As Trump’s behaviour became increasingly authoritarian—openly defying laws, targeting his enemies with prosecutions, dispatching troops into Democratic cities, and turning US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into a shock force to terrorize immigrant communities—many in Silicon Valley cashed in on the action. - The Walrus

In 1849 alone, more than forty thousand people travelled overland to California, while roughly the same number headed there by sea. - The New Yorker

One "emerging medieval strand 'wenchcore,' which offers 'a more acceptable voracious sexuality, the ribald, singing, dancing, drinking, doesn’t-need-to-be-perfect idea of womanhood and of masculinity … more of just whatever goes.'" - The Guardian (UK)

“You can’t talk about aesthetics,” he wrote, “without talking about the principle of hope and the existence of evil.” Attention, for him, was a matter of life and death, or at least of their cultural equivalents, remembering and forgetting. - The New York Times

The reality is that friction, despite seeming so antagonistic, is necessary and even productive. The force that resists motion has, since humans first struck a spark from a stone, been the very thing that propels us forward. - Aeon

Actively shaping this perception, rather than only letting it shape you, is a big part of what makes you creative. You need to actively create an attitude that enables you to do work amidst your circumstances, or even transcending it.  - 3 Quarks Daily

Lee Chang-Dong: "I constantly asked myself: am I worthy of telling this story? And if I am, how do I tell it? Do I stand close to the workers, or keep my distance?" - The Guardian (UK)

For some reason (the reason being that after WWII, "local officials fought successfully to keep it, seeing it as a historical site that could attract visitors"), it was still standing, and had a popular restaurant. - The New York Times

“Satire doesn’t just needle politicians or regimes — it occasionally helps bring them down. … Historian Ben Lewis credits Soviet joke-­telling with helping to topple communism, by making it impossible for even the system’s own enforcers to take it seriously. … ‘Every joke,’ George Orwell observed, ‘is a tiny revolution.’” - Time

“Clifford Murphy, the director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, which runs the festival, called it a ‘democratizing experience’ — one that added up to more than just making lemons into lemonade.” - The New York Times

Last week, Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right politician sworn in as President in August, declared a "cultural counterrevolution" and had dozens of artworks and historical objects removed from the Museo Nacional in Bogotá. In response, some 62,000 people demonstrated in the capital, arguing that the President's action violates Colombia's 1991 Constitution. - Artnet

Since 2008, the territory’s government has funded nine designated major performing arts groups, including the Hong Kong Ballet, Philharmonic, and Repertory Theatre. The city’s chief executive has announced a planned change to a more flexible, “merit-based” system which would make room for more organizations. - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

In the first half of 2026, almost two thirds of the music played (about 60%) was released five or more years ago. So, if we're stuck in a streaming rut, what's to blame? - BBC

The work was sold at auction for a reported $2 million to a then-anonymous American buyer, seemingly proving that music could sell at the level of Picasso and Warhol. It proved a Pyrrhic victory when the buyer was revealed to be the hated “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli. - ARTnews

From Jóhann Jóhannson's score for Sicario to the many joys of Shrek 2 to Howard Shore's scores for The Lord of the Rings, music makes these movies - not just better, but essentially makes them what they are. - The Atlantic

"We don't need to pretend to be nobody else, we're just us. It just took a while to get there." - BBC

“The Elvis plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before," according to the lawsuit. - The New York Times

Is nostalgia - and not just A.I. - ruining popular music right now, when more than 100,000 songs are released to streamers every single day? - BBC

Want to sell tickets? Get a K-pop star's art collection up. "The show has been a blockbuster success, with over 66,000 tickets sold and advance sales that were six times higher than any previous exhibition at the museum." - The Guardian (UK)

Multiple dealers told ARTnews they’d received an email announcing the decision at around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. By then, many had already suspected Saturday’s opening might be canceled. The loss of Sunday came as more of a surprise. - ARTnews

“Officers responding to a report of destruction of property at the Marine Corps Base Quantico around 10:31 p.m. saw a man ‘actively damaging the statue with a sledgehammer’ and detained him without incident, Prince William County police said.” - CNN

The art fair had been schedule to run through the weekend, but organizers have decided to shut it down on Friday evening “in light of potential demonstrations across Paris this weekend, and in the interest of safeguarding our visitors.” - Artnet

He has achieved what many curators, scholars and museum professionals dream of: A museum that decontextualizes art, mixes it all up in a giant cauldron of visual distraction and isolates it from history and culture. But why? How could this happen to one of the country’s great art collections? - Washington Post (MSN)

“Unionized staff across all four branches of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London announced their intention to strike on October 29 and 30, citing stalled negotiations and allegations of ‘Amazon-style’ working conditions at the newly-opened V&A East Storehouse.” - ARTnews

The company is, in essence, a crowdfunding e-commerce site, belonging to the same category as Kickstarter, Patreon, Gumroad, and OnlyFans. But it has out-evolved its ancestors and bested its competitors in its relevance to public discourse and in its direct commodification of online parasocial relationships.  - The New Yorker

The writer herself has questions."Writers are, often, to generalise, outsiders, observers, given to the long view, odd if not downright awkward. ... How do these propensities relate to the construction of literature as an international sport?" - Irish Times

"Turning to fiction allowed for stories that would otherwise have disappeared into the chest of time, to live on, and slowly but surely they are educating, bringing forth that we all share this place together. The 24-hour news cycle leaves little room for reflection or deeper understanding." - LitHub

The end, says Stephen Graham Jones."The story is running along the top of a flat mesa, and it's nighttime and 95% of it is even-footing. But then at the very end, you jump off into the night, into the darkness, and you trust." - NPR

Edgar Allan Poe "seems in deliberate, even flagrant, contrast with what were once regarded as the great themes of American literature: the freedom of self-reinvention promised by a new society and its frontier, exploration, rugged individualism, and the struggle to conquer nature." - Slate

Júlian Delgado Lopera: "'Most of the catastrophic violence in our history can be traced back to a man who hasn’t allowed himself to feel tenderness,' he affirms. ... He’s referring to a kind of violence that goes beyond the long-running armed conflict." - El País English

Patricia Highsmith's "politics are horrendous. She is homophobic despite being gay, antisemitic, anti-everything. Yet she is one of the most psychologically astute writers of the 20th century, particularly brilliant at allowing us into the dark parts of the human psyche.” - The New York Times

For instance, Shirley Clarke's 1967 movie Portrait of Jason. - The New York Times

"The main problem with 2020s Netflix: It gets eyeballs watching far more than it gets tongues wagging. If a Super Bowl-size event takes place and nobody talks about it, does it even matter?" - Fast Company

Poehler, and Hugh Laurie, star in a fictional show about realistic archaeologists. "Getting the objects right was important for the production because an appreciation of artifacts is central to archaeology." - The New York Times

"'It’s like the opposite of Hearts of Darkness,' Sofia said. 'In a way it’s sort of a nice counterpoint because that movie’s so macho and masculine and this is so feminine.' And it’s also true to what really happened." - Seattle Times (AP)

"Every single thing you see onscreen is an artistic choice. You start with a blank canvas, nothing exists. Everything has to be thought through, designed and manipulated by an artist’s hands." - The New York Times

But "is it a Canadian ballet company or just a first-rate ballet company based in Canada?" - The New York Times

"It’s rare for Dancing With the Stars to attract a star of Stiles’s wattage. The show is hard, humbling work." - The New York Times

Or so lovers of (ridiculously) loud dance music claim. "At Gaffe, a DIY space in northeast London, a sign shows two arrows pointing in different directions. One says 'Dancing,' the other 'Yapping.'" - The Guardian (UK)

And not as dancers, but as DJs, promoters, and business owners. "Trans women aren’t just more visible in dance music—they’re 'taking the reins over the modes of production.'" - Slate

“Five centuries later, the dancing plague of 1518 remains one of history’s strangest medical mysteries. Historical records confirm that a bizarre episode turned a medieval city” — Strasbourg — “into a very unwilling dance floor that summer, but exactly why it happened remains a matter of debate.” - Popular Science

Evidently so. "Since its official opener in May, the IDL has secured a media rights deal with ESPN and garnered more than 2 billion views on social media. ... Almost every stop on the season tour sold out; the Los Angeles finals sold out in 15 minutes." - Dance Magazine

Yet the Broadway musical persists, in its wholly impossible format, imposing eight big singing shows a week on its stars, which is, as any veteran will tell you, one of the most brutal workloads possible for a performer—and, when it occurs in long-running shows, mostly invisible as a personal triumph.  - The New Yorker

"In rehearsals, they tightened the structure, fine-tuned the music and lyrics, tamping down the sentimentality. Still, the show is plenty sentimental." - The New York Times

"In an alternate universe, might 'Seasons of Love' have opened with the lyric: '31,536,000 seconds?'” - The New York Times

The city only received two propsals to take over the spaces, known as Portland'5 (yes, there are 5 theatres), starting next July. - Oregon ArtsWatch

“The play, The Amish Project, will be Groff’s first nonmusical production on Broadway, and it’s strikingly personal for him: It’s a work of fiction inspired by a 2006 shooting at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, just a few minutes from Groff’s childhood home.” - The New York Times

Kimberly Motes, the executive director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater since 2023, is leaving her position in mid-November to become president and CEO of Hennepin Arts in Minneapolis. - Chicago Tribune

Recently, "the Canadian actor outdid himself with Coyote vs. Acme, voicing everything from Bugs Bunny to Foghorn Leghorn and Tweety Bird." - The Hollywood Reporter

"Even as the stories were still being written and published, tens of thousands around the world behaved as if Holmes and Watson truly lived and breathed." Why? - The Guardian (UK)

The best piece of advice the actor says he's ever received: "'Know your lines and don’t hit the furniture.' That is Spencer Tracy’s acting advice. I’ve always thought, dead on.'" - The Guardian (UK)

"For more than 40 years, Mr. Anderson was the hidden hand in nearly every movie the Coen brothers made. It was a close-knit but unheralded working relationship that aesthetically defined one of the greatest runs in moviemaking history." - The New York Times

Someone writing from the Bard president’s email address asks Mr. Epstein whether a young woman was “for me, or are you keeping her for yourself.” The contention over the email is the latest, and perhaps most intense, dispute over the former Bard president’s ties to Mr. Epstein. - The New York Times

“He guided listeners through major events like Ronald Reagan’s landslide electoral victories, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. But to the people who worked alongside him in the newsroom, Adams’s journalism shone through in the softer features he reported.” - NPR