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AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only

DANCE

    IDEAS

    • Sarah Schulman Also Predicted This

      Writer and activist Schulman: “People raised to dominate are told – and taught – that they should never feel uncomfortable. If you ask them to question themselves or reflect on how they relate to others, it’s as if you’re attacking them, mistreating them.” – El País English

    • Why Do Opera Singers Quit?

      Andrew Potter says it’s the money. “We just have to start telling the truth, and that is that unless you’re in the top 1- or 2% of singers in the world, this is not something that you’ll be able to sustain a family with.” – NPR

    • Yes, Having A Gay, Theatre-Loving Uncle Can Help You Find Your Way In New York

      “The play twines the story of Ryan’s relatively easy coming out with Charlie’s fraught experience a generation earlier, when his parents took a painfully long time to accept him as gay.” – The New York Times

    • If The Ellisons Think This Is Going To Be Easy, They Need To Read Some Hollywood History

      Skydance “must braid together two huge film studios (housing nine film labels), four streaming services, three TV production studios, three animation units and more than 50 television networks, including two prominent news organizations.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)

    • Nicolas Cage Didn’t Sign Amazon’s AI Waiver

      Good Morning,

      Nicolas Cage told a New York ComicCon panel that he refused to sign Amazon’s AI waiver for Spider-Noir, a series Amazon cancelled after one season and 11 Emmy nominations (Variety). Meanwhile more than two dozen staffers at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette tell Wired that executives are having ChatGPT and Claude write publicity copy and emails to literary agents, and that HarperCollins drafted dozens of employees as “AI Champions” (Wired). One industry source tells the Guardian that AI-made ads can cost up to 60 percent less, which worries Luke Scott, who runs Ridley Scott Associates, about a “lost generation” of directors who would have learned on ad shoots (The Guardian).

      SiriusXM replaced its Raw Comedy channel, which played tracks from more than 800 comedians a month at $15 a spin, with a channel owned by Sebastian Maniscalco that played 275 last month, three-quarters of the plays going to its top 50 (CBC). Deniz Göktaş, the Turkish stand-up convicted of insulting Erdoğan after 88 days in custody, used his courtroom defense to argue that if leaders can be this fragile about jokes, comedy has power (The New York Times).

      And from the physical, practical world of dance, Ballet Des Moines, Iowa’s only professional resident dance company, spends about $45,000 a year on 300 pairs of pointe shoes and is raising $10,000 by October 31 (KCCI).

      All of the stories we collected this weekend, below. See you tomorrow.

    ISSUES

    MEDIA

    • Amazon Fumbled The Bag With Spider Noir – And With Nic Cage

      Cage: “I am not an AI-friendly actor, so it’s like, connect those dots! I’m not a member of their club. I didn’t sign the waiver to let him use AI on Spider Noir. I’m probably not going to be working with that studio again.” – Variety

    • What Made The iPod So Perfect

      For one thing, it never connected to the internet. And: “It was a one-function device that superbly executed its function. It made people unconditionally happy.” – Wired

    • Artist Manager For Rock Stars To Be Kennedy Center’s Next Programming Chief

      “Rick Canny, … a longtime talent manager who worked with several prominent rock stars from the 1980s and ‘90s, … will soon be elevated to an executive artistic director position, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.” – CNN (MSN)

    • Cooper Union Finds A New Lessee/Owner New York’s Chrysler Building

      “New York’s iconic Chrysler Building, standing on land owned and leased by the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, is transferring ownership to the commercial real-estate company Tishman Speyer and other investors, who are planning an extensive overhaul of the Art Deco landmark after years of neglect.” – ARTnews

    • How Defunding Arts Education Brought About Civic Unraveling

      The Bicentennial offered everyday people in the middle of the map novel opportunities to appreciate and deliberate what America was, and it succeeded in this because it conducted more than a history lesson: Art was surprisingly paramount in this event of collective self-identification, historical commemoration, and political convocation. – ARTnews

    MUSIC

    PEOPLE

    • Sarah Schulman Also Predicted This

      Writer and activist Schulman: “People raised to dominate are told – and taught – that they should never feel uncomfortable. If you ask them to question themselves or reflect on how they relate to others, it’s as if you’re attacking them, mistreating them.” – El País English

    • Why Do Opera Singers Quit?

      Andrew Potter says it’s the money. “We just have to start telling the truth, and that is that unless you’re in the top 1- or 2% of singers in the world, this is not something that you’ll be able to sustain a family with.” – NPR

    • Yes, Having A Gay, Theatre-Loving Uncle Can Help You Find Your Way In New York

      “The play twines the story of Ryan’s relatively easy coming out with Charlie’s fraught experience a generation earlier, when his parents took a painfully long time to accept him as gay.” – The New York Times

    • If The Ellisons Think This Is Going To Be Easy, They Need To Read Some Hollywood History

      Skydance “must braid together two huge film studios (housing nine film labels), four streaming services, three TV production studios, three animation units and more than 50 television networks, including two prominent news organizations.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)

    • Nicolas Cage Didn’t Sign Amazon’s AI Waiver

      Good Morning,

      Nicolas Cage told a New York ComicCon panel that he refused to sign Amazon’s AI waiver for Spider-Noir, a series Amazon cancelled after one season and 11 Emmy nominations (Variety). Meanwhile more than two dozen staffers at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette tell Wired that executives are having ChatGPT and Claude write publicity copy and emails to literary agents, and that HarperCollins drafted dozens of employees as “AI Champions” (Wired). One industry source tells the Guardian that AI-made ads can cost up to 60 percent less, which worries Luke Scott, who runs Ridley Scott Associates, about a “lost generation” of directors who would have learned on ad shoots (The Guardian).

      SiriusXM replaced its Raw Comedy channel, which played tracks from more than 800 comedians a month at $15 a spin, with a channel owned by Sebastian Maniscalco that played 275 last month, three-quarters of the plays going to its top 50 (CBC). Deniz Göktaş, the Turkish stand-up convicted of insulting Erdoğan after 88 days in custody, used his courtroom defense to argue that if leaders can be this fragile about jokes, comedy has power (The New York Times).

      And from the physical, practical world of dance, Ballet Des Moines, Iowa’s only professional resident dance company, spends about $45,000 a year on 300 pairs of pointe shoes and is raising $10,000 by October 31 (KCCI).

      All of the stories we collected this weekend, below. See you tomorrow.

    PEOPLE

    • Sarah Schulman Also Predicted This

      Writer and activist Schulman: “People raised to dominate are told – and taught – that they should never feel uncomfortable. If you ask them to question themselves or reflect on how they relate to others, it’s as if you’re attacking them, mistreating them.” – El País English

    • Why Do Opera Singers Quit?

      Andrew Potter says it’s the money. “We just have to start telling the truth, and that is that unless you’re in the top 1- or 2% of singers in the world, this is not something that you’ll be able to sustain a family with.” – NPR

    • Yes, Having A Gay, Theatre-Loving Uncle Can Help You Find Your Way In New York

      “The play twines the story of Ryan’s relatively easy coming out with Charlie’s fraught experience a generation earlier, when his parents took a painfully long time to accept him as gay.” – The New York Times

    • If The Ellisons Think This Is Going To Be Easy, They Need To Read Some Hollywood History

      Skydance “must braid together two huge film studios (housing nine film labels), four streaming services, three TV production studios, three animation units and more than 50 television networks, including two prominent news organizations.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)

    • Nicolas Cage Didn’t Sign Amazon’s AI Waiver

      Good Morning,

      Nicolas Cage told a New York ComicCon panel that he refused to sign Amazon’s AI waiver for Spider-Noir, a series Amazon cancelled after one season and 11 Emmy nominations (Variety). Meanwhile more than two dozen staffers at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette tell Wired that executives are having ChatGPT and Claude write publicity copy and emails to literary agents, and that HarperCollins drafted dozens of employees as “AI Champions” (Wired). One industry source tells the Guardian that AI-made ads can cost up to 60 percent less, which worries Luke Scott, who runs Ridley Scott Associates, about a “lost generation” of directors who would have learned on ad shoots (The Guardian).

      SiriusXM replaced its Raw Comedy channel, which played tracks from more than 800 comedians a month at $15 a spin, with a channel owned by Sebastian Maniscalco that played 275 last month, three-quarters of the plays going to its top 50 (CBC). Deniz Göktaş, the Turkish stand-up convicted of insulting Erdoğan after 88 days in custody, used his courtroom defense to argue that if leaders can be this fragile about jokes, comedy has power (The New York Times).

      And from the physical, practical world of dance, Ballet Des Moines, Iowa’s only professional resident dance company, spends about $45,000 a year on 300 pairs of pointe shoes and is raising $10,000 by October 31 (KCCI).

      All of the stories we collected this weekend, below. See you tomorrow.

    THEATRE

      VISUAL

      • Why We Need A Four (Or More) Hour Documentary About Elon Musk

        “This small group of people has tried to basically run a con on all of us. ‘We’re doing this out of the goodness of our own hearts. We’re making the world better.’ No, you’re padding your bottom lines and all you care about is you.” – The New York Times

      • The Helpful Science Behind Spooky Season

        “Seeking out fear is our way of preparing our bodies for the sometimes scary real world. And this vaccine is actually fun for most people.” – NPR

      • Is AI A Brain Or A Database?

        Human intuitions and mental models about how technology works govern how people use it. The idea of AI as software – deterministic, fact-retrieving – causes people to misinterpret the outputs they provide. – The Conversation

      • For Lifelong Learning, It’s Better With Partners

        The internet is full of resources for self-directed learning: for any subject, you can easily find blog posts about essential texts, links to university syllabi, and hours of YouTube lectures. When I attempted to make use of these guides, however, I often found myself disengaged and unfocused. – Psyche

      • How Data Visualization Tells Stories

        Because data, and how we present it, tells a story, it’s important to transform results responsibly into visuals. A good visualization can show you really interesting patterns in your data; however, a bad visualization, like truncating the Y-axis or choosing the wrong type of plot, can lead you or your audience to the wrong conclusions. – The Scientist

      WORDS