“Obviously, failing and struggling is not fun, but the sense of pride and succeeding afterwards is very, very motivating for me. And I don’t think you’d get that same kick or that same hit from getting a ninety from ChatGPT versus getting a ninety over an essay where you spent six hours in a basement.” - The Walrus

Just because something makes sense doesn’t mean that it’s true. Even valid reasoning cannot establish that its starting premises are correct. Even today, science continues to rely on experience, reasoning, and knowledge passed down by others. Much of the scientific process comes down to how we check our knowledge. - 3 Quarks Daily

Promises of prosperity by Reagan, Thatcher and other advocates of neoliberalism were mistaken because it brought only fragility to previously prosperous democracies. - Aeon

Beyond pushing our concepts of “who” can make art, AI provides a new medium for art experience — it is immersive and participatory.  - Stanford

Landlines are making a slightly abashed return. “The phone itself is a sleek black with gold trim, and the cord connecting the receiver is all coiled up—just like the ones I grew up with back in the ’90s.” - Maclean's

It’s "a nearly three-hour barn burner, racing from event to event with whirlwind kinetic energy. … Nolan’s reluctance to take a pause should, actually, give us pause. After all, Homer’s poem doesn’t just involve a lot of waiting. It is a postwar tale about waiting.” - Boston Globe

Sophistication, one begins to think, is a thing won against the grain of privilege—a substitute for it, a social sleight of hand. A “classy” entertainer is almost never someone from the upper classes; sophisticated people are mostly smart people passing as rich people.  - The New Yorker

What this administration cannot capture directly of the country's culture, it destroys with chaos, making life intolerable for people who persevere in the audacious belief that things like "the increase and diffusion of knowledge" actually matter. - Washington Post (Yahoo)

“The Eiffel Tower closed Monday due to strikes over outrage that female workers were allegedly ordered to leave and stay out of sight to comply with a special request from a traditional Hindu delegation that visited the monument over the weekend.” - ARTnews

A healthy cultural ecosystem needs not just the creation and presentation of art. It needs education, access, discovery, interpretation and criticism, documentation, advocacy, funding, participation, connection, preservation and audience development. - Culture OC

“Bunch's resignation comes at one of the most politically fraught moments in the Smithsonian's 180-year history. ... Trump has sought to purge what he calls ‘improper ideology’ from its museums, while his administration has threatened the institution's federal funding, tried to fire a museum director and challenged its authority over personnel and exhibitions.” - The Washington Post...

In August, the Commission confirmed grants to all but two of the nearly 180 applicants its selection panel had approved. Those two are the Greenville Gay Men's Chorus and Spartanburg’s Proud Mary Theatre Company, which have been told to provide additional demonstration of their artistic merit beyond what was in their applications. - The Post and Courier...

“Many performances will be staged at multiple venues, bringing the NSO to new places and making the shows more accessible to the broader D.C. region than ever before. With so many venues to choose from, we put together a guide.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)

“In her decision, ... Judge Annalisa Torres said that Netrebko and her team failed to prove that Peter Gelb ‘acted with actual malice when he made the allegedly defamatory statements.’ Additionally, the judge concluded that Netrebko’s team were unable to prove that ‘Gelb’s 2024 and 2025 remarks’ were made in retaliation for the lawsuit.” -...

The 116-year-old orchestra’s European debut will be in Barcelona in late April of next year, followed by performances in Toulouse, Hamburg, Paris and Dublin. Music director Rafael Payare will conduct, with pianist Javier Perianes as soloist in Spain and violinist Leonidas Kavakos featured on the remaining dates. - The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)

Zoe Ziegfeld, a carnival performer who plays a snake handler in the Met’s Coney Island-inspired staging of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, tried out a number of snakes for this season’s revival of the production. This time out, she settled on a sun-glow boa named Princess. - AP

Try this site. Though many recordings are from the UK, Europe, and the US, “it’s still quite fun and soothing to set the globe to rotate automatically, and as the reticle nears points on the Earth, it transitions to those new sounds.” - The Verge

“Anderson (1897-1993) won renown as a true, rare contralto with a rich, resonant low range who could also soar into the soprano sphere. Yet from the start, just being an excellent singer was not enough.” - The New York Times

The museum calls it “narrative art,” defined as art “created to tell stories through images.” George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, have also described their collection as “the people’s art.” - Los Angeles Times

The suit, one of four recently brought by contractors alleging nonpayment, claims the museum “actively promoted, contracted, and labeled the construction as a ‘private, non-profit development’ to bypass the rigorous administrative, registration, and bonding mandates of the California Public Contract Code, Civil Code, and Labor Code.”  - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Hungary’s new government has scrapped plans for a New National Gallery that was to form part of a development in Budapest’s City Park (Városliget) aimed at elevating the capital’s cultural standing. - The Art Newspaper

That language has been removed from the website, and the marker in the cemetery has been replaced by a new sign that omits wording critical of slavery and the Confederacy. - Washington Post

"Mayor Roberto Gualtieri presented the recently restored ‘Painted City’ fresco and ‘Great Mosaic’ that were discovered in an underground gallery during excavations in the 1990s of the Baths of Trajan on the Oppio hill near the Colosseum.” The sites are opening on a trial basis, only on weekends, strictly for small groups. - AP

Like Balanchine, de Kooning made images for the mind about the body as it was expressed in the streets of the city. Sometimes, when I watch Balanchine’s choreography, I can’t help imagining “Monumental Woman” and other drawings from the “Women” series flashing behind the dancers as they embody de Kooning’s symphony of flesh. -...

In 1957, undercover police bought a copy of the poetry collection which featured “Howl” at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco — and proceeded to arrest owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti and manager Shig Murao for selling obscene material. Their trial set a major precedent in First Amendment case law. - BBC (MSN)

We appreciate that each of us is a link in a millennia-long chain of language, connected to people over the centuries by the words they bequeathed us. Following where, and through whom, that chain has passed is the business of etymology. - Psyche

“If the past few years of American literary publishing have had a zeitgeist, it has been more like a series of geists from zeits past.” - n+1

Having identified books as the “highest quality source of training data” for Anthropic’s L.L.M.s, it initiated a covert program called Project Panama, defined succinctly in court documents as “our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.” “Destructively scan” means precisely that. - The New Yorker

Writers have been posting on social media that publishers seem to be claiming more than their fair share of some payments. - TechCrunch

I don’t read Pauline Kael to track my sensibility with hers on an aesthetic oscilloscope. I read her because I think she—more than any writer I know, including Agee—brings the whole of herself to writing about movies.  - Hedgehog Review

“Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of South Park to SOUTH AMERICA,” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker said in a statement. “We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount – a Skydance Capitulation.” - The Guardian

The summer’s total was a nearly 30% improvement on the lackluster 2025 season. Notably, this summer’s tally was 9% higher than that of the same period in 2019 — before the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes upended the industry — though when accounting for inflation, this summer ends up ranking below....

In a submission to Britain’s consultation on the proposals, the U.S. government said the plans would be state meddling in the algorithms of American companies that could amount to “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online.” - Deadline

“The lawsuit, initially filed in 2022, was about the profit participation rights for the original Walking Dead series and its first spinoff series Fear the Walking Dead. AMC says that it will pay $120 million to resolve the lawsuit, including $85 million this month, with another $35 million next year.” - The Hollywood Reporter

“Domestic ticket sales from May 1 through Labor Day on Sept. 7 stand at $4.76 billion, according to Rentrak. Revenues surpassed the long-held record set in 2013 with $4.755 billion, anchored by Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2 and Man of Steel.” - Variety

“If the administration’s position was accepted, it would result in an unprecedented, uncompensated transfer of IP rights from news organizations to tech companies,” said Matt Topic, a lawyer at Loevy & Loevy who is representing The Intercept in the case. - NiemanLab

“Located on a prominent site in Rotterdam’s historic docklands, … Danshuis will be the largest centre in Europe dedicated to the production and development of dance under one roof. Open to all ages and levels of experience, it will provide facilities for both professional and amateur dance-making.” - Gramilano

“Why do you keep adding professionally trained dancers to the cast?” tweeted one fan in response to the news that the next crop of celebrity competitors — Jenna Dewan, Julia Stiles, and Harry Shum Jr. — have all at some point danced for their livelihood. - The Independent (UK)

Guillem Alonso and his colleagues trained a new generation of tap dancers, and that generation, in turn, developed its own styles, pedagogies, and companies. They’re still developing them, as are their students. The result is a hotbed of creativity. - San Francisco Classical Voice

In the wake of a beloved production manager’s death in a tragic accident last year, questions remain about how staff and interns manage the intense dance festival workload. - The New York Times

“Since joining the Joffrey in 2013, (Greg) Cameron has brought financial stability to the organization, eliminating a budget deficit and establishing its first-ever endowment, which has grown to approximately $30 million. During his tenure, the operating budget more than doubled from $13 million to about $33 million.” - WBEZ (Chicago)

This past May, Dance Place executive director André Mazelin abruptly fired artistic director Tariq O’Malley and eliminated his position. In July, at a town hall, former staffers, performers, and choreographers gave accounts of severe staffing, management, and interpersonal difficulties. (Mazelin himself resigned in August.) - Washington City Paper

The first, starting previews next month, is Bruce Norris’s Downstate, about four convicted sex offenders, one of whom is confronted by a now-adult victim. The second has less fraught subject matter; in fact, it has almost no words at all. Bess Wohl’s Small Mouth Sounds stars Julia Roberts and Paul Rudd. - The Hollywood...

“The Gate Theatre, which has punched above its weight ever since it was founded above a Notting Hill pub in 1979, is to close permanently next month. The announcement comes four years after the theatre had what it described as a ‘devastating’ 100% cut to its Arts Council England funding.” - The Guardian

We’ve actually grown to be the largest Fringe Festival in the United States in terms of the number of venues being used. This year, we have more than 350 shows at over 100 venues. We’re taking over the whole city, with performances at traditional venues and theaters but also in places you might not...

“What’s more surprising than how gay the show has become,” writes Jesse Green, “is how quietly gay it was all along.” - The New York Times

The aim of this actor’s comedic videos, “he says, was to land on ‘something bigger and onto a new challenge’ - such as theatre acting.” - BBC

What will happen to the stage where Elvis’s swiveling pelvis was kept demurely out of frame, where the Beatles made their American debut, where Jackie Mason may or may not have flipped the bird at the host, where Topo Gigio found inexplicable fame? - Curbed

Through a combination of principled stances and deft political skills, he has kept the sprawling institution on mission and aligned with its public. - The Atlantic

“He played a leading role in developing the independent dance scene through the 1970s and early ‘80s, before going on to direct Ballet Rambert for six years from 1986, and then the Richard Alston Dance Company from 1994 to 2020.” - The Guardian

This year’s laurates of the ¥15 million (approximately $95,000) prize, awarded by the Japan Art Association in the categories of painting, sculpture, architecture, theatre/film, and music, are visual artists Holzer and Goldsworthy, architect Libeskind, actress Blanchett, and 99-year-old conductor Herbert Blomstedt, who was still working until earlier this year. - Artforum

Miriam Alejandra Bianchi, known by the stage name Gilda, died 30 years ago in a highway collision, and she’s since become one of Argentina’s many folk saints, not officially recognized by the Vatican but venerated by ordinary people nevertheless. Gilda’s wrecked tour bus has even become a pilgrimage site. - AP

When she died last month, 37 years later, Ms. Kusama — in her life and her art — was obscured, paradoxically, by too much fame. - The New York Times

At least that was the experience of Maisie Williams - Arya Stark, to all of the many, many, many Game of Thrones watchers out there. - The Guardian (UK)