Observing the company's worrisome slump in ticket sales and Peter Gelb's announced plans to focus more on contemporary works and reduce the number of performances (especially of revivals), Parterre Box contributor Dawn Fatale suggests further ways to get the FOMO factor working in the Met's favor again. - Parterre Box
Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker's emotional tone. - Ars Technica
Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with the mid-twentieth century, research done in the 2000s was much more likely to incrementally push science forward than to veer off in a new direction and render previous work obsolete. Analysis of patents from 1976 to 2010 showed the same trend. - Nature
The novelist and screenwriter (My Beautiful Laundrette) fell in Rome the day after Christmas. He wrote in a series of tweets that he can't move his arms or legs after the fall and a surgery on his spine. - The Guardian (UK)
"(Michael Langlois's) approach, which combines the close linguistic and paleographical analysis of ancient writings with advanced scientific tools … can sometimes make long-gone inscriptions come back to life. Or it can bury them for good — as in his exposé involving (forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments)." - Smithsonian Magazine
Nadine Dorries tweeted that she's been "blamed for lazy, politically motivated decision making at (Arts Council England), who … pulled this as a stunt to try (to) reverse levelling up and funding being transferred to poorer communities in the north of England." - The Stage
Rosemary Tonks was suceessful critically, commercially, and socially. Then a series of life crises in the 1970s led her to convert to fundamentalist Christianity, destroy her manuscripts, forbid further publication of her work, and even check out her books from libraries and burn them in her backyard. - The New Yorker
Leonard Whiting, who was 16 when the film was made in 1968, and Olivia Hussey, who was 15, are seeking damages from Paramount reported to be more than $500 million, claiming that they suffered decades of emotional distress and lost career opportunities. - Variety
Neither a cult reputation as a pioneer of bebop nor American canonization quite does justice to Monk, who was simply one of the most imaginative composers of the twentieth century, a judgment that in my view does not require the qualifiers “jazz” or “American.” - The Baffler
Mail mattered then, as it had from the beginnings of the republic through the 1970s, more or less, when the falling price of long-distance phone calls and the fax machine devastated written correspondence. - New Criterion
"His prolific career spanned more than six decades, with over 100 completed buildings erected. ... The bold, helical Art Tower Mito in Japan, the Sidra tree-inspired Qatar National Convention Center in Doha and the Palau Saint Jordi, created for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, are among his best-known works." - CNN
The word “information” predates Gutenberg. But once printing took off and books proliferated, new kinds of books had to be invented to track, organize and summarize the relentless flood of data they generated: encyclopedias, bibliographies, dictionaries, multilingual bibles, summaries, herbals. - The Wall Street Journal
"This long-lost urban web encompassed nearly 1,000 settlements across 650 square miles, linked by an immense causeway system, which was mapped out with airborne laser instruments, known as LiDAR." - Vice
The danger of the current moment is a second hollowing: the relegation of even lower-budget productions to commercial oblivion, the ever-widening gap between the spectacular successes and the quiet failures. In a way, the industry has done itself in, aesthetically. - The New Yorker
"Do we want you to argue with this list? Of course we do. That's the nature of the beast. ... No doubt you'll say: How could that movie have been left off the list? Or this one? Or that one? Trust us: We often asked that very same question ourselves." - Variety
The new limitations of his body became an opportunity for renewal. There is a lesson here about what it means to care for the body, to inhabit the bodies we have not merely with acceptance and love, as we are often rightly advised to do. - The New York Times
"Hit hard by a cash shortfall and lackluster ticket sales ..., the (company) said Monday that it would withdraw up to $30 million from its endowment, give fewer performances next season, and accelerate its embrace of contemporary works, which, in a shift, have been outselling the classics." - The New York Times
"What happens when an ad agency and a greeting card company make a TV show?" In this case, Hallmark Playhouse, the Hallmark Hall of Fame (and its 81 Emmy Awards), and, ultimately, the Hallmark Channel and its iconic Christmas programming. - Tedium
Over time, laughter-inducing play transformed into practical uses: Laughter and amusement signified a situation was safe, and positive emotions could be used to help cheer others up. Then, around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago humor evolved to serve more modern applications. - Vox
In the 1950s, TV networks broadcast light operas by Victor Herbert and Kurt Weill. Those pieces are rarely revived now; neither are the comic works of Anthony Davis and William Bolcom, and there are composers today who could write more. We just need a company for them. - The New York Times
