3121 MetaFilter comments by rory (displaying 51 through 100)


Why Deleting and Destroying Finished Movies Like Coyote vs Acme Should Be a Crime
Whatever the technical legality of writing off completed films and destroying them for pennies on the dollar, it’s morally reprehensible: Oller memorably calls it “an accounting assassination.” Defending it on grounds that it’s not illegal is bootlicking. The practice also has a whiff of the plot of Mel Brooks’s “The Producers”. The original idea of Brooks’ hustler protagonists Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom was to mount a play so awful that it would close immediately, and they can live off the unspent money they raised from bilking old ladies. When the show unexpectedly becomes a hit, they blow up the theater. The biggest difference between the plot of “The Producers” and what happened to “Batgirl” and “Coyote vs Acme” is that in “The Producers,” the public got to see the play.
Background: The Final Days of ‘Coyote vs. Acme’: Offers, Rejections and a Roadrunner Race Against Time, in which WB executives axe a completed and likeable film they've never even seen for a tax write-off after a token, bad-faith effort at selling it.
comment posted at 9:37 AM on Feb-12-24

AI generated obituaries turn real people into clickbait. Searching for information on a deceased friend? Better check your sources carefully; there’s a whole shady online industry designed to profit off your loss.
comment posted at 7:47 AM on Feb-12-24

Linkfest on recycling or recyclability research and approaches: Pulpatronics makes RFID tags out of scorch marks on paper. Turbine blade maker Vestas may have figured out how to recycle the epoxy in epoxy-carbon-fiber. California museum Exploratorium uses and re-uses machinery from the Bay Area's history, which become part of the exhibits. A polymer analagous to porphyrin is good at collecting gold and platinum from acid-cleaned circuit boards. A plastics-back-to-polymers technique with a new factory opening ?soon?.
comment posted at 1:40 AM on Feb-10-24

"It is almost impossible to believe that these paintings have been overlooked. The qualifying statements people often make about their so-called domesticity and how Morisot did the best she could within a limited sphere, even when meant as a defence of the work, are entirely unconvincing: what is ‘the domestic’ but the core of life, of eros, and of work?"
comment posted at 7:43 AM on Feb-9-24

"The composition of Opening dates back to 1979, where Glass was commissioned by the Alberta Piano Institute to write a set of varying piano pieces for educational use. It was originally published for solo piano as part of his 'Solo Piano' album in 1989, and since then has been re-recorded and re-arranged in numerous other forms. Opening was also re-contextualised in 1996 as part of the album ‘The Essential Philip Glass’ and was even re-arranged again in 2010 as an orchestral score." Phillip Glass - 'Opening' ( offical version) [slyt. 7:17]
comment posted at 1:21 AM on Feb-7-24

We require leaders who recognize before disaster strikes that mass panic is largely a myth, not after they have mismanaged it. This is a hard thing to ask of a governing class. One reason this myth has persisted despite decades of evidence to the contrary is that narratives of panic are a useful crutch for leaders under pressure. By projecting their own insecurities onto the masses they lead, elites find a ready scapegoat for their own failings. A leader who does not measure up to the demands of disaster will find it easier to blame the crowd for panic than accept the crowd’s harsh judgments on his own performance. from The Myth of Panic [Palladium; from 2021]
comment posted at 1:04 AM on Jan-29-24

Yesterday, the UK press were astir over the prescription of an American chemistry professor (or "egghead", as UK journalists know them) for the perfect cup of tea, to which she recommended adding salt, of all things. The outrage! Ridiculous! Etc. The US embassy issued a tongue-in-cheek press release about how this didn't represent official US policy, and how they would “continue to make tea in the proper way—by microwaving it.” This, in turn, was an excellent excuse for the UK press to keep the story going (warning: Daily Mail) by pretending to take them literally.
comment posted at 8:14 AM on Jan-25-24
comment posted at 9:16 AM on Jan-25-24
comment posted at 9:19 AM on Jan-25-24
comment posted at 12:45 AM on Jan-26-24
comment posted at 2:44 PM on Jan-27-24


In March 1945 the air force may have bombed a southern right whale from the air after mistaking it for a submarine. An article from the Wagga Daily Advertiser in March 1945, reports the air force examined the southern right whale carcass and confirmed it had been hit by an aerial bomb after likely being mistaken for a submarine.
comment posted at 4:20 AM on Jan-19-24
comment posted at 4:26 AM on Jan-19-24

This is not to say that there is no climatological mystery to be explained. The countries of northern Europe do indeed have curiously mild climates, a phenomenon I didn't really appreciate until I moved from Liverpool to New York. I arrived in the Big Apple just before a late-summer heat wave, at a time when the temperature soared to around 35 degrees Celsius. I had never endured such blistering temperatures. And just a few months later I was awestruck by the sensation of my nostrils freezing when I went outside. Nothing like that happens in England, where the average January is 15 to 20 degrees warmer than what prevails at the same latitude in eastern North America. So what keeps my former home so balmy in the winter? And why do so many people credit the Gulf Stream? from The Source of Europe's Mild Climate
comment posted at 2:59 AM on Jan-18-24
comment posted at 6:27 AM on Jan-18-24

Wish you could revisit New York's Tower Records circa 2005, or San Francisco's Sutro Baths before it was demolished in 1964? Disappointed Tourist is a series of paintings by Ellen Harvey depicting places that no longer exist. Some reach as far back as Ireland's prehistoric rainforest or the City of Troy; others are painfully recent. Each painting is nominated by someone who cares about that place.
comment posted at 2:18 AM on Jan-17-24
comment posted at 2:35 AM on Jan-17-24
comment posted at 7:14 AM on Jan-17-24

BBC Micro bot runs your Mastodon toot on an 8-bit computer emulator and replies with a video. Toot-sized programs are written in BBC BASIC - a language created by Sophie Wilson in 1981 for the BBC Micro.
comment posted at 8:00 AM on Jan-15-24

These entrancing maps capture where the world’s rivers go. When Hungarian cartographer Robert Szucs looked online for a map of the world’s rivers based on their ocean destination, he found nothing on a global scale with high resolution. “It’s like, how does this thing not exist? So, I just instantly put it on my to-do list."
comment posted at 3:59 AM on Jan-26-24



No lie. This Guardian story has a link to his footage.
comment posted at 3:43 AM on Jan-8-24

The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again // Anil Dash on how the new year offers many of the promises of an online moment we haven’t seen in a quarter-century [archive]
comment posted at 5:42 AM on Dec-31-23

It is a species so endangered that just five years ago only 20 birds returned from the species' annual migration. But 81 orange-bellied parrots have returned to Melaleuca in Tasmania's remote south-west from the mainland to breed, the largest number seen in 15 years. The orange-bellied parrot is one of the most endangered birds in the world, and the program saving it from extinction is starting to focus on the next phase of the birds' survival plan.
comment posted at 3:26 AM on Dec-24-23

After the Atlantic's expose Substack has a Nazi Problem, several hundred authors signed an open letter Substackers against Nazis (previously). In response, co-founder Hamish McKenzie says that Substack is ok with hosting supremacist content (as well as transphobic and anti-vax authors) and that they will continue to profit from it.
comment posted at 3:32 AM on Dec-23-23
comment posted at 4:48 AM on Dec-23-23

"The only artist in the world to embed gold leaves in glass, Kirikane." Yamamoto Akane: 'Making Beauty'. (slyt) [via The British museum]
comment posted at 2:11 AM on Dec-23-23
comment posted at 2:18 AM on Dec-26-23

Announced today, the American company founded in 1901 by some of the original American oligarchs -- Charles Schwab, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan among them -- intends to sell itself to the Japanese company for $14.9 billion including the assumption of debt.
comment posted at 8:55 AM on Dec-18-23

While we shove tartes of flesh into our mouths and read seasonal food reviews, we note that a week today 'twil be the birthdays of Humphrey Bogart (1899), Annie Lennox (1954) and Chef (1984). While invaluable goods continue to disappear, a new etiquette divider is those who ladle their gravy verses those who pour it from the boat, and the best peanut spread is Pindakaas, the question remains: what are you buying or making or planning to eat? Or ... just write about anything, because this is your Free Thread.
comment posted at 5:21 AM on Dec-18-23
comment posted at 12:54 AM on Dec-19-23

Honest Government Ad: Visit the UK! (2024 election). (Political satire.)
comment posted at 6:49 AM on Dec-18-23
comment posted at 7:28 AM on Dec-18-23
comment posted at 7:36 AM on Dec-18-23
comment posted at 8:04 AM on Dec-18-23

Today, December 14, 2023, a group of Substack publishers (also known as creators or writers) sent an open letter to the founders of Substack by publishing it in their individual newsletters. After salutations, the letter begins, "According to a piece written by Substack publisher Jonathan M. Katz and published by The Atlantic on November 28, this platform has a Nazi problem. ... We, your publishers, want to hear from you on the official Substack newsletter. Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know—from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be. Signed, Substackers Against Nazis."
comment posted at 5:51 AM on Dec-25-23

Justice by Means of Democracy [archive|transcript] - "[T]he work of democracy is to continuously resist capture. There is no end of history. There is no state of rest for democracy. Democracy is the work of resisting capture by powerful interests and restoring power-sharing just over and over and over again. So we have to do work to introduce new governance mechanisms in the place of those that are not working."[1,2; link-heavy post!]
comment posted at 1:11 AM on Dec-12-23


Twenty-one critically endangered red handfish hatched in successful Tasmanian conservation breeding program. A lot is riding on this group of tiny baby fish — so much so, they'll be put through school to get them street smart before release into the wild in Tasmania.
comment posted at 3:51 AM on Dec-8-23
comment posted at 6:18 PM on Dec-8-23

One of the important voices of modern Britain, Benjamin Zephaniah was not much like other poets teenagers get introduced to.
comment posted at 11:06 AM on Dec-7-23

Following on the recent Rolling Stone best albums of 2023 posting and with a few media outlets yet to weigh in, a few more best-of lists from the media jungle, compiled for your reference and enjoyment.
comment posted at 8:53 AM on Dec-8-23

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