The authors don’t actually exist, but are instead names that large language models repeatedly produce when tasked with generating experts in certain fields. - 404 Media

There were ups and downs in the stories I saw people telling, but the trajectory I observed most frequently was an upward one. Growth, expansion, improvement, overcoming. Vacations as burnishments to the image. Illnesses as stress tests, ways of ultimately proving fitness. - The Walrus

The difference between private knowledge, even when widely shared, and common knowledge is not a mere logical nicety. It can unify knowers in coordinated action and sometimes explode a social status quo. - Persuasion

In one moment, you see children playing on the grass, and you are genuinely moved. In the second moment, you see the children playing, and you think how nice it would be to be moved. The latter is the substance of kitsch. - 3 Quarks Daily

In one chat that I share with literary friends, we sometimes joke that after we’re all dead, if historians try to unearth our correspondence, they will find only this sprawling, years-long museum of absurdities. - The New Yorker

In some cases, you need to make it (ever-so-slightly) harder for people to sign up for the program to help them feel like it’s worth the effort, suggests research forthcoming in Management Science. - Harvard Business Review

What’s happening to the New School is an increasingly common story across all of higher education, hit by a perfect storm of financial and political pressures. Well-paid bosses, touting fiscal crises, seek to fire their way to profitability. - Dissent

Nearly all (95%) women working in the arts thought gender inequality persisted, while three-quarters (75%) reported experiencing unconscious bias or sexism, according to a survey of 76 arts professionals. - The Guardian

Across the city, community-based arts education organizations employ thousands of music educators, teaching artists, arts therapists, accompanists and administrators — together, one of the city’s largest employers of working artists. New York’s real competitive advantage is the ability to attract and retain creative talent. But artists need reliable employment, benefits, professional networks and room...

Each new development and court filing in opposition makes the same structural problem clearer: A judge can restrain the board’s actions time and time again, but “if the problem is a governance problem, there is not much that a court can do.” - The Atlantic

The announcement followed an emergency court hearing prompted by a Justice Department filing this week warning that the Kennedy Center could be demolished and potentially replaced with an outdoor amphitheater if the board is not allowed to close the building for two years for repairs. - ARTnews

“Philadelphia experienced the greatest contraction of all of the cities that we were looking at. It has gone from 7 percent of local government coverage of expenses in 2019 down to 1 percent in 2024.” - Philadelphia Citizen

An effective review offers what the concert can’t: an extra-human perspective. By “extra-human,” I mean going beyond the experience of any one person, beyond the perspective of the reviewer and beyond the specific concert itself. - San Francisco Classical Voice

This year Curtis will have 13 musicians entering school under the age of 18. But even at a place known for prodigies, Olivia is unusual. She is believed to be the youngest student to study at Curtis since 1950, when 6-year-old violinist Diana Halprin matriculated. - Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

“The ‘10,000-hour rule’ is one of the most repeated ideas in popular writing about skill and success: put in 10,000 hours of practice, the story goes, and elite performance follows. … A 2019 study … redid the underlying comparison and found practice hours didn’t cleanly separate the best violinists from merely good ones.” -...

“The organization announced this week that it will offer Los Angeles County residents with active Medi-Cal or EBT cards $10 tickets to L.A. Phil performances at the Hollywood Bowl starting with the 2027 season.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

Titled “Symphony Where You Are,” the C$2.3 million partnership with 407 ETR (the company which operates one of the metro area’s major toll highways) will see the orchestra give performances and music education programs in the satellite cities of Brampton, Markham, and Scarborough. - The Toronto Star

“We are writing to let you know,” said AFM Local 6 in a statement, “that the musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra will not be able to perform on Opening Night, September 12, unless management has reached a fair contract with us before then.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art is canceling its planned exhibit honoring British designer John Galliano, which had led to severe backlash in the Jewish community and beyond because of the designer’s past antisemitic and racist statements.” - AP

“She made more than 20 variants of her mirrored chambers, which use light, sculpture and reflection to create a kind of 360-degree celestial infinity. They have traveled around the world and reached enormous popularity, forever changing the types of exhibits that are staged and the way the public engages with them.” - CNN (Yahoo!)

“Two municipal employees in the Dutch city of Rotterdam have been dismissed following an investigation into alleged corruption involving construction contracts. They include work connected to asbestos removal at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, one of the country’s most important museums.” - ARTnews

While the exhibition of the massive medieval embroidery at the British Museum hasn’t yet opened to the public, the right-wing tech billionaire was hosted by the museum’s director of development for a private viewing — for which he is reported to have made no donation — on August 18. - The Guardian

The design is rapidly descending into parody—even as Sauer told the court it has been built so solidly that it cannot be demolished, should the court (correctly) so rule. Just like the “unsinkable” Titanic. The ridiculous grand stair from nowhere to nowhere has reappeared on the prominent elevation facing President’s Park. - Architecture and...

Since her 2018 appointment, Havilah has been overseeing the $915 million build of Powerhouse Parramatta—the city’s most significant cultural infrastructure project since the Sydney Opera House, which opened in 1973 for an estimated cost of AU$102 million. - ARTnews

“The reality is that our reading choices are directed and massaged at every turn. … And who are the persuaders? They’re the booksellers, the supermarket stock buyers, the publishing houses and their ranks of marketers and publicists. And, more recently, persuasion often comes from (social media). How is all this changing publishing?” - The...

“(She) produc(ed) 12 novels, four volumes of poetry, one collection of short stories, and an autobiography between 1977 and 2002. … Kusama’s novels are dark, violent, and, in many cases, clearly informed by her decade in New York, no matter how emphatically she entreated readers to interpret them otherwise.” - Artnet

“Expert Intelligence (is) a feature that allows someone reading an e-book purchased on Google Play's e-bookstore to interact with the title — by asking questions about the book, taking a quiz after reading it, or producing an infographic of key data.” And it respects copyright. - Publishers Weekly

"I have been thinking about this for close to 20 minutes, and I have concluded that human writing is finished." - The Atlantic

Arion bills itself as the only printer in the country that makes books entirely by hand under one roof, from casting metal type to printing pages to binding them together into exquisite volumes prized by collectors. - The New York Times

“Many contributors, especially prominent politicians or CEOs, employ speechwriters or hire a Beltway writing shop,” he wrote. “How different is that from using AI to streamline an essay?” - The Atlantic

“She is part of a lineage that has gone dormant: larger-than-life, carefully curated personas bolstered by their market value at the box office and by how their sheer artistry shapes the texts that end up on the silver screen. These are women like Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Mae West.” - Vulture...

Love it or hate it, with its viewing figures fast overtaking traditional broadcasters’, YouTube is now undeniably a part of the U.K.’s broadcasting ecosystem. - Variety

The movies in the good-because-bad canon are not forgettably bad, like cheesy Hallmark fare or the thousandth predictable sequel in a superhero franchise; they are not skillfully and expensively bad, like botched Oscar bait. - The New Yorker

From its very first broadcast episode on September 8 1966, Star Trek established that its true subject was the exploration of humanity itself.  - The Conversation

Internal documents show Meta knew for years that its youngest users were the most likely to be targeted by bullies, extortionists and sexual predators. - Los Angeles Times

Big, established names are using it to make more money. Non-stars say the number of jobs has plummeted and that they are being tricked into training their replacements. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

The 49-year-old native of Estonia danced with San Francisco Ballet for 18 years, retiring as a principal in 2023. He spent over a decade applying for artistic director positions; now that he has one, he’s excited about almost every aspect of it, even the fundraising. - Pointe Magazine

"Dancing? Banned? In New York?! Not anymore," Hochul said. "Thanks to my administration, you can now cut loose, footloose and kick off your Sunday shoes." - New York Daily News (Yahoo)

“The contests appear to be designed for virality, with young competitors often demonstrating exaggerated versions of popular TikTok dance moves for the audience. Outrageousness seems to be the point of these battles, which have no apparent criteria, judges, or rules. Instead, contestants compete for crowd reaction and are rewarded with attention.” - CNN (MSN)

Rachael Gunn, the middle-aged Australian breaker who went viral worldwide after coming dead last in the 2024 Olympics: “It’s part of society now, if you end up online, people are going to rubbish you, but maybe we need to reframe it as a badge of honor that you’ve actually done something interesting.” - CNN...

“Pandora … was the first woman, an Eve-like figure, created from clay and given by Zeus to Epimetheus, unbeknownst to him, as a punishment for his brother Prometheus giving humans fire. ‘One of the things I was really driven by was the fact that she was an agent of change,’ says Barton.” - The...

For dancers over 40, retirement is close. A new company, WINNDance, is challenging that assumption, and it’s launching with a roster of names that most companies would kill for. - Gramilano

Attendance and grosses have fallen from the show’s early highs, with the show playing to 50- to 60-percent capacity this spring, but the production has seen a relatively long, healthy run on Broadway, as the 40th longest running show in its history. - The Hollywood Reporter

One might argue that Beckett is the perfect playwright for an actor with that condition to perform — especially when the play is Krapp’s Last Tape, which Peter Marinker is preparing to do this week. Here’s how he, along with the director and crew at London’s Cockpit Theatre, are making it work. - BBC...

The play, titled Odysseus, Maeotis (an ancient name for the Sea of Azov), is performed by a mix of professional actors and active-duty soldiers. Says serviceman Daniil Mireshkin, who plays Odysseus. “This combination of myth and modernity allows us to … understand just how critical the question of return is.” - AP

As research, including my own, into this breadth of ancient media production has developed over time, one theme has emerged again and again: as theatrical performance grew into a cultural staple, it was accompanied by the fear that just as art imitates life, so art could overcome reality itself. - The Conversation

“In less than a month (at the Volksbühne), the pool has become a window to the rising power of right-wing online media outlets in Germany, underscored debates over who has the right to cool off in public, … and revealed fundamental changes in Berlin’s working class.” - The New York Times

The generally inoffensive nature of these selections seems to reveal an agency that has trimmed its sails (not only financially) and ceded ground to conservative demands in order to survive. - American Theatre

In works that were by turns personal and political — vividly realistic and unsettlingly surreal — he captured and uplifted Palestinian life and history, creating art that served as a form of preservation as well as resistance. - Washington Post

The only issue at the former obstetric nurse’s trial is whether she deliberately planned the killings (as prosecutors argue) or (as she claims) was in the grip of postpartum psychosis. Yet there’s a crop of true-crime fans on TikTok and other platforms who insist that Patrick Clancy is really the murderer. - Variety

She starred in movies and invested in property and wrote children’s books, sold cake mix and jeans and doggy toys. Dollywood, the theme park she launched in 1986, was an economic engine that generated thousands of jobs in the Eastern part of Tennessee. - The Wall Street Journal

After Indiana’s death, the Star of Hope Foundation began to transform the old lodge as a public art space. But now it plans to put the building and another one he owned on the market as the foundation shifts from focusing on managing the properties into directly supporting art and cultural initiatives on Vinalhaven....

The beloved librarian and host of the kids’ TV show reboot, Threets made news earlier this week when he said on social media “I am not okay” and checked into a psychiatric hospital. Now he has revealed some details of how he’s been suffering and what his diagnoses are. - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)

“One of the most distinctive features of Schlemm’s career” — which ran from the 1940s to the 1990s — “was the evolution of her voice and repertoire. Having begun with lyric soprano roles, she gradually moved into dramatic soprano and mezzo-soprano territory, while becoming particularly admired for her abilities as a singing actress.” -...