The name was given by present-day collectors and dealers; in their Victorian heyday, they were usually called mock or mocking valentines. They were very much intended to mock or offend their targets, and they did so with spirit. - The Conversation
There’s no question that they’ve helped me write. And yet, if I look back over my career as a writer, the value I’ve derived from carefully controlling my environment has paled in comparison to my main source of motivation: scary e-mails from editors. - The New Yorker
In the medieval period, poets had used “coffee” as a symbol (or euphemism) for wine (forbidden in Islam), so praising coffee in a poem was suspect. So was all the fun being had at coffeehouses. Yet both the drink and the establishments serving it had passionate defenders making their case in poetry. - History Today
Is it a helpful shorthand for describing the remarkable plasticity of our nervous system or has it become a misleading oversimplification that distorts our grasp of science? - Aeon
The unique power of literary tradition, unlike philosophy or science, is that literature can respond to its predecessors without invalidating them, can contradict them without competing with them. - Aeon
The wind-down of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has given birth to a new independent, nonprofit organization that looks to fill some of the gap left by CPB’s closure after nearly six decades. - InsideRadio
In 2023, principal Taylor Stanley asked management if they’d permit a male-identifying dancer to play Carabosse; they said no. This year, they said no again. So Stanley went over their heads to choreographer Peter Martins, who’s fine with it. Now Stanley is making quite a meal of the role. - The New York Times
The masterplan forms one of Australia's largest urban development projects and, once complete, will be the country's first major city built in over a century, according to SOM. - Dezeen
Many worry that a kind of “canned” creativity will take over much of what originates from real people today, pushing a broad swath of lab technicians, ad writers, studio musicians, and commercial artists out of jobs and into unemployment lines. - Christian Science Monitor
It hasn’t been easy: some artists are scared to come to the theater, as are many audience members, and some shows have had to be cancelled. (Alex Pretti was shot two blocks from one theater on a two-show Saturday.) Yet performances are happening when and where they can — including, sometimes, in clandestine locations. - Playbill
Institutions foster cooperation by rewarding good behaviour and punishing rule-breakers. Yet they themselves depend on cooperative members to function. We haven’t solved the cooperation problem – we’ve simply moved it back one step. So why do institutions work at all? - Aeon
What happens in a performer’s brain while playing? Traditional brain-imaging tools like functional m.r.i. (f m.r.i.) require subjects to lie motionless in a scanner. Newer wearable technologies, including EEG (electroencephalography) caps fitted with electrodes, make it possible to study musicians in more natural settings. - The New York Times
A.I. companies are increasingly exerting outsize influence over higher education and using these settings as training grounds to further their goal of creating artificial general intelligence (A.I. systems that can substitute for humans). - The New York Times
“This clandestine smear machine seemingly connects some of the most talked-about scandals of recent years. … (Figures are) targeted by mysteriously operated websites that are filled with character-assassinating claims and impossible to take down. In recent months, the origins of these sites have been connected and allegedly unmasked in court.” - The Hollywood Reporter
