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Post-Pandemic: Broadway Attendance Down, Also Movies, But Pop Concerts And Orchestras Up And Museums Mixed

The Philadelphia Orchestra is averaging 78 percent attendance so far this season, compared with 63 percent before the pandemic. The New York Philharmonic is averaging 85 percent attendance this season compared with 74 percent. - The New York Times

Historical Movies Like “Oppenheimer” Shape Historical Records. We Should Be Clear How

With Oppenheimer having received so much commercial, critical and Academy success, we have an opportunity to think about critical criteria for viewing historical film — and what we are owed by historical filmmakers. - The Conversation

What AI Is Learning About What Life Is

While some skeptics think the models are going to hit a wall, more optimistic scientists believe that foundation models will even tackle the biggest biological question of them all: What separates life from nonlife? - The New York Times

Today’s Journalists Come From A Different Economic Class. Here’s How It Changes Their Work

Contemporary journalists have a relationship to ideas that is more or less the opposite of the old school’s. It begins before they even get to campus. Students at elite colleges are drawn overwhelmingly from the upper classes, with roughly two-thirds coming from the top 20% of the income distribution. - Persuasion

UK Study: 2023 Audiences Rebounded From The Pandemic

Overall tickets sales in 2023 were 101% of what they were in 2019, the last complete year of data before Covid. More than half of audiences in 2023 were first-time bookers.54% of the audience had not attended before, a near record high in the decade, eclipsed only by the figure of 55% first-timers in 2013. - BachTrack

AI Researchers Warn They’re Being Priced Out

Fei-Fei Li is at the forefront of a growing chorus of academics, policymakers and former employees who argue the sky-high cost of working with AI models is boxing researchers out of the field, compromising independent study of the burgeoning technology. - Washington Post

Batsheva Dance Company Creates An Entire Piece About Cultural Appropriation

Choreographer Hillel Kogan calls the work, titled Appropriation, a ballet because "In a symbolic way, ballet is the major appropriator." Yet Kogan also incorporates, among other forms, breakdance, jazz, voguing, Chinese dance theater, various folk dances, Broadway, gymnastics, and capoeira. - The Jerusalem Post

Amateur Ballerina Held By Russia After $50 Donation To Ukraine Charity

Russian authorities apparently accessed Ksenia Karelina’s phone and discovered she had donated approximately $50 to Razom, a pro-Ukrainian charity, in 2022. - The Guardian

Duplass Brothers Bring Their Indie-Film Model To Television

With the passing of Peak TV, they found themselves getting turned down by studio after studio, just like most of the other independent creators of new series. So Duplass Brothers Productions started producing shows itself, financed with the money Mark makes acting in the Reese Witherspoon series The Morning Show. - Variety

If We’re So Polarized, What Is The Culpability Of Technology?

So what is the ideology of the Internet? An optimist might invoke the idea of democratization, pointing to the medium’s ability to amplify otherwise silent voices, in ways both good and bad. But the Internet is not so much a forum as a language unto itself, one with its own history, predilections, and prejudices. - The New Yorker

Street Art, Graffiti, or Advertising? How L.A. Decides Which Is Which

"How to keep murals thriving while keeping them from intruding illicitly into neighborhoods, how to keep businesses from simply ginning up wall-sized ads and calling them art, how to distinguish legal from illegal handiwork, and, frankly, good from bad. It’s a seesaw we’re still riding." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

Editor William Whitworth’s Outsized Influence On The Atlantic Magazine

Bill was a mentor to two generations of writers—writers of narrative reporting, primarily, but also novelists, biographers, intellectuals, essayists, and humorists. He expanded The Atlantic’s topical range and its cultural presence. - The Atlantic

One Of The Craziest Treadmills In Television: Casting Director For Procedural Dramas Like “Law And Order”

"Each week’s new cases require new clients, new patients, new victims and killers and crooks, some at least mildly famous and each of them plausible. ... (Delivering) such shows involves a hectic, grueling, often maddening sprint to assemble new troupes of actors week after week." - The New York Times

Why Theatre Resonates: What A 19th Century Ibsen Play Has To Say About Today

It would be challenging to find a 19th century drama that speaks as directly to our pandemic-scarred society as this one. - Los Angeles Times

Public Libraries Must Pay A Higher Price For E-Books Than Consumers Do, And It’s Squeezing Their Budgets

"While one hardcover copy of (Robin) Cook’s latest novel costs (a) library $18, it costs $55 to lease a digital copy — a price that can’t be haggled with publishers. And for that, the e-book expires after a limited time, usually one or two years, or after 26 checkouts." - AP

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