stephen.nyc

Tag: YouTube

  • Majestic Casual, now on Apple Music

    It’s 2012.

    I’m late for my 8am marketing class. I’m running out the door of my tiny apartment, scrambling along the the sidewalk to campus. I’m 10 minutes away. Can I grab a coffee before class? Surely I can make it. I pull out my shiny new iPhone 5. Pull up YouTube. The wired headphones slowly untangle as I saunter into the student union building. I search for “majestic casual”. I hit play. Full send, volume up. Every step seems softer with music flowing out of the headphones.

    Majestic was my daily driver for so long. This was a lo-fi, trip-hop, chillwave firehose of music for so long that my entire catalog of playlists came directly from Majestic for years. That is until there was a brief hiatus because of copyright drama.

    My electronic roots demanded reflection today. Lo and behold, after digging up old playlists, I discovered that Majestic is a listed Curator on Apple Music!

    It doesn’t look like there’s much activity, but maybe that will change? Check out some of the playlists here:

    https://music.apple.com/us/curator/majestic-casual/1173595537

  • Alien Romulus Teaser Trailer

    From the video description: “While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”

    Fuck. Yes.

  • The Curse Q&A with Nathan Fielder & Benny Safdie Moderated by Christopher Nolan

    Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie sit down to chat with Christopher Nolan about The Curse. Nathan reveals the inspiration for the series. A great talk that wanders around a range of creative angles with no spoilers. An unresistible roundtable that can’t be missed.

    youtube.com

  • Carl Weathers has died

    Carl Weathers has died

    I’m a little at a loss for words.

    Carl Weathers has played so many wonderful roles over his tenure as an actor. I always thought he had such a lovely voice and brought us so much delight on the screen. It wasn’t until recently I learned he was an Oakland Raider in the NFL briefly!

    Weathers has had some iconic roles in the past, and frankly it’s a tragedy he doesn’t have a Hollywood Star. Maybe that could change posthumously. The man had major roles in Toy Story, Rocky, and Predator. Those 3 titles alone, were some heavy-hitters.

    Take a few moments to take in Weather’s considerate thoughts about how he perceived the character Greef Karga. You can tell that he was very jazzed to be him. Weathers is a studied man of many talents — chief among them is theater and he’s a director himself too. I just love hearing him carefully choose his words here. You can really tell he’s excited to have such an amazing opportunity to essentially take part in a modern western, and carve out Karga as a benevolent complex character on-screen.

    Here’s a few other noteworthy (and hilarious) characters he’s portrayed.

    High Magistrate Greef Karga

    (a starving) Carl Weathers as himself in Arrested Development

    Who could forget Chubbs Peterson?

    Rest easy Carl ❤️

  • 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.”

  • How to make perfect eggs every time

    I always look forward to Sohla El-Waylly’s tips on cooking. She is a master in culinary arts. She’s got legendary wit and has great perspectives on cooking. Sohla studied at CIA, previously had a show on Bon Appetite, went solo with her own show and now has a show on NYTimes Cooking.

    To be brief, she’s incredible. Buy her books.

    This all brings me to her Cooking 101 segment on NYTimes Cooking, on how to make perfect eggs every time. Eggs are the building block for so many recipes. It’s a unique protein that has been used in cooking for a millennia. To achieve perfection here requires some knowledge of chemistry, tame temperature on the skillet and understanding timing. All of these skills can inform your cooking in other recipes since eggs are such a crucial component in many dishes.

  • Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

    Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

    School’s out. It’s the summer of 2000. As you boot up your Sega Dreamcast, you wonder if anyone else is awake in the house. As you reach to close the lid of the console, you tremble with anticipation. You glance one last time, you read the words Jet Set Radio on the disc. Excitement and sleepiness washes over as you finally close the lid. You barely slept last night. The Dreamcast squeaks and squawks as the game disc is spun and read by the laser. You make sure the volume of the tv isn’t too loud. You squint your eyes as the tv dims to black.

    You hold your breath and close your eyes. Static begins to drip through the speakers. Not a second later, a loud blaring funky dance-y tune cuts across the tv to your ears. It’s here. It’s loaded and your mind’s eye knows the next button to press to start the game. You move your thumbs over ever so slightly.

    You open your eyes. It’s 2024. What is going on here? The electro funk music fills the room. Bomb Rush Cyclone flashes on the screen in front of you.

    It’s been 24 years since Jet Set Radio. The spiritual successor, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is here.

    This game was built by an indie game developer studio called Team Reptile and my understanding (h/t DreamcastGuy on YouTube) the title was essentially made out of a labor of love for the original Sega game. What’s not to love about it? The soundtrack is mature and thrilling. Fighting cops. Solid. Graffiti tagging and shredding sick cyberpunk locales? Sign me up.

  • How 5 Bridges Transformed New York City

  • Google might bring games to YouTube, but they’re doomed to fail

    Jacob Siegal for BGR writes:

    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.

  • The Cast of “Asteroid City” talk about working with Wes Anderson

  • How to build a wood skyscraper

    How to build a wood skyscraper

  • Nearly 300 episodes later, Hot Ones still gets it

    Nearly 300 episodes later, Hot Ones still gets it

    From The New York Times:

    “‘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 ????

  • One Day in the Coldest Village on Earth — Yakutia

    One Day in the Coldest Village on Earth — Yakutia

    Yakutia, also known as The Republic of Sakha is one of the coldest places on Earth. The region has been inhabited by Yakuts (Turkic Sahka) since the 9th Century (or perhaps earlier). @KiunB on YouTube put together this fascinating short documentary on their lives living in the extreme cold.

  • Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Deep Voodoo raise $20M investment

    Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Deep Voodoo raise $20M investment

    The duo’s deepfake studio raised a combined $20M investment from Connect Ventures, Creative Artists Agency and New Enterprise Associates. The deepfake studio opened its doors in 2020 according to TechCrunch:

    The Parker/Stone cachet showed when the company made its public debut alongside no lesser a personage than Kendrick Lamar. The video for “The Heart Part 5” has the musician delivering his lyrics in seemingly one take, but when he addresses the camera directly his face takes on the aspects of others: OJ Simpson, Nipsey Hussle, Kobe Bryant and Kanye West:

    It comes as no surprise that this technology, is making its way to Hollywood and artists. Deepfake studios are the next logical step. There has always been a symmetry between the porn industry and Hollywood.

  • A trove of Levi’s 201s discovered at Castle Dome

    A trove of Levi’s 201s discovered at Castle Dome

    It’s not everyday you discover century old jeans in a mine shaft!

    Allen Armstrong, CEO and founder of the Castle Dome museum, mine and ghost town where Schlichting made his find, had previously explored the same shaft but missed the trove of jeans, coming within 20 feet of it. He did, however, find a pair of Levi’s 201s—a lower-priced version of the classic 501s, created around 1890 with cheaper buttons and a linen label rather than leather—on his first rappel to the shaft two decades ago.

    To authenticate the Levi’s, Armstrong turned to Levi Strauss & Co. historian Tracey Panek, who drove out from California. “She carried [the jeans] around for two hours like they were a little kid in her arms,” says Armstrong.

  • Men In Black is the most incredible homage to New York City of all time

    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.