Stories

New Website Tracks Author Events

LitCircle’s database will track author readings and signings, as well as book clubs and literary festivals across the country, and alert readers to upcoming literary programming in their vicinity. George partnered with Patrick DiMichele, a technology consultant and a longtime Volumes customer, to build the platform. - Publishers Weekly

To Promote Themselves, Some Standup Comics Are Switching From Posting Videos To This

“They use (comic strip-style) still frames with embedded captions of jokes, sometimes across multiple images that include longer setups and punchlines — in social media parlance, a carousel.” - The New York Times

Colombian Cultural Heritage Sites Damaged In The Earthquake

The report, published on 14 August, identifies 40 nationally protected cultural properties in the seven departments hardest hit by the disaster that suffered some degree of damage, 22 of which were severely impacted. Of the remaining properties, 13 suffered moderate damage and five were only lightly affected. - The Art Newspaper

Refurbishment Plans For The Kennedy Center Detailed

More than 160 pages of plans, assembled by the real estate company JLL and presented to the board of trustees, outline extensive changes throughout the building. - Washington Post

“Ragtime” Sets Lincoln Center Theatre Box Office Record

Broadway‘s Ragtime went out on a huge note Sunday, breaking its own box office record to become the highest grossing Broadway show in the history of Lincoln Center Theater. - Deadline

Google Now Has An AI Tool To Catch Fake AI Images

“After (a fact-checker) upload(s) an image and enter(s) a basic question, Backstory can automatically run checks to determine whether the image is AI-generated, whether it shows signs of manipulation, and where else the image has appeared throughout its lifetime on the internet.” - Nieman Lab

How The First-Ever L.A. Jazz Festival Collapsed On Its Opening Day

Founder Martin Ludlow, a former City Councilman, hoped that his star-studded multi-day event could ultimately become a peer to the great jazz fests in New Orleans and Montreal. Instead it came out looking more like Fyre Festival, and some say Ludlow was very much the wrong person to organize it. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Many Of New York City’s Most Prominent Cultural Institutions Don’t Pay Fines For Fire Code Violations

The Met Museum, Carnegie Hall, BAM, Lincoln Center, even the Brooklyn Children’s Museum — in fact, none of the 39 institutions in what’s called the Cultural Institutions Group have to pay Fire Dept. summonses. There is, in fact, a logical reason for this. - Gothamist

Soprano Ileana Cotrubaș Is Dead At 87

One of the opera world’s most admired lyric sopranos of the 1970s and ‘80s, she was known for her acting skill as well as her voice, especially in such roles as Violetta in La Traviata, Gilda in Rigoletto, and Tatiana in Eugene Onegin. - Moto Perpetuo

Penguin Random House Suspends New Mamdani Biography Following Plagiarism Accusations Against Author

The publisher has halted promotion and public sales of The Revolutionary: Zohran Mamdani and the Remaking of American Politics by Ross Barkan in the wake of allegations that the author plagiarized parts of numerous columns he wrote as a freelancer for New York magazine. - The Washington Post (MSN)

This Summer’s European Heat Waves Are Damaging Monet’s Gardens At Giverny

Horticultural staff are reporting that some foliage is scorched and many flowers are wilting, though they’ve been able to mitigate the weather's worst effects by careful watering and moving some plants around. Chief gardeners also say they may have to change some of the seasonal scheduling and choice of plantings. - ARTnews

Kennedy Center Management Explains Why That Tarp Is Still There

The fabric barrier and scaffolding put up while Trump’s name was removed from the building’s façade are still in place more than two months later. In a court filing this week, management stated that there is still work being done at and around that area. - The Independent (UK)

A Whole Crop Of Pole-Dancing Shows At This Year’s Edinburgh Fringe

“Pole dance is a big part of the festival this year, popping up in sweaty, dazzling shows right across the Fringe. Not only do these acts show off amazing physical feats, they also tell stories that range from one woman’s HIV diagnosis, to the relationship between a neurodivergent mother and son.” - The Guardian

Some Of The Sharpest Political Writers In 18th-Century Britain Were Fictional

British writers in the 18th century repeatedly invented fictional characters to intervene in the politics and culture of their day. - The Conversation

An Expressive History Of Punctuation

The exclamation point arrived in the middle of the 14th century, bringing what many felt was “a welcome infusion of emotion onto the page,” and was joined, over the 15th century, by parentheses and the apostrophe. - The Wall Street Journal

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