“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of students enrolled in Yiddish-language online courses exploded – not only in the United States but also in Canada, Mexico and Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. … At the same time, organizations like the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Yiddish Book Center have pushed for a new perception of Yiddish.” - The Conversation
Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and numerous other music publishers have sued Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, alleging the AI lab conducted a “brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works.” - TechCrunch
Silicon Valley’s embrace of improvisation and theater is also part of its much bigger and more longstanding philosophical tendency to treat reality, play, perception and performance as essentially interchangeable. - The New York Times
Two decades ago, Downtown Brooklyn was well connected but underpopulated, a combination that drew armies of fresh college graduates, quintupling the population. It’s hard to believe how thoroughly and quickly the skyline has been remade in that time—and how shoddily. - Curbed
“(The) gap between the rapid expansion in available titles and slowing revenue growth is creating new pressure across the industry. ... More titles are competing for a finite amount of listening time, raising the value of established audiences and making it harder for individual projects to break through.” - TheWrap (MSN)
“The new label, titled Leawood Films, will distribute and market films for established and emerging filmmakers. But … the company is not necessarily aiming for blockbusters, and will instead focus on small- and medium-sized films. It will be genre-agnostic.” - The Hollywood Reporter
Calls for an audit of the African-American Arts and Culture Complex came after the nonprofit was consistently late with required reports on the spending of millions in city grant money. The audit found no misuse of funds but identified shortcomings with both the AAACC and the San Francisco Arts Commission. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
“President Trump on Monday urged Congress to approve federal tax incentives aimed at reviving American film and television productions, saying Hollywood has been hollowed out by productions moving to Canada and other countries.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
“In poems, stories, novels and essays (he) celebrated the farming communities of his native (Kentucky) and warned of the excesses and misjudgments of an industrial, commercialized society.” - AP
The festival sold or distributed over 2.8 million tickets in 2026, up nearly 8% from last year and approaching the 3 million sold in 2019. This despite the fact that attendance fell sharply during the festival’s final week. Saturday 17 August set an all-time record for single-day attendance — more than 164,000. - BBC (Yahoo!)
“From Tuesday 1 September, every title in the LaScalaTV catalogue will be available to watch for free, following simple registration – a shift made possible by continued support from the platform’s Principal Sponsor, Intesa Sanpaolo.” - Gramilano (Milan)
Currently, per Rentrak, the North American box office for the first Friday in May through EOD today stands at $4.598 billion, officially the second-highest summer ever behind 2013. If this summer is going to beat 2013’s all-time high, it has $158M to gross. - Deadline
For the first hour or so, I found the Robot Games enthralling. What can robots already do, and where do they still fall short? Which robot will manage to crawl under an obstacle, and which will pitifully get stuck? But after a while, I suddenly realized that I had grown deeply bored. - Yascha Mounk
It would be an understatement to say that the growing prominence of A.I. music is generating backlash—sometimes it seems this music generates nothing but backlash. - The New Yorker
What’s happening to the New School is an increasingly common story across all of higher education, hit by a perfect storm of financial and political pressures. Well-paid bosses, touting fiscal crises, seek to fire their way to profitability. - Dissent
