The unnerving thing is that now, with hundreds of millions of people regularly engaging with chatbots, English-speaking humans are starting to talk like the inhuman communicator on the other side. - Washington Post
Almost every person I spoke with for this story said that AI is already a core part of the “previz” process, where scenes are mapped out before a shoot. - Wired
Museums were repurposed to emphasize heroic and nationalist themes. Military museums glorified past victories while erasing defeats. Archives were cleansed of inconvenient truths: Jewish soldiers’ service in World War I was omitted from military histories. “Un-German” books by Freud, Marx, Einstein, and others were burned in 1933. - Berkshire Eagle
“There is no intimacy between men, no talk of abortion, no logos of banned companies or jokes about Putin. By August, censors had cut at least 64 hours of content from 152 Western series.” Here’s what five episodes from very well-known shows look like when Russian audiences get them. - The New York Times
The scrolls come from a small Mongolian shrine found by an expedition in 1927. Researchers are virtually unrolling and deciphering them using X-ray tomography, the same technique used with the Herculaneum Scrolls, which were carbonized in the volcanic eruption which destroyed Pompeii. - Artnet
“(There’s) a new effort from Riverhead Books, led by editor Han Zhang, to publish more translated Chinese language literature. … The books that Zhang is looking to publish aren't aiming to be sweeping classics. But they're small looks into contemporary Chinese life.” - NPR
It’s known as the Art Alliance building, it’s near Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, Curtis bought it in January in the UArts liquidation sale, and fire broke out on July 4. The damage was severe, but engineers and workers have stabilized the structure; soon demolition of the old roof will begin. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
Since he returned to the White House, Trump has appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center, revived the Garden of Heroes statuary project, and pushed for more control over the Smithsonian, among other things. The allies he’s appointed to oversee these efforts don’t always have arts backgrounds or experience. - The New York Times
FEMA had been using the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to evaluate proposals and award grants for the Next Generation Warning System Grant Program, which funded upgrades to local stations’ emergency alert systems. But now the CPB is closing down. - Inside Radio
She says that on Saturday, following her next-to-last performance in Gypsy on Broadway, an audience member “snuck around and found me the way I had exited from the theater, followed me all the way home to where I was staying, came into the building,” and insisted that “they deserved an autograph.” - Entertainment Weekly
“Ne Zha 2, an animated fantasy adventure movie written and directed by the Chinese filmmaker Jiaozi, broke multiple records after it premiered in China earlier this year. With box-office earnings of more than $2.2 billion, it is the highest-grossing film of 2025 and the highest-grossing non-English-language film in history.” - Slate (MSN)
What if we only think of happiness as a goal because we have lost sight of other alternatives? What if the heart of the problem is a lack of imagination? Aztec philosophers would urge us to reconsider our “Western” position. They would implore us to question the conventional wisdom of our culture. - LitHub
The Kiruna Kyrka, weighing 672 tons and made mostly of red-stained timber, has been elevated onto rolling platforms and is lumbering its way across its hometown in the Swedish Arctic. Kiruna is the site of a major iron mine which has weakened the ground under downtown, which is being relocated. - BBC (MSN)
This is the AI era in a nutshell. Squint one way, and you can portray it as the saving grace of the world economy. Look at it more closely, and it’s a ticking time bomb lodged in the global financial system. The conversation is always polarized. Keep the faith. - The Atlantic
There are book carts organized by United Airlines in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Virginia and more; Little Free Libraries in Seattle and Providence, Rhode Island, and “Flybrary” shelves in Punta Gorda, Florida, Traverse City, Michigan, and Redmond, Oregon. - Washington Post
