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- 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
- 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
- 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
- The Music Scams Of Yesteryear
As Columbia House closes, Millennials and Gen-Xers are wishing for a bygone era of “customer-service runarounds, unwelcome bills and general scuzziness,” all of which Columbia House perpetrated to great profits for years. – Salon
- The Musicians Bringing Classical Sounds To Rural Oregon And Washington
“The group formed in 1999 to bring classical music to communities that may otherwise not have access to it. It consists of three ensembles,” including one that attracts kids to music and “adults later in life” back to music. – OPB
- 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
- An Amazon Studios Movie Suddenly, Mysteriously Disappeared From Prime
And the reason that happened (probably not the reason you think it is) says a lot about where we are with ownership and access to digital stuff. – Reactor
- Inside Mattel, Where The Toy Story Toys Come To (Plastic) Life
“It’s art and science. You can have the best idea on paper, but if you can’t manufacture it, it doesn’t matter. Or if you can manufacture something that’s okay, but not great, it’s not worth it either.” – El País English
- 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
- 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
- Pacific Northwest Ballet Is Spending Millions Of Dollars To Reimagine Sleeping Beauty
The idea is that most people access ballet through a story ballet – often, even usually, Nutcracker, but also Sleeping Beauty. It was, simply, time for a refresh – including 268 new costumes. – PBS
- 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)
- An Eighties Pop Star Reinvents Herself In – Where Else ? – Musical Theatre
Tiffany – of the gorgeously fun teen sex anthem “I Think We’re Alone Now” fame – will relive the ’80s, “making her Off Broadway debut in Spandex the Musical. She plays Linda, a housewife who escapes a life of domestic drudgery to compete in a national aerobics championship.” – The New York Times
- Boston Musicians, Management Agree To A 48-Hour Contract Extension
Though the union didn’t answer questions — and management press releases can be pressure tactics of their own — the extension seems like a good sign as “the BSO announced Sunday that a ‘ratification vote’ is in the offing.” – Boston Globe
- How Do You Get Good Anymore?
Good Morning,
Classical music training still runs on a guru model — teacher as oracle, student as supplicant — and an argument in The New York Times says the deference is damaging the people it’s meant to turn into musicians. The useful question isn’t who behaved badly, it’s what should mastering your craft actually require you to hand over.
One field over, the question is getting harder to answer. Young writers are finding that the small, unglamorous, paid assignments where you used to learn the craft are being absorbed by machines before anyone earns a first byline (Fast Company). The training ground was always the low end of the market. That’s the part being automated first.
At the other end of mastery, Boston Symphony musicians have voted to authorize the first potential strike in the orchestra’s history (WGBH).
Audiences, meanwhile, keep choosing to go physical. Young buyers are pushing CD players back into stores (The Guardian), and country has taken over the Billboard charts largely by being the genre people still buy deliberately rather than absorb passively (Slate).
Elsewhere, the LAPD is investigating a Nicolas Cage movie that went missing at Netflix (MSN). Someone mislaid an entire film.
The rest of our stories below.
- The Struggles To Translate Final Fantasy, The World’s Biggest Entertainment, Between Cultures
“For Final Fantasy XVI, Fox and his team were given unusual latitude. The writers wanted the story to feel true to Western medieval fantasy stories.” – Washington Post (Yahoo)
- 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
- Writing Is Hard, And Young Writers Are Getting Extra Discouraged
“They’re simultaneously struggling to figure out if they need to use AI to keep up in today’s competitive industry—or eschew it altogether in order to maintain trust.” – Fast Company
- Now The LAPD Are Involved In Finding Out What Happened To Netflix’s Nicolas Cage Movie
“This report is being made on an emergency basis, as there is reason to believe that Netflix, Inc. and its employees are suppressing and/or spoliating evidence of the theft of an asset with a cost of $45 million to create.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
- No, A Music Teacher Is Not A God
Why do teachers get so many pedestals – and so, so many opportunities for abuse? “Being perpetually curious is hard work. Grappling with an unruly instrument and the infinite subjectivity of music is extremely hard work.” – The New York Times
- How Country Music Suddenly Started Dominating The Billboard Charts
“For a century now, country music has been a parallel universe of hitmaking that didn’t always register on the national pop charts—for data reasons more than popularity reasons.” Streaming is changing everything. – Slate
- First, Record Albums Came Back, And Now It’s CDs
Teens and 20-somethings are, again, driving the shift back (related: so are K-Pop bands). One fan, on switching out phone for CD player: “It gives me a different feeling. … I feel like I’m listening to an artist’s work. It brings me joy.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Patricia Douglas Challenged A Culture Of Abuse In Early Hollywood, And Paid A Price
In 1937, Douglas was told to come to a producer’s ranch for a movie. But, “she later said, she and more than 100 other young women — many of whom were minors — had been summoned to entertain men attending MGM’s annual sales convention.” – The New York Times
- Australia, Like Most Places, Has A Dwindling Number Of Drive-In Movie Theatres
In Melbourne, there’s one hold-out. “The drive-in demands little of its audience. You can lie down, walk around, talk and sing without fear of being hushed. Parents feel at ease bringing newborns, and dogs can curl up beside their owners.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Don’t Be Fooled By The Emmy Nomination For SubwayTakes
“The Emmy nod isn’t, in itself, a milestone. What it actually represents is much smaller: a win for YouTube’s awards campaigning, confined for now to a category that’s spent most of its existence as the Emmys’ junk drawer.” – Vulture
- How Theatre Created, Then Recreated, The ‘Rocky Horror’ Mad Scientist Lab
“A slapdash seediness has been embedded in the musical’s aesthetic DNA ever since it started in 1973 in a tiny upstairs space at the Royal Court Theater in London.” – The New York Times
- What Sepideh Moafi Brought To The Pitt
“The Iranian American actor drew from her own childhood experiences and advocacy work as an ambassador with the International Rescue Committee to shape Dr. Al-Hashimi into who audiences get to know onscreen.” – HuffPost
- 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)
- The Smithsonian Plan For A Latinx Museum Avoids A Congressional Vote
“The Smithsonian Institution has called a board meeting to discuss giving one of its current buildings to the National Museum of the American Latino, which would bypass the need for congressional approval for a new site.” – The New York Times
- Orchids Made Charles Darwin Who He Was
“Darwin had long been interested in orchids, possibly influenced by the borderline sexual love his grandfather, Erasmus, felt for them and put into his writings.” – LitHub
- Meta May Finally Face A Day Of Reckoning Over Child Safety
“Other companies in Meta’s social media cohort, like Snap, TikTok, and YouTube, have opted this year to settle some suits that allege their platforms have harmed kids’ mental health. Meta instead chose to go to trial, only to very publicly lose and pay massive fines.” – Wired
- The Mayor Of Los Angeles Suddenly Loves The Warnermount Merger
What in the rolling over for rich people hell, Karen Bass? – Vulture
- After The Pentagon Fired The Publisher, The Editor, And A Reporter, Can We Call Stars And Stripes Independent?
As they say, if a headline asks a question, the answer is usually pretty clear. The fired reporter, Lara Korte: “These are important issues we’re reporting on, and I think being able to maintain independence is extremely critical.” – NPR
- Boston Symphony Orchestra Musicians Vote To Authorize A Potential Strike
The contract expires at midnight tonight (Sunday, August 23). That’s not to say there will be a strike, but the musicians are supportive of a potential strike, which would be the first in the BSO’s history. – WGBH
- Marquise Lindsey-Bradley shares strategic approaches to engaging young audiences
Marquise Lindsey-Bradley, Marketing & Engagement Director of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, shares their strategic approach to engaging young audiences.