Tag: Things to Read

Various and Sundry

Recommended Reading: Coming Changes to Transportation

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

One of the reasons I’ve become more interested in learning about basic income and future potential economic models has been what appears to be the growing automation of everything. In other words, we’ve moved beyond automating factory and manufacturing processes (though we still automate that and refine that automation), and into automating service and analytical processes. Nowhere is this more evident than in the race to implement the self-driving car, because when the self-driving car…

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Producing Various and Sundry

As the Dust Settles on a TV Season

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I tweeted out Vox’s rundown of shows that were renewed, canceled, or ended via the Team J twitter a couple weeks ago, though it’s since been updated further. Last Tuesday, they not only updated that list, but Todd VanDerWerff did a great rundown of the various reasons a show might get canceled. Within that explanation comes a great overview about how TV shows make money. For those of us looking to understand the economics of making…

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Producing

Eschewing “To-Do” and Using a Done List

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I have been dealing with a number of deadlines for the past few weeks from Team J to my own writing… and of course, with my project management hat on, I’m always looking for ways to manage the lists and lists and lists of to-dos more effectively. I’m sure I’m not the only project manager who gets calm by organizing or revising a to-do list. For all there is to do, it does feel like…

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Raves

Daniel Boorstin and The Image

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being a “talking head” on television talking about Hollywood, celebrity culture, and the 2016 Presidential Race. One of the things I referenced was Daniel Boortsin’s 1962 book The Image, which when I first read it 20-some years ago, seemed very prescient. Nowadays, it seems only more so. What I was referring to on the program was Boorstin’s observation of the new class of celebrity who was “a person who…

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Various and Sundry

FiveThirtyEight Follow-up on Basic Income

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

A couple weeks ago, FiveThirtyEight did an in-depth look on universal basic income and I talked about it briefly here. This is a great group to look at it because they are so wonkily numbers-driven. They’re back with a quick video recap, but the whole thing makes me feel I should be writing more about it here on the blog. As we humans face more and more automation, it seems like we need to find an…

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Various and Sundry

Recommended Reading: The Rise and Fall of HBO?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’ve been thinking about “Peak TV” and such from a couple of articles I talked about back in January. Of course, one of the issues with TV or any cinematic development is that you need something of a development pipeline. As Walt Hickey’s article on FiveThirtyEight last week goes into, that might be one of the biggest issues facing HBO right now. Apparently, Game of Thrones may be shorter lived than some of us hoped.

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Various and Sundry

Recommended Reading: The Actual Science Behind Dyson & Other Dryers

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Recently, there’s been some news stories making the rounds on the Internets about the Dyson “air blade” hand dryer things actually being horrible germ-distributing death machines, etc. etc. etc. The reason for this conclusion appears to be the usual search for sensation by reporters as explained in this entertaining article by Emma Bryce. Don’t worry hypochondriacs, you can still worry.

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Various and Sundry

Recommended Reading: A FiveThirtyEight Look at Basic Income

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’ve been reading a lot about basic income over the past year or so, from activist like Scott Santens as well as actual studies that have been and are being done. So I was very pleased to see that the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight decided to do a feature length article about it. If you want to get an idea about what basic income is all about — and what we really know about what…

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Various and Sundry

Crisis of Infinite Star Treks: Of Paramount and Puppets

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

This is the 13th of the ongoing series about Star Trek’s future and its fandom. I’m as surprised as anyone it keeps going, but hey, that’s why tagging is so handy (or click on Crisis of Infinite Star Treks). So, a pair of links today. The first is an article by Marc Perton that appeared this afternoon in Newsweek. If you haven’t been following this story for months like some of us nuts, it does a…

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