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Susan Sarandon Apologizes For Her Remarks About Jews

Sarandon, whose agents dropped her after her remarks at a Nov. 17 rally in support of a cease-fire in Gaza, wrote on Instagram that her phrasing "was a terrible mistake." - The New York Times

Saudi Arabia’s Architectural Mega-Projects Are For Whom, Or What, Exactly?

"It will take to the limit the proposition that art can change the world for the better." Er, indeed. - The Observer (UK)

How A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright Teaches Theatre To Her Students

Lynn Nottage: "American Spectacle has always begun with a field trip to the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. ... We also go to vogue balls, courtroom trials, and megachurches. The event that the students especially love, which I never would have anticipated, is wrestling." - Paris Review

Do Poor And Lower-Middle Class Kids Deserve Access To The Humanities?

West Virginia says no. "For most students, their state’s main public university remains their best hope of breaching the walls of class difference. As the ax falls, that idealistic mission fades, and inequalities widen." - The Atlantic

Booker Winner Paul Lynch On His Dystopian Novel

Lynch has been incessantly (after the prize) "asked for his views on far right movements in Western Europe and about the recent riots in Dublin that were sparked by right wing agitators — an event that he found both shocking and depressingly predictable." - The New York Times

Bologna Decides To Repair Its 12-Century Leaning Tower

"The city’s mayor, Matteo Lepore, noted in a debate earlier this month that the Garisenda tower had leaned since it was built 'and has been a concern ever since.'" - The Guardian (UK)

How To Get The Best Black Friday, Cyber Monday, And Every Other Day Deals On E-Books

For that matter, the best deal on books, streaming, magazines, newspapers, and a lot more - yes, yes, you already know: A library card. (And for e-books and audiobooks, the app Libby.) "It’s all so easy that it feels like cheating." - Slate

John Nichols, Author Of The Milagro Beanfield War, Has Died At 83

The author, who moved from New York to New Mexico, fell for the state. His publisher: "A lot of his work might be characterized as a long slow-motion valentine to the mountains, mesas, high desert, sky and especially people of New Mexico." - The New York Times

The David Hockney-Keith Haring-Jean-Michel-Basquiat Amusement Park Is Reopening

That's right, people will soon be able to see (but not ride) a Keith Haring carousel at the long-neglected, now revived amusement park Luna Luna. - Los Angeles Times

The Decline And Fall Of Sports Illustrated Shows Just How Precarious Media Are

The potential AI controversy is just the latest in a series of humiliations. "All of these companies have followed the same strategy: 'leveraging” the SI brand and wringing maximum cash from it, even as they actively undermine the journalism that built that reputation." - The Atlantic

Very Few Stage Magicians Are Women

The figures are grim: About 8 percent of working stage magicians are women. What's that about, and how can it change? - The New York Times

The Slow, Blinking Performance Robots Of An American Pizza Chain Are What One Might Call Endangered

The infamous Chuck E. Cheese animatronic performers were for kids, kind of. "Those were also for the adults. The robotic characters originally spoke in double entendres." - NPR

The Ballet Where A Princess Rescues That Working-Class Guy Cinders

For the dancer playing Cinders, letting the woman playing Princess Louise "take the lead has meant fighting his ballet instincts daily. 'I don’t really know how to hold myself anymore, where to put my hand with her,' he said with a laugh." - The New York Times

On The Exploitation Of Jean-Michel Basquiat, And Baltimore

"Is the point of art to bring us into ourselves, or out?" - LitHub

Merriam-Webster Values Something In Short Supply In 2023

The word of a year in which AI, deep fakes, political chicanery, and war propaganda filled the airwaves and wireless chat is a bit unexpected. - Wired

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