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On Watching George Santos’s Post-Congress Cameo Videos

"There was once a transgressive appeal to the Santos persona. … It was the inappropriateness of his high status that made him amusing. Now that he’s been brought low, viral fame supplies no tension for a Santos character. There is nothing transgressive about a grifter on Cameo." - The New York Times

Philadelphia Orchestra Appoints Marin Alsop As Principal Guest Conductor

"Alsop, 67, was music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2007-08 through 2020-21, the first woman to lead a top-level American orchestra. She agreed to a three-year term with the Philadelphia Orchestra starting with a 2024 tour of China." - AP

The Literary Line A Bot Truly Cannot Cross

Sure, Google Translate can help out with ordering a coffee in another language, but "neural machine-translation models can translate only about 30 percent of novel excerpts—usually simple passages—with acceptable quality, as determined by native speakers." - The Atlantic

Joan Acocella, Elegant And Erudite Writer About Dance And Culture, Has Died At 78

Acocella, who wrote of dance, culture, and more for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books for decades, "was often mischievous and always delicious," says her editor at the NYRB. - The New York Times

In A Streaming World, What Are Three Million LPs Worth?

The ARChive of Contemporary Music "reportedly holds some of the world’s biggest collections of Broadway, African, punk, jazz, country and western, folk, hip hop, and experimental recordings" - and it's in trouble. - Wired

Actress Glynis Johns, 100

"(Her) effervescence and crackling husky voice — which she attributed to 'slightly twisted' vocal cords that permitted the air to hit 'the soprano and the contralto at the same time' — made her a distinctive presence in nearly 60 films, dozens of TV appearances and scores of theatrical productions." - The Washington Post (MSN)

The Retiring CEO Who Has Transformed The Detroit Opera

Under Wayne Brown, the company "has placed itself at the center of operatic conversation, … broken fund-raising records, (and) drawn first-time ticket buyers by the thousands," writes David Allen. What's more, says Deborah Borda, "He has a kind word for all, which is quite unusual in our business." - The New York Times

So, What Other Goodies Have Come Into Public Domain As Of 2024?

In the US, Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Brecht's Threepenny Opera, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc. In the EU, Canada, and Latin America, works by Dylan Thomas, Django Reinhardt, and Hank Williams. In most of Asia and Africa, everything by Picasso and Tolkien. - The Public Domain Review

Nashville Changed Its Arts Funding Model To Help Organizations That Had Been Neglected. Then The City Changed It Right Back.

Racism at work? Depends on what exactly one means by racism, and where — because the Metro Nashville Arts Commission reversed the new funding model, and the grants allocated under it a month previously, on the advice of its legal department. - The Tennessean (Nashville)

Five More Ways That AI Will Change Art

Even more arguments about appropriation. Parasocial aesthetics. (Yes, there's a definition of that.) Art that's about trying to outfox or even break AI. And there's more … - Artnet

Five Ways (Which You Probably Haven’t Thought Of Yet) In Which AI Will Change Art

Ben Davis: "I always say: Futurology is mainly people telling you what corporations are already doing. Here, I’m trying to avoid predictions like, 'art gets more interactive' or 'limitless content-on-demand,' because obviously that is just restating the proposition generative A.I. is being sold on." - Artnet

Peter Marks’s Farewell Column As The Washington Post’s Theater Critic

"For the most part, though, being a theater critic has been an extraordinary privilege. How many people have the opportunity to be transported by an actor’s performance or a playwright’s words or a composer’s music, and then be able to do something about it?" - The Washington Post (MSN)

Standup Comedians Never Used To Have To Worry About Getting Fact-Checked (Poor Hasan Minhaj)

"'It's so bizarre to me,' says the Last Comic Standing finalist Laurie Kilmartin. 'Because when you look at how modern standup started, it was a thing that happened in between strippers. It’s gutter art. We’re not trying to win a Pulitzer Prize.'" - The Guardian

I Tried To Be A North Korean Novelist. I Failed. Repeatedly.

One of the Japan-born ethnic Koreans who emigrated to North Korea in the 1970s, Kim Ju-sŏng lived there for 28 years, working as a novelist for the Korean Workers' Party's propaganda department (the only permitted career path) and getting lousy evaluations before escaping to the South. - The Guardian

Ruth Seymour, Who Remade SoCal’s KCRW Into One Of America’s Leading Public Radio Stations, Has Died At 88

When she started there in 1977, it was in a little bungalow in Santa Monica with the oldest radio transmitter west of the Mississippi. When she left in 2010 after 30 years as GM, "KCRW had become a cultural and intellectual trendsetter ... for public radio listeners across America." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

This Indian State Is Home To The Thinking Person’s Bollywood

In recent years, the Malayalam-language cinema industry of Kerala — the state with the country's highest literacy rate and standard of living — has been moving beyond the action-pic, song-and-dance blockbusters typical of Bollywood to depict ordinary people and such sensitive topics as closeted gay politicians. - The New York Times

The Quiets Are Winning TV, Again

Who could have predicted that on Netflix, Ginny & Georgia's numbers would be so far ahead of The Witcher - or The Crown? (Anyone who remembers the Nielsens from the first age of Prestige TV, of course.) - The Verge

That Time Jeff Koons Killed A Critic’s Review

Remy Golan, an art history professor whose review for Brooklyn Rail was tanked by Koons, says, "I thought it was pathetic. ... Supposedly these journals are about opinion, about free speech, so where’s the free speech?" - The New York Times

The Return Of Physical Media

VHS tapes are back, baby. And DVDs, Blu-Rays, cassette tapes, essentially anything that a streaming corporation can't surveill - or suddenly yank away. - Washington Post

Historical Forced Labor Camps In Texas Remove Books On Forced Labor From Gift Shops Because It’s Too Alarming To Think About The History Of...

"Around two-dozen books were removed from two plantation gift shops' offerings after the Texas Historical Commission received complaints that the titles were too focused on racism and white supremacy." - Houston Chronicle
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