Flamin’ Hot Deviance
Abcarian: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and iPhones are ruining my kid and yours
by Robin Abcarian
With apologies to Allen Ginsberg:
I am seeing the best minds of our middle-school generation destroyed by Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and iPhones,
Teenagers on the cusp of young adulthood dragging themselves out of bed each day to mainline TikTok and Snapchat,
Measuring themselves by the yardstick of uber-filtered Kardashian perfection and falling short,
Getting expelled from school for sending AI-generated naked photos of classmates.
I want to howl about what’s happening to our kids. Between the negative brain effects of ultra-processed foods, and what can only be described as smartphone use disorder, something has gone terribly awry.
As it happens, you’ve caught me at a bad moment. In our home lately, the 13-year-old and I seem to be having daily conflicts over food and phones.
When she moved in with me at age 8, she had a smartphone, which I immediately put away. Her preference for ultra-processed food was already well-established; she’d been raised on a diet heavy on fast food and Lunchables.
Navy Seals?
from The Washington Post via Yahoo News!
How many dogs have government jobs? What about sea lions?
by Andrew Van Dam
Washington is going to the dogs – for real this time.
As of 2022, the federal government employed 5,159 German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, beagles, Jack Russell terriers and other forms of everyone’s favorite furry friend. Another 421 worked as canine contractors.
The job descriptions for these four-legged feds range from the sublime – 31 help “park rangers traverse Denali National Park in winter” – to the subprime: Others “detect waterfowl feces” infected with bird flu.
Director BEE
Bret Easton Ellis to Make Directorial Debut With L.A.-Set Horror Movie ‘Relapse,’ Starring Joseph Quinn (EXCLUSIVE)
“Less Than Zero” writer Bret Easton Ellis is set to make his directorial debut with “Relapse,” an elevated horror film he wrote starring “Stranger Things” breakout Joseph Quinn.
Paris-based SND has boarded the project as producer, alongside Adrian Guerra’s Nostromo (“Penny Dreadful”) and Simon Wallon’s Kiss & Kill (“Bonnie”). SND will handle worldwide sales on “Relapse,” as well as French distribution, and will tease the title at the EFM with a sizzle reel.
Quinn, who will next be seen in “Fantastic Four,” “A Quiet Place: Day One” and the “Gladiator” sequel, stars in ”Relapse” as Matt Cullen, who checks into rehab after witnessing a horrific death during a debauched party. Three months later, he is set to get his life back together, staying at his parent’s mansion in the hills of Los Angeles. But things have changed around Matt and everything seems off balance.
Cartoons Still Old-school
Newspaper Cartoonists Rely on Digital Tools, but Not as You’d Expect
I spent dozens of hours last fall interviewing newspaper cartoonists about how they draw their work, assuming that many would have adopted modern tools like a Wacom Cintiq tablet or at least a digital stylus paired with something like an iPad. Instead, I was surprised to find that many rely on traditional media, like ink, paint, and watercolor. Even more surprising? Many younger artists, who had the choice of whether to start in analog or digital, work on paper instead of on screen.
I expected that most artists producing daily cartoons would have made a partial or total conversion to drawing and producing their work digitally, thanks to the advantages in time and effort. Perhaps those who started working before the 1990s would largely stick to traditional media, but I reckoned even some percentage of them would have shifted over. But no. While they don’t draw digitally, they’re happy to leverage digital technologies in other ways.
The persistent use of liquid stuff on paper is partly because modern reproduction technology makes it just as easy to work in older media as with digital tools. The ease of scanning, or even taking high-resolution flat photos of analog work, outweighs the seeming advantages of an all-digital workflow for those who prefer the messy, unpredictable, and sometimes frustrating limitations of materials for the physical feedback, happy accidents, and familiarity they provide.
These interviews were part of my multi-year research for a book, How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page, that I’m currently crowdfunding with an anticipated ship date late in 2024. My book starts in the 1890s and follows North American newspaper comic production and reproduction to the modern days, focusing on how artists drew their strips and worked their way through the transformations necessary to get artwork onto a newsprint page or digital display.
FRIGHT KREWE Season Two
EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK AT SEASON 2 OF ELI ROTH’S ANIMATED HORROR SERIES FRIGHT KREWE
Watch the new DreamWorks Animation trailer for Fright Krewe, the second season of James Frey and Eli Roth’s animated teen horror series.
By Tara Bennett
a’ll, it’s time to get scared again by the good and bad juju mixing it up in the DreamWorks Animation original series, Fright Krewe. The animated series is set in contemporary New Orleans and was created by long-time friends James Frey and Eli Roth. Their first animation collaboration, Fright Krewe is their original contribution to the growing category of entry-level horror, meant to welcome tweens and teens into the genre.
‘We wanted to do a show for parents that love horror movies and want their kids to get into horror movies. Where they could show them something that’s new, something that’s modern, but also beautifully animated,” Roth told SYFY WIRE about he and Frey’s intentions with the series.
Fright Krewe returns March 29 on Peacock with 10 new episodes. Watch the brand-new trailer that teases Belial reanimating an even scarier collection of monsters so he can conquer and reign over New Orleans.
Spoonlady
Collapsing Shelf
Strange rock formations beneath the Pacific Ocean could change our understanding of the early Earth
Our world may seem fragile, but Earth has been around for a very long time. If we ventured far back into the past, would we reach a time when it looked fundamentally different?
The answer lies in some of the earliest extensive relics of Earth’s surface, found in a remote corner of southern Africa’s highveld – a region known to geologists as the Barberton Greenstone Belt.
The geological formations in this region have proved difficult to decipher, despite many attempts. But our new research has shown the key to cracking this code lies in geologically young rocks laid down on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Zealand.
This has opened up a new perspective on what our planet looked like when it was still young.
“In My Eyes”
One Photographer’s Trip Into Punk History
Jim Saah’s “In My Eyes” features photos of artists ranging from Foo Fighters to Minor Threat
Nearly everyone with a foothold in punk rock has some sort of origin story. For photographer Jim Saah, his unlikely path to the music he loved involved a certain cult film. “I discovered punk rock at, of all places, The Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showing at a theater in DC,” Saah tells InsideHook. “They had a DJ, and before the movie started, they played music.”
Young Saah found himself drawn to the music playing at the theater that night: “He was playing a lot of British stuff like The Stranglers and The Buzzcocks and maybe The Sex Pistols. And I thought, What’s this music?”
And so Saah did what countless people before him did: he sought out some local experts. “I went to the record store and asked, ‘Who are these bands?’ The old heads at the record store were great — they were turning me onto stuff and they told me, ‘You know, there’s local punk rock bands too,’” he says.
“My first show was a Minor Threat show,” he adds. “I really got into the scene — the punk scene and the hardcore punk scene.”
They’re Listening To Us
What YOUR music taste actually says about your personality, according to science
By ROB WAUGH
What does it actually say about you if you love chart pop hits, or prefer unwinding with some bass-heavy dance tracks or heavy metal?
Probably not what you expect.
Multiple scientific studies have investigated the personality traits associated with different music genres, and come up with some unexpected facts, like the fact that psychopaths are most likely to enjoy No Diggity by Blackstreet.
If you like popular, chart-topping music, you’re more likely to be an agreeable person.
Meanwhile, people who listen to extreme heavy metal about violence are actually no more likely to be violent themselves (and in fact just find ‘joy’ in the music).
And if you like exaggerated bass in music, it could be bad news.
Secret Cézanne
A Mysterious Cézanne Work Is Discovered in the Artist’s Childhood Home
It’s an entirely unknown work by the French painter.
A new work believed to be by the French painter Paul Cézanne has been found on the walls of his childhood home during renovations, officials announced last week. The work, which measures about 64 square feet, was not included in the 1996 catalogue raisonné by art historian John Rewald.
Sophie Joissains, a French senator and mayor of the town of Aix-en-Provence, shared the news on social media after a conference attended by Philippe Cézanne, the painter’s great-grandson, and experts on the artist from the Société Paul Cézanne and the Musée Granet.
“The walls of the ‘Grand Salon’ in the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, currently being renovated, have just revealed some of the painter’s hidden, unknown treasures,” Joissains said.
The piece was found under wallpaper and plaster in the house’s main living room in August 2023. The home, known as the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, sits on a 12.3-acre property bought by Cézanne’s father, Louis-Auguste Cézanne, in 1859.
Well That Sucks (from, ironically, a lack of sucking)
The Data is Clear: People Are Having Less Sex
And it’s not just the youths!
by RYAN BURGE
There was a bit of kerfuffle on the internet back in August surrounding a piece published with the title “Failure to Launch: Why Young People are Having Less Sex.” Using a survey of Californians aged 18-30, the percentage reporting no sexual partners in the prior year reached an all-time high of 38%.
Here’s an even more eye-raising statistic: in 2021, among that same age group, just 9% of women reported having at least 2 sexual partners. It was 12% of younger men. The widespread belief that these young adults are having a ton of casual sex is demonstrably false. The common perception of ‘sexually promiscuous’ likely doesn’t align with a 25-year-old having only two sexual partners in a year, I’d guess.
But, let me expand the scope of the inquiry even further. It’s not just young people having less sex; this trend spans virtually all adult age groups. People are having less sex.
Here’s how I came to that revelation: it started with the graph below. I had already written the code to do the analysis in prior waves of the General Social Survey and wanted to update the results from the last two years of the GSS.
Who Needs GMT?
‘Cosmic clock’ dates earliest human presence in Europe
By Katie Hunt
Stone tools unearthed in a quarry in Ukraine belonged to ancient humans who used them more than a million years ago, according to new research.
The fresh dating analysis of the artifacts reveals the earliest known presence of hominins in Europe, said Roman Garba, an archaeologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. The first humans to inhabit Europe made their way from east to west, the report also suggested.
Initial dating of the Korolevo archaeological site, discovered in the 1970s, suggested it had been used for more than 800,000 years. Archaeologists have recovered 90,000 stone tools from the site, which lies close to Ukraine’s southwestern border with Hungary and Romania.
God Bless Venice
Where It All Ended
Patmos: The Greek island where the end of the world began
by John Malathronas
The island of Patmos, sitting under perfect blue skies in the eastern reaches of the Aegean sea, may look like a typical vacation destination in Greece, but it isn’t.
It’s where the end of the world began.
Not that you’d guess that, strolling down the winding path in the center of the island, where a sleepy priest tends a souvenir stall.
Yet, this is the place from where infernal visions of mankind’s ultimate downfall sprang – inspiring St. John to write the Book of Revelation which forms the closing pages of the New Testament and gives the Bible some of its most portentous descriptions.
Raising Union Station
Billionaire Todd Graves Hopes to Use Art to Fuel Infrastructure Improvements
Graves plans to display and then donate a group of Carlos Diniz drawings depicting the 1988 renovation of D.C.’s Union Station.
By Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
Todd Graves, founder of the Raising Cane’s restaurant franchise, is hoping an art exhibition will help spur on the long-awaited renovation of Union Station in Washington, D.C.
A proposed $10 billion redevelopment would be the train station’s first major facelift in more than three decades. With an upcoming display of illustrations detailing its last major renovation in the 1980s, Graves hopes to remind the city of the station’s potential.
Currently on display at Raising Cane’s Union Station location, the six drawings were made by Carlos Diniz, one of the most iconic architectural illustrators of the 20th century. Graves, who acquired a dozen of Diniz’s illustrations of the station for around $200,000, will donate the entire batch to a yet-to-be-announced museum in Washington, D.C., later this year.
Subliminal Da Vinci
Art Bites: Did Leonardo Hide Music in ‘The Last Supper’?
Dinner and a show.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (c. 1495-98) which shows the final meeting of Jesus and the 12 apostles, is one of the world’s most famous artworks.
It has been analysed time and time again, its true cast of figures has been questioned, has been found to contain hidden astrological messages, and in 2007 a University of Oxford doctorate candidate found that the masterpiece was also holding a musical secret: a hidden hymn coded in the bread.
Giovanni Maria Pala, an Italian musician, computer technician, and at the time student at Magdalen College, had been fascinated by Leonardo and The Last Supper for years.
He began examining the straight row of scattered pieces of bread that ran along the iconic table, which were present in the banquet as a symbol of the body of Christ.
What Pala found was that, when paired with the hand-placement of the 13 figures, the bread spelled out a haunting 40-second melody when the painting was overlaid with a standard five-line musical staff.
But what if you turn into a monkey?
If you yearn for the void, try floating naked in a dark tank
Depending on who you ask, spending an hour floating naked in a soundproof, lightproof tank with only your own thoughts for company sounds either like a soothing respite from everyday life, or a nightmarish punishment devised by a uniquely devious and vengeful deity.
Personally, I yearn for the void. So I signed up for a session in a float tank. These used to be called sensory deprivation tanks, but the term has fallen out of favor because your senses aren’t fully deprived; the terms of art are flotation therapy or flotation Rest (restricted environmental stimulation therapy).
Isolation tanks were first developed in the 1950s by John C Lilly, a neuroscientist who used them to enhance his psychedelic experiences. They didn’t become commercially available until the 1970s but their popularity quickly grew.
Eno Illuminated
Brian Eno’s New Illuminated Turntable Does More Than Spin Records
The record player doubles as an artwork and can be yours for a mere $25,000.
Musician and artist Brian Eno has released a new edition of a custom-designed turntable that is as much an artwork as a device for playing music.
“When it doesn’t have to do anything in particular, like play a record, it’s a sculpture,” said the artist.
The turntable features a round base, echoing the shape of the platter; the two parts light up and transition among various colors independently of each other, creating what the artist calls “generative ‘colorscapes.’” The first edition of the turntable, produced in 2021, inspired the stage set for U2’s recent shows at the Sphere, in Las Vegas.
It’s Beginning
Private lander makes first US moon landing in more than 50 years
BY MARCIA DUNN
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private lander on Thursday made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years, but managed just a weak signal back until flight controllers scrambled to gain better contact.
Despite the spotty communication, Intuitive Machines, the company that built and managed the craft, confirmed that it had landed upright. But it did not provide additional details, including whether the lander had reached its intended destination near the moon’s south pole. The company ended its live webcast soon after identifying a lone, weak signal from the lander.
“What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” mission director Tim Crain reported as tension built in the company’s Houston control center.
Added Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus: “I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon.”
No worries, Eve made the same mistake.
Investigative Issues: The Apple Vision Pro May Rewire Our Brains in Unexpected Ways
By Adam Rogers
The Vision Pro, like the similarly kitted-out Quest 3 and Quest Pro headsets from Meta, uses what’s known as “passthrough” video — cameras and other sensors that capture imagery of the outside world and reproduce it inside the device. They feed you a synthetic environment made to look like the real one, with Apple apps and other non-real elements floating in front of it. Apple and Meta are hoping that this virtual world will be so compelling that you won’t just visit. They’re hoping you’ll live there.
That, unfortunately, could have some very weird and very messy consequences for the human brain. Researchers have found that widespread, long-term immersion in VR headsets could literally change the way we perceive the world — and each other. “We now have companies who are advocating that you spend many hours each day in them,” says Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. “You’ve got many, many people, and they’re wearing it for many, many hours. And everything magnifies at scale.”
Meaning: Our brains are about to undergo a massive, society-wide experiment that could rewire our sense of the world around us, and make it even harder to agree on what constitutes reality.
Coyote vs. Warner Bros.
The Final Days of ‘Coyote vs. Acme’: Offers, Rejections and a Roadrunner Race Against Time | Exclusive
Warner was seeking $75 – $80 million but rejected offers from Netflix, Amazon and Paramount, insiders tell TheWrap
by Drew Taylor
In early January, “Coyote vs. Acme” producer Chris DeFaria got a startling phone call from a Warner Bros. executive. “They just want to get this behind them,” the executive told DeFaria. “They want to close the books.”
In the words of the Roadrunner: Meep.
The movie, a live-action/animated hybrid that stars Will Forte and the “Looney Tunes” gang, had been earmarked for demolition on Nov. 9. But following the announcement that the movie would be canceled, a firestorm of outrage and indignation erupted. It was heightened by a friends-and-family screening that had already been planned before the cancellation announcement was made. The screening brought more goodwill and an even louder public outcry.
“What was so exciting was that it felt like the film captured the voice of the Looney Tunes that we love in a way none of the other feature versions have ever done,” Paul Scheer, who was at that screening, told TheWrap. (The last movie to feature the characters, 2021’s “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” was pilloried by critics and lost money.)
Carl Weathers Gone
Carl Weathers, Apollo Creed from ‘Rocky’ and ‘Mandalorian’ star, dies at 76
The beloved actor, who also had roles in “Happy Gilmore” and “Predator,” died in his sleep, his family said.
By Diana Dasrath and Antonio Planas
LOS ANGELES — Carl Weathers, the actor best known as Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” movies and more recently for his role in the hit “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian,” died Thursday in his sleep, according to his family.
He was 76.
Weathers got his big-screen break in 1976, when he landed the role of Creed in “Rocky,” according to his bio on IMDb. He continued his role in three other “Rocky” movies. Weathers also landed parts in 1987’s “Predator,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, in Adam Sandler’s “Happy Gilmore” in 1996 and on the small screen in “The Mandalorian.”
Weathers also was the voice for Combat Carl in “Toy Story 4” and other shorts in the beloved Disney-Pixar franchise.
He also earned comedy cred by playing a bizarro version of himself in the cult sitcom “Arrested Development.” Other TV acting credits include “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Magnum P.I.” and “Chicago P.D.”
Koko Meets Mork
Battle of New Canaan
Gates Battle of the Bands FINALE
by Rachel Lampen
Gates Restaurant is celebrating 5-years of championing local music and raising money for Meals on Wheels – in 2023 they presented a check for $4.3k. This highly charged production consists of 4-weekly heats and an electrifying final, hosted by radio presenter Jon Kamal.
The ticketed final on Saturday, February 3rd, will see 4-bands play a 20-minute set from 8pm. Special guest judges have been recruited to decide their fate. This year it is Brooklyn based Paul Green – Founder of School of Rock, PG Academy. His wife Kim France, editor, music writer and author. Renowned international author James Frey and local musician Michael Louis-Smith. Organizer Rachel Lampen says: “The competing bands work so hard and it’s an important time of year to raise money and encourage community spirit. It’s a huge production and I want to personally thank Todd Grosberg for sound, the judges for giving up their time and to Jen and Jay, Owners of Gates Restaurant for putting their trust in me five years ago. Everyone plays an integral part.”
Norman Jewison Gone
Norman Jewison Dies: ‘Fiddler On The Roof,’ ‘Moonstruck’ & ‘In The Heat Of The Night’ Director Was 97
By Tom Tapp
Norman Jewison, who directed Best Picture Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night and nominees Fiddler on the Roof, A Soldier’s Story, Moonstruck and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, also producing the latter four, died peacefully Saturday, January 20. He was 97.
Jewison’s film career spanned more than four decades and seven Oscar nominations — three for Best Director (In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck) and the four for Best Picture. His films received a total of 46 nominations and 12 Academy Awards. In 1999, Jewison was honored with the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award at the Academy Awards. He also collected three Emmy Awards for his work in television.
Mormorio di storni
Production Bowl
Behind the Scenes of the Most Spectacular Show on TV
Months of preparation, hundreds of staff, convoys of cutting-edge gear: inside the machine that crafts prime time’s most popular entertainment.
By Jody Rosen
Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Kansas City Chiefs, the N.F.L.’s defending champions, is a very loud place. Players say that when the noise reaches top volume, they can feel vibrations in their bones. During a 2014 game, a sound meter captured a decibel reading equivalent to a jet’s taking off, earning a Guinness World Record for “Loudest crowd roar at a sports stadium.” Chiefs fans know how to weaponize noise, quieting to a churchlike hush when the team’s great quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, calls signals but then, when opponents have the ball, unleashing a howl that can even drown out the sound of the play call crackling through the speaker inside the rival quarterback’s helmet.
There are others whose work is complicated by the din. Around 11 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 7, Brian Melillo, an audio engineer for NBC Sports’ flagship N.F.L. telecast, “Sunday Night Football,” arrived at Arrowhead to prepare for that evening’s Chiefs-Detroit Lions game. It was a big occasion: the annual season opener, the N.F.L. Kickoff game, traditionally hosted by the winner of last season’s Super Bowl. There would be speeches, fireworks, a military flyover, the unfurling of a championship banner. A crowd of more than 73,000 was expected. “Arrowhead is a pretty rowdy setting,” Melillo said. “It can present some problems.”
Melillo was especially concerned about his crowd mics — three stereo microphones intended to catch the ambient oohs and aahs of fans, mounted atop 16-foot-high painters’ poles that he and a colleague had secured to the railing separating the seats from the field. These needed to be kept at a distance from exploding pyrotechnics and angled away from the blare of the stadium’s public-address system. A perhaps greater hazard was overzealous fans, who are prone to shaking the poles or even pulling them down. “You’ll get people who’ve been tailgating for five hours,” Melillo said. “I might have to bribe some people to stay off those poles.”
Social Divorce
The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms
by Ross Barkan
Empiricism, algorithms and smartphones are out – astrology, art and a life lived fiercely offline are in.
Cultural upheavals can be a riddle in real time. Trends that might seem obvious in hindsight are poorly understood in the present or not fathomed at all. We live in turbulent times now, at the tail end of a pandemic that killed millions and, for a period, reordered existence as we knew it. It marked, perhaps more than any other crisis in modern times, a new era, the world of the 2010s wrenched away for good.
What comes next can’t be known – not with so much war and political instability, the rise of autocrats around the world, and the growing plausibility of a second Donald Trump term. Within the roil – or below it – one can hazard, at least, a hypothesis: a change is here and it should be named. A rebellion, both conscious and unconscious, has begun. It is happening both online and off-, and the off is where the youth, one day, might prefer to wage it. It echoes, in its own way, a great shift that came more than two centuries ago, out of the ashes of the Napoleonic wars.
Ken Block’s Finale
Ken Block’s Final Gymkhana Video Is a Spectacular Showcase of What He Did Best
Elecktrikhana Two: One More Playground is an epic exhibition of car control and cinematography.
Before we tragically lost driving and racing legend Ken Block at the beginning of this year, he had already filmed one last Gymkhana-style video with his Hoonigan crew. That video finally dropped today, and it’s absolutely epic.
“Electrikhana Two: One More Playground; Mexico City in the Audi S1 Hoonitron” features, of course, Block’s incredible driving talents, Hoonigan’s delightful attention to detail, and this bizarre electric Audi that’s somewhere between a rally car and a spaceship going wild in Mexico’s capital.