AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- The Ragtime Cancellation That Lasted Twelve Hours
Good Morning,
Every hour in Veracruz, the clock tower plays the original “La Bamba,” three centuries older than Ritchie Valens’ hit. Son jarocho, the genre behind it, was dismissed in the 1970s as “the music of drunken people”; now its fandangos draw dancers from Tokyo to Los Angeles, summed up in one word, convivencia — alive together (NPR). In Melbourne, Charles Lai has spent a decade running a free calendar of gallery openings, turning down offers to let galleries sponsor it because he wants to “keep my own counsel”; one critic, following his listings, hit seven shows by e-bike, from a converted lending library to Everfresh Studio, an artist collective back after its old space closed (The Guardian).
In Louisville, Nathan Balasubramanian, incoming academic chief for city schools, secretly ordered Manual High School’s “Ragtime” canceled over its racial slurs; the district reversed course that evening, after a viral outcry, though board member Linda Duncan says nobody told the superintendent (LPM). Conductor Andris Nelsons, pushed out by the Boston Symphony this year, got the opposite verdict in Leipzig, where the Gewandhaus orchestra just extended his contract to 2032 (The Boston Globe).
YouTube, TikTok and Meta are declining paid ads for documentarian Alex Gibney’s new film on Elon Musk, despite breaking none of their political-ad rules; distributor Bleecker Street is appealing, refused by Meta, while a film about a man trying to control the conversation makes its point before it opens Oct. 9 (The Hollywood Reporter).
All of our stories below.
- The All-Night Song And Dance Parties Of Veracruz

“This syncopated, jubilant folk music is a melange of European, Caribbean and Indigenous influences. While fandangos — where folks gather to play their instruments, sing and dance — are more than 300 years old, their popularity is now spreading around the world.” – NPR
- In Leipzig, Ousted Boston Symphony Orchestra Director Andris Nelsons Feels The Love

“When he conducts, he does not think in English or German or Latvian, even if that would be his own. But he thinks directly in music, and this is so direct. … Sometimes in a concert you have suddenly a new gesture never seen before, that everybody understands.” – Boston Globe
- Major Social Media Platforms Are All Turning Down Paid Advertising For The Documentary About Elon Musk

No one will be surprised that X (formerly Twitter) won’t take the ads for Alex Gibney’s award-winning movie, but what’s up with TikTok, YouTube, and Meta? – The Hollywood Reporter
- Sylvester Stallone Finally Reckons With Decades Of Trauma

“When I look at that footage, I look distorted. I was gone for a few seconds. Sometimes in acting or painting or writing, you just subliminally lose yourself. You do not know where you are. … What was that?” – The New York Times
ISSUES
- An Art Crawl, By Bike, In Melbourne

“Even as a Melbourne local and a longtime art lover I find it near impossible to keep up with the independent openings happening in my city.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Milwaukee Museum Returns Enslaved Artist David Drake’s Works To His Descendants

“Drake made and inscribed ambitious stoneware jars while enslaved in South Carolina in the 1800s, despite punishing conditions and anti-literacy laws that prevented teaching enslaved persons to read.” – The New York Times
- Correcting The Record On Lee Krasner

Krasner and Pollock were, in mid-20th-century New York, at the heart of the artistic movement that would become Abstract Expressionism. At that time, the only label more detrimental to a talented artist’s career than “woman” was the handle “wife.” – The New York Times
- At Long Last, MOCA In L.A. Has Its New Director

“After almost two decades of high leadership turnover and a more than year-long search, the Museum of Contemporary Art has appointed Jonathan Abbott as its new director and chief executive.” He comes from Boston’s PBS affiliate, GBH, where he was CEO for 15 years. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
- Lucas Museum Architects And The Building Of Fantasies

MAD Architects is a team that has completed major cultural and residential projects in 16 countries and counting. Their signature is hard-to-believe designs that do all of the shouting — etched towers churning like hula-hooping women; a museum honed like an ancient stone; an opera house resembling a mountain, bursting from the ground. – The New York Times
MEDIA
- Major Social Media Platforms Are All Turning Down Paid Advertising For The Documentary About Elon Musk
No one will be surprised that X (formerly Twitter) won’t take the ads for Alex Gibney’s award-winning movie, but what’s up with TikTok, YouTube, and Meta? – The Hollywood Reporter
- Who Killed Paulina Borsook’s Tech Writing Career?
Maybe it wasn’t one person, or one magazine – maybe it was just the Zeitgeist changing. Right? (Because that’s the way it always goes for “difficult” women.) – Wired
- In Colombia, Arts Workers Of All Sorts March To Protest Cuts To Culture Budget
“Hundreds of artists, students and cultural workers gathered outside of (the) Ministry of Culture in Bogotá on Monday, protesting a proposed 30% cut to the cultural budget in 2027 and a suspension of national arts awards.” – The Art Newspaper
- Australia’s Performing Arts Sector Is In Crisis
Too many of our finest performers and musicians feel compelled to leave Australia. Productions, concert seasons and festivals are being cancelled or scaled back. – ArtsHub
- White House Officials Search For Easier DC Landmarks To Put Trump’s Name On (But Not Ford’s Theatre)
What with the ongoing battle over the Kennedy Center, Trump administration staffers are reportedly trying to find other spots to which his name could be added without legal wrangling. An MS NOW report said that among the places aides considered was the site of Lincoln’s assassination, a suggestion Trump himself angrily denies. – AlterNet
MUSIC
- Haitian-Canadian Author’s Book Withdrawn From Goncourt Short List Over Accusations Of AI
“As critics sparred with defenders of Mr. Orélien, who is Black, over whether he was targeted because of his race and his book’s treatment of migrants, he was accused of plagiarism in earlier writings, inflaming the controversy.” – The New York Times
- A Guy Who Scammed Writers And Publishers For Years Sure Appears To Be Back, If Hidden, Online
“The messages bear the hallmarks of Bernardini’s original scheme: look-alike emails, carefully replicated fonts and signatures, fluency in industry slang and an intimate knowledge of relationships in the book world.” Then there are the poop emojis. – The New York Times
- Survey: How Libraries Are Using AI
Respondents were most likely to use AI for enhancing staff productivity (57.7%), supporting student learning (55.8%), and improving content discovery (53.3%). They were less likely to use AI tools for digital preservation (21.3%) or collection management (27.5%). – Publishers Weekly
- A Convicted Prolific Publishing Scammer Seems To Be Back In Business
Over more than five years, Bernardini created some 160 fraudulent internet domains, prosecutors argued, and impersonated hundreds of publishing professionals to obtain more than a thousand unpublished manuscripts. – The New York Times
- Wikipedia Is 25 Years Old
In 25 years Wikipedia has transformed from a new and provocative innovation to a stalwart of the internet age. That journey reflects persistent anxieties about credibility, expertise, and user-generated content that have continually haunted our relationship with the online. – History Today
PEOPLE
- The Ragtime Cancellation That Lasted Twelve Hours
Good Morning,
Every hour in Veracruz, the clock tower plays the original “La Bamba,” three centuries older than Ritchie Valens’ hit. Son jarocho, the genre behind it, was dismissed in the 1970s as “the music of drunken people”; now its fandangos draw dancers from Tokyo to Los Angeles, summed up in one word, convivencia — alive together (NPR). In Melbourne, Charles Lai has spent a decade running a free calendar of gallery openings, turning down offers to let galleries sponsor it because he wants to “keep my own counsel”; one critic, following his listings, hit seven shows by e-bike, from a converted lending library to Everfresh Studio, an artist collective back after its old space closed (The Guardian).
In Louisville, Nathan Balasubramanian, incoming academic chief for city schools, secretly ordered Manual High School’s “Ragtime” canceled over its racial slurs; the district reversed course that evening, after a viral outcry, though board member Linda Duncan says nobody told the superintendent (LPM). Conductor Andris Nelsons, pushed out by the Boston Symphony this year, got the opposite verdict in Leipzig, where the Gewandhaus orchestra just extended his contract to 2032 (The Boston Globe).
YouTube, TikTok and Meta are declining paid ads for documentarian Alex Gibney’s new film on Elon Musk, despite breaking none of their political-ad rules; distributor Bleecker Street is appealing, refused by Meta, while a film about a man trying to control the conversation makes its point before it opens Oct. 9 (The Hollywood Reporter).
All of our stories below.
- The All-Night Song And Dance Parties Of Veracruz
“This syncopated, jubilant folk music is a melange of European, Caribbean and Indigenous influences. While fandangos — where folks gather to play their instruments, sing and dance — are more than 300 years old, their popularity is now spreading around the world.” – NPR
- In Leipzig, Ousted Boston Symphony Orchestra Director Andris Nelsons Feels The Love
“When he conducts, he does not think in English or German or Latvian, even if that would be his own. But he thinks directly in music, and this is so direct. … Sometimes in a concert you have suddenly a new gesture never seen before, that everybody understands.” – Boston Globe
- Major Social Media Platforms Are All Turning Down Paid Advertising For The Documentary About Elon Musk
No one will be surprised that X (formerly Twitter) won’t take the ads for Alex Gibney’s award-winning movie, but what’s up with TikTok, YouTube, and Meta? – The Hollywood Reporter
- Sylvester Stallone Finally Reckons With Decades Of Trauma
“When I look at that footage, I look distorted. I was gone for a few seconds. Sometimes in acting or painting or writing, you just subliminally lose yourself. You do not know where you are. … What was that?” – The New York Times
PEOPLE
- The Ragtime Cancellation That Lasted Twelve Hours
Good Morning,
Every hour in Veracruz, the clock tower plays the original “La Bamba,” three centuries older than Ritchie Valens’ hit. Son jarocho, the genre behind it, was dismissed in the 1970s as “the music of drunken people”; now its fandangos draw dancers from Tokyo to Los Angeles, summed up in one word, convivencia — alive together (NPR). In Melbourne, Charles Lai has spent a decade running a free calendar of gallery openings, turning down offers to let galleries sponsor it because he wants to “keep my own counsel”; one critic, following his listings, hit seven shows by e-bike, from a converted lending library to Everfresh Studio, an artist collective back after its old space closed (The Guardian).
In Louisville, Nathan Balasubramanian, incoming academic chief for city schools, secretly ordered Manual High School’s “Ragtime” canceled over its racial slurs; the district reversed course that evening, after a viral outcry, though board member Linda Duncan says nobody told the superintendent (LPM). Conductor Andris Nelsons, pushed out by the Boston Symphony this year, got the opposite verdict in Leipzig, where the Gewandhaus orchestra just extended his contract to 2032 (The Boston Globe).
YouTube, TikTok and Meta are declining paid ads for documentarian Alex Gibney’s new film on Elon Musk, despite breaking none of their political-ad rules; distributor Bleecker Street is appealing, refused by Meta, while a film about a man trying to control the conversation makes its point before it opens Oct. 9 (The Hollywood Reporter).
All of our stories below.
- The All-Night Song And Dance Parties Of Veracruz
“This syncopated, jubilant folk music is a melange of European, Caribbean and Indigenous influences. While fandangos — where folks gather to play their instruments, sing and dance — are more than 300 years old, their popularity is now spreading around the world.” – NPR
- In Leipzig, Ousted Boston Symphony Orchestra Director Andris Nelsons Feels The Love
“When he conducts, he does not think in English or German or Latvian, even if that would be his own. But he thinks directly in music, and this is so direct. … Sometimes in a concert you have suddenly a new gesture never seen before, that everybody understands.” – Boston Globe
- Major Social Media Platforms Are All Turning Down Paid Advertising For The Documentary About Elon Musk
No one will be surprised that X (formerly Twitter) won’t take the ads for Alex Gibney’s award-winning movie, but what’s up with TikTok, YouTube, and Meta? – The Hollywood Reporter
- Sylvester Stallone Finally Reckons With Decades Of Trauma
“When I look at that footage, I look distorted. I was gone for a few seconds. Sometimes in acting or painting or writing, you just subliminally lose yourself. You do not know where you are. … What was that?” – The New York Times
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Habermas’ Ideas On Public Debate
He explained the three types of discourse that characterise deliberation – moral, ethical, and pragmatic – and was clear that when it comes to the moral, there are no experts: only individuals working out, together, what’s right in a given context. – Aeon
- Is AI Above The Law? Outside? Under?
At least for now, then, robots legally are things, not persons. But neither category quite fits. Instead, robots are outlaws: they lie outside the protection of the law, and their actions are not answerable to it. – The New Yorker
- Are Debates Over Student AI Use Arguing Over The Wrong Things?
The battle for the role of AI in higher education this fall is being fought over when and where AI and other digital technologies should be used. This combat ignores the larger crisis: how can colleges verify that they are preparing students to become productive members of society in a digital age? – Post Alley
- Looking Back On What The Literary Theory Generation Wrought
A half-century after poststructuralism broke out of Parisian lecture halls and stumbled into unexpected acclaim and vitriol in the English-speaking world, we now have enough distance from the culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s to look back on theory with clearer vision. Or so it would seem. – Hedgehog Review
- The Real Qualities Of A Skeptic
‘Sceptic’ comes from the Greek skeptikos, meaning enquirer, and has a long and serious pedigree in philosophy. Yet, since the 1990s, the term has been hijacked by science-denial movements, giving us oxymorons like ‘climate sceptic’, ‘vaccine sceptic’, and ‘evolution sceptic’. – Aeon













