The social media site that’s been gaining new members by the million this week says that unlike Twitter (“X”), which has promised the opposite, Bluesky does “not use any of your content to train generative AI, and has no intention of doing so.” - The Verge
The fate of phone restrictions will depend primarily on whether or not principals and superintendents can establish clear rules, stand up for teachers who enforce them, hold firm against parents who object, and create clear and enforceable boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate use. - Maclean's
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2025 budget allocates $73 million for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (which administers city arts grants) — 11% more than the agency actually received this past year but less than City Council had approved for fiscal 2024. Arts organizations are puzzling it all out. - WBEZ (Chicago)
"Fifteen small arts organizations complained in a Nov. 1 open letter that the city of Portland plans to unfairly decrease their collective share from the city’s arts tax and give a greater share to the largest arts organizations, like Oregon Ballet Theatre and Portland Center Stage." - Willamette Week (Portland)
If you control the choke points of social mobility, then you control the nation’s culture. And if you change the criteria for admission at places such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, then you change the nation’s social ideal. - The Atlantic
Projected economic gains from hosting such events can appear impressive on paper, but questions remain about who ultimately benefits. Several reports in support of hosting mega-events use inflated numbers to document indirect economic impacts and job creation without accounting for initial public spending and other hosting costs. - The Conversation
Afterwards, fundraising became much more of a spectacle. Donors were re-imagined and empowered as “saviours”. Celebrities began to view endorsement of charities as a key part of their star profile. - The Conversation
Authenticity is not a feeling, but an active way of being defined by conscious attention to the fit between who we are and the situation(s) in which we find ourselves. - 3 Quarks Daily
"Shock waves from the war have been felt throughout the arts and cultural world, with movie productions, museums and book festivals — not to mention universities, institutions and entire industries — experiencing bitter conflict over what qualifies as tolerable speech about the conflict and its combatants." - The New York Times
Our storytelling is necessarily derivative, since we’re responding to works of someone else’s imagination. And yet in how we frame the plays and operas and films we write about, and whether we even write about them at all, we’re implicitly telling a story about what’s newsworthy and what isn’t. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
A report from the Sutton Trust found stark overrepresentation in the arts for those from the most affluent backgrounds, which it defines as those from “upper middle-class backgrounds”. - The Guardian
"More than a decade after Spokane’s city arts department was dismantled by former Mayor David Condon, Mayor Lisa Brown has announced that she plans to rebuild it in partnership with the independent nonprofit created in 2012 from the ashes of the former department." - The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)
“Many Russian writers and historians are complicit in facilitating this war. It is their words and thoughts over the past 350 years that sowed the seeds of Russian fascism and allowed it to flourish, although many would be horrified today to see the fruits of their labour … - The Guardian
“Over the years it has become more and more pervasive to the point where, on those rare instances when a performance doesn’t get a standing ovation, you can see it on the actors’ faces, like ‘What did we do wrong?’” - The New York Times
