Anyone who’s ever seen “The Sound Of Music” will get a kick out of a satiric piece Melinda Taub wrote for McSweeney’s in which Baroness Elsa Schraeder regretfully explains why her wedding to Captain Von Trapp has been canceled.
Rick Ellis explains why the proposed purchase of Paramount Global by Warner/Discovery would be very bad for consumers and employees — in fact, anyone who isn’t part of the top echelons of the companies. He even thinks the US government should block any such merger on antitrust grounds. It’s one of those deals where the proponents talk a lot about synergy, but that always means a huge number of people lose their jobs, and those who aren’t laid off end up doing much more work — without an increase in pay. Meanwhile, the rest of us end up with fewer viewing options because there’s less competition.
In a piece for Rolling Stone, Ed Niedermeyer reveals how Elon Musk’s big lie has finally been exposed now that Tesla has been forced to recall two million cars because of ongoing issues with its “self-driving” systems.
Charlotte Klein has a piece for Vanity Fair about the people in the New York Times’ games department who create and edit Wordle, Connections, and the Crossword. It contains lots of information about the processes behind the puzzles, their histories, and the ones they tried but ultimately rejected.
Until I read this piece Keith Phipps wrote for The Reveal, I never knew about the ill-advised 1977 remake of “It’s A Wonderful Life” with Marlo Thomas starring in the gender-swapped lead role Jimmy Stewart played in the original, with a supporting cast of Wayne Rogers, Orson Welles as Mr. Potter, and Cloris Leachman as the angel Clara (not Clarence).