Over the past several decades, philanthropy has become much more bureaucratic: if you want a grant from one of these well-endowed foundations, you have to be willing to navigate a large bureaucracy while specifying all of the legible ways in which your activity will have provable impact. - Palladium
"Freedom is neither a fixed idea nor a story of progress toward a predetermined goal. The history of American freedom is a tale of debates and struggles. Often, battles for control of the idea illustrate the contrast between the “negative” and “positive” meanings of freedom." - The Nation
Whatever the fate of modern DEI programs in corporate America, diversity of experience, thought, and ideology is a meritorious goal for a company to pursue. Done right, it will be good for business. - The Atlantic
You may not recognize the term, but you use pragmatics all the time; we all do. John McWhorter explains what exactly they are, and he predicted that when AI programs started incorporating pragmatics properly, chatbots would start become convincing to human users. - The New York Times
“Even as the subjects reported trusting online content less after the quiz, they still ranked (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest circulation broadsheet daily) highly and turned to it more after being confronted with a quiz that showed how difficult it can be to tell fake from real.” - Nieman Lab
He and his wife, the Bolshoi ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, were high culture’s power couple in the late Soviet era; his works were staples of the repertoire. After the USSR fell, interest in Shchedrin’s music soared in Russia and abroad, where it was championed by Mstislav Rostropovich and Lorin Maazel. - The New York Times
The Deep South’s largest daily is going digital-only and will print its last hard-copy newspaper in December 31, ending a run which began in 1868. The closure comes despite the fact that the print version, with about 40,000 subscribers, is still profitable. - AP
“The move follows last month’s congressional rescission of more than $1 billion in federal public media funding. Vermont Public CEO Vijay Singh said the station will lose $2 million from its current budget.” Fifteen employees have been laid off; two further positions were reduced from full-time to part-time. - Inside Radio
The busy 29-year-old maestro, soon to start music directorships at both the Chicago Symphony and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, will relinquish the post of chief conductor in the Norwegian capital at the end of the coming season. - Moto Perpetuo
The sometime-director of blockbusters hasn’t worked in Hollywood since getting fired from Bohemian Rhapsody in 2017. He moved to Israel several years ago and has reportedly completed a feature starring Jon Voight (another figure in the industry’s doghouse) set during Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon during that country's civil war. - Variety
Ben Davis: “In the non-metaphorical world, slurry means an unresolved mix of liquid and solid. …. The word comes to mind with this very pervasive kind of content that’s gunking up my feed, where different content types are running together into one half-resolved substance. Where everything assumes the qualities of everything else.” - Artnet
Might the relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence follow a similar logic—a hope of consciousness helping consciousness across generations? Perhaps the best thing that we’re put here for is indeed to see; but our vision is limited. - 3 Quarks Daily
Arizona State University reported a fall semester decline for the first time since 2020. Declines have been announced at universities in Texas, Missouri and Illinois. The state of Massachusetts is expecting about 10,000 fewer new international students this year. - NPR
