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Editor Of People Dishes On The Rules Of Celebrity

An early editor at People came up with rules for who to put on the cover. "Young stars sell better than old. Rich is better than poor. TV is better than movies. Anything is better than politics." And then there's another rule, more troubling, "write about a woman with a problem." - CBC

OMG – Surely The Ugliest Building In Paris

One can hardly deny feeling something un-Parisian, even anti-Parisian, exuded by the dark, Kubrickian slab rising out of its nineteenth-century surroundings. But nor, on closer inspection, can one deny the traces of élan in its design. - The New Yorker

Hollywood Ponders What AI and How Much AI

Netflix is looking to hire an AI product manager who will “define the strategic vision for” the streamer’s machine-learning platform, according to a job posting. - Wall Street Journal

Show Your Work: Why Scientific Papers Should Tell Better Stories

I understand the need to present scientific findings in a clean, concise way, but the papers also omit all the false starts, blind alleys, broken equipment, and dumb mistakes that beset real scientific research every day. By omitting all the human stuff, the papers fail to explain how science really gets done. - The American Scholar

Underneath The Hype Around AI

Too much focus on this worry risks downplaying somewhat less apocalyptic but more likely scenarios of social disruption, like dramatic upheavals in jobs. Finally, hype and alarmism about AI will inevitably be used to advance stupid, self-interested, or beside-the-point pet causes. - New Atlantis

Louisville Ballet Makes Cuts To Next Season And Is Trying To Raise $3 Million “To Sustain The Company’s Future”

"Tax documents from 2010-2020, which are the most recent available from the IRS, show that's an optimistic number, and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the ballet garnered annually in gifts in the past decade." - MSN (Louisville Courier-Journal)

Major Museums Hike Admission Fees

The trend started last July when the Metropolitan Museum of Art — New York’s largest art museum — raised its adult admission price to $30, a $5 increase. Others followed, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, with Art Institute of Chicago now one of the most expensive. - The New York Times

Wyoming Library Board Withdraws From Library Association, Fires Librarian For Not Removing Books

The board voted 4-1 to fire longtime library director Terri Lesley after months of tension surrounding her refusal to weed out the library’s shelves based on a vague new policy aimed at shielding children and teens from sexual content. - The Daily Beast

Hong Kong’s Big New Arts Center Is Facing A Terrifying Fiscal Cliff

The West Kowloon Cultural District was meant to be funded by income from adjacent office buildings — but, since COVID, the office market is weak, WKCD is hemorrhaging cash, and the government, which set up a US$3 billion endowment in 2008, appears unlikely to help. - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

All About Leonardo – Inside Google’s Masterclass in The Artist

The expansive project, titled “Inside a Genius Mind,” is a collaboration with 28 institutions around the world. It features 3,000 drawings, including 1,300 pages of the Old Master’s famed codices, such as the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus. - Artnet

Well, There’s One Big Show Business Event Unscathed By The Hollywood Strikes: Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival

"To be sure, stand-up artists gathered in Montreal like summer camp for their industry have been looking with great interest to the stalled contract talks in Hollywood between actors and writers and North American producers for settlements. But their livelihoods aren't necessarily riding on the outcomes." - The Hollywood Reporter

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Names New Director

Giovanna Sardelli will serve as the company’s artistic director, after a brief turn in the position on an interim basis following the departure of artistic director Tim Bond, who left to take the reins of Oregon Shakespeare Festival. - American Theatre

Threads: How A Small Team Built An Alternative To Twitter From Scratch In Seven Months

"(The app's fast creation and launch) has become something of a marvel inside Meta. … Many see its quick rise as a reminder that well-executed product launches might not need all the bureaucratic trappings that a company with some 66,000 employees had grown accustomed to." - MSN (The Washington Post)

British Museum Director Steps Down

As well as overseeing the British Museum during the Covid pandemic, Hartwig Fischer has faced growing controversy over one of the institution’s cultural highlights – the Parthenon marbles, also known as the Elgin marbles – amid calls for the ancient sculptures to be returned to Greece. - The Guardian

Why “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” Was So Brilliant At What It Did

"(The show) made perfect sense. Kids are wigged-out surrealists by nature; it takes grown-ups to regiment their impulses into predictable TV formats. ... Maybe a 5-year-old could imagine something like Pee-wee's Playhouse, but only a genius like Reubens could do it as an adult." - The New York Times

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