I’m not sure “swap” is quite the right word for it. Effects can be used to drastically reduce the risks for performers, which already happens. Stunt performers wear harnesses and safety wires for high falls that get digitally painted out. Functioning guns with blanks can be replaced by non-functioning guns that have muzzle flash effects added later (though I still don’t know how to accurately depict recoil). I would like to see awards going towards innovations in these areas.

That said, I’m not sure how to properly honor stunt performers for the risks and sacrifices asked of them without encouraging more people to do it.

Idiots will hurt themselves doing stunts for cheap too without the prestige. The “Big” stunts are actually usually safer as they have more people knowing what they are doing.

Having a prize for stunts encourages more low budget unsafe stunt work too as people take risks to increase their prestige to get the bigger gigs.

I don’t deny that stunt work demands immense talent and effort and risk. Just like a performance artist who does five-finger filet really fast for money. But is it moral to give out accolades for it?

Would it be better to look at ourselves and say “Woah, this is fucked up. It’s fucked up that it’s happening and it’s fucked up that I’m entertained by it. What can I do to encourage less of this in the world?”

Oh dear.

The stunt arms race is officially on. That means bigger stunts, more danger, and more people getting hurt to chase the big shiny prize they just created.

The safe and humane way forward here was better digital effects. This change will literally mame and kill people who didn’t have to get hurt.

I’d be 400% more interested if Ernest P. Worrell showed up on my watch.

I’m sure Dunkey will be happy about the Animal Well plug.

I believe so, but they’re going to use the public tweet to argue that the tip was public. “It’s not insider trading if it’s all out in the open.”

Mafioso shit.

Strawberry Mansion

https://youtu.be/dpPsvOSc1Gk

Trust me; you’ll have a good time. 🩷

He’s deliberately manipulating stock prices on a massive scale. And his administration controls the regulators who would be policing this.

End of story.

See also the July 4 2022 cover of the New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2022-07-04

This is an issue to take up with individual website operators.

Almost every large website is going to be protected by both a CDN and an application firewall, either of which can be configured to slow down, gatekeep or outright block traffic coming from an IP that is suspected to be a VPN. And there are many reasons why they could be doing this:

• websites that rely on advertising to operate get less value from VPN users. A lot of users using the same IP address means advertisers have a more difficult time showing them relevant ads, thus paying the website less for them. So there is a financial incentive for a website to convince its users to stop using their VPN voluntarily.
• a security-minded site could be concerned with malicious actors using VPNs to shield their identities and locations during attack/breech attempts.
• a site seeking to protect its content from automated scraping by various bots (search crawlers, LLM data harvesting or competitors) may believe that those actors are using VPNs to hide their identities.

The only solution I can see is to reach out to the site operators themselves and explain your valid use case. I’ve done this a few times myself. I’ve never received a response, but some of the websites that I visit which used to block my VPN traffic eventually stopped blocking it.

If you don’t like something, make some noise.

Alternatively, you could use a cloud provider to spin up a micro instance running your own OpenVPN server that you re-roll IPs on occasionally, but this takes more effort and doesn’t really address the root cause.

Jack Reacher, the vanilla gorilla.

Not just a tool for monitoring, but a tool for propaganda delivery and indoctrination for anyone with a message and cash to burn.

Proper journalism costs money and requires focused attention to consume and metabolize. Propaganda is shiny, sweet, goes down easy and it’s always free.

Reznor was (is?) the lead singer in Nine Inch Nails. He and Ross have collaborated on a bunch of film and TV scores over the last 20 years or so, mostly to excellent results.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are doing the score, so the music should at least be solid.

But the Jared Leto of it all…

Make a joyful noise…

I think it depends on the distribution agreement. For a big-budget, major studio release you might see one or two trailers like that (featuring this card), but exhibitors can put whatever else they want in there as well. AMC is the absolute worst about this.

0. Don’t make me pay to park a car.
1. No ads.
2. No excessive “welcome to our theater chain!!1!” preroll. A static card or 5-sec bump will do.
3. One movie trailer is ideal; Two is OK; Three if you must. Absolutely no more than that.
4. Comfy seating.

I also never quite got a grip on Summer Wars. I got this sense that the pacing and storytelling was not at all designed or intended for me (as an American viewer, watching subs). But I would never argue it was a “bad” movie, or even that it didn’t work. I just got the sense that I was not the right judge of it.

If there are cases to be made for it, I’m all ears.

Jellicle post.