Posts tagged “screenwriting”

• Most people simply recorded the emergency as it unfolded. A couple of college athletes took action.
• In one of the largest studies ever, scientists found that eating more fiber meaningfully reduced your risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and colorectal cancer. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• Oh, Jason, this is totally my cup of tea: The Greek Mythology Family Tree, Explained
• I just ordered my third set of these awesome 5″ twisty-lock wire loops because I keep finding new uses for them. I also highly recommend these JETech iPhone screen protectors, which I have on all our phones.
• Skier Lindsey Vonn said she almost lost her left leg after suffering a tibia fracture on the second day of the Olympics, adding that having surgery soon afterward was the only thing that spared an amputation.
• The best drone shots of the Olympics – via Kottke
• The U.S. women’s hockey gold medal-winning match was the most-watched women’s hockey game ever. (And then the team politely declined an invitation from the president to attend his State of the Union address.)
• It’s pretty incredible that the same guy who wrote Andor, Rogue One, the Bourne screenplays, and Michael Clayton also wrote The Cutting Edge.

It Could Be All Downhill from Here:

• In any other universe, this would be the biggest story of the month. But in our current dystopian hellscape, it barely made the news: The US Justice Department withheld testimony that POTUS sexually abused a girl when she was 13 or 14. – via @adamjschwarz
• In any other universe, this would be the second-biggest story of the month. But in our current dystopian hellscape, it barely made the news: The US Secret Service shot and killed an armed man who entered the secure perimeter of Mar-a-Lago.
• Companies with backbones should be supported.
• Wired is reporting that a popular right-wing account that called a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes “a masterpiece” appears to be run by a White House staffer.
• What is clear is that Kansas Republicans have weaponized the government to target a tiny subset of an already small portion of the population to score political points and institutionalize cruelty.
• Someone referred to VPOTUS as the Pillsbury Proud Boy and that is simply some top-tier comedy right there.
• An analysis reveals that the social media accounts of Nicki Minaj, which are now advocating for conservative causes, has been amplified by an army of bots and coordinated activity.
• U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas resisted growing calls from fellow congressional Republicans to resign over a report of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire.
• More than a dozen states sued the current administration over its rollback of vaccine recommendations for children, calling the move an illegal threat to public health.

• Banana! An Olympic figure skater from Spain will not be able to perform his normal routine due to a copyright claim from the Minions.
• I love that the Pope published a Holy See about the dangers of AI.
• A 13-year-old boy has been hailed as a hero after swimming 4 kilometres through rough waters for help after his mother and two siblings were swept out to sea off the coast of Australia.
• A photographer found thousands of dinosaur footprints near an Italian Winter Olympic venue.
• I enjoyed reading the essay Dreaming of Sundance by screenwriter Bob DeRosa about his Hollywood experience.
• Amazon is being forced to repeatedly learn a lesson: Use AI slop, and get people yelling at you until you don’t.
• Bad news for people who can’t stop thinking about bad news: Repetitive negative thinking is associated with cognitive function decline.
• Your friends are still acting like everything is normal in America. What do you do? – via Kottke

Jane! Stop this crazy thing!

• What it’s like to see ICE tear gas kids
• Ugh. Three fraternity members were arrested after the death of a Northern Arizona student following a rush event.
• “It’s perhaps unfair for me to call Melania the worst film ever made, since I haven’t seen every film ever made. But I have seen Porky’s 3, Police Academy 6, and many Rob Schneider vehicles, so you know I mean business when I say it’s the worst film I’ve ever seen.”
• This essay on the rise and fall of Scott Adams (and Dilbert) was mostly depressing.

• One of the largest sports collectibles forgery rings in the hobby has been busted in a bizarre fraud and forgery case that has rocked the hobby.
• A professional toy photographer recreated the amazing story of the Shackleton Arctic expedition using LEGO bricks and a Nikon DSLR camera.
• Tragic things are going to happen. Figuring out how and why is the complicated work of serious professionals.
• I really cannot argue with any of the films on this list of The Ten Best Screenplays of All Time, but I dramatically disagree with the order. I also cannot imagine not putting Casablanca first and not including Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or any of a half dozen other Spielberg movies.
• Spontaneously Exploding Prosecco sounds like it would be a good late-90s Italian punk band name.
• The ‘rising fastball’ was a tantalizing myth. Then teams started teaching Induced Vertical Break.
• I agree with most of the points made in this essay on why Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in The Natural still resonates with sports fans. (It’s one of my all-time favorite movies.)
• An Amateur’s Guide to Working with the Media in a Hostage Crisis

• Florida surgeon general says state will eliminate all vaccine mandates.
• Consider those loonies who believe that the Apollo moon landing never happened. Now imagine a world in which everybody is like that about everything—because nothing can be proven. – Our Shared Reality Will Self-Destruct in the Next 12 Months
• The current administration’s shortcut rule-making is shortchanging all of us.
• His Book on Charlie Kirk Was About to Come Out. Then His Subject Was Murdered. (See also: Florida Reporter Suspended After Texting MAGA Congressman to Ask If He Still Supports Campus Carry After Kirk Shooting)
• The Department of Education has announced that it will partner with right-wing think tanks and organizations to develop and spread what it claims is patriotic education.
• It’s painful to read the archived story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them.

• Even in his darkest time, Van Gogh was able to capture, with eerie accuracy, one of nature’s most complex and confusing concepts a century before scientists had the technology to do so. – via my dad
• The Los Angeles Rams will hold a minicamp in Maui this June; players will also help build four Habitat for Humanity homes in Lahaina, a historic town destroyed by wildfires in 2023.
• Self-styled prophets are claiming they have “awakened” chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT.
• And now: The Nations of the World, brought to you by Yakko Warner!
• The Death of the Screenplay Industrial Complex – via The Dailies
• People with the lowest LDL levels are less likely to develop dementia. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• Good News for People Who Like Bad News:
  • Trillion-dollar Pentagon budget proposal cuts competitors out of NASA budget and could add billions to SpaceX defense contracts.
  • The new president of the University of Florida is slated to make up to $3M/year, more than any other public university president in the country and more than twice what he made at the University of Michigan, and all he has to do is be a boot-licking sycophant. I am terribly disappointed in my alma mater and fearful of what this portends.
  • Senate Democrats chose not to use the leverage they had to deal with the latest POTUS crypto scam, effectively allowing politicians to speculate personally in perhaps the most fraud-riddled financial market in human history. Pathetic.
  • ICE efforts in Washington, D.C. thwarted by solidarity.
  • God help us all, but I <gasp> agree with Laura Loomer, regarding the POTUS nomination of Casey Means – who has no government experience and dropped out of her surgical residency program: “[W]e can’t have a pro-COVID vaccine nepo appointee who is currently embroiled in a medical malpractice case and who didn’t go to medical school in the US,” as the surgeon general.
  • I cannot believe this has happened three times now: More Troops Injured as U.S. Planes Keep Plunging into Red Sea

• The key difference between a calque and a loanword is that a loanword isn’t translated into English whereas a calque is. – surprisingly not via kottke, although he posted it, too!
• Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Jose Molina are television writer/producers with over forty years of combined experience — on shows including Lost, Firefly, Sleepy Hollow, and Helix — and they have a great podcast.
• Should We Be Punching Nazis? You already know where I stand on this.
• My sons and I love Cautionary Tales, the Tim Harford podcast about mistakes and what we should learn from them. (He’s also written a children’s book, The Truth Detective: How to Make Sense of a World That Doesn’t Add Up.)
• Horror stories of cryonics: The gruesome fates of futurists hoping for immortality
• Is your heart a hardworking pump or a mystic miracle?
• What are Progressive Web Apps?

• The US government wants to start protecting you (and your kids) from Roblox robux scams. – via Anil
• The Moon is part of the Diocese of Orlando, in accordance with the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which states that “any newly discovered territory was placed under the jurisdiction of the diocese from which the expedition which discovered that territory left.” – via Kent Hendricks
• I can’t be the only GenXer really struggling with the fact that it’s 2025. That number seems impossible to me. It sounds like a year from The Jetsons or Space Mountain. (Related: Wikipedia’s list of movies set in 2025 is somewhat disappointing.)
• I thoroughly enjoyed reading this essay on the evolution of the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade screenplay. – via hiro.report, via Phil Gyford
• Bad news for people who hate good news:
  • In a 6-1 ruling in favor of sixteen youth who sued, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” – via kottke
  • The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear appeals from oil companies challenging a lawsuit in Hawaii that aims to hold them accountable for climate change. – via Crooked Media
  • The US jobs market roared to life in December – via Semafor
  • Trump can still vote after sentencing, but can’t own a gun and will have to turn over DNA sample – via The Associated Press
  • Biden Issues Sweeping Deportation Protections Before Trump Takes Office
• Good news for people who love bad news:
  • Global temperatures in 2024 eclipsed 2023’s average by more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit. That’s an unusually large jump; until the last couple of super-hot years, global temperature records were exceeded only by hundredths of a degree. – via The Morning Wire
  • Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state. – via my dad

• Just in time for Penguin Awareness Day (on Thursday, January 20th), the Wildlife Conservation Society‘s Argentina Program has released amazing underwater selfie video recently taken by a male Gentoo penguin fitted with a special camera.
• Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said, “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.” – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter
• In the city of Poznań, Poland, a group of eight clams controls the local water supply through a clever bio-monitoring system. – via kottke
• I have been trying unsuccessfully for a while now to find the recipe for the Pistachio & Orange “Redemption Cake” that Amelia Le Bruin made on The Great British Baking Show: Holidays (S7: E1 “The Great Christmas Baking Show”). If anyone has any leads, please let me know. [Update: I sent her an Instagram DM and she replied to tell me she’d try to find the recipe in her notes!]
• Oysters and Beer Have Always Been on the Menu at One of America’s Oldest, Most Renowned Restaurants. I have been here many times, including a memorable birthday dinner in my 40s, and can confirm that The Union Oyster House is a national treasure. – via my dad
• Netflix Is Telling Writers to Dumb Down Shows Since Viewers Are on Their Phones – via The Dailies
• The essay Who Goes Nazi? from the August 1941 issue of Harper’s Magazine should be required reading at every high school in America. – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
• It was fun to read about all the wild Christmas gifts NFL quarterbacks got their offensive lineman last week. Did you know that NFL teams are required to provide “three dozen sliced oranges for halftime” for the visiting team? And that each team easily goes through at least 80,000 Uncrustables each year? Oh, and Notre Dame winning the Sugar Bowl on January 2, 2025 ensured a Black head coach will be in an FBS national championship game for the first time ever. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
• People often ask me what I think their children should study to learn how to be a programmer, or create video games or apps and I always answer that they should start with the absolute basics. Learn Bash Scripting in 10 minutes is a great example.

• Congratulations to Dr. Patric Gagne, author of Sociopath: A Memoir, which was recently included in the NPR Books We Loved list for 2024. – via @patricgagne
• This is probably a day late and a dollar short, but I found great success following the suggestions in this How to Cook a Turkey: Turkey Temperature & Doneness guide from ThermoWorks. Maybe bookmark it for next year?
• If, like me, you save every cool knot-tying video you find, give a follow to @knot_short on Threads or Instagram.
• Pretty much everything is 25% off at Field Notes this weekend. An annual subscription makes a great gift for the lovers of little notebooks in your life. [Ed. note: This is not an ad! I just really like the brand.]
• There are far too many football games to watch this weekend. If you get tired of leftovers, bake a batch of my favorite chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. I promise you’ll love them.
• If you are worried about your writing, just remember that somehow, Palpatine returned. – via @zacharyseda
• It’s in the Game: MADDEN NFL on Amazon Prime is a new 4-part documentary series all about the Madden NFL video game (which I’ve been playing for 34 years). There’s a great article at The Athletic with all kinds of details.
• Just started watching the latest Keri Russel show The Diplomat on Netflix. Only through S1E3 but so far it’s at least as good as The Americans, which I loved.
• Selling Christmas wrapping paper that is impervious to standard scotch tape should be considered a war crime.
• Anyway here’s a cheerful piece about how the Sun will eventually destroy all life on Earth (but not by exploding, so, you know, there’s that) – via @astrokatie.com