“(A) grant (from the Stephen Sondheim Foundation) will go toward rebuilding Steppenwolf’s Scout program, which supports new works by emerging writers and was shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Steppenwolf has developed and launched more than 130 plays in its 50-year history.” - WBEZ (Chicago)
“Today, CBS News Radio provides material to an estimated 700 stations across the country and is known best for its top-of-the-hour news roundups. The service will end on May 22, the network said Friday.” - AP
“The lawsuit (by the American dictionary publisher and British encyclopedia) incorporates both the ‘mass-scale copying’ of their copyrighted content for training AI models and for real-time RAG scraping (retrieval-augmented generation). It also claims ChatGPT generates outputs that contain ‘full or partial verbatim reproductions’ of Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster content.” - Press Gazette (UK)
“After a nearly two-week trial in Santa Monica, jurors found Cosby, 88, liable for the sexual battery and assault of Donna Motsinger. They awarded her $17.5 million in past damages and $1.75 million for future damages, … (plus) an additional $40 million in punitive damages,” totaling $59.25 million. - AP
“(Her) memorable film roles included a porn actress abducted by aliens in Slaughterhouse-Five, Lex Luthor’s secretary in two Superman films and an Oscar-nominated performance as the wife of Lenny Bruce in Lenny. (She died) following a 15-year battle with Parkinson’s disease.” - Deadline
Tempting as it is to blame Trump for the Kennedy Center’s fate, he does not bear sole responsibility. The idea of a national arts center was always more of a noble dream than a reality. - The New Yorker
"The Voice of America has been breaching the Constitutional and statutory rules that require that outlet not to push propaganda or censorship," one of the lead attorneys on the lawsuit, Norm Eisen, tells NPR. - NPR
The lawsuit seeks to have the White House and the Kennedy Center board comply with existing historic preservation laws and secure Congress' approval before moving ahead with the renovations. - NPR
Recently Barnes & Noble has tried to convince more publishers to publish paperback originals, particularly for YA and middle grade books. But choosing a format to please one vendor, no matter the size of that vendor, is limiting, especially when smaller indie bookstores run on such tight margins in the first place. - LitHub
A chatbot is not (or not yet) an individual, and therefore bears no moral responsibility, but to lay hold of what it delivers, and to pass it off as one’s own work, could be construed as handling stolen goods. - The New Yorker
Along with his happy student-teacher alliance with Hammerstein, the defining association of Sondheim’s life was his tortured relationship with the mother he described as a “monster,” among harsher words. - The Atlantic
These proposals, the rush to realize them, the stacking of key oversight groups with Trump loyalists and flunkies and the collaboration of firms like Shalom Baranes Associates, have upended and effectively destroyed the process of design review — which has until now preserved Washington as a monumental, picturesque capital. - Washington Post
One of the White House’s most compelling features has always been its domestic scale and ornamentation. In a city where architectural bombast has often been favored over architectural quality, the White House has stood apart for its grace and modesty. - Chicago Tribune
Visitors will discover that it’s a dramatically different place than a decade ago: lines of bikes and throngs of pedestrians where lanes were once jammed with cars, greenery encroaching on former pavement, summer swimming in the once-grimy Seine river — and a corresponding drop in air and water pollution. - Bloomberg
