AI’s automating powers are indiscriminate. They are affecting blue-collar manufacturing jobs and white-collar office jobs. Many who spent years, and thousands of dollars, developing specialized skills now need to live with the fact that AI can do their job faster and often better. It is a terrifying reality. - The Walrus

The more these systems anticipate and deliver what we want, the less we notice what’s missing—or remember that we ever had a choice in the first place. But remember: If you’re not choosing, someone else is. - The Atlantic

The collapse of the institutions where young people learn to make and critique art stands to greatly benefit companies like OpenAI, which, in the absence of human artists and critics, can both make the stuff and tell us it’s good. - LA Review of Books

As animation studios wither, one indie animator, whose fan-supported series has now been picked up by Amazon Prime: “I’ve been online since, like, late middle school. … So I have gone through every level of being cringe, being a dumb teenager, making mistakes, drawing really weird stuff.” - Slate

Cognitivism, which has permeated society—as evidenced by the omnipresence of the terms “cognitive” and “cognition”—has perpetuated a traditional view of thought and intelligence as phenomena of inextricable complexity, and therefore phenomena that we can hardly imagine recreating artificially. - AI & Society

By now we’ve moved beyond a post-literature culture into what some are calling a post-literate age, taking us back several thousand years to communication by images and symbols. - The Atlantic

Some might be wondering why anyone should care if, for example, the number of Harvard history Ph.D.s drops from 13 to five. Although these cuts might not look important, they signify something far darker for higher education. - Harvard Crimson

Merely nine months in, the Trump administration is poised to become the most consequential, effective arts presidency in American history—peerless in impact since at least Johnson, whose pillars this administration has toppled with surgical efficiency. - Artnet

Rockstar Games fired a bunch of folks last week. “According to the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), all of the employees fired were part of a private trade union Discord chat and were either already union members or attempting to organize a union at Rockstar.” - The Verge

Coogan: “I noticed the University of Leicester’s website carries Richard Taylor’s statement in full, but not any of my statements. I’m sure that’s just an oversight.” - The Guardian (UK)

Ethical experts have some questions, and some worries - though Somers’s widower claims she knew all about it, and approved, before she died. - CBC

According to SCAD, the Applied AI program will prepare students for professions including AI product developer, AI design strategist, AI story engineer, autonomous agent designer, and “ethical design strategist.” SCAD is also offering a minor in Applied AI that’s open to students across all majors. - Fast Company

“The agreement includes all aspects of YouTube’s various music services and platforms, embodies our artist-centric principles and drives greater monetization for artists and songwriters.” - Music Business Worldwide

“There are some things going on in the US that are not pleasing to me, but I keep my head up. I turn on a light, you know, I don’t dwell on it. If someone needs me out there, I’ll be out there.” - The Guardian (UK)

"A cousin to self-playing player pianos, photoplayers automatically play music read out of perforated piano rolls. During their slim heyday — from their invention around 1910 until about 1930, when the silent film era is thought to have ended — photoplayers delighted audiences.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Microsoft really tried. “It had a bunch of interface design ideas that are still very present in our lives today. The universe in which the Zune was a smash isn’t so far away. … Maybe if it hadn’t been brown?” - The Verge

The three solo artists who make up Huntr/x recorded their now-platinum album alone. Then they went on The Tonight Show and got asked to sing, live. “It was literally our first time singing together,” but “it was very organic and easy.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

Talk about an alternate reality: Perlman told John Williams he’d consider it. “Toby, my wife, said, ‘Are you out of your mind? You’re going to think about it?’ So I called back.” - The New York Times

Despite its upgraded size, the redesigned museum never felt daunting. There’s something intimate about how the installation of its collection—one of the oldest in the country and now numbering around 2,000 objects—has been realized. - ARTnews

If you want to be yelled at for your art historical ignorance by an “aggressive” guide, get your kink on in Düsseldorf. "Asked to explain the tour’s popularity, Brandi said people ‘enjoy the emotional ride.’” - The Guardian (UK)

Yes, you can blame the man who destroyed that honor system, but it could have been set up quite a bit differently. - The Atlantic (MSN)

Renato Casaro and Drew Struzan, both of whom died this autumn, "somehow combined realistic, often borderline photographic, representation of marquee movie stars with outsize, awe-inspiring iconography” and left us with iconic pop culture memories. - The New York Times

Cemetery artist Arthur “Deatly works with slow-drying acrylic paints, whose extended drying time gives flexibility outdoors. This allows him to take his time to lay out his paintings.” - Glasstire

Conceptualised by Calatrava as a "monumental bridge", its volume traverses a series of 350-metre-long platforms and bus stops that extend outwards from the gallery's underside. - Dezeen

Orlean allows that if there’s anything anyone should be jealous of, it’s that she had been encouraged to pursue ideas most magazine editors would dismiss as small. - New York Magazine

The retailer is in the process of opening 15 new outlets this year, which will keep the total number of outlets at over 220 spread across 32 states. - Publishers Weekly

“Writing can terrify us, confuse us, devastate us. Good writing means that you’re engaging with practices that will force you to lean into things that make you uncomfortable. Work that’s doing its job is inevitably hard.” - LitHub

For instance: “Turkish author Sabahattin Ali’s 1943 novel Madonna in a Fur Coat, first published by Penguin in 2016, has rocketed this year, selling almost 30,000 copies in the UK and outstripping even Pride and Prejudice. It’s another anguished story of frustrated love.” - The Guardian (UK)

While some in the literary world are snobs, one author says she considers the best of historical fiction “a lens forged from the experience of the past, through which we may view the concerns of the present with renewed clarity.” - Irish Times

“Lauriane Nicol threw herself wholeheartedly into the creation of the Prix Gouincourt (gouine is a slang term for lesbian), an ironic hat tip to France's most celebrated literary award, the Prix Goncourt.” - Le Monde (Archive Today)

Bob Mondello says yes: "I love seeing movies in a theater, and if I can possibly avoid watching them at home, I do. ... is 55" which is, I guess, not bad for a television screen. But it doesn't compare to the tennis court-size screen.” - NPR

Not even counting the numerous Doctor Who locations (to be fair, many are in Wales), “England's historic buildings and landscapes ‘provide an essential ingredient in making the audience's flesh creep.’” - BBC

"Overall revenues for the month were tragic, with $425 million across all titles, the worst collective haul since October 1997.” - Variety

“While physical beauty is often conflated with a character’s moral goodness, villains have historically been associated with disability or disfigurement: facial scarring, wheelchair use, limb difference.” - The Guardian (UK)

“Joking that she had probably watched Robert Altman’s Gosford Park too many times, DaCosta said that she set the action in 1950s England because of her interest in the postwar era.” - The New York Times

Alassane Moustapha, a filmmaker from Niger, was “as much a multimedia artist as a cineaste, he took an idiosyncratic approach to folkloric storytelling.” He’s been left out of some film histories - but it's time for a reevaluation. - Current

Ballet Theatre was renamed American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in 1957; journalists don’t often use “essay” as a verb anymore (though maybe we should); and the Company is now very diverse, with principal dancers and soloists hailing not only from the U.S. and Europe but also Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico and South Korea. -...

The Boston Ballet’s Howard Merlin: “During the dress rehearsal, something looks really, really bad. … It’s my job to make sure it looks really, really good by the next day.” - Boston Globe (Archive Today)

“Everything you see on the stage starts with Eyal herself improvising, which is then mapped on to the dancers. ... Each movement idea could be slowed down, reversed or repeated. ... From a small amount of source material, Eyal will play with composition and timing and layering up movement.” - The Guardian

“The team performs for hundreds of thousands of fans each year, appearing frequently at sporting events, community centers, festivals and conferences across the Northeast. … The Pacemakers boast 47 members and have won fans around the globe with viral performances that have racked up millions of views online.” - New York Post

“Dance is already abstract, and so the role of us as artists is to be as specific as possible with what we want to say. That’s how we make dance speak. We are talking heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit, with the audience.” - The Minnesota Star Tribune

“Kureishi, 70, who wrote the award-winning novel The Buddha of Suburbia and the film My Beautiful Laundrette, has devised a filmed piece about the devastating aftermath of his fall for two leading ballet dancers, in collaboration with choreographer and Royal Ballet principal character artist Kristen McNally.” - The Observer (UK)

“There’s an inherent theatricality to church, and a furtive spirituality to theater. In form, they’re similar: Everybody crowds into a room, usually sits facing the same direction, and focuses on a central action — at least for a while.” - The New York Times

“In a city where the so-called Theater Row has more ‘For Lease’ signs than marquees, New Theater Hollywood feels improbable. Yet since opening in early 2024, it has already become something of a small cult phenomenon.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Cyndi Lauper isn’t thrilled, actually, about Working Girl. "Unfortunately, this story is just as relevant for women as it was when it came out in 1988. … In fact, since the rollback of Roe v. Wade, times may even be worse for women.” - American Theatre

Eight years ago at the Marin Theatre near San Francisco, Thomas Bradshaw’s play Thomas and Sally sparked in-person protests, an open letter with 1,800 signatures, and a police confrontation. Now, under new leaders, the company hopes to repair some of the damage with Suzan-Lori Parks’s play Sally & Tom. - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)

The company was producing Michael Frayn’s backstage farce Noises Off, which is, as DTC’s executive director wrote to subscribers, “an intensely physical comedy that depends on precise timing and movement, (so) even one missing performer made it impossible to safely continue.” And the cast had a whack-a-mole series of health issues. - KERA (Dallas)

Artistry is what the ’40s biopics get most wrong. Not just the facts, though the depictions of composition, collaboration and show-making are boldly inaccurate. “Rhapsody in Blue” makes a fuss about Gershwin’s use of a diminished-ninth chord in “Swanee,” a chord that appears nowhere in it. - The New York Times

Wicomb, who was born just after apartheid was formalized, said, “I was transported from the vulgarity of apartheid by books — books opened up different worlds, and brought freedom from an oppressive social order.” - The New York Times

“She invited friends — and later hungry museumgoers — to join her for the ordinary-seeming meal, and she documented some of the feasts in journals and Polaroids.” - The New York Times

John McWhorter: "Mispronouncing someone’s name certainly can be a form of ridicule or dismissal. … But malice is not the only possible explanation for these flubs. As a matter of pure linguistics, it would be surprising if people didn’t have trouble with the name Mamdani.” - The New York Times

“A ‘once in a century’ discovery of a cache of long-lost letters has revealed how the English poet WH Auden developed a deep and lasting friendship with a Viennese sex worker and car mechanic after the latter burgled the author’s home and was put on trial.” - The Guardian

“The Trump administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical of Trump since his first presidency. … Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.” - The Guardian

Two days after confetti rained down on Copeland, she spoke about her career at Ballet Theater and what comes next. - The New York Times