Weekend Reads (Apr 2): Spotify, Anime, the Oscars, Video Stores
Weekend Reads (Apr 2): Spotify, Anime, the Oscars, Video Stores
Recommended weekend reading material for April 2, 2022.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
If you’re a paying subscriber, be sure to check out the latest subscriber-only playlist that came out yesterday, and keep your eyes peeled for the related podcast episode, which will be dropping soon.
Damon Krukowski reveals how Spotify uses lots of positive-sounding numbers to make it sound like they’re benefiting artists. Only, the numbers don’t add up.
So never mind the financial shenanigans, which Spotify chooses to discuss in the most mystifying ways possible. What Spotify is concretely telling us, amid the blizzard of randomly defined categories and figures that don’t add up, is that the bulk of artists on the platform are probably not who we thought they were. 98% are not professionals, at least as defined by Spotify. And 67.5% don’t make albums at all.
No wonder Spotify doesn’t seem to care what professional musicians think about the platform.
Animation Obsessive delves into the complicated and contentious relationship between Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream.
Pointing out that Aronofsky took from Perfect Blue is different from condemning him for it, although you can do both. After all, every piece of art takes from somewhere. Kon was open about how much he learned from foreign filmmakers like Terry Gilliam. Meanwhile, Perfect Blue’s film-within-a-film Double Bind plays much the same role in its story as Invitation to Love does in Twin Peaks (a series that went big in Japan).
At the same time, though, there’s an ethical question.
Related: How, exactly, do you define anime?
It seems like everyone had an opinion regarding the Will Smith/Chris Rock incident at this year’s Oscars. Unfortunately, some expressed their opinions to the wrong Will Smith and Chris Rock.
The internet is a mess, especially after something big happens that pierces the online zeitgeist and bleeds it dry. Right now, that’s the fact that newly-minted Oscar winner Will Smith seemingly slapped two-time Oscars host Chris Rock over a poor ‘joke’ regarding Jada Pinkett Smith at last night’s 2022 Academy Awards. And as millions rushed to post their feelings about something that had nothing to do with them, people who are not the Will Smith or the Chris Rock — but still happen to share their legal names — were caught in the social media crossfire.
If we learn nothing else from this situation, then at least let us learn the value of taking 5 seconds to make sure we’re tweeting at the right people.
Of the many, many opinions that have been expressed so far, these are some of the few that I’ve found most interesting and worth considering: “Will Smith Did a Bad, Bad Thing” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, “Jada Pinkett Smith Shouldn’t Have to ‘Take a Joke.’ Neither Should You” by Roxane Gay, and this Twitter thread by Myron J. Clifton.
On Friday, Smith formally apologized, stating that he “betrayed the trust of the Academy,” and resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Resignation means that he can no longer submit votes for the Oscars, but can still be nominated and attend future ceremonies — unless the Academy decides to levy further disciplinary actions.
Of all the things worth criticizing about this year’s Oscars program, its disparagement of animation and obeisance to Disney ought to rank right near the top.
If the entire set-up didn’t stink, the three actresses made it worse by claiming that animation is an exclusively children’s art form. James and Bailey explained that “so many kids watch these movies over and over and over and over and over and over and over,” before Scott chimed in, “I see some parents out there know exactly what we’re talking about.” This happened on an evening where the stunningly adult work Flee was among the nominees. (Flee, which was also nominated for international feature and documentary feature, went home empty-handed.)
I know the Oscars’ relevance has dramatically reduced in recent years, but it still feels incredibly unprofessional (at the very least) to dismiss an entire medium.
Back in the ‘80s, Ken and Roberta Williams founded Sierra Online and created groundbreaking video games like the King’s Quest series. After a long hiatus, the couple are back and remaking one of the games that inspired them.
Colossal Cave 3D will be the Williams’ first new game project in more than 20 years, and actually came about primarily because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Ken and I were locked down like everyone,” Roberta Williams told PC Gamer. “Ken was bored and I suggested he write a book about Sierra. The process of writing the book brought back long forgotten memories resulting in Ken deciding to learn Unity and deciding to make a game.”
Chris Logan’s Call Video might very well be last video store in Nebraska, and its time is running out. And when it inevitably goes, a very unique culture will go with it.
More than jobs and incomes have been lost. Trips to the video store helped cement a local “movie culture” and contribute to the social fabric of a community in small but meaningful ways. Customers conversed with employees, and with other customers, about what to watch and why.
“The loss of all those things means that we are relating to movies in a very, very different way than we used to,” Herbert said, “and also interacting with each other about movies differently, too.”
The convenience of Netflix et al. is unbeatable, but I really do miss perusing the shelves and aisles looking for interesting movies that you’d never find anywhere else. And unfortunately, many of the titles that you might have found even at the local Blockbuster will probably never appear on a streaming service.
Related: Netflix’s DVD library used to contain over 100,000 titles; now it contains less than 4,000.
In the largest cryptocurrency-related hack to date, a hacker stole $625 million from the NFT-based video game Axie Infinity.
According to Sky Mavis, the Ronin attack was possible partly because of a shortcut the company had taken to relieve an “immense user load” on its network in November of last year — months after the game exploded in popularity in the Philippines and other countries where players relied on it as a full-time job. The system was discontinued in December, but the permissions that allowed it were never revoked. In addition to compromising four of Sky Mavis’ own nodes, the attacker exploited them to get access to one managed by the community-owned Axie DAO. After compromising five of the nine validator nodes, the attacker could effectively override any transaction security and withdraw whatever funds they liked.
Related: Dan Olson explains why NFTs are a terrible idea.
Investigators trying to track down the wealth of Russia’s secretive oligarchs have found a useful new tool: Instagram.
Their decades of fancy living at the highest possible level of luxury have turned out to be enormously useful for investigators tracking down the assets of Russia’s sanctioned elite. That’s because, in multiple cases, a few careless Instagram posts have blown up the best defense for their secret empires: Anonymity.
Oligarchs themselves rarely use Instagram to accidentally crack open a window into their high living. Rather, it’s the people partying with them: A stepdaughter, an ex-wife, or in least one infamous case, an escort.
Via NextDraft.
Related: The kids of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs are well-known for flaunting their wealth on Instagram, but some have been using the platform to criticize Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Finally, astronomers have discovered the most distant star in the universe, which they’ve named Earendel (or “morning star” in Old English).
The newly detected star is so far away that its light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, appearing to us as it did when the universe was only 7 percent of its current age, at redshift 6.2. The smallest objects previously seen at such a great distance are clusters of stars, embedded inside early galaxies.
The star was formed within the first billion years of the Big Bang, giving astronomers new insights into the universe’s earliest phases. My favorite detail of the story, however, is that Earendel was discovered via gravitational lensing, i.e., a massive galaxy cluster is located between Earth and Earendel, and its extreme gravity is a natural magnifying glass that helped astronomers see the star.
Related: The oldest known star in the universe is Methuselah, which is 14.5 billion years old (give or take 0.8 billion years). Which means that Methuselah somehow appears to be older than the universe — an obvious conundrum.
From the Blog
My latest piece for Christ and Pop Culture is a review of Natalie Bergman’s Mercy, a stunning gospel album from 2021 that’s filled with grief and pain, but also deep faith and love.
I don’t want to leave you with the impression that Natalie Bergman’s Mercy is nothing but gloom and doom. It’s an exceedingly sad album, to be sure, filled to the brim with Bergman’s hurt and longing. But it’s also filled with incredible love. Indeed, the reason it’s so sad — I dare you to listen without getting choked up at least once or twice — is precisely because of all that love. If Bergman’s songs weren’t so filled with love for both of her fathers, then I doubt they would hit so hard, or feel so universal.
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