AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Latino Group Opposes Paramount/Warner Deal
A prominent Latino group is raising fresh concerns about Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the blockbuster deal would crush Latino workers and small businesses that support Hollywood. – Los Angeles Times
- Historic LA Performing Center Reopens After 15-Year Renovation
After a 15-year renovation, South L.A.’s historic Vision Theatre Performing Arts Center is reopening, marking a major milestone for Leimert Park and a $40-million investment in Black arts and culture. – Los Angeles Times
- Hollywood Trade Mag Pays Farewell Tribute To Gustavo Dudamel
“He doesn’t have a pretentious bone in his body, eagerly embracing the way … rockers bashed away at a late-19th-century Russian suite. And just as eagerly, he embraced the world of film music so completely that he became only the second LA Phil music director with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.” – TheWrap
- For These Movement Artists, It’s Not Site-Specific Dance, It’s “Site-Responsive Dance”
“Fluency in a variety of movement techniques — including street dance, acrobatics and, especially, parkour — allows these dancers to shape seemingly unbounded interactions with their environments. Is that chain-link fence asking to be hurdled with a flip? Could those four stories of scaffolding become a creative jungle gym?” – The New York Times
- Dutch Broadcaster Says It Will Boycott Eurovision Song Contest Again
“AVROTROS will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2027 because the event can no longer be considered neutral, with a participating country still involved in a large-scale military conflict,” the network said, though the decision on the Netherlands’ participation remains up to national public broadcaster NPO. – AP
ISSUES
- Russian Drone Strikes Hit Art Museum In Kherson
“According to a report by United24, the Ukrainian government–run platform, the fire destroyed the museum’s historic plasterwork, parquet flooring, furniture, and books, as well as the building’s electrical and heating infrastructure.” No human casualties were reported. – ARTnews
- Smithsonian Considers Workaround For National Latino Museum
On Aug. 31, the Smithsonian will consider whether to give the Latino Museum its Arts and Industries Building, which was built in 1881 and is on the National Mall between the Smithsonian’s Castle and Hirshhorn Museum. – The New York Times
- Does AI Really Belong In A Museum?
It’s not like most of these flyers were ever going to be high art anyway. Still, the issue nags at me constantly, whenever I pass one of these synthetic images plastered over the real world. – The Atlantic
- A New Report Accuses A Marseille Museum’s Director Of Sexual Misconduct
The report “accuses Pierre-Olivier Costa, the recently suspended president of Marseille’s Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM), of sexual and moral harassment, breaching rules for granting public contracts, and putting the southern French city’s only national museum ‘at risk.’” – ARTnews
- Designer Error, By About 10,000 Miles
Sydney, Australia, has an Allianz soccer stadium, and so does Munich, Germany. Guess which one appears on the Sydney Marathon medal? – The Guardian (UK)
MEDIA
- Historic LA Performing Center Reopens After 15-Year Renovation
After a 15-year renovation, South L.A.’s historic Vision Theatre Performing Arts Center is reopening, marking a major milestone for Leimert Park and a $40-million investment in Black arts and culture. – Los Angeles Times
- Elections Flip Control Of Florida School Board At Center Of Book Bans And Culture Wars
“Two Democratic-backed candidates beat out conservatives in Tuesday’s school board election in Sarasota, Florida, flipping the board’s majority. Helmed for the past year by a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, … the board is moving in a new direction, the winners said.” – The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
- LinkedIn Added An AI Slop Button, And People Are Clicking It A Whole, Whole Lot
Since July 30th, more than a million people have clicked on the button accessible on each post. – The Verge
- Viral, Often AI-Generated, TikToks Have Police Announcing The Cat In The Hat Isn’t Real
Wild: “Many of the AI generated images have been centred on the Irish counties of Limerick and Wexford, where shaky videos purportedly showed the character wandering through the streets, causing alarm and confusion among residents.” – BBC
- The Mayor Of Los Angeles Suddenly Loves The Warnermount Merger
What in the rolling over for rich people hell, Karen Bass? – Vulture
MUSIC
- UK Looks Headed For Record Year In Print Book Sales
According to NielsenIQ BookScan, sales of print books across the British consumer market have passed £1 billion at the earliest point in the calendar year since records began. – The Bookseller (UK)
- In A Country With Almost No Actual Murders, Writers Have To Make Mysterious Deaths Believable
The authors’ “plots have to be built on buried grudges and horrifying secrets hidden in the fog and the fjords. Otherwise, how else could they convincingly kill off their characters?” – The New York Times
- This Small Publisher Will Now Only Accept Pitches By Phone
The strategies to defeat AI are getting, well, old-school: “We’re re-humanizing the process with a dedicated hotline (which has the added benefit of weeding out supposed reporters who aren’t in the habit of ringing up strangers.” – Nieman Lab
- California Has The Publishing Rizz Right Now
But it’s a bit nervewracking: “I feel like for a small press you really need to, not just catch a break, but catch a break every time, … if you want to last.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
- How Winnie Became The Pooh Bear, A Century Ago
“Sometimes words need pictures and pictures need words. When they find each other, characters spring to life.” – NPR
PEOPLE
- Latino Group Opposes Paramount/Warner Deal
A prominent Latino group is raising fresh concerns about Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the blockbuster deal would crush Latino workers and small businesses that support Hollywood. – Los Angeles Times
- Historic LA Performing Center Reopens After 15-Year Renovation
After a 15-year renovation, South L.A.’s historic Vision Theatre Performing Arts Center is reopening, marking a major milestone for Leimert Park and a $40-million investment in Black arts and culture. – Los Angeles Times
- Hollywood Trade Mag Pays Farewell Tribute To Gustavo Dudamel
“He doesn’t have a pretentious bone in his body, eagerly embracing the way … rockers bashed away at a late-19th-century Russian suite. And just as eagerly, he embraced the world of film music so completely that he became only the second LA Phil music director with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.” – TheWrap
- For These Movement Artists, It’s Not Site-Specific Dance, It’s “Site-Responsive Dance”
“Fluency in a variety of movement techniques — including street dance, acrobatics and, especially, parkour — allows these dancers to shape seemingly unbounded interactions with their environments. Is that chain-link fence asking to be hurdled with a flip? Could those four stories of scaffolding become a creative jungle gym?” – The New York Times
- Dutch Broadcaster Says It Will Boycott Eurovision Song Contest Again
“AVROTROS will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2027 because the event can no longer be considered neutral, with a participating country still involved in a large-scale military conflict,” the network said, though the decision on the Netherlands’ participation remains up to national public broadcaster NPO. – AP
PEOPLE
- Latino Group Opposes Paramount/Warner Deal
A prominent Latino group is raising fresh concerns about Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the blockbuster deal would crush Latino workers and small businesses that support Hollywood. – Los Angeles Times
- Historic LA Performing Center Reopens After 15-Year Renovation
After a 15-year renovation, South L.A.’s historic Vision Theatre Performing Arts Center is reopening, marking a major milestone for Leimert Park and a $40-million investment in Black arts and culture. – Los Angeles Times
- Hollywood Trade Mag Pays Farewell Tribute To Gustavo Dudamel
“He doesn’t have a pretentious bone in his body, eagerly embracing the way … rockers bashed away at a late-19th-century Russian suite. And just as eagerly, he embraced the world of film music so completely that he became only the second LA Phil music director with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.” – TheWrap
- For These Movement Artists, It’s Not Site-Specific Dance, It’s “Site-Responsive Dance”
“Fluency in a variety of movement techniques — including street dance, acrobatics and, especially, parkour — allows these dancers to shape seemingly unbounded interactions with their environments. Is that chain-link fence asking to be hurdled with a flip? Could those four stories of scaffolding become a creative jungle gym?” – The New York Times
- Dutch Broadcaster Says It Will Boycott Eurovision Song Contest Again
“AVROTROS will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2027 because the event can no longer be considered neutral, with a participating country still involved in a large-scale military conflict,” the network said, though the decision on the Netherlands’ participation remains up to national public broadcaster NPO. – AP
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Was Howard Zinn’s “People’s History” Too Simplistic?
Zinn presented his readers with genuinely admirable dissidents, from Bartolomé de las Casas to Ida Tarbell and Langston Hughes. At a moment when the country needs effective dissidents, Zinn, the scholar-activist, is in that pantheon. But A People’s History’s had flaws: It can flatten complex problems and people into apparently simple ones. – The New Republic
- Study: Language Skills Don’t Decline In Older Adults
Unless impaired by a stroke or dementia, most older people retain their language skills and may even improve them as they steadily gain vocabulary throughout their lives. A new brain imaging study from an MIT-Boston University collaboration now reveals the neural activity underlying this observation. – MIT News
- Movies Have Been Exploring Manhood, Or What It Means To Be A Man, For As Long As Movies Have Existed
But, cautionary moment (akin to making movies about war): “Sometimes the filmmakers, they can kind of get wrapped up in the bad behavior … of the men that they’re trying to critique.” Think Fight Club. – NPR
- Study: More Than One-Third Of Web Pages Created Since 2022 Show Signs Of AI
Over one-third of web pages published after the release of ChatGPT show signs of being written by AI, according to a new study from Pew Research released on Thursday. – TechCrunch
- Research: Large AI Datasets Obscure Authorship
It feels counterintuitive, but at sufficiently large scales, they find, you can often remove any single image from the training data, or every image by a given artist, or every photograph of a given person, and the generated sample doesn’t change. – MIT