Jackie MacMullan is doing a five part series on mental health in the NBA for ESPN:
Yet there remain many obstacles to confront, chief among them the stigma attached to mental health that prompts many players to suffer in silence. There’s another critical sticking point: The union insists that mental health treatment be confidential, but some NBA owners, who in some cases are paying their players hundreds of millions of dollars, want access to the files of their “investments.”
Rebecca Sun, writing at The Hollywood Reporter:
To director Jon M. Chu, the only tune that could fit the bill was Coldplay’s 2000 breakthrough single “Yellow.” Warner Bros. was concerned that the song’s title was problematic (the word has been used as an ethnic slur against Asians), but that’s exactly why Chu wanted it. “We’re going to own that term,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in an outtake from THR’s cover story. “If we’re going to be called yellow, we’re going to make it beautiful.”
Today, EuroTrip – directed by Jeff Schaffer (currently a director and producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm), Alec Berg (executive producer on Silicon Valley), and David Mandel (showrunner of Veep); only Schaffer was allowed a full directing credit – is considered a cult classic, while Road Trip has largely been forgotten. And a huge reason for this is that EuroTrip had a secret weapon that even the filmmaker didn’t quite know they had at the time – a catchy song of betrayal that is played throughout the film called “Scotty Doesn’t Know.”
John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:
My strong preference for Tweetbot, on both iOS and Mac, is simple: I prefer its user interface.
Tweetbot presents tweets and replies/mentions in a way that fits my mental model of what Twitter is. Tweetbot makes sense to me — in large part simply because it presents tweets in chronological order. Twitter’s iOS app does none of these things for me. I truly find it confusing. And Twitter no longer even fucking has a first-party native app for the Mac. I don’t want to use a website for Twitter. I want an app.
I think Twitter should reverse course on this whole thing.
I agree with Gruber on this entire thing. Now that Tweetbot can no longer stream tweets, but instead will show them after a one or two minute delay, the app is almost worthless while watching sports. Beside just getting pissed off at the news each day, that’s one of the main reasons I loved Twitter. I’ve never seen a service constantly shoot itself in the foot and alienate its most loyal users as much as Twitter has in the past year.
In partnership with Berklee College of Music and Electric Lady Studios, Spotify’s EQL Studio Residency will help open the door for emerging female producers and engineers while shining a light on the great work already being done by women in the music industry.
Starting in October, the program will offer three residencies in three different cities: New York, Nashville, and London. During these paid six-month residencies, one participant in each city will work hands-on in our studios and gain access to invaluable networking and mentoring opportunities to further her career.
Andy Cush, writing at Spin:
Martina believes that artists can help survivors by publicly supporting their claims, especially those in tight-knit communities such as the emo and goth scenes, and those who have collaborated with figures like Control in the past. “Silence is very, very powerful. When someone they’ve worked with and are promoting to their followers turns out to be an abuser, they have a responsibility to warn the young women who follow them and not stay silent,” she said.
James Shotwell sat down to talk with Anthony Green over at Substream Magazine:
He continues, “It was through trying to realize that similarity that I learned I was bipolar. And it was during the creation of that song when I was like, this song is about being okay with the fact that you’re paranoid. You know what I mean? Yeah, you’re paranoid, it’s okay, you have to fucking trust that it’s okay that you’re feeling this way because it all goes away. Even the good stuff. And so, it was intended to be a love song about a person and a romantic feeling, and it just ended up being almost a love song about being bipolar and that it’s okay. I wanted to call the record Bipolar Love Songs, but I’m thrilled I didn’t because it came out on the same day as that Kanye record where he makes a big deal out of it.”
Victor Mather, writing for The New York Times:
More Shakespearean sport: When Hamlet says “To sleep — perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!” by rub, he meant difficulty. The term comes from lawn bowling, of all sports.
The “rub” is an unevenness in the playing surface that can cause the ball to slow or alter course. A sticky wicket indeed!
Kara Swisher, writing for The New York Times:
But by that measure, the rest of us plebes, including Mr. Jones, should probably get no protection if we err, no matter how much we rant that tweeting is a right under the First Amendment. It’s not, because Twitter is not the government and it can decide what and what not to host on its service. In any case, if you get kicked off Twitter, you can always unload your twisted mind on your very own website. And it cannot be said too many times that freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from consequence.
All this is not to say that fixing Twitter will be easy; in fact, I think at this point it is nearly impossible. Add to that the fact that this is a global issue, making it hard to have any consistent rules that address the complexity of the world and, really, its deep and abiding ugliness.
It’s time for Jack to leave as CEO. He failed at the most important tests for his company, time, and time again.
According to a new report from Citigroup, the music industry made $43 billion in revenue in 2017 while only 12% of that actually went to the artists.
Artists’ share of music revenues is small. In 2017, artists captured just 12% of music revenue with most of the value leakage driven by the costs of running a myriad of distribution platforms — AM/FM radio, satellite radio, Internet distributors — augmented by the costs (and profits) of the record labels.
The proportion captured by artists is, however, on the rise (it was just 7% of industry revenues in 2000). The bulk of the improvement is not driven by the growth in music subscription services. Rather, it’s driven by the strength in the concert business.
To address the concerns of those who find the show to be too long and boring (thanks largely to the current existence of 24 competitive awards, of which the general public only cares about a few), Bailey and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson said in a letter to members that the board has “committed to producing an entertaining show in three hours.” They explain that this will be achieved partly by “present[ing] select categories live, in the Dolby Theatre, during commercial breaks (categories to be determined).” Those categories will not be removed from the telecast; instead, “the winning moments will then be edited and aired later in the broadcast.”
And:
At least as important, in terms of improving the ratings of the Oscars telecast for ABC, the Academy also said in its letter that it “will create a new category for outstanding achievement in popular film,” adding that “[e]ligibility requirements and other key details will be forthcoming.”
So, is this just “the Marvel movie” category?
Taylor Telford, writing at The Washington Post:
Overlooking the sins of powerful artists has felt intolerable in the era of #MeToo, but at Warped, taste is tethered to identity, and what comes next for its audience is complicated. The tour has flourished because much of its music is confessional and intimate. It fosters a devotion in the young, marginalized and vulnerable that rarely fades with age. Now fans are wrestling with whether the culture can adapt and evolve, or whether its worst roots run too deep. […]
Until I got to college, I actively disliked female musicians. I was enamored with the myth of the tortured artist; I chased it not only in my taste but also in my personal relationships. Now I wonder if some of these failures can be traced back to the music that shaped me. In part, I want to scrub myself of its influence. The problem is that I wouldn’t know myself without it.
This entire piece is really good. I hope this music scene can learn from the mistakes of the past. Sometimes I see signs of progress, and sometimes I am at a loss for words.
Etan Vlessing, writing for The Hollywood Reporter:
MoviePass has changed its plan yet again, this time down reducing the number of movies a subscriber can see to three movies per month. The embattled company also announced on Monday that it is abandoning a price increase to $14.99 a month, and keeping it at $9.95.
Meanwhile, rumors about the multi-instrumentalist’s predilection for taking advantage of his predominantly female adolescent fanbase have been floating around the Internet for years, and there are now multiple online groups that seek to alert the world to Dahvie’s alleged crimes. And yet, somehow, Blood on the Dance Floor continued to record and perform successfully, and to receive positive (or at least neutral) press. Only recently has BOTDF is Garbagecore, a Facebook group devoted to outing Dahvie as a sexual predator, had success derailing the band’s tours.
Now a handful of Dahvie’s victims have bravely stepped forward to tell MetalSucks their stories in the hopes of preventing him from hurting anyone else.
Jeff Maysh, writing at The Daily Beast:
On August 3, 2001, a McDonald’s film crew arrived in the bustling beach town of Westerly, Rhode Island. They carried their cameras and a giant cashier’s check to a row of townhouses, and knocked on the door of Michael Hoover. The 56-year-old bachelor had called a McDonald’s hotline to say he’d won their Monopoly competition. Since 1987, McDonald’s customers had feverishly collected Monopoly game pieces attached to drink cups, french fry packets and advertising inserts in magazines. By completing groups of properties like Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues, players won cash or a Sega Game Gear, while “Instant Win” game pieces scored a free Filet-O-Fish or a Jamaican vacation. But Hoover, a casino pit boss who had recently filed for bankruptcy, claimed he’d won the grand prize–$1 million dollars.
I don’t even know which part of this article to quote, just read the whole thing.
Todd Spangler, writing for Variety:
Shares of Facebook plunged more than 19% in early trading Thursday, as investors reacted to signs that the social-media giant’s user and revenue growth are significantly slowing down.
The stock drop, to its lowest levels in nearly three months, wiped out more than $110 billion in market capitalization for Facebook and dragged down other internet and tech stocks including Twitter and Snap. Facebook’s market cap was $629.6 billion at the close of market Wednesday, and stood at around $503 billion as of Thursday at 10:30 a.m. ET.
Ouch.
Francesca Bacardi, writing at Page Six:
A spokesman for the Riverside Police Department in California confirmed to Page Six on Monday that Camp, whose real name is Josiah Camp, was reported missing on July 19 by his sister. Friends and family have been sharing concerned messages on social media, asking anyone for information on his whereabouts.
Camp, 38, rose to fame in 1998 when he became an MTV VJ after winning the network’s first “Wanna Be a VJ” contest. He had previously been homeless.
Nick Statt, writing at The Verge:
An investigative journalist who went undercover as a Facebook moderator in the UK says the company lets pages from far-right fringe groups “exceed deletion threshold,” and that those pages are “subject to different treatment in the same category as pages belonging to governments and news organizations.” The accusation is a damning one, undermining Facebook’s claims that it is actively trying to cut down on fake news, propaganda, hate speech, and other harmful content that may have significant real-world impact.
Burn it all down.
Davey Alba, writing at BuzzFeed:
Since at least 2012, Spotify users like Meghan have been asking the music streaming giant for a block feature for a simple reason: Over the years, harassers and abusers have used the service to stalk and intimidate victims. […] A company representative told BuzzFeed News that Spotify “does not have any timeline on plans for a block feature.”
One of the last interviews with Anthony Bourdain has been published. It’s full of wonderful anecdotes and stories:
I do find that my happiest moments on the road are not standing on the balcony of a really nice hotel. That’s a sort of bittersweet — if not melancholy — alienating experience, at best. My happiest moments on the road are always off-camera, generally with my crew, coming back from shooting a scene and finding ourselves in this sort of absurdly beautiful moment, you know, laying on a flatbed on those things that go on the railroad track, with a putt-putt motor, goin’ across like, the rice paddies in Cambodia with headphones on… this is luxury, because I could never have imagined having the freedom or the ability to find myself in such a place, looking at such things.
To sit alone or with a few friends, half-drunk under a full moon, you just understand how lucky you are; it’s a story you can’t tell. It’s a story you almost by definition, can’t share. I’ve learned in real time to look at those things and realize: I just had a really good moment.