Rishi Sunak's approval ratings fall to lowest level since becoming prime minister - "A survey from YouGov showed the prime minister's net favourability had hit -40, a 6% decrease from just last month, with almost two-thirds of respondents (65%) having an unfavourable view of the Conservative Party leader, compared to 25% with a favourable one... Sir Keir Starmer's approval rating has dropped from an already negative -14 in June to -22, and while 32% had a favourable view of him, 54% of respondents had an unfavourable one."
Damn racism!
American Churchman⚓ on Twitter - "Movies feel like a dying art form. They’ve been declining in quality for a while now. It’s not just the writing and inaudible dialogue, but also the cinematography and excessive use of CGI. This thread explains some of the reasons why Hollywood fails to deliver like it used to."
Thread by @ReviewsPossum on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " The reason they use CGI for things that don't need to be CGI is so they can change them at any point in post production when executives inevitably demand changes based on market research or the censorship laws of other countries. You ever wonder why blood spurts are always CGI now, even though practical squibs have been around for decades and look much better? It's so they can just rerender the scene without blood when they need to get past censors in the overseas market. It's also why they shoot movies the way they do now. Modern movies are shot "for coverage", meaning they get as many angles as possible so they always have something to cut away to when they have to remove something or add in a pickup shot later. Have you ever watched a scene in a movie and wondered why it suddenly cuts to a random reaction shot that doesn't add anything? It's because they cut something out and had to cut away to something else for a second so you wouldn't see a jump-cut. This is also the reason why cinematography sucks in big movies now. You need a bunch of close-ups and inserts just for cutaway material to cover up jump cuts, and because you have to shoot this way, you can't plan out long shots with complex blocking and staging. You can't even light things creatively because if they decide to change it, the shadows need to match. There's a greenscreen shot in Cruella where, if you brighten it, you can see how flat the lighting is. They probably didn't know what the background would be when they shot it."
Why do Hollywood blockbusters like Fast X cost so much? - "The film had originally been planned out five years earlier; in the intervening time, another studio’s blockbuster franchise had become extremely popular, thanks in no small part to its thrilling action set pieces. The upshot? All such sequences in the new film would have to be reshot, to make them a match for their rival’s. The other problem concerned certain shifts in real-world current affairs, which had left a major character looking far less sympathetic than he would have done half a decade ago – meaning his scenes would also have to be rewritten and reshot. A schedule was drawn up, the cast reassembled and a crew hired. But there was a hitch: the new scenes – many of which took place outdoors, in natural locations – would be filmed at a completely different time of year to the originals. So, a visual-effects studio was enlisted to digitally primp the foliage in post-production, airbrush out the snow, and so on. Could the filmmakers not just have waited instead for the correct season to wheel back around? Absolutely not: the film’s release date was now barely six months away and, owing to the rigid future plans for the franchise, could on no account be deferred. So, there was only one option: plough ahead and damn the additional costs – which turned out to be roughly another third of the film’s entire original budget... In the post-Covid era, new on-set protocols (testing, isolation, PPE, and so on) have added between 5 and 6.5 per cent to the cost of every large-scale shoot – and far more in the case of the new Mission: Impossible, which spent 18 months outmanoeuvring the virus in Europe, at eye-watering expense. But the sums had already started to spiral long before the pandemic hit. To find out why, I spoke to a number of producers and visual-effects directors, who talked me through the strange and terrifying financial landscape created by what could be called the “cinematic universe business model”: the various series of interlinked films with which the industry has become obsessed. These tend to be built around existing “brands”, such as Star Wars, Harry Potter and the Marvel and DC stables of superheroes, and their reliance on digital spectacle is the most obvious inflationary factor. Stars’ fees amount to between 15 and 20 per cent of a film’s budget, and the director and producers’ cuts the same again (though often these can be coaxed down with a promise of a share of future profits). But visual effects regularly now cost about the same as those sums combined – more than a third of a film’s entire budget – eclipsing even the cost of the physical shoot itself. (As for those poor striking writers, script development tends to take about five per cent of the budget, at most.) This VFX bill is thanks to both the effects’ complexity and their ubiquity. While the original 1993 Jurassic Park had 63 shots containing computer graphics, last year’s Jurassic World Dominion had 1,450 – about 10 per minute. Yet however expensive they may be, VFX-heavy films still make sound commercial sense, since they leave no prospective viewer excluded. Regardless of age, sex, nationality, culture or cognitive function, anyone can sit down in front of, say, Morbius, and have more or less the same experience... For the same reason they appeal to a global audience, serialised films based on already familiar pop-culture properties are also by far the likeliest to provide their makers with multiple cash-in opportunities – sorry, avenues for ancillary profit. So while making just five blowout films every year might seem riskier than making 30 sanely budgeted ones – and therefore having six times as many chances at a hit – the sane ones aren’t likely to inspire their own ranges of action figures or dedicated zones in theme parks... The same goes for the cast, of course. It is often said that modern Hollywood struggles to mint new movie stars, but it has created a sizeable second tier of witty and beautiful performers with passionate online followings – and the more of them you can cram into your film, the likelier it is to draw a crowd... And so we arrive back at the nightmare with which we began: the reshoots themselves. Once upon a time, a cast and crew would head off on location, and the studio would have to make do with whatever footage they brought back. But modern production techniques allow for more arm’s-length interference than ever before. When a US production is based in the UK, for instance, executives back in Los Angeles will watch the “rushes” (the industry term for each day’s footage) overnight, and have their lists of demands in the director’s inbox before he or she awakes... What’s more, the conveyor-belt nature of the cinematic universe model requires individual release dates to be plotted out years in advance, which means films are often rushed into production before scripts have been fully developed, characters polished and plots made watertight. Many of those I spoke to described the disconcerting cloud of vagueness that now often hangs over shoots as a result: neither filmmaker nor studio actually knows what the film is that they’ve been making until they sit down and watch the first rough cut. The reshoot process is described as a way of “bringing clarity” to a project: in other words, only once you know what you’ve got do you understand what you still need to complete it... One recent superhero film opened in cinemas with about 600 of its visual-effects shots still unfinished: the various effects houses had to keep plugging away at them after release, in order to complete it in time for its launch on home entertainment."
Financial Literacy: What's the Point? - The Atlantic - "the vast majority of Americans lack basic levels of financial literacy. For example, a survey of Americans over the age of 50 that asked three basic questions about compound interest, inflation, and risk diversification found that only a third answered all three questions correctly. And a more extensive survey of financial literacy among high-school students found that young people aren’t any more informed. Forty-four percent of U.S. students surveyed had scores that placed them at the lowest levels of financial literacy. Worse still is that levels of financial literacy are lower among the less educated, minorities, and women. Almost 65 percent of Americans with graduate degrees possess basic financial knowledge and skills, compared to just 19 percent of high-school grads. African Americans and Hispanics score lower than do whites on surveys measuring knowledge about financial concepts like debt. And analysis done in the U.S. and Europe has consistently found that women are significantly less likely to answer financial-literacy questions correctly than men. The costs of financial illiteracy are high. For example, research on credit-card debt found that those with lower levels of debt literacy were more likely to do things that resulted in higher fees and charges like going over the credit limit or only making the minimum payment. One study estimates that up to one-third of the fees and charges paid by those with lower debt literacy is due to a lack of knowledge. Overall, financial mistakes tend to be more common among those with less education and income. Financial institutions often target such unsophisticated consumers with their less-than-straightforward—and often very expensive—financial products. A recent study found that misconduct by financial advisers is concentrated in firms located in counties with low levels of education and elderly populations. By contrast, being financially savvy has clear payoffs. Those with higher levels of financial literacy are more likely to plan for retirement, make better investment decisions, refinance mortgages at the optimal time, and manage credit-card debt better. They are also more likely to sidestep common pitfalls like borrowing against 401(k) accounts. So who is financially literate? Disproportionately, they are white males from college-educated families whose parents had stocks and retirement savings... “Which is easier?” Olen asked, “Educating and changing the financial practices of 300 million Americans or changing the financial frameworks surrounding them? The vast majority of Americans think that their financial advisor has a fiduciary responsibility to act in their best interest. As of right now, that's not true. Instead of educating people about this, why not just make it a legal duty that financial professionals act on the behalf of consumers.”"
The libertarians are going to be very upset
Americans say they need a $233,000 salary to feel financially secure. To feel rich? They'll need more than double that. - "a June Bankrate.com survey of 2,521 US adults, which found that 72% of Americans considered themselves to be financially insecure. These individuals said they would need to earn, on average, $233,000 per year to think otherwise. In 2021, the median US full-time worker earned roughly $54,000 per year, per the Census Bureau's American Community survey — only about a quarter of the figure Americans are aspiring for. To feel rich, those surveyed said they'd need to earn, on average, $483,000 per year, nearly nine-times the median income."
Clearly the system is broken and they just don't earn enough money
Meme - "土地公 no longer is Chinese.. *foreign worker sitting in back of Kei truck in Earth God shrine*"
Meme - "How CBC reports when...
A dude from Arkansas donates $5 to a trucker *Lisa Simpson with magnifying glass*
China buys off 11 candidates in Canadian elections *Blind Bart Simpson with cane and glasses*"
CBC media bias is a myth
Meme - crixiv @crixiv: "The denazification of the United States is going to be the most violent event in history. Imagine Nazi Germany with 4x as many nazis, 10x as heavily armed, half as educated, and 5x as fanatically rightwing. WW2 will look like a boxing match."
These people are batshit insane, and dangerous
Meme - "When you learn that house centipedes are known for killing pests in your house that are completely unwelcome, such as cockroaches, flies, silverfish and termites, they don't create any type of nest or web, nor do they eat wood. They rarely bite and do not carry any fatal diseases."
"He was a hero. I just couldn't see it."
Quite Interesting on Twitter - "Greenland is situated farther to the east, west, north, and south than Iceland. [Credit: @etymology_nerd.]"
Polyester on Instagram: “The visual language of Sofia Coppola's films is instantly recognisable as her work - "the camera never lingers, we never feel a hatred…” - "The visual language of Sofia Coppola's films is instantly recognisable as her work - "the camera never lingers, we never feel a hatred towards Antoinette’s shopping, eating, and sleeping: Instead it’s completely romanticised. We’re invited to sleep in and eat strawberries" 🍓
Meme - "The Jetsons really predicted our future
Online classes
Zoom meetings
Tele doc
Face time"
Frustrated Gloucestershire residents give birthday cake to temporary traffic lights on A46 - "Frustrated Gloucestershire residents marked the first anniversary of the introduction of temporary traffic lights on a major road with a birthday cake. It has now been more than 15 months since temporary traffic lights were installed at Broadham in Painswick which has restricted the traffic flow on the A46 to a single lane."
What I’ve Learned Since Getting a Glory Hole in my Home
???
Of course it's VICE
Are younger generations truly weaker than older ones? - "People have complained about younger generations for thousands of years. In fact, looking down on the generation that comes after you could simply be human nature. “The tendency for adults to disparage the character of youth has been happening for centuries,” says Peter O’Connor, a professor of management at Queensland Institute of Technology, Australia. He points out the stereotype remains alive and well, with research showing thousands of Americans believe that ‘kids these days’ lack positive qualities that participants associate with older generations. But this wasn’t necessarily because the youths of today actually did lack these qualities – the researchers argued that this was because we project our current selves onto our past selves. By doing this, older people are unconsciously comparing who they are today to today’s young people, giving an impression that today’s youth is somehow on the decline, no matter the decade we’re living in... One 2010 study that examined millennials graduating university between 2004 and 2008 showed that they had more traits associated with low resilience than people who graduated before 1987. Other research has demonstrated that neuroticism and a need for recognition have increased in younger generations, while one 2012 study suggested that youth are more self-centered than they were in the past. Yet for many experts, these measures don’t point to younger generations being weaker than older ones. Instead, they are simply ways of judging a generation shaped by a modern and technologically-focused society by the standards of decades ago. “Prior generations were taught to repress instead of express, but for newer generations it’s the other way around”"
Presumably more cases of cancer don't reflect more unhealthy lifestyles - just increased diagnosis
The Turkish city that lives for breakfast - "Breakfast is so integral to Van in eastern Turkey that a backstreet parallel to the main boulevard is unofficially known as ‘Breakfast Makers Street’.
Where people drink beer for breakfast - "Known as a "Weißwurstfrühstück", this traditional sausage-pretzel-and-beer-breakfast might be Germany's most "German" meal... Many places around the world have unique morning traditions. In Lyon, France, people tuck into wine and offal at 09:00. In Van, Turkey, it's typical to sit down to a nine-plate breakfast spread. And in Trang, Thailand, it's not unusual to flock to dim sum halls before sunrise... The meal will be harder to find once you cross the so-called Weißwurstäquator – the "white sausage equator". While not unanimously defined, with both the Danube and the Main rivers suggested as possible markers, this divide doesn't only reflect culinary differences in this part of the country, but also cultural ones. You won’t see many people wearing Lederhosen in northern Germany, for example. Traditionally, the sausages should be consumed before the church bells ring at midday, reflecting a time before refrigeration and different preparation techniques. While this is no longer necessary, many places and locals still abide by it. Others, including Wallner and Portenlänger, now serve them past this cut-off, but it does feel odd ordering them late in the afternoon."
Somebody vacuum pack and send Hokkien Mee to Lee Hsien Yang in Europe : singaporehappenings
Sydney police 'asked woman to remove tampon' in strip-search - "An officer told that inquiry that strip-searches at festivals were necessary because of concerns over drug use, after several young people died from overdoses."
I've seen strip search guidelines which say you can pull visible strings, so
The Great Australian Scream. Opening Keynote for Sydney Morning Herald Sydney 2050 Summit - "So high is immigration that Migration Agent is listed on the Skilled Occupation List and Brickworks, the largest brick manufacturer in Australia, is demanding that we bring in more migrants as bricklayers.. to build houses for migrants... What’s crazy about the ponzi is 69% of immigrants are in rental stress, with outgoings greater than income, the second worst group after the elderly. That’s why they say migrants are net contributors to the economy, because they’re drawing down their savings to live... Programmers and analysts are indeed the top skills brought into the country, but the quality coming in is awful. Of 228 applicants I had for a software role last week, 220 were unsuitable... This is the actual skills crisis that politicians primarily bleat about, a crisis created by themselves. Cafes can’t find workers because despite paying the highest casual wages in the world, locals can’t make it work with the cost of living. So we import people and trick them for a while to work in a cafe, before they realise they can’t afford it either... Sydney used to be fun, until developers, politicians, casinos, wowsers, media and councils, shut down 176 venues, by gaslighting the public that violence had “spiralled out of control” when Sydney had just won an award for being the ‘safest and friendliest city in the world’."
The end of the late night kebab in Australia - popular late night feast could be BANNED by council - "Indian Home Diner (IHD), an iconic eatery opposite The Unicorn Hotel on Oxford Street, has been serving partygoers and locals for more than a decade. It's recognised by Paddington residents as part of the fabric of the community, with its famous cheese garlic naan kebab bringing in people from around the Harbour City. However, Woollahra Council recently rejected owner Robert Chowdury's application to officially allow the shop to trade until 3am - saying he had been in breach of his DA conditions and threatened penalties because remaining open late is 'not in the public interest'."
Why Not Polygamy? - "Today, 80 percent of Americans still think it’s wrong according to a 2020 Gallup poll, but that number is trending downwards... Legalization of polygamy has long been a cause aided by reality TV and TV dramas... In 2020, Utah passed a law that decriminalized polygamy, but few voices have been heard wondering if Utah is meeting its obligation to “prohibit” it. Legalization gets support not only from polygamous religious sects, but also from some scholars, lawyers, philosophers, and cultural critics representing a wide span of political, moral, and religious attitudes. Pop science lends credence to these views by describing monogamy as a bad fit for biological human nature and a potent source of personal misery. Supporters point out that men can have scores of babies by scores of women and walk away, while women can have only a small number of babies—as many with one man as with 20—and must feed and care for them. Despite the keen interest of the commentariat, public debates about polygamy tend to be disturbingly fact-free, and driven by terminological and other confusions. “Polygamy” refers to any system of plural marriage, polyandrous or polygynous, but polyandry is so rare that for practical purposes polygamy is polygyny... Polygamy and polyamory get lumped together in argument, but polygamy is a form of marriage and polyamory is primarily a sexual ethic. Some polyamorists now call for legalizing polyamorous marriage. But polyamorous marriage, too, presents a different set of social and legal questions from polygyny—unless, of course, the form of polyamorous marriage sought was, or inevitably would become, a de facto form of polygyny... Overall, defenses of polygamy tend to be heavy on doctrinal and constitutional argument, and light on—or dismissive of—facts. However, these arguments must be considered alongside an immense body of empirical evidence... Gay marriage doesn’t create the appalling, well-studied, and proven harms and dangers of polygyny. It doesn’t advantage men over women. It doesn’t create an unbalanced sex ratio, with the cascading harms this causes. It doesn’t inevitably deprive children of adequate fathering or make them less healthy, educated, safe, and so on. For these and other reasons, cohabitation and some forms of polyamory, too, don’t cause the harms that polygyny does. Polygyny is uniquely pernicious."
The philosophical grounds are more dodgy though
Weird. We were told this would never happen when gay marriage got rammed through
How Polyamorists and Polygamists Are Challenging Family Norms | The New Yorker - "The Austins would like one day to enjoy the legal benefits that married couples take for granted. Brandy and Julie take heart from the success of the gay-marriage movement. “I’ve got a wedding invitation on the way from a friend who’s transitioning from female to male,” Julie said. “I’ve got classmates that came out almost twenty years ago. They’ve been lucky enough to get married. I wish people would be as accepting with us as we try to be of everyone else.” As many as sixty thousand people in the United States practice polygamy, including Hmong Americans, Muslims of various ethnicities, and members of the Pan-African Ausar Auset Society. But polygamists face innumerable legal obstacles, affecting such matters as inheritance, hospital visits, and parentage rights. If wives apply for benefits as single parents, they are lying, and may be committing welfare fraud; but if they file joint tax returns they are breaking the law. Members of Julie’s family have made it clear that, if she dies, they will demand custody of the daughter from her first marriage. “That would be very sad for her,” Julie said. “She’s lived here since she was two.” Polygamists have become more vocal about achieving legal rights since the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide, in 2015. So has another group: polyamorists... In the popular imagination, polygamists are presumed to be right-wing misogynists and polyamorists to be decadent left-wingers, but the two groups share goals and, often, ways of life... In 2015, when the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a dissent arguing that, if a system denying marriage to gay and lesbian couples represented an assault on their constitutional rights, existing marriage restrictions must similarly “disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships.” Roberts continued, “Although the majority randomly inserts the adjective ‘two’ in various places, it offers no reason at all why the two-person element of the core definition of marriage may be preserved while the man-woman element may not.” He went on to emphasize that the prevalence of polygamy throughout history made it less of a radical leap than same-sex marriage. Many gay activists, such as Evan Wolfson, who founded Freedom to Marry, dismiss comparisons between poly marriage and same-sex marriage as a “scare tactic.” But legal scholars take the argument seriously. In an anti-poly paper in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, John O. Hayward wrote, “Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, the only remaining marital frontier—at least for the Judeo-Christian nations of the West—is polygamy.” Another law professor, Jack B. Harrison, wrote that state bans against plural marriage were sure to be challenged, and that anyone who wanted to maintain them would have to “develop a rationale for them, albeit post hoc, that is not rooted in majoritarian morality and animus.” This is no longer merely a theoretical matter. In February, 2020, the Utah legislature passed a so-called Bigamy Bill, decriminalizing the offense by downgrading it from a felony to a misdemeanor. In June, Somerville, Massachusetts, passed an ordinance allowing groups of three or more people who “consider themselves to be a family” to be recognized as domestic partners. Last week, the neighboring town of Cambridge followed suit, passing a broader ordinance recognizing multi-partner relationships. The law has proceeded even more rapidly in recognizing that it is possible for a child to have more than two legal parents... Queer theorists have complained that Obergefell valorizes the family values associated with monogamous marriage and thereby demeans people who resist those values. But others see it as the first step toward more radical change... “The L.G.B.T.Q. movement and, in particular, a lot of gay men really embrace polyamory”... Those who said that gay marriage wouldn’t lead to poly marriage often argued that being gay is an intractable condition and being poly is a chosen life style. Helplessly gay people are therefore a protected category; electively poly people are not. But Edward Stein, of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, notes that many polyamorists claim to have been drawn to nonmonogamy for as long as they have experienced sexual desire, and that many nominal monogamists have intractable difficulty remaining that way, suggesting that a polyamorous orientation may be both innate and immutable. Sheff said, “For some people, it isn’t a choice—it really is an orientation.” But even if, for the sake of argument, we say that being poly is a choice, is that a reason to say that it warrants no protections? Surely, when we defend the rights of Jews or Muslims, we don’t imply that they can’t help being that way; rather, we confer dignity on a chosen way of life."
The myth of the slippery slope strikes again
This Polyamorous Commune in Singapore Aims to Help People Find Authenticity in Relationships
Trang: the Thai city obsessed with breakfast - "There aren’t many places in the world where people are willing to accommodate the logistics required to roast entire full-grown pigs every day. But there also aren’t many places in the world that are as serious about breakfast as Trang. Even in an utterly food-obsessed country like Thailand, the city’s enthusiasm for the first meal of the day can seem almost pathological."
Meme - "When did south park stop being cool?"
"When the world's absurdity surpassed the show's"