Why I Decided to Leave Substack - A Media Operator
A Media Operator I feel that even more when it comes to the whole “creator economy.” This notion that everyone should have a paid newsletter is bizarre. Some content should be paid for directly while other content should be used as a tool to monetize indirectly. READ MORE
Discord will be able to screen share from iOS and Android devices starting today – TechCrunch
TechCrunch Discord will be able to screen share from iOS and Android devices starting todayThe super popular chat app Discord is getting a much-requested feature starting today: mobile screen sharing. READ MORE
Paul McCartney surprises with 'McCartney III' | ALBUM REVIEW - RIFF
RIFF It’s usually too much to ask for: a legitimately good new chunk of music standing on merit alone from the guy who could’ve retired 40 years ago and still been called the world’s greatest living songwriter today.At times over the years it seems he suddenly realized he’s Paul McCartney and hauls everything that entails into the nearest studio because he feels he has to. READ MORE
Twitter launches its voice-based ‘Spaces’ social networking feature into beta testing – TechCrunch
TechCrunch The test additionally adds new reaction emojis — the 100, raised hand, fist, peace sign and wave — along with reporting and blocking tools, a “very early version” of automatic transcriptions, and the ability to share tweets into a Space.
Steve Gillmor — Twitter is throwing out stuff like Periscope as it goes after a more politically correct Clubhouse. Feels like Jack Dorsey is relaxing into CEO middle age, which might prove surprisingly productive, albeit for the user-found combinations of these various experiments.
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Inside Bob Dylan's Lost Interviews and Unseen Letters
Rolling Stone In the Newport Folk Festival program of 1963, Dylan wrote that Glover was “a friend to everything I am … who feels and thinks and walks and talks just like I do.”“You didn’t sing songs like that and live a normal life,” Dylan said. READ MORE
David Fincher’s Impossible Eye
The New York Times One of the most remarkable techniques Fincher has helped to pioneer is called shot stabilization. Since “The Social Network,” he has captured a frame as much as 20 percent larger than the one he needs for his final picture. This creates a buffer of excess visual information that allows him to digitally correct for the slightest trembles, lurches and late starts, erasing all imperfections from the camera movement. His shots come to represent the gliding, unmediated gaze of some impossible — and faintly malevolent — eye: “I want it to feel omniscient,” Fincher said.Stabilization also allows Fincher and his editors to reframe entire shots after the fact and to construct seamless split-screen composites, suturing different takes into one. READ MORE
How Francis Ford Coppola Got Pulled Back In to Make ‘The Godfather, Coda’
The New York Times The Best of 2020 Best Comedy Best TV Shows Best Books Best Movies Best Albums How Francis Ford Coppola Got Pulled Back In to Make ‘The Godfather, Coda’ The director and cast, including Al Pacino, Sofia Coppola and Andy Garcia, look back at making “Part III,” which has been re-edited (and retitled) for its 30th anniversary.Image Another incentive for Coppola to return was to team up again with Puzo, his esteemed screenwriting partner, and compose the script for “Part III”: one branch of the story would follow a new family member, Vincent (played by Andy Garcia), an illegitimate child of Michael’s brother Sonny, as he tries to earn his place in the Corleone clan, while another branch would chronicle Michael’s efforts to buy his way to legitimacy and absolution. READ MORE
TV In Transition - TV[R]EV
TV[R]EV The goal across all of these plays would be twofold: get viewers to subscribe to the network’s streaming app and keep viewers who are not ready to subscribe hooked on the free app, where the network can earn ad revenue and continue to try and upsell them while capturing their email addresses for better ad targeting. READ MORE
Putin Said to Have Two Identical Offices: One in Moscow, the Other at the Beach
NYT > World News The Coronavirus Outbreak live Latest Updates Maps and Cases The Latest Vaccine Information Vaccine Tracker FAQ Putin Said to Have Two Identical Offices: One in Moscow, the Other at the Beach The supposed ruse has enabled him to spend time at a government residence on the Black Sea without risking a potential political backlash, a Russian news site reported.The report cited public records of flights by presidential planes that seemed to contradict Kremlin statements about Mr. Putin’s whereabouts, as well as several unnamed sources said to have knowledge of the duplicate office in the Black Sea city of Sochi. READ MORE
Who’s Who in ‘Mank’: A Guide to the Real-Life Players
The New York Times Hecht hailed from the quick-witted New York circles once frequented by Mankiewicz, who telegrammed his friend an oft-quoted invitation to Hollywood: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots.” In an ensemble scene in “Mank,” Hecht and Mankiewicz join a murderers’ row of contract screenwriters for a conference: the Broadway comic genius George S. Kaufman, the humorist S.J. Perelman, and two Hecht collaborators, his “Front Page” co-writer, Charles MacArthur, and the youthful Charles Lederer, a nephew of Marion Davies. READ MORE
Opinion | Movie Theaters Are Dying. Did Jason Kilar Deal the Final Blow?
The New York Times It sounds like there’s been rumors of HBO with CNN. And now, there’s more stories about CNN doing its own streaming service, which I think is actually brilliant, because I think cable is really going to be over at some point. And a lot of it is worthless. So when you think about —jason kilarTell me how you really feel?kara swisherWell, it’s just like — it’s just shitty stuff, people and pundits that have no information. Don’t get me started on this issue. But I think they’re not good products. That’s all. So are you thinking of spinning off CNN — selling it?
Steve Gillmor — Given the pushback from Hollywood A-lister directors and theatrical chains, you'd think Warner Media was out over their skis. That might turn out true, but this conversation suggests a lot of thought and future proofing has gone into this decision to (at least for a year) gut the Hollywood windowing business model in favor of subscription streaming television.
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Paul McCartney’s Surprisingly Playful Pandemic Album - The New Yorker
The New Yorker Time passes, he notes, and someday the trees will cast shade. The implication is that McCartney won’t be around to see them, but, by doing his part, he has helped a future visitor. The sentiment is lovely, and it harks back to a different generation’s sense of what’s possible. We’d all like to believe that love will prevail, that the earth will heal itself, and that we’ll leave things better than we found them. He’s written this song countless times. But it sounds a little different now. ♦ READ MORE
Revisit George Harrison and Bob Dylan jamming to the classic ‘Gates of Eden’ - Far Out Magazine
Far Out Magazine It’s a song direct from Dylan’s finest record Bringing It All Back Home and sees Harrison join in like an unquestionable fan. There’s something utterly joyous about this collaboration, likely because we know that both men relished the sessions so much. For Harrison, it was the break from the Beatles he needed and, for Dylan, it was an artist with whom he could stand toe to toe and not be embarrassed. You can feel the comfort the two share in the jam session. READ MORE
Social Networking 2.0
Stratechery by Ben Thompson I would go further: Twitter’s incompetence didn’t simply make Facebook’s advertising business look more dominant than it should have; it led all of us — including the FTC — to miss the point that friends and family was Social Networking 1.0: something imported from the analog world that, as time goes on, will be viewed as inferior to the far richer universe that is Social Networking 2.0.In particular, because a personal social network is generally more valuable to a user when more of that user’s friends and family are already members, a new entrant faces significant difficulties in attracting a sufficient user base to compete with Facebook. READ MORE
Apple’s seismic change to the mobile ad industry is drawing near, and it's rocking the ecosystem
Tech But many in the mobile ad ecosystem have said that Apple hasn't given them clear guidance or communication along the way as they retool their apps to comply with the new rules related to the tracking systems known as Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA).When Apple announced the new IDFA rules in June, app makers who rely on targeted mobile ads started scrambling to figure out what was going on. READ MORE
Live-streaming platform BoxCast raises $20M
TechCrunch The company has created several different video encoder devices, but Daily said the “small box” is just a one piece of BoxCast platform, which is designed to cover all your live-streaming needs, with support for 1080p broadcasting; streaming to Facebook Live, YouTube and your own website; analytics and more — plus there are add-ons like automatic scoreboard displays and event ticketing.And it’s no surprise that 2020 has been a “watershed moment” for the company, as Daily put it, with BoxCast now live streaming millions of events per year — everything from sports to religious services to virtual safaris offered by Sri Lanka’s tourism board . READ MORE
‘Using all parts of our business as innovation’: Vox Media Publisher Melissa Bell on future content strategies
Digiday One thing that came across in a very strong way was that our audience wants there to be some journalism outlets that are still free and accessible to others who can’t pay for journalism. They felt like contributing, in part, to allow other people access to Vox. There was a desire from people to support us, but also desire to make sure that we were still accessible to others. READ MORE
Paul McCartney, Rick Rubin Teaming On 6-Part Docuseries; First Time Original Masters Have Left Abbey Road Studio
Deadline EXCLUSIVE: Paul McCartney and top record producer Rick Rubin are joining forces on a six-part documentary series that will amount to a behind-the-scenes magical mystery tour of McCartney’s unbelievable musical journey.
Steve Gillmor — The trailer shows some old Beatle tracks that just leap off the tape.
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‘Like a Hand Grasping’: Trump Appointees Describe the Crushing of the C.D.C.
NYT > Top Stories By Noah Weiland ATLANTA — Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, were installed in 2018 as two of the youngest political appointees in the history of the world’s premier public health agency, young Republicans returning to their native Georgia to dream jobs.Last week, the editor in chief of the C.D.C.’s flagship weekly disease outbreak reports — once considered untouchable — told House Democrats investigating political interference in the agency’s work that she was ordered to destroy an email showing Trump appointees attempting to meddle with their publication. READ MORE
Substack launches an RSS reader to organize all your newsletter subscriptions
The Verge Substack seems to be thinking about its reader as a companion to its newsletters, more than as a competitor to full-on RSS readers like Feedly.
Steve Gillmor — Competition with Feedly may grow the market. A third vendor may come in and combine the two feature sets into a newsletter studio.
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