With this blocking, Spielberg quickly sets up the geography of the scene, the physical goals of the characters, and even allows for full-body physical comedy to happen within the frame. Other directors would shoot this scene as a wide+closeups, then intercut “to increase tension”.

I love Todd Vaziri’s little nuggets of film analysis (click through to see if you can spot the crew member in this sequence before Vaziri points them out.)

Linkding is a very good name, and I'm always curious about bookmarking tools — although like note-taking tools, I don't think the exact right thing exists. I wonder if Pomato and Linkding could work together.

Hate it, thanks.

The Sourdough Sidekick feeds your starter—so you don't have to!

Just tell it how much starter you need and when, and it handles the rest! Forget the constant feeding, the guilt of discarding, and the stress of keeping your starter alive. Instead, get happy, healthy starter that's ready when you are.

This scene was really something. We are watching early ER episodes at the moment and the commitment to showing the inside of people's bodies has come a very long way in 25 years.

The rig consists of a gurney with a silicone prosthetic of a belly, legs, and a vaginal canal anchored on top. The actress, seated in a chair directly behind the rig, leans over the prosthetic so that her body aligns with the pregnant belly. Her real legs are disguised by the gurney and other medical draping, and the draping also helps disguise two separate puppeteers who crouch in front of the actress between her chair and the rig. One puppeteer uses tubing to add blood and other fluids at appropriate points during the birth; the other has an arm inside the hollow pregnant belly in order to squeeze the silicone baby out of the vaginal canal.

Neon is a cloud database platform that offers serverless postgres. Last time I used postgres I was writing SQL on the command line (I have an awful memory, so this was extremely painful) — but for this project I'm using Neon, and it's such a treat to be able to do basic database stuff in a nice UI without losing any of the power of SQL. I chose Neon because it integrates neatly with Vercel and was ahead of Supabase alphabetically, but so far I'm finding it a bit magical I have to say.

I have been fighting auth for several days — basically haven't done anything else, definitely haven't read anything — and it's finally sorta working and my whole body aches. I switched to Clerk because oh, reasons.

Last fall, David Remnick, the editor, suggested convening a group to talk about the magazine’s house style, to see if any rules might bear reëxamination. The group—comprising copy editors, current and former, and editors—met this past January and came up with a list of styles that might qualify for changes, and in a subsequent meeting the following month the director of copy and production and I came up with a limited list of proposals. It was decided that, while no one wanted to change some of the long-standing “quirky” styles (teen-ager, per cent, etc.), some of newer vintage could go. Along with a few other changes, “in-box” is now “inbox,” “Web site” is now “website,” “Internet” is now “internet,” and “cell phone” is now “cellphone” (though everyone acknowledges that the word “cell” in this context will soon disappear altogether).

At least they have a sense of humour about it.

At first glance, it might appear as though she’s following the same playbook that so many women in tech leadership have played before: downplaying her femininity to be taken seriously.

I really don't approve of this framing, which indicates that a woman wearing a t-shirt is downplaying her femininity. But I do approve of Jay Graber giving Zuckerberg shit, because he thoroughly deserves it.

The game’s premise is straightforward enough. Two hopeful writers, Zoe (Elsie Bennett) and Mio (Kaja Chan) show up at Rader Publishing, eager to have their stories published. Zoe writes fantasy fiction and Mio writes science-fiction, but neither has had success in the cutthroat world of publishing.

A video game about the cutthroat world of publishing! I mean...

Assaf Arkin's Weekend Reading is one of a very small number of newsletters I allow into my primary inbox, and one of many inspirations for this site.

Trey Goff, the chief of staff of the startup nation known as Próspera, tells WIRED that he and other Próspera representatives working under an advocacy group called the Freedom Cities Coalition have been meeting with the Trump administration about the idea in recent weeks. He claims the administration has been very receptive. In 2023, Trump floated the idea of creating 10 freedom cities. Now, Goff says that Próspera’s vision is to create “not just 10, but as many as the market can handle.” They hope to have drafted legislation ready by the end of the year.

This is such utter wtf nonsense.

Gene Hackman’s wife died of hantavirus, which I had heard of but knew nothing about.

Hantavirus refers to a family of viruses that are carried by rodents. It is often transmitted to humans by inhaling particles from dried mouse droppings. In North America, Sin Nombre virus is the most common form of this virus, said Sabra L. Klein, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

A few weeks back, Ross Chaldecott, CEO of Kinde spoke to a product forum I'm part of. I had not previously heard of Kinde, but Ross was terrific and when I realised I needed auth for my funny little CMS I decided to give it a shot. They've got a sufficiently generous free tier and the process of getting set up could not have been more seamless. My needs are incredibly basic and I have no idea whether or if Kinde is suitable yet for big complex use-cases, but it's nicely documented and neatly designed. Ross also says many of the correct words about how to run a software product organisation.

When I heard the news about Gene Hackman’s death and the strange circumstances surrounding it, I assumed foul play (murder-suicide?). The reality somehow seems sadder and stranger: Hackman’s wife died of hantavirus, and Hackman died in the same house some days later — perhaps not even aware that his wife had died, according to CNN.

This is the first production post on the Bespoke Artisanal link-blogging CMS I've been building obsessively during the waning weeks of my unemployment.