Will there be a montage of typing fingers? A poetry read-off in Iowa City? A "who navigated the workshop the best" scene in LA? Well: "The six finalists, locked together for a month, will face 'live-wire' challenges as they attempt to write an entire novel." - The Guardian (UK)
If an AI-powered robot exhibited intelligence and capacity to suffer, we might consider granting it moral personhood even though it's not alive. Tapeworms and pubic lice are alive but clearly not person-equivalent, whereas dolphins or bonobos might be. Tim Sommers considers some criteria. - 3 Quarks Daily
The school's leader, before the Taliban and now in exile: "We can show the world a different Afghanistan. ... We will show how we can raise the voices of our people. We will show where we stand." - The New York Times
"This pattern of movements can be used by one forager bee to tell other bees where a food source is located. ... An international team of researchers set out to see if a similar system could be used by robots and humans in locations ... where wireless networks aren't available." - New Atlas
Can a painter plagiarize a film? Maybe not in the legal sense - but instead of litigation, the museum and the artists involved in this case created something like reparation instead. - ARTnews
"He (has) revised and radically rewritten ... An Obedient Father, (which) he published 22 years earlier. Considerably shorter, with a very different ending but the same title, the novel ... reappears this month — more than 30 years after Sharma began it." - The New York Times Magazine
"English has always been a language that has looked ahead to the future. Forged multiply in the crucible of caste, class, gender, and ethnic politics, English has found roots in India as a language that erases itself in the hope of what it could be." - Los Angeles Review of Books
Mary Harris interviews Katarina Tsymbalyuk, a mezzo and a member of the Odesa Opera's resident ensemble, about the love, and the fear, she and her colleagues have for the opera house and their city, as well as how they're continuing to perform. (podcast; includes transcript) - Slate
When the president of Pathé approached filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud (Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose) about making a documentary about the catastrophic blaze, he decided to make a thriller instead. "We have an international star, very beautiful and very famous. And an exceptional villain: fire." - The Guardian
"Actors' Equity and the union representing theatrical designers are separately taking Broadway musical Paradise Square to court for close to $350,000 total in owed benefit contributions, wages and other fees." - The Hollywood Reporter
The apparent strife between the theater's board and its staff and artists has culminated (unless things get still worse) in playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza withdrawing permission to finish the run of her "cullud wattah," about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. - Chicago Sun-Times
"King was an instrumental figure behind a company that The New York Times Magazine once described as 'the Disney of the experience economy.' … During the group's early years, King played an instrumental role in coming up with some of the surreal environments the company would become renowned for." - Artnet
"Her husband Walter Keane fraudulently took artistic credit, while she painted for 16 hours a day to satisfy demand for the work, originally presented publicly as a joint effort, and always signed simply 'Keane.'" - The Guardian (UK)
Basically, the plaintiff sued the wrong entity - Cattelan's gallery and a museum, not the artist himself. So "the ruling still leaves the key question of the case in doubt: whether a fabricator can rightfully claim authorship of an artwork made on commission for an artist." - Artnet
And the result is a viral video set in a beautiful environment: "The performance takes place in Swords Castle, an early medieval castle in Swords, Dublin." - Classic FM
