Newly added to my RSS reader: AppAddict, a site for exploring new apps.
Roger Corman, The B-Movie Legend Who Launched A-List Careers, Dies At 98. npr.org
The movies Corman willed into being are their own loopy, glorious world of teenage cavemen, X-ray eyes and humanoids from the deep. His 300-some movies barely even rose to the level of camp. But many of Hollywood’s most respected directors have at least one Corman credit buried in their resumes. And by teaching so many people how to deliver on-budget and on-schedule, Corman was arguably one of the most influential figures of American film.
Roger Corman Dead: Independent Filmmaking Legend Was 98. hollywoodreporter.com
[Jack] Nicholson, then 21, made his big-screen debut in Corman’s The Cry Baby Killer (1958)_. _Corman hired a young [Martin] Scorsese to direct Boxcar Bertha (1972) and [Jonathan] Demme to write Caged Heat (1974). He made new college graduate [Gale Anne] Hurd his production assistant and later his marketing chief and handed [James] Cameron the job of designing props for Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).
The giant of independent filmmaking also gave Howard a chance to direct his first feature, Grand Theft Auto (1977). When the former child actor complained about the producer’s refusal to pay for more extras, Cormanfamously said, “Ron, if you do a good job for me on this picture, you’ll never have to work for me again.”
All are proud members of “The Roger Corman School of Filmmaking.”
It has taken me literally years to figure out how to drink hot coffee directly from a Zojirushi travel mug without burning my mouth. The trick, I learned, is this: When drinking from a normal cup, I suck the liquid into my mouth after tilting the cup to bring the liquid to my lips. With a Zojirushi, I get too much liquid that way—ow!—so I have to tilt the thing just right so that just the right amount of liquid flows into my mouth.
But now I think I’ve got the hang of it … and I think I like it. Maybe I prefer to drink coffee that way. Less hassle. Coffee always at the perfect temperature without spending $200 on an Ember mug.
On the other hand, maybe I’m missing out on aromatics and other qualities by drinking directly from the Zojirushi.
What do you think? Do you prefer to drink from the Zojirushi (or other travel mug) even when you’re not on the go?
… in the US, the car, philosophically, is a house you drive around. While in China, EV manufacturers are treating them like giant smartphones.
— Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day. garbageday.email
I've started a new thing with Fierce Network
It’s a weekly research bulletin, called the Fierce Network Research Bulletin (it does what it says on the tin).
Kicking things off: a report on the state of US 5G. tl;dr dismal for now, but hopeful.
U.S. companies have been snoozing at 5G — and are losing to international counterparts. But they can regain the lead by playing to their strengths, says a director at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), speaking unofficially.
The US is losing at 5G. But Next-G is just getting started [fierce-network.com].
OpenAI has an announcement Monday. openai.com
I feel like generative AI is on the verge of being great, but not quite there yet.
Nifty: Cometeer ships concentrated frozen gourmet coffee in single-service pods for your home and business. Dilute it and drink it hot or cold.
I found out about this when Marco Arment brought it up on the Accidental Tech Podcast.
Arment is a coffee enthusiast—he even roasted his own beans at home for a while—but he’s been busy, and his house, including his kitchen, is under construction, so he used Cometeer and bought take-out coffee.
He says the Cometeer coffee is excellent, but it is too expensive and too much hassle to make it a regular habit. Yes, it’s convenient once it’s in your freezer, but it has to be kept frozen until it’s there.
Cometeer ships in allotments of 32 or 64 one-cup pods. Their least expensive rate comes to $2 per cup. I guess that’s not bad for take-out coffee, but it’s too much for the coffee you have at home.
Still, a neat idea.
Arment is a tech podcaster (obvs, his podcast is called the Accidental Tech Podcast), developer of the Overcast podcast app, and formerly in charge of technology for Tumblr.
Google Cloud’s asteroid hunt could mean better AI models for astronomy. [fierce-network.com] Astronomers are working with Google Cloud to build AI models that detect asteroids, identifying nearly 30,000 candidates in a few weeks. The research has implications for pure science, of course, and to detect potential hazards to space navigation and threats to Earth. My colleague Diana Goovaerts reports.
Something I saw while walking the dog at the park this morning.
A young light-skinned, slender Black man with a thin beard, riding a skateboard, crouched and turned to the side, as skilled skateboarders can do.
A medium-sized dog ran joyously alongside the skateboarding man, mouth open and grinning.
The young man had the dog’s leash in one hand, and the other hand was outstretched, holding his phone.
I could see he was getting a perfect shot of the dog running.
The young man turned to look at me and dropped his jaw, as if to say, “This is amazing! Are you seeing this?!”
I dropped my own jaw in return as if to say, “I know! Amazing!”
This would have been a perfect shot for me too, of the young man on his skateboard with his phone and the joyously running dog. But by the time I thought of that, the moment had passed.
Are Americans losing their taste for Starbucks? “The whole concept got old,” one customer said. [cbsnews.com]
I rarely shop at Starbucks when I’m home, but it was a regular stop, sometimes multiple times daily, when I was traveling frequently on business in the teens.
This month, I had my first business trip since the pandemic—and I don’t think I stopped at Starbucks at all. I didn’t seem to be near a Starbucks when I was in the mood for coffee, not even at the airport.
Also, I don’t mind the coffee they serve at conferences. The coffee itself is bad, but I top it up with oat milk or soy milk and add a packet of Splenda, and it’s a tasty caffeinated beverage that contains coffee.
Jack Dorsey quits Bluesky board and urges users to stay on Elon Musk’s X [theguardian.com]
“Don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights,” Dorsey tweeted. “Defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you’re on one).”
What a load of bollocks. Musk pays lip service to free speech but he drops the ban-hammer on people who disagree with him, and when authoritarian governments ask him to do so.
Twitter and Musk are hardly underdog defenders of freedom against corporations. Twitter is a $41 billion corporation that practices censorship, and Musk is the third-wealthiest person in the world.
You’re not a sinner for gaining weight. You’re a typical product of a dysfunctional environment that makes it very hard to feel full. If you are angry about these drugs, remember the competition isn’t between you and your neighbor who’s on weight-loss drugs. It’s between you and a food industry constantly designing new ways to undermine your satiety. If anyone is the cheat here, it’s that industry. We should be united in a struggle against it and its products, not against desperate people trying to find a way out of this trap.
— Ozempic Is Repairing a Hole in Our Diets Created by Processed Foods [nytimes.com]
A local government in England is eliminating apostrophes from street signs
The “problematic punctuation point” messes up geographical databases. [bbc.com]
The writer Damon Knight said the apostrophe should simply be eliminated from the English language; it serves no purpose other than to make intelligent people look stupid.
You’re now going to tell me that the apostrophe denotes possession. No, it doesn’t.
My new favorite subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/OhNoConsequences/. For people shocked by the consequences of their words or actions.
