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How Soderbergh Elevates A (Minor) Scene
Nerdwriter argues that Steven Soderbergh turns even a minor transitional scene in Black Bag into something vivid through precise staging and camera placement. He highlights Soderbergh’s use of slow dolly movements, reframing, focal-length shifts, and real-location depth to establish relationships, tension, and momentum without wasting a shot. The essay’s larger point is that great filmmakers solve small cinematic problems brilliantly, and in a truly great film, no scene is unimportant.
AI Fruit Slop Is The New Greek Mythology w/ Kyle Chayka
Kyle Chayka is a writer for the New Yorker, and on this week's Power User he joins Taylor Lorenz to break down the rise of AI fruit slop dramas
The guilt of building AI agents that have led to layoffs
The language around the threat to jobs from AI is becoming increasingly apocalyptic. It's hard to know what the level of threat really is. One clear cue comes from big tech companies like Amazon and Meta who are slashing jobs and pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence.
The Imperfect Cinematography Of Paul Thomas Anderson
The photography in acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson's films feels alive: not because it’s perfect, but because it’s honest. In this video, we’ll look at five different techniques that he uses in his films to build emotion not through perfection, but through presence.
5 Filmmaking Rules That Can Be Broken
In Depth Cine explores five filmmaking rules that can be broken, including the mixing colour temperatures, wide angle and telephoto lenses, three point lighting, coverage, the 180 degree rule.
Why owning nothing is so expensive
Subscription services exist for nearly everything consumers buy. Many, like Netflix or Spotify, start out affordable, but the cost adds up over time. And while signing up is effortless, cancelling can be difficult. Companies such as Adobe and Amazon have even been accused by the Federal Trade Commission of using dark patterns to trap consumers in subscriptions. But rising costs are only part of the problem. The subscription model is eroding consumer’s opportunity to own what they buy. So how did we get to the point where practically everything is a subscription? And why is owning nothing making everything so expensive?
The Internet is Being Deleted (And You Haven’t Noticed)
Right now, we are witnessing a massive, systematic erasure of digital history. From war crime investigations to grassroots activism and historical archives, the "permanent" web is vanishing. In this episode of Free Speech Friday, Taylor Lorenz breaks down the escalating censorship from Big Tech and governments that is burning our collective digital archive. Documentation of major historical events, war crimes, police violence, videos documenting things like ICE abductions, but also thousands of photos, websites, and archives that play a crucial role in documenting our cultural and political history are being systematically erased from the web.
After the Bondi attack, a deepfaked Guardian video went viral. It won't be the last
A video of Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett claiming four Indian nationals had been arrested, with a Guardian watermark on screen, was in fact a deepfake made from a genuine video of a press conference Barrett had given on 18 December. The video was flagged by online factcheckers, but not before being watched hundreds of thousands of times. As Guardian Australia's technology reporter Josh Taylor explains, these deepfakes are only getting easier to make.
Understanding Focal Length In Cinematography
When you watch a movie you’re looking through a lens that has a specific viewpoint, a specific way of interpreting depth, scale, and distance. And that viewpoint, expressed as a focal length, affects everything.
Why Is Everyone Running In Rom-Coms?
The Nerdwriter1 video explores why the classic romantic-comedy trope of someone running to declare their love resonates so strongly. It argues that such scenes externalise an inner emotional drama and reflect a deeper modern desire for meaning. As traditional shared moral frameworks weakened after the 1700s, individuals began seeking purpose through personal narratives, a shift reflected in the rise of the novel. Romantic love became a cultural “quest” promising fulfillment and identity, offering a comforting, simplified fantasy in an uncertain modern world. 
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