“[The suit is] on behalf of the resident Neal Morris, who is facing potential jail time over a mural painted on his private property that the city has demanded he remove. The mural, by the artist Cashy-D, depicts a quote from the 2005 Access Hollywood Tape in which US President Donald Trump brags about [you-know-what].”
Tag: 03.21.18
Barbara Wersba, Whose Children’s Books Explored Alcoholism, Gay Relationships, And The Like, Dead At 85
“Ms. Wersba began writing in the 1960s, and her work reflected the era’s new realism in literature for younger readers with stories no longer confined to intact nuclear families and sanitized goings-on like prom nights. Some of her frank themes generated criticism; others generated praise.”
J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore Website Lays Off Most Editorial Staff
“The popular website was launched by JK Rowling in 2012 after the final Harry Potter film was released and was originally conceived as a way for the British writer to maintain and grow the online Potter fandom. According to a well-placed source, Pottermore sacked a string of editorial staff over the last few days, including both senior and junior staff who were making original content for the website.”
The Marionettes Bringing Health Education To Burmese Villages
“In the play, a puppet starts to offer a cigarette to a friend but his cough gets the better of him, which makes his voice a bit funny-sounding – eliciting peals of laughter from a roomful of a hundred schoolchildren.” Didem Tali reports on puppeteers who have adapted the traditional Burmese puppet theater yoke thay to improve public health in modern Myammar.
Royal Philharmonic Manager: Let’s Just Call Classical Music Orchestral Music
“Gone are the days of classical repertoire standing alone and just being enough,” James Williams said. “This approach would cater for less than half the new audience that wants to learn more about the genre. Classical music for a modern British orchestra has a new name – it’s simply called orchestral music.”
A New Generation Of Self-Help Book Recommendation Columns
A field of advice columns that lob texts at people’s troubles has flowered recently, from the Times’ “Match Book” to Lit Hub’s “Dear Book Therapist” to the Paris Review Daily’s “Poetry Rx.” The series run the gamut from straightforward recommendation engines (ask for a thriller, receive a thriller) to columns that see books not as frigates or loaded gunsbut as medicine, selected from the canon’s well-lit pharmacy by a critic in a smock.
What Will Our Society Look Like When Artificial Intelligence Is Everywhere?
“Will robots become self-aware? Will they have rights? Will they be in charge?” Stephan Talty offers five potential scenarios from a future when AI surrounds us.
Facebook Will “Never Be The Same” After The Analytica Scandal
“To some cynical journalists or techno-skeptics, this maneuvering might seem like Facebook just being Facebook—that the Cambridge scandal is merely the latest in a litany of privacy intrusions; that Facebook’s de facto response is, as Dance noted, disingenuous. But this scandal really is different, and everyone in Silicon Valley knows it. Since the story broke a significant investor and entrepreneur, who has worked in tech for over two decades, recalled to me that the incident reminded him of what happened to Microsoft in the 1990s, when years of pugilistic corporate behavior caught up to the company in the form of significant antitrust regulation.”
University Drops Humanities Courses For Those With “Career Pathways”
The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point has proposed dropping 13 majors in the humanities and social sciences — including English, philosophy, history, sociology and Spanish — while adding programs with “clear career pathways” as a way to address declining enrollment and a multimillion-dollar deficit.
An Oratorio About DACA And The Dreamers (Now There’s Relevant Classical Music For You)
Dreamer, with music by Jimmy López (the opera Bel Canto and text by Nilo Cruz (a Pulitzer winner for the play Anna in the Tropics), was commissioned two years ago by Cal Performances in Berkeley. In those two years, of course, quite a lot about the situation of the Dreamers has changed, and, as reporter Michael Cooper found out, that changed the piece itself.