“People just stay very playful for a longer period of time. And it’s cross-brand. You know, it might be Teddy bears. It might be Lego bricks. It might be Transformers. It might be Barbie dolls.”  - The New Yorker

Look to Kant. - Aeon

"The issue goes deeper than presents. I have four kids from elementary to high-school age, and as hard as I try to expose them to life’s realities, they remain sheltered from disappointment and dissatisfaction at every turn." - Slate

"Several of the most fundamental debates about the future and safety of AI remain unresolved. I believe we can’t expect these disagreements to be resolved until it’s too late to change course." - Time

That slide from engineering model to human anthropology is easy to miss. We begin by saying: this is how machines work. Then, almost without noticing, we say: this is what intelligence is. And then, more dangerously still: perhaps this is what we are. - Aeon

Antonio Damasio argues, we “possess the celebrated gift of consciousness because of the continued presence and abundance of your homeostatic feelings.” According to Damasio, the conventional theories of consciousness have it backwards. - Undark

Physical media are really making a comeback in the era of streaming services removing series and movies at (seemingly) random, book censorship, and AI music. - The Guardian (UK)

In addition to established understandings of intrinsic esthetic and historic values of heritage, new emphasis on development reconceptualizes heritage as a resource that can generate economic development, tourism, employment and social cohesion. - The Conversation

The pavilion reopened partway through the 2026 summer season after two seasons of design and construction, then quickly began demonstrating its newfound flexibility. - Architect Magazine

"When they announced the one month notice it was a surprise for everybody. ... It's like the leadership didn't even try to keep it open, and that's why there's a lot of frustration around what's happening. It's just not right." - NPR

"Spotlighting Sony Pictures Studios, Apple, Pinterest and Amazon MGM Studios, all with local offices, protesters demanded that the companies sign on to the 'Business for Democracy Pledge' ahead of the elections in November." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

"As Mr. Trump pushes to close the center for two years of renovations, he is trading the ruby-red Opera House for the 20,000-seat home of the N.B.A.’s Washington Wizards and the N.H.L.’s Washington Capitals." - The New York Times

The gift will allow the symphony to resume the season, which runs through June 2027, and to retain staff, Mark Tillinger, Nashville Symphony’s president and chief executive, said in a news release on Sunday. - The New York Times

The consequences have reverberated across the country. Higher instrument prices are a particular threat to lower-income districts where enrollment and budgets are shrinking. - The New York Times

Instead, it brought classical music to much wider audiences, especially during and just after WWII. - Classical Music (BBC)

For Liz Harris, "an elevated digital profile comes with a range of new concerns – like fake remixes and songs posted with the same titles as hers by bad actors trying to skim whatever royalties they can." - The Guardian (UK)

Screamo isn't it. "Music can manipulate consumer moods. It’s why soothing, well-known songs for the local demo play in the grocery store (so you feel comfortable and familiar), why fancy restaurants play jazz, classical, or piano music (to create a sense of elevated place, influencing a higher spend)." - Ravenous

As the composer turns 90, Fresh Air mines the archives - and it's worth a listen. "I don't work as a scientist. That's not an intellectual - it's not an emotionally rewarding way to work. I was just following my intuition, just following my nose, so to speak." - NPR

The goal is to allow the public and scholars to both search the institution’s collection and draw connections across the Smithsonian and other organizations, such as the Library of Congress, to gain a deeper sense of how communities formed and functioned at the nation’s birth. - AP News

In addition to museum workers, of course, the public and artists are already using AI, which means that AI is already affecting any museum’s digital strategy, ability to attract visitors, understanding of the ever-changing art world, and capacity to fulfill its mission. Avoidance is not an option. - ReMuseum

The museum apparently hadn't thought of adding an audio description to its app, or having more audio description tours, before the lawsuit - despite saying they worked with specialists on accessibility. - BBC

"The great public efforts—the colossal statuary, the expansive propaganda programs, the image campaigns, the attempts to remake the world of living people—have been shattered, defaced, and refaced." - The Atlantic

"Her response to life with a mean and desperate drunk was to cannibalize her old canvases and explode into the pugnacious scale, audacious color, and thrusting verticles of collages." - The New York Times

At least, what the U.S. pavilion could have been. - The New York Times

What are those commas doing there, anyway? By modern usage, they should mark off a non-restrictive clause, but they don’t. Nor are they marking items in a series or natural pauses in speech.  - The New Yorker

That is ... not going well (though romance readers are still gaga for M/M, W/W, and M/W hockey tales from more traditional channels). Fans "see the stories as cheap pandering that fails to engage with female and LGBTQ hockey fans’ concerns about homophobia and toxic masculinity in the sport." - Wired

As Substack has become a more respectable platform and mainstream academics have begun to join in some numbers, they have encountered a strange simulacrum of fields they thought they knew intimately. Cultural and symbolic capital seem to work differently here. - Paroxysms

"When you put your finger on every single book in order to type it into a spreadsheet, you really do think, ‘Am I willing to lose my job over this particular book?’ ... I think that is a real concern for teachers around the state." - The 74

"In total, this summer, 13 Ukrainian books have been destroyed by Russian missiles or drones – a third, estimates the government, of all books printed in Ukraine this year." - The Guardian (UK)

Emerging from Reddit, the subgenre is not fully defined, but "books that get called weird girl lit tend to deal in uncanny or dreamlike circumstances." - The New York Times

"In the coming weeks, NAZA will continue its rollout to theaters across the U.S., and this week it hit No. 1 at the Italian box office, surpassing Avengers: Endgame." - Vulture

"Nithya Raman comes by her Hollywood bona fides honestly. Her husband, after all, is Vali Chandrasekaran, writer on Modern Family, 30 Rock and other TV hits." - The Hollywood Reporter

Prestige movies don't reliably make money on streaming. "It seems like Netflix’s main game plan is to put an increased focus on producing lower-budget series, live events, and sports programming." - The Verge

"Almost every 3D technology cuts something you care about in half, whether it’s resolution ... or the refresh rate and flicker you get with active shutter glasses. But what if you had a full screen for each eye? That’s what video glasses can provide." - The Verge

There's that real energy of the live report of the Chicago Sun-Times, whereas WBEZ has always been a little bit more of an experience. You want to sit down and you want to capture those driveway moments where you really are connecting with people. - Medill Local News Initiative

“David Ellison on Friday shared on X that once Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery combine, the new corporate brand will take the name of the studio he founded 20 years ago. But while that will be the corporate name, Paramount and Warner Bros. will serve as sub-brands.” - The Hollywood Reporter

One man is trying to change that.  "You can come down with your blankets, your tablets, your headphones. You don’t have to be in regalia. You can have your caregivers with you. You can have your parents with you, a support person or persons." - OPB

“This year’s Dance Magazine Awards will honor Germaine Acogny; Ayodele Casel; Final Bow for Yellowface; Cleo Parker Robinson; and Alice Sheppard. The Lydia Joel Award — recognizing behind-the-scenes dance leaders — will go to Alicia Adams, formerly of the Kennedy Center.” - Dance Magazine

“Yes, I am a ballet outsider. I don’t have all the ballet steps at my fingertips but I have a list of ballet steps and I go through them like a laundry list and experiment. … It’s hard to separate the two systems now. I have my own ideas no matter what.” - The...

“Kyle Abraham’s company is now officially the Kyle Abraham Dance Vanguard. It’s not the first time the contemporary troupe has changed names: Abraham launched it in 2005 as Abraham.In.Motion, later revising it to A.I.M by Kyle Abraham in 2019.” - Dance Magazine

A Florence-based nonprofit, the New Generation Foundation, is backing the company, called the Nouveaux Ballets Russes. Parish, a Briton who was until 2022 a principal at Russia's Mariinsky Theater, is artistic director, and he aims, as Diaghilev did, to engage collaborators in the vanguard of art, music, tech, and fashion. - Pointe Magazine

For months, two-thirds of Cuba had no electricity at night. Some neighborhoods in the capital of Havana have been without running water for more than two weeks. Transportation is scarce and eggs, bread and cooking oil are hard to find. - AP News

But Hamilton plays differently now. "The show was written in a time where hope was what we were striving for, holding on to, and the pandemic did a lot to diminish that and exhaust people and scare people." - The New York Times

"Theater is so hard to do for so many reasons," says one actor in the renovated Olney Theatre. He's pleased "to see an actual new facility come up out of the ground, and to see talent and audience members come into this space and relish in the experience.”  - Washington Post

She was laughing, but the X-Files (and current Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf) star told her fans, "It's so distracting. You can't come 20 times and sit in the front row, it's driving me mad." - The Telegraph (Yahoo)

“Bill Pay itself was extremely meta and self-aware, a post-postmodern pageant that would have given David Foster Wallace an aneurysm. … (It) felt like an indicator of where the broader cultural zeitgeist is headed: back to a not-so-recent past where wealthy companies devoted heaping shares of their budgets toward sheer pandering.” - Slate (Yahoo!)

The Yard opened in an old industrial estate in July 2011; it was supposed to be a three-month pop-up but stayed for 14 years, presenting edgy stagings of classics and new work — and occasionally sending a production on to the National Theatre. Now it’s reopening after a £7 million renovation. - The Nerve...

In the 11 years since the last episode of “Glee” aired, one thing has become clear: The TV series was a game changer for musical theater. - The New York Times

Mazzullo was "an Italian actor who for more than 40 years provided the endearing voice of the floppy-eared mouse puppet Topo Gigio, a TV character beloved by children all over the world," not to mention by Ed Sullivan. - The New York Times

Errázuriz was "a patron, adviser, connector and tastemaker whose influence expanded beyond Picasso and Stravinsky to fashion and interior design. She ... opened doors, offered criticism and used her considerable wealth to steer artists toward the work that would make them famous." - The New York Times

She's felt a pretty big responsibility, honestly, and she's proud of the film Girls Like Girls. "We go to watch movies to dream and to fantasise and to see representation that maybe we lack in our lives.” - The Guardian (UK)

Nothing, actually. “No, I'm happy with what I knew then and what I didn't know, and I was glad to get a chance to be an idiot. … You know, I don't mind making these blunders. I learned a lot through blunders.” - The Nerve (UK)

“A federal judge on Wednesday threw out much of Baldwin‘s civil rights lawsuit against prosecutors in the Rust case, finding they are entitled to prosecutorial immunity. Baldwin sued last year, alleging he was the victim of an out-of-control prosecution that wrongly sought to convict him for the accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.” - Variety

The awardees working in the arts are choreographer Trajal Harrell, poet Layli Long Soldier, jazz saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins, novelists Maaza Mengiste and Bryan Washington, and artists Christine Sun Kim, Chip Thomas, Vincent Valdez and Rodney McMillian. - NPR