The Emmy- and Tony-winning actor will become artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre, a well-regarded company located near his birthplace in the highlands of Perthshire. He begins the job this January and his first fully-programmed season will be in 2026. - BBC
"It's strange that we don't still really know the answers to questions like when do children have a proper distinction between the past and the future, given that this seems to structure the entire way that we think about our lives as adults." - BBC
Yes, Raygun (civilian name: Dr. Rachael Gunn), the Australian academic whose singularly odd performances and (ahem) perfect score made her one of the viral sensations of the Paris Games, is — due to quirks in the rules of competitive breaking's governing body — temporarily leading the sport's rankings. - The Wall Street Journal (MSN)
"The StraightForward Foundation ... acts like a pro bono literary agency. It connects Russian authors, writing about sensitive topics, to publishers abroad, who publish their work in different languages. The foundation only requires that the authors agree to post the Russian versions of their manuscripts online for free for readers back home." - NPR
In October 2023, OPB's environmental reporter filed a public records request for documents about Portland's Clean Energy Fund. City officials denied it, and she appealed to the D.A. He ruled in her favor; OPB sued to keep the documents confidential; that case has now been dismissed. - Jefferson Public Radio (Ashland, Oregon)
"Vance George, who led the Chorus for 23 years, called the Symphony’s proposal to slash up to 80% of the group’s budget 'simply awful,' in a letter addressed to Symphony CEO Matt Spivey on Sept. 4." - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
Under a settlement agreement, the School Board of Nassau County (along the border with Georgia, about 35 miles northeast of Jacksonville) must restore access to 36 titles with LGBTQ content which it had ordered removed. The authors of one of those books were plaintiffs. - AP
One thing which these reporters seem confident of is that the Museum of Modern Art's next boss is unlikely to be a white man. Here's a look at five probable candidates. - ARTnews
The director filed suit against the trade magazine and two of its executive editors over a story posted in July which quoted anonymous sources saying that Coppola kissed scantily clad female extras uninvited. - TheWrap (MSN)
In an excerpt from his new book, Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, Sebastian Smee writes about the partnership, both romantic and artistic, between the great Impressionist painters Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot. - The Washington Post (MSN)
The composer had seemingly appeared from nowhere. Now he was engaging the world’s best soloists to perform his music—compositions that some musicians and critics found amateurish at best and soulless at worst. - Van
This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities’ reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. - MIT Technology Review
The organization argued that AI helps disabled or marginalized writers who don't have industry connections. As one of many now-former members put it, "It’s pretty insulting to imply that the only way members of marginalized communities can get their foot in the door is through the use of a plagiarism machine." - Slate (MSN)
“We’re calling ourselves the ‘City of the Arts’ in St. Pete so it’s just the right thing for the city to contribute to that and not just leave it up to the free market economy because the free market economy does not necessarily provide for diverse programming." - 83 Degrees Media
Critics have painted a nearly apocalyptic picture of its impact, calling it a threat to startups, open source developers, and academics. Supporters call it a necessary guardrail for a potentially dangerous technology — and a corrective to years of under-regulation. - The Verge
