The Irish Pub Company has created over 2,000 pubs in more than 100 countries, in places from Berlin to Bahrain to Nigeria to Novosibirsk to Tokyo to Tulsa to Tashkent. This isn’t a prefab bar-in-a-box business; the pubs are custom-designed, with the owner having final choice on the many details. - Smithsonian Magazine
The truism has it that most great New York magazine editors come from away—from the West or the Midwest or across the Atlantic—and arrive with an ability to see what natives don’t. - The New Yorker
There are two errors we must avoid if we want to get closer to the truth: we shouldn’t believe things that are false, and we shouldn’t discount things that are true. If we focus solely on reducing belief in false content, as current efforts tend to do, we risk targeting one error at the expense of the other. -...
Hertz Hall, the existing classical venue at UC-Berkeley, seats 600; it wasn’t uncommon for some concerts to attract 100 people or fewer, but there were no concert halls that size anywhere nearby. That is, until the opening on Sunday of the 100-seat Wu Performance Hall. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
The initiative by Il Foglio, a conservative liberal daily, is part of a month-long journalistic experiment aimed at showing the impact AI technology has “on our way of working and our days”, the newspaper’s editor, Claudio Cerasa, said. - The Guardian
Beckett is perennially timely because his works concern themselves with those eternal questions that the political emergencies of the day cannot override. Even as we confront impossible times, we remain planted in that greater impossibility — human existence. - Los Angeles Times
Tony- and Pulitzer-winning actor-playwright Tracy Letts (August: Osage County and The Minutes) is writing the story and book for the jukebox show, titled Fire and Rain, and another Tony winner, David Cromer (The Band’s Visit), will direct. - Variety
“It’s in tremendous disrepair, as is a lot of the rest of our country, most of it because of bad management,” Trump told reporters Monday after he toured the Kennedy Center and met for the first time as chair of its board. - The Hill
Through all his binges and bankruptcies, through every setback and depressive spell, he kept making art because he knew that’s where the best of him lay. - Washington Post
“If the federal government can show up and demand a university department be shut down or restructured, then we don’t have universities in this country.” - The Hill
A wave of proposed state laws that would hold librarians criminally liable for the presence of any material in their libraries’ collections deemed “obscene” has been getting increased attention and drawing opposition. Yet it’s important to remember that such laws are (a) straight out of Project 2025 and (b) not new. - Book Riot
“As the Met’s head of provenance research, a new position created last May, … (Lucian) Simmons (has) a job to correct earlier errors, to prevent new questionable acquisitions and to ensure that the museum’s reputation for integrity and scholarship is not further damaged.” - The New York Times
Blake Gopnik: “I’m not sure that we really understood the contradictions at the heart of Albert Barnes, the fact that he could be just an incredibly smart man and a man who was emotionally, socially incredibly stupid, a man who could be incredibly generous and just absurdly vituperative.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
“Tate is cutting 7% of its workforce as the British arts institution seeks to address a funding deficit left over from the pandemic. … Tate, which has four galleries across London, Liverpool and Cornwall, said it had been working with staff for a number of months to achieve the reduction.” - The Guardian
