"At a certain point, the survival tool, which has kept you safe and kept you warm, which has kept you with your family, it’s allowed you to exist in the world — you gotta cut that fucking thing off," she said. "You gotta cut that thing off, because it’s killing you." - The Atlantic
"IDF raids on Palestinian publishing houses are nothing new. Seven Palestinian publishing houses were raided or destroyed over a six-month period in 2016-2017, and eleven more were targeted in a seven-month period in 2021." - LitHub
Molly Lewis: "People often don’t have a reference for whistle music apart from a jingle or a riff in a bad pop song. … I think it’s a beautiful instrument." - Washington Post
"I will always remember the words written on a piece of paper that Navalny held at one of his court hearings: 'I am not afraid and you should not be afraid.' Navalny was still smiling and laughing on the eve of his death." - The Atlantic
Then Hugo Awards rumors started; now leaked emails confirm that “one of the Hugo administrators had advised other members to vet the finalists and 'highlight anything of a sensitive political nature' in China. ... Such works, he added, might not be safe to put on the ballot." - The New York Times
In the current staging, Sweeney's barbershop is above the stage; when he slits a customer's throat, he pulls a lever that sends the victim down a slide into Mrs. Lovett's basement. Under the tag "A Bad Idea Worth Considering," Rebecca Alter points out that slide's underutilized revenue potential. Wheeeeee! - Vulture (MSN)
Kevin Roose: "My column about the experience was probably the most consequential thing I’ll ever write — both in terms of the attention it got … and how the trajectory of A.I. development changed. … It's been a year of growth and excitement in A.I. but a surprisingly tame one." - The New York Times
Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding. Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways. - Slate
"Jukebox" opera was hardly unknown in centuries past; it was called pasticcio. And while Schubert was a master of vocal music, his operas are rarely revived. (Blame the bad librettos.) So conductor Raphaël Pichon has taken highlights from those operas and put them together with a new story. - The New York Times
"Imagine a small island where, for an entire week, you’re in the company of some of the world’s finest classical musicians. They play almost continuously from 9.30am until bedtime. You’re one of more than 13,500 audience members." Welcome to the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam. - The Guardian
"Scaffolding surrounding the spire came down this week, revealing the restored structure in a landmark moment for the cathedral, which was ravaged by a fire in April 2019. The soaring spire, crowned with a cross and golden rooster, peeks out of a dense grid of support beams." - The Washington Post (MSN)
"We need to stop treating museums, theaters and galleries like sacred spaces that exist in some rarefied realm of public life. And we need to start treating them — and funding them — like interstate highways, high-speed internet and other infrastructure projects, using money that’s earmarked to maintain the country’s infrastructure." - The New York Times
"MoMA, which acquired in 1949, received $4 million in compensation for giving it back under an arrangement negotiated by a restitution company that represented the seven heirs." - The New York Times
Can any opera company withstand the blows of the 21st century? “The ongoing crisis in opera parallels a current 'free fall' … in American theater — with low ticket sales, slumping philanthropy and rising costs putting experimental platforms and long-standing institutions alike on indefinite hiatus.” - Washington Post
"The shaggy-haired, high-voltage maestro who served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for almost 30 years, … was widely considered the first Asian conductor to win world renown leading a (symphony) orchestra." - The Washington Post (MSN)
"Several staffers … say there’s an undercurrent of fear and intimidation fostered by domineering bosses whose push to make the station more relevant online — on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok — has affected morale and undermined the radio and TV broadcasting that has been GBH’s bread-and-butter." - The Boston Globe (MSN)
The scroll is one of hundreds, all far too fragile to unroll, from Herculaneum that constitute the only intact library from the ancient world to survive, By using machine-learning to decipher scans of the scroll, the students have won the $700,000 prize offered in the Vesuvius Challenge. - Time
"The film gave me an exposure that I could not have imagined, and I had to catch up with my own fame when the floodgates opened to do countless operas," she later said. After a 25-year singing career, she found happiness as a special-ed teacher in Kentucky. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
