If the “Internet novel” or “Instagram novel” are ascendant genres in today’s literary marketplace, Tolstoy Together is an impressive nonfiction cousin. It sits merrily on the fence between a type of collective criticism and a commonplace book filled to bursting with clever ruminations and quotations. - The Smart Set
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University collected more than 86.6 million comments from more than 6.5 million users on 200,000 YouTube videos, then analyzed them using an AI technique normally employed to translate between two languages. - Wired
It wasn’t so long ago that people were worried that automation would put them out of work. Ironically, instead, people chose to quit jobs they hated, and now companies are scrambling to automate to replace them. - 3 Quarks Daily
It was the details, many of them none too plausible, that were true; the larger outline of the stories and characters were what was made up. - The Atlantic
It is a series of meditations on the social role of art, the sometimes dysfunctional structures of the cultural sector, and the effect that unexpected, horrific loss – and the necessity of moving past it – can have on a person, a community, and the art created in response. - ArtsFuse
This indigenous tongue of northern California was severely endangered by the early 1900s, and efforts to revive it didn't begin until the 1970s (and didn't really take off until the '90s). Now there are high school and college classes in Yurok. - The Guardian
He has navigated a life with little precedent, one in which a few home-town friends played a pivotal role in the rise of rock and roll, the invention of the teen-ager, youth culture, and the sixties. - The New Yorker
Abby Phillips Maginity of Ballet Arizona was diagnosed while she was rehearsing for her first principal role — and just as the pandemic was getting serious. The first months stuck at home were hard, but, in treatment, with support from the company, she's back at work. - Pointe Magazine
Ian Fleming, who introduced the Bond character in his novel Casino Royale, back in 1953, was a devoted jazz fan. His tastes were a bit old-fashioned, but he was hardly the only British writer to prefer traditional jazz even in the face of bebop and other modernist movements. - Ted Gioia
Oksana Lyniv, the 43-year-old Ukrainian who this summer became the first female conductor at Bayreuth and who last year finished a term leading the orchestra and opera of Graz (Austria's second city), takes over at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in January. - OperaWire
Randomness, like cards or dice, is unpredictable because we just don’t have the right information. Chaos is somewhere between random and predictable. A hallmark of chaotic systems is predictability in the short term that breaks down quickly over time, as in river rapids or ecosystems. - The Conversation
"I keep returning to an unrealized project of the late philosopher, public intellectual, and curator Édouard Glissant, who consistently told me that what matters is the production of reality." - Artnet
"The wildly popular dystopian drama pits the heavily indebted against each other … for an unimaginably large cash prize. But (the) desperate situation is real – (there's) a large and growing number of ordinary South Koreans who find themselves choked by debt." - The Guardian
"Fittingly, the artist (Wolfgang Beltracchi) — infamous for his uncanny ability to mimic the work of others — is making 4,608 versions of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, in a variety of different artistic styles." Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art … - Artnet
Move over, Scott Rudin. As one former staffer put it, "I don't say this lightly. Sharon Waxman is one of the most awful people that I have known in my life." - The Daily Beast
