KAPOOKA BABY

marco:

I saw this widget on a blog tonight.

Nine of the ten stories are list posts — useless “10 best”, “10 worst”, “10 scariest”, “10 biggest” posts made for Digg-bait and quick skimming. List posts are the McDonald’s of online writing: they require no thought, provide no intellectual value, and guarantee lots of cheap traffic and comments.

I can hardly even listen to Diggnation anymore, previously one of my favorite podcasts, because the “stories” are so inane and useless. This is every Diggnation episode now:

• (long intro, description of this episode’s alcohol)
• “Hey, here’s a funny video about cats!”
• “Guy gets hit in the crotch with lightsaber by 5-year-old”
• (commercials)
• (stupid emails)

Digg’s current state of affairs is just sad. They’ve hit a wall of mediocrity and community isolation. I can’t imagine that their traffic is growing significantly. All attempts to broaden Digg’s appeal have failed — the fundamental idea simply doesn’t scale beyond a single narrow userbase. They can’t go anywhere else with this.

No wonder they’re trying to sell it. They know it’s time to move on.

somethingchanged:

So no one I know IRL has a Twitter account? Is this for real?!

I feel you - and unfortunately I think Twitter works best with people you know IRL.

From a really great At The Movies interview …

MARGARET: Why did you want it so much?

ROBERT DOWNEY JR: So I could be sitting here looking at a poster in back of you, with my hair done up all cutsie, and a big shining knight of armour in back of it.

…

MARGARET: I think it’s been written well. How much of an input did you have into that writing development process?

JON FAVREAU: Well, there’s no real - I mean, there’s no real script, per se, on a film like this, compared to the smaller films you work on where you have a script, you lock it, you try to get financing and then you get your cast, and then you get your release date and then you get your poster. This one is the other way around. Here you get your poster; you get your release date; you get your cast; and then the last thing you get is your script.

…

MARGARET: I know this is a stupid question, but where does the talent come from to do what you do?

ROBERT DOWNEY JR: Experience, I guess. I don’t even know. I think the talent thing is kind of a - I don’t want to be a schmuck about it, but I think if you -you could literally walk out on the street and point at somebody and say, “I want him or her to be a fully formed, gifted actor or actress inside of six months.” And if I was training them, I’d be like, “Please. That’s a no brainer.”

I think talent is, like they say, you know, where opportunity meets la-la-da-da and the rubber hits the road, and all that stuff, and perspiration rather than inspiration. It’s very rare that I have been working on a character or been on a set or in a location and said, “Boy, I feel so darn inspired today, I just feel talent pouring through me.”

Instead it’s more of the groundwork; what it is to be an actor on a movie set given - you’ve given an objective. The objective is: this is the scene you’re doing; and here are the beats you want to hit; and then it’s kind of like you can’t - basically, what I would do in the six months with that man or woman is I would say, “We don’t do a waltz here. We’re not playing rock and roll.

We’re not doing blues’ progressions. We’re doing jazz, so it’s going to be in this key, and what you have to do is improvise.” And you show them what notes to hit and what notes not to hit so it doesn’t offend anyone’s ear. And that you would call, in my estimation, talent.

bullshit:

Drawings by kids recreated in real life (from here or here)

Kind of like this.

marco:

(via whatthehale)