"BoJack Horseman, Fleabag, Veep, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are among the comedies that have left the traditional sitcom form in the dust. … The laughs come with much higher emotional stakes, often juxtaposed with grief, shame, addiction, … and questions about the very meaning of life." - BBC
Creating hypotheses has long been a purely human domain. Now, though, scientists are beginning to ask machine learning to produce original insights. They are designing neural networks that suggest new hypotheses based on patterns the networks find in data. - Scientific American
"Choreographer Amy Gardner used to consistently run into the same problem: When jobs popped up in different cities, whether for Nick Jonas or Neiman Marcus, finding dancers wasn't easy, and casting was slowing down her momentum." So she started Dance Hypha. - Dance Magazine
All together, about a dozen AI datasets vanished—hastily scrubbed by their creators after researchers, activists, and journalists exposed an array of problems with the data and the ways it was used, from privacy, to race and gender bias, to issues with human rights. - Slate
Mayfield, who became a symbol of the survival of New Orleans, and his business partner, pianist Ronald Markham, were given 18-month sentences for diverting $1.3 million to themselves from the New Orleans Public Library Foundation. - NPR
"This (finding) contrasted (with) surveys in prior years, which indicated strong visitation growth for history museums — especially small, local ones." - Hyperallergic
“(The movement is) confront(ing) conditions that workers — from archivists and curators to those selling T-shirts — say are untenable: minimal wage increases, draining resources, lack of transparency from top administrators, and mass layoffs and furloughs resulting from the coronavirus pandemic." - The Washington Post
The ancient Jewish historian Josephus reported that Herod (reigned 37 BC-4 BC) built four temples: the Second Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem and three Roman temples, one each in Caesarea and Samaria and a third in an unknown spot. That is, until now? - Haaretz (Israel)
Less than a week after news broke of Mandy Greenfield's departure from the Williamstown Theater Festival following reports of poor working conditions, co-founder Julianne Boyd has announced her retirement (on good terms) from Barrington Stage Company. - The New York Times
"(The orchestra) turned a $4.4 million operating deficit into a $1.6 million surplus by cutting expenses deeper than revenue fell during the pandemic-struck fiscal year ended June 30. The black ink was the first in five years, a stretch that included a musicians' strike." - Crain's Chicago Business
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr of Senegal has won the Prix Goncourt for La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (The Most Secret Memory of Men), which the magazine L'Express called "the revelation of the literary year … shining proof of the vitality and universality of the French language." - The Guardian
Once streaming services like Netflix tore down geographical barriers, the creators say, the country transformed from a consumer of Western culture into an entertainment juggernaut and major cultural exporter in its own right. - The New York Times
Booker judges pronounced Damon Galgut the winner, praising his novel for its “unusual narrative style that balances Faulknerian exuberance with Nabokovian precision, pushes boundaries, and is a testament to the flourishing of the novel in the 21st century.” - The New York Times
The controversy comes as the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities has dramatically reshaped its policies to focus on diversity and equity and to broaden its reach to serve the entire city. Its $38.4 million budget is one of the nation’s largest. - Washington Post
In 1980, brain surgery left him with no memory, but he painstakingly relearned the instrument, and his own past, and went on to three more decades of innovative musicianship. - The New York Times
