Stories

Is musical drama better suited than film to represent tragedy without manipulating its audience? - Van

"A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a lower court’s granting of a preliminary injunction stopping the law from being enforced until a trial is held in Orlando to determine its constitutionality." - AP

Last week, 6 percent of New York Public Radio’s workforce was let go — with most of the cuts targeting its podcast vertical, WNYC Studios. - The Verge

The scrolls, intact but carbonized and impossible to unroll, came from a library in Herculaneum destroyed by the 79 AD eruption that both wiped out and preserved Pompeii. Thousands of 3D X-ray images were released, and computer scientists took up what's called the Vesuvius Challenge to decipher them. - The Guardian

 “To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” a Best Buy spokesperson said. - Variety

The January festival of new and experimental theater has been reassembled by founder/director Mark Russell, indie production company ArkType, and over a dozen theater companies ranging from La MaMa and Mabou Mines to St. Ann's Warehouse and Soho Rep to the Japan Society and Lincoln Center. - Playbill

The stores will sell merchandise based on hit Netflix shows, so you can finally snag that Lincoln Lawyer coffee mug you’ve always dreamed of. - Engadget

In 1989, a group of thieves disabled an alarm system and broke into the Haggs Castle Museum of Childhood and stole a cache of items, all missing until now. Robert Gemmell Hutchison's painting Children Wading (1918) was located after being consigned to a Yorkshire auction house by unsuspecting owners. - BBC

"In this, the 148th season of the company, the tiny core of remaining artists" – most of them escaped to Lithuania and are touring Europe to earn cash – "is battling on in Kharkiv to bring live music, song and dance to the city." - The Guardian

The city's own Baroque-instrument ensembles seem to run out of energy and money after no more than ten years. (The venerable Music of the Baroque persists in playing modern instruments.) But Cleveland-based Apollo's Fire now has a growing concert season and school residency in Chicago. - Chicago Sun-Times

"An audit showing unpaid bills. More than half of CapRadio’s board later resigned. Potential conflicts of interest came to light. News from competitors ... was how staff members said they often first learned about each instance. ... Sadness, worry and exhaustion poured out from employees." - MSN (The Sacramento Bee)

"In fact, according to PBS’s chief programming executive, … just one program on its fall lineup was impacted by the strikes: John Leguizamo’s American História: The Untold History of Latinos. PBS replaced it with another docuseries, Becoming Frida Kahlo." How'd they manage that? Separate union contracts. - Variety

The college's president granted that the Review is "a superb literary journal, does really extraordinary work … (but) its purpose is not the education of students." Many former interns at the Review disagree. Others say the college has done little do leverage the magazine's high reputation. - Inside Higher Ed

Pyotr Pavlensky was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and fined €20,000 for broadcasting sex videos of politician Benjamin Griveaux, this driving him out of the Paris mayoral race. (Background: Eight months after claiming political asylum in Paris, Pavlensky set fire to the Bank of France.) (in English) - Le Monde (France)

After Learning to Paint and Patrolling the Ruins of Pompeii, a Robot Dog Is Helping Humans Visit an Abandoned Monument in a State of ‘Curated Decay’ - Artnet