They are the first major Hollywood studios to file copyright infringement lawsuits, marking a pivotal moment in the ongoing fight by artists, newspapers and content makers to stop AI firms from using their work as training data — or at least make them pay for it. - Washington Post
Venezuelans suffering through the worst of Maduro saw themselves in the show, but so did committed Chavistas. Same for anti-Lukashenko protesters in Belarus, Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring demonstrators, Jan.6 insurrectionists, anti-Beijing Hong Kongers, and Mormons. Zachary Pincus-Roth considers what they all see in the show. - The Washington Post (MSN)
Organizations including Los Angeles Opera, Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad museum and the Japanese American National Museum are grappling with the snowballing effects of the civic unrest compounded by an uncertain future as thousands of National Guard troops and Marines roll into town under President Trump’s orders. - Los Angeles Times
“I think it’s crazy that 20 years in, we still offer music for free. We’re the only service that doesn’t have a free service. As a company, we look at music as art, and we would never want to give away art for free. - The Hollywood Reporter
The bill, known on Capitol Hill as a “rescissions” proposal, is the closest NPR and PBS have ever come to a complete loss of federal funding. The bill would strip all federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. - CNN
“In his art work, seemingly endless numbers of nails, which would by themselves perhaps be perceived as potentially aggressive and hurtful, turned into harmonic, almost organic creations. His reliefs with the tightly hewn nails are reminiscent of waving grasses or fields of algae in a marine landscape.” - AP
In contrast to the mess at Dallas Black Dance Theatre last year, when dancers voted to join a union and were promptly fired, leading to a nationally publicized fiasco, the dancers at Texas Ballet Theater, who voted to join AGMA in 2023, have just signed their first contract. - KERA (Dallas)
The author and activist reported on Bluesky last week that her Facebook account on Facebook was suspended, later adding that she was told the decision was permanent. Then the Chronicle reported the ban, and within 24 hours Solnit was reinstated, with a Meta spokesperson saying the suspension was in error. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
“The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts and develops Wikipedia, has paused an experiment that showed users AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the Wikipedia editors community.” - 404 Media
“Approximately 100 employees were dismissed in a broad ‘reduction in force’ on Tuesday, June 10. … Fewer than 60 staff members remain at the agency, which oversees an annual $207 million budget to support public history, libraries, museums and education programs across the country.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
“There was an abiding pathos in his best records — not merely the idealized scenes the songs depicted, but also that they were created by a depressed, socially awkward, partially-deaf young man who never surfed or much liked the beach and spent his time alone in his room.” - The Washington Post (MSN)
Khaby Lame, a 25-year-old Senegalese-Italian influencer with 162 million followers on the video app, was detained at Las Vegas airport for (as an ICE spokesperson put it) “overstaying the terms of his visa.” He was allowed to depart the country without being held to wait for a deportation order. - AP
The latest crisis in literary studies feels different: more spiteful and less fertile, more terminally gloomy, a scene of death throes rather than birth pangs. - N+1
Tracy Young: “I’ve seen nothing to counter the notion that Shakespeare was a populist. All about the people, and the audience’s kind of theater guy. … That to me was the real affirmation of why Play on Shakespeare is worthy. I have no complicated feelings about the rightness or wrongness of it.” - TheaterMania
