Stories

It’s not like most of these flyers were ever going to be high art anyway. Still, the issue nags at me constantly, whenever I pass one of these synthetic images plastered over the real world. - The Atlantic

Unless impaired by a stroke or dementia, most older people retain their language skills and may even improve them as they steadily gain vocabulary throughout their lives. A new brain imaging study from an MIT-Boston University collaboration now reveals the neural activity underlying this observation.  - MIT News

Rob Bonta, the attorney general, called off the meeting late Sunday, accusing Paramount of acting in bad faith. In a statement to The Times, Mr. Bonta accused Paramount of leaking details of a meeting the parties held on Friday. - The New York Times

The Justice Department was preparing to wage a legal battle more than a decade in the making against the world’s largest concert promoter. Then President Trump called. Settle it, the president told a senior DOJ official, the official later told associates. - The Wall Street Journal

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is expected to ask Paramount to divest some cable channels and commit to keeping its movie studio separate from Warner Bros. before he signs off on the $81 billion merger, people familiar with the matter said. - The Wall Street Journal

The authors’ "plots have to be built on buried grudges and horrifying secrets hidden in the fog and the fjords. Otherwise, how else could they convincingly kill off their characters?” - The New York Times

Since July 30th, more than a million people have clicked on the button accessible on each post. - The Verge

The strategies to defeat AI are getting, well, old-school: “We’re re-humanizing the process with a dedicated hotline (which has the added benefit of weeding out supposed reporters who aren’t in the habit of ringing up strangers.” - Nieman Lab

As Columbia House closes, Millennials and Gen-Xers are wishing for a bygone era of “customer-service runarounds, unwelcome bills and general scuzziness,” all of which Columbia House perpetrated to great profits for years. - Salon

“The group formed in 1999 to bring classical music to communities that may otherwise not have access to it. It consists of three ensembles,” including one that attracts kids to music and “adults later in life” back to music. - OPB

The report “accuses Pierre-Olivier Costa, the recently suspended president of Marseille’s Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM), of sexual and moral harassment, breaching rules for granting public contracts, and putting the southern French city’s only national museum ‘at risk.’” - ARTnews

And the reason that happened (probably not the reason you think it is) says a lot about where we are with ownership and access to digital stuff. - Reactor

“It’s art and science. You can have the best idea on paper, but if you can’t manufacture it, it doesn’t matter. Or if you can manufacture something that’s okay, but not great, it’s not worth it either.” - El País English

But, cautionary moment (akin to making movies about war): “Sometimes the filmmakers, they can kind of get wrapped up in the bad behavior … of the men that they're trying to critique.” Think Fight Club. - NPR

Wild: “Many of the AI generated images have been centred on the Irish counties of Limerick and Wexford, where shaky videos purportedly showed the character wandering through the streets, causing alarm and confusion among residents.” - BBC