Stories

Fact-Checker Jasper Lo On His Illegal Firing From The New Yorker

“Why me? I wondered. I had finished my three-year term as the first vice chair of the New Yorker Union the week prior. Condé Nast had violated our collective bargaining agreement and broken labor law dozens of times, but it had never attempted something as reckless as illegally firing union leaders.” - The Nation

How Two Recent AI Publishing “Scandals” Will Changing The Books Industry

Stories like Shy Girl and The New York Times’ profile of AI romance author Coral Hart, who boasted of using AI to write and self-publish 200 hundred books across 21 pen names, demonstrate that theoretical disputes did not prepare us to be confronted with the reality of AI. - The Conversation

Original Dancers In Pina Bausch’s “Kontakthof” Revive The Piece After Half A Century

“Nearly 50 years since that first performance in 1978, Meryl Tankard is getting the Kontakthof band back together. Now a choreographer, she has assembled nine of the dancers (including herself) and adapted the piece to synchronise with black-and-white footage of their younger selves projected onto a giant screen behind them.” - The Times (UK)

How The Humanities Declined Into Crisis

A combination of technological, economic, political, and cultural forces, at work both within and without the university, had by the early 2020s effectively pummeled the tradition of universitarian humanism into unconsciousness. - Chronicle of Higher Education

Duchamp’s Ideas A Century Ago That Still Have Us Debating

I think Duchamp got at something vital about Western culture over the previous 400 years: that an object didn’t count as “art” because of its beauty, its subject matter or its greatness, but because of how it asked us to use it.  - The New York Times

An Essay That Explains Why The New York Art World No Longer Works

Titled “New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art” and published by October, Kline’s essay is a despairing portrait of the city’s art scene. It functions both as an elegy for a lost New York art world of the 2010s and as a blistering critique of all the privilege required to find success here. - ARTnews

Vocal Cortex, A Choir For Recovering Survivors Of Stroke And Brain Injury

“The choir is part of a wellness program at (a D.C.) hospital that uses music to stimulate neurologic change in the brain and help patients with speech, movement, coordination and mood.” - The Washington Post (MSN)

Chicago’s Uptown Theatre Gets A New $46M Home

For almost three decades, the ambitious, history-centered company had to make do with the second-floor of a 110-year-old church building in Lake View — along with dodgy electrical wiring, no elevator, toilets that didn’t always work and no central air conditioning. - WBEZ

The City Of Boston Gets A New Arts Chief

“Many cities are facing affordability crises, lack of access to physical space for creative work, and tighter budgets. It’s more important than ever to have leaders who can engage planning and policy systems and ensure the creative sector is at the table.” - WBUR

Inside The Project To Remake Paris’ Catacombs

Over the past five months, architects, designers, technicians and masons have been renovating this vast tomb — installing new lighting and ventilation systems, restoring the bone walls, and preparing new audio guides. - The New York Times

UK Bans Ye (Kanye West) From Entering Country

“The rapper formerly known as Kanye West was barred Tuesday from entering the U.K., where he was scheduled to headline the Wireless Festival in July, after a backlash over Ye’s history of antisemitic remarks.” - AP

Why It’s So Difficult To Get Our Heads Around AI

Artificial intelligence is both a technology and a theology, and in its latter aspect, it too often resembles a doctrinal dispute among an assortment of shrieking priests. - The Nation

Justice Department Settles Investigation Into Broadway Touring

The Justice Department has quietly resolved a yearslong investigation into possible anticompetitive practices by a major player in the lucrative touring market for Broadway shows, saying it decided not to prosecute the company. - The New York Times

Alternative Conservative Entrance Exam Gains Traction In US Schools

The CLT stands out because it mainly features passages from noted philosophers, religious scholars, scientists and authors in the canon of Western literature, including Plato, St. Augustine, Dante and Shakespeare. Students can take the test at a traditional testing site or online at home. - Washington Post

How Larry McMurtry Convinced E. Annie Proulx To Let Him Adapt “Brokeback Mountain” For The Screen

“Proulx (said) she had already gotten ‘a couple of anything-you-want film tenders.’ But Larry had said the magic word: ‘West.’ Some would-be producers saw a story of forbidden love that could be set anywhere. Larry, like Proulx, saw the tale rooted in one specific place.” - TheWrap (Yahoo!)

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