Tag: Things to Read

Various and Sundry

Recommended Reading: Universal Basic Income as a Way to Grow the Economy

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Between Labor Day and chatting with some very bright people about the future of finance at Escape Velocity this weekend, it felt like a good time to post something about the future and universal basic income (UBI). One of the things I like about Dylan Matthew’s article in Vox about the Roosevelt Institute’s recent study on the potential effects of implementing UBI is that he explores the premises behind both the study and the critics of said…

Continue reading

Writing

The Kirby Centennial

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Monday, August 28th (yesterday) marked Jack “King” Kirby’s 100th birthday. He isn’t still around to celebrate it, but we certainly have a tremendous body of work with which to celebrate his storytelling. I had made a comment on social media, but he seems to have cast a large enough shadow across pop culture that people may well be celebrating his centennial all week. One of his assistants, Mark Evanier, who also wrote the biography Kirby:…

Continue reading

Producing Various and Sundry

This Summer Means Hollywood is Doomed…. Again

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Every summer –for at least a decade or more– the Hollywood film industry has been doomed. I would imagine they must get sick of all the doom, what with being doomed with the advent of television, the disintegration of the studio system, the rise of VCRs and video stores, online streaming, streaming services like Netflix making their own content — and possibly avocado toast. Nevertheless, within the traditional ‘doom’ narrative, there may be trends, so…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

Will the Oil Industry Collapse in Less than a Decade?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

As the engines of disruption continue in the form of automation, one trend I keep following is the coming changes to transportation. No, I don’t mean the fabled hyperloop (though I’m following that too). I’m thinking of electric vehicles. Seth Miller over at an outfit called NewCo Shift hypothesizes that a major shakeup in the oil industry and our car culture is coming sooner than we might have thought — all based on replacing the…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry Writing

In Which a Domino’s Patience is Rewarded

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Some of my past few Monday posts on motivation have been a bit on the grimmer side, so I wanted to share something that was more in the “You Can Do It” vein. On Scriptnotes a couple weeks ago, John August’s One Cool Thing was a physics paper about the power of dominoes to topple bigger dominoes. In fact, the domino the size of a sliver can start a process by which dominoes the size…

Continue reading

Writing

A Writer Writes… and Finishes

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Continuing my series of Monday posts about motivation, I wanted to share another favorite post about staying motivated by Terry Rossio from the inestimable resource that is Wordplay. It arguably builds off the tough love/cold water of The Speech two weeks ago. And while I’m going to focus on writers and motivation, I have observed (and been told) that this sort of motivation (and procrastination) is something that all creative folk encounter. But back to writers. There’s a notion…

Continue reading

Producing

Promoting Your Film on Social Media

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Indie producers always need to wear lots of hats — and one of them is often that of marketer. And since we don’t have the funds for a conventional ad buy… Welcome to social media marketing. No Film School has a post about promoting your film on social media — and while it has some nice tips and tricks throughout, I especially like the thought given to voice and what the different channels (e.g. YouTube,…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

The Shiny and Chrome Future of Cars… According to the Companies Themselves

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Not long after I shared an article about some of the latest innovations in self-driving cars, news broke that Volvo was planning to have all its cars be electric or, at least, hybrid by 2019. Well, Volvo isn’t the only one with grand plans for the automotive future. Alexis Madrigal in The Atlantic goes over the plans of about a dozen car companies for the cars of the future. Though, spoiler alert: none of the car…

Continue reading

Various and Sundry

The “Cadillac of Self-Driving Cars” May Be… Cadillac

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

One of the trends I casually, yet actively, watch is how “self-driving” automation is coming along. I’m sure many of us have followed Google’s efforts as well as Tesla. So I was shocked to read Alex Davies’ piece in Wired about the self-driving technology of Cadillac… which I suppose may mainly point to my pre-conceived notions of Cadillac. But I bet I’m not the only one.

Continue reading