To blame? AI (and some very poor teenage decision-making). "As AI image-making tools have become more widely available, there have been several high-profile incidents in which minors allegedly created AI-generated nude images of classmates and shared them without consent." - Wired
"Residents of Japan’s ancient capital have struggled to reconcile the financial boost from a return to pre-pandemic visitor numbers with overcrowding and incidents of bad behaviour among tourists," especially in the geisha district of Gion. While the neighborhood's alleyways are now off-limits, its main street remains open. - The Guardian
After two years dark, the Kharkiv National Opera and Ballet company has built an underground bunker with a complete auditorium in it.Says general director Ihor Toulouzov, "We want to bring life back to Kharkiv, including cultural life. Demand for any kind of cultural event here is really high." - BBC
The chancellor has given Britain’s creative industries a boost, including £26.4m to help the National Theatre upgrade its stages and tax relief to encourage film-makers to shoot more movies in the UK. - The Guardian
"More than half of the tickets will cost £30 or less, with £10 tickets on offer for every performance, while 2,000 free tickets will be distributed to young people. A half-price ticket offer will be extended to under-18s, those with disabilities or hearing impairments and to neurodivergent festival-goers." - The Guardian
The new permanent rate covering theatres, museums and galleries - 45% for touring productions and 40% for non-touring shows - is below the current rates of 50%/45%, but well above the pre-pandemic rates of 25%/20%, which had been due to come back in over the next two years. - BBC
"Some have framed South Korea’s cultural advance as a government-led mission. The Korean state has been instrumental in turning cultural identity into an exportable commodity since ... the late '90s — a thread that has run through successive administrations. ... But others see it as more of a fruitful public-private effort." - The Guardian
Mayor Brandon Johnson, who took office last May, dismissed Commissioner Erin Harkey in February, and nobody knows why (other than wanting to replace his predecessor's appointee with his own). Johnson has named no replacement, and with Chicago's festival season coming on, there's some concern. - WBEZ (Chicago)
Censorship is on the rise globally, say artists and art professionals: two groups that carry the unofficial but historic burden of speaking truth to power and offering political critique on behalf of wider society. - The Art Newspaper
"How is what's happening in the Middle East - and the tensions being driven here by war and violence there — impacting the UK's arts and entertainment sphere? What role does culture have to heal political divides — or foment them? They're questions I wanted to explore with figures working in that world." - BBC
We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on writers, then on editing and fact-checking their findings. Perplexity gets it all for free. When newsrooms die, what will be left to search? What will answer engines do when the people who spent time and money figuring out all those answers are gone? - The Walrus
"I’m feeling very energized by California. There is clearly a rich universe of creative forces at work — not to mention good food and a varied physical landscape, including ocean and mountains." - The New York Times
The information furnishes "a useful lesson in how U.S. media companies fare when they cannot fall back on the ironclad legal protections they enjoy in the United States, along with a window into an embarrassing fact-checking breakdown at a top American media outlet." - Washington Post
