My 7 or 9 longtime readers will know I am generally interested in elections and voting rights. I especially like the use of ranked choice voting (explained here with both extant animals and, also, dinosaurs) as well as other voting systems which might engage the electorate and lead to good representation of constituent needs. But Ranked Choice Voting continues to pop up in various places around the United States. As of this post, it’s only…
I’m working on a couple writing deadlines, so keeping the motivation up is important and I find Kurt Vonnegut to be a good source of pithy motivation. I’ve referred to him before, most recently in regards to routines, but Emily Temple made a collection of some of his ‘greatest hits’ for Literary Hub back in 2017. I should note that Literary Hub appears to like Vonnegut a lot, so you might respond to some of…
Bob Newhart has died. He wouldn’t want people to be anything other than low-key about it… perhaps a deadpan quip. And 94 years is a great run for a person. Maybe not for an elf, mind you, but remember he was management. Still, I’m quite bummed, and I’m hardly alone. You can read obituaries and appreciations from CinemaBlend has a good rundown of where you can see and hear some of his work. And the…
My post earlier this week about the Paramount sale reminded me of one of the annoying aspects of the streaming era: that films and shows can go missing This isn’t a new phenomenon. Even before the succession of VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray (not to forget the attempts of Betamax, LaserDisc, and HD DVD), prints of films and TV shows could be hard to find. But if a longstanding truth of the way to make…
I’ve previously shared videos from Wired’s long-running series of “[Topic] Support.” This is where they have an expert on a topic usually far removed from tech support giving short, definitive answers to various questions on said topic. I gotta do it again, because Dr. Armstrong covers a far-ranging series of questions in just under 20 minutes from the general (“why is it called the middle ages”) to ultra-specific knowledge about names of swords. And, of…
As John Oliver might say, “A lot happened last week,” but there’s one news story that I wanted to highlight. Paramount aka Paramount Global aka the latest incarnation of CBS Corporation & Viacom aka Mithrandir (for certain brain-addled elves) has a buyer. You can learn about it from an official notice, their own news division (CBS) talking about it, as well as: Both NPR and Variety have some questions about the deal and what this…
I’m very happy to announce an audio fiction gig I did some moons back, Clutch, is coming to the podwaves… today! I am part of a huge and very talented cast — and the mini-series all comes from the mind of Kennedy Phillips, whom some of you may know from Magus Elgar. But you don’t have to take my word for it! Listen (and take a look at) the many wonderful and wonderfully silly characters…
If you haven’t been on hold with some business or another so far this year, don’t worry: it’ll happen. And when it happens, you might ask yourself, “Why is hold music the way it is?” Alexia Kontolemos has you covered with an informative article for Mental Floss. My main improvement would be the elimination of ads, but I know that won’t happen. And if you want to know more about the grandfather of background music,…
So let’s say you just finished binge-watching season three of The Bear in the span of a few days and, with not much food in the house, you just want to get a beef sweet and hot ‘n’ wet and talk about it. But maybe you don’t. In fact, maybe you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. In which case I have two actions for you, should you choose to accept them. 1)…
If I had a dollar for every time I heard or read about major studios being too risk averse, I could fund feature films to my heart’s content… or could I? Films cost a lot of money, which is why there aren’t 147 major studios and, as one indie filmmaker friend of mine is wont to say, money isn’t a thing, it’s the thing. So how did such a small non-studio become such a major…