If you look at the reaction to our robots, humanoids get 10 times the reaction to anything else. So if you care about people responding, you have to care about that. We got fantastic reaction to the “Do You Love Me” video, and contrary to what some people think, we did it for pure fun. - Wired
When Chrome’s cookies are fully removed the open web will have mutated from a place where up to 90% of users were in some way targetable by advertisers, to a vast desert in which most users are essentially invisible to publishers and their clients. - Press-Gazette
"I have so many things in my life that kind of fulfil what ballet has been, and ballet is still in that: it's the work I'm doing through my foundation, it's these incredible projects I'm creating with my production company, it's having a son." - BBC
eMuseum, the program that allows visitors to search an institution’s archives and collections suffered in the attack, as was a program named TMS, which stores donor names, loan terms, provenance records, the storage locations of artworks, and shipping information. - ARTnews
"It's worth asking now, five years after Roth’s death, whether they have eclipsed the actual work that Roth produced, or any true reckoning with the man himself. … Will (his) literary output enjoy the same immortality as that of the persona he created?" - The Atlantic (MSN)
Employment in motion pictures and sound recording climbed by 11,400 jobs to 463,000. After months of declines, industry employment began rising again in November. - Deadline
Last spring, the library in Lake Luzerne announced, as a one-time event, a drag queen story hour. After months of strife that included a bomb threat and a fistfight at a council meeting, most of the staff and board resigned and the library had to shut down. - The New York Times
Has comedy changed dramatically in purpose in our era? Or have its ideological trappings gone pious in ways that are at odds with what comedians have always done? - The New Yorker
In Suffolk, where roughly three-quarters of the population qualifies as "wealthy" or "comfortable," the county announced that it will end all core arts funding as of April 2025. Arts organizations issued a joint statement saying that the amount (£500,000) is tiny for the council but will severely affect them. - The Guardian
“This expectation that all artists per se should have a particular responsibility to be overtly political flies in the face of what I believe about art being directionless research. Or sometimes I like to say that art is useless. And that’s one of its absolute strengths." - New Statesman
"While recent rumors suggest the pair had a falling out, (Benny) Safdie insists his split with Josh is amicable. 'It’s a natural progression of what we each want to explore,'" says Benny, who has found himself with a healthy acting career. - Variety
There is the giving up that we can admire and aspire to, and the giving up that profoundly unsettles us. What, for example, does real hope or real despair require us to relinquish? What exactly do we imagine we are doing when we give something up? - The Guardian
"The Cleveland Ballet has severed all ties with the School of Cleveland Ballet, which was co-founded by its currently suspended Artistic Director Gladisa Guadalupe, and will now be launching its own dance academy in mid-January amid an investigation into 'serious and disturbing workplace allegations.'" - WKYC (Cleveland)
Dmitry Rybolovlev has been pursuing dealer Yves Bouvier from country to country with lawsuits alleging that Bouvier fraudulently inflated prices for multimillion-dollar artworks (such as Salvator Mundi) and pocketed the difference. Rybolovlev accuses Sotheby's of assisting Bouvier, and the trial starts next week. - The New York Times
"'Most contracts have arbitrary termination clauses and offer paltry fees, especially to newcomers,' says a leader of the Indian equivalent of the Writers Guild of America. … 'They also don't pay writers for reworking drafts and give producers the right to decide whether a writer should be credited for their work.'" - BBC
