Future of Museums

"We already are seeing 'border war' with individual states passing major legislation that differs considerably from that in other places," says Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and William Gale, a Brookings senior fellow in economic studies,

When and if the issue turns to violent confrontations between local citizens and federal officers, or between contentious groups of citizens, the clash might well take place far closer to home

America has an extraordinary number of guns and private militias," they write. How many? They cite the National Shooting Sports Foundation's estimate of 434 million firearms in civilian possession in the U.S. right now. That would be 1.3 guns per person.

Half or more of the increasing gap in wages among American workers over the last 40 years is attributable to the automation of tasks formerly done by human workers, especially men without college degrees, according to some of his recent research.

tax changes to pursue “labor-friendly innovations.”

the technological shift evolved as growth in postsecondary education slowed and companies began spending less on training their workers. “When technology, education and training move together, you get shared prosperity,” said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “Otherwise, you don’t.”

The wage increase comes as several museum employees said the morale of some guards had sunk because they felt worn out and undervalued while working in often difficult circumstances.

The Met’s main building on Fifth Avenue is now served by a staff of some 300 full-time guards versus the 404 that had been assigned there before the pandemic

Under the new wage agreement, existing guards who were being paid $15.51 an hour were given raises and are now being paid $17 an hour. District Council 37 said that average pay among guards at the museum was around $20 an hour.

students also want to see this emphasis on mental health occurring school-wide, even education system-wide, in the midst of a pandemic.

her class has been more “bold” in asking for less of that busy work, as well as in asking for extended time for work or test preparation, compared with pre-pandemic school.

The pandemic made even more visible systemic inequities that made safety and school most challenging for the families who needed the most help — the conditions that often worsen mental health in the first place. Students are pushing both for interesting classes and a feeling of safety at school in the ways they can.

individuals who have been repeatedly exposed to major disasters show a reduction in mental health scores

many communities that reside along the Gulf Coast are at the nexus of exposures from natural and anthropogenic, or human-caused, hazards,

a composite score for both mental (MCS) and physical (PCS) health

Vignesh Sundaresan, a collector known as “MetaKovan” who purchased the $69 million Beeple NFT that touched off one of the earliest hype cycles around the digital assets. MetaKovan is the financier of Metapurse, a Singapore-based investment firm that earlier this year listed its mission as to "democratize access and ownership to artwork." Metapurse has bought 20 Beeple NFTs, four virtual museums, a soundtrack, and consolidated it all into an "NFT bundle" that offers fractionalized ownership through 10 million B20 tokens. Beeple, as it turns out, happens to be a business partner of MetaKovan and owns 2 percent of all B20 tokens, while MetaKovan owns another 59 percent.

a landmark October study published in Nature analyzing 6.1 million trades encompassing 4.7 million NFTs since 2017: the top ten percent of traders account for nearly 90 percent of all transactions, this group trades 97 percent of all NFTs at least once, and the greatest predictor of any NFT’s value isn’t its appearance but its previous price points.

people quit bosses, not jobs

In a Gallup poll released last fall, managers’ levels of stress, physical well-being, and work-life balance were, in some cases, reported to be even worse than their direct reports’. Thirty-five percent of people managers reported being burned out “very often” or “always,” compared to just 27% for individuals.