Author: Douglas McLennan

Virus Could Cost $5 Billion Worldwide To Live Events Business

Coronavirus-related event cancellations seem to be barreling in by the hour, and the $26 billion global live events industry is watching with bated breath. Several sources across the booking, management, and venues sectors either declined to comment to Rolling Stone on the subject because of the uncertainty around the matter, or say they do not yet have them in place. There’s also the issue of unpredictability. – Rolling Stone

Crowds Continued To Fill Disneyland As Warnings Increase

Aimee and Charlie Cotherman, of Oil City, Pa., said that ahead of their trip to Orlando last week, they were worried about the coronavirus, but decided to still visit with their children, ages 8, 6 and 3, as well as their two-month-old baby, because “percentages are in our favor,” Mr. Cotherman said, referring to the low number of children infected. – The New York Times

Ex-President’s Estate Sues Otis College

The legal complaint by Bruce Ferguson’s sister, who is executor of his estate, alleges that Otis committed discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination related to Ferguson’s illness at the height of a power struggle on campus, when faculty members whose jobs were threatened by organizational changes waged a letter of no confidence campaign against Ferguson after his illness became public. – Argonaut News

How Dallas Opera Ran Afoul Of Social Media Algorithms

As much as it sounds like something out of Isaac Asimov, we have to say it: we can’t surrender our discernment to the computers. What we need now — what will make our social media feeds and our national discourse saner — is not better artificial intelligence but more actual intelligence. We don’t need better algorithms; we need deeper wisdom. We’re not getting that from Facebook. – Dallas Morning News

Met Museum Hikes Pay For Top Execs

The highest paid executive in the most recent financial year, according to tax filings, was chief investment officer Lauren Meserve, whose total compensation package was worth $1.6 million, up 8.3 percent from 2017–18, when she made $1.47 million. The next best-paid exec is CEO Daniel Weiss, whose total pay package was worth $1.25 million in 2018–19, a 25 percent increase over the previous year, when he made $1 million. – Artnet

How Coronavirus Might Change The Arts

As was the case during the AIDS crisis and in the months following the Sept. 11 atrocities, “regicide, civil strife and anarchy” tend to be replaced with great writers musing on the existence of God or the utility of religion, as Tony Kushner did in “Angels in America,” and they start to see that there are forces in the world that level us all. And the marketplace tends to reward those writers. – Chicago Tribune

A Different Way Of Understanding Emotional Intelligence

Here’s the 20,000 foot summary: Your brain’s most important job is not thinking or feeling or even seeing, but keeping your body alive and well so that you survive and thrive (and eventually reproduce). How is your brain to do this? Like a sophisticated fortune-teller, your brain constantly predicts. Its predictions ultimately become the emotions you experience and the expressions you perceive in other people. – Nautilus