thebradbain

The unions guarantee a minimum price floor for actors, and healthcare if you work full time. No maximums.

Unfortunately the entire reason for the strike is studios will rarely, unless you are very top talent, deviate from the minimums. They would often try to go even lower, if they could. Hence the strike is to raise the minimums.

There’s 160,000 members of SAG. There’s maybe only 50 household-name celebrities acting in any one year? Those 50 are not representative of everyone who acts at all.

They do have protections against that in the contract, which would apply to all SAG members — the use case you brought up is exactly what Fran Drescher, the president of SAG, brought up of something they are hoping to prevent.

The studios don’t want to sign such a contract. And so the actors are withholding their work until they do, among other conditions. Crossing the picket line, no matter how big an actor you are, will have you expelled from SAG, and when studios eventually sign whatever deal they do with SAG, any non-SAG actor will be barred from working with studios, based on the exclusivity contract that’s been in every deal since 1960.

One side will win. Based on history, it will be SAG.

Do you mean Sept 2020? I believe everything shutdown (in most US states and European countries) in March 2020.

Only wondering because ~3 years versus a little less than 2 years seems like a potentially big difference, so wondering if that feeling of fulfillment has is still going strong that long

I would argue for many people the value of a college education is not so much the education. Fraternities/sororities/equivalents, for example, are often seen at some schools as more important to social mobility + marriages and more exclusive than the schools themselves– mostly in the South, but also at some other schools, say University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Not just, those, of course, really but any shared activities+clubs for practically any niche– college could be considered one of the last places where everyone has normalized openly seeking groups of friends based on common interests, to the point most throw extracurricular fairs at the beginning of every year. Not saying those don't exist after college, but finding e.g. a truffle mushroom foraging group is a lot harder in your 30s if you've never met anyone who does it before.

Yet most US constituents, of all parties and socioeconomic status, seethe at the thought of a government worker of any level making “too much” money.

It doesn’t matter that someone working for the government has the potential to have a much higher impact on a nationwide level than some rank and file worker who works at some blue chip auto insurance company, the moment increased pay for government workers is even brought up, that person imagines it as coming directly out of their paycheck.

See teachers, urban planners, sanitary workers, NASA scientists, etc…

It’s a shame, because I have the unpopular opinion that _more_ government, filled with talented people who actually want to _fix_ the issues they’re passionate about, is the answer to almost all of the USs domestic problems. Right now the highest paid government workers are those on the brink of retirement in administrative positions so far removed from any real work. A bureaucracy of gerontocracy, if you will. I really wish the government (not the political world, but the civil staff) was seen as as a place for passionate young people to aspire to, with the pay to match.

There’s no shortage of people who meet any of that criteria!

The whole point of a selective college is they have to select from a pool of already qualified applicants. There is no objective measure to measure against when you’re splitting hairs. Even were you to limit it to “objective” requirements like test score and GPA, how do you decide between two students for one spot when both have the exact same scores?

There is no shortage of perfect scores applying to Harvard. And yet a majority, or even a plurality, of any given class of admits didn’t have perfect scores.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say an Olympiad 4.0 student — many of whom exist, I went to school with a few — has a much more promising academic career than someone who managed to get good-not-great grades and a single perfect test score.

Aside from the dedication of waking up to practice a sport every morning, think of how much time and discipline is it takes to balance being an amazing athlete with being a great student. They likely have all the mental fortitude and academic talent they need to succeed in college, no question, regardless of if they had a bad test day, or their pencil broke, or they had to use the bathroom and ran out of time, etc.

Someone with As and Bs, maybe a C, who did nothing else of note and managed to get a perfect test score one time doesn’t seem near as surefire a bet. If anything it shows you didn’t apply yourself.

It’s naive to think schools don’t have a system in place for this: separating piles into buckets of test score, ordering by grade, marking a certain number from each bucket as worth another look, then ordering by essay, marking a certain from each group, and repeat on any other metric.

Many schools, selective or not, actually do this whole process — multiple times, with each admissions agent doing a separate order of criteria, to ensure everyone’s application gets read at least twice. The idea being that those with the most “let’s give them another look” across the board are the most notable. Then from that shortlist the debates comparing each applicant, usually sorted by geographic proximity to each other, begin (at Harvard, if you’re from Texas you’re not really competing against New Yorkers for a spot, you’re competing against other Texans for the XX number of Texan spots they usually admit a year).

I did a short stint as a student worker in the admissions office of a very selective college in California (<5% admission rate, but not one many could name off the top of their head), and this is more or less how it worked

1. Would absolutely not get you in anywhere selective

2. Would absolutely not either

I believe the whole concept of “meritocracy” for purpose of admissions is a lie— choosing the criteria to measure against is itself a subjective act.

I personally could not think of a more boring way to curate a student body, but even more so than that, I think that’s completely unfair to the many, many way-more interesting people who make up top schools’ student bodies: why does Jimmy Also-Ran with the perfect score on a single test and nothing else get to go to college while track-star Olympiad with a 4.0 doesn’t?

Interviews, transcripts, (optional) test scores, letter of recommendation, a set of common essays across all schools, and an optional supplemental section or portfolio to showcase any personal achievements not covered by the other standard categories.

Oh wait! That exists — it’s called the Common App, and it’s what most private colleges today use, from the Ivies to elite tiny liberal arts colleges with the largest share of students from the 0.1% that you’ve never heard of, like Pomona College.

Except for, you know, Letters of Recommendation, which at top schools are often the deciding factor. All else being near-equal (or not), a letter from a Kennedy is going to get you into Brown versus say, a regular high school teacher that many of comfortable-but-not-connected suburban students applying to college will be using. Maybe a local lawyer, if you’re special.

Those are who families who scream “meritocracy” should be directing their ire at, not the applicants (usually with more impressive results and stories considering the background they grew up in, compared to—sorry!—a hum-drum suburban also-ran) _think_ they’re better than, which ultimately is what a meritocracy boils down to.

Ultimately the only answer that will give you, or your kids, peace is accepting the fact that schools will curate the student body they want. They’ve admittedly done a good job at it! Complain all you want about Harvard tilting the scales, they’ve done an amazing job maintaining their reputation and exclusivity. If they don’t accept you, they don’t want you. If they do, they do. It’s that simple.

Depends on the city… in Los Angeles private schools can push $70k/yr/student easily; In the Bay Area I would imagine even higher. In Dallas, where I grew up and went to the same school for much less, tuition is now around $40k/student/year for top private schools.

Which is exactly why I always advocate for outsourcing engineering talent overseas. Letting the Silicon Valley software engineers gain too much power is half the reason why keeping a product from being cancelled is so difficult at Google.

See, throwing a lot of nonsequiters together does not make a convincing argument that you know anything about what you’re talking about!

I completely disagree— walking around inside Boston City Hall, and any well-designed Brutalist building in general, makes you feel like you’re in some sort of natural rock formation.

Brutalism prizes honesty over anything else— the necessary structural elements are the form, and everything else gets out of the way. And that’s why walking through a good Brutalist building often feels refreshing, or like you’re an explorer:

https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5c3c/8212/08a5/e59f/5...

Look at the interior of Dallas City Hall, for example, by world-renowned architect I.M. Pei

https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/G...

https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020...

What is art or not is not decided by popular vote.

Similar to how film or food critics often differ from the general audience on what makes a good film— art must be studied within the context of itself.

The Eiffel Tower was hated in its heydey, too.

Unpopular opinion, but Boston City Hall is an objectively VERY beautiful building.

Brutalism is absolutely an acquired taste, but it is, by all measures, an objective style that can be measured against, in the same way classical or say, Spanish Mission architecture style is. In fact, some would even go so far as to argue that most Victorian/neo-classical architecture is just a chintzy facade with no real architectural rules, akin to a Vegas casino or a Cheesecake Factory (I wouldn’t, but some would).

But as far as Boston City Hall being “objectively” ugly— that’s an objectively wrong statement. I can understand the vast majority might unfortunately say they personally find it ugly, but that is subjective.

I have the same views on e.g. Dallas City Hall too, which I think is another stunning example of a beautiful building many people hate.

Saying a pile of trash covered in mold and feces is objectively ugly— I’d agree there. Barring that, though, I’m of the strong opinion that most anything expressive, including graffiti, is “art”. Your response to whether you find it beautiful or not is your own, but that does not make it art or not.

I have complex relationships with both states, and family roots in each, so my entire life has been spent between the two, and I often visit Texas still.

Both are dysfunctional in completely different ways, and both succeed in very opposite AND similar ways, too.

Regarding “homelessness and crime”, though— I have not noticed a significant difference feeling in safety in either. And in both I lived in the “city” (Dallas and Los Angeles) rather than sprawling suburbs.

I do feel actually a lot more worried in Texas about gun violence when I go back, and find myself always mentally making a note of exit plans in e.g. concert venues or malls back in Texas.

I personally prefer the people in California more than in Texas, but that’s a subjective value judgement. That’s ultimately what keeps me here.

As a lifelong Texan who now lives in California— Texas has absolutely no problem overriding municipal and county governments, the biggest of which are solidly blue. It’s a pattern they’ve repeated for over 20 years, often more so as a show of force than anything that affects things at a state level:

- Local “bag charges” and “bag bans” on non-reusable plastic bags at grocery stores were outlawed in 2018.

- Anything that has to do with attempts at gun restrictions in cities (auditoriums/malls/etc) gets overridden every year.

- Just this year, the state passed a law with explicit language exclusively targeting its biggest county, Harris County (Houston), disbanding its election commissioner position and that the state AG has the ability to re-call elections in the county if he believes there was “enough fraud”.

There’s so much more, but “local control” is not a term which holds much water in Texas. The other side of the coin is that, unlike California, this philosophy is also reflected in Texas’ zoning codes, and as such it’s much easier and much more consistent across cities to build — developers in cities begin to bemoan when permits take more than 3 months in Texas cities, whereas in Los Angeles years would be the norm

I don’t use Reddit, but I did occasionally read Ask Historian threads when they were linked from other places on the internet:

Good luck trying to find the actual historians that made the subreddit worth visiting (many often mods themselves, I presume) once said mods are demoted and policies are changed.

Ah yes! Would love to know how the crowd that protests better public transit, pedestrian paths and bike lanes as “taking away space from cars” will respond to roads being further clogged with… empty cars?

We’re really going to spend billions and billions on further car infrastructure, more reduction in space-constrained cities towards pedestrian and bike infrastructure, and even the displacement of existing homes and communities for… empty cars?! If it weren’t so depressing, it’s a perfect indictment of the US’s car culture taken full circle.

I’m sure that’s the case, but wouldn’t the courts be able to seize the relevant land in that case, too? Or pass some special blanket law stating any site that requires the government pay for clean up reverts to public (government) ownership?

At least in that case the government gets a lot of land back that can be sold for solar farms or, in higher density areas like Los Angeles, developed into higher uses like housing+parks?

What possible justification does Texas have for keeping Dallas/Travis (Austin)/Bexar (San Antonio)/Harris (Houston)/most of the Mexico border counties as captive colonies when they clearly want to leave?

And that’s notwithstanding Texas is actually constitutionally allowed per its annexation agreement to split itself into 5 separate smaller states, if it so wishes! The reason it hasn’t though is because at least 3 of the 5 would be solidly Blue by the approved divisions made at the time. One a tossup. One solidly red.

So, similar too the Greater Idaho plan. Or the Jefferson/California plan. Or Calexit. Or…

SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, is actually about to go on strike for partly this very reason. Turns out unless you’re already very famous, boilerplate contract clauses claiming to own your image and likeness in perpetuity and forever outside of the specific project you are working on is a pretty bad deal!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/act...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sag...

San Francisco and Los Angeles could be the worst-run cities in the US (and spoiler, they’re not— as someone who has lived / still lives in both these cities and in red cities and in suburbs or towns), and they will still be desirable to live in.

People forget what drew (and to a lesser extent, still draws, despite the valid complaints) people to California is the weather and climate, the nature, the mountains, the desert, and the ocean. It’s objectively one of the most gorgeous and geographically diverse states (and I don’t say that lightly, as a Texan myself).

There will be a devastating earthquake here sooner than later, but after what I imagine will be a particularly devastating 3-5 year initial adjustment period where certain segments of the media will be jumping at the bit to say “California is dead” (remember NYC and Covid?), I have no doubt people will be flocking back in greater numbers than left, likely looking to buy at a significant discount before prices inevitably shoot up again.

Because, despite it all— People want to live here.

Look at Santa Barbara, for example— it has almost no corporate presence yet some of the most expensive real estate in the state and nation. Yet it’s not a summer destination like the Hamptons, but a year-round thriving city. That’s not an accident, but because Santa Barbara is situated on one of the most beautiful coastal inlets on one of the world’s most desirable coasts, georgraphically and weather-wise.

Who’s to say the proposed $300M in cuts won’t touch tech? They may be still trading as a tech company, but it looks like they may be firing some of those engineers anyways.

So worst of both worlds?

…?

In these neighborhoods a 1bd condo would still sell for above $800k, minimum. More than likely $1.2-1.5m, looking at Zillow. They’d rent for at least $7k/mo.

If we’re generalizing, like you are, then they’d allow the well-off professional class to live and work in their neighborhood and send their kids to the same schools as the investor-class and trust fund kids-turned-homeowners who haven’t done anything in decades other than be born to the right family.

Unless you’re talking about white-collar convicted felons? Which I can guarantee you, once again, they already live in these neighborhoods and aren’t the ones trying to move into it.

If that sounds like hyperbole, then sure— but so is yours.

Acres? Those are bona-fide mansions and estates.

The definition of McMansion I’m familiar with, at least in Los Angeles, is demolishing a 2bd/2ba bungalow to build a 5bd/4ba house, usually by getting rid of all fertile backyard/frontyard in the first place. They have another pejorative name, too— “Boxy Moderns”

This is super common in Santa Monica or Beverly Hills, for example. Even San Francisco!

And yet, for some reason, this is completely fine to build without any zoning meetings but the second you propose a 5-unit 1bd/1ba apartment building with the same profile in a “single family neighborhood” it’s ruining the entire “character” of the place and requires 3-5 years of bureaucracy and, depending on the neighbors, litigation.

Sorry, but you’re creating a false dichotomy.

The _vast majority_ of land in the US, urban centers included, including NYC, is zoned for low density single family homes. Manhattan is only 1 of 5 boroughs in NYC, remember.

There is NO shortage of single family homes.

There IS a shortage of absolute number of units in urbanized areas.

This is because, contrary to what you claim, the only thing allowed to be built in many areas is exclusively single family homes.

> Should we make sure that our children can live in nice houses that our generation was not able to afford

I say this as a relatively fortunate homeowner in Los Angeles who is part of “this generation”: if we do not allow more homes to be built, the next generation will not be able to live in the city at all.

I myself would not have been able to afford my home in the city and neighborhood I love had the recent state zoning changes (sb9) which allowed me to convert my single family home into to a duplex not occurred.

I think it’s important to get into the weeds as to _what_ the demand around AI is, because it’s not as simple as “you can’t use AI”.

As someone who is very close with (and supportive of!) people in the WGA— this is not what they’re demanding. They’re demanding that a studio cannot classify something AI-generated as “source material” in the same way a book, movie, play or another WGA script is. They want things generated by AI to be classified as “background material” (e.g. a Wikipedia article, newspaper clip, etc).

In a nutshell (but also, I’m not an expert), this gets down to how studios can pay or hire writers:

- A studio CAN hire a writer at a day-rate (think, as a one-off gig rather than stable job) to “touch up”/“rewrite”/etc source material such as other scripts. This is usually at a lower rate than if you hire the writer in full capacity. These jobs are usually short — maybe a couple weeks, could be just a single day.

- A studio already CANNOT hire a writer on a day-rate, give them a Wikipedia article, and claim that a writer making a story off of it is simply a “revision”. They must be hired in their full capacity, often with a writers room, to flesh it out. These jobs are usually longer, likely months.

The WGA’s demand is that ChatGPT and similarly generated content be placed into the second category.

A writer could still “use” ChatGPT themselves, and a studio could also provide writers with a ChatGPT-produced script, but the writers would need to be paid as if they were working “from scratch” (though, conceivably the studio still saves money in this context, as the room could be less weeks than otherwise). As the article points out, their fear is that a studio will begin “writing” unattributable AI-generated scripts, give them to writers, and demand they turn it into a full show or movie— on a day rate.

It seems like a very sane middle ground.