New Yorker - "Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic"
By Ben Taub
Monday, October 7, 2024
Juror #2
November 1, 2024
Written by Jonathan Abrams
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J. K. Simmons, Chris Messina, Zoey Deutch, Cedric Yarbrough, Kiefer Sutherland
Written by Jonathan Abrams
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J. K. Simmons, Chris Messina, Zoey Deutch, Cedric Yarbrough, Kiefer Sutherland
Sinners
Written & Directed by Ryan Coogler
Starring Michael B. Jordan,
Hailee Steinfeld,
Jack O'Connell,
Wunmi Mosaku,
Jayme Lawson,
Omar Benson Miller,
Delroy Lindo
The Death of the Minivan
The Atlantic - "The Death of the Minivan"
By Ian Bogost"
"Pickup was quick. In the first year after introducing them, Chrysler sold 210,000 Dodge Caravans and Plymouth Voyagers, its initial two models. Overall minivan sales reached 700,000 by the end of the decade, as the station wagon all but disappeared. But the new design also generated stigma: As the child of the station wagon and the service van, the minivan quickly came to represent the family you love but must support, and also transport. In a nation where cars stood in for power and freedom, the minivan would mean the opposite. As a vehicle, it symbolized the burdens of domestic life.
That stigma only grew with time. In 1996, Automobile magazine called this backlash “somewhat understandable,” given that the members of my generation, who were at that point young adults, had “spent their childhoods strapped into the backseat of one.” Perhaps it was childhood itself that seemed uncool, rather than the car that facilitated it. In any case, minivans would soon be obsolesced by sport utility vehicles. The earliest SUVs were more imposing than they are today: hard-riding trucks with 4×4 capabilities, such as the Chevrolet Suburban and the Jeep Wagoneer. These were as big as or even bigger than the plumber-kidnapper vans of the 1970s, and they got terrible gas mileage, cost a lot of money, and were hard to get in or out of, especially if you were very young or even slightly old. Yet the minivan’s identity had grown toxic, and for suburban parents, the SUV played into the fantasy of being somewhere else, or doing something better."
Related,
"Volkswagen ID Buzz Coming to U.S. by 2023" (Mar. 2021)
Sunday, September 22, 2024
John Madden's Sunday Set Up
LA Times - "John Madden is gone but his family is keeping his NFL gameday legacy alive"
"The best seat in the house is still reserved for John Madden.
His throne is fully reclined and draped in a fleece Raiders blanket. It sits squarely before a 20-foot-tall LED wall, a study in sensory overload, showing every NFL broadcast at once.
When the Hall of Fame coach retired from the TV booth in 2009, until his death in 2021, he watched games in his own temple of boom — a family-owned production studio in a quiet business park.
He would sit in that recliner, or at a table at the back of the darkened and cavernous room, where his family now arranges a weekly place setting in his honor. There’s a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice and a fresh-baked apple fritter, all of which go undisturbed throughout the day."
"The best seat in the house is still reserved for John Madden.
His throne is fully reclined and draped in a fleece Raiders blanket. It sits squarely before a 20-foot-tall LED wall, a study in sensory overload, showing every NFL broadcast at once.
When the Hall of Fame coach retired from the TV booth in 2009, until his death in 2021, he watched games in his own temple of boom — a family-owned production studio in a quiet business park.
He would sit in that recliner, or at a table at the back of the darkened and cavernous room, where his family now arranges a weekly place setting in his honor. There’s a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice and a fresh-baked apple fritter, all of which go undisturbed throughout the day."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)