Luxury cinemas are fighting Netflix with steak tartare, expensive booze, and gourmet popcorn Fast Company
This Tuesday, a US Federal Court May Decide the Fate of the Climate TruthOut
Ralph Nader: American Society Is in Rapid Decay TruthDid
What Can You, the Individual, Do to Fight Air Pollution? The Wire
Marijuana advocates hit unexpected roadblocks The Hill
‘It’s a miracle’: Helsinki’s radical solution to homelessness Guardian
Chess piece bought for £5 then left in drawer turns out to be medieval treasure worth £1m Independent
Hillary Clinton Testing Hollywood Waters With Planned Production Company & Studio Deal Deadline
Waste Watch
Scrap Collector: Malaysia returning 3,300 tons of contaminated plastic scrap Waste Dive
Texas struggles to keep pace as thirst for water intensifies Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Extreme weather has made half of America look like Tornado Alley WaPo
The Economic Cost Of Devastating Hurricanes And Other Extreme Weather Events Is Even Worse Than We Thought International Business Times
Syraqistan
Protesters shot as Sudan military tries to clear Khartoum sit-in Al Jazeera
North Korea
Death And Resurrection In North Korea (Updated) Moon of Alabama
North Korean official seen in public days after report he had been executed MarketWatch
2020
Bernie Sanders: I Know Where I Came From. Does President Trump? NYT
Hickenlooper booed at California Democratic Convention for decrying socialism: ‘Read the room’ AlterNet
Warrior-Mayor Pete’s Sanctimonious Chest Thumping American Conservative
If Pete Buttigieg Is the “Opposition” to Trump, We Are Screwed TruthOut
Beto Spoke With Hillary Clinton This Week About the 2020 Campaign Daily Beast
California Democratic race is wide open, and Elizabeth Warren may be in top tier San Fran Chronicle
With debates on horizon, Democrats sharpen attack lines The Hill. Hmm. Caveat lector.
737 MAX
FAA Warns Some Boeing 737s May Have Faulty Wing Parts NPR
Boeing Faces Doubtful Airline Chiefs in Mission to Restore Faith Bloomberg
Venezuela
In a Blow to Maduro, Russia Withdraws Key Defense Support to Venezuela WSJ
Class Warfare
It’s Time to Change the Way the Media Covers Crime Marshall Project
The Populist Paradox Project Syndicate. Simon Johnson.
One Family’s Struggle to Escape Poverty in the UK Der Spiegel
Guillotine Watch
China?
If China cuts rare earth supplies, what can the US do? Asia Times
Why does Beijing suddenly care about AI ethics? MIT Technology Review
How soybeans became China’s most powerful weapon in Trump’s trade war The Conversation
India
India heatwave temperatures pass 50 Celsius Phys.org
Why Hindutva’s Dark Fantasy About India’s Muslims Could Become Real The Wire
Backstory: India’s giant Modi wave – why we didn’t see it coming Reuters
Julian Assange
Assange won’t face charges over role in devastating CIA leak Politico
Trump Transition
Trump faces giant penis mowed into field near airport where he lands for UK state visit independent
COMB ON OVER Donald Trump sports slick new hairdo before flying to meet the Queen
The SunDonald Trump wades into Britain’s ‘interesting’ Brexit crisis Reuters
For the U.S. and China, it’s not a trade war anymore — it’s something worse LA Times
Antidote du Jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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i’ve always liked Michael Lind, even(especially) when i disagree with him.
here’s an interesting differential diagnosis, and his preferred remedy—which looks a lot like old fashioned mercantilism, to me(I’m squarely in what he calls “Progressive Localism” camp…and “Yeoman” is one of my favorite words)
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/05/national-developmentalism-from-forgotten-tradition-to-new-consensus/
so good mornin’, and now off to links
Thanks, that looks interesting.
I’m a fan of the yeomanry and Red localism, too, Amfortas! I’ll never lose my suspicion of the Hamiltonian faction.
And now to work on some Wampanoag-style mound agriculture….
it does occur to me that i’d rather have political arguments with neomercantilists than with the starry eyed neoliberal utopians, any day.
much in the same fashion that i get along better with Russel Kirk Conservatives than with randian or christofascist nutters.
at the very least there’s room for compromise on things(i fail to see how local ag would interfere with boeing’s sales abroad)
from what i remember, shared reality is kind of neat….and their neomercantilism necessitates a modicum of autarky, instead of trade for trade’s sake and the proliferation of middle men.(anyone noticed the price of beef? one might think that with tariffs and floods beef would be abundant and therefore cheap.$90 for an untrimmed brisket.under $30 around march)
I’m with you on getting all the various political stripes talking first, then try to find a way to communicate, by the way I spent some of my formative years on the caprock so I always like to hear your version of texas, it rhymes quite well with my experience
Agreed with both of you; I find paleo-cons easier to deal with than fanatical market fundamentalists, for sure.
Not to worry .. I think a political sandworm is about to turn, and it looks really Yuuuuuge from my view on the dune crest. Should be here in less then a decade … sooner if the bloody blue Harkonnens continue to tighten their grip. All the worse if the Empire’s Sardaukar continue to mix it up with the prolies planetwide …
Step up when that segment shows it’s tender side. It’s time to have your sandhooks ready !
Hickenlooper hyperlink takes you to chess piece story instead. Here’s the correct link:
https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/hickenlooper-booed-at-california-democratic-convention-for-decrying-socialism-read-the-room/
Fixed it; thanks!
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1135272316072595462
Presidential candidate John Delaney booed at CA Dem convention for saying: “Medicare for all may sound good but it’s actually not good policy nor is it good politics.”
The way this SOB wags his finger at the crowd is particularly amusing. The best part is when he calls for “common purpose” while denouncing Medicare for All.
It’s almost like the crowd wanted nothing to do with Hillary’s cloned policies via Delaney and the demand for ‘incrementalism’ as the only way forward. His campaign is now toast but I bet that the media keep on pushing his name forward.
Delaney used to be my Congress-person, until he resigned [thankfully] to run for president. He was worthless the entire time. The district is now represented [sic] by another zero, David Trone, who bought his way in. Our district [MD 6th] is the subject of the gerrymandering suit before the Supreme Court, and the boundaries are supposed to be re-drawn. Hopefully we’ll get returned to what is now Jamie Raskin’s district.
They say he misread the room. Maybe.
Or maybe he feels that being booed in San Francisco gets him support in other quarters. And I guess any coverage is good coverage when you have ~40 folks in the field.
I am not surprised that a Democratic Governor would quietly support fracking. But I am surprised at the apparent zeal of his support.
I had another comment, stuck in moderation, but this is the Southern paternalism endemic to Team Blue since Bill Clinton and an “I know best” schtick with the candidate profile they searched for. Obama gave it a rebranding of the “nerds are in charge” (because a few wore glasses), but its a “sit down and shut up, you damn kids” act. Now, they are looking for a few dopes to appeal to the “kids” who will still be loyal to the establishment.
The problem with primaries is they have all the problems of Tuesday in November elections but they aren’t even standardized. These people like Hickenlooper can survive, and the local committee people are just living in weird “West Wing” fantasies. They tend not to notice and don’t want kids messing up their mole hills either. This “adults are talking” act works to keep people out.
Getting booed in SF doesn’t necessarily translate into getting cheered in the midwest. Guess he’s never heard of all the rural mutual-aid societies, the Grange organization, and farmers’ co-ops.
adding: for all the Milton Friedman-esque, neolib cheering the john galt image of progress – the idea the country was built and prospered only because of individuals of genius and drive (unhindered by govt regulations) – an equal and possibly more important reason the country prospered is due to the many mutual-aid societies. Public fire departments and police departments were set up as public mutual-aid organizations so individuals didn’t have to pay for individual fire department response, for example. (Once upon a time fire departments were private organizations so that if you bought coverage but your neighbor did not, and your neighbor’s house caught fire, your house might very well burn down, too.)
Insurance companies were originally set up as mutual-aid organizations.
That was before they morphed into rent extracting companies to make the CEOs ungodly wealthy. imo.
I wish someone would calmly explain to these midgets that we already have socialism. No, not fire departments; the FIRE industry. Fossil fuels. Big Pharma. Big Prison. Big Surveillance. The MIC. We are so far from capitalism for those industries, with hundreds of billions in free money being passed over to them straight from government coffers each and every year. And nobody of course asking “but how will we pay for it?”
The plebes of course get real capitalism: bankruptcy and creative destruction.
Russell1200, I would not say that Hickenlooper supports fracking ‘quietly.’ While governor, he was openly reviled for being behind a ‘frack everywhere’ (except by my house) policy. Along with Jared Polis. I recall driving up to Aspen in 2013 with a group of anti-fracking protesters, while he met with industry bosses (we counted the private jets at the Aspen Airport).
We mocked him, former brewery owner, with a list of his favorite brews: Benzene Blonde, Pipeleak Lager, Polluted Aquifer Pale Ale, Hydrochloric Hefeweizen and Polyacrilymide Pilsner. How ya gonna make good beer after you pollute the aquifers and ground water? Buy it back from Nestle?
I’m not surprised that a Dem governor would support fracking either, why Jerry Brown. However Hickenlooper is really bad. He’s one of the few candidates (Harris and Biden as well) who won’t sign the no fossil fuel money pledge (and I don’t even think that means the others are particularly good. It just means those 3 are OPENLY awful, and announcing it to the whole world).
He’s bad. May he not even get in the debates. He deserves to crash and burn badly.
Luxury cinemas are fighting Netflix with steak tartare, expensive booze, and gourmet popcorn Fast Company
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I probably went to the movies an average of once a week as often as the late 90’s, but doubt i’ve been to the cinema more than a few dozen times since.
Once upon a time films were our zeitgeist, familiar talking points-a sure conversation starter, but only if you made the effort to go.
I’m not sure exactly what stifled my interest, formulaic CGI violence that more increasingly resembled a strap-on dildo with a 50 round banana clip hanging below, inane plots all too often and crummy acting (or worse), and most importantly, movies lost their currency vis a vis word of mouth. Nobody had to see a film soon after it came out, I can wait a year or 2, it ain’t no big thang.
Its worth noting that in the late 20’s, movie theaters went all out vying to outglam one another, as that was the only avenue left in terms of getting peoples rear echelon ensconced. Kinda like now.
It’s not just the 20s. There was the Cinerama/wide screen craze of the 50s and periodic attempts to revive 3-D projection. Unfortunately for the theater owners they can no longer out technology the home competition. There is IMAX, but even that has been degraded from its original specification.
The truth is that movies and TV have always been about story and character and above all about actors and acting. It’s those big closeups people care about, not seeing every blade of grass.
I had a gin and tonic while sitting in a chair that shook, sprayed , mist, moved to match vehicles on screen, and probably something else too. It was fun, but not 35 dollars fun.
I would like a couch that moves in time with movies for my house. Just need to bring that price down from 20k to 2k.
I am not averse to a bit of well-placed violence in films, although psychological violence is ever-so-much-more effective. Especially if I see it coming and can close my eyes.
I have finally translated one of the current Netflix triad of descriptors for each film: “Cerebral” equals “No car chases or shoot-em-up sequences.”
I have often thought about making a survey of how many fiction DVDs at my library feature a character holding a gun (proper two handed stance) on the cover. Here’s betting it’s, like, 50 percent.
Action movies do well internationally because they don’t depend on dialog–hence Hollywood’s addiction.
I’d say you’re about right, and i’m betting that in 100% of the films with gunplay where somebody gets kilt, there’s no more than a couple lines of grieving allowed before moving on to more fruitful plot development.
Kurosawa was on to that theme. His visuals of violence were eerily compelling, but not gore for the sake of thrills. The ending of “Sanjuro” comes to mind. The end of Mifune’s character in “Throne of Blood” also resonates.
The ‘seppuku’ of the Ronin who accidentally causes the death of the old woman in “47 Ronin” as depicted in one of the early colour Japanese versions of the tale is all hidden, until the spray of blood hits the inside of the rice paper screen the camera is looking at from the outside. The shock value, without gore, is significant.
As someone wiser than me once said, “The true horrors are all in the mind of man.”
Chushingura wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABshingura
Or David Lean, directing Dr. Zhivago. He shows the horror of a massacre by simply zooming in on the face of Omar Sharif watching the massacre. Very powerful and no buckets of blood required
Some of the works by directors who learned their craft during the silent film days can be stunning. The imagery in Fritz Lang’s “M” is worth a TED talk all by itself. Some later practitioners I favour include Lindsay Anderson, Kubrick, Ken Russell (almost the entirety of “The Devils” qualifies as ‘Art Film,’) Werner Herzog, indeed, this list can go on practically forever. There is a wealth of talent ‘out there’ for making films, just not a particularly talented wealth to finance it’s production.
The film version of F Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Last Tycoon” tried to show this aspect of Hollywood in particular. I haven’t seen the Amazon series. (Amazon does television! What next? Amazon DIY surgery kits?)
I LOVE M and I really need to watch more early and classic movies. In addition to your faves, I also like Fassbinder and Bertolucci. The Lives of Others is a great movie by a first-time director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. I hope he lives up to his promise.
Lang’s only French film, made when he was leaving NAZI Germany, was a version of “Liliom” starring Charles Boyer with some almost surrealist set designs. Well worth looking at. Compare it to the later American musical version of the story, “Carousel,” and find a study in the contrasts between the two ‘Western’ versions of European civilization, the Old and the New Worlds.
One of the few real advantages to DVDs and ‘streaming’ I have encountered is that “Art Film” is now much easier to find and see. Not living in a “Big City” is no longer an excuse for not seeing the non-commercial works. Indeed, I will go a step further and suggest that all true art is of necessity “commercial.” Work done for patrons always holds the potential for degenerating into propaganda. Someone else, a restricted and unitary “someone else” at that can subtly impose strictures on the production of a person’s art. The wide net of “public” funding can ameliorate and soften the forces of circumspection.
Oh, so much to see, so little time left.
That would make a good story. A person eagerly waiting to see a film, with a secret health condition. What a confusion and conflict of themes and desires!
Bloody ‘Stoic Film Institute’ stuff.
Lives revolving around watching movies–see Bertolucci’s The Dreamers.
Also, Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer.”
I met Percy when we lived in Covington, Louisiana. Just a, “Hello. Nice to meet you,” exchange. He used to have a weekly breakfast club at the local Waffle House. I never sat in there. He lived well, having been a doctor before becoming a successful writer.
Helps if you have a great actor.
Lean did the same to even greater effect in Oliver Twist, where he focuses on a dogs panic to leave the room as Bill Sykes beats Nancy to death. An immensely powerful moment.
Great example and arguably an earlier, better Lean.
Eclair, that is why Hitchcock movies are still worth watching, the psycho (see what I did there?) tension.
Wuk,
Why so few are going to the movies?
When’s the last movie that has been shown in which normal parents support their family, raise children and do something constructive with their life?
Thank god for streaming, at least people can watch good things.
Hollywood is a cultural sewer, run by a small number of elitists, whose mission is to make money while they further degrade the society they live in for some strange reason.
Witness Hillary Clinton’s upcoming movie deal.
Here’s the kind of people she’s going to work with and who were major donors to her failed campaign to represent “working class Americans”:
https://la.curbed.com/2015/6/25/9946506/david-geffen-malibu-compound
“For the cool price of $85 million, David Geffen has sold his oceanfront residence along Malibu’s Carbon Beach neighborhood…”
https://la.curbed.com/2016/12/12/13902424/malibu-property-owners-fined-blocking-beach-access
https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topindivs.php?view=hi
search for “Malibu” in the list
Escapism is where you find it, but Hollywood hardly seems like a mortal lock in that regard.
http://images.nymag.com/travel/spring/2006/la060403_geffenbeach_560.jpg
This may be the most ludicrously petty thing I’ve ever seen.
Good news about the house sale. Maybe now the public beach access will be available.
This just isn’t true. Hollywood produces lots of films, and plenty of them are still worth seeing. What you’re complaining about seems to be the big tent-pole action fests, which are a model that is ultimately doomed to fail.(two or three hundred million official budget, plus at least that much again for advertising; it won’t take many failures of that magnitude to bankrupt a studio).
Movies are probably in a better place now than they’ve ever been, since streaming services and affordable, good quality digital cameras have drastically lowered the barriers for making a movie. Studios, especially smaller ones, love low and modestly budgeted movies. Something like Get Out, which cost less than 10 million but made 255 million, is where the real money is at.
And word of mouth is most definitely still a thing, it’s just more digital than verbal these days.
Hollywood movies are not in a better place then ever before, what planet are you living on? Expensive ugliness.
A lot of the Indie stuff is good. Then they “Go Hollywood.”
“Going Hollywood” has been a term of derision since people first started making movies there.
The “Money People” are the real villians in this plot.
Criterion Films is a great place to find movies for purchase that aren’t available elsewhere .. their roster includes many fine Janus Films selections.
Lots to choose from. Worth a looksy.
The planet where I actually watch movies, instead of just parroting that the industry only produces crap.
Ok, sorry. That was rough and I apologize. I was taking out anger. I’m a huge fan of foreign films and indie American films and I know there’s a lot of activity on the margins of Hollywood, which I think was your original point.
This is why I don’t usually post, I regret it later!
I also operate cameras as a major income source so this is a touchy subject for me.
The CIA has an office whose primary purpose is to liaison with Hollywood. There has always been a certain amount of propaganda in film, but I think recently it has become more pronounced. I rarely watch movies in theaters now because I can’t afford them, and as you mentioned, there is an awful lot of crap out there. Mostly what I see now is the rise of fantasy pictures, often violence. Marvel is a good example, and their movies seem very successful.
The length and breadth of “the culture” is a field of pro-violence propaganda. Shooting someone in the face is not normal acceptable human behavior and should not be normalized, but it is. What a perverted society: we ban images of the beautiful naked human form as “pornographic” but a man spraying a room full of children with bullets is considered wholesome family entertainment.
The “Call of Duty” video game now even features anti-Russian propaganda, can’t have Junior growing up thinking Russians are just people like you and me trying to get on with their lives
Sham to see how far they’ve fallen from their roots. Russian missions were often the best ones in CoD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tbIY-TmHgA.
During the Great Depression movies had their hey-day. First, they were cheap. A kid’s saturday matinee was a nickel and a regular performance was around 35¢, maybe raised to 50¢ for a real blockbuster, but that was a lot of money in those days. Most importantly, they were air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter, at a time when home air conditioning was unknown and landlords might cut heat to save money.
Our brothers and sisters are having such fun across the pond: WE SHALL OVERCOMB!
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/mirrorachi-band-donald-trump-uk-12909380
“Ralph Nader: American Society Is in Rapid Decay”. I wonder what Nietzche would have to say about this screed.
I would rather use Saint Augustine as my philosophical cicerone than Nietzche. The thunderous Teuton is ‘small beer’ by comparison.
I failed to finish my master’s thesis on Nietzsche, because, in the end, I concluded that he was a politician, not a philosopher.
My question for Nietzsche is: “Just how incompetent, dumb, arrogant, or weak did the masters have to be for the slaves to successfully replace master morality with slave morality?”
I thought Nietzsche’s interesting insight was that slave morality only enhances the amorality of the powerful, a symbiotic relationship that insures the meek will inherit the earth, i.e at death, preferably buried under it and presumably on their way to some promised after life.
Indeed, power is its own justification. Master morality is not just an alternative moral system to slave morality; it is of an entirely different order.
So how did the ancient masters succumb to slave morality? The masters are certainly stronger, better in every way then the slaves.
It seems to me that, contrary to Nietzsche’s thinking, the slaves did understand the masters’ morality. They had to, to minimize the daily beatings.
So the slaves learned (Nietzsche has an extended essay on the origins of memory, which unsurprisingly for Nietzsche’s thinking, involves the infliction of pain.) how to subvert and poison master morality.
All the while, the masters blithely carry on paying no attention to slave morality because it was beneath them.
“So how did the ancient masters succumb to slave morality? The masters are certainly stronger, better in every way then the slaves.
It seems to me that, contrary to Nietzsche’s thinking, the slaves did understand the masters’ morality. They had to, to minimize the daily beatings.”
No – and your “contrary” is absolutely the wrong way around. The Slaves had an internalized rational depth the Masters did not, and they developed it precisely to “minimize the daily beatings.” The rot for the Masters set in with Socrates’ dialectic (and so the end of the Tragic Age of Greece).
Nietzsche was important because he was an extreme skeptic exploring the ethical implications of skepticism – in contrast to Kant. Of course, his writing was so flamboyant that it was often difficult to ascertain what he really thought – again, in contrast to Kant.
Wouldn’t your insight have made a good thesis? It’s certainly interesting.
Oh, Nietzsche is important for philosophy, even if only to understand what happened in 20th-century continental thinking.
It took a lot of reading and rereading of Nietzsche to latch onto that question. By that time I had become frustrated with him, and couldn’t find the motivation to continue the thesis.
The Teuton’s not all bad.
His ‘stare into an election long enough, the election will stare back at you’ is still useful today.
So, who’s ahead today?
the antidote critter is hidden in “unequal blush jig”.
or, alternatively, in “a diacritical pause”.
Re movie theaters–this is a rather silly article that assumes expensive eateries with movie screens attached will somehow save exhibition and convince the movie studios not to abandon the “release window” which is in fact the only thing keeping movie theaters alive. To be sure it can be exhilarating to watch a good comedy with a large audience but these days watching a drama can be quite the opposite with the patrons in front of you fiddling with their iPhones or discussing the actors’ costumes. Add in the odors of cooked cuisine and 1950s “smell-o-vision” will indeed be revived.
It is now possible to buy an inexpensive digital projector that will throw an 8 ft wide picture in 2k resolution that is the same resolution as most movie theaters (film projection is dead). In fact the cost of a few nights out at one of those pricey restaurant cinemas would get you one. Boutique cinemas will still be around perhaps, but the same movies will more than likely be simultaneously streaming to home computers.
Our neighbor in Mineral King has an internet movie projector powered by a fairly silent generator, and a 9 foot screen that unfolds and sets up in a jiffy, where we watch films on the deck of their cabin. We’ve seen 5 or 6 movies that way, the last being “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming”.
Sounds great. “Walk-ins” (to your back yard) can be the new drive-ins.
I don’t know…there’s an Alamo Drafthouse near where I live, and I enjoy going to movies there. It’s not just the first-run films and menu (which is pretty good), but the overall moviegoing experience which makes it worthwhile.
Movies started to lose me when they began playing ads before hand. That and the overall quality seems to have gone down terribly like most everything else in this world.
When I visit Phoenix there’s a $2 theater we like to go to even though the movies shown are already out on DVD.
All I’m saying is that those giant mall multiplexes are likely to become dinosaurs and drafthouses are not going to change the equation. Movie theaters take up a lot of real estate and are very expensive to run due to utilities etc.
They also have to have state of the art fire systems and hvac systems. They really add into the cost of construction.
“Buy an inexpensive digital projector that will throw an 8 ft wide picture in 2k resolution that is the same resolution as most movie theaters…” onto what?
Spend less than $100 and and you have the perfect screen on a blank wall.
https://www.projectorcentral.com/paint_perfect_screen_$100.htm
8 feet wide? How about 12 feet? or 14 feet, depending on the “shape” of the projected film, “Aspect ratio.”
Do the math. If four family members go to the movies, add up the gas, parking, tickets, junk food…probably $60 or more per movie. In less than a year of not doing that, one could pay for the projector, the screen and streaming, like Netflix, Amazon or Criterion, Warner Bros etc.
Thousands of good/bad movies, how to’s, and other videos, some in high definition, are available for free on Youtube.
The amount of light any projector can supply is inversely proportional to the screen area (or wall area) so there are limits to how big before starts to seem hopelessly washed out. Even your 8 ft picture won’t have the same contrast as a flat screen television but it’s 8ft wide. Sit close enough and you might as well be at the Ziegfeld.
The main point is that 2k movie theaters (some are 4k) aren’t supplying any greater resolution than a BluRay at home. Bigger or smaller doesn’t change the resolution or sharpness and the amount of detail.
True, but what do you think you are looking at in a movie theater? They are all video projection now.
Criterion Channel B&W films are streamed at level so high one can seen the grain structure of the film. On a 27″ 5K Mac desktop, the picture is as good as in a theater.
Projected, the image can be reduced in size with the zoom control to the same quality point.
Forgot one thing above. You must paint the rest of the room a dark color for the best viewing.
Is there an echo in here? As I said theaters now are mostly 2k but some I believe do use 4k projectors or UHD. Top streaming sites now do so in 1080p which is 1920 pixels across–2k–and that is the resolution of Blu Ray.
Film projection can still be found in some art theaters and special situations (the Fox in Atlanta) but the industry as a whole forced movie theaters to get rid of them because film distribution to 3000 theaters for every first run release costs a fortune. The minimum size for a print is about 10,000 ft of the same sort of 35mm film you used to put in cameras. This is not cheap or environmentally friendly.
Re: Tornado Alley
North America is unique among the major continents. In the middle third of the continent, there are no significant bumps from the Arctic Ocean down to the Gulf of Mexico. There is the Rocky Mountains to the west and the Appalachians to the east, but the central third of the continent is effectively flat as a pancake for thousands of miles. The other continents have east-west cordilleras of mountains (Pyrenees through the Himalayas into the Chinese mountain ranges in Eurasia) or no large north-south plains (S. America) or doesn’t go far enough to the pole (Africa).
This means there is no physical barrier to Arctic cold dry air meeting up with warm moist Gulf of Mexico air. So the jet stream becomes the determinant in where that interaction occurs and for how long. Climate change impacts on the jet stream as well as warmth and moisture from Gulf of Mexico are be huge players in Mid-West and South-Central US weather.
Thank you for that insight into the climate in the Midwest regions. What you state suggests that the US may experience more serious problems than some other regions when the Arctic pole melts leaving a dark Arctic sea to absorb heat. With the ice gone, and no longer using heat to melt, the sea waters will warm faster. The fluctuation of the jet stream could become even more powerful and chaotic.
“TO INFINITY & BEYOND From ‘young blood’ transfusions to apocalypse insurance – weird ways tech billionaires are trying to live forever”
I guess that when Steve Jobs bit the bullet at the tender age of only 56, that a lot of fellow tech billionaires got spooked. Who knows for whom the bells toll next? Of course the fact that Jobs ignored medical intervention and used alternated medicine on himself because he was so smart was besides the point. Maybe they should read up on their Shakespeare-
“By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will he that dies this year is quit for the next”
There is a poster on reddit who posts their quickie oil paintings who has done Zuckerberg and Musk.
Data (star trek character) and Zuckerberg
Musk smoking on Rogan
Couldn’t find Bozo. Maybe they take requests.
I have made mention of Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory here and this is in the Guardian today. It is focused more on treatment implications for trauma survivors and not so much on the basic science (though he was actually doing basic research which turned out to have therapeutic applications) so I will look for something better but thought I’d pass this on meanwhile.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/02/stephen-porges-interview-survivors-are-blamed-polyvagal-theory-fight-flight-psychiatry-ace
Thanks very much for that link.
Reading through all the campaign money that Duncan Hunter & his wife frittered through on themselves in his indictment and my favorite episode being that the couple would overdraw their account 3x a week, week in-week out for 7 years, ensuing in $38k worth of overdraft fees, was about the most fun i’ve had regarding politicians and just how slimy & useless they can be when all is revealed.
He’s now justifying a Navy Seal killing an innocent, by claiming that his unit inadvertently killed hundreds of civilians in Iraq, was no biggie. He was merely following orders.
As a retired soldier I consider the crime not that he killed an innocent but that he killed a prisoner. We inevitably kill innocents. That’s one of the reasons for the suicide epidemic among veterans. Most people are not like the ones being court martialed for war crimes, and having killed people you realize are innocent is traumatic for them. But killing a prisoner is a crime for good reasons. We do not want to encourage our enemies to casually kill our people who fall into their hands. If Trump pardons these guys he is tarnishing our honor and shitting on our soldiers. Once you have accepted a person as your prisoner honor requires you to care for him as best you can, and protect him from harm. The possibility that Trump might do this enrages me much more than the possibility that Russia “meddled” in our elections.
About:
The piece has one of the buzz-words of today: Innovation and the piece suggest that innovation will generate jobs. As always then short pieces are skimpy with the details but maybe it is possible to examine it anyway?
Will innovation lead to increased productivity? If so, then less people will need to be employed so fewer jobs.
Will innovation lead to decreased productivity? If so, why is it something we would want? Do we want to go back using shovels instead of machinery?
Maybe innovation is about creating something new, something we didn’t realise we need? But if we don’t know that we need it is the need real? Would it not be more accurate to call it a want? A want of something to consume and then discard? Is that what will save the environment, more consumption of things we do not need?
This quote from the piece probably clarifies for whom it was written:
If prosperity is to be shared then the basis for that sharing is collective bargaining so anything and everything else, including the snake-oil of ‘innovation’, is recommended to be tried first so that defenders of liberal democracy can remain in power.
Yes, I read this side by side with Nader and was stricken by the contrasts
Johnson here…
” Trump seems intent on disrupting the US economy by prosecuting a full-scale trade war with China. Ordinarily, you might expect this to hurt him with voters who care about access to export markets – such as America’s highly productive farmers. Instead, Trump’s support seems to be holding up across rural areas, as well as other parts of his electoral base.”
vs. Nader
“The unknown and unrecognized people who harvest our food are on the lowest rung of the income ladder despite the critical role they play in our lives. Near the top of the income ladder are people who gamble on the prices of food via the commodities market and those who drain the nutrients out of natural foods and sell the junk food that remains, with a dose of harmful additives. Agribusiness tycoons profit from this plunder.”
Johnsons “productive farmer” would in my view have to be Archer Daniels Midland or some such, an economic model where 3 humans can farm 10.000 acres because they dump tons of poison on it, rely on complicated patent protected machinery and etc… and gain massive subsidies for things like ethanol
I guess I tend towards Nader’s view
I thought the piece was utterly dependent on the Confidence Fairy to promote groaf and, supposedly, jobs (and why would it?) I really thought Johnson was better than that.
Johnson is probably talking his new book – “Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream.” – co-authored with economist Jonathan Gruber. Yes, that Jonathan Gruber.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-thanks-to-jonathan-gruber-for-revealing-obamacare-deception/2014/11/17/356514b2-6e72-11e4-893f-86bd390a3340_story.html
I’m surprised Simon Johnson would co-author a work with an economist who admitted to lying, but the more rarefied reaches of academia are apparently a different world… or maybe it’s just the economics department. ;)
I couldn’t read the link too closely. It was too heavily laced with the Kool-Aid and I started getting itchy and angry and had to drop off. What I read and scanned didn’t convey a coherent pattern of thought that I felt could be argued for or against.
Trump faces giant penis mowed into field near airport where he lands for UK state visit independent
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In a related incident:
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/05/30/that-f-35-sky-penis-above-luke-afb-wasnt-intended-to-be-sky-penis-base-says/
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The worry of course, is what if Iran’s F-14’s sketch a sky vagina, trying to draw us in, and the F-35’s have performance issues?
From the Simon Johnson article “The Populist Paradox” Project Syndicate
China has been on this track for a decade or more. Landlocked cities such as Guizhou and Chengdu are among the 17 tech hubs designated by Beijing to spur innovation and transition the country into a tech powerhouse. All these cities are following the blueprint laid out by Shenzhen. To get an idea of the competition the US is up against here is a Bloomberg video report that, at least to me, is an eye-opener.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2019-05-23/the-people-s-republic-of-the-future-video
“Hillary Clinton Testing Hollywood Waters With Planned Production Company & Studio Deal”
Maybe Hillary could make a film about a plucky young SecState landing under fire in a Bosnian airport only to see a young flower girl called Kenninsky cut down by sniper fire. Shouting “Oh my God – they killed Kenninsky. You B******!”, she grabs an assault rifle from her bodyguard to take on the snipers herself. Should be quite the blockbuster that.
I’m really liking this idea, sort of a Miss Pavilchenko in a pantsuit, Ludmilary Clinton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHKjOl9ocR0
Too late Rev – already been done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I23fjRN-PGc
The biopic would get really interesting with Hillary Clinton in her Goldwater Girl phase as a spirited Young Republican in light of how Clintonites were accusing Sanders of being racist and misogynistic. Compare what Sanders was doing during that era. In many ways, the leadership of the Democratic Party have become Goldwater-era Republicans now that neoliberalism holds sway over both political parties.
Clinton has finally found the Third Way (TM)! If you cannot beat Trump, do your best to emulate him. First buy yourself quick access to a hollywood studio with all the gear and expertise you need to… second, film and air your own reality shows and hell, cooking shows as well. Three, PROFIT! By losing again because none of this stuff matters.
Death And Resurrection In North Korea (Updated) Moon of Alabama
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I’ll admit I was mystified when a Nork undermensch ended up being the second coming, but the Sith Lord works in mysterious ways & Yahweh don’t.
Still find it hard to believe NC hasn’t split out a Links list to the poster child of all that is wrong with Silicon Valley, Wall Street, regulatory capture of pretty much every regulator they deal with, green washing, bullshit “progressive” virtue signaling . . . etc etc etc
“Months before the April fire, the sprinkler heads were clogged and coated at least an inch thick of paint and clear-coat,” according to Kolodny’s sources.
Yet another incredible article.
Tesla Air Quality Compliance Violations Center On Troubled Paint Shop
New air quality violations confirm reports that fires and equipment trouble at Tesla’s paint shop has led to non-compliance and unpermitted pollution.
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28339/tesla-air-quality-compliance-violations-center-on-troubled-paint-shop
Probably my favorite Lee Marvin song…
From: Paint Your Wagon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTymtAbaG08
p.s.
How do we know that Elon wasn’t reincarnated?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_Kreuger
Wuk !
You might be on to something !!!
History rhymes?
The Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation
Why am I not surprised?
“Tesla had failed to obtain the necessary Permit To Operate for 15 emissions sources and four abatement systems installed as part of its 2015 revamp of North Paint, and had failed to perform required particulate emissions tests on three of those sources (all spray booths) and the E-Scrub systems that were supposed to abate their overspray. With the e-Scrub system shut off due to fire risk, overspray began to collect in the shop’s ductwork and damaged the thermal oxidizer, leading to an “informational” source test that showed the oxidizer was letting through Precursor Organic Compounds through the abatement device at a rate above the permitted limit. Conveniently, however, Tesla hadn’t maintained records related to the temperature at which it was operating that oxidizer, raising now-impossible-to-answer questions about its actual POC destruction rate.”
Can we make them give back their pollution credits? Hahahahahaha….yeah, never mind.
maybe after the perfect regulatory capture flips
Or hell freezes over.
Now that’s what I call disruption!
Trump Administration Considered Tariffs on Australia
Will somebody give Trump a new toy to play with? The metaphor that if the only tool you have is a hammer, the world becomes a nail – seems to apply.
Just finished Gordon Lightfoot’s biography, penned by Nicholas Jennings…
A fine read, and i’ve always thought Gordon the best of a very good lot of composer/singers of his era.
An hour+ concert @ the BBC, in 1972
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqS310cQ0CI&t=2760s
Thanks Wukchumni I hadn’t heard this concert, his voice is just brilliant as well as his songs, I just love all the acoustic songs from the 60s 70s, they dont write them like that any more
My status on the do-not-call list being perfunctory, as in the shields are down, I can either answer that ‘unknown name’ on the other end or let it ring. I enjoy messing with people messing with me and its fun telling that voice far away asking for her, that, sorry my wife was deported to North Korea, and she can be reached @ PYOnyang 5836 if they want to get in touch, or in the lapse before somebody from the subcontinent speaks from a prepared script, I calmly tell him that the results are in, and he has Chlamydia, and whatever you do, don’t eat any curry in the future, as there could be horrible side-effects.
But I feel spent, and would prefer to have my force-field back, where they can’t bother me.
Gene Editing
CRISPR-Cas9 babies likely to die earlier, Berkeley study says Deutsche Welle
Only problem is, removing CCR5 turns out to be deleterious to life expectancy…
Not so much oops as duh.
Society needs to leash science..not the other way around.
In a Blow to Maduro, Russia Withdraws Key Defense Support to Venezuela WSJ
The article is pay-walled, but the headline did not sit with me…
So, here is a different take:
https://sputniknews.com/world/201906031075572338-russian-advisers-in-venezuela-claims/
“Russian Ambassador to Venezuela Vladimir Zaemsky has refuted reports about the withdrawal of Russian military specialists from the Latin American country. “This is another piece of ‘news’ which has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Work is being carried out in accordance with existing obligations, and there is no talk of any cuts,” Zaemsky said on Monday.”
Not all is gold that glitters…
Curiosity piqued, I wondered how Finland was miraculously creating housing for the homeless but the article from the Guardian, It’s a miracle…, never breaks down the financial mechanism funding The Y Foundation and Housing First. The best they can do is, “Finland has spent €250m creating new homes” and “Helsinki owns 60,000 social housing units; one in seven residents live in city-owned housing. It also owns 70% of the land within the city limits, runs its own construction company… & public-sector planning and collective effort ”
Is it a public/ private scheme, or a billionaire’s pet foundation project? It seems not, the Y foundation site lists a coalition of entities mainly Finnish cities, construction trade union, the Red Cross, a mental health group and (CFCI) the Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries RT. “CFCI is the joint interest organisation of building contractors, special contractors and the construction product industry.”
Indeed it is interesting that Finland has found a way to be the only European country reducing homelessness but the Guardian should really do a better job of ‘splaining such an important and relevant miracle in our troubled world, though miracles of course are typically shrouded in mystery.
A couple of years ago I saw a mind-boggling front page headline in The Seattle Times, which in large font read, “More Homes, The Solution To Homelessness?” It was so stupid that I could barely believe it. Two years later, homeless encampments litter the city in even greater numbers.
Ever seen any homeless encampments that weren’t total squalor?
I did. In Visalia a few years ago an encampment of around 3 dozen tents popped up and I went and had a look. 34 of the domiciles were filthy mc nasty, I wouldn’t dare go into one of their tents, no sirreebob.
Tents 17 & 18 were different though, there was pride in their surroundings, everything was tidy and neat, and what set it off, was old glory atop a 12 foot high pole with a concrete pedestal anchoring it below, in front of their ‘home’
That’s because the phenomenon of “homelessness” once was confined to the less well off, mentally and physically, of our population. Now it is consuming the bottom layers of the once safe “thrifty poor.” Next up, lower middle class tent cities on the Anacostia Flats.
>”What Can You, the Individual, Do to Fight Air Pollution”
When I read the header my first thought was, “Duct tape Trump’s mouth shut!”
Seriously, I did read the article. I’m not sure I’m in agreement with turning off your vehicle engine if you’re stopped for more than 20 seconds, however. I strongly suspect that is NOT good for your engine, despite what they may have you believe.
Most of the other ideas I think the majority of us know (walk, bike…).
I was looking forward to more suggestions regarding wastewater, but it didn’t elaborate on that.
Therefore, I saw it as only an ‘eh’ story.
Still thinking my initial idea was a good one. ;-)
The article lists a number of well known ideas. Switching to LEDs is easy and very helpful. Buying a new refrigerator if yours is more than about 15 years old would be good.
Unless your car is really old I don’t think it would hurt to switch off the engine rather than letting it idle for long. All hybrids do this, so do many newer cars.
My wife composts all kitchen scraps. Easy to do. I bicycle any place less than 5 miles away if the weather isn’t horrible.
It’s good to do this on our own, we need to have things like this mandated to be really effective.
Yes that type of thing needs to be mandatory, but will be fought tooth and nail by the “don’t tread on me” types. As far as LEDs, some types are supposedly dangerous to your eyesight. https://www.quora.com/Will-LED-lighting-harm-our-eyesight?redirected_qid=18148543
crittermom
I’ve seen lineups of 20 vehicles and more (half of them pickup trucks) at Starbucks or Tim Hortons drive-thru lanes here in small town southern Vancouver Island. The pollution purveying drivers could easily have parked, walked into the shops and been back out in their vehicles in half the time, probably 5 minutes as compared with 15 or 20 pumping out their smog.
I DO like your original response: duct tape. I’ve used one of those expensive but effective brands (gorilla tape); it would do nicely.
>”I’ve seen lineups of 20 vehicles and more… ”
That would disgust me, as well. Not to mention, I suspect many of them could use the exercise?
I rarely go out to eat but when I do I park, go inside (& then order it to go).
I fully understand about conserving.
I lived off-grid for almost twenty years–on only 408 watts of solar panels! (eight 51 watt panels) after installing my system in the early ’90’s–until the banksters stole my humble home.
How many readers would be willing to live on that?
Since being forced into an apt in a city, composting is no longer an option.
But I still stock up on groceries like I previously did, so my car still remains parked for weeks at a time.
It’s old, so turning it on & off is not a good option.
But if I’m stuck for more than a couple minutes, I do turn it off.
I was using low energy bulbs when they still required an adapter to fit a regular socket (before LED’s)
Yes. With only 408 watts, you learn to conserve, yet I had modern conveniences like a computer, microwave, TV (for movies), stereo, DVD & CD players, washer, power tools.
I learned to do the energy-sucking activities when the sun was up.
I have even been known to turn off lights or a TV not being used while visiting friends!
I still use a hand crank can opener.
I got composting toilets approved in my county back in ’92 or ’93.
Since doing so myself, I’ve thought that if EVERYONE had to live just one year with such limited power, they would understand just how much energy they use & hopefully that would instill in them new habits to then automatically conserve.
That alone would make a difference.
Combined with other measures, we could still stand a chance to salvage our planet. Maybe.
Many people think they need to install many thousands of watts of panels to live.
Wrong answer. Everyone needs to learn to conserve in their everyday usage.
But alas, come Christmas, I’ve no doubt we’ll once again see numerous ads for electronic, useless ‘convenience’ items pushed as gifts.
And consumers will gobble ’em up. *palm to forehead*
BTW, you’re probably right about the gorilla tape.
I’ve heard it’s even stronger. ;-)