"We invest every year in thousands of ideas and dreams, and only a few make it to the top. So I call it the Silicon Valley of media. We are angel investors of our authors and their dreams, their stories. That’s how I call my editors and publishers: angels.” - Harper's
"Less than 1 percent of movies released in 2022 feature a sex scene. ... When audiences have been conditioned to want only sexless Marvel movies, fully clothed Christopher Nolan epics, chaste action thrillers, and possibly cocaine bears, why take a chance on love?" - MSN (The Atlantic)
Proposition 28 creates a guaranteed annual funding stream for music and arts education by setting aside 1% from the state’s general fund. In 2023, that comes out to roughly $941 million. - EdSource
"Survey data showed that a bulk of (the site's) readers were in the 18-to-35 age bracket. ... To experiment with a new approach, The Conversation launched the Quarter Life series in March 2022, commissioning stories for people in their 20s and 30s." - Journalism.co.uk
Under the increasingly uncontrollable uncertainty of our financialized world, speculation becomes a more productive mechanism to imagine community and collective coping with disorienting volatility. Speculation, in this sense, is not merely a symptom but a structure. - Boston Review
"From familiar character actors lacking household names like Ronald Guttman, Dennis Boutsikaris, and Jessica Hecht, to well-known crossover stars like Bebe Neuwirth, Roger Bart, Billy Porter, and Laura Benanti, Law & Order has always made room for Broadway actors." - Looper
The dreariness of ChatGPT, the soulless works of visual art produced by similar programs seem to confirm that hunch. In the real world, the bots aren’t our overlords so much as the enablers of our boredom. Our shared future — our singularity — is an endless scroll, just for the lulz. - The New York Times
The Finnish National Opera and VR company Varjo developed a "digital twin" of the theater, with sets, lighting, costumes, etc, so that elements could be seen and fine-tuned before workers and material were committed. - Fast Company
A report released by Digital Citizens Alliance in August 2020 found that pirated streaming subscription services are used by an estimated 30 million individuals in the U.S. alone, generating over a billion dollars in revenue annually for the criminal enterprises operating these services. - The Hill
The law firm MinterEllison, a major supporter of the Southern Hemisphere's counterpart to the Edinburgh Festivals, pulled back after several participants withdrew from Adelaide Writers' Week over the appearance of two authors, both harshly critical of Israel and one of whom takes a Putinist line on Ukraine. - The Age (Melbourne)
"(He was) the founder of Catch a Rising Star comedy club in New York City where a generation of stand-up comics — Billy Crystal, Richard Lewis, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Richard Belzer and countless others — honed their craft in the 1970s." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Members of a group calling itself the National Socialist Movement yelled slogans and accosted theatergoers just before the first preview performance of Jason Robert Brown's musical, which is about the false conviction and lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia in 1915. - Playbill
"Daniel Elie Bouaziz ... pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering, referencing a sale of counterfeit Warhol works to an unnamed victim. ... The court agreed to drop 16 other counts," related to sales of fake Liechtensteins, Basquiats, Harings and other works. - ARTnews
"National Public Radio will reduce its workforce by 10 percent as it grapples with what CEO John Lansing says is a 'sharp decline' in sponsorship revenue. ... More than 700 employees work at the public media firm." - The Hollywood Reporter
"Cuts of around £6.6m," made by the cabinet of recently departed First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, "to Scotland's arts and culture sector funded by the state were reversed – but (the acting Finance Minister) warned this was the 'absolute limit' of funding he could offer Creative Scotland." - The National (Scotland)
