In Jeton Neziraj’s Negotiating Peace, "vain generals can only be lured to the negotiating table by promises of Hollywood films celebrating their actions. Opposing parties get drunk while negotiating demilitarised zones, mix up drafts of ceasefire agreements and sign on the wrong dotted line." - The Guardian
Adjusting values on a per capita basis as well as accounting for differences in costs of living enable this analysis to level the playing field as much as possible. - SMU Cultural Data
"In all its elemental, metaphorical, campy, over-the-top, gore-y goodness, blood is something that has seeped into the visual vocabulary of movies. But how exactly did all that gloop get on the movie set? It’s kind of a sticky story." - Quartz
The Province of Alberta has sacked the board and appointed an administrator to oversee and assess. The institution has suffered for years with poor leadership. - Rocky Mountain Outlook
When an AI image-generation tool—like the ones made by Midjourney, Stability AI, or Adobe—is prompted to create a picture of a person, that person is likely to be better-looking than those of us who actually walk the planet Earth. - The Atlantic
"That was accidental. … (At university) there were modules on contemporary dance. I didn’t know what the hell that was. But I decided because it’s dance, I’ll do that. I don’t think anybody really knows how to combine the two. ... My body got confused, and I celebrated that confusion." - San Francisco Classical Voice
Presumably, Spotify will frame this as a way to combat fraud and to limit payments to ambient-noise generators, but it could also have a tremendous effect on the service’s role within the independent music world. - Stereogram
The plays have many passages marked as songs, but no indication of what the melodies were or who composed them. Identifying that music requires a lot of detective work, and scholar Ross Duffin has found art songs by composers such as Thomas Morley and popular ballads. - The New York Times
After fleeing Czechoslovakia following the 1968 Soviet invasion, he made an international career. He was music director/chief conductor of the Cologne Radio Symphony (1970-74), the NDR Radiphilharmonie in Hannover (1980-1983), the Milwaukee Symphony (1986-1995), New Jersey Symphony (1993-2002), and, in a triumphant return to his homeland, the Czech Philharmonic (2003-2007). - NJArts.net
"The (Garisenda Tower in Bologna) already leans at an angle of four degrees — only slightly less than the renowned five-degree tilt of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Now, the detection of ‘anomalous oscillations’ has prompted road closures around the structure to allow for detailed monitoring of potential instability." - Euronews
"Mention it, and you tend to get a puzzled look and two questions: Doesn’t Roosevelt already have a presidential library? (No.) And why the heck is this one being built in North Dakota? That second question is one just about everyone in Medora is ready to answer." - The New York Times
“To everyone who read that article, I want to answer the question that’s probably on your mind: Underneath all that pomade, is Hasan Minhaj just a con artist who uses fake racism and Islamophobia to advance his career? Because after reading that article, I would also think that.” - The Hollywood Reporter
"In a postscript to the new book, Le dedico mi silencio (I Give You My Silence), the 87-year-old novelist writes: 'I think I’ve finished this book. I’d now like to write an essay on Sartre, my teacher as a young man. It will be the last thing I write.'" - The Guardian
"A week after Artforum published a widely criticized open letter calling for Palestinian liberation that didn’t mention the Hamas attacks on Israel, editor-in-chief David Velasco has been fired" by the magazine's owners, Penske Media. - TheWrap
