MAN ON FIRE (2004) Tony Scott utilized an old hand-cranked film camera built in 1910 to make movie magic. No CGI needed. DP Paul Cameron built a "merry-go-round" rig that spun Denzel Washington and the camera 360 degrees to create a hyper-kinetic visual effect.

An insurance company is trying to kill my life partner. Felt it was appropriate to write down the rage I feel

Some of you didn’t have a Christian Existentialism phase followed by a Taoism phase followed by a Zen Buddhism phase followed by a Philip K Dick’s Personal Religion phase which all rounded out to a loose Christianity informed primarily by Dante and Simone Weil, and it shows

The Vatican infographics are, in some sense, aptly done, in that they combine “Voyager golden record” with “instruction booklet for the Zojirushi”

PICARD: Data, shields up DATA: Brilliant! Shields can reduce damage we sustain. Not immunity. Not hubris. Just prudence. It's not precaution—it's strategy. [camera shakes] WORF: HULL BREACHES ON NINE DECKS DATA: Here's what happened: you told me to raise shields, and I didn't

We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. This is the risk of dehumanization: building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means.

The Pittsburgh Zoo is clearly in win-now mode.

the tech world has genuinely not grappled with how many people despise them and what they make

On billionaires, please read this by Cory Doctorow, summarizing Thomas Piketty's 𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 21𝘴𝘵 𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘺.

Kid Rock addresses The Pentagon on the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump assassins failing to kill the obese pedophile for the third fucking time Lee Harvey Oswald:

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

the pitt video game actually looks pretty cool

Did you know in HEAT (1995) the iconic shoutout scene was entirely improvised? After finishing their scene, Val Kilmer and Robert DeNiro decided to kill all the cops that had shutdown traffic, unaware director Micheal Mann was still filming.

I have never been a fan of scorebugs that use dots for outs and only have two of them. Three outs is a meaningful game state. I want closure

Let me explain exactly why every new subdivision in America looks like the top photo, because the math is wild. A mature tree increases a home's value by 7 to 19 percent. On a $400,000 house, that's $28,000 to $76,000. A single shade tree produces the cooling equivalent of ten room-size air conditioners running 20 hours a day. One tree on the west side of a house cuts energy bills by 12 percent within 15 years. The bottom photo is worth more, costs less to live in, and sells faster. This has been documented by the University of Washington, Clemson, Michigan State, and the USDA. The data is not in dispute. Removing those trees saves the builder roughly $5,000 per lot. Concrete trucks need twice the dripline radius of every standing tree. Utility trenches need flat ground. A bulldozer flattens 200 lots in an afternoon. Preserving trees adds weeks and thousands per home. So the developer pockets $5,000 in savings and the buyer eats $50,000 in lost value for the next two decades. The person making the decision and the person paying for it have never been in the same room. The Woodlands, Texas is the proof of what happens when they are. George Mitchell bought 28,000 acres of Houston timberland in 1974 and preserved 28% as permanent green space. He forced McDonald's to build behind the tree canopy. That McDonald's became one of the highest-volume locations in Texas. The first office building, designed to reflect the surrounding forest so you couldn't see it from the street, leased completely. The Woodlands median home price today: $615,000. Katy, a comparable Houston suburb that clear-cut: $375,000. Named #1 community to live in America two years running. Fifty years of data. The trees are worth more than removing them saves. Developers clear-cut anyway because they sell the house once and leave. You live in it for 30 years.

Bombing the center of a capital should be unthinkable. Apparently it depends on the city — and who’s dropping the bombs. In London, Paris or Washington this would be a global crisis. Here it barely registers.