“The brain initiates voluntary action unconsciously: our conscious sense that we have decided to act is actually the result of this brain activity.” It’s possible that our only choice is in deciding not to do something. - 3 Quarks
Some companies have embraced outright celebration; a few are pointedly grappling with what they see as troubling issues in the country’s history and present. Many are highlighting the huge body of American choreographic work, both ballet and modern/contemporary. - Dance Magazine
“The Kossuth radio station and M1, Hungary’s main public television channel, had halted transmission by Tuesday afternoon, with the latter showing the message: ‘Public media should not lie. We are sorry for doing it for so long.’” For the time being, Kossuth is rebroadcasting public radio’s classical-music channel. - The Guardian
“Since the (Sam Bankman-Fried/FTX) scandal, the movement’s organizations have shied away from the limelight and become extremely concerned with PR. For several years, their growth has been severely curtailed. But they survived. And the new AI money has given EA a chance to come back larger than ever before.” - New York Magazine
Dar al Funoon, located in the starchitect-heavy Saadiyat Island cultural district — alongside the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (also by Gehry), the Zayed National Museum (Foster + Partners), the Louvre Abu Dhabi (Jean Nouvel) and others — will contain a 2,000-seat performance hall, a 3,500-seat open-air amphitheatre, a 400-seat theatre and a 250-seat jazz venue. - Dezeen
“The tents are the new home of the Gaza branch of Palestine’s national conservatory, dedicated to teaching classical, popular and traditional music. The institution, founded in 1993, once enjoyed well-equipped offices in Gaza City, three pianos and storerooms full of instruments and musical scores.” - The Guardian
And, for balance, this report also includes on-the-record favorable comments from one high-level staffer who worked with Sharif at Arena — Reggie D. White. who followed Sharif to DC from the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. - DC Theater Arts
“Ending months of speculation, the New Museum said today that it has selected Massimiliano Gioni, its artistic director, to be its next director. Gioni has been with the New York standby since 2006, and will take the helm in August. Its previous leader, Lisa Phillips, announced her retirement last September.” - Artnet
Her deadpan performances in Woody Allen’s early films (she was his second wife) first brought her to public notice, but she achieved real fame as the pigtailed, gingham-wearing, put-upon suburban heroine of Norman Lear’s soap opera parody Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which aired 325 episodes over its 18-month run in 1976-77. - Deadline
“Richard Heffner’s The Open Mind, the gleefully eggheaded talk show on which Martin Luther King Jr gave his first sit-down televised interview — continues to soldier on,” with grandson Alexander Heffner hosting since Richard’s death in 2013. - The Hollywood Reporter
Why should a name matter so much? Psychologists have a term that might help explain what’s happening here: prestige bias. Developed by the cultural evolution theorists Joseph Henrich and Francisco J Gil-White, the concept describes the human tendency to preferentially attend to, learn from, and value the outputs of high-status individuals. - Psyche
Such an opportunity was bound to present itself to the director of San Francisco Ballet in the 2020s. It’s no surprise that she took the opportunity — but what she has to say about the experience, while quite perspicacious, isn’t much of a surprise either. - The Times (UK)
“These new rules cross a line,” claims the streaming giant. “They attempt to fix in law the exact genre balance of our slate, constrain our ability to back other types of French works – drama, comedy, unscripted – and do so only for streamers, while traditional broadcasters are spared.” - Deadline
The report often doesn’t even bother to engage with many of the claims it ridicules — like obvious and well-documented facts about anti-Chinese sentiment in post-Civil War America — or takes them as self-evident proof that the Smithsonian is misrepresenting history. - Washington Post
The problem is that not only does AI train on human writing, but humans are stylistically influenced by AI, the interplay creating a kind of linguistic hall of mirrors. Short of an author admitting it, it’s hard to say for certain whether an individual piece of writing is AI or not. That uncertainty is a recipe for paranoia. -...
