Understanding is a lively topic for philosophers, but not for the tech industry. In their race to the ultimate prize of AGI, Silicon Valley’s main players instead see the mechanization of reasoning as the main hurdle. For them, mathematics is the supreme AI challenge because it is the purest form of reasoning. - Boston Review

Habermas’s death might mark the end of a mode of main-stage philosophizing that, in the German-speaking world, reaches back, by way of Adorno, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Marx, Schopenhauer, and Hegel, to Kant himself. - The New Yorker

This cockroach of forms—adaptive, resilient, unkillable—was named by the Roman dramatist Plautus in the second century BC, enjoyed its heyday in 17th-century Renaissance theater, and was revived in the 20th century to describe a slurry of existential despair and absurd farce. - ARTnews

Samuel Moyn argues that the oldest Americans, because of their retrograde politics and ever-increasing presence, are profoundly reshaping our collective life. - The New Yorker

Music has a unique capability to engage multiple areas of the brain that can function in sync with one another. This includes areas involved in hearing and listening, movement, attention, language, emotion, memory and thinking. - The Conversation

Reading a book involves a complex series of mental tasks. A reader must decode words, interpret pictures, and connect new information to what they already know. To do this efficiently, the human brain builds what scientists call a story schema. - Psypost

Philadelphia, as the cradle of American independence, was supposed to be the center of attention 50 years ago. From the beginning, deliberations involved arguably the most important architect of the late 20th century, Louis I. Kahn. - Architecture and the City

“(Its) establishment comes less than two weeks after a judge ruled the Kennedy Center's board acted unlawfully in adding the president's name. … A source with knowledge of the plans for the endowment” — called the Trump Kennedy Center Fund — “suggested it will focus on the ‘physical disrepair’ of the building.” - CBS...

My biggest concern is that the Kennedy Center will remain nominally open—as in, I’ll be free to walk through the doors and perhaps buy a coffee at the cafe—but there will be few, or even no, performances to see. - Washingtonian

Imagine a scenario in which Bernstein and the Kennedys — John and Jackie both — bequeathed a proactive White House arts component prioritizing American achievement, past and present. It would have shaped the goals of the envisioned national cultural center. It almost happened. - ArtsFuse

After blowing the deadline and begging for more time - and being denied - workers took Donald J. Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center on Friday night. But “a spokeswoman for the center, said the institution was … evaluating ‘legal options.’” - The New York Times

Trump’s threat to walk away from the Kennedy Center suggests an additional danger: He could lose interest and doze off, as if at yet another Cabinet meeting or NBA Finals game, leaving parts of the government to fend for themselves. - The Atlantic

Victor DeRenzi: “In the last few years, I had begun to realize that I could not develop an artistic future for the opera with the current board. Budgets were approved late, sometimes less than six months before the new fiscal year began." - Sarasota Herald-Tribune (MSN)

Austin Chanu, a 33-year-old Brazilian-American and a former assistant conductor at the Philadelphia Orchestra, succeeds Lawrence Loh, whose 10-year tenure ended in May 2025. The Syracuse Orchestra is the musician-led co-operative ensemble formed after the Syracuse Symphony folded in 2011. - The Post-Standard (Syracuse)

David Israelite said the Udio agreement is the first industry-wide licensing deal struck with a major AI music company, and the first to “value songs and sound recordings equally” when it comes to AI training. - Music Business Worldwide

Womad in Glasgow “is the 20th casualty so far this year as small and independent festival operators enter another tough summer facing myriad challenges, from belt-tightening consumers becoming more picky about how they spend their cash, to soaring energy and labour costs.” - The Guardian (UK)

There’s a new way to distract oneself while donating blood - to play immersive virtual reality games. And the games's soundtracks? “Abbott commissioned the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ... to record them in a whirlwind, one-day recording session in the spring.” - The New York Times

Renell Shaw: “Our story is of growth, and it’s a love story, too. I mean, my grandmother came over here from Jamaica looking for work, and my grandfather came over to chase my grandmother!” - The Guardian (UK)

“A massive Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv has badly damaged the Dormition Cathedral in the Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, a UNESCO world heritage site and one of Ukraine’s most significant religious and cultural sites.” - The Guardian

"The biggest will be Glory Facade, which is the main facade. Maybe it will take 10 years, but we don't yet have a fixed schedule." - Dezeen

After standing in the glow of this new South Side landmark, I admittedly feel like a buzzkill focusing on documents, kind of like visiting the Sistine Chapel and contemplating the plumbing. - The Atlantic

“Frida died – but she didn’t pass away. She was like a rocket. She just went up and up.” - The Guardian (UK)

“Among their demands were a section of the museum dedicated to Black (and, in a later, amended statement, Puerto Rican) artists, an artist committee granted curatorial power, a ‘rental fee’ paid to artists for the exhibition of their work and free admission for all.” - The New York Times

“Mora, who is 91 and tiny, wearing head scarves around her weathered face, has clung to a mix of ancestral Indigenous and Spanish traditions.” - The New York Times

If, as a French saying has it, “style is the man himself,” what does the style of AI writing tell us about it? For one thing, it has no fixed style, revealing that it has no fixed self. It’s happy to burn tokens saying the same thing in as many ways as you want. ...

“The bookstore boom is a story about a certain educated, culturally aspirational demographic doing what it has always done, while the literacy crisis unfolds elsewhere, namely in under-resourced schools, rural communities, and households without the discretionary income to browse a charming bookshop on a Saturday afternoon.” - LitHub

And that good book is Charlotte’s Web. - The Guardian (UK)

“I have this daydream where I go to the park and read under a tree. The sun is shining. It's not too hot. The ground beneath me is comfortable. I have snacks on hand, I'm hydrated, and I am captivated by the book in front of me.” - NPR

The fiction award is well-known (as is, in this case, the award winner), but the Women’s Prize added the nonfiction award in 2023 to help redress an imbalance in nonfiction award winners in the UK. - The Guardian (UK)

Can ‘Hot Girls Read’ be trademarked? One creator thought so. “She is using the trademarking this common phrase to retroactively target small businesses who very likely had the idea before her, or at the very least had it around the same time as her.” - Slate

“Assembly Bill 2319, which passed the California State Assembly and is awaiting a vote in the State Senate, would establish a $100 million budget allocation that would give productions that do their post work in the Golden State a base tax writeoff equivalent to 35% of qualified spending,” - TheWrap (Yahoo!)

“The National Public Radio affiliate WLVR, which broadcasts at 91.3 FM, has been sold outright to LVPM by the university, which announced the transfer on Thursday. LVPM, which has operated the station since entering into a partnership with Lehigh in 2019, will purchase the Federal Communications Commission license.” - The Morning Call (Allentown, PA)...

The transaction combines Fox’s sports, news, and entertainment content and the Tubi streaming service with Roku’s connected TV platform, The Roku Channel, first-party data and direct relationship with more than 100 million global streaming households, the deal partners touted. - The Hollywood Reporter

The early renewal order represents one of the most significant actions the Trump administration has taken against a media company, a potential regulatory death-blow to go alongside the myriad legal actions taken against the press and access restrictions placed upon journalists. - The Guardian

“You can keep it pretty simple. There are the alien movies where the aliens come in peace and the alien movies where the aliens do not come in peace.” - NPR

According to analysts, it’s “an encouraging sign for what could be a big summer for theaters.” - Los Angeles Times

“Of all the joy blooming throughout the Knicks championship run, the most visible has been the jubilant transfer of energy from body to body.” - The New York Times

“For (a decade NCAAkron) has supported research and development of new work by over 800 dancers from around the United States through dancing labs and residencies. ‘As nobody questions when a scientist goes into a lab, that’s what we believe is possible for a choreographer going into the studio,’ said director Christy Bolingbroke.” - Signal Akron

“’Welcome to bad dancing,’ says Alex Ketley, a choreographer and former member of the San Francisco Ballet who teaches Dance 123: Hot Mess & Deliberate Failure as Practice. Ketley, an advanced lecturer in the department of theater and performance studies and a former Guggenheim Fellow, says it’s his most popular course.” - Stanford Magazine

The passionate ballroom dance of Buenos Aires and Montevideo has found a large, equally passionate base of fans in Istanbul, where a multitude of milonga clubs, dance studios and schools have arisen to support a vibrant tango scene. - AP

Following widespread rumors that the chosen candidate was a politically-connected university professor with no experience in ballet, the company’s dancers issued a public statement stressing the importance of a qualified, experienced director. The Culture Minister responded, insisting that no choice had been made and the rumors were groundless. - The Chosun Daily (Seoul)

Choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, no less. “Tennis doesn’t have a strong tradition of opening numbers — and certainly not of dance routines.” - The New York Times

Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s five-day event — called “Edinlochry” — won’t be as chaotic as the actual Edinburgh Fringe can be, mainly because it will be curated rather than open-access. - The Edinburgh Reporter

This actor did, though he adds, “When I first had the idea, oh, yeah, I'm going to learn them all. I … I did not realize how much work it actually was.” - NPR

Or more specifically, in one song: “Sunday.” - The New York Times

The plan - after extensive renovations of the now unprepossessing building - is for ExoArts to “offer six six-week blocks a year at subsidized sliding-scale rates that can be rented by outside theater companies to perform full-scale production” and to have its own programming as well. - Seattle Times

Pride: the Musical, now at the National Theatre in London, is the stage adaptation of a 2014 film about the London-based activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners and the members of a Welsh colliery community whom they supported financially during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. - The Guardian

Georgia Classic Theatre is being founded by former artists with Georgia Shakespeare, which operated from 1985 to 2014. GCT held its first fundraiser last month and will present its first production, of Macbeth, this fall. - ArtsATL

Shalit started on Today in 1970, according to NBC's report on his passing, and became its arts editor in 1973, interviewing celebrities and reviewing books as well as films. His role on the show was reduced in his later years and he retired at age 84 in 2010, saying, "It's ​enough already." - CBC

“In an extraordinarily accomplished career that spanned eight decades, Ibrahim helped bring bebop stylings to South Africa, and he bonded with Duke Ellington, who produced one of his early, influential recordings. In his later years, he became an idol and an inspiration to new generations of jazz pianists.” - NPR

"Yolen never encountered a genre she didn’t like; among her early books was a history of kites. Yet running through almost all her writing was a strong through-line of deep psychological insight and a sense of wonder.” - The New York Times

“Antic yet elegant, Mr. van Reigersberg was closely associated with two important strands of 21st-century performance: devised physical theater — in which an ensemble works together to create a script through improvisation — and a playful, let-the-chest-hair-show take on drag.” - The New York Times

After moving over from the book critic desk, “Shalit proved to be a spirited counterbalance to the heavier news of the day, entertaining audiences with celebrity interviews and insights into moviegoing choices during his ‘Critic’s Corner’ segment.” - The Hollywood Reporter

The growing trend for auctions of deceased famous people’s personal items – which has boomed ever since the hugely popular Marilyn Monroe estate sale in 1999 – has even attracted its own portmanteau: “deleb” as in dead celebrity. - The Guardian