The work stoppage by the Writers Guild of America has led to the temporary closure of the weekday late-night shows on NBC, ABC, CBS, HOB (Bill Maher) and Comedy Central. Saturday Night Live and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver have also halted production. - The Hollywood Reporter
"Vice, the brash digital-media disrupter that charmed giants like Disney and Fox into investing before a stunning crash-landing, is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to two people with knowledge of its operations." - The New York Times
"The best sales pitch is the threat of censorship. It draws attention to books that might otherwise have gone under the radar." What's more, "we tend to believe that when books are censored, they are obliterated or withdrawn from view. But more often they are edited to increase sales." - The Guardian
Two weeks ago, Danielle St.Germain stepped down from the dance troupe without explanation. Now the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have announced that she will be their chief philanthropic officer. (The bulk of her career has been as a fundraising executive outside the dance world.) - San Francisco Chronicle
Mario Botta: "We've added a 17-story structure (six floors are underground) on the Via Verdi. At the base of this tower is an orchestra practice room, and on top is an airy dance studio. In between is needed functional space like offices, storage and rehearsal space." - The New York Times
Conferences on Scruton’s work are springing up like mushrooms across the continent. Budapest boasts a chain of Scruton cafes that hold regular discussions of his work. The flagship of the chain displays various bits of Scrutonia — books, records, an old-fashioned gramophone and even a teapot. - Bloomberg
A push that began last summer to remove a few children's sexual education books from the southern Manitoba library system has since bubbled up into accusations its staff are pedophiles, as well as a campaign to defund the library — leaving some of its exhausted librarians considering quitting, the library's director says. - CBC
The platform is part of a wider effort to modernize La Scala’s infrastructure, including an extensive educational outreach program using the technology and plans for subtitles on seat backs. - The New York Times
Artists know best what they need to advance their art and to thrive — hire artists as grantmakers and advisors. Support organizations that are founded and led by creatives. - Hyperallergic
If you want to trust a prediction, you need to understand how all the computations work. For example, in health care, you need to know if the model even applies to your patient. And it’s really hard to troubleshoot models if you don’t know what’s in them. - Quanta
"It's possible to see Balanchine as both a god and a bogeyman, responsible for everything that's wonderful or wrong about ballet. Of course, that's far too simplistic. … No one's calling for Balanchine to be cancelled, but we should carefully consider what has been passed on." - The Guardian
To show you what this process looks like, we trained six tiny language models starting from scratch. We’ve picked one trained on the complete works of Jane Austen, but you can choose a different path. - The New York Times
Chris Dumont, the company's fight director, is much more used to staging fencing than fist-fighting with gloves. So he turned to former professional WBO heavyweight champion Michael Bentt, who says, "I'm not an expert on opera. But I'm an expert on rhythm. And boxing is rhythm." - The New York Times
“Some people initially thought that I had planted the dolls myself, but that is definitely not the case. All I did was provide a mailbox. Somebody else decided to make it into a home for Mary and Shelley.” - Washington Post
