There are so many celebrities that turn out to be jerks in real life that I try not to put any on a pedestal (so if they turn out to be jerks later, I’m not disappointed).
Dolly Parton is one of the few celebrities that seem so genuine and cool that I can’t help but believe she’s truly a good person.
This raises a more philosophical argument as to what signifies the fall of a body like the Federation.
The Federation is a union of other bodies who through the spirit of cooperation decide to work together. If the majority of the bodies that make it up decide to pull out, does that constitute the fall of the Federation?
If one body leaves, of course it has not fallen; and if they all leave, it no longer exists at all. How many planets still need to be in a union for the Federation to successfully exist?
The fact that Vulcan/Ni’Var and Earth both pulled out and are two of the Charter members is certainly notable (though it doesn’t prove the fall of the Federation).
If it felt like the Federation had been weakened but was slowly rebuilding, I would agree with your idea that the blow to the Federation was meant to show its resilience; but the fact the Federation was not picking up steam at all (and felt much more in decline), to me indicates that the writers intended for us to interpret this as the Federation in its death throws until the Discovery showed up.
Perhaps this speaks to my own mindset as opposed to how the writers intended it, but it’s certainly how it came across to me.
As an aside, it could be interesting to explore what a Federation not primarily influenced by human/Vulcan influence could look like, as well as explore the idea of what constitutes the Federation (for example, could you have a Federation with no planetary members made entirely of individuals who have left their planet in the name of galactic brotherhood?). I am not sure the Federation is still in a place where such concepts could be explored, but it could certainly be interesting…
I’m definitely excited to see Lower Decks hopefully going out on a high note, but I’m definitely sad to see it ending.
As someone who only recently got into Star Trek specifically because of Lower Decks, I am curious what show Paramount is hoping will act as a gateway show, so to speak, for new viewers.
That lines up pretty similarly with what I found also. The angle should be a constant since there is only one angle where the relationship would be true. I just left it in terms of π because I try to avoid rounding.
Having said that, L would be a ratio of r; which I think lines up with what you found as well.
Someone may want to double-check my math on this one, but the length of the sides will be dependant on the radius of the smaller circle
Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about this leak (assuming it’s remotely accurate).
I suppose you could make a horror/thriller-esque story about Plas if you leaned into the body horror aspect of it; but he seems like a much better fit for a comedy instead.
The two most recent runs in 20 years (Gail Simone and Kyle Baker) definitely have Plas established as a pretty unserious guy. There’s definitely a tinge of tragedy in his origin of being betrayed by his fellow goons, but he definitely bounces back.
Even runs where he isn’t the primary focus (the Injustice tie-ins or the Terrifics) have him as a pretty comedic character.
Having said all that, I am not terribly familiar with Aronofsky’s work; so I could definitely be missing something that makes him a good fit…
That stuck out to me as well. Disney probably made 50k USD in the time it took me to write this comment. This feels more like sending a message than trying to avoid a costly payout.
I’m sure they want to discourage lawsuits, but I’m worried they did this just to try to set a precedent on EULAs being the end-all-be-all.
I just hope they get enough bad publicity from this move to cost them more than the payout would have.
The fact that Disney is asserting that whether a EULA has been read is irrelevant and that a EULA signed five years prior for an unrelated use is still enforceable feels more than insidious.
I hope Disney’s claim gets thrown out because I worry about the precedent this could set for EULAs going forward.
I’ve been holding onto my phone well past its prime since I can’t help but see every new phone on the market as a downgrade because of this.
I know people say that you don’t NEED an SD card if you buy the most expensive version and rely heavily on cloud services but it’s definitely an intentionally worse customer experience.
I’m actually really sad Sony pulled out of the US, since I was planning on getting an Xperia this year. Now it feels like I’m limited to Samsung or Google if I want a flagship SoC…
I’m definitely a little late to the party to comment on this thread, but it blows my mind that any organization would pick a flight with SAG-AFTRA at this point (or the WGA, though that’s not relevant to THIS issue).
SAG has already proven they will hold out pretty much indefinitely and the effects of the joint SAG/WGA strike are still being felt in Hollywood now.
Is the siren song of AI so alluring that companies are willing to die on this hill? At its peak hype, I could see executives salivating at the potential savings; but my understanding is there has been pretty substantial pushback to projects made with AI (or tech with AI in it). I can’t imagine that these large studios think their potential savings would outweigh the potential losses in sales; but I guess that’s why I’ll never be a Fortune 500 CEO…
I wish SAG-AFTRA nothing but the best in their endeavor for protections against AI.
Ever since I watched RedLetterMedia’s “F*ck You, It’s January” (YouTube | Piped) I cannot stop noticing how studios will drop movies they don’t have faith in at the very start of the year.
To date, based off my very detailed research of quickly scrolling through Wikipedia, Marvel has only released two MCU movies in February: Black Panther, and Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania.
With the numerous data-set of two points, it seems like Marvel has two potential reasons for not having faith in a movie:
You could make the case that they dropped Black Panther in February because it is Black History Month, but Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was released in November…
With all this said, now, I am curious in their lack of faith in the new Captain America movie. I’ve already mentioned the two reasons, I would expect them to not have faith in it, but there is a third reason as well:
Whatever their reason for releasing Captain America: New World Order in February is, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.
It feels like a tale as old as time, that a company gets bought by another and immediately selling off assets; and I would very much like to stop hearing it.
While sometimes spending does need to be cut, cutting assets immediately after an acquisition usually does not maintain the company’s health in the long term.
On another note, while I think Paramount/ Skydance is right that the current streaming environment is not amiable to the customer; I find it amusing this is just creating “Cable 2.” I know each studio wants to keep all the money for themselves, but it feels ridiculous they are pretending “Cable 2” would be better for customers than a music streaming model, where any streamer can provide any content
I can’t say I’m surprised to see Gamepass get a price hike; it always seemed like it was in the loss leader stage to try to grow market share.
I wonder what the reasoning was to institute the hike now, though, since I’m not sure how strong their market share actually is on it.
My theory is that either:
My understanding is they are still releasing new Series S models, which are basically just Gamepass machines; so I would expect they are not happy with their current market share (though corporations literally never are), which makes me think it’s the former option, not the latter.
All that being said, I wonder how much the price can increase before the value proposition of Gamepass is moot. Right now 20 USD a month doesn’t sound bad as long as you’re playing at least one new game a month, but I wonder how much more room there is in the price before the number of games you would need to play becomes unreasonable.
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the Gamepass model since I like owning my games physically (it’s the main reason I prefer console to PC), so I don’t have much of a horse in this race; but I will be interested to see what becomes of Gamepass in the long term.
While I am tired of comedy sequels coming out decades too late, I am cautiously optimistic about Shrek.
Given its animated nature and fantasy setting, there isn’t a lot of pressure to explain why the characters are all decades older. You can just set it right after the last one, which I think avoids a pitfall a lot of late sequels fall into.
Additionally, in my opinion, Shrek actually has a pretty strong track record. I mostly rewatch the first two, but the fourth and Puss in Boots 2 (if you count that as a Shrek movie) are both really good also. (I can’t comment on the first Puss in Boots movie since I never saw it, and we don’t need to discuss Shrek 3…)
I think it COULD also be fun to see Shrek lampoon more of modern Disney, since a lot has changed for them since the early 2000s; but it feels like Shrek has moved further and further from that style of comedy and have moved more into irreverently twisting broader fairy tales instead, so that doesn’t feel very likely to happen, unfortunately.
Seeing as how the movie is years away, I think it is too soon to be making claims in either direction for the movie’s quality; all I can decisively say is I really hope it doesn’t disappoint.
That’s a really good point about their business model potentially being unsustainable, but I still question if adding gambling is the answer.
Things that get me to go out (and I know that is anecdotal at best) are things like trivia nights, theme nights, stand up comedy, etc. I don’t think I would be very tempted to go out by the opportunity to be hustled in Angry Birds.
I agree that Dave & Buster’s needs to develop a more novel niche to not get erased by home entertainment, but I would be shocked if this was the best way to do it.
I remember when this news first leaked, people online were joking about getting into fights over a 200 dollar bet on a kid’s game if skeeball.
While I’m not sure how common that type of phenomenon would be, I have to agree with the author of this article that I would certainly think twice before bringing a child to a location where gambling is encouraged (especially in conjunction with drinking).
At this point, I’ve lost count of the number of times Elon should have been let go. I recall him recently saying that dosing himself with cat tranquilizers was cool and a good business decision actually.
That’s not even getting into turning Twitter into a Nazi bar (and throwing out its extremely valuable branding) or pushing for the cybertruck that cuts its passengers, looks like a dumpster, and corrodes if you look at it funny.
The fact any board of directors considers this man employable at all is mind boggling to me.
Honestly, that’s my main hope as well; that all the charging team talent will disperse across the market and help other chargers spread as well. The article mentioned Tesla having 60% of the fast charger market, so hopefully we will see other companies fill the gap.
My concern is that if no companies pick up the ball Tesla just dropped (or more accurately angrily chucked over the fence), that this could set the EV charging network back significantly; which would definitely be a problem for mass adoption of EVs.
Almost all of the Sony Spider-Man movies since 2008 have been of questionable quality. Even the ones I enjoy (Venom, Madame Webb) are only fun in the so-bad-it’s-good kind of way.
I really don’t have very high hopes for Noir because of that, but I am sure I’ll still be entertained by Nic Cage; and I am a little hopeful since Lord and Miller are involved in some capacity (though I’m not sure what the extent of their involvement is).
I don’t know the actual budget, but I think it probably cost much more than 1kUSD, though probably still less than real human work would cost.
It’s important to note that no shit could last more than a second or two because after that the generated video starts to much more noticably have errors. So at minimum you still need editors (plus the music needed to be composited, etc). Also, as the article notes, all the logos needed to be added in post as well because GenAI cannot reliably do text or logos. With that in mind, I’d guess there was probably a significant amount of “cleaning up” that had to be done in post as well.
With all that said and done, I’m sure the commercial was not exactly dirt cheap, but it WAS probably still cheaper than having dignity and paying humans.
What’s actually kind of wild, though, is a lot of these shots just look like bland stock imagery. And since they couldn’t have any cohesion between shots because of GenAI’s own limitations, the majority of these shots could have been replaced with stock footage and they probably would have only needed to CGI a few different shots…