Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How Early Humans Learned To Count, A History
At first, our hominid ancestors probably did not count very high. Many body parts present themselves in pairs—arms, hands, eyes, ears, and so on—thereby...
An Online Library At The Heart Of A Battle Over AI And Copyright
For critics, Books3 isn’t a boon to society—instead, it’s emblematic of everything wrong with generative AI, a glaring example of how both the rights...
A Statistical Profile Of Artists In Ontario
The 81,800 professional artists who reside in Ontario account for 40% of the 202,900 artists in Canada. As a percentage of the overall labour...
Model Collapse? Spotify Is Desperate To Find New Ways To Charge Subscribers
The company is on the hunt for anything it can do to get users to pay up. After pouring billions into podcasts and audiobooks...
The Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum Has A Human Remains Problem
The Natural History Museum has at least 30,700 human bones and other body parts. Responding to The Post’s reporting, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch...
Research: Our Brains May Sort Memories By Practical Necessity
A new theory proposes the brain sorts memories by how likely they are to be useful as guides in the future. Memories of predictable...
Donald Runnicles Steps Down From Leading Berlin’s Deutsche Oper
Runnicles was appointed Music Director in 2007 and began his tenure in 2009. He extended his contract in 2016 and in 2020 extended it...
Aesthetics And The Dispassionate Observer
All of us experience aesthetic properties when we’re not in a condition to fully appreciate them because we are tired or distracted. Yet the...
How The TV Industry Was Broken By Streaming
Streaming provided an explosion of opportunity at first, but profits dried up along with the pool of potential subscribers. The dual strike is happening...
Writers Condemn Use Of Misleading Book Blurb Quotes On Jordan Peterson Book
On 15 August, prominent writers criticised the way their reviews had been quoted on the back cover of the paperback edition of Peterson’s book,...
Bradley Cooper’s “Leonard Bernstein” Biopic Gets A Big Greeting At The Venice Film Festival
Bradley Cooper’s long-awaited second film as director — screened at the Venice Film Festival to rapturous applause. The drama about the life of legendary stage composer...
Confessions Of A Netflix DVD-Holdout
"I stream plenty of movies, and listen to most of my music on Spotify. The real reason I stuck it out was the queue....
Politics Is Fracturing The Close-Knit Country Music Community
“Politics has to cool off, but I don’t know if that changes anytime soon. It’s a bummer. Now we feel like any other genre,...
Cable Company Admits Cable TV Business Is Broken
Cable TV has become too expensive for consumers and providers, Charter Communications said in an 11-page presentation to investors on Friday, adding that cord-cutters...
Oregon Shakespeare Festival – Back On Track?
We think we’re gonna end up with about 15,000 more tickets sold than in 2022. And student groups are coming back. That was a...
The Problem With Non-Profit Journalism
Regular journalism plumped up with NGO filler and paid for with foundation dough too easily becomes either risibly partisan or a kind of kitsch...
The Metropolitan Opera’s Focus On New Opera Is Great. But It’s Going About It...
"Peter Gelb is telegraphing to composers that stylistic conformity within the boundaries of a populist musical means is the only possible route to success...
The Real Villain In The British Museum Scandal: Politicians
At the British Museum, flat funding from the Conservatives has meant a real-terms cut in revenue grant-in-aid of 37% between 2009-10, under Labour, and now, under...
How JD Salinger Used Copyright To Shield His Privacy
Salinger’s public legacy, a gnarled mess of copyright enforcement designs, First Amendment controversies, and the persistent desire to be left alone by the press,...
How Authors Are Being Influenced By Their Fan Communities
I reminded them that I was older than their dads, but they didn’t mind, and I became a fusion of agony uncle, village witch...
Major Increase In Philanthropy For Journalism
"Partly because it’s a relatively new area of giving, it’s hard to get a reliable count of how much philanthropy funds journalism. A report...
Major New Arts Center Opens In Lower Manhattan
Getting here required not just artistic pluck but political backing, a half-billion-dollar construction budget, and the creation of a new institution with the interdisciplinary...
British Museum In Crisis After A Rough Summer
The museum is now deluged with renewed calls for the restitution of contested objects, and raising a huge sum for an impending refurbishment looks...
Scalpers Make Out Like Bandits At Toronto International Film Festival
By Tuesday, tickets for Hayao Miyazaki’s film “The Boy and the Heron” had topped $527 — more than a $200 increase. Meanwhile, tickets for...
Could The AI Boom Quickly Bust?
Reality check, we have no concrete reason, other than sheer technoptimism, for thinking that solutions to any of these problems is imminent." - Dezeen
