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ISSUES

Trump Tours Kennedy Center, Declares It Substandard, Vows To Fix It

“It’s in tremendous disrepair, as is a lot of the rest of our country, most of it because of bad management,” Trump told reporters Monday after he toured the Kennedy Center and met for the first time as chair of its board. - The Hill

American Universities Under Threat As Government Uses Funding Threats

 “If the federal government can show up and demand a university department be shut down or restructured, then we don’t have universities in this country.” - The Hill

OpenAI Appeals To Trump To Let Its AI Feast On Copyrighted Work (Or We’re Dead)

"If the PRC's developers have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair use access, the race for AI is effectively over," the company wrote in its policy proposal. "America loses, as does the success of democratic AI." - Futurism

Trump Moves To Close VOA And  Institute of Museum and Library Services, Which Funds Libraries

One order signed Friday night calls for the agencies — some of which are focused on minority business enterprises, museum and library services, and homelessness prevention — to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” - Washington Post

AI Versus Copyright Just Got More Hard Core: Google Gemini Removes Watermarks

Gemini 2.0 Flash will uncomplainingly create images depicting celebrities and copyrighted characters, and — as alluded to earlier — remove watermarks from existing photos. - TechCrunch

Miami Beach’s O Cinema Responds To Mayor’s Threats

“Throughout the years, we've certainly had vocal audience members or community members who've questioned some programming choices. … But what we have never encountered is elected officials trying to dictate what we should and should not be showing.” - NPR

The Creative Fields Being Decimated, Fast, By Generative AI

Translators, photographers, illustrators: all are suffering, thoroughly. But some still say they use ChatGPT to help with work - and to help with personal tasks as well. - The Observer (UK)

Amazon’s Echo Will Soon Be Sending Everything You Say To Amazon

“Amazon is forcing Echo users to make a couple of tough decisions: Grant Amazon access to recordings of everything you say to Alexa or stop using an Echo; let Amazon save voice recordings and have employees listen to them or lose a feature set to become more advanced.” - ArsTechnica

Trump Wants More Say In Picking Kennedy Center Honorees

The Board, which has been purged and replaced by Trump loyalists, will take up a resolution that says, "The committee will recommend a slate of honorees to the Kennedy Center’s president for approval.” And we know who that is. - The New York Times

Mayor Of Miami Beach Threatens To Oust Cinema For Showing Oscar-Winning Film

“Steven Meiner, the mayor of Miami Beach, has issued a draft resolution calling for the termination of the city’s lease agreement with O Cinema, and withdrawing $40,000 in promised grant funding for the nonprofit that runs the independent cinema.” - The Guardian (UK)

The Deaths Of Gene Hackman And Betsy Arakawa Are A Red Alert About The Role Of Carers

That’s what Bruce Willis’s wife says as she cares for her own husband, who has dementia. “Caregivers need care, too. ... They are vital, and that it is so important that we show up for them so that they can continue to show up for their person.” - The Guardian (UK)

Now, They’re Coming For All Of The Libraries

These executive order-demanded cuts will affect public libraries, museums, the Voice of America, and so very much more. - Politico (MSN)

IATSE Stagehands Protest Show Cancelations At The Kennedy Center

 “Behind-the-scenes workers need to feed our families and have neither participated in any decisions relating to booked content, nor have we considered social issues as a matter of whether we service a production in the history of our relationship at the Kennedy Center.” - Deadline

OpenAI Urges Trump Whitehouse To Allow Its AI To Train On Copyrighted Work

In its proposal, OpenAI urged the federal government to enact a series of “freedom-focused” policy ideas, including an approach that would no longer compel American AI developers to “comply with overly burdensome state laws.” Copyright in particular is an issue that has plagued AI developers. - NBC News

How And Why Did Trauma Narratives Become Ubiquitous?

“You need only look at some of the biggest stories of the past decade to realise popular culture from the late 2010s had a love affair with trauma. … It was the use of trauma as a ballast for plot, not just as a technique to illustrate character, that was so striking." - The Guardian

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