Many parts of the ancient Babylonian tale are still missing, and searching through hundreds of thousands of surviving cuneiform fragments to separate portions of the narrative from, say, private letters or sales receipts is slow and tedious. A new AI project has led to "extreme acceleration" in the field. - The New York Times
Company management posted on Instagram on Monday that last Friday's abrupt mass sacking happened because "a video surfaced that violated their contractual terms and our standards of artistic excellence." The union, AGMA, is not at all convinced and has issued a rare "do not work" order for DBDT. - KERA (Dallas)
This particular jackass is a 37-year-old British man who carved his initials and those of his two daughters on a wall at the House of the Vestals. He told police that he just wanted to leave some trace of his visit. - Artnet
Ilya Ram, a 33-year-old Israeli-American, is currently music director of the Akademische Philharmonie Heidelberg, a position he will keep. He begins his tenure in Tennessee this coming season. - Chattanooga Times Free Press
"The project, called 'Track(ed) Changes,' along with the related community events, jibes with the city’s promise to Chicagoans to broaden the limelight and to spread the economic impact of the convention through many of the city’s 77 neighborhoods." - The New York Times
Reasoning that he should not be held morally responsible for deaths from a drug (OxyContin) that his company (Purdue Pharma) brought to market years after he died, the Harvard Corporation decided not to rename the Sackler Art Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Building. - AP
"Patreon says podcasters make up the second-largest group of creators on its platform and collectively earned more than $350 million from fans in 2023. (The company) says creators have benefited as they’ve moved beyond just audio to video, live shows, books, and merchandise lines, broadening their appeal." - Inside Radio
"The difference between being mean and being cruel has to do with intention, scale, and intensity. ... Being mean is always directed at another person. It is a way of telling the truth … that, through carelessness or minor wickedness, gives pain to someone else." - The Hedgehog Review
The Royal Opera House's renaming as the Royal Ballet & Opera and concert venue St. John's Smith Square's rechristening as Sinfonia Smith Square — they weren't just a way for some marketing consultant to earn next month's mortgage payment. Here's a look into their considered reasons for making the change. - Classical Music (UK)
In addition to editing Seattle alt-weekly The Rocket, Cross was one of American rock's most accomplished biographers. He wrote bestselling books on Kurt Cobain (Heavier Than Heaven), Jimi Hendrix (Room Full of Mirrors), and the band Heart (Kicking & Dreaming, written with Heart frontwomen Ann and Nancy Wilson). - Variety
"ADQ, an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund, investment, and holding company, has entered into 'a definitive agreement' to acquire a minority interest in Sotheby’s. The deal, valued at around $1 billion, will see ADQ purchasing newly issued shares of Sotheby’s. Patrick Drahi, the current majority owner, will invest additional capital." - ARTnews
The Washington Post's art critic has been thinking about John Quidor’s 1849 painting The Return of Rip Van Winkle and about a certain Rip van Winkle Motel in Virginia. So he decided to ask AI about van Winkle's 20-year hotel stay — and even to create new paintings. - The Washington Post (MSN)
"Death slots" were times when audiences were presumed to be low, and therefore where network programmers would park shows presumed to be doomed anyway, so the series — most notoriously, the original Star Trek — would get cancelled for low ratings. Yet it turned out some shows thrived in "death slots." - Tedium
Dr. Rachael Gunn — whose nom de breaking is "Raygun" — knows that, at 36, she can't compete against the spins and strength moves of younger breakers. So the Australian university lecturer gets creative — and gets attention. "Sometimes it speaks to the judges," she says, "and sometimes it doesn’t." (In Paris it didn't.) - The Guardian
At American Players Theater, “banking on the glory of the human voice is primarily an artistic decision: Nothing comes between the actors, their words and the public.” - The New York Times
