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Thousands Sign Petition To Cancel South By Southwest; Facebook And Twitter Pull Out

Fears over the spread of the COVID-19 virus have led more than 20,000 people (so far) to join in the request that organizers call off this year’s festival, which is still scheduled to run March 13-22. And even as the two tech giants withdraw from SXSW, a number of high-profile individuals say they’re still in, including Hillary Clinton and Rep. Adam Schiff. – Dallas Morning News

How The Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum Is Helping The Public Understand Pandemics

“Ebola was not a pandemic, but it created a panic rarely seen in the U.S. It was on the heels of the Ebola mania that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History developed Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World, a major exhibition proposed by Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease physician on the frontlines of the epidemic in West Africa. His idea came with the recognition that the public needed a better understanding of how outbreaks of unknown (or unfamiliar) infectious diseases start and spread.” – Smithsonian Magazine

Leaker Of AGMA Report On Plácido Domingo Reveals Himself (He Had His Reasons For Doing It)

“As a sexual assault survivor myself, my conscience would not allow me to be a party to an agreement than allowed the union to bury the details of Domingo’s decades-long abuse of female AGMA members,” wrote Samuel Schultz in his letter resigning from AGMA’s board and acknowledging that he gave the report to the AP. Schultz is the singer who accused countertenor David Daniels and his husband of drugging and raping him in 2010. – NPR

Ulay, Audacious Performance Artist (And Marina’s Ex), Dead At 76

“Since the early 1970s, Ulay created performances and photographs that made frequent use of his own body. Having worked collaboratively for more than a decade with Marina Abramović, his former partner and currently the world’s most widely known performance artist, it was not until the later stages of his career that Ulay’s solo work achieved its own sort of notoriety.” – ARTnews

NPR Is Turning 50 – Here’s How It Happened

In 1971, there were 88 member stations and a total staff of 65; now NPR’s total staff is 862, with 390 in news and 17 overseas bureaus, and the network has 1,008 member and affiliated stations.  The total weekly audience for NPR stations is 37 million; 27 million for NPR programs. Ninety-nine million consume NPR content from some platform in a month. NPR is the leading publisher of podcasts and reaches 23.7 million listeners monthly with its offerings. – Current