In 2023, more than 10,000 developers lost their jobs; one-third of game-makers surveyed at the beginning of this year reported they’d been affected by layoffs in some way. - Wired
Whether it’s chestnuts roasting on an open fire or a white Christmas, many of our classic Christmas images are drawn from songs written by Jewish composers and lyricists. Why are so many great artists drawn to making art about a holiday that isn’t theirs? - The New York Times
Despite offering 75 copies of the e-book, the library's waitlist currently sits at about 1,200 people. With a maximum borrowing period of 21 days, someone placing a hold on the e-book today could be waiting well over a year before it comes available. - CBC
It’s convenient to assume that readers are to blame for killing literary fiction, and publishers have abandoned it because book-buyers are stupid, have bad taste, and just aren’t reading anymore. But what has actually occurred is death by committee. - Persuasion
The novelty score is calculated using an algorithm that compares the combinations of keywords and cited journals in a scientific manuscript with those in previous publications and projects the types of paper that will be published in the future. From this, it identifies novelty as deviations from these predictions. - Nature
Spotify, the rumor had it, was filling its most popular playlists with stock music attributed to pseudonymous musicians—variously called ghost or fake artists—presumably in an effort to reduce its royalty payouts. Some even speculated that Spotify might be making the tracks itself. - Harper's
Some creative geniuses make the world richer because of their work. Others have used their cultural impact as an excuse not to treat others with basic respect. The latter group brings to mind a truly notorious kind of “art monster” - The Atlantic
Eungie Joo, the curator and head of contemporary art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), was fired from her position on Tuesday (17 December) for allegedly violating the museum’s policies governing workplace conduct. - The Art Newspaper
MrBeast says on the podcast that he worked with the Egyptian government to get access to the historic site. “I’ve never been inside of it,” he says. “I want to just find secrets and go through all the rooms and the tombs and that kind of stuff.” - Fast Company
The National Labor Relations Board ruled in their favor and they're getting compensation, but the ten dancers are declining to return to DBDT. So they got together for one last performance — a program of new pieces collectively titled Emergence —before figuring out where their careers will take them next. - KERA (Dallas)
Broadway returned to boom times, and several commercially produced shows did gangbusters business in smaller theatres, but Off Broadway’s nonprofit companies continued to struggle. Yet a lot of what made the city artistically exciting this year required that all parts of the ecosystem flourish. - The New Yorker
“Sound directs our passage through time. It shapes our orientation to the future moment and also to the moment when the future stops.” - The Wall Street Journal
The Ukrainian-born dancer, who has three tattoos of Putin (despite the Russian military's near-obliteration of his hometown, Kherson), now says "My time in Russia ran out a long time ago … I've fulfilled my mission here." Last week he posted a message calling for peace negotiations and promptly lost his job. - CBS News
