Stories

The Real Miracle Of Notre-Dame? Reconstructing The Intricate Wood Frame Of The Roof

That project meant finding trees comparable to the huge oaks used to make the original eight centuries ago, finding or reproducing the medieval tools and techniques used by the original builders (and locating workers who knew how to use them), and getting the complicated structure finished within the five-year timeline. - GQ

Students Entering Elite Colleges Don’t Know How To Read Books. Why?

It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to. - The Atlantic

AI And The New Questions About Copyright

From a legal perspective, even though the use of AI dates back to the 1950s... the proliferation of AI today brings to the forefront questions that we have not previously considered, specifically from a copyright law perspective: Should AI itself be considered an “author” under copyright law? - New York State Bar Association

Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival Selects Giancarlo Guerrero As Director

The 55-year-old Costa Rican conductor, currently completing his 16th and final season as music director of the Nashville Symphony, takes over the summer music festival next year. 2025 will also mark the start of his tenure as music director of the Sarasota Orchestra in Florida. - WFMT (Chicago)

CNN, Its Revenues Falling, Paywalls Its Websites

U.S. users will have to pay $3.99 a month or a discounted rate of $29.99 a year for access. The subscription will allow unlimited usage of the site, which is visited by 150 million people globally each month. - Los Angeles Times

Matthew López On The One Play He’s Written That He Was Terrified Of Reviving

One big reason that the Tony-winning playwright of The Inheritance has been reluctant to revisit this script, titled Reverberation, is that it's the last play he wrote before getting sober. And where López calls his gay romcom screenplay Red, White & Royal Blue a "joy-bomb," Reverberation is more like an A-bomb. - The Guardian

Kris Kristofferson, Country Music Philosopher

Kris Kristofferson, who died at age 88 in his Maui home on Saturday, was a guitar-toting stage performer, a ruggedly handsome movie actor, and an outspoken humanitarian and activist. But at base, he was a thinker-poet who pushed country music in existentialist directions. - The Atlantic

Backstage At San Francisco Opera For “Innocence” And “The Handmaid’s Tale”

"(Kaija Saariaho's) Innocence is about the aftermath of a school shooting, and the blood table was where the makeup crew applied stage blood to the performers. (There) were squirt and nozzle bottles, as well as baskets with blood packs, which would later burst onstage, each basket labeled with the name of a performer." - San Francisco Classical Voice

Video Streaming Platforms Are Looking Back To A Very 20th-Century Structure: TV Channels

"Viewers are getting tired. Choosing from thousands of options on a dozen streaming services, it turns out, is 'overwhelming.' .. Now Disney … has decided there’s something missing from the TV experience: channels. Sorry, 'Streams,' or a collection of 'collection of lean-back viewing experiences'." - New York Magazine (MSN)

Why France’s Culture Pass For Young People Is In Danger

President Macron's program giving money to young people to spend on cultural products now costs €260 million a year. After a report showed that 71% of the recipients spent their money only on books, half of them manga or comics, some lawmakers began calling for ending the program. - The Art Newspaper

New York Public Radio Settles Discrimination Suit Brought By Former Host

Jami Floyd had filed a lawsuit in February 2023 alleging racial discrimination, retaliation, and a hostile work environment (though that part of the case was thrown out). Floyd resigned in April 2022 amidst allegations of plagiarism. - Inside Radio

Daniel Day-Lewis Ends His Seven-Year Retirement From Acting

The three-time Oscar winner is co-starring in his son Ronan's debut feature film, Anemone, whose screenplay the two wrote together. Ronan is also a painter; his first international exhibition opens this week in Hong Kong before traveling to Los Angeles and New York. - The Guardian

Salman Rushdie’s “Knife” And Miranda July’s “All Fours” Among Titles Shortlisted For National Book Awards

"The National Book Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2024 National Book Awards. The winners in each of the five categories — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people's literature — will be announced during an awards ceremony on November 20." - Publishers Weekly

John Amos, Pathbreaking Black TV Actor Known For “Roots” And “Good Times,” Has Died At 84

"A running back turned actor who appeared in scores of TV shows — including groundbreaking 1970s programs such as the sitcom Good Times and the epic miniseries Roots — (he) risked his career to protest demeaning portrayals of Black characters." - The Washington Post (MSN)

“Inside Out 2” Broke Theatre Box Office Records. Now It’s Breaking Streaming Records

The success of “Inside Out 2” on streaming has been unsurprising given how well it performed at the box office earlier this year, surpassing “Frozen 2” as the highest-grossing animated film of all time with $1.7 billion on a budget of $200 million. - Variety

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