Tag: Editors
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Why do I defend Hollywood?
Why do I worry about the survival of Hollywood? I haven’t liked anything they produced since 1970, and very little since 1950. Everything they produce now is intentionally awful, devoid of empathy and depth. Mike Gioia writes a spirited defense of the new independent producers, emphasizing that AI will give more power to the independents…
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Proves my point
The Christians are bashing the pres of Harvard for doing EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED HER TO DO until right now. Before October they were bashing university presidents for opposing free speech. Now the Harvard pres is supporting free speech as the Christians wanted, but supporting it for people the Christians hate. This idiocy proves my…
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Metrology lesson
The Pew Center has some graphs on the decline of newspapers. They broke a basic rule of metrology. Always put measurements into context. Know the baseline and measure in proportion to the baseline. Pew’s graph of newspaper total circulation (brown line) seems to show that newspapers were starting to lose in 1990, when digital media…
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Electrotyping, part 2 of 3
Part 1 showed the essential process of electrotyping in a small-scale experimental setup. Real factories like Kellogg’s Patent Insides used bigger machines in mass production. Here again is the Kellogg building in KC, placed in my down-home scene. Most of the Kellogg building was devoted to electrotyping, with hot-lead composition and the writers and researchers…
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Still good advice
Continuing on the value of condensation. From an 1899 book Making a Country Newspaper: = = = = = START QUOTE: Newspaper English to be good must be simple and concise. Clearness and brevity of statement are all-important. This does not imply that the narrative should be limited to a few facts. On the other…
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Not worth the price.
Kirn and associates have started up a printed newspaper. Since I’ve been mouthing off about real printing and real newspapers for a long time, decided to put my moneying where my mouthing is. Got the first issue. It’s nicely wrapped and nicely printed, but it doesn’t have ANYTHING I couldn’t find on the web. No…
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Auctions
Activists are constantly complaining about censorship and canceling. I’ve never been excited about those topics because I recognize that censorship is the default. Censorship is another name for editing. Publishers always choose what to publish. I realized much earlier that canceling is rarely what it appears. An executive who is fired for “political” reasons is…
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Nice salute to country papers
American Radio Library added a station album from WTAQ in Green Bay. Most albums are predictable, with a selection of station employees pretending to work, plus a selection of famous network personalities. This one is different. It includes short features on several small towns served by WTAQ. Normally a feature on a small town would…
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The Stevens rule
Very old rule: Tight budgets cause smart plans and smart designs. Unlimited money causes stupid plans and stupid designs. The rule is clear with designs. My favorite example is Brooks Stevens. His 1947 design for the Willys wagon was TIGHTLY constrained by postwar restrictions. Willys was last on the priority list for bodymakers and machine…
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Writing and editing
Since I’m talking about writing and editing this week… Sohrab Ahmari is a wonderful writer and speaker. I always try to catch every interview and podcast because he always teaches me something new. Every interview has several Aha! So that’s why! moments. He publishes Compact Magazine, and I eagerly tried reading and subscribing for a…
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Worth reading
Denyse at MindMatters points to an eminently wise essay on AI. Denyse: Others are worried that ChatGPT will detract from a “love of learning” and “critical thinking,” according to Bloomberg. The new AI tool has cast a wrench in plagiarism detection and poses even philosophical questions about what education should be FOR. According to college…
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The old Hollywood
The folks at Ankler are discussing the Barbie/Oppenheimer pair, observing that it breaks out of the Tech Tyrant model and restores the old Hollywood way of working. Rushfield notes that the techies were trying to create algorithmic certainty by running endless remakes of reliable ‘brands’. Entertainment doesn’t work that way. Semiquoting: We’re SHOW people. We…
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Monkeys down the drain
Pointed by Denyse, this article by Arlie Coles is an excellent clarifier of AI. = = = = = START QUOTE: To find a math map between inputs and targets, neural networks need a lot of examples of input-target pairs. If you give people a puzzle like, “you want to turn two into four, and…
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When didn’t it matter?
Rob Lowe’s latest piece takes the long way around to plead for less fussiness by the unions. I think. During the long trip he makes a point that seems automatic but maybe isn’t. He’s talking about what entertainers call continuity, the small details that some people notice immediately but most people don’t see at all.…
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Boom in quantity = bust in quality
Denyse asks if there’s a rise in dishonesty and cheating in academia. I doubt it. Primarily there has been a huge rise in PUBLISHED UNITS since tenure and grants dominated academia in 1970. Grad students and new profs are required to churn out huge QUANTITIES of papers, and the only way to get there is…
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