Most discussions of AI and consciousness ask whether machines can experience anything. But maybe the real mystery is: If consciousness is not fundamentally related to higher cognition, then what kind of phenomenon is it? - Noema

In popular culture and pop psychology, crowds are often associated with strong emotions, excessive emotional expression and the uncritical spread of emotions. Commentators often link that crowd emotion in turn with uncontrolled behaviour and, in some cases, mindless violence. - Psyche

In both its depth and breadth, Hegel’s philosophy is perhaps rivalled only by that of Aristotle. - Psyche

Generalising comes so naturally that few of us are at any risk of undergeneralising, so we give it little thought. The focus on overgeneralising is understandable given its potential costs, such as the child assuming that a dangerous dog is just like the friendly dogs they’ve encountered to date. - Aeon

Now the problem is how to let in the good bots (like the avatar you send to the Gap to buy you a new pair of pants) and keep out the bad bots (like the thief trying to scrape the data of every Gap customer). The rest of us have to be our own bot detectors. - The New Yorker

"Our contention is that, if we fail to think through and delimit the role of AI in our lives, we risk undermining the intelligibility of our own guiding cultural concepts, and thus initiating a period in our own society of which it may someday be possible to say that “nothing happened.” - The Point

One company, Inception Point AI, has “a cohort of more than 100 personas, each with its own market-friendly niche, that could be deployed to host podcasts, star in YouTube videos, converse with followers and — in the company’s loftiest vision — one day navigate the physical world in a robotic body.” - The New...

The Royal Theatre of Rabat, which includes an 1,800-seat main auditorium, a 520-seat performance space, and a 7,000-seat outdoor amphitheater, was largely completed in 2021 but only opened this year. It’s planned as an international platform for Moroccan, Arabic and African music, dance and theater — and Western pop. - The New York Times

Complaints about StubHub to the Better Business Bureau rose 47% from 2024 to 2025, and climbed 63% in the eight months leading up to the company’s September 2025 initial public offering. - The Wall Street Journal

Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) stands a good chance of winning a majority in the state legislature of Saxony-Anhalt, home to the birthplaces of Martin Luther and George Frideric Handel as well as the Bauhaus. The latter is a particular target of AfD, which says it will refuse to fund “anti-German art.” - Deutsche Welle

Though elite colleges profess a faith in meritocracy and insist that they are engines of class mobility, in practice they reward the already rewarded. - The Nation

Anthropic said that all models released after August 2 will automatically have tech to watermark both computer-generated text and files. For files, the company is using the C2PA open standard. - TechCrunch

BMG is the first significant rightsholder to ink a licensing deal with Suno since Warner Music Group announced an alliance with the AI company nine months ago. - MusicBusinessWorldwide

Scores are more available than ever: in multiple published editions, online in public domain collections, in libraries and elsewhere. But a manuscript, music written in a composer’s hand, has the almost magical power to make even the most distant giants feel near and alive. - The New York Times

They reveal that even as expenses ticked downward, donations fell 25 percent short of expectations last year, and that this year’s ticket revenue is on pace to earn about half of what the orchestra budgeted. - Washington Post

“The Mozarteum Foundation on July 15 unveiled 320 statuettes, barely … 20 inches high, showing Mozart with his dog. They were designed by German conceptual artist Ottmar Hörl. Within two weeks, more than 80 of the polymer figures had disappeared. By Wednesday, a total of 210 were missing.” - AP

The Strawberry Music Festival, held in the Sierra foothills near Nevada City in October, features American roots music of many types, including performances by major country stars. Co-founder Charlie Cran died suddenly in November, and his heirs, now the event’s owners, aren’t yet ready to present the festival properly. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

It’s a vital, creative and adaptive evolution, a way of preserving an important cultural heritage in a world of cheap noise where the piano recital might otherwise fade from view or become hopelessly marginalized. - 3 Quarks Daily

The affected sites include 196 arts education institutions, 141 museums and galleries, and historic sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Cultural institutions across 24% of Ukrainian territories and nearly half of the country’s community cultural centers have been damaged during Russia’s prolonged and deadly campaign. - Hyperallergic

More than 200 gold-colored Mozart figures have vanished from a public art installation in Salzburg, forcing organizers to end part of the exhibition early. - Deutsche Welle

The statuary ensemble, which also includes a new 23-foot rendering of a female figure dubbed “The Spirit of Liberty,” is one of the most cogent and confrontational expressions of the Trump administration’s views on race, urban design and public space. - Washington Post

“The San Diego Museum of Art laid off nearly a dozen employees Wednesday in what it described as an effort to stay sustainable as it contends with rising operating costs and an uncertain funding future.” - The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)

At the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, a 1939 building in the city of Manizales and the tallest neo-Gothic church in the Americas, one of the side towers toppled onto the center of the building following the 7.4 magnitude quake which struck Colombia on Monday. - The Art Newspaper

“Amid a broad crisis in higher education in the US …, enrollment at New York’s School of Visual Arts is down some 34% since 2019, and the school faces a $22 million structural budget deficit. … SVA is largely dependent on tuition; full-time tuition is $55,270 annually for the coming school year.” - ARTnews

David Corn gave the Anthropic software a pleasantly meta seven-sentence plot summary as a prompt. Several minutes later, Claude produced a 6,000-word manuscript. Corn replied that that wasn’t novel-length, and Claude served up a narrative eight times the length. Corn: “I ’ll cut to the chase: The novel isn’t so bad.” - Mother Jones

Looking at trends in the trade category, which includes religion books, sale rose 2.7% overall to $21.7 billion. The increase was led by religious presses, whose sales rose 9.3%, to $2.2 billion. Adult fiction sales had the second biggest sales increase, with revenue up 3.9%, to $7.1 billion. - Publishers Weekly

Early last year the Giller Prize broke ties with its longtime sponsor Scotiabank — leaving it without the means to support the C$100,000 award and other programs. Now the foundation which stepped up with C$! million in bridge funding has made a C$4 million donation to keep the Giller going longer-term. - The Canadian...

We can thank the Preraphaelite coterie for this tendency. " - LitHub

"It speaks about the creative process as though it were something getting in the way of our creativity, slowing us down, rather than being the path that leads us to it. Then again, it’s no surprise that a capitalist venture focuses on the product and speed to market.” - Irish Times

Personal pan pizzas for reading? Yes: “Pizza Hut’s Book It! program is part of the lore of countless childhood readers turned adults. According to Pizza Hut, over 70 million children have participated since the program was founded in 1984, a Reagan-era initiative.” - Slate

"So that's how Ellison wants to prove that he will be a steward of (Hollywood's) flailing entertainment industry — by threatening to rip out a big part of its still-beating heart and implant it in Texas or Tennessee?" - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

“By threatening to leave the state because it doesn’t want the government to enforce the law, Paramount further proves the danger of its outsized power over the industry and what that will mean for writers and the creative community." - Deadline

If the art of filmmaking is inseparable from that of adaptation, it’s because almost all feature films are made by way of a fundamental form of adaptation: that of a script. - The New Yorker

“Choreographing a sea-witch straddling a man’s face until he suffocates (Widow’s Bay) is different from dramatizing the intimate moments of the 1990s’ most recognized celebrity couple (Love Story); both of those differ from creating the physical storytelling for almost every lead character across multiple sex scenes (Your Friends & Neighbors).” - Los Angeles Times...

Ellison has most often mentioned Tennessee as a potential new headquarters, the Journal previously reported. That state is already a home to Oracle, the software giant co-founded by Ellison’s father and Paramount stakeholder Larry Ellison. - The Wall Street Journal

“Just days after USA Today Co. (formerly Gannett) announced a new deal with technology company Palantir to help monetize its users’ data, unionized employees across the country are calling on the company to end the partnership.” - Poynter

“The past year has seen an explosion of dance on the big screen. Behind some of (the) more technical sequences are dance doubles — professional dancers who step in for the actors and execute the choreography. But what does being a dance double actually entail? And how do performers book these roles?” - Dance...

“(For) this year’s NOW evening of world premieres at Vail Dance Festival, tap dancer/choreographer Michelle Dorrance … is creating a work with … Chelsea Hoy, co-artistic director of Chicago’s Trinity Irish Dance Company, for a cast that includes top New York City Ballet dancers” — who, says Dorrance, “are blowing everyone’s minds.” - Dance...

The drama which nearly derailed the company began in April 2024, when the company members voted to unionize and the then-executive director fired them en masse. That boss has now retired, the dismissed dancers moved on, and their successors — with no resistance from management — have joined AGMA. - The Dallas Morning News...

“A perusal of the archives shows how rich the Dance Division’s history has been, with a roster of teachers and students that reflects the arc of American dance in the 20th century. And the curriculum, a mix of ballet and modern dance, once seen as eccentric, now is the norm.” - The New York...

“In 1956, under the direction of Lew Christensen, SFB went to the Pillow with three programs featuring eight ballets by George Balanchine and Christensen himself. The performances were a tremendous success, and … helped propel SFB from regional significance to international renown.” Now, under Tamara Rojo, the company is back. - Pointe Magazine

“There is some debate over exactly when biama emerged, but it exploded in popularity after the coronavirus pandemic as young people turned to TikTok to post and respond to dance challenges that fused acrobatics with goofiness that pushed bodies to their limits.” - The Guardian

“The comedians behind some thoughtful shows (this year) are exploring the vexed problem with a mixture of droll wit and intuitive wisdom." One of them created an AI replica of himself and interacts with it onstage; another recounts how he became convinced AI software was deliberately sabotaging his career. - The New York Times

This past season saw only six new musicals, the fewest in 25 years; the coming season will have at least eight, roughly the post-COVID normal. The shows have eight-figure budgets, and some have music by superstars (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dolly Parton, Prince), while others have familiar IP (Paddington, Benjamin Button, Black Swan.) - Broadway Journal

“When a show becomes a meme, the meme becomes the story, eclipsing the show itself. This phenomenon is here to stay. Thankfully, we’ll always have satire.” - The New York Times

Cell phones are the least of it. Yes, of course they occasionally find people having sex in the auditorium or restrooms, but they've encountered things even worse. - The Guardian

ATG Entertainment (originally Ambassador Theatre Group) owns seven Broadway houses, ten London venues, numerous theatres in Europe, and the discount app TodayTix. Now Emanuel’s company Mari, which owns Frieze art fairs and two large pro tennis tournaments, has agreed to acquire ATG for a rumored $6 billion. - The Hollywood Reporter

On Instagram, the composer wrote, "Maybe the show’s closing just might be remembered as the moment that caused everyone involved with Broadway to come to their senses and address the unsustainable cost of producing and running any new show now.” - Variety

The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, "Life Is a Dream," on Decca Classics. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

She began her career as a singer, then became a promoter and impresario. She co-founded what started as a 1974 Duke Ellington tribute and, in 1979, became the Chicago Jazz Festival. She then created another event, which started in 1981 as the South Shore Jazz Fest and became JazzFest Heritage Weekend. - Chicago Sun-Times

After having memory issues while rehearsing a production at Chichester Festival Theatre earlier this year, the revered star is stepping away from full-scale work. She will continue giving performances of a two-person show which she’s been doing for many years and will do a short Beckett play next year. - The Times (UK)

“The actress Laura Linney, who graduated from Juilliard in 1990, was confused when Ms. Smith stared at the floor during her entire audition. ‘She wasn’t looking, she was listening,’ to Ms. Linney’s voice, the actress said.” - The New York Times

Lane, who didn’t speak Spanish when this part of her career began, "exuded a sultry Latin air as the star vocalist for the bandleader Xavier Cugat in the 1950s and ’60s, and in a successful solo career afterward.” - The New York Times

The comic monologue, titled Cartwheel, is billed as about a woman “approaching forty, juggling motherhood and finally getting around to being furious about the whole wrongful-imprisonment thing. Especially when half the world is telling her to get over it, while the other half still thinks she’s guilty.” - AP