Weekend Reads (March 22): Richard Scarry’s Legacy, Shakespeare & Math, Looney Tunes, Roku Ads
Recommended weekend reading material for March 22, 2025.
Every week, I compile a list of articles in order to give subscribers like you something interesting and thought-provoking to read over the weekend.
Chris Ware pays tribute to the works of illustrator Richard Scarry, who’s best known for such childhood classics as 1974’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go and 1963’s I Am a Bunny.
Scarry’s guides to life both reflected and bolstered kids’ lived experience and in some cases, like my own, even provided the template for it. And while often sweet and quiet in its depiction of a picture-perfect society functioning measuredly — was Busytown urban or suburban or . . . European? (Where did all those Tudor homes and corner groceries come from, anyway?) — there’s just enough innocent mayhem and tripping and falling to hint at a darker side of things, like failing 1970s marriages and the things on television news that adults were always yelling about.
Via Daring Fireball. I spent countless hours as a kid poring over the pages of my grandparents’ copy of Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, just as I spent countless hours reading I Am a Bunny to my own kids when they were younger.
William Shakespeare’s plays were influenced by the mathematical advancements of his era, such as the concept of zero.
With 2023 marking 400 years since the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, it is exciting to see how the Bard’s plays spoke to significant developments in the 16th-century mathematical world.
Shakespeare’s plays registered the 16th-century crisis of classical mathematics in the face of newer ideas. But they also offered space for audiences to come to terms with these new ideas and think differently about the world through the lens of mathematics.
Via 1440.
James Cameron’s The Abyss is one of those movies that I can watch anytime, anywhere. Kali Wallace dives into (npi) the film’s insane production.
That on-set report in Starlog describes the filming of one of the movie’s best, more harrowing scenes: the part where the crane from the surface dislodges Deepcore and the rig begins to flood. It’s a tremendous sequence in the film, packed with panic, confusion, and tragedy as the characters rush to seal off parts of the flooding rig. It should come as no surprise by now that this scene was filmed by sending a flood of 50,000 gallons of water into the set, where the actors were slammed and drenched and tossed around.
And, of course, they had to do it at least three times, because nothing is ever perfect on the first take.
So, was it worth it? It depends on who you ask. In all interviews, then and now, Cameron seems to think it was. Members of the cast have always been less enthusiastic. I do think the film’s real-for-real production adds a great deal to the end result and makes all of the strong elements of the story — the disaster, the escalating danger, the problem-solving — carry even more weight. But I wasn’t the one getting full-body slammed by 50,000 gallons of cold water multiple times in a row to make it look good.
Tales of The Abyss’ difficult production are nigh-legendary. At one point, female lead Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio left the set and refused to work anymore because she was so traumatized by the effort. Director Cameron nearly drowned during the filming of a particular scene. And male lead Ed Harris compared making the film to being a Vietnam POW.
If you’re a Max subscriber and you want to watch some classic Looney Tunes, you’re out of luck.
Warner Bros. Discovery has removed the entire lineup of classic Looney Tunes shorts (1930-1969) from its streaming service, Max. The company confirmed the move to Deadline, saying the streamer will prioritize adult and family programming, rather than content for kids.
Back in 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery also removed hundreds of Looney Tunes episodes from Max, making it nearly impossible to (legally) watch some of the most classic animation of all time. And in 2023, they shelved the Coyote vs. Acme film despite it generating some positive buzz.
What a strange time to be alive, when film and TV execs don’t seem to care about film and TV.
Related: Back in 2023, Disney+ removed dozens of titles from its streaming catalog — including Crater, The Mysterious Benedict Society, and The World According to Jeff Goldblum — in order to get a tax write-off.
Also related: The aforementioned Coyote vs. Acme might finally be coming to theaters. Ketchup Entertainment, which previously rescued another Looney Tunes movie, The Day the Earth Blew Up, from the Warner Bros. vault, is negotiating a deal to acquire the rights to the film.
Attention Roku users: Prepare to see ads before you even start watching anything.
Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS’ home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: “I just turned on my Roku and got an ... ad for a movie, before I got to the regular Roku home screen.” Multiple apparent users reported seeing an ad for the movie Moana 2. The ads have a close option, but some users appear to have not seen it.
When reached for comment, a Roku spokesperson shared a company statement that confirms that the autoplaying ads are expected behavior but not a permanent part of Roku OS currently. Instead, Roku claimed, it was just trying the ad capability out.
And thus, enshittification continues apace.
The U.S. recording industry experienced a record-high revenue of $17.7 billion in 2024, a modest improvement over 2023. Much of that revenue was driven by streaming and vinyl sales.
Most physical music formats saw a continued resurgence, with total revenues increasing by 5% to $2 billion. Vinyl was the standout performer yet again, growing by 7% to $1.4 billion, marking its 18th consecutive year of growth. Vinyl albums outsold CDs, with 44 million units sold compared to 33 million CDs. A year prior, those numbers were 43.2 million and 37 million, meaning the gap between the physical cousins is growing. Despite these trends, CD revenue still grew by 1% to $541 million compared to $537.1 million.
The article also notes that digital downloads were down 18% compared to 2023, from $434.1 million to $336 million.
Pitchfork has shared their list of the 50 most anticipated albums of Spring 2025, including new albums from Bon Iver, Car Seat Headrest, Japanese Breakfast, Lana Del Rey, LCD Soundsystem, and The Waterboys.
And speaking of upcoming albums, A Closer Listen has shared its picks for the best experimental, electronic, ambient, drone, and modern composition releases coming this spring.
Despite having some highly acclaimed titles, including Severance, Ted Lasso, and Shrinking, Apple’s losing over $1 billion a year on their streaming service.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, on quarterly conference calls with analysts, routinely tips his hat to Apple TV+ shows and awards they win. But the company doesn’t break out any data on the streamer, which is buried in the Services division — one of the company’s fastest growing — along with myriad other subscription platforms like Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness, Apple News+, Apple Books as well as the Apple App Store, iCloud, Apple Care, Apple Pay and more. The segment had revenue of $96 billion for FY 2024 that ended in September.
A billion dollar loss sounds pretty bad. But considering that Apple had a total revenue of $391 billion in 2024 and is currently valued at well over $3 trillion, I think they’ll be OK.
Ted Lasso was recently renewed for a fourth season, but Lasso fan Kevin Fallon isn’t too happy about the prospects of more soccer-related hijinks.
The idea that the show’s tone and mere existence is a prescription for some sort of societal healing during our current maelstrom of violent awfulness is malpractice. It would be like Democrats thinking that releasing a video of celebrities singing “Fight Song” again would be at all helpful in combating current circumstances. (And given the party’s current struggle to do anything remotely impactful, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did try that throwback stunt — and that’s the problem.)
I love Ted Lasso. I love its characters. I cherish the role it legitimately had in cheering up its truly hurting audience. But can’t we let that be?
I loved the first season of Ted Lasso. (“[A]n outpouring of optimism, encouragement, and sheer goodness that feels like nothing short of a balm during 2020” is how I put it.) Seasons two and three had their moments, but they never quite lived up to that special first season. Although I’m curious about a fourth season, I’m also deeply skeptical given the show’s trajectory and how season three ended. But maybe Coach Lasso will surprise and delight us one more time.
In order to get the massive amounts of data needed to train their AI tools, Meta turned to LibGen — one of the biggest online libraries of pirated books — as a way to get around copyright issues and compensating authors.
Meta employees spoke with multiple companies about licensing books and research papers, but they weren’t thrilled with their options. This “seems unreasonably expensive,” wrote one research scientist on an internal company chat, in reference to one potential deal, according to court records. A Llama-team senior manager added that this would also be an “incredibly slow” process: “They take like 4+ weeks to deliver data.” In a message found in another legal filing, a director of engineering noted another downside to this approach: “The problem is that people don’t realize that if we license one single book, we won’t be able to lean into fair use strategy,” a reference to a possible legal defense for using copyrighted books to train AI.
Court documents released last night show that the senior manager felt it was “really important for [Meta] to get books ASAP,” as “books are actually more important than web data.” Meta employees turned their attention to Library Genesis, or LibGen, one of the largest of the pirated libraries that circulate online. It currently contains more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. Eventually, the team at Meta got permission from “MZ”—an apparent reference to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—to download and use the data set.
It’s a well-known fact that AI companies are doing everything they can to avoid compensating authors and other creators due to the high costs that would entail. But Meta’s deliberate use of pirated materials is something else entirely. (Meta’s current worth is nearly $1.5 trillion. They could easily work out some compensation deals with publishers; they’re just choosing not to do that.)
Molly White is one of the most astute tech pundits currently writing today, and she’s published an excellent article concerning free and open access to information in the age of generative AI.
When we freely license our work, we do so in service of those goals: free and open access to knowledge and education. But when trillion dollar companies exploit that openness while giving nothing back, or when our work enables harmful or exploitative uses, it can feel like we’ve been naïve. The natural response is to try to regain control.
This is where many creators find themselves today, particularly in response to AI training. But the solutions they're reaching for — more restrictive licenses, paywalls, or not publishing at all — risk destroying the very commons they originally set out to build.
Via Pixel Envy.
I’d love to see some sort of legal framework developed to maintain a healthy and respectful relationship between AI companies and creators. But given their current reluctance to entertain any such limitations on their actions, I suspect that it’s going to take losing a few major lawsuits to get AI companies to come to the table. And in the meantime, they’ll keep gobbling up whatever they can find.
From the Blog
Opus primarily focuses on music, movies, anime, and other pop culture artifacts. But as the Trump administration continues to flex its autocratic muscles, it’s important to remain vigilant against their abuses of power. Which is why I took a break from my normal coverage to write a couple of posts about important and significant Black individuals being scrubbed from government websites.
I wrote about Medal of Honor recipient Charles Calvin Rogers and baseball legend Jackie Robinson, both of whom were (temporarily) deleted from the Department of Defense’s website in order to appease Trump’s anti-DEI lunacy.
Unfortunately, “gender and race equality” has become synonymous with “DEI,” which is officially anathema in the Trump administration. Government agencies and departments are now scrambling to remove anything that might portray diversity, equity, and/or inclusion in a positive light.
This has led to several examples of anti-woke idiocy, including: removing educational materials that mention the Tuskegee Airmen and female WWII pilots; flagging photos of the “Enola Gay” (the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima); deleting information about Black, Hispanic, and women veterans; banning events for Black History Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and other observances; and now, it seems, diminishing the valor and legacy of a military hero simply because he sought to improve the lives of his fellow soldiers.
This post is available to everyone (so feel free to share it). However, paying subscribers also get access to exclusives including playlists, podcasts, and sneak previews. If you’d like to receive those exclusives — and support my writing on Opus — then become a paid subscriber today for just $5/month or $50/year.