Movies 2.0

From the always-excellent Daring Fireball:

Natalie Jarvey, writing for The Hollywood Reporter:

“Amazon has not only scored its first Oscar nominations with Manchester, it has also become the first streaming service to earn a best picture nod. Manchester received six total nominations, including Kenneth Lonergan for directing and original screenplay, Casey Affleck for lead actor, Lucas Hedges for supporting actor, and Michelle Williams for supporting actress. The Salesman, Iran’s selection in the foreign-language film category — which Amazon is distributing in the United States — also received a nomination, bringing Amazon’s total nominations to seven.”

Amazing success story for Amazon. There’s been a lot of talk over the last decade or so that Hollywood was wary of Apple doing to them what the entertainment industry thinks they did to the music industry. In the meantime, Netflix and Amazon are kicking their asses.

I spent the first third of my career in the tech industry, and the next third in film, so I saw from the inside the disdain that both of those worlds have for each other.

Tech entrepreneurs long believed that they could bring across their industry’s tools, ideas, and processes, rethinking how film and television is made and distributed to yield better content and broader audiences.  Whereas the studio execs believed those tech folks were hopelessly naive, and totally out of their depth.

Looks like we now know which side was right.

January 26, 2017

Fighting Trump: What Do I Do Next?

This past weekend, I was proud to take part in the NYC Women’s March. Had I been alive at the time, I know I would have wanted to join the 1963 March on Washington, and I suspect we’ll look back on this weekend’s event similarly from decades in the future.

Because I fell behind on podcast listening over the weekend, I got to hear, in a single day, several politically-focused shows covering the inauguration, some recorded before the march, and others recorded after. From that juxtaposition, the power of the protest was immediately clear: before, anyone opposing Trump sounded despondent, somewhat in shock, unable to do anything but mope; after, anti-Trump’ers seemed buoyed up with hope and enthusiasm, ready to make change happen.

But while the march clearly rallied the troops, I don’t think it will make change in and of itself. We now need to channel that renewed energy into concrete action, in ways that are likely to create real and meaningful change.

To that end, I was heartened to discover recently two excellent websites that provide specific guidance moving forward.

The first is Swing Left, which seeks to shift control of the House in 2018 by focusing national Democratic attention on a handful of swing districts, where the last election was decided by a thin margin. Put in your zip code, and the site will point you towards your nearest swing district – in my case, New Jersey's 5th, just across the Hudson River. Then pop in your email address, and you’ll be intermittently pinged (not more than once weekly) with opportunities to fundraise / donate, spread the word on social media, phone bank, canvas, etc., in ways that will help take that district in 2018.

Even nearer-term is 10 Actions / 100 Days, which comes from the organizers of the Women’s March. Each ten days, the site posts a new action you can take right now (the first: “Write a postcard to your Senators about what matters most to you – and how you’re going to continue to fight for it in the days, weeks and months ahead.”), along with step-by-step instructions and tools. For the first week, for example, they provide printable postcards, senators’ addresses, and inspiration for what issues you might want to address.

And finally, a bonus site that’s not directly about action, but is still a hugely valuable way to say well-informed: Track Trump, which summarizes daily the Trump administration’s actual political actions (ignoring crazy tweets / distractions / media circus / etc.), and tracks the degree to which Trump fulfills his “Contract with the American Voter” promises for his first 100 days.

From just the past week, it’s already clear that any hopes of Trump surprising us all positively when he actually got into office were badly misplaced. Things are getting ugly already, and we need to move quickly in response.

Swing Left, 10 Actions / 100 Days, and Track Trump. Visit all three, and get to work.

Cold as Ice

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but I’m a fan of them, especially in water bottles.

I’m always surprised to see how few people bring water with them to the gym in the first place, given how crucial hydration is to performance. Most athletes know that dehydration can reduce their endurance in longer-duration events. But the effect on shorter duration exercise, like sets of weightlifting or CrossFit WODs, is just as impressive: in one study, athletes who were only 2% dehydrated saw their high-intensity exercise performance drop by 45%.

Even fewer people know that the temperature of the water you drink matters, too. Studies have repeatedly shown that drinking colder water helps athletes go longer before reaching exhaustion, at higher mean power output, and improves performance on everything from the bench press to the broad jump.

So, in short, if you’re working out, you should probably be drinking plenty of water, and drinking plenty of cold water, along the way.

That’s where the vacuum comes in. Something like the insulated Kleen Kanteen (my go-to, and The Wirecutter’s top choice) will let you tote 20 ounces of ice cold water to the gym – even if you have to fill it hours and hours in advance (say, filling it with ice water in the morning and then hitting the gym post-work.)

If you’re picking up a Klean Kanteen, I’d suggest you go with the Cafe Cap 2.0 lid. You can sip through it, without needing to unscrew each time you drink, so you’ll drink more frequently. And, as a bonus, you’ll also be less likely to imitate my signature post-workout move: inadvertently pouring the first sip of water from an uncapped bottle down the front of your shirt.

January 20, 2017

Pollute and Die

I was listening this morning to a podcast interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, in which he discussed his very successful track record of environmental activism (including his bipartisan push to defeat Prop 23, a Califronia anti-regulation proposition heavily funded by oil and gas companies, back in 2010).

Arnold pointed out that, currently, the vast majority of environmental lobbying and debate focuses on climate change – obviously, a huge and extremely serious issue, though one where we need to change current actions to address seemingly distant future outcomes.

At the same time, the pollution that’s driving up global temperatures is having huge impact, today, on global health. The WHO estimates that more than 7 million people will die in 2017 due to air pollution, at least 250,000 of them here in the United States.

Despite my support for environmental causes, and my general interest in the policy world, I had absolutely no idea that the current numbers were that high. Indeed, this year, more people will die from air pollution than from war, terrorism, homicide, suicide, and car accidents, combined. That’s a huge clear-and-present danger, though one that environmental activists and lobbyists don’t seem to be effectively communicating.

Sure, we should be focusing on climate change, on the security benefits of energy independence, and the economic and jobs potential of green energy. But we’re killing millions of people around the world – and hundreds of thousands here in the US – every single year with our current environmental policies. That’s something that should be front and center in the push for tighter regulations and smarter investments.

Messaging matters, and it appears, in the push for a cleaner world, that’s where we’re falling short.