AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Trying To Improve The Pointe Shoe, Whose Customers Are Resistant To Change

“Ballet is an art form bound by tradition, with limited financial resources to support forward-thinking change. But that hasn’t stopped artists and artisans from trying. And recently, some manufacturers have made waves with nontraditional designs that incorporate very 21st-century technologies.” – Dance Magazine
- The Art Commissioned By The Obama Presidential Library

For the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago, Barack and Michelle Obama commissioned original works by 30 artists from diverse backgrounds, a bold move never seen at such scale at a presidential library. – The Guardian
- “Graphic Journalist” Joe Sacco Says Penguin Random House India Censored His Book On Sectarian Riots

The Indian subsidiary of the publishing giant has withdrawn Sacco’s The Once and Future Riot, an account of the 2013 street battles between Hindus and Muslims in Muzaffarnagar. Sacco says the publisher sent him a list of edits that amounted to “finding excuses” not to release the book. – The Wire (India)
- A Professor Despairs Of What AI Reveals About Students

There will always be idealistic, ink-stained people who want to devote their lives to scholarly pursuits—their role to inspire young people to love ideas as they do. But this transfer, more than anything else in the academy, has been increasingly blocked by A.I. in the classroom. – The New Yorker
- “Teaser” Events Have Become A Powerful Way For Pop Stars To Introduce Their Projects

From a marketing perspective, this approach blends internet culture and storytelling to create a memorable experience for fans. These teaser releases are particularly effective at generating fan theories, sparking speculation, creating memes and helping create stories with fans. – The Conversation
ISSUES
- The Art Commissioned By The Obama Presidential Library

For the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago, Barack and Michelle Obama commissioned original works by 30 artists from diverse backgrounds, a bold move never seen at such scale at a presidential library. – The Guardian
- 11th-Century Cathedral In Kyiv Set On Fire By Russian Missiles

“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
- Sagrada Familia Might Have Topped Out, But Big Challenges Ahead

“The biggest [challenge] 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
- Behold The New Obama Library

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
- Living ‘FridaMania’ In Kahlo’s Hometown

“Frida died – but she didn’t pass away. She was like a rocket. She just went up and up.” – The Guardian (UK)
MEDIA
- A Professor Despairs Of What AI Reveals About Students
There will always be idealistic, ink-stained people who want to devote their lives to scholarly pursuits—their role to inspire young people to love ideas as they do. But this transfer, more than anything else in the academy, has been increasingly blocked by A.I. in the classroom. – The New Yorker
- What We Learned About How To Celebrate A Divided America’s Birthday From The Bicentennial
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
- Kennedy Center Establishes A New Endowment, One Named After Donald Trump
“(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 News
- The Kennedy Center Sign Is Restored. But There’s A Bigger Issue
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
- What The Kennedy Center Might Have Been
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
MUSIC
- “Graphic Journalist” Joe Sacco Says Penguin Random House India Censored His Book On Sectarian Riots
The Indian subsidiary of the publishing giant has withdrawn Sacco’s The Once and Future Riot, an account of the 2013 street battles between Hindus and Muslims in Muzaffarnagar. Sacco says the publisher sent him a list of edits that amounted to “finding excuses” not to release the book. – The Wire (India)
- Are Most Children’s Books “Crud”?
“There are so many bad kids’ books,” Mac Barnett writes, “and kids’ books are bad in so many different ways.” He states that “a big reason for our low opinion of children’s books is simply that lots of children’s books are bad.” – The New Yorker
- The Problem With AI Writing (And The Opportunity For Human Literature)
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 Atlantic
- If People Aren’t Reading, Why Are Bookstores Thriving?
“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
- Ruth Ozeki Knows The Power Of A Good Book
And that good book is Charlotte’s Web. – The Guardian (UK)
PEOPLE
- Trying To Improve The Pointe Shoe, Whose Customers Are Resistant To Change
“Ballet is an art form bound by tradition, with limited financial resources to support forward-thinking change. But that hasn’t stopped artists and artisans from trying. And recently, some manufacturers have made waves with nontraditional designs that incorporate very 21st-century technologies.” – Dance Magazine
- The Art Commissioned By The Obama Presidential Library
For the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago, Barack and Michelle Obama commissioned original works by 30 artists from diverse backgrounds, a bold move never seen at such scale at a presidential library. – The Guardian
- “Graphic Journalist” Joe Sacco Says Penguin Random House India Censored His Book On Sectarian Riots
The Indian subsidiary of the publishing giant has withdrawn Sacco’s The Once and Future Riot, an account of the 2013 street battles between Hindus and Muslims in Muzaffarnagar. Sacco says the publisher sent him a list of edits that amounted to “finding excuses” not to release the book. – The Wire (India)
- A Professor Despairs Of What AI Reveals About Students
There will always be idealistic, ink-stained people who want to devote their lives to scholarly pursuits—their role to inspire young people to love ideas as they do. But this transfer, more than anything else in the academy, has been increasingly blocked by A.I. in the classroom. – The New Yorker
- “Teaser” Events Have Become A Powerful Way For Pop Stars To Introduce Their Projects
From a marketing perspective, this approach blends internet culture and storytelling to create a memorable experience for fans. These teaser releases are particularly effective at generating fan theories, sparking speculation, creating memes and helping create stories with fans. – The Conversation
PEOPLE
- Trying To Improve The Pointe Shoe, Whose Customers Are Resistant To Change
“Ballet is an art form bound by tradition, with limited financial resources to support forward-thinking change. But that hasn’t stopped artists and artisans from trying. And recently, some manufacturers have made waves with nontraditional designs that incorporate very 21st-century technologies.” – Dance Magazine
- The Art Commissioned By The Obama Presidential Library
For the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago, Barack and Michelle Obama commissioned original works by 30 artists from diverse backgrounds, a bold move never seen at such scale at a presidential library. – The Guardian
- “Graphic Journalist” Joe Sacco Says Penguin Random House India Censored His Book On Sectarian Riots
The Indian subsidiary of the publishing giant has withdrawn Sacco’s The Once and Future Riot, an account of the 2013 street battles between Hindus and Muslims in Muzaffarnagar. Sacco says the publisher sent him a list of edits that amounted to “finding excuses” not to release the book. – The Wire (India)
- A Professor Despairs Of What AI Reveals About Students
There will always be idealistic, ink-stained people who want to devote their lives to scholarly pursuits—their role to inspire young people to love ideas as they do. But this transfer, more than anything else in the academy, has been increasingly blocked by A.I. in the classroom. – The New Yorker
- “Teaser” Events Have Become A Powerful Way For Pop Stars To Introduce Their Projects
From a marketing perspective, this approach blends internet culture and storytelling to create a memorable experience for fans. These teaser releases are particularly effective at generating fan theories, sparking speculation, creating memes and helping create stories with fans. – The Conversation
THEATRE
VISUAL
- “Teaser” Events Have Become A Powerful Way For Pop Stars To Introduce Their Projects
From a marketing perspective, this approach blends internet culture and storytelling to create a memorable experience for fans. These teaser releases are particularly effective at generating fan theories, sparking speculation, creating memes and helping create stories with fans. – The Conversation
- Mathematics And The Tools Of Reasoning That Ai Is Tackling
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
- Jurgen Habermas And The Public Sphere
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
- The Aesthetic That Fits Our Times: Tragicomic
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
- The Old Are Taking Over America
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

















