood was in streaming. And as the journalist Nicole LaPorte found in an investigation for Fast Company in 2018, little of it paid well. - N+1

These shows didn’t just pioneer ways to teach children their letters and numbers. They created a set of tenets rooted in love – the science of sharing. - Christian Science Monitor

"TikTok, which has 170 million monthly American users, had argued the ban tramples on the First Amendment rights of both the app and its users — an argument that the court ultimately shot down on Friday." - TheWrap

"The lawsuit, filed in December, claims that (Jun) Reina used the misappropriated funds for lavish overseas trips, home renovations, his children’s college tuition, and other personal expenses. CapRadio is seeking $900,000 in damages and is requesting that Reina’s 4,500-square-foot West Sacramento home be placed in a trust." - Inside Radio

GBH, the Boston public radio/TV franchise that owns Cape Cod station CAI, agreed to sell the historic house where CAI has studios to the Woods Hole Community Association, which rallied to buy it for the sake of CAI. GBH, however, says it's still looking for "a more suitable home" for CAI. - Nieman Lab

"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)

"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

Jesse Green, who admits to being one of those New York critics doing the panning, has some ideas. - 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)

"(His films) bridged the mainstream and avant-garde, exploring the sinister recesses of the human psyche — and the mysteries behind America’s white picket fences — with an unsettling blend of melodrama, whimsy and nightmarish horror." - The Washington Post (MSN)

Drake’s lawsuit claims that Universal Music Group ‘chose corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists’ by allegedly promoting Kendrick Lamar’s song with bots and payola. - The Verge

"(He) was the creative force behind the United Colors of Benetton campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s that featured images such as a Pope kissing an imam on the lips, a priest embracing a nun, … and a black woman breastfeeding a white baby, part of the brand’s advocacy for diversity and tolerance." -...

"I can't continue seeing the children of Iranian oligarchs come to spend their holidays in France, even become naturalised," she wrote, "while at the same time young dissidents have difficulty in obtaining a tourist visa to come to see what the country of the Enlightenment and human rights looks like." - AFP (Yahoo!)

The week's issue of New York magazine features a cover story by Lila Shapiro detailing allegations of repeated assaults by the author on women, including an employee and a tenant, in New Zealand, North Carolina, Florida, and England. - New York Magazine