Citizen Kane It's always a pleasure to see a classic updated for modern platforms, and the latest version of Citizen Kane  should bring this mas...

Seeing people complain about subjectivity in film criticism - the absolute horror! - reminded me of @matthewdessem.bsky.social’s extremely good objective review of Citizen Kane

Criterion could release a nice set of those Strongbad DVDs, and they probably should. (I would love a feature about the technical process of converting Flash animations to interlaced video.)

Homestar Runner is not in the Criterion collection. However, “George Washington” *is* in the Criterion Collection, and it’s a “Free Country U.S.A.” production because Craig Zobel and Mike & Matt Chapman were involved, so Homestar Runner is a Criterion Collection prerequisite.

A letter to the editor about "the locomotive nuisance."

This is an interesting avenue of inquiry! Here is a railroad booster in the 1920s downplaying very real environmental problems by claiming health concerns are exaggerated, other industries are worse, and in any event the downsides are a fair trade for “growth and prosperity.”

A patent drawing for a one-person flying machine. It involves a suit of feathered wings, a featured tail, and a hot air balloon attached to a harness.

RETVRN.

A newspaper clipping. It reads: It will soon make possible exact, long-range weather predictions, aid radar explorations of the universe and the study of atomic energy and generally revolutionize the mathematics of engineering, its in- ventors claim. It is said to be one of the greatest scientific "tools" ever developed. And the potential effect on science of this mechani- cal robot isn't fully realized yet, they say. It is called the ENIAC-Elec- tronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.

A newspaper clipping. It reads: Army does admit that the ma- chine has limitations. Here are a few: It can't tell when the U. S. budget will be balanced. It can't figure out your income tax for you. It isn't practical for Junior's homework.

When ENIAC was built, its creators predicted computers would be able to make long-range weather predictions but not help with taxes or homework.

An 808 is pretty cool, but consider the visual impact of going on stage at your next rap battle with several sets of polished copper timpani.

Some personal news: I have assumed the style and title of Barry Lyndon.

The audio format they choose is not recognized by ProTools, which makes me think it’s a case of STEM people with no familiarity with the ways digital technology is used in the humanities.

Unclear if this is a case where the developers assumed anyone uploading a wav was making a mistake (i.e., none of our users have any idea what they are doing) or if it was a case where developers were so disconnected from the humanities they had no idea ANY user might need uncompressed audio.

It seems that when Canvas lets an instructor download all student submissions in a single zip file, it applies lossy compression to any WAV files, which is causing exactly the problems you would expect for comp sci, music, and music engineering classes.

Frequently Asked Questions About Our Innovative New EdTech Collaboration “With a free Skynet Edu account, students can gain the career-readiness needed to navigate an exciting future in which they will be hunted by a remorseless, ...

"With a free Skynet Edu account, students can gain the career-readiness needed to navigate an exciting future in which they will be hunted by a remorseless, nuclear-armed superintelligence seeking to annihilate the human race—which will later be revealed to be Skynet itself."

Sometimes I genuinely miss working on “What’s Fact and Fiction in $MEDIAPROPERTY” articles, an invitation to do a whole bunch of primary source research about odd moments in history. (I end up checking it out anyway but I don’t get paid.)

A newspaper story headlined "Spy Gear Found in Moscow Chimney: Soviets Bug U.S. Embassy."

FWIW, the tunnels connecting to the Embassy chimneys were also real. Unused 70s embassy lore includes a guy who came into the embassy with a suicide vest demanding to be taken to the U.S. (he didn’t make it) or the Soviets bathing the whole building with microwaves for unclear reasons. Season two!

“Ponies” pretty much lives or dies based on how charming Haley Lu Richardson can be, but she can be *extremely* charming. I love that they used the 1977 fire at the U.S.'s Moscow embassy and forgive them for moving Elton John’s Moscow concert two years earlier to coincide.

It’s that third requirement that gets you, because if you have someone give her a copy in a more common format, the audience can’t immediately see that it‘s video from the same spy cameras featured elsewhere. And NOBODY wants a subplot about converting video formats.

So that is very silly, but the requirements for the prop were:
1. A new video format employing miniaturized cartridges and cameras for spy use.
2. It looks kind of seventies.
3. Emilia Clarke's character could immediately watch such a tape, in a dramatic "projected on translucent curtains" form.

That projector is about the size of a camcorder and does full-color video projection with a single-lens, insanely outperforming the three-lens video projectors that started showing up in sports bars and Pizza Huts a few years later.

I keep thinking about that weird imaginary video format on Ponies. It is supposed to be video, it's got magnetic tape inside, it's like a tiny U-Matic, but it also has a commonly available top-loading cartridge projector.

It’s interesting as a prop design, it’s like a mini U-Matic, but the projector makes no sense!

It turns out this prop was also a plot point, and is supposed to be some type of compact videotape format used by the KGB, which does not explain why Emilia Clarke’s character had a compatible projector, but does explain why it didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen.

Calm down, computer software isn't making decisions about who lives and who dies in war. It merely processes a ton of data and then makes a recommendation to a human who has no realistic way to verify it

A page of a book which is visibly printed at an angle.

Not only is this laser printed, it’s laser printed *crooked*. @ucpress.bsky.social, what is happening here?

I'd Rather Be Like a Hermit by Frankie Ervin & Austin McCoy & His Combo on Apple Music Song · 1996 · Duration 2:40

Here is a lesser known piece of atomic kitsch I’d put up against “Atomic Cocktail.”

Honestly, at this point I want to keep buying books from Amazon just to make them spend time and money shipping me counterfeit replacements until they give up and give me a refund, at which point I will buy directly from the publisher.

The weirdest thing I I bought two Mariner Classics editions of Calvino novels; one was authentic, one was counterfeit, and because they were in the same shipment the difference in quality was obvious.

All I can figure is that for most of their customers this is good enough and people don't make Amazon go to the expense of fixing their fuckups. I, however (virtuous, brave) am going to have them replace all of these until they successfully deliver what I paid for.

Amazon continues to be completely unable to successfully deliver a book. They shipped me five trade paperbacks; two were shoddy print-on-demand counterfeits that arrived damaged, one was authentic, and one was authentic but damaged. Shipped in a non-padded cardboard envelope.

It might not be clear from the photos but the cartridge enters the projector vertically from the top, so the cassette spools would be vertical. It’d have to unspool from the cassette like video but I don’t think it’s misoriented.

Yeah, I can find single-reel 8mm film cartridges for projectors and a few two reel 8mm film cartridges for cameras but nothing like that. On the other hand the Soviet stuff is not well documented. I’d buy a custom KGB camera but a projector is weirder.