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- Who Vouches For The Work Now?
Good Morning,
Google has built a tool that tells fact-checkers whether an image was machine-made, whether it’s been altered, and where else it has surfaced (Nieman Lab). Provenance as a service — infrastructure for a question that didn’t really need infrastructure five years ago.
Which makes the day’s other verification story more difficult. Harvard is closing its writing center, and faculty read the timing as of a piece with the university’s enthusiasm for AI on campus (The Atlantic). We’re building machines to certify authorship while shutting the institutions where people learn to earn it. Small wonder 52% of Americans now say AI worries them more than it excites them, up from 37% in 2021 (Pew Research). The anxiety isn’t about capability. It’s about not knowing who made what, or who answers for it when it goes wrong.
No algorithm would have caught the first L.A. Jazz Festival, which imploded on opening day and left the scene that had lent it credibility furious (Los Angeles Times).
What people do trust: a place with something happening in it. Ragtime closed as the highest-grossing production in Lincoln Center Theater’s history (Deadline). And Gia Kourlas watched a champion surfer and saw a dancer (The New York Times). The map of what counts as choreography just got a little bigger.
The rest of today’s stories below.
- Could Disney Actually Win Its Lawsuit Against FCC Over Threats To ABC’s License?
“Disney has a far stronger case against (Trump-appointed FCC chairman Brendan) Carr than Carr has against Disney,” a former FCC chief of staff said. “I doubt any court would uphold Carr’s failure to renew Disney’s license.” Alas, it’s not quite that simple. – TheWrap (Yahoo!)
- 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
- Why Ever More Of Hollywood’s Production Is Happening Anywhere But Hollywood
“Los Angeles and California continue to struggle to keep movies, television series and even game shows from fleeing elsewhere. … The story of how L.A. steadily lost much of its homegrown industry to other locales is a tale of hubris, escalating costs, political inaction and fierce competition (from other locales).” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
- 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
- Why The Closing Of Harvard’s Writing Center Matters
A Harvard faculty member who requested anonymity so that he could speak openly told me he worried that the elimination of the center could be seen as part of a broader trend of “real boosterism” of AI on campus—one that students feel acutely. – The Atlantic
- 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
- A Dance Critic Considers High-Level Surfing As Ballet
Gia Kourlas on champion Caitlin Simmers: “Her undulating torso, her sensitivity to the fluctuations of an unsteady surface and her speed are all part of her power. … Her clarity comes from her deep center of gravity, which allows her to slice up and down waves like a silken ribbon.” – The New York Times
- How Melancholy Became Hungary’s Literary Brand
Melancholy, an affinity with oblivion without a concrete cause, suffuses the Hungarian fiction translated for foreign audiences over the past 30 years, from the tortured tales of Sándor Márai to the taut novels of Magda Szabó. – The Guardian
- Did Smartphones Really Kill Reading?
It is tempting to blame smartphones for this condition and conclude that some kind of ban would solve the problem. But a historical perspective shows that this is not enough: reading was in decline before the smartphone appeared. – LitHub
- New Website Tracks Author Events
LitCircle’s database will track author readings and signings, as well as book clubs and literary festivals across the country, and alert readers to upcoming literary programming in their vicinity. George partnered with Patrick DiMichele, a technology consultant and a longtime Volumes customer, to build the platform. – Publishers Weekly
- To Promote Themselves, Some Standup Comics Are Switching From Posting Videos To This
“They use (comic strip-style) still frames with embedded captions of jokes, sometimes across multiple images that include longer setups and punchlines — in social media parlance, a carousel.” – The New York Times
- Colombian Cultural Heritage Sites Damaged In The Earthquake
The report, published on 14 August, identifies 40 nationally protected cultural properties in the seven departments hardest hit by the disaster that suffered some degree of damage, 22 of which were severely impacted. Of the remaining properties, 13 suffered moderate damage and five were only lightly affected. – The Art Newspaper
- 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
- “Ragtime” Sets Lincoln Center Theatre Box Office Record
- Google Now Has An AI Tool To Catch Fake AI Images
“After (a fact-checker) upload(s) an image and enter(s) a basic question, Backstory can automatically run checks to determine whether the image is AI-generated, whether it shows signs of manipulation, and where else the image has appeared throughout its lifetime on the internet.” – Nieman Lab
- How The First-Ever L.A. Jazz Festival Collapsed On Its Opening Day
Founder Martin Ludlow, a former City Councilman, hoped that his star-studded multi-day event could ultimately become a peer to the great jazz fests in New Orleans and Montreal. Instead it came out looking more like Fyre Festival, and some say Ludlow was very much the wrong person to organize it. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
- Many Of New York City’s Most Prominent Cultural Institutions Don’t Pay Fines For Fire Code Violations
The Met Museum, Carnegie Hall, BAM, Lincoln Center, even the Brooklyn Children’s Museum — in fact, none of the 39 institutions in what’s called the Cultural Institutions Group have to pay Fire Dept. summonses. There is, in fact, a logical reason for this. – Gothamist
- Soprano Ileana Cotrubaș Is Dead At 87
One of the opera world’s most admired lyric sopranos of the 1970s and ‘80s, she was known for her acting skill as well as her voice, especially in such roles as Violetta in La Traviata, Gilda in Rigoletto, and Tatiana in Eugene Onegin. – Moto Perpetuo
- Penguin Random House Suspends New Mamdani Biography Following Plagiarism Accusations Against Author
The publisher has halted promotion and public sales of The Revolutionary: Zohran Mamdani and the Remaking of American Politics by Ross Barkan in the wake of allegations that the author plagiarized parts of numerous columns he wrote as a freelancer for New York magazine. – The Washington Post (MSN)
- This Summer’s European Heat Waves Are Damaging Monet’s Gardens At Giverny
Horticultural staff are reporting that some foliage is scorched and many flowers are wilting, though they’ve been able to mitigate the weather’s worst effects by careful watering and moving some plants around. Chief gardeners also say they may have to change some of the seasonal scheduling and choice of plantings. – ARTnews
- Kennedy Center Management Explains Why That Tarp Is Still There
The fabric barrier and scaffolding put up while Trump’s name was removed from the building’s façade are still in place more than two months later. In a court filing this week, management stated that there is still work being done at and around that area. – The Independent (UK)
- American Classical Music at 250 — Take Seven: Another Boston Symphony Perspective on the “Malaise” Afflicting Orchestras
- A Whole Crop Of Pole-Dancing Shows At This Year’s Edinburgh Fringe
“Pole dance is a big part of the festival this year, popping up in sweaty, dazzling shows right across the Fringe. Not only do these acts show off amazing physical feats, they also tell stories that range from one woman’s HIV diagnosis, to the relationship between a neurodivergent mother and son.” – The Guardian
- 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
- An Expressive History Of Punctuation
The exclamation point arrived in the middle of the 14th century, bringing what many felt was “a welcome infusion of emotion onto the page,” and was joined, over the 15th century, by parentheses and the apostrophe. – The Wall Street Journal
- The Case Of The Fake Ancient Roman Amphitheatre
“Picture this: a hillside ‘archaeological site’ complete with what were marketed as Neolithic and Greco-Roman artefacts, impressive enough that visitors were charged a hefty 40-euro entrance fee. … Except it wasn’t ancient at all.” And the perpetrator had cleared a protected hillside forest to build it. – Gramilano
- The Irish Dancer Trying To Revive Dancing For Pleasure
“You know how it feels when you’ve got really good music and you dance and people are suddenly dancing closely and they never got the chance to dance closely?” So the establishment was right about the corrupting influence of dancehalls? She laughs. “They were.” – Irish Times
- A Plan To Bring Portable Kids Libraries To Rural Mongolia
Magic Box, a Mongolian NGO (non-governmental agency) has hatched a program to turn old shipping containers into a constellation of children’s libraries throughout rural Mongolia. And they now the program will catch on anywhere children need books, and a place to call their own. – Publishing Perspectives
- A New World Record For Most Tickets Sold For A Standup Comedy Tour
“Nate Bargatze’s ‘Big Dumb Eyes’ tour, which began on April 6, 2025, crossed the 2 million mark after just 16 months and 10 days — and across only 128 venues.” As of last Saturday, the total was sold approximately 2,016,254 tickets. – Variety
- Brazen: Thieves Steal Four Renaissance Paintings From Italian Museum
Taking advantage of an annual religious celebration that brings tens of thousands to Messina’s streets, thieves made off with three of five panels that constitute the Polyptych of San Gregorio as well as a small double-sided devotional painting. – The New York Times
- The Difficulty Of Turning Viral Video Into Full Movies
Consider the growing slate of satires about influencers, the numerous coming-of-age films that have tapped into teenage angst amid the rise of social media, and the fact that entire movies have been made that take place exclusively on computer screens. – The Atlantic
- “Thoreauvian Resistance” — Why “Walden” Is A Big Hit In Today’s China
“Thoreau warned us that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. In China today, that desperation has been given a name: Neijuan — involution. … If Thoreau were alive today, he might say that China has industrialized quiet desperation. The pushback has a name too: tang ping — lying flat.” – Literary Hub
- Movie Theatre Group Reverses Position On Paramount/Warner Deal
“Today, our industry has the wind at its back. Studio partners are creating and distributing extraordinary films. Audiences across generations are responding with enthusiasm. But none of that can be taken for granted. Global exhibition believes in a bold future for this industry, but reaching our full potential requires working together.“ – The Hollywood Reporter
- Preservation Group Appeals To Supreme Court To Stop White House Construction
The preservationist group trying to stop President Trump’s White House ballroom urged the Supreme Court to deny the administration’s emergency request to allow construction, calling it “astonishing” on Tuesday. – The Hill
