On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all. Sometimes consumer prices are an incomplete, even misleading, signal of economic well-being. - The Atlantic

This is a moment that philosophers have warned us about for years. Before his death, philosopher and neuroscientist Daniel Dennett wrote that we face a grave peril from AI systems that emulate people: “These counterfeit people are the most dangerous artifacts in human history … distracting and confusing us. - Wired

Botto is a decentralized semi-autonomous artistic agent created in 2021 by the German artist Mario Klingemann; Simon Hudson, a media entrepreneur; and Ziv Epstein, a computer scientist and designer. - Wired

In speaking to hundreds of experts, consumers, and skeptics of AI over the past few years, four strongholds for humans keep coming up. - Harvard Business Review

Rousseau was, in effect, the diagnostician of despair who captured the affliction of alienation in all of its dimensions. The source of our affliction was the very thing we thought made us better: civilization. - The American Scholar

Contemporary America segregates debility and death, and it’s costing us, body and soul, writes Duke University historian James Chappel. - The American Scholar

The budget cut is a departure from Berlin’s previous plan to inject the city’s cultural spaces with new capital.  In 2021, Germany approved a record €2.1 billion federal culture; a €155 million increase from 2020. - ARTnews

Nostalgia is a powerful lure, even when it comes to songs like "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" and movies like "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." And retailers and radio stations and TV networks know it. - Tedium

“There’s been a lot of conversation about a false doom narrative … surrounding our city’s art scene. I counter that assertion. I want to point out that our scene is, in fact, thriving.” - ARTnews

Well, Merry Christmas. (Even with the cuts, the city's arts and culture budget for 2025 is well over €1 billion.) - ARTnews

I’ve set out to perform the annual ritual of assessing and unpacking the year gone by through the objects that captured our attention. Here, then, is the year in objects—the good, the unsettling, and the hard to explain.

"From financial challenges and workforce dynamics to measures of arts vibrancy, these findings capture the trends and key shifts shaping the field today. For a broader perspective, we’ve also included a few honorable mentions, offering a well-rounded look at this year’s discoveries." - SMU DataArts

Believing that you possess a perfect understanding of what the people want is a poor way to run an opera company—or any organization, up to and including a nation. What we call the “audience” is an ever-shifting assemblage of tastes, expectations, experiences, levels of knowledge, degrees of passion. - The New Yorker

Unlike a record label, a tech company doesn’t care whether we’re hooked on the same hit on repeat or lost in a three-hour ambient loop, so long as we’re listening to something. - The New Yorker

The sight of young people moving to K-pop’s electrifying beat has become part of the drama of this protest movement. Protest organisers are blasting out K-pop hits, and demonstrators are waving K-pop light sticks (portable devices associated with specific artists or groups), turning the protests into multicoloured musical rallies. - The Conversation

When the librettist obtained a copy of the score, in early 1743, he didn’t like it. “His Messiah has disappointed me,” he wrote to a friend, “being set in great haste … . I shall put no more Sacred Words into his hands, to be thus abus’d.” - The Wall Street Journal

The venue is in the city's top conference center/shopping mall; the cast includes Asmik Grigorian and Brian Jagde; José Cura is conducting; top tickets cost nearly $700. But hours before curtain time, director Davide Livermore stormed away and producers reconfigured the hall to remove 2,800 seats. - The Korea Herald

Some — London Heathrow, Nashville, Phoenix, Seattle-Tacoma, both Chicago airports — have stages with live musicians. Others — Detroit, Austin — have specially curated playlists. Singapore-Changi even commissioned piano music for its famous waterfall. - AP

The corridor, designed by the Renaissance-era architect Giorgio Vasari, was commissioned in 1565 by Cosimo I de’ Medici, the second duke of Florence, and completed in just five months. - The Guardian

Monday’s fall economic statement included the proposed update to the copyright act, which will give Canadian visual artists a slice of the proceeds if their work is resold at galleries or auction houses. - The Globe & Mail

The ultimate reason is the wave of anti-monarchism that swept the country after Napoleon III's fall and the foundation of the Third Republic. Why New Jersey? Because of a certain Charles Lewis Tiffany. - The New York Times

"Klint family members say that a proposed deal between Zwirner, who is one of the biggest gallerists in the world, and the foundation’s board would open the door to the 'commercialisation' of the artist’s work, which they say directly contravenes her wishes and the statutes of the foundation." - The Guardian

Suddenly, at exactly 11:57 p.m., 92 electronic billboards all around Times Square stopped pulsating with ads for Coca-Cola, Broadway plays, and fashion brands, and began a synchronized 10-second countdown. Then a digitally animated young woman appeared on all 92 screens, with “Autofiction: Moving Pictures” written in white letters across her blue T-shirt. - Artnet

"Situated on a leafy corner of the Crown Heights neighborhood, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum commemorated its 125th anniversary last weekend with a daylong celebration. A few weeks earlier, its president and chief executive, Atiba T. Edwards, had his own anniversary — his first year on the job." - The New York Times

As with so many innovations, the first Christmas card, sent out in 1843, was devised by a guy trying to avoid a big, tedious task. Reaction was mixed, and the temperance society was particularly upset. - BBC

"PW looks back at the major contractions in the independent book distribution space, an explosion of artificial intelligence tools and businesses, turmoil over freedom of expression in multiple sectors, and more that defined the book business landscape throughout the year." - Publishers Weekly

Britannica has figured out not only how to survive, but also how to do well financially. Jorge Cauz, its chief executive, said in an interview that the publisher enjoyed pro forma profit margins of about 45 percent. - The New York Times

Spines said it aims to help a million authors bring their stories to life—so they can focus on writing great books while A.I. handles the heavy lifting of publishing. - The Observer

Despite offering 75 copies of the e-book, the library's waitlist currently sits at about 1,200 people. With a maximum borrowing period of 21 days, someone placing a hold on the e-book today could be waiting well over a year before it comes available. - CBC

It’s convenient to assume that readers are to blame for killing literary fiction, and publishers have abandoned it because book-buyers are stupid, have bad taste, and just aren’t reading anymore. But what has actually occurred is death by committee. - Persuasion

Yep, it's true. The 21-minute film, The Junky's Christmas (1993), was written and narrated by Burroughs and produced by no less than Francis Ford Coppola. And it's right there on YouTube. - Open Culture

"CBS executives thought the 25-minute program was too slow, too serious and too different from the upbeat spectacles they imagined audiences wanted. A cartoon about a depressed kid seeking psychiatric advice? No laugh track? Humble, lo-fi animation? And was that a Bible verse?" - The Conversation

The songs form the basis of the highest-grossing musical in the history of Broadway. Thirty years on they remain embedded in our collective consciousness, so Lin-Manuel Miranda could be forgiven for feeling wary about being called on to provide the tunes for follow-up Mufasa: The Lion King. - The Independent

In the show's 55th season. producers are trying to re-orient it to keep it alive. Its core audience of toddlers and pre-schoolers is different than in the 1970s, there's vastly more competition today, income from DVDs has evaporated due to YouTube, and HBO has cancelled a lucrative deal. - The Washington Post (MSN)

Obviously everyone is different, but Alissa Wlkinson does have some general guidelines to offer. Among them: remember that people are more susceptible to tears at 35,000 feet. And don't assume that the films are all disposable pop stuff; there are frequently award- and festival-winners on the menu. - The New York Times

The successful roll-out of fast broadband in the UK has allowed streaming services — led by the US giants, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Apple TV+ — to demonstrate the dynamic power of subscription as a funding mechanism. - The Critic

Dozens of students from Nairobi's Kibera Ballet School, which provides free instruction to impoverished children and teens, donned Santa hats and sequined outfits to perform holiday choreography they had practiced for months. - AP

Darius Kuolys who was the first culture minister after a 1990 declaration of independence, said it was obvious that the Kremlin often exploited culture for political ends. But he added, “It never occurred to me as a minister to tell people what to watch or listen to.” - The New York Times

In her contentious essay, Croce, one of the finest dance critics of the 20th century, railed against what she called victim art: “By working dying people into his act, Jones is putting himself beyond the reach of criticism. - The New York Times

"Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar asked Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to examine whether the Batsheva Dance Company is in violation of its state funding over a performance that included the Palestinian flag" — among 40 other flags onstage. - The Times Of Israel

The dancers fired this summer won their case, but they've chosen to take severance pay rather than return to the company. The current dancers are new and all crossed picket lines to be there. And, because of all this turmoil, the city of Dallas has cut off funding. What next? - Dance Magazine

As in last year’s column, a couple of these books were published recently; the others earlier in the century. All, in one way or another, are about dancing and dance, the people who make it, practice it, teach it, and, no small thing, the passion that drives them. - Oregon ArtsWatch

Twenty years ago marked a turning point for the arts in the UK. And not a good one. - The Stage

Sarah Bahr: "For me, watching fictional journalists scheme their way to scoops is akin to what I imagine it must feel like for doctors to watch Grey’s Anatomy. … So, let me share how some stage scenarios would most likely unfold in a real newsroom." - The New York Times

While Jimmy Kimmel cries and Jon Stewart rants, the right wing in the U.S. has successfully depicted itself as the new home for free speech and cutting edge comedy. - The Conversation

The Citizens Theatre is returning to its historic playhouse next September after a seven-year renovation, the first overhaul the facility has had since it opened as a working theatre in 1878. - The Guardian

Broadway returned to boom times, and several commercially produced shows did gangbusters business in smaller theatres, but Off Broadway’s nonprofit companies continued to struggle. Yet a lot of what made the city artistically exciting this year required that all parts of the ecosystem flourish. - The New Yorker

Like the drama series about the Post Office scandal aired a year ago, “Mr Bates vs The Post Office,” dramatizations of the news can often draw more attention to an event. They can also build public pressure for injustices to be addressed. 

In 1087, a group of three grain ships from Bari, the port on the heel of the Italian boot, decided to steal the relics of the patron saint of sailors and bring them back home. So off they went to the tomb in Myra in what's now Turkey. From there the story gets literally...

"Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey withdrew the appeal of a July decision at trial to dismiss the (involuntary manslaughter) charge against Baldwin in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on set for the movie Rust outside Santa Fe in October 2021." - AP

He has remained one of the most successful TV producers in entertainment history, specifically in the talk, news and variety programming genres, over a five-decade career. Most notably, he co-created The Mike Douglas Show in 1961 and ABC News's Good Morning America in 1975. - Variety

Some creative geniuses make the world richer because of their work. Others have used their cultural impact as an excuse not to treat others with basic respect. The latter group brings to mind a truly notorious kind of “art monster” - The Atlantic

The Ukrainian-born dancer, who has three tattoos of Putin (despite the Russian military's near-obliteration of his hometown, Kherson), now says "My time in Russia ran out a long time ago … I've fulfilled my mission here." Last week he posted a message calling for peace negotiations and promptly lost his job. - CBS News

She had always insisted that what she was reviewing was not a dance itself but an “afterimage” imprinted in her mind, something personal and partial to throw “out there” into the cultural conversation, whatever that might be. Which is why, even when I disagree with Croce intensely, I often find myself in conversation with...