According to results from a 2025 Harris Poll, 62 per cent of American kids aged eight to 12 have never walked or biked somewhere without an adult. Roughly the same percentage have never made plans with friends without adult assistance, and almost half have never walked in a different aisle than their parents at a store. - Psyche

“A lot of mathematicians just find the whole proposal preposterous,” said Joel David Hamkins(opens a new tab), a set theorist at the University of Notre Dame. Ultrafinitism is not polite talk at a mathematical society dinner.  - Quanta

Whether you talk with engineers, venture capitalists, founders or managers, or with doomers, accelerationists, lefties or libertarians, the so-called San Francisco consensus on the impact of A.I. for workers is bleak. - The New York Times

“The internet is getting worse, fast. The services we rely on, they’re all turning into piles of shit. Worse, the digital is merging with the physical, which means that the same forces that are wrecking our platforms are also wrecking our homes and our cars, the places where we work and shop. - Literary Review of Canada

The underlying intelligence of a large language model isn’t a function of its architecture, its parameter count, or the volume of compute thrown at its training. It is not even about the training data. It is a function of the social complexity of the civilization whose language it digested. - The Ideas Newsletter

The paper shows the divergence between the self-serving narratives AI companies promote in the media and how they collapse under rigorous examination. - 404 Media

“Longtime arts and city government veteran Matthew Goudeau has been named San Francisco's first executive director of arts and culture. … To that end, Goudeau will oversee three of the city's most important arts entities: the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts and the Film Commission.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)

“The museum and research center … plans to lay off 53 employees and scale back some programs as it grapples with a growing budget deficit driven by rising costs and lagging revenue. The cuts, announced Tuesday, will affect about 9.3% of the academy's workforce.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)

Billed as Oxford’s largest and most programmatically ambitious academic project, the Schwarzman Centre yokes together seven humanities faculties, along with a 500-seat concert hall, a 250-seat theatre, a black-box immersive performance space, a white-box exhibition gallery, a dance studio, a cinema and a museum to house the Bate Collection of historic musical instruments. -...

The experience of attending, supporting and living among the arts differs in ways that are practical, financial and social. - ArtsHub

What of misinformation that has taken hold, and how can it be debunked? If the misinformation is not going to be widely shared, the best thing to do can simply be to ignore it. Otherwise, however, it is best to get in first, provided our own presentation is clear and sticky. - 3 Quarks Daily

“Every day, patrons are being sold what they believe are valid tickets, when, in reality, they are only paying for a chance that someone may be able to secure a seat,” said John Mangum, Lyric’s general director, who was also joined by leaders of The Auditorium and Harris Theater. - WBEZ

Keith Lockhart, longtime conductor of the Boston Pops, said Wednesday “there is a lot of blame to be spread around” for the turmoil that has engulfed the Boston Symphony Orchestra, noting that the BSO for years has been “living on borrowed time.” - Boston Globe

“These experiences allow people with money but little musical ability to roleplay composer and conductor — for a price. This development flows naturally from this era’s extreme inequality as well as classical music’s precarious state, even in such historically generous countries as Germany. It risks reshaping the art itself to align with the whims...

“In 1944 during the German army’s retreat, the 1719 ‘Lauterbach’ Stradivari violin was looted from the Warsaw Museum in Poland. … The violin’s value is estimated at €10 million. … Now, more than 80 years later, notice has been taken of an instrument which may be the looted violin.” - The Strad

There's a slight change to the all-tickets-for-$11-or-name-your-price scheme for next year: subscribers get first crack at tickets. And what is this "timely" Gershwin show? It's Let 'Em Eat Cake, about a fictional US President who loses his re-election bid and tries to overturn the result. - WHYY (Philadelphia)

The new two-year agreement, effective Sept. 1, includes a 2.5% salary increase each year as well as what are described as “temporary changes to hiring practices” in order to reduce expenses by $2 million. - Pioneer Press (Minneapolis-St. Paul)

Boston Baroque was founded back in 1973 by harpsichordist/conductor Martin Pearlman, who stepped down as artistic director last year. His successor, as of this coming season, is Marc Minkowski, who has amassed an estimable discography with Les Musiciens du Louvre, the Baroque orchestra he founded in France in 1982. - Moto Perpetuo

The sculpture depicts a man marching forward off a plinth while carrying a large, billowing flag that obscures his face. A video Banksy posted on social media shows the statue being towed to Westminster in the dead of night, alongside shots of the nearby statue of Winston Churchill. - The Guardian

“We radically, radically need something new, because old thinking isn’t getting us anywhere. In my 30 years in the cultural sector I’ve never known a situation in which so many major institutions — the National Gallery, Tate — are in such a precarious economic state. If they catch cold, the rest of us will...

“A century ago, the median down ... Park Avenue was much more welcoming than it is today, a place with seating and substantial plantings where you’d consider spending time. … In 2024, (New York City) announced a call for proposals wherein those two lanes would be reclaimed from traffic for leisure and greenery.” -...

“(The move was made) just nine days before the world’s oldest and most important contemporary art fair opens, amid tensions over Russia’s participation and the panel’s decision to bar prizes for countries accused of crimes against humanity.” - AP

It launched in 1996 via a city ordinance that originally earmarked 1 percent of the budget for capital improvement projects for public art. That amount was raised to 1.5 percent for the 2022-2027 bond program. - San Antonio Express (MSN)

The Council of the European Union announced on April 23 that it is formally sanctioning Mikhail Piotrovsky, the long-time director of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The reasons given are that Piotrovsky is “a close associate of Vladimir Putin.” - ARTnews

The three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit wrote that HB 710 enables a “system of informal censorship” and potentially “encourages formal censorship through the legal process. The First Amendment does not tolerate either outcome.” - Publishers Weekly

“(The Guardian) has found a lane in the U.S. news market as a progressive alternative to institutional American media, … backed by a voluntary contribution model that has attracted 700,000 supporters, 500,000 of them recurring. Reader revenue has grown 35% a year for the past two years, with a still-growing 150-person newsroom.” - The...

“Scholars from Trinity College Dublin uncovered the manuscript that contains Caedmon’s Hymn at the National Central Library of Rome. Bede, the medieval theologian revered as the father of English history, recorded the nine-line poem in the eighth century.” - The Guardian

“We’ve had success in blue states that want to protect from book banning at the local level, but these efforts have moved to purple or even red states, to the point of Alaska now moving this forward." - Publishers Weekly

The 6th-century Codex H included a Greek-language copy of the New Testament's letters of St. Paul. Sometime in the Middle Ages, though, the monks of Mt. Athos broke the book up and re-used the parchment. Fragments have since been identified, but the original text on them was considered irretrievable — until now. - Artnet

Adelaide writers’ week was sacrificed to save the 2026 Adelaide festival, an event that ploughs more than $60m into South Australia’s economy each year, documents show. - The Guardian

“The Onion’s plan to take over the Infowars platforms that Alex Jones built into a bullhorn of conspiracy theories and turn them into parody sites was in limbo again Thursday, after a Texas court paused a proposed deal involving the satirical news outlet.” - AP

“Paramount subscribers, in a lawsuit filed on Thursday in federal court, allege the acquisition will substantially reduce competition in streaming, news and theatrical distribution in violation of antitrust laws.” - The Hollywood Reporter

“That is the technical legal term for this: batshit crazy. … Legally there is no basis for removing a broadcast license because you don’t like the program. And if there is some kind of DEI claim here, I really don’t know what that would be.” - Vulture (MSN)

As expected, Brendan Carr and the FCC on Tuesday unleashed license-renewal hell on The Walt Disney Co. However, with another Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha erupting with Donald Trump and MAGAland, the Josh D’Amaro-led Disney is playing it cool and playing along, at least for now. - Deadline

Reviews are now even more crucial than they used to be while ratings have dipped in importance in a world of cannibalized viewing, Jeff Pope told a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch this afternoon in London. - Deadline

“They’ve got the books, and I (have no) desire to debate them over what they say their business model is and how it does not work anymore. But less than two years before, ... they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed.” - The New York...

“I keep waking up every day, pinching myself, thinking I’m so lucky. It feels, literally, as if I’ve just been transported back in time,” says Hart, 70, who joined the company 50 years ago, in 1976. - Winnipeg Free Press

When Leslie Smart took the helm in early 2023, the company’s existence post-COVID was in doubt. She undertook both cost-cutting and fundraising campaigns, and she ultimately raised over $18.5 million and oversaw record-breaking ticket sales; just last week she announced a $9 million investment in the company’s expansion. - Louisville Courier Journal (AOL)

The company’s operating loss for 2025 was AU$4.7 million, down from AU$6 million in 2024. Losses are due to the costs of a temporary venue change; the company’s usual home, the Ian Potter State Theatre in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, closed for renovations in March of 2024 and will reopen this October. - AAP

Clarissa Hard argues that, with no hard evidence of serious sexual misconduct ever revealed, the gifted young choreographer should not have been made a total pariah and driven to take his own life. - The Critic (UK)

“’Usually, when I walk in rooms, people are afraid of me,’ the choreographer Courtney Washington said recently.” - The New York Times

Graham saw herself primarily as a dancer—she made dances, she said, so that she would have something to dance. It could be said that she invented a people and a place. - The New Yorker

Three months after pausing its programming because of financial hardship, the Jungle Theater has put its south Minneapolis home up for sale. The company announced April 30 that it is actively looking for a buyer of its Lyndale Avenue S. building. - Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Renzo Carbonera, an Italian filmmaker, is making his theatrical directing debut with a production (of Jitney) that he says will be the first Italian-language translation of a Wilson play to be performed by a cast of Black-Italian actors in both Italy and the United States.” - The New York Times

The shows that left the biggest impression on me — “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” “Ragtime” and “Chess” — are well-known properties. But these warhorses have been rejuvenated in startling ways. - Los Angeles Times

“(Their) show, titled ‘Official. Unofficial. Belarus.,’ (explores) how art is ‘made, censored, and experienced under authoritarian power and constant surveillance.’ … It’s a provocative and timely subject, made more so by the fact that the Belarus Free Theatre has been in exile since 2020, following widespread protests against President Alexander Lukashenko.” - ARTnews

The play is still the thing for these powerhouse performers, even if drama as good as Arthur Miller’s masterpiece is a rare occurrence in any age. But these actors are after more than a prestige showcase. They’re looking for an artistic lifeline. - Los Angeles Times

Trish Santini — who, as executive director, oversaw the construction, opening, and programming of the Barry Diller-funded Little Island just off the shore of Manhattan — will have the title of co-CEO at the Old Globe, working alongside artistic director Barry Edelstein. - Playbill

“Baselitz pushed figuration beyond recognizable form into abstraction — ultimately, and famously, flipping the medium itself: his experiments culminated in his signature upside-down portraits and landscapes, both genres apt for his unique dissection of masculinity.” - ARTnews

“By her mid-30s, Rose Dugdale had burned every bridge to the world that made her. She gave away her inheritance, stole money from her own family, hijacked a helicopter to attack a police station, develop bombs for the IRA, and played a central role in one of the largest art heists in history.” - BBC

In the past decade, the defining trend among curators has been to shine a light on artists who were previously “overlooked.” Various groups who were once misunderstood, neglected or ignored have been excavated and exhibited — artists of color, older women artists, women of Abstract Expressionism and so on (though “overlooked” is a deprecating...

"So you could also call me a soft Viking. I tend to stay away from crime, but I do like parallel fifths and parallel octaves, so maybe I’m not as innocent as I’d like to pretend to be." - San Francisco Classical Voice

“Dr. Ittai Gradel ... alerted the British Museum and the police after he was able to buy dozens of museum artefacts on eBay over the course of several years. Gradel died of renal cancer days after receiving a rarely-presented medal from the museum in recognition of what its director called his ‘very significant contribution.’” - The...

“From reimagined Greek and Roman classics to the exploration of identity and morality in the suburbs and landscapes of Australia, David Malouf successfully merged his passion for literature, language and imagination with his connection to home to become one of Australia’s most celebrated writers.” - The Guardian