Today’s AJ Highlights: The entertainment industry is aggressively pivoting to “verticals”—microdramas designed for phones with 90-second episodes—turning cities like Vancouver into factories for this new, fast-paced format (The Guardian; The Hollywood Reporter). This race to the bottom of our attention spans coincides with a flood of AI “slop”, as low-quality generative content pollutes everything from search results to legal filings (Mother Jones). Yet, for all the hype, a retrospective on 2025 concludes that the “Year of the AI Agent” was actually the “Decade of Maybe,” defined by slow clicks and hallucinated maps (The New Yorker).
In stark contrast, the physical world is heavy and expensive. The UK Treasury has agreed to insure the Bayeux Tapestry for $1 billion for its loan to the British Museum (ARTnews) , a work historians now believe was originally designed as lunchtime reading for monks (Artnet). Meanwhile, the Louvre is “bursting at the seams,” facing a collapse driven by its own overwhelming popularity (The Guardian).
The Kennedy Center sees more cancellations as artists protest its renaming (The Washington Post (MSN)) , and the Norman Rockwell Museum is pushing back against the Trump administration’s appropriation of the anti-segregationist artist’s work (The Bulwark).
All of our stories below.
