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While examining film history, it is also well worth exploring the stories of the various unions and guilds that formed as the film industry grew. Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola’s Hollywood Unions thoroughly chronicles the histories of these unions that organized motion picture and television labor. Among the unions and guilds highlighted in this book are IATSE, DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA. These different unions encapsulate the many different types of …

Bluesky has the juice right now, and while it’s slowed down a bit this week, they were adding over 1 million users a day for a bit last week. One sentiment I’m hearing a lot recently is that Bluely “feels like early Twitter,” which to be fair, I feel as well.But you don’t have to look back too far to see this “it feels like early Twitter” sentiment thrown around …

Among Mexico's most highly regarded and awarded writers, Enrique Krauze keynotes at the IPA Publishers Congress in Guadalajara. The post Mexico’s Enrique Krauze at the IPA Publishers Congress: ‘Age of Discord’ appeared first on Publishing Perspectives.

Plårp recounted how hiding in holes, eating crayons, and listening to gnomish alienists are bad for your health.

Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man must have been a success for DC and Marvel, as it was followed by a second crossover starring the pair, although almost everything other than the headliners would be different in the sequel: Different creators, different villains and a different way of assembling and publishing the book. Reading it in 2024, and immediately after reading its predecessor, I think it suffers somewhat in comparison with …

I support statutes that restrict businesses from contractually “gagging” their customers’ reviews. This pernicious business practice emerged around 15 years ago. Eventually, both state legislatures and Congress banned the practice. The flagship law in this area is the Consumer Review Fairness Act, enacted by Congress in 2016. My primer on that law. California enacted a similar law, Civil Code 1670.8, informally called the “Yelp Law” (as in, it protected consumers’ …

Online Album Club tonight. When the host announced it would be an Alanis Morissette record I braced myself for an ordeal, but Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie was an intriguing, surprising treat.

One of the most enduringly popular articles on this website (at least in terms of clicks and re-posts) is a very early one, from 2013. It concerns the graphic identities created for Railtrack’s major stations by Citigate Lloyd Northover. These ones… Firstly – have I really been writing this website on and off for that […]

It’s the season of thanks, and here in Massachusetts public transit, there is much to be thankful for. As someone who watches their TrainTrakr with remorse at how few trains have been on the move recently, I was pleasantly surprised to see a fully-lit board this morning. No more slow zones After two multi-day closures during October, the Orange Line fully reopened on November 2nd, free of speed restrictions for …

“Hume’s Trojan Horse,” my review of Aaron Alexander Zubia’s new book The Political Thought of David Hume: The Origins of Liberalism and the Modern Political Imagination, appears in the Fall 2024 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

Oof. Regardless of your personal takes on Aethy, this closure — specifically, the reason for it — is one hell of a canary . . .

Wow, it has already been one year since I joined NerdPress. And I couldn’t possibly be happier that I did. The NerdPress team are such great people to work with. Everyone is very dedicated to their job, but they are also well balanced people who care about their work, their community, and their core values. They don’t just say so they actually do it. My thanks to Andrew Wilder and …

There's an under-appreciated connection between two of this week's big political stories - Starmer's promise to "crack down hard" on benefit fraud; and the assisted dying bill. The link is James C. Scott's concept (pdf) of legibility, which for my purposes we can understand to mean the degree to which the state can read, and thus control, society. A big question with the assisted dying bill is: are there sufficient …

‘One day, I was summoned to a pub near the Royal Court theatre where Samuel Beckett was looking at my work. “These are wonderful pictures,” he said’I knew Samuel Beckett’s reputation. He didn’t like photographers. He didn’t want them around really. It’s hard to believe I took so many photographs of him. During the 1970s, I photographed him and his rehearsals at the Royal Court theatre in London, and eventually …