"Approximately 14 percent of Pixar’s workforce, or around 175 employees, will be let go. … The layoffs are part of Disney chief Bob Iger’s overarching mandate to return to a focus on quality versus churning out content for streaming, which was a priority for his short-lived successor, Bob Chapek." - The Hollywood Reporter
The accusations against the 52-year-old Frenchman — currently music director of the orchestra and opera in Cologne as well as founder/director of the widely-hailed period-instrument orchestra Les Siècles — were revealed by Le Canard enchaîné, a magazine famous for both satire and serious investigations. - Van
"In addition to laying off staff across 13 departments," including 11 people from the newsroom, "GBH will also stop producing (the shows) Greater Boston, Talking Politics, and Basic Black, (because they) 'no longer draw enough viewers to justify the cost of making them for television.'" - The Boston Globe (MSN)
Funding to the California Arts Council would fall by 38%, and the state would rescind $12.5 million previously promised to the Equitable Payroll Fund, which was created to help small arts companies comply with so-called gig-work bill AB5. The state faces two years of 11-figure budget deficits. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
"Shelby County Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins issued a temporary injunction against the proposed auction that had been scheduled for Thursday in Memphis, where the king of rock ‘n’ roll’s former home is located." Elvis Presley's granddaughter says the debt allegedly racked up by Lisa Marie is based on fraudulent documents. - AP
Even if nostalgia is a less “dangerous emotion” today than it seems to have been to the Swiss soldiers, it well deserves to be taken seriously and sympathetically. - The Guardian
Your phone mirrors the world back to you. But what you see is the world you want to see—a “frictionless,” “responsive,” “immediate,” “obedient,” “commercialized,” “optimized” simulacrum of your own will accomplished. - The Point
The reason for the return to larger-cast shows gets at the heart of what makes the 89-year-old company unique. OSF is one of the biggest nonprofit theaters in the U.S., but it’s based in Ashland, Ore., which has a population of just over 21,000 — about one-sixth the size of Berkeley. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
At the core of these deflections is an implication: The hypothetical superintelligence they are building is too big, too world-changing, too important for prosaic concerns such as copyright and attribution. - The Atlantic (MSN)
"People attempting to recover from unhealthy obsessions unanimously report a tendency to overthink to the point of debility. Riding the subway uptown to the Scrabble club, I considered the ways I’d replaced one addiction with another." - The Paris Review
Was it because, as a child mathematics prodigy, he wanted to fulfil his real vocation and become a great mathematician? Apparently not. He taught the course that humanities and social science majors have to take in the US university system. “Math for tenors,” he calls it. - The Guardian
Jonathan Tunick began his career in the 1960s, when Broadway pit bands were big, and orchestrated all of Sondheim's Broadway shows of the '70s. For the Sondheim revivals of the '90s, he reworked his arrangements for bands 50% to 80% smaller. Now he's building one of those back up again. - Playbill
At least 1,000 paintings that the artist Damien Hirst said were “made in 2016” were created several years later, the Guardian can reveal. - The Guardian
