Anthropic's Book Shredding Sparks Outrage; Pickleball Courts Get Art Makeover

In a recent editorial, Ed Simon criticized Anthropic for its practice of scanning and destroying out-of-print books to train its large language models, labeling it an egregious act of artistic theft. The article, "AI Companies Are Pulping Our Humanity," likens this to book burning and calls for support of local libraries. In a different artistic endeavor, Sharmistha Ray, co-founder of Hilma's Ghost, has turned three pickleball courts in Pittsburgh into colorful murals through her "Geometry of Play" initiative. The art community also mourns the loss of Francisco Correa Cordero, founder of Lubov gallery in New York, who passed away at 37. Additionally, two Interlochen Center for the Arts alumni have come forward with new abuse allegations against Jeffrey Epstein, while staff at The Eric Carle Museum advocate for unionization due to claims of understaffing and poor conditions. Critics are also discussing Ellen Pau's inaugural US exhibition, "Ellen Pau's Elegy to a Vanishing Hong Kong," which uses the transformation of water as a metaphor for the city. A comment from Sandy Sanders addresses the decline of intellectualism in libraries, and an archived article highlights Craig Thompson's graphic novel on ginseng farming.