“(The) museum has approved a ticket hike from €22 to €32 ($25 to $37) for non-European visitors from January to help finance an overhaul of the building whose degradation has been exposed by the Oct. 19 crown jewels heist.” - AP
“People are sitting through one-to-two minute, out-of-order clips of TV shows and movies on social media, awkwardly cropped for the vertical format and often with terrible music blaring in the background.” Okaaaaaay. But the people who love them really love them. - Washington Post (MSN)
“Classic films, you may have noticed, concentrate practically all the energy in every facet of their production toward the expression of specific themes, stories, and characters; at their best, their every line, gesture, cut, and invention represents the tip of an artistic iceberg.” - Open Culture
“Pick a film from either current releases or a curated archive, select a drink package for an extra $50 each, choose a 12-13 course gourmet meal off a seasonal menu for another $100 a head, and you have a ritzy night at the movies.” - The Guardian (UK)
That’s a big jump. “Some customers are starting to get fed up with having to subscribe to multiple streaming platforms just to get all of their favorite shows and sports. That has driven some people back into the arms of pay-TV.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
“Three in 10 advertisers relied on ideological appeals — emphasizing ‘pro-life,’ Christian, pro-gun, ‘America first,’ or pro-military themes, or attacking Democrats, gender identity or policies they described as liberal. Roughly a quarter promoted the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda.” - Bloomberg (Archive Today)
A security guard (now suspended from his job) was not at his post. “That allowed the two protesters to walk on a narrow ledge along the wall of the left side of the orchestra pit and make their way on to the stage.” - The New York Times
“Many participants reported that their work had already been used without their permission to train large language models, and more than a third (39%) said their income had fallen as a result of generative AI. A large majority also expected their earnings to decline further.” - The Guardian (UK)
One of the organizers: “It’s a way to get folks to know or get used to what might look like. … What their rights are as bystanders, as citizens, as noncitizens, as folks who are documented, undocumented.” - Wired
For each of this weekend’s three performances of Philip Glass’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast, set to Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film), Fort Worth Opera has 100 tickets available for $1 or whatever price the purchaser names. - NBC 5 (Dallas-Fort Worth)
First, they repeatedly play a little melody on a glockenspiel or dinner chime or marimba as they stroll through the lobbies. Then, says one longtime usher at the Metropolitan Opera, “We have to push them, kind of like moving cattle.” - The New York Times
“As a sports obsessive and avid theatergoer, I’ve always found the communal experiences staggeringly similar. Either way, we root and cheer and gasp in unison. Worship-worthy idols emerge — and nothing beats seeing them ply their trade in person.” - Washington Post (Yahoo)
Bob Iger knows it’s, uh, interesting to be suing some AI companies while courting others. “'It's obviously imperative for us to protect our IP with this new technology,’ Iger said.” - NPR
Disgusting. “What you have here is 50,000 tracks a day that are competing with human musicians. You have a new, hyperscalable competitor and, moreover, this competitor that was built by exploitation.” - The Guardian (UK)
