I don’t usually have much to say about the Oscars, but I do love checking out all the nominated shorts and this year’s winner for best animated short is just, well, check out Hair Love:
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Video VideoFlight of the (Original) Concordes
For whatever reason, Big Data decided to show me a Vox video piece from 2016 about the Concorde the other day. It’s part of an article by Phil Edwards.
For you young whippersnappers, the Concorde was a quite cool-looking supersonic passenger plane that heralded the future of air travel… until that future disappeared.
Later in 2016 (and also in Vox), Brad Plumer noted that several startups and NASA were revisiting supersonic transport. He noted one young company, Boom, in particular.
Fast forward (though not supersonically so) to 2019 and Boom has been busy. They’ve been rolling out the PR and getting reactions from the press. James Wynbrandt in a piece for AIN Online this past June adds some numbers to get a better idea of Boom’s business model and timeline.
More recently, Rohit Jaggi over at the Robb Report gives a summary of where Boom and other companies (including Lockheed Martin) are in working to get supersonic transport revived again.
Analog Impressionist meets Digital Impressionist
Here’s a video that was posted on October 4th and has been making the rounds.
I’ve seen Jim Meskimen before (he’s phenomenal) and I’ve seen “deep fakes” before, but this is quite the combo.
We live in interesting (and potentially scary) time.
Master of Suspense Masterclass
Well, technically, it’s a 96-minute press conference moderated by film historian, author, and critic Richard Schickel. However, it really is a bit of a masterclass as Alfred Hitchcock, quite confident in what he does and doesn’t do, gives pronouncements about how he goes about things.
Note that you may want to watch Family Plot, his last film, before watching this as that’s the reason for the press conference. You may also find that he’s rather old school and private in his answers, compared to what you might expect from a modern talk show. That should in no way distract some great nuggets of wisdom as to how he approaches filmmaking as a craft. I especially appreciated his observation on keeping the audience engaged and, above all, not confused.
Also, a pro-tip from the comments. If you play the video at 1.5 times speed (under the settings menu in YouTube), you’ll finish faster and Hitchcock will, frankly, not sound like the spokesman for the Slow Talkers of America (which he clearly isn’t, what with being British and all).
More About Work as Religion
Continuing this week’s series of video posts, I came across this video from The Atlantic that touches back to an earlier article I linked to about work becoming people’s faith.
I’ve long been interested in work-life balance and finding joy or at least satisfaction in work, perhaps because, as mentioned in the video below, conventional wisdom is no longer satisfied with jobs or, to a certain extent, no longer even satisfied with careers. No, it has to be a calling.
And when you read things about “ikigai” of just finding flow, it seems like a calling is not that far-fetched a goal. But it so clearly is, because we’re just not set up for a surplus of those types of jobs. In fact, perhaps we’re asking too much of our jobs. Take a look at the video and consider.
Stephen King’s Brief Writing Tips
After Monday’s post, I didn’t want to take up too much time. The weight of the week is probably dragging on you in any case. Here’s Stephen King with some brief writing tips.
A Writer Autobiography, Carl Reiner Edition
I’ll probably share some other videos done by the Writer’s Guild as I watch them in the future, but here’s a treat for those of you who are fans of Your Show of Shows or The Dick Van Dyke Show and so on.
Carl Reiner talks almost for almost an uninterrupted hour and it flies by as he gives you not only his history and development as a writer, but all sorts of wonderful tidbits about writing… and human nature, naturally.
Hey, it’s a nice flag. One might even call it grand.
I’m not sure if this is what the Founding Fathers were thinking of when they decided to adopt the ol’ Stars and Stripes. I’m sure they hoped the Great Experiment would be successful. But did they envision a future where people would proudly wear versions of the nation’s flag as neckwear and sing about said flag in a form of digital cloning on the Inter-Tubes?
Okay, I’m pretty sure it’s not what they were thinking of… but in any case, enjoy a one-man barbershop quartet do a song appropriate for Independence Day.
Why Isn’t the U.S. Metric Already?
Just over 240 years ago, the United States announced its separation from Britain… a separation that could be measured in many ways, but definitely in miles.
And while pretty much the rest of the world has decided to “Make Mine Metric,” Americans remain unconvinced. Why? The Verge has some theories.
Real Princesses Roll for Initiative
If your 2019 has been bereft of geeky, geeky mashups thus far, have we got the video for you! Behold: nearly all the Disney princesses playing D&D (with Belle as DM, which just makes sense).
In case you not only like it, but love it, they apparently have a crowdfunding campaign going through February.