April 23, 2024

SAD: Jerry Seinfeld Says the ‘Movie Business Is Over’ and ‘Film Doesn’t Occupy the Pinnacle in the Cultural Hierarchy’ Anymore: ‘Disorientation Replaced’ It.

Jerry Seinfeld is finally a movie director with the upcoming premiere of his feature debut “Unfrosted.” Backed by Netflix, the star-studded comedy is a fictional account of the creation of Pop-Tarts toaster pastries. In a new interview with GQ magazine, Seinfeld reflected on his experience jumping into moviemaking for the first time so late in his career.

“It was totally new to me. I thought I had done some cool stuff, but it was nothing like the way these people work,” Seinfeld said. “They’re so dead serious! They don’t have any idea that the movie business is over. They have no idea.”

Asked to elaborate on a more serious note, Seinfeld continued: “Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”

So what, if anything, has replaced film? “Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced the movie business,” he answered. “Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, ‘What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now?’”

There’s no secret to good storytelling. Give audiences flawed but admirable heroes they can identify with, and then put them through hell on the way to victory.

It seems impossible that Hollywood can’t — or won’t — remember that simple lesson, but here we are.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD ONCE AGAIN DOING STRAIGHT UP REPORTAGE:

And as Jonathan Turley writes: “Deactivated:” Columbia Reportedly Blocks Jewish Professor from Access to Campus.

Meanwhile, it’s back to the (virtual) bunkers for the rest of the students and faculty there, as the demons of 1933 and 2020 converge: Columbia University faces calls for tuition refunds as school moves to hybrid classes for rest of semester in wake of anti-Israel protests.

Exit question:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT HAD A REALLY GOOD RUN: After 48 years, Zilog is killing the classic standalone Z80 microprocessor chip. “Last week, chip manufacturer Zilog announced that after 48 years on the market, its line of standalone DIP (dual inline package) Z80 CPUs is coming to an end, ceasing sales on June 14, 2024. The 8-bit Z80 architecture debuted in 1976 and powered a small-business-PC revolution in conjunction with CP/M, also serving as the heart of the Nintendo Game Boy, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Pac-Man arcade game, and the TI-83 graphing calculator in various forms.”

The faster eZ80 — introduced more than 20 years ago — remains in production.

Incredible.

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green

SKYNET SMILES, KNOWING THAT THE TERMINATOR FINALLY HAS A BEST FRIEND TO ROMP AROUND WITH: Watch: Flamethrowing robot dog goes on sale.

A US company has built a flamethrowing robot dog that is available for purchase online.

Called the Thermonator, the four-legged robot comes equipped with an ARC Flamethrower mounted on its back, which is capable of shooting jets of fire up to 30 feet.

Designed by Ohio-based firm Throwflame, the $9,420 (£7,600) robot is not advertised as a weapon, with the manufacturer suggesting possible uses include wildlife control, snow and ice removal and general entertainment.

Throwflame described its creation as the world’s first-ever flamethrowing quadruped robot dog, capable of delivering “on-demand fire anywhere”.

What could possibly go wrong?!

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S COME TO THIS:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HIDDEN COSTS: California’s Exploding Rooftop Solar Cost Shift.

Regardless of what is driving utility costs higher, their impact on rates is multiplied when customers install their own generation and buy fewer kilowatts-hours from the grid. That’s because those households – whether they are customers of the utility or of a community choice aggregator – contribute less towards all of the fixed costs in the system, such as vegetation management, grid hardening, distribution line undergrounding, EV charging stations, subsidies for low income customers, energy efficiency programs, and the poles and wires that we all rely on whether we are taking electricity off the grid or putting it onto the grid from our rooftop PV systems.

Since those fixed costs still need to be paid, rates go up, shifting costs onto the kWhs still being bought from the grid. This will be less true for systems registered after last April when compensation for new systems was made somewhat less generous, but that applies to almost none of the systems installed before 2024, which are the ones I am studying here.)

A decade ago, this was a small concern, because rooftop solar was barely a blip in the total supply picture. In 2014, the homes served by these three IOUs got less than 2% of their electricity off their roofs. Today they get about 20%. As fewer kWhs are sold from the grid, retail rates must rise even more in order to recover the fixed costs of the system.

The problem has become particularly acute in the last four years. During that time, solar capacity on houses has more than doubled at the same time that the utilities’ fixed costs have escalated dramatically due in large part to wildfires and the need for grid hardening against them.

So Sacramento and Washington have been subsidizing activity that will make supporting the electrical grid unaffordable while pushing for the electrification of virtually everything.

But wait, there’s more: California ‘throwing away’ wasted solar power may raise electricity prices. “In California, there are 47 gigawatts of solar power installed atop rooftops, equaling out to over a quarter of the state’s energy. However, during the middle of sunny spring days, the energy produced exceeds demand, meaning prices for electricity will go negative, and solar power is thrown away.”

Posted at 10:38 am by Stephen Green