Author: NY TIMES

Ye, the rapper and producer formerly known as Kanye West, apologized to the Jewish community on Tuesday for a series of antisemitic comments he made last year.“It was not my intention to offend or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused,” Ye said in an Instagram post that was written in Hebrew. “I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future. Your forgiveness is important to me, and I am committed to making amends and promoting unity.”Ye became embroiled in controversy in October 2022…

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel exchanged sharp words on Wednesday after Mr. Erdogan compared the Israeli leader to Adolf Hitler while discussing Israel’s war in Gaza.‘‘Is what Netanyahu is doing any less than Hitler? It is not,’’ Mr. Erdogan said in televised remarks in Ankara, Turkey, at a science awards ceremony. The Turkish leader has frequently criticized Israel for its conduct in Gaza.“They were talking ill of Hitler. What difference do you have from Hitler? They will make us miss Hitler,” Mr. Erdogan said.Mr. Netanyahu fired back, slamming Mr. Erdogan’s treatment of…

On a recent evening inside the Hotel de la Poste, an alpine hotel in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy’s most ski-and-be-seen winter destination, a boisterous party celebrated the birth of a cinematic era.Forty years earlier, the libidinous, up-chalet down-chalet comedy “Christmas Holiday,” set in the lodge, was released. Nominally about a plain but lucky-in-adultery piano bar singer and the wealthy Milanese, salt-of-the-earth Romans and tuxedoed bons vivants who surround him, the film previewed decades of gleefully vulgar, broad and formulaic Christmas comedies that earned a fortune and came to be known, after the cakes Italians devour during the season, as “Cinema Panettone.”To…

The artist Eduardo Kac was at his New York gallery the other day to show a reporter his work: a hologram encoded on a sliver of glass resting inside a tiny metal case. This little package is the capstone of Kac’s career to date — an artifact he created in 1986 that is now, finally, about to find its intended home in space. On Jan. 8 it is scheduled to be on board a Vulcan Centaur rocket as it lifts off from Cape Canaveral and heads into orbit around the sun. This holographic artwork — a “holopoem,” Kac calls it…

The boom in artificial intelligence tools that draw on troves of content from across the internet has begun to test the bounds of copyright law.Authors and a leading photo agency have brought suit over the past year, contending that their intellectual property was illegally used to train A.I. systems, which can produce humanlike prose and power applications like chatbots.Now they have been joined in the spotlight by the news industry. The New York Times filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of copyright infringement, the first such challenge by a major American news organization over the use of…

At a reception for OpenAI’s first developer conference in San Francisco last month, a crowd mingled, wine in hand, as withering criticism of art created with artificial intelligence flashed on a blue wall at the front of the room. “I’ve seen more engaging art from a malfunctioning printer,” one critic jabbed. “The fine-art equivalent of elevator music,” huffed another. “Inoffensive, unmemorable and terminally dull.”It might seem an odd strategy for OpenAI, the company behind widely used generative A.I. tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, to promote scorn of A.I. art, until you catch the twist: A.I. itself wrote the criticism. Alexander…

When the Bronx-bred pianist Zita Carno auditioned for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1975, she played short excerpts from the orchestra’s repertoire for the music director, Zubin Mehta.“Then Mehta said, ‘Come back tomorrow. I want to hear you play the Boulez,’” she recalled years later, referring to the French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez.“Well, I said, ‘I eat that stuff for breakfast,’ which made him laugh.”Ms. Carno was hired and spent the next 25 years as the orchestra’s pianist, capping a career as a widely praised classical keyboardist (she also played the harpsichord and organ) who was also an expert…

As Israel pounded targets in the Gaza Strip from the air and sea on Wednesday, a member of the country’s war cabinet threatened action on a second front, along the border with Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has fired rocket barrages into Israel.“I say to our friends around the world: The situation in the northern border necessitates change,” the war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, told reporters. “The time for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the government of Lebanon don’t act to stop the fire toward northern communities and to push Hezbollah away from the…

In February 1961, The New York Times, citing a study by the American Medical Association, ran a brief article reporting that Americans could very well enjoy a life expectancy of 120 years during the 21st century.The A.M.A., reflecting a now bygone era perhaps more optimistic than our own, was foreseeing a continuing tide of medical science advances that would carry people along in good health for decade after decade.Suffice it to say that the 21st century still has a long way to go before anyone looking back from the 22nd will be able to confirm whether those medical authorities of…

Going out, once a hallmark of celebrity status, took a hit this past year. Amid entertainment industry strikes and global turmoil, it seemed like many of the folks who formerly sought to see and be seen threw on sweats and stayed in.That is, unless you crossed the velvet rope separating the plebeian world from the h.wood world, a gilded nightlife empire governed by John Terzian. As in Narnia and Oz, in h.wood, different rules apply.There will be martinis. There will be Art Deco-ish sconces. There will be lighting so dim that even those who consider themselves young may reach for…