Category: issues

Only 26% of internet users 65 years and older said they feel “very confident” when using computers, smartphones or other electronics to do what they need to do online, according to a 2015 study from Pew Research. – CNN

There is a growing realization that the binary nature of open versus closed is not the right way to think. “It’s not going to be a light switch,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, last Sunday. So what does that mean for live entertainment? – Chicago Tribune

Vu Le: “This is the problem. Our sector is afraid of advocacy, much less politics. And we have an absolute disgust for politics. We believe it is beneath us. We don’t want to get our hands dirty. Politics and anything associated with it is an ugly, terrible thing; we should focus on more noble, feel-good pursuits while virtue signaling by rabble-rousing about how we need to change systems yet simultaneously avoiding doing the one thing that would significantly change systems.” – NonprofitAF

“It’s bizarre to be this busy and not presenting music,” said an official at one festival; “We’ve had to unravel a pretty huge ball of yarn while transitioning to working remotely,” said another. Not only are there the issues of contacting patrons (individually, in some cases), testing the cancellation clauses of contracts, and dealing with lost income, there are problems like airlines giving (in place of refunds) travel credits to the ticket holder, not the festival who paid for the ticket. – The Post and Courier (Charleston)

The story of how about 70 National Guardsmen managed to transform a convention center into an alternate health-care facility in mere days shows a state community coming together to get ahead of the pandemic at a time when the federal response is faltering. – The Atlantic

The ruling, which could make a difference for websites that use material originally posted on social media such as Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, sidesteps what has been called “the server test” and concentrates on Instagram’s Terms of Use. Timothy B. Lee explains. – Ars Technica

The circulation of a billion Indians has not settled into the neat grid of social distance. On my phone, I see looming disaster. And yet, looking up, I see something else—a glimpse, behind the jungle crow facing off with two brahminy kites, of an alternative to how we live. In northern India, the change has been as basic as breathing. Of the thirty cities with the worst air pollution in the world, twenty-one are in northern India. – The New Yorker

Germany has a low infection rate, but additionally the city has efficiently tried to help its residents: “Fortunately, last week more than $1.4 billion was already doled out in Berlin to more than 150,000 of the city’s self-employed and small businesses. Colin filled out a short online application for the $5,400 which is being offered, no strings attached, available to freelancers. To his shock—as Germany’s bureaucracy is notoriously ponderous and time-sapping—the sum popped up in his bank account two days later.” – Boston Review

There’s a lot more money in pro sports, and athletes have benefited from psychologists who teach them how to turn in their best on demand. So it makes sense that the sports doctors are working with artists. – San Francisco Classical Voice

In an extensive Q&A, Bolshoi general director Vladimir Urin talks about how the dancers, singers and instrumentalists are and aren’t continuing to get paid, how everyone is trying to stay in shape, trying to plan for a very uncertain future, what the Bolshoi’s (and the arts’) relationship with audiences will be (including the prices they’ll be willing to pay) post-COVID, and the best- and worst-case scenarios for Russia’s flagship ballet/opera house (“if we don’t open in September, it could go as far as the destruction of the theatre”). – Kommersant (Moscow) via Melmoth