I know the coffee drinkers have opinions about Starbucks 😅 but I recently picked up these beans. It’s real bright and bouncy. Acidity is more subdued than I was expecting. It’s become one of my faves recently and wanted to share!
Tag: Video
-
AI can do your homework. Now what?
“This presents a major challenge to educators, who now need to rethink their curriculum to either incorporate chatbot use or to attempt to deter it. In this video, we hear from students and teachers about how they’re thinking through the problem, and review research in the science of learning to understand how the “fluency” of a chatbot experience could disrupt the learning process that we go to school for.”
-
F1 Steering Wheel buttons explained
F1 Steering Wheel buttons explained. Clearly, I’m behind on my F1 lore. But, this video blew my mind.
-
The Best Toonami Promos, Voiced by Peter Cullen
Peter Cullen is a legendary voice actor. Notably, he’s voiced Optimus Prime of The Transformers since 1986. Some of his other voice acting credits include Gremlins, Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers, Winnie the Pooh and literally hundreds of others. My personal favorite are his epic narrations from the fabled Toonami Promos of the early 2000s. These promos would be used as bumpers between regular programming and often would promote special films to be featured during the Toonami programming block on Cartoon Network.
The Big O promo easily sits at the top of my list. Not only is Big O one of the best animated series ever created, but this Toonami Promo is slammin’. The duet of Peter Cullen’s deep but stoic concentrated voiceover and the electronic flat beat-esque house background track gets me amped every time. These kinds of bumpers just don’t get cut like they used to. It’s an absolute banger of a promo:
I would never advocate for piracy but if you’re curious what Toonami programming was like back then, visit here to get a sense for the nostalgic vibe of Toonami.
I’m fairly sure Peter Cullen even voiced other Adult Swim promos as well. Surely there’s some Cullen VO just sitting in the Williams Street video archives. If you have access to these or know someone who does, please email me. Until then, here’s some other Cullen Toonami Promo gems I have saved:
Gundam 0080 Toonami Promo
Gundam Wing Endless Waltz Toonami Promo
Outlaw Star Toonami Promo
Rurouni Kenshin Toonami Promo
Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone Toonami Promo
Gundam Wing Epic Promo (Long Version) Toonami Promo
-
Poor Things is an absurdist masterpiece
Steph Green at Inverse writes:
In Victorian London (but not as we know it), the physically deformed scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) has lovingly — if irresponsibly — saved the life of a young woman who jumped off a bridge by transplanting the brain of her unborn baby into her own head and re-animating her (yep). He christens her Bella (Emma Stone) and sets to work accelerating her mental development to match her body with the help of Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), a budding surgeon who comes to love this gleefully unfettered woman-child. Finding herself to be “a flawed, experimenting person” who is into masturbating in a big way, Bella decides that before she is married off to a life of relative imprisonment with Max and her father, she must see and explore the world, setting off for a sexual odyssey with debauched lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, never more hysterically funny than this).
Holy shit. Sign me up. Full disclosure, I absolutely hated The Lobster. But, I will always give Lanthimos the benefit of the doubt. His films are hard to love for obvious reasons, most notably, his cold and cruel worlds are full of stoicism and absurdity that is just relentless. However, Poor Things appears to have some levity and stylistic frivolity unseen in his previous works (I mean Dogtooth was just so unbelievably bleak). So, I’m a little excited for this one.
-
The Boy and the Heron – Official Trailer
The trailer’s description on YouTube reads:
A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead. There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning. A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.
Seemingly ominous! It seems to have all the trappings and flow of a classic Miyazaki films. I’m excited for this one to drop. This couldn’t come any sooner. Looks like the US will see a theatrical release in December 8th.
-
Introducing NASA’s On-Demand Streaming Service, NASA+
-
Danny Elfman Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tim Burton Scores
Danny Elfman is a musical genius. The man really needs no introduction. But, for those who are unaware, a small sampling of his talents includes: The Simpsons, Nightmare Before Christmas, several Tim Burton films, Mission Impossible, Spider-Man, MIB, hundreds of collaborators, and that’s just abridged resumé. Batman (1989) was a groundbreaking movie at the time, and the score is iconic to say the least.
I saved an excerpt from his interview with GQ on the Batman score below because it’s simply amazing. Warner Bros. Studios wanted Elfman to collaborate with Prince to make a score for Batman. I don’t hate it, but it would have changed the movie in unimaginable ways I can’t even fathom:
I’ve never done anything harder than Batman because first off, I had to prove myself. You know, it’s like, okay, he’s the quirky comedy guy, and here I am doing like this Batman movie. Understandably, I think they were like, “uh, we need somebody who knows how to do this kind of music.” But, nobody knew what kind of music it was. There really was no superhero music. There was just Superman. And, we said we know we don’t want it to be Superman — John Williams.
And, then there was an element with the producer in the studio of wanting it to be a pop score. There was definitely this moment of like, “Danny, we want you to collaborate with Prince and co-write the score.” And I go, I can’t do that. People go, “you really said that?” I love Prince, but not for that score. I already knew what the score was, and I knew that if I collaborated, he’d be writing tunes, and I’d be orchestrating his tunes, and I would be essentially a glorified arranger rather than a composer, you know. Because he was world famous, and I was still nothing.
I had to walk away. I was so depressed. I felt like I just blew up my own career. And then a month later I got the call saying, Danny, you’re back on. It’s like this gamble paid off. But, it was a miserable period of time. On the other hand, I already heard the music in my head. I knew what it was, and I was determined that that was gonna be the score. The producer was so hard on me, John Peters, and then [they’re finally] he’s in — I think it’s the third presentation. And, I didn’t know how to do presentations.
I was playing this weird music stuff that was all like inspired, you know, crazy. And then Tim says, play the March, “play the March, play the march!”
[That’s] what he called the titles. I go, “oh yeah, I got this piece here.” And of course, now I know, you lead with your headline, obviously. I didn’t really know, or understand that back then. And I put this piece of music on, and John starts conducting in his chair. And then at a certain point he stands up,
and he’s going like this. [Danny waving his arms like a conductor] Tim looks at me and he’s like [Danny laughing], “yeah, we got it.” -
The World’s Smelliest Fruit? Sohla and Ham Try Cooking With Durian
Another fantastic episode from NYT Cooking’s Mystery Menu with Sohla and Ham. I was pleasantly surprised that processing durian and cooking it, neutralizes the aromatics, but elevates savory flavors in dishes! Also surprised to see acid and durian making a great pairing. Also, Sohla has explored some variations on the kolar pitha before, but this durian kolar pitha looks so good!
-
Google might bring games to YouTube, but they’re doomed to fail
Unless YouTube has a killer app, I cannot see the reasoning behind even testing games, much less launching them to the public. Netflix has a selection of great mobile games that anyone with a subscription can download for free, and yet hardly anyone does.
If Netflix is having a hard time with their mobile game adoption, I think the writing is on the wall for this one. YouTube is going to have a difficult time competing with basically the entire web and App Store’s gigantic selection of free games.
I wonder if YouTube will make certain titles available to Premium subscribers only. Perhaps the maximum saturation of premium subscribers has been met, and product is thinking up new features for YouTube Premium.
-
Nearly 300 episodes later, Hot Ones still gets it
“‘Hot Ones’ was just the dumbest idea of all time,” Schonberger said, only half-joking. “How is it, philosophically, that the dumbest idea is the best?”
“It’s like, well, we can’t just have people get drunk or high,” he went on, “but I think we can get people to eat spicy food, which might just be hilarious.”
It’s true. The best ideas, are almost exclusively the dumbest ones. Hot Ones came about at the perfect time too. Right around the same time Hot Ones was taking off, the Hot Pepper Challenges were making the rounds on YouTube and the web. Sean Evens and the show came onto the scene at the perfect time. I hope their spicy wings burn bright and strong forever ????
-
Men In Black is the most incredible homage to New York City of all time
I am coming up on my seventh year living in New York City. During my tenure living here, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I feel like I’ve hardened myself, forged a worthwhile career here and sharpened all of my senses. It’s a vast nexus of creativity, food, technology and people. All walks of life live here, and it’s chaotic as fuck, but it all somehow works.
Thanks to LL 30, New York City’s language access law provides access to City services for all New Yorkers in 12 languages. Arabic, Bangla, Chinese (simplified Cantonese), French, Haitian-Creole, Italian, Korean, Polish, Spanish, Urdu, Yiddish and English. That alone is incredible. You’d be hard-pressed to find any government notices in more than two languages anywhere in the continental United States. There’s no place like New York City anywhere on Earth. Sure, lot’s of cities are like NYC, but there’s something that sets thihttps://stephen.nyc apart from other large metropolitan cities.
NYC is absolutely, full of wonderful weirdos. Weird stuff happens when you put 8.5 million people together in one spot. Enter Patrick Willems video essays. First off Willems breaks it down for us like this — it’s a masterpiece film that we’ll probably never see the likes of every again (Hollywood in a post-MCU world would likely never permit another MIB to happen). It’s an action buddy-cop movie about aliens in NYC sure, but it’s really an ode to New York City. That goes double for folks who have lived in NYC, and finally move out of the city. The feels are real.
-
Ironworkers Local 433 members discuss The Picture
Perhaps you’ve seen the Wilshire Grand Tower and its iconic spire. Maybe you’ve seen The Picture and wondered how they took the photo in the first place. Look no further! Watch below.
One small note about this video: one of the ironworkers makes a reference to “[that] empire state building photo.” He is actually referencing the iconic, Lunch Atop a Skyscraper photograph of ironworkers constructing Rockefeller Center. That photo was taken 90 years ago today, on September 20, 1932.
-
John Plant’s Primitive Technology channel inches closer to the Iron Age in latest video
If you haven’t been following Primitive Technology on YouTube, you will now. The channel, created by John Plant features an impressive stream of videos that dissect how-to-survival techniques. Each video is roughly 10 minutes in length, features no VO (voice-over) or backstory. Each video stands alone and covers a singular topic in survival. Methodically-cut shots, and well-written subtitles to explain in further detail John’s movements and decisions.
The end result is often a high-quality video. He has set the bar for survivalists YouTube. While there are many imitator channels, he remains atop the throne of high-quality uploads in this category.
His latest upload, is another chapter in inching closer to Iron Age content. Take one look at the comments in any of his uploads and you can see his audience clamoring for more iron smelting, casting and blacksmithing:
Oh man, that’s what I wanted to see. You building up to the iron age. You released a video years ago with some iron in it and was looking forward to the next one. Here we are
The long arc from Neolithic-content to Iron Age-content on Primitive Technology is remarkable. In his earliest days, Plant was creating huts, firestarters, basic stone tools, clay bricks, kilns and even pottery. Using the very same tools in later videos, he’s laying the groundwork for a mythology in his channel. A speedrun of human prehistory. It’s fascinating to watch: