“Cult films are the lifeblood of so many cinephiles, and imagining a world without them points to a bleak and sanitized existence. Ross has a point. Streaming apps have become one of the dominant methods of consuming entertainment, effectively killing the rental market and continuing to choke out cable television. Cult classics existed before home video, and certainly before streaming, but we still have to wonder: Does the bleak future of streaming suggest a world without new cult classics?”
“America’s aging houses of worship face a stark choice: sell, redevelop, or pray for a miracle.”
“I recently spent a day at the Library of Congress, reading Goofus and Gallant strips from over the years, and found that the panels are remarkable windows into history. They chart the shifting freedoms and boundaries of childhood, and illustrate how adults’ expectations of kids have changed over the decades.”
“Anti-LGBTQ laws in the US are getting struck down for limiting free speech of drag queens and doctors”.
“It was the culmination of a bizarre shift for Rasmussen Reports. After two decades of fairly consistent right-leaning polling of elections and political issues, the firm had stopped acting like a normal pollster. Rather than simply asking Americans about their beliefs in conspiracy theories and fringe views, Rasmussen Reports has amplified those beliefs, lending them its legitimacy as a household name in politics — to the delight of right-wing politicians and influencers eager for new material.”
“To my mind, though, the anti-Semitism is almost the least interesting part of this. Kennedy is a full-of-himself conspiracy theorist and bullshit artist. The whole line of thought he’s spouting here is textbook. He makes these pretty outrageous claims. Each link in the chain of his argument comes in a factitious wrapping of bullshit.”
RIP, Jane Birkin, actor, singer, activist, namesake of the Hermès Birkin designer handbag, mother of actor Charlotte Gainesbourg.
“Alabama Republicans Are Daring the Supreme Court to Uphold Its Own Voting Rights Ruling”.
“Never make contact with a public toilet, never ever, ever cross a picket line. What was the third one? Oh yeah, never wear musk oil to the zoo.”
“Benjamin Franklin was so busy as an inventor, publisher, scientist, diplomat and U.S. founding father that it’s easy to lose track of his accomplishments. So add one more to the roster: his early work in printing colonial paper currency designed to counter a constant threat of counterfeiting.”
“The struggle to work enough to qualify for union health coverage is huge for actors, as the responses to a tweet by WGA member Caroline Renard highlight. Renard pointed out that it takes $26,000 a year in earnings on SAG-AFTRA jobs to qualify for insurance, and 87% of members don’t qualify in any given year. There were plenty of working actors ready to tell their stories.”
David Tennant is a mensch.
Boy, that story about The Dress sure took a dark turn.
“The latest Threads update adds a ‘follows’ tab, but it doesn’t do what you’d like”.
“While there is little doubt that many a Mesozoic mammal became a meal for a dinosaur, it may come as a surprise to learn that some mammals also dined on dinos.”
“Two Jupiter-like planets, known as PDS 70b and PDS 70c, are already known to orbit the star.
But astronomers also spied a cloud of debris within the orbital path of PDS 70b, which could represent the building blocks of a new planet that is actively forming or already formed. The scientists believe their direct image may be the strongest evidence to date showing that two exoplanets can share the exact same orbit.”
“The premise of the rule of law is that everyone is subject to it and no one is above it. And so, I hope that when we get through this agonizing period in American history, we will be able to say that everyone was treated fairly under the rule of law and that no one escaped criminal accountability for offenses against the United States just because of an office they once held or a certain kind of privilege.”
RIP, Kevin Mitnick, legendary hacker and author.
Netflix’s password sharing crackdown seems to be working pretty well.
A closer look at that “small town” video.
RIP, Tony Bennett, legendary singer.
“Kevin Maxen, an associate strength coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars, has become the first male coach in a major U.S.-based professional league to come out as gay.”
RIP, André Watts, award-winning pianist and one of the first Black superstars of classical music.
“In other words, I don’t think the timing of the trials or verdicts matters as much as we might think. It’s true that it would be better to have the trials and have a newly inaugurated Trump disappear them than to have them never held at all. But that’s a bit more of a moral victory than I have an appetite for. What it all comes down to is that you have a judicial and an electoral track. They may move in parallel. But a Trump victory on the electoral track will inevitably cancel a Trump defeat on the judicial one. The salient point to take from this is that Trump’s fate rests ultimately on the outcome of the election.”