“The computer has been trained to reflect back at you what you tell it, so if it shows you as a billionaire, it doesn’t mean you are going to be a billionaire. It just means you told it you want to be a billionaire.” - The New York Times
"I’m not interested in participating in consensus culture. The way I understand art to function and the function that it carries out in culture is about provoking something that’s harder to understand.” - The Guardian
One simple reason his songs endure is that, for all that they are written for their words, it’s hard to stop humming their tunes. His brilliance as a pianist kept him from becoming repetitive, particularly because he had such a remarkable talent for musical pastiche. - The New Yorker
Remember Alberto Vilar? What Matthew Christopher Pietras did might have been worse. Or it might not, since the victims of the theft may not have noticed that they were being robbed. - New York Magazine
Wallis Annenberg, a deep-pocketed philanthropist who helped transform the city through massive donations to arts, education and animal welfare causes, died Monday morning at her home in Los Angeles from complications related to lung cancer, the family said. She was 86. - Los Angeles Times
“It’s like this huge puzzle, a thousand-piece puzzle, and every time a release comes out, we’re adding another puzzle piece. That is giving us a much more accurate, well-rounded perception of who Woody was and what he wrote about.” - Washington Post
Mr. Lehrer — an Ivy League mathematics teacher who spent his early academic career on the periphery of show business — created a repertoire of songs that subverted saccharine clichés about romance, patriotism and small-town life when they weren’t skewering the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America or the U.S. Army. - Washington Post (MSN)
Mr. Pelzer’s children said he was able to read 3,599 books from 1962, when he first began jotting his reads down on his language class work sheets while stationed in Nepal with the Peace Corps, to 2023, when his eyesight failed him and he could no longer read. - The New York Times
His hit “Feels So Good,” an instrumental pop-jazz crossover that reached No. 4 on the Billboard charts during the summer of 1978, has unexpectedly had as much staying power as “Stayin’ Alive,” “I Will Survive” or any other anthemic tune from that era. So much so, in fact, that we didn’t always notice it. - Washington Post
“With astonishing green eyes and a mop of frizzy auburn hair, … a voice that could soar easily from a throaty C below middle C to high-pitched trills on top A, … (she was) the only performer to receive Grammy nominations in the female jazz, popular and classical categories.” - The Telegraph (UK) (Yahoo!)
His biggest hit, “Feels So Good,” has become so familiar that many people know it without realizing it has a title. He developed a distinctive persona — flugelhorn, long hair, beard, banded fedora — which he cheerfully parodied while playing himself in the animated sitcom King of the Hill. - The Washington Post (MSN)
Rachida Dati, 59, who has publicly outlined her ambition to become mayor of Paris in 2026, was charged in 2019 on suspicions she lobbied for the car-making group, Renault-Nissan, while an MEP, which is the only directly elected body of the European Union. Dati has denied the allegations. - ARTnews
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Pärt has found a way to speak across boundaries of culture, creed and generation. In the world of contemporary classical music, where complexity and empty virtuosity often dominate, Pärt stands apart. - The Guardian
Her tribe, birthplace, date of death — all those and much else from the journals and later testimony of Lewis and Clark had been considered definitive. But Native American oral history about Sacagawea is quite different, and there are good reasons to believe that Lewis and Clark were misinformed. - The New York Times Magazine
Prosecutors allege that Rachida Dati, who was a Member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2019, accepted €900,000 in lawyer’s fees between 2010 and 2012 from a Netherlands-based subsidiary of Renault-Nissan — and that she either didn’t really work for the auto manufacturer or illegally lobbied for it while an MEP. - France 24
