The 55-year-old Spanish-Italian conductor succeeded Andrew Davis in 2021, with a five-year contract. That agreement will now run for an additional five seasons, through the summer of 2031. - AP
"The trial is scheduled to take place on Aug. 4, 2025, following a lawsuit that accused Polanski of giving a (13-year-old girl) alcohol and raping her at his Benedict Canyon home. The complaint was filed last June in Los Angeles County Superior Court." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
"From York stone" — still valuable as a building material — "gouged from a 200-year-old bridge to graffiti sprayed on a medieval chapel, there has been a rise in theft and vandalism at the nation’s most cherished historic sites, with the cost of living crisis expected to only worsen the problem." - The Guardian
"Patriotic blogger Wu Wanzheng, who goes by 'Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo' online, sued under a law that carries civil penalties and (occasionally) criminal punishments for perceived offenses against China’s heroes and martyrs. Wu claimed Mo’s books have smeared the Chinese Communist Party’s reputation ... and insulted former revolutionary leader Mao Zedong." - AP
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
"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!)
