Tom's Top 3: November 12, 2024
Don't Show Them The Shark
Hi everyone! Welcome to this week’s installment of Tom’s Top 3 Tuesdays, where I highlight three pieces of content (Podcasts/Shows/Songs/Articles/etc.) that I found interesting or noteworthy from the prior week.
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Trump was elected. AI is taking over. That burrito place you love down the street is closing down.
Halloween might be in the past, but spooky season rests for no man.
We don’t know how things will turn out, but that’s what makes it scary. Every good horror movie holds off on showing the monster as long as possible. Let the suspense build. Let the imagination run wild.
It’s like Jaws. We hear the music, maybe we see a fin. But Spielberg doesn’t properly show us the shark until over an hour into the film.
Right now, I feel like Brody sitting on the beach, realizing shit is about to get real.
Pull up a beach chair, spread your toes in the sand, and join me. Let’s discuss some scary topics. 👻
[Podcast] Plain English - How Trump Won: Young Men’s Red Wave, the Blue-City Flop, and the Incumbency Graveyard
The title just about sums it up. In this episode, Derek Thompson speaks with Republican researcher Kristen Soltis Anderson to try to make sense of the election.
Thompson posits that this election result is largely due to a combination of economic and cultural shifts.
On the economic front, a pandemic-induced inflationary period has swept across the globe. This, justifiably or not, has become a stain on the Biden presidency. We saw Trump really focus on this in his campaign, and it worked.
Culturally, an anti-incumbency trend has taken shape throughout the 2000s. This year, that trend has peaked. Thompson points to a Financial Times analysis, which reported that “for the first time on record since 1905, every governing party facing election in a developed country lost vote share this year.”
Thompson argues that this may be due to the rise of sensationalism brought on by the internet and social media. Trust has shifted from institutions to individuals, and the negative sentiment regarding pandemic lockdowns, inflation, crime, homelessness, and public health topics has reverberated across the world.
I believe many of Biden’s policies will prove beneficial in the long run. But that doesn’t win elections. It appears that aforementioned concerns left a bad taste in voters’ mouths.
Harris, unfortunately, represented a sort of Biden 2.0. Even worse, Soltis Anderson argues that Harris did not do enough to define herself in the mind of the voters. Her political agenda was well-understood, but Soltis Anderson believes voters did not get to know her worldview and how she would respond in a crisis.
[Article] The New York Times Magazine - What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?
Centered around a visit to the offices of Metaphysic, the company behind the de-aging technology used in the newly released film Here, this article discusses the possibilities of (and fear around) the use of AI in Hollywood.
Through a series of interviews around town (including Tom Hanks), the author has come to the conclusion that AI is a beneficial tool for filmmakers, not a replacement:
Over several months of talking to people around Hollywood about A.I., I noticed a pattern: The people who knew the least about its potential uses in the filmmaking process feared it the most; and the people who understood it best, who had actually worked with it, harbored the most faith in the resilience of human creativity, as well as the most skepticism about generative A.I.’s ever supplanting it.
[YouTube] Vanity Fair - When The Jump Scare Is Actually Clever
If you know me, you know I don’t like horror movies. I think a major reason is that I don’t enjoy gratuitous jump scares.
That being said, I do appreciate a jump scare done well. As the title suggests, this video tells the history of jump scares and highlights the best ones. Fun little video for some film history and storytelling techniques.
That wraps up this edition of Tom’s Top 3 Tuesdays. If you made it to this point, please drop a 1️⃣, 2️⃣, or 3️⃣ in the comments to let me know what you found most interesting/useful. And as always, please consider sharing with a friend who you think would enjoy! I’ll be back next week. ✌️
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