If the academic humanities too often address only siloed experts, then pop philosophy too often addresses an audience of imagined idiots. - Yale Review

Insights from western literature and myth point to the ethical problem at the core of human intelligence. How we understand the role of humans’ symbolic communication, including language in establishing ethical relations, has profound consequences for our society. - The Conversation

"If art is meant to be a portal, then the art of the future will have not one single exit, but unlimited gateways... This transition, as we are now experiencing it in the early days of the AI overhaul, will test our relationship to reality." - Wired

The end of Netflix's DVD service heralds the era of the very, very short tail - because, weirdly, "faced with even more options, people just gave up entirely." - Slate

Crowd science has long been working to understand how throngs can turn dangerous. It has borrowed from psychology and epidemiology, and now is also incorporating complex systems theory, physics, and physiology, combined with plentiful empirical data coupled with computer modeling. Scientists have even started turning their eyes toward the dangerous dynamics of virtual crowds. - Nautilus

The museum provided about 532,000 krone (£61,500) from its reserves to recreate artworks as well as an artist’s fee of about 40,000 krone. But when staff unpacked the newly delivered works, they found two empty frames with the title Take the Money and Run. - The Guardian

Many of the results show consistency with the last survey in 2019: 97% of Australians engage with the arts, 84% acknowledge positive impacts of arts and creativity, 73% believe that First Nations arts and culture are an important part of Australia’s culture and 61% agree culture and creativity should receive public funding. - Limelight

While U.S. universities charge ever higher tuition in an arms race for the best facilities and research, leading to a soaring student debt crisis, U.K. universities have the opposite problem. They aren’t able to charge enough. They are cutting back on everything from research to teacher salaries to dorm rooms. - The Wall Street Journal

"The Manitoba Arts Council would receive $20 million in funding annually — up from $6 million a year — if the Liberals are elected on Oct. 3, (provincial party leader Douglas Lamont) said." - CBC

In instants on September 11, the floodwaters "destroyed a cradle of Libyan culture" - by neglect and design from authorities who don't care for rebellious poets. - The New York Times

Two thirds of people in the U.S. oppose book bans, so why is there such an increase? - NPR

A "best and final offer" before today's meetings may lead to a deal soon, but the writers say this is a management-side leak and that the WGA needs to stay focused and strong. - The Hollywood Reporter

“I think the greatest challenge for us as interpreters today is to find authenticity of spirit in the music we interpret, and that's a cultural thing. There are two ways to do it. One is as a tourist and the other one is a native. - BachTrack

“Before the pandemic, we had 8,000 subscribers. As of today, we have 2,000 subscribers. That’s a huge difference.” - Waterloo Record

At the Ambronay Festival in France, Alejandro Meerapfel, a 54-year-old Argentine, was performing in an oratorio called Il Dono della vita eterna (The Gift of Eternal Life). The concert was being telecast live on France TV's Culturebox. (And that's not the strangest part of all this.) - Classical Music (UK)

"A plan is being formulated to reconstruct Davies and some of its environment (such as the large outdoor parking lot on Franklin Street), including reducing the number of seats to 2,100 and adding new facilities to venue, as if the three Zellerbach Rehearsal Halls in the building were not enough." - San Francisco Classical Voice

"The 2025-26 season marks the Madison orchestra's 100th anniversary. The symphony will conduct a search for a new leader, and DeMain intends to depart after that season" — his 32nd with the orchestra — "ends," at which point he will be 82. - The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.)

A large part of the archives of the historic company, which was founded in 1830, was destroyed in the blaze at the facility just outside Vienna. Firefighters were able to control the fire before it spread to the manufacturing floor. - Classic FM (UK)

That piece of land is referred to as "the promenade." According to the descendants of Memphis founders, who are referred to as the "heirs" in legal documents, the city should not be building on the property since it belongs to the citizens. - Memphis Commercial Appeal

"The system had suffered from low enrollment since the coronavirus pandemic began. Previous challenges included a $95 million settlement after fraud allegations in 2015 and a loss of accreditation that led to the shuttering of nearly 20 other locations in 2018." - The New York Times

The megadealers love museums. They need them. They’re the best of friends. But there’s no longer any hiding it: They’re also trying to clone them, to do what museums do — just better. And they’re willing to go where museums have lately been too afraid to venture. - Washington Post

Just as a photographer walks around a city or forest looking for compelling scenes to photograph, so an AI artist explores the “latent space” of images a tool like Midjourney can produce. In a literal, pixel-by-pixel sense, images are produced by the software, not the artist. - Ars Technica

In Egypt, President Sisi has grand plans "for a highway cruelly named the Passage of Paradise, a series of flyover bridges that the government claims will relieve some of Cairo’s notorious traffic congestion" - and displace millions of the alive and dead. - The New York Times

The painting emerged "during attempts to trace all the paintings sold off across Europe after Charles I’s execution, which included seven recorded Gentileschi paintings." - The Observer (UK)

Much of the landscape of North America was new to the English, so many early word inventions applied to the natural world. Often these simply combined a noun with an adjective: backcountry, backwoods (and backwoodsman), back settlement, pine barrens, canebrake, salt lick, foothill, underbrush, bottomland, cold snap. - Lapham's Quarterly

In addition to rising costs, topics discussed at the daylong conference included the renewed postpandemic threat of work moving off-shore, sustainability concerns, the shift from offset to digital printing, and labor shortages. - Publishers Weekly

Writers have to ask themselves if they're "willing to sell their creative souls for the convenience of a hand clap ... to take the easy-lazy path that requires no deep investigation, no deep learning, where you drive up, place your order, and pick up a short story to go." - Salon

When the essay, called “Ghosts,” came out in The Believer in the summer of 2021, it quickly went viral. I started hearing from others who had lost loved ones and felt that the piece captured grief better than anything they’d ever read. - Wired

"Libraries will also operate with reduced opening hours. The service said the funding situation is presenting 'significant challenges', and that the board's decision to reduce operating hours was not taken lightly." - The Guardian

As the new school year begins, parents of public school students in Miami have become more engaged than ever in resisting the mandate of the DeSantis administration. - The Guardian

A motion by the actors' union to authorize a strike against video game companies passed with 98% of votes cast. The previous Interactive Media Agreement, which covers members working on video games, expired last November; it included no provisions regarding AI. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

The median age of viewers at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox has ballooned in recent years. That has left executives looking for ways to acknowledge and nurture an audience that still reliably flips on the television and watches in prime time, the old-fashioned way. - The New York Times

The pay gap between CEOs and average workers is unsustainable. Moreover, labor must have access to financial information (to satisfy themselves about profits and costs), share in the gains during good economic times and not bear the brunt of corporate financial insecurity when management cannot accurately gauge industry shifts. - Washington Post

At least, when it's safe to leave a movie theatre to pee. "Longer movies have more; for example, we have six Peetimes for Oppenheimer. Most movies have two or three.-" The Observer (UK)

The strike is still alive, but picket lines (for the WGA) have been suspended. - Variety

Once A League of Their Own - the movie - started casting, the batting cages of Los Angeles were filled with everyone from Courteney Cox to Laura Dern to Brooke Shields. - LitHub

"In many Western countries, pole dance classes achieved mainstream popularity years ago. Egypt's pole-dancing culture has been slower to grow — partly due to the country's conservative society. … Though social media has helped Egyptian pole dancers tackle taboos, misunderstandings persist." - Dance Magazine

And not just free of alcohol, but fully sober. "This is Natural High, a renegade alcohol- and substance-free dance party that pops up in outdoor spaces around the city." - Los Angeles Times

"Lexington-native Mikelle Bruzina and Harald Uwe Kern were named Louisville Ballet's new artistic directors after former artistic director Robert Curran's abrupt resignation earlier this year after nearly 10 years with the ballet." - Yahoo! (Louisville Courier Journal)

"I want people to see that LAB is on the road to … becoming one of the country's leading dance companies," she said. "Over the next few seasons people (will) really see that strong sense of a more established company, a company that Angelenos can call their own." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

On Sunday, I will retire from New York City Ballet after 16 years with the company. I have spent over a year preparing myself, and I am ready. But I know that I am about to give up one of my primary ways of being me. - The New York Times

A native of Los Angeles, Bleiberg earned an undergraduate degree in history at Scripps College and a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, L.A. Weekly, Zocalo Public Square, GQ Magazine, Orange Coast Magazine, CalArts magazine The Pool and other publications. - CultureOC

“So when people attend, they engage, they connect and then they give. So when the audience isn’t coming back, isn’t seeing the shows, then they’re not as motivated or connected to make that additional donation.” - Oregon Public Broadcasting

"Many PAs, the union (says), are early-career stage managers, and PAs 'are among the only Broadway workers without current union representation.' The new bargaining unit includes both current PAs working on about ten productions as well as about 100 who have worked on Broadway the last two years." - Deadline

"Bishop, 74, said he is choosing to leave at the end of the 2024-25 season because that is when his current contract (as producing artistic director) ends, and because that will allow him to join in that season's celebrations of Lincoln Center Theater’s 40th anniversary." - The New York Times

Actor Shia LaBeouf personally invited critics to a new Mamet production anyway. - Los Angeles Times

"Helping people in theater take care of their children is part of core mission — an early initiative was hiring babysitters to watch children at auditions. Then the leadership realized that theater artists need audiences." - NPR

Six years on from the #MeToo movement, they say there remains a culture of misogyny and male privilege in the comedy industry that emboldens predators and prevents women from speaking out. - The Guardian

As the mysterious secret agent Ilya Kuryakin on Man From U.N.C.L.E., the Scottish character actor became a major American TV star and teen heartthrob. 35 years later, he attracted a new generation of fans as medical examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard on NCIS. - AP

“David would yell at and berate the people he found responsible for executing his vision. Only senior leadership would be directly bullied by him, but they would offload that anxiety on the rest of us." - Artnet

"Anil Kapoor (filed suit) because of the large number of morphed videos and emojis bearing his likeness going around as well as his iconic phrase 'jhakaas', first used in 1985 film Yudh. The phrase, which translates roughly as ‘awesome’ or ‘wicked,’ is now protected by the court order." - Variety

Last week, a public database cataloging all those family objects—more than 8,000 of them—went live. The unparalleled collection has been assembled by the Amherst-based Emily Dickinson Museum and stored in an undisclosed warehouse in Western Massachusetts. - The Atlantic

"The (61-year-old) singer withdrew this summer from the Bayreuth Festival, where he was scheduled to perform (three different leading roles). He said he made the announcement after the Festival ended last week because 'I did not wish anything to cloud this year's achievements.'" - AP

"(He) sold an estimated 50 million albums worldwide, becoming a staple of easy-listening charts while cultivating a sunny and often sentimental folk-pop sound. Although he was considered a one-hit wonder ('The Last Farewell') in the United States, he had a devoted fan base across Europe." - MSN (The Washington Post)