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At 60, Alessandra Ferri Prepares To Leave The Stage For Good — And Start Running The Vienna State Ballet

On retiring: "At this stage in my life, dancing takes up the whole day, for my body, the training. I have the energy for one thing or the other." On becoming the boss: "I’m actually really enjoying the management part, … which for me is quite surprising!" - Bachtrack

Trend? Titles That Seem Familiar

Perhaps the frisson of cleverness (I know where that’s from!), or the flip-side cringe of ignorance (I should know where that’s from!), is enough to spur you to buy a book, the way a search-optimized headline compels you to click a link. - The New York Times

Without Warning, A Linchpin Of The Entire U.S. Indie-Publisher Ecosystem Has Closed

Small Press Distribution, founded in 1969, was the country's only not-for-profit literary distributor. It served roughly 400 small. independent presses and was known for getting unknown or experimental books to stores and to readers. Titles it distributed won over 100 literary awards in the last five years alone. - KQED (San Francisco)

The AI-Created Junk Polluting Our Culture

It’s unclear what the ethical line is between scam and regular usage. Some A.I.-generated scams are easy to identify, like the medical journal paper featuring a cartoon rat sporting enormous genitalia. Many others are more insidious, like the mislabeled and hallucinated regulatory pathway. - The New York Times

“My Three Right Hands” — Without These Women, Holst Could Never Have Composed “The Planets”

As amanuenses, copyists, assistants, rehearsal pianists, and performers, Vally Lasker, Jane Joseph and Nora Day did the countless necessary parts of the work of composition which Holst, who suffered from neuritis in his hands, was physically unable to do. - The New York Times

Hong Kong’s Enormous New Arts Center Needs To Find New Funding, And Soon

The 99-acre West Kowloon Cultural District was given a start-up fund (called an "endowment" there) of HK$21.6bn (US$2.8bn) by the enclave's government in 2008. That fund is projected to run out one year from now, potential rental income is limited, and no further state funding has been announced. - The Art Newspaper

Actor Louis Gossett Jr., 87

He was the first Black man to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (in 1983 for playing the drill sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman), and won an Emmy for his role as Fiddler in the 1977 series Roots. His last screen role was in the 2023 remake of The Color Purple. - AP

Life Magazine Is Being Revived (Yes, As A Print Publication)

"Bedford Media, the holding company founded by model and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss and her husband, investor Josh Kushner, has acquired the publishing rights to Life from Dotdash Meredith. Bedford says that Life will be relaunched as a print magazine, with a 'vibrant' digital and video presence." - The Hollywood Reporter

Artist Robert Moskowitz, “A Rare Bridge Between Abstract Expressionism And Minimalism,” Has Died At 88

"Beginning in the late 1970s, (he) began painting the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building and, most indelibly, the World Trade Center. Those three buildings appear over and over through the decades, … (with) the shimmering, self-contained quality of letters or numbers." - The New York Times

Workers’ Strike Closes Toronto’s Largest Art Museum

"Hundreds of employees from the Art Gallery of Ontario gathered on the picket line as they began strike action Tuesday. After months of negotiations, union members ... voted to reject the gallery's latest contract offer, saying it doesn't address wage increases, protections for part-time workers and contracting out positions." - CBC

Another Boston Public Media Outlet Warns Of Layoffs

Senior management at GBH, which under the call letters WGBH operates both an NPR affiliate and a TV station which produces a number of national PBS shows, says it is "facing financial headwinds. … While final decisions have not yet been made, layoffs are not off the table." - The Boston Globe (MSN)

Kennicott: The Baltimore Bridge And Its Symbolism

The loss of the bridge is first a human tragedy. Then it is an economic shock, with a radiating toll that won’t be fully understood for years. But it’s also a powerful symbolic shock, given the metaphorical power of bridges as a form of connection. - Washington Post (MSN)

Can There Truly Be “New” Opera Without Saying Goodbye To The Old?

In short: There can be no history of operatic modernity that is not also a memorial, no production of new opera that does not account for generic death, no opera written that does not, in its own way, undertake the work of mourning. - Van

How The Hulu Merger Is Changing The Ways Disney Works

Yes, Hulu is just a tile. But that tile also seems to represent something bigger inside of Disney: the full Disney Plus-ification of everything, as the tech and strategy it built over the last few years percolates out to everything else Disney does. - The Verge

For Centuries The Dutch Have Fought Back The Water. In Climate Change Maybe Cities Float Above The Water?

 “I think some bowls should be full,” he said, suggesting that flooding the land would amount to little more than a natural evolution of a man-made system, not unlike the way skyscrapers transformed cities a century ago. “It’s just an update to the machine.” - The New Yorker

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