Artist/software developer Josie Williams created four chatbots, each built on a dataset consisting solely of the works of a great African-American writer: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Octavia E. Butler, and Zora Neale Hurston. A visitor interacts with the bot, whose responses are assembled from that author's own words. - Artnet
Weinberg’s departure is not entirely unexpected given his age, 68, and his long tenure at the museum. But his departure also signals an inevitable changing of the guard that promises to substantially alter the landscape of the museum world — particularly in New York. - The New York Times
He was already a successful designer for opera and ballet (who got his start with David Hockney) when, in the 1990s, he started writing stories about a pig for his niece Olivia. He published his first Olivia book in 2000, and the series became a juggernaut. - MSN (The Washington Post)
The new contract "will increase salaries by 30 percent, on average, with entry-level employees set to receive a greater raise, to $54,101 from $40,500. Employees will also receive a one-time bonus of $1,000 because the deal was ratified." - The New York Times
Morgan Library director of conservation Maria Fredericks: "The glove thing. It just won't die." Grolier Club director Eric Holzenberg: "Every time it comes up, I sigh deeply. And then I give my three-sentence explanation of why it's ****." And the explanation does make sense. - The New York Times
Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch: "I'm not the CEO of Fox News. I'm not responsible for the editorial on Fox News. I don't make editorial decisions on Fox News." Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott: "I don't decide what's on Fox News." (Sure.) - Variety
Studios, agents, and sometimes the talent themselves try to manipulate Academy voters and the press by hiring consultants, buying ads, throwing events, pestering people, staging photo ops, and sometimes even dropping dirt on competitors. - The New York Times Magazine
"The company said it pays out nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music back to the industry. ... These rights holders include record labels, publishers, independent distributors, performance rights organizations and collecting societies ... (but) rarely the artist or songwriter." - Variety
"The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced on Tuesday that its $750-million fundraising campaign for a new building — the David Geffen Galleries, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor — is 98% complete, now standing at $736 million." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
A revered actor in his native Israel, he had a respectable list of stage and screen credits there and internationally, but he was indelibly associated with Tevye the Dairyman, whom he played in the West End, on Broadway, in the movie film, and elsewhere, performing the role more than 3,500 times. - Variety
"(He) has canceled a piano recital at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo due to the effects of a serious neurological condition. … Barenboim was diagnosed last year with the condition, which forced him to step down in January as music director at the Berlin State Opera after three decades." - AP
Molly Johnson has achieved at the highest level in Canada, with the awards to match: “I gotta say I was depressed. It saddened me, initially, deeply, that here I am in this stage of my career and I still can’t really pay my bills." - Toronto Star
The bill would make it defamatory to claim that someone is racist, sexist, or homophobic based on that person’s religious beliefs. This is, in some ways, the bill’s most reactionary provision, because it recasts what courts ordinarily consider an opinion as a defamatory fact. - The New Yorker
More than half the respondents (53.5%) said they were scared of clowns at least to some degree, with 5% saying they were “extremely afraid” of them. Interestingly, this percentage reporting an extreme fear of clowns is slightly higher than those reported for many other phobias. - The Conversation
Using around 90 per cent of the brain-imaging data, the pair trained a model to make links between fMRI data from a brain region that processes visual signals, called the early visual cortex, and the images that people were viewing. - New Scientist
