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On Anniversary Of On-Set Shooting, Prosecutor Warns Of Potential Indictment

A year after Alec Baldwin fired the gun whose bullet killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, a New Mexico prosecutor said in a statement, "No one is above the law and every victim deserves justice." - Los Angeles Times

The Ursula Le Guin Fiction Prize Names Its First Winner

Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, author of The House of Rust, won the prize, named for the legendary Portland author and activist - but "Le Guin was famously skeptical of awards, so designing one in her honor was especially difficult." - Oregon Public Broadcasting

Why We Still Need Physical Archives

For one thing, it's nearly impossible to digitize everything in an archive, or to connect it in context. "Physical documents can help us understand individuals from the past, while capturing the world in which they lived." - The Atlantic

British Arts Venues Feel Desperate In The Deepening Cost Of Living Crisis

"Those institutions which made it – sometimes barely – through the pandemic are now contending with huge leaps in fuel prices, increased staffing costs, reluctant audiences and the logistical and cost hangovers of Brexit." - The Guardian (UK)

New Yorker Art Critic Peter Schjeldahl Has Died At 80

Schjeldahl was a poet, art lover and sometime artist before he became an art critic. The Fourth of July parties he and wife Brooke Alderson threw were legendary. As a critic, "He was first and foremost a visual pleasure seeker, on the prowl for new thrills." - The New York Times

When The Stories We Tell About History Change… An Existential Crisis

Though the true past is fixed and unrevisable, stories about that past are not. Palaeontologists understand these stories as theories, but their audiences often experience them in the same ways they would experience fictional tales – as narratives that shift with mood and politics and time.  - Aeon

What Scientists Are Learning About Language From The Grammar Of Artificial Intelligence

The overwhelming majority of the output of these AI language models is grammatically correct. And yet, there are no grammar templates or rules hardwired into them – they rely on linguistic experience alone, messy as it may be. - The Conversation

The Growing Book-Banning Coalition

Predicated on “protecting our kids” from the “scourge” of sexual progressivism, the anti-democratic right is forming a powerful religious alliance against secular liberalism.  - The New Republic

How Social Media Is Changing How We Engage With Art

The internet has always had an expansive capacity to reach some pretty strange and inexplicable places, but with the ever-evolving nature of social media, its strangeness is more readily available than ever before. - ArtsHub

Criticize The Show You’re In? What Does It Accomplish?

Is the mainstream media the place to debate the process of theatremaking? Or does honesty, however it cuts, break the compact of the rehearsal room, of the backstage? - The Stage

When An Actor Criticizes The Show They’re In…

I’ve had artists and members of the theater community reach out after a review — yes, even ones where I didn’t care much for the show — and extend grace and understanding for my point of view on their work. As I sit here, I can’t fathom why some can’t extend that same hand to their colleague. - Seattle...

This Play About Abortion And Birth Control Is A Century Old And In Yiddish

Lena Brown's play Sonia Itelson, or, A child, a Child was written, and set in, the 1910s; it was almost certainly not produced then, being against the same anti-obscenity laws under which Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger were prosecuted.  Then it sat in a drawer for decades, until ... - Tablet

Is The Live Entertainment Capital Of America Really Branson?

Few places in the country host a professional show-business destination as quirky and expansive as this Missouri mountain town a few dozen miles north of the Arkansas border. Singer Andy Williams opened a theater here. So did comedian Yakov Smirnoff. - Washington Post

A High School Kid Paints A Mural, And Some Parents Freak Out, Alleging Hidden Anti-Christian And Satanic Messages

"School district officials and a high school student in Michigan have drawn the ire of parents who allege that a painted mural contains LGBTQ propaganda, a depiction of Satan and a message of witchcraft. The painting covers a wall inside a teen health center (in southwestern Michigan)." - NPR

Chess Computers Are Now So Dominant, Are Humans Even A Factor In High-Level Play?

In an era when chess engines entirely dominate the game—when they’ve so monopolized human players’ thinking, strategy, and preparation that chess has, in certain ways, come to resemble poker—is it really possible to disentangle creativity from computing? - The Atlantic

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