AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Australia, Like Most Places, Has A Dwindling Number Of Drive-In Movie Theatres
In Melbourne, there’s one hold-out. “The drive-in demands little of its audience. You can lie down, walk around, talk and sing without fear of being hushed. Parents feel at ease bringing newborns, and dogs can curl up beside their owners.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Don’t Be Fooled By The Emmy Nomination For SubwayTakes
“The Emmy nod isn’t, in itself, a milestone. What it actually represents is much smaller: a win for YouTube’s awards campaigning, confined for now to a category that’s spent most of its existence as the Emmys’ junk drawer.” – Vulture
- How Theatre Created, Then Recreated, The ‘Rocky Horror’ Mad Scientist Lab
“A slapdash seediness has been embedded in the musical’s aesthetic DNA ever since it started in 1973 in a tiny upstairs space at the Royal Court Theater in London.” – The New York Times
- What Sepideh Moafi Brought To The Pitt
“The Iranian American actor drew from her own childhood experiences and advocacy work as an ambassador with the International Rescue Committee to shape Dr. Al-Hashimi into who audiences get to know onscreen.” – HuffPost
- Designer Error, By About 10,000 Miles
Sydney, Australia, has an Allianz soccer stadium, and so does Munich, Germany. Guess which one appears on the Sydney Marathon medal? – The Guardian (UK)
ISSUES
- Designer Error, By About 10,000 Miles
Sydney, Australia, has an Allianz soccer stadium, and so does Munich, Germany. Guess which one appears on the Sydney Marathon medal? – The Guardian (UK)
- The Smithsonian Plan For A Latinx Museum Avoids A Congressional Vote
“The Smithsonian Institution has called a board meeting to discuss giving one of its current buildings to the National Museum of the American Latino, which would bypass the need for congressional approval for a new site.” – The New York Times
- Behold America’s First-Ever Jellyfish Museum
“The private Jellyfish Museum in Pompano Beach, Florida, just north of Fort Lauderdale, … was created by Alex and Yana Yanovsky, who previously developed successful aquariums in Ukraine, including their first jellyfish museum in Kyiv. The couple left those facilities behind when they fled Ukraine following the 2022 Russian invasion.” – AP
- The Growing Threat Of Cyberattacks On Museums
We live in a time when digital systems underpin everything from ticketing to surveillance and building access. Sidelining cybersecurity leaves museums vulnerable to attacks that could threaten both their finances and their collections. – The Conversation
- Institute Of Contemporary Art San Diego Lays Off Nearly Half Its Employees
The ICA San Diego (not to be confused with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego) is reducing its staff from 19 to 11, including almost all senior management and public-facing workers. The head curator position was eliminated last month. – The San Diego Union-Tribune
MEDIA
- The Mayor Of Los Angeles Suddenly Loves The Warnermount Merger
What in the rolling over for rich people hell, Karen Bass? – Vulture
- Weird Idea Spreads On Chinese Internet That Tang Dynasty Never Existed
The Tang era (618-907 CE) is considered a golden age, a period of territorial expansion, prosperity and high culture which every Chinese schoolchild learns about. Claiming it never happened is like telling Brits there was no Norman Conquest. Yet the bogus idea has caught on widely enough that China’s government is weighing in. – CNN
- How The COVID Crisis Shifted Culture Funding
In 2019, arts organizations in BIPOC-majority neighborhoods of a major U.S. city received 16% less median grant funding than those in white-majority neighborhoods. By 2022, they were receiving 289% more. – SMU Cultural Data
- How The Kennedy Center Plans To Put Trump’s Name Back
- Refurbishment Plans For The Kennedy Center Detailed
More than 160 pages of plans, assembled by the real estate company JLL and presented to the board of trustees, outline extensive changes throughout the building. – Washington Post
MUSIC
- Orchids Made Charles Darwin Who He Was
“Darwin had long been interested in orchids, possibly influenced by the borderline sexual love his grandfather, Erasmus, felt for them and put into his writings.” – LitHub
- More Schools Are Teaching Cursive Again. Should They Be?
Pennsylvania and Florida legislators argue, for example, that an informed citizenry needs to be able to read historical documents, which are often written in cursive script. – Washington Post
- Texas Is Coming After The “Filthy, Dirty” Books In School Libraries, Says Lt. Gov.
“Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, during a Wednesday press conference, threatened to take over public school districts that don’t remove ‘obscene books’ from their library shelves.” – San Antonio Current
- Utah Bans Novel Adapted Into Movie “Precious” From Schools
“’Push’ by Sapphire got cut across the state Wednesday after the Davis, Granite and Washington County school districts removed it, bringing the total number of books banned from public schools to 37.” Current Utah law holds that if three county school districts ban a book, the title is then barred statewide. – The Salt Lake Tribune
- In Russia: The Publishers’ Plot
In May 2025, ten people affiliated with Eksmo, Russia’s publishing behemoth, were detained in Moscow. Three of them, Pavel Ivanov, Dmitry Protopopov and Artyom Vakhlyaev, were charged with ‘organising activities of an extremist organisation’. Their crime was distributing LGBT-themed books. – London Review of Books
PEOPLE
- Australia, Like Most Places, Has A Dwindling Number Of Drive-In Movie Theatres
In Melbourne, there’s one hold-out. “The drive-in demands little of its audience. You can lie down, walk around, talk and sing without fear of being hushed. Parents feel at ease bringing newborns, and dogs can curl up beside their owners.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Don’t Be Fooled By The Emmy Nomination For SubwayTakes
“The Emmy nod isn’t, in itself, a milestone. What it actually represents is much smaller: a win for YouTube’s awards campaigning, confined for now to a category that’s spent most of its existence as the Emmys’ junk drawer.” – Vulture
- How Theatre Created, Then Recreated, The ‘Rocky Horror’ Mad Scientist Lab
“A slapdash seediness has been embedded in the musical’s aesthetic DNA ever since it started in 1973 in a tiny upstairs space at the Royal Court Theater in London.” – The New York Times
- What Sepideh Moafi Brought To The Pitt
“The Iranian American actor drew from her own childhood experiences and advocacy work as an ambassador with the International Rescue Committee to shape Dr. Al-Hashimi into who audiences get to know onscreen.” – HuffPost
- Designer Error, By About 10,000 Miles
Sydney, Australia, has an Allianz soccer stadium, and so does Munich, Germany. Guess which one appears on the Sydney Marathon medal? – The Guardian (UK)
PEOPLE
- Australia, Like Most Places, Has A Dwindling Number Of Drive-In Movie Theatres
In Melbourne, there’s one hold-out. “The drive-in demands little of its audience. You can lie down, walk around, talk and sing without fear of being hushed. Parents feel at ease bringing newborns, and dogs can curl up beside their owners.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Don’t Be Fooled By The Emmy Nomination For SubwayTakes
“The Emmy nod isn’t, in itself, a milestone. What it actually represents is much smaller: a win for YouTube’s awards campaigning, confined for now to a category that’s spent most of its existence as the Emmys’ junk drawer.” – Vulture
- How Theatre Created, Then Recreated, The ‘Rocky Horror’ Mad Scientist Lab
“A slapdash seediness has been embedded in the musical’s aesthetic DNA ever since it started in 1973 in a tiny upstairs space at the Royal Court Theater in London.” – The New York Times
- What Sepideh Moafi Brought To The Pitt
“The Iranian American actor drew from her own childhood experiences and advocacy work as an ambassador with the International Rescue Committee to shape Dr. Al-Hashimi into who audiences get to know onscreen.” – HuffPost
- Designer Error, By About 10,000 Miles
Sydney, Australia, has an Allianz soccer stadium, and so does Munich, Germany. Guess which one appears on the Sydney Marathon medal? – The Guardian (UK)
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Study: More Than One-Third Of Web Pages Created Since 2022 Show Signs Of AI
Over one-third of web pages published after the release of ChatGPT show signs of being written by AI, according to a new study from Pew Research released on Thursday. – TechCrunch
- Research: Large AI Datasets Obscure Authorship
It feels counterintuitive, but at sufficiently large scales, they find, you can often remove any single image from the training data, or every image by a given artist, or every photograph of a given person, and the generated sample doesn’t change. – MIT
- The Fan Psychology
The fan at heart is a manager of excess: too much feeling, too much weight on too little incident. This is a kind of madness after all, the madness of meaning-making under a few too many constraints. – N plus 1
- Research: Majority Of Americans Are Anxious About AI
Today, 52% of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life – up from 37% in 2021. Another 9% are more excited than concerned and 37% say they’re equally excited and concerned, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 22-28, 2026. – Pew Research
- Some Of The Sharpest Political Writers In 18th-Century Britain Were Fictional
British writers in the 18th century repeatedly invented fictional characters to intervene in the politics and culture of their day. – The Conversation