"The new report by the Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) identified 108 medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches, and cemeteries in Nakhichevan that were completely destroyed between 1997 and 2011 — an eradication." - Hyperallergic
I knew that if I merely retreated to my “side,” I would only contribute to the problem. With some trepidation, then, I set out to ask twelve scholars what they see as the main challenges facing literary studies and literary criticism today. - The Point
"M*A*S*H is in some ways the most contemporary of its contemporaries. Its blend of madcap comedy and pitch-dark drama — the laughs amplifying the serious stakes, and vice versa — is recognizable in today's dramedies, from Better Things to Barry, that work in the DMZ between laughter and sadness." - The New York Times
"I was looking for stories, each in a different way, that showed how everybody left the war with a wound of some kind. ... The crazy behavior wasn't just to be funny. It was a way of separating yourself for a moment from the nastiness." - The New York Times
"Preserving the rhythm, the sound, and the sensibility of the original musical while translating its dense libretto into a language characterized by multisyllabic compound nouns and sentences that often end with verbs, and all in a society that has minimal familiarity with the show's subject matter." - The New York Times
For instance, Alexander Hamilton in "The World Was Wide Enough" —
English: "America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me."
German: "America, durch deine Brust pumpt Sklavenblut, Moral und Wut."
("America, through your breast is pounding the blood of slaves, morality and rage.")
- The New York Times
Sak Tz'i' was an ancient but small city, caught between more powerful neighbors; scholars weren't aware it had existed until they found inscriptions describing its defeats. Nobody knew where Sak Tz'i' had been, until a Chiapas rancher showed a researcher a carved limestone slab he'd found. - The New York Times
Most college students, according to a FIRE report published this week, do not believe that speakers who hold various conservative beliefs should be allowed on campus; I am grateful that these students do not (yet) run a whole country, as the ayatollahs do. - The Atlantic
The arrival of widely available image synthesis models such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion has provoked an intense online battle between artists who view AI-assisted artwork as a form of theft (more on that below) and artists who enthusiastically embrace the new creative tools. - Ars Technica
These new AI capabilities confront the world with a mountain of questions over the rights to the images the programs learned from, the likelihood they will be used to spread falsehoods and hate, the ownership of their output and the nature of creativity itself. - Axios
"His use of long takes, jump-cuts and actors’ asides to the camera all changed the filmmaking vocabulary. He once famously stated that every film needs a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Runway's "Text to Video" demonstration reel shows a text input box that allows editing commands such as "import city street" or "make it look more cinematic" (applying an effect). It depicts someone typing "remove object" and selecting a streetlight with a drawing tool that then disappears. - Ars Technica
"It’s absolutely beyond creepy—and therefore totally in keeping with Facebook’s general vibe—that adults are spending time avidly thumbing through children’s books to look for anything they might consider vaguely 'pornographic' (or, you know, vaguely affirming of non-white or queer identities)." - LitHub
Editors have been doxxed, threatened, and arrested. "Doronina of the Wikimedia Foundation’s board of trustees said that Russia’s state agencies could target one of those editors any day. 'You cannot predict who is going to attack. It’s not a bear, it’s a pack of bears,' she said." - Nieman Lab
"Audience members generally rustle their programs and shift in their seats when performers are onstage. But on that late October evening inside Lincoln Center in 2021, 'it was so quiet,' remembers. 'Absolute silence.'" - Mother Jones
Free speech requires a robust exchange of views without the coercion of threats and violence, and self-censorship in response to social pressure is a genuine risk. Yet by definition, there is no free speech if one person is allowed to make an argument and another is not allowed to object to it. - The Atlantic
Several lines of contemporary scholarship emphasize what might be gained by moving from a focus on science education to a focus on reciprocal power-sharing, cooperation, and exchange between researchers and citizens. - Boston Review
“You are the last orchestra and the most important orchestra where I have been music director. Your memory will accompany me in my heart to the end of my life. You, Chicago, are the Symphony of my heart. Grazie.” - New City
