#Amazon interview process

[fandiehard]

Discovering and Navigating Amazon's Work from Home Opportunities

Amazon, a global e-commerce giant, not only offers a wide array of products and services but also provides remote work opportunities. Interested in exploring and applying for these roles? Let’s delve into what Amazon work from home jobs entail, the available positions, the perks, challenges, and the steps to secure these roles.Understanding Amazon Work from Home RolesAmazon’s work from home jobs…

[deliciouskeys]

I watched G20.

I must say, I don't quite understand the process of when and how people in the film industry decide "yes, this script is good enough, let's go spend a bunch of money and time filming it." It's okay as a draft, but why was this the final product. Which individual is making the decision that the script is ready for filming? The director?

Antony Starr was kind of just doing his thing interpreting a character. [Aside: I die a little whenever I see Amazon post clips titled "Rutledge channeling his inner Homelander" or hear an interviewer mention the supposed parallels between the two characters and see Antony Starr's eyes just get this far off look of "I'll never escape." (which ironically is much more Homelander-coded than Rutledge lol). Cheer up, Antony, perhaps Seth Rogen will get you better connections once you being able to demand more money for doing The Boys is no longer a factor. Perhaps you will be released out of the B6 of underpaid strictly-TV actors. Because Jack Quaid is getting more and better movies lol. But I suppose he has nepoconnections. And I digress.]

Anyway, back to G20.... I really don't have much to say. It was an action movie. With stilted scenes and awkward gestures towards being a family-centric story. Viola Davis was.... fine. Not sure why she's doing this other than she wanted to run around and shoot a gun. Was it better than White House Down? Not really. And that was a comedy, so it had that going for it. I did enjoy Antony Starr strutting around in a flattering bulletproof vest and at one point rolling around on the floor such that I could glimpse his ass. That's where my brain was at by the time the movie was wrapping up (i.e. melted down to its core program 'i see a sexy butt, hooray').

[flanaganfilm]

wanted to ask about 'midnight mass: the art of horror' as a tie in book to the show because i never hear about it. personally i loved finding out about the whole process of midnight mass, what did you think about having/contributing to it? would you ever consider doing something similar for future projects?

That was Netflix's idea - it was the one and only time they did any kind of physical media tie-in for any of the work I did while I was there. I honestly don't know why they opted to do that for Midnight Mass, but not for Hill House, or Bly, or Usher. One of my theories is that we filmed Midnight Mass during the early days of the pandemic lock-down, and there just weren't many other productions up and running at Netflix at the time. All of the executives were working from home, there were far less shows and movies, and maybe that encouraged some more attention on us. But regardless, they never did anything else like it for one of my projects again.

I love that this book exists. It's a wonderful record of what we went through to make the show, and a testament to the exquisite production design and art direction. Of all the series I made, Midnight Mass is still my favorite, and it was by far the best production experience I ever had making a series, so having a record of it is a very special thing. The interviews with the cast are excellent and thoughtful, and it really captures a moment in time in my career that I'll always treasure. I wish they'd opted to do it for everything I made while I was there, and I hope Amazon will be a little more thoughtful with the work we do together. Would be great to do more of these.

For anyone interested, here's a link:

[lesb0]

Hi miss Terra. Any advice for someone 22 and really lost and depressed from being dependent on my parents. I live in a rural town and I feel like I'm crumbling into dust.

This is what I wish I heard when I was 22 in a rural town: as an adult you need to find full time work and do WHATEVER it takes to keep that work, the commute time/distance/walking miles/salary/hardness is not a negotiable until you find better work. This is your responsibility only, not your parents/loved ones/the government. amazon and mcdonald's always have openings with no interview/resume, doordash and uber if you have a car. This is the only time you will ever be able to do 22 hour days and spring right back into it. You need reliable set income every 2 weeks of your life. You need to save all the income you get. Your expenses and bills and groceries should be scheduled and automated. Every week/month. You should be spending $25/week or less on non-emergencies or necessities. Your happiness will never come from consumer goods. Your groceries should be real things that came out of the ground and real meat if you eat it, not processed fake food that will just make you sick. Eating out is only a socializing treat. You need to get up early before 8am to shower thoroughly and clean your teeth and groom yourself until you look successful and feel confident. You need to wear professional work clothes or a uniform every single weekday, and only dress comfortably/lounge wear when you are done working. You need to clean your room and your home every day after work. Yes you will be tired! but not doing all this is infinitely exhausting and terrible in a much, much worse way that kills you inside out. You're going to need to do these things forever. But they will all become way easier, better, and more rewarding every year.

Lastly, working hard to get yourself the success you deserve feels really GOOD!! This will all actually make you feel truly happy in a way that makes you depression/anxiety proofed for a long time. Good luck!

[petercapaldi-press]

INTERVIEW

Peter Capaldi: 'We didn't rehearse for The Thick of It. I could never remember my lines'

The Doctor Who star talks about the new series of The Devil's Hour, having a sinister voice, and how society has stopped investing in young people

(Photo: Yoshitaka Kono/Amazon Prime)

Helen Brown

October 18, 2024 5:00 am (Updated 8:58 am)

Peter Capaldi can trace the moment he “became the go-to person for the darker, more disturbing parts” back to 2013. “I was recording a voiceover for an Anchor Butter commercial,” he says. “They had a nice, cosy slogan, ‘Anchor butter: Tastes like Home.’ I did the line to the best of my ability, but they said: ‘Could you make it a little less sinister?’” He grins and shakes his head. “I thought, ‘It’s all over now! But if people want to buy sinister, that’s alright. I’ll give it to them!’”

Zooming onto my computer screen, he’s edgy in a crisp black blazer and a black shirt buttoned tight up to the jugular. This means that his pale, gaunt face seems to float above his collar like a ghost train skull – an effect he can enhance by tilting his head forward so that shadows blot out his eye sockets and hollows his cheeks. 

This happens when he rocks forward laughing at the recollection of how that Anchor butter experience would be his last commercial voice over – “because I could no longer do it without irony, without indicating my distrust of the whole process”. Capaldi was 55 at the time. He’d just finished a seven-year stint playing foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the fourth and final series of Armando Iannucci’s political comedy The Thick of It (2005-2012). And he was on the brink of sending a whole new generation of children scuttling behind their sofas as the Twelfth Doctor in Doctor Who, bringing an unprecedented existential chill into a show that had “obsessed” him from childhood.

Although this was always Capaldi’s take on Doctor Who, he tells me he was “never scared, not at all” by the programme when he was a boy. Instead he recalls the science fiction and horror films he devoured as “a gateway to the imagination” for a creative child. Capaldi, the son of Italian immigrants who ran an ice cream business (and were neighbours of the Iannucci family), famously wrote to the BBC, aged just six, to say that “when I grow up I want to be an actor so I can help Doctor Who”. By the age of 18, he was writing fanzines about the show and bothering fan-club directors by expecting a direct dialogue with the producers of his favourite show. 

It may seem like Capaldi was destined to play the Time Lord – but his working-class background forced him to take a roundabout route into acting. He didn’t get into drama school because he didn’t know enough about the audition process to have prepared monologues, and went to art school instead, where he became the lead singer in a punk rock band called the Dreamboys. “Art, music, horror films… all these OBSESSIONS,” he chuckles now, grateful for the government grant that enabled a working-class boy to imagine a career in the creative arts was possible. “Art school was the right place for me and my parents couldn’t afford it. Back then there was a belief in investing in the potential of young people, which seems to have gone. That’s terribly wrong, denying that potential.”

That said, Capaldi did get into trouble in his first year of art school for “spending too much of my grant on curries and lager and not enough on art supplies”. He recalls finding a letter his tutor had sent home to his parents, warning them he would be chucked off the course if he didn’t pull his socks up. “Luckily I got to the letter before my mother did, hid it and worked harder.” 

Capaldi fully expected to metamorphose into a director at this point. But – despite an initial invite to the Weinstein party – it didn’t happen for him. Looking back, he’s relieved not to have been sucked into the Hollywood system. “It is rare for British directors to flourish over there,” he says. “The traditional path is that they do an independent movie and the Americans love it. They get you on the phone and suddenly you’re making a film with some big Hollywood star and that does OK. But the next one doesn’t and it all begins to fall away… I think that may have been what would have happened to me…” He rakes a hand through his shock of white hair and chuckles ruefully. “Luckily it all fell away much more quickly than that in my case!”

But after “one really terrible year when there was no sense of anyone being interested in me in any way shape or form”, he was rescued by the plummy-voiced actor Martin Jarvis (who had appeared in Doctor Who in the 60s, 70s and 80s), who cast him in a radio play. Everything picked up from there. Which led to Malcolm Tucker. 

I’ve always thought one of the things that made Capaldi such a compelling Doctor – and now such a deeply unsettling Gideon Shepherd – is the way he seems to transmit unpredictability. The combination of the mad-scientist hair and restless energy lend him a crackle of cosmic instability that makes you think he could glitch between dimensions at any moment. He suspects he learned this working on The Thick of It. 

“Armando [Ianucci] was obsessed with filming everything live,” he says. “Although a lot gets made of the improvisation we did, he wanted the script word-perfect. But there were no rehearsals, so the performances were alive, full of attack.” He says there was added jeopardy playing Tucker because he “had so much material to learn I wasn’t always certain of my ability to grasp it all. Sometimes I would have to stick an extra ‘f***’ in while I searched for a word.” 

He hung onto that tension when he was cast as the Twelfth Doctor and says it “helped me keep things vital at times when we were down to a last take, shooting in a car park in the rain and the latex was all coming off the monster.” Some people, he says, “will have seen my Doctor Who through a Malcolm Tucker filter.”.

He agrees that The Devil’s Hour is, in many ways, a kind of Doctor Who for grown-ups, “plugging into a creepy cosmic thing I’ve accrued”. Instead of latex monsters, his character is battling “real, adult fears”. The show confronts us with rapists and paedophiles; torture, murder and mutilation. Blowing through the chilly heart of the series is the dread of isolation – the fear that even our parents and children may not know or love us. Perhaps that they’re not even real. 

“The show has been really popular,” mulls Capaldi with mild surprise as we wind up our chat. The actor tells me he’s a vulnerable person, “scared of all kinds of things as a father and as a grandfather… as a sentient observer of this world, what’s NOT to be scared of?” For this reason, the man who’s planning to spend his Christmas Day watching the new Nosferatu film suspects horror shows like The Devil’s Hour offer an essential release valve. 

“There’s a calming quality about going into this dark, nightmarish world. Then getting to the end, watching the credits roll and being reassured that it was all a pretence.”

‘The Devil’s Hour‘ series two is on Prime Video

[alexanderwales]

I binge-watched Cross on Amazon, the new Alex Cross show. I watched the first episode on a whim, then stuck around because ... I don't know, I guess I was trying to figure out what it was trying to say about crime and the police. And after eight episodes, I think it just totally fails to hit any sort of mark.

The big problem, for me, is that it's trying to weave in a lot of discussion of the relationship between law enforcement and race while showing some of the worst elements of "copaganda". Police searching a home without a warrant, police tampering with evidence, police not playing by the book and having that be what allows them to catch the killer, implying that restraint and due process is a shackle on police that makes them ineffective ...

And this is a show that's trying to tackle these questions, to weave them into the show organically. After watching the show I read an interview with the showrunner, and ... he was trying to say something! But the story is being told in a world where there are billionaire serial killers, it focuses on their depravity, it punishes restraint, and I think in the end, really just wants to be a fantasy of getting "the bad guys".

There's a plotline where Cross beats the shit out of a guy he thought had either killed his wife or knew who did, and it turns out the guy is innocent, and the way they talk about it, it's like they think that this would be okay if he were guilty, or if he had priors, or if there was some kind of reason. And you're just never going to get to good policing if you're still in the mindset that we should only refrain from beating the shit out of the innocent.

Also, the main bad guy is nicknamed "The Fanboy" and his MO is to kidnap people, make them look like famous serial killers, then document their resemblance, recreate some famous scene using real life props, then kill whoever he's abducted. I found this interesting, but it felt like a lead-in to or parable about the obsession with true crime, or the ways we deal with media representation. It just never really came, and felt like the punchline was missing. Like, surely "I take innocent people and pretend that they're killers for my own sadistic pleasure" should have tied into the conversations on race and law enforcement, right? I mean, he's literally picking his victims because they bear some resemblance to famous serial killers.

But the killer explains his philosophy, that serial killers are like gods because they spit in the face of the idea of fairness, and any narrative cohesion seems like it gets shot in the foot. He's doing this because he wants to join the pantheon of killers, to be as famous as they were, and I don't know, there's probably a reading that ties them together better, but in the end it seems more like a "wouldn't it be fucked up" kind of serial killer, and any thematic resonance I was seeing partway through has mostly evaporated.

I am moderately interested in hearing a defense of this show, or a reading of this show that makes sense of its themes, but right now it feels like it was just confused about its message and how it was slotting things together.

[mikefaistinfo]

Mike in the Q&A with Zendaya and Josh O'Connor for Amazon MGM Studios Guilds

Interviewer: [...] I love that you say that because I was just going to say to Mike is there's a lot of little moments that all of your characters get that I think tell a deeper truth about who they are. I actually think of the moment towards the end when Patrick is looking at the woman's breakfast sandwich and like is actually going to take it. Like, I'm like, this is who you are. I would die of the embarrassment that I even looked at this woman's sandwich, let alone had the audacity to eat it. And I was going to ask you, Mike, if you had a little moment that you felt was really illustrative of who Art is, that maybe the audience and again, those internal motivations that are not maybe in the dialogue, but tell a lot about who he is as a person and maybe what motivates him in this story.

Mike: Yeah, that's a very good question. There is one moment that jumps out to me in particular. And again, piggybacking off what Josh said, it is the, these conversations that we were very fortunate to have with Luca and each other all throughout that rehearsal process. And one of the things that was discussed about Art was this idea, you know, Patrick's character is much more, I think brazen, a little much more relaxed, much more calm about life in general, and Art's character is maybe a little bit more controlled, particular, very neat, very organized, trying to really make sure that things are correct. And within that, there's this this scene at the party and we're watching Tashi dance on the dance floor. And then we have a conversation with her and she leaves and we decide to stay and wait for her. And so Josh, Patrick, and Art. We're just sitting on the couch and and there's this dessert that was presented to us and it had it was like some sort of cake and it had an icing on top of it. And there was strawberries on top of the cake. And I remember thinking Art would love to eat the cake. They probably won't eat the cake. That's not the right thing to do. So I guess we'll have the strawberry. But then, the strawberry has icing on it, so he has to scrape the icing off of the strawberry. While he's eating and I remember doing that and that felt as if that, that probably was the correct choice, and I think it's in the movie. I don't know if it made it (Zendaya: it is! Mike: it is? Zendaya: it is!) it felt right (Zendaya: but it is) and it felt very indicative as to who this person was in terms of, you know, the decision to eat the cake or not eat the cake is its own thing and the consequences of that. Well, I guess. Yes. You know.

Interviewer: [...] I want to bring it to you, Mike. Because I feel like with Art, there's much more to find things. Yeah, starts off is very flirty and a little bit unsure. Then it becomes focused, and my favorite moment is right after the sign-in at the tennis match, when he hits that ball back at Patrick, we see basically the ice turn into fire. And that is like the biggest emotional shift we see from the character from that moment on and all of the stuff that comes after that has to be told through tennis. I'm curious, what was in the script? What were you trying to basically say in addition to those tennis moves that y'all are doing in that final climactic moment? There's a lot of emotion coming out from Art, like more so than you maybe even seen from him in earlier moments. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that climax. And then I want to come to you, Josh, about how you were on the other side of that, because you essentially popped open all that emotion. So Mike, yeah.

Mike: Well, it's interesting because I think that was actually, it wasn't planned. Um, that moment, it was something that was felt, um, sorry, there, there's no way to articulate that other than, you know, I think there are these strange things that happen. Um, and they're kind of unexplainable where, you know, you, you do all of this prep work, you do as much thought as you can. Um, with the material that you're given, the conversations that you have with the creatives, the wardrobe that is, you know, built for you. And then at the end of the day, you're placed in that situation and you have to allow the character to kind of come forth and decide for themselves what is appropriate in that situation. And, and I remember that day very distinctly. Because we had been, we had been shooting, um, uh, that tennis, uh, see all those tennis sequences going back to that, um, for two or three weeks. Um, and, um, we did shoot that section of it towards the end of those two to three weeks. So there was this kind of natural progression leading up to that climactic moment that you're talking about. And, and, and that particular moment. Um, it just felt as if that this thing was coming out of me and it felt like Art was taking over-is the truth of the matter.

Um, and it's one of those, you know, unexplainable events where, like I said, you do this work, you do as much prep and thought as possible. And then you let these things kind of take over and let them go. And, and that felt also correct in the sense, for our characters, well with this person that does work so terribly hard in terms of making the right choice, and stepping in the right place, and doing the right thing in order to get to those places and here's with the situation where truly the game that is playing... if you were look at his career it really doesn't matter, however in this moment, you know because of the dramatic, the dramaticniss of the story that we're telling is the most important thing

And in this moment as well, he is letting go of all of that, which I think is, which I think is the thing that both Art and Tashi are trying to get out of him as not just a tennis player, but also a person. And it did feel as if when we, when I, I remember just reading the actual tennis sequence itself and the way that it had come across to me off of the page was, oh, now everybody has fallen back in love with not just each other, but the game and why they are doing it in the first place. And so that release of that tension that Art allows himself kind of allows everybody to let go of it all and just let go. I'm not being very articulate, unfortunately, with this, but I think it was just one of these things that naturally, that tension and buildup is kind of placed into Art's hands. And he has the decision as to how he's going to let both Tashi and Patrick kind of feel about it. And the choice that he makes is to actually kind of come into himself and let go of all of that and choose to engage with it.

[acourtofthought]

Lol you're hilarious. Everything about the story and SJM's recent online activities AND the articles point towards elriel endgame but y'all will only stop when elriel is announced I guess.

Anons like this are always better than a cup of coffee because wow, do they wake my brain up in an instant.

Articles pointing to an E/riel endgame? You mean articles written by journalists who never sat down with SJM and who never even spoken to the author or Bloomsbury regarding the content? Articles that were factually incorrect, one originally claiming that SJM was the author of the Elemental series with a hyperlink to a different authors Amazon page? Journalists who definitely are not more qualified than Sarah's own best friend who is on record as saying she doesn't think E/riel is happening?

Also, if we're really claiming her posts as possible clues of which we have zero evidence they are, those clues suggest Elain more than any ship.

Bloomsbury tweeted flowers and fire (not stars or a night sky). Which actually would hint at Lucien over Az.

She had the book of flowers displayed during her live. It's cute how some tried to claim there was a black bat on the spine of the book but alas, it was a blue petal.

She wore a Bambi sweater with flowers during an IG and yes that sweater was on a black background but only because that's how the shirt is produced. I'm sorry but you can't be so ridiculous as to think that the author would want to wear that particular sweater (something she's owned for years as it was mentioned in another article from way back when) but second guess herself because the black background it was already on might have people thinking it hints at Az.

The Spring story had nothing, NOTHING to connect to Az but if you recall from the actual books, Lucien is permanently stationed in the Spring Court.

Let's break down the Az clues you're so confident in.

She was writing ACOTAR 5 in September. She was already into the process to the point that she was obsessed with the book, that it felt like having a crush, that she was so focused on it she didn't even have time to make a treat for her childs school. So that probably means she was at least a few chapters in? A third in? In February, about 5 months later, she did a fan made bracket (that did not include Lucien). and said Az was someone she'd be exploring more in the future.

She wrote the current version of HOFAS in a month. If she had already been working on ACOTAR 5 and had already spent 5/6 months writing about Az, why would Az be someone she wanted to explore more in the future? Shouldn't she have already explored him in e/riels book?

The post where SJM went up North to draft and stopped in front of a small body of water in the middle of the mountains? Guess what, Koschei's LAKE is hidden in a forest, surrounded by mountains. Illyria is not the only place in their entire world with mountains and pine trees. Also, Vallahan is surrounded by mountains on the map! Places SJM could easily have written about in this next book, places more connected to Lucien, Elain and Vassa. And as mentioned above, she said she was up north to draft. It is now 7 months since she did the Live interview talking about how she was working on ACOTAR 5. Chances are, whatever she was up North drafting is not ACOTAR but her next project.

Onto Guilty as Sin. My point mentioned above twice still stands. Why are you assuming it made her think of a book that's probably already written rather than a book she may be working on? Maybe it gave her the feels for the LoA / Helion's love story as they were forbidden lovers who were not yet lovers in their youth. Sarah has often spoken about wanting to write an ACOTAR book set in the past, maybe it's time for theirs. Mor heard rumors that the LoA waited before agreeing to Beron's proposal, after having met Helion at an Equinox the previous year. Helion claims that he heard her family wanted ties to power. At that time (before they ever had an affair), the LoA and Helion would have been forbidden because he had no real power. If you recall, he only became HL during Amarantha's reign after she killed the HL of Day and most of their family. Or maybe she is writing about the Seraphim from 500 years ago, before the first war. Where Miryam and Drakon fell in love when she was with Jurian.

Would it honestly make sense for her to be excited about a song that she just heard for the first time three days ago over a book that should be finished save for maybe final edits?

I like imagining how these things might hint at Elain and Lucien too, it's fun in this drought of ACOTAR info. But I don't have such blinders on that it makes me unable to consider other possibilities.

Stop claiming you see the whole picture when you are only selecting the puzzle pieces you like best. Trying putting the entire thing together if you want to have a chance at sounding like you know what you're talking about.

You guess we'll stop when e/riel is announced? You mean the ship that ended on Solstice, the ship Elain did not shed a single tear over the way she cried for Graysen (someone we know that she loved)? Elain returned Az's necklace and never once looked like she was struggling with moving on. What kind of Elain stan are you, having Elain daydream of being with the guy who rejected her and couldn't confirm real feelings to his own brother? Are doormats now the rage?

I think I remember the Bryce / Az shippers saying the same thing, how we'd see when CC3 was released, but guess who was victorious on that front? The people who believed Bryce was ending up with her mate.

[collapsedsquid]

Listened to some of Odd Lot's "Beak Capitalism" series, first episode was pretty much a "biases confirmed" moment about how the egg shortage was used as a way for suppliers to experiment with prices and see how much they could get away with raising them.

But the second one was interesting to me, this one was how chicken-raising works. Basically, the big companies who supply chicken contract with small farmers, the farmers build the barns and supervise the chickens, and the chickens which remain owned by the big company through whole process are given to the farmer as chicks and taken away when they are ready to be prepared. Feed, conditions, and the rest are mandated by the big companies, the farmers don't really have a lot of choice.

They compared it to the Uber business model while saying it predates Uber, to me Uber is a comparatively benign form of this business model and I was thinking of the way Amazon delivery subcontracting works. They aren't "employees" but have tight supervision, the "owner" is required to purchase the equipment. You sometimes see "Schools aren't teaching people how to balance a checkbook" but in the past year I've been thinking "schools aren't teaching people how to participate in a market," people being surprised by things that they should not be. This is clearly a bad deal.

And it's funny because you have the Coase thing "why do companies choose to have employees at all, why not participate as contracting individuals." This isn't about a merely about a legal dodge to save money, but a model of an optimally socially and individually efficient business where people would rent the equipment they use, buy the inputs and sell the outputs. But here you have something that from that "free market" perspective is the worst of all worlds, the farmers aren't even buying and selling the chickens, they have used a "free contract" to avoid a market. There is some performance pay but the farmer mentioned that pay is zero-sum, it's not about efficiency, it's about beating your neighbors.

And as someone who is interested in small business paranoia, one of the things I picked up was that the farmer they interviewed was convinced that their supplier was intentionally working to make sure the farmers remained in debt, so they would unable to quit. The big thing he mentioned was that they required spurious "upgrades" that the farmer is required to pay for and perform. As a city-slicker I am suspicious of these sorts of claims from farmers but it was interesting to hear about them.

[mariacallous]

One phrase encapsulates the methodology of nonfiction master Robert Caro: Turn Every Page. The phrase is so associated with Caro that it’s the name of the recent documentary about him and of an exhibit of his archives at the New York Historical Society. To Caro it is imperative to put eyes on every line of every document relating to his subject, no matter how mind-numbing or inconvenient. He has learned that something that seems trivial can unlock a whole new understanding of an event, provide a path to an unknown source, or unravel a mystery of who was responsible for a crisis or an accomplishment. Over his career he has pored over literally millions of pages of documents: reports, transcripts, articles, legal briefs, letters (45 million in the LBJ Presidential Library alone!). Some seemed deadly dull, repetitive, or irrelevant. No matter—he’d plow through, paying full attention. Caro’s relentless page-turning has made his work iconic.

In the age of AI, however, there’s a new motto: There’s no need to turn pages at all! Not even the transcripts of your interviews. Oh, and you don’t have to pay attention at meetings, or even attend them. Nor do you need to read your mail or your colleagues’ memos. Just feed the raw material into a large language model and in an instant you’ll have a summary to scan. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude as our wingmen, summary reading is what now qualifies as preparedness.

LLMs love to summarize, or at least that’s what their creators set them about doing. Google now “auto-summarizes” your documents so you can “quickly parse the information that matters and prioritize where to focus.” AI will even summarize unread conversations in Google Chat! With Microsoft Copilot, if you so much as hover your cursor over an Excel spreadsheet, PDF, Word doc, or PowerPoint presentation, you’ll get it boiled down. That’s right—even the condensed bullet points of a slide deck can be cut down to the … more essential stuff? Meta also now summarizes the comments on popular posts. Zoom summarizes meetings and churns out a cheat sheet in real time. Transcription services like Otter now put summaries front and center, and the transcription itself in another tab.

Why the orgy of summarizing? At a time when we’re only beginning to figure out how to get value from LLMs, summaries are one of the most straightforward and immediately useful features available. Of course, they can contain errors or miss important points. Noted. The more serious risk is that relying too much on summaries will make us dumber.

Summaries, after all, are sketchy maps and not the territory itself. I’m reminded of the Woody Allen joke where he zipped through War and Peace in 20 minutes and concluded, “It’s about Russia.” I’m not saying that AI summaries are that vague. In fact, the reason they’re dangerous is that they’re good enough. They allow you to fake it, to proceed with some understanding of the subject. Just not a deep one.

As an example, let’s take AI-generated summaries of voice recordings, like what Otter does. As a journalist, I know that you lose something when you don’t do your own transcriptions. It’s incredibly time-consuming. But in the process you really know what your subject is saying, and not saying. You almost always find something you missed. A very close reading of a transcript might allow you to recover some of that. Having everything summarized, though, tempts you to look at only the passages of immediate interest—at the expense of unearthing treasures buried in the text.

Successful leaders have known all along the danger of such shortcuts. That’s why Jeff Bezos, when he was CEO of Amazon, banned PowerPoint from his meetings. He famously demanded that his underlings produce a meticulous memo that came to be known as a “6-pager.” Writing the 6-pager forced managers to think hard about what they were proposing, with every word critical to executing, or dooming, their pitch. The first part of a Bezos meeting is conducted in silence as everyone turns all 6 pages of the document. No summarizing allowed!

To be fair, I can entertain a counterargument to my discomfort with summaries. With no effort whatsoever, an LLM does read every page. So if you want to go beyond the summary, and you give it the proper prompts, an LLM can quickly locate the most obscure facts. Maybe one day these models will be sufficiently skilled to actually identify and surface those gems, customized to what you’re looking for. If that happens, though, we’d be even more reliant on them, and our own abilities might atrophy.

Long-term, summary mania might lead to an erosion of writing itself. If you know that no one will be reading the actual text of your emails, your documents, or your reports, why bother to take the time to dig up details that make compelling reading, or craft the prose to show your wit? You may as well outsource your writing to AI, which doesn’t mind at all if you ask it to churn out 100-page reports. No one will complain, because they’ll be using their own AI to condense the report to a bunch of bullet points. If all that happens, the collective work product of a civilization will have the quality of a third-generation Xerox.

As for Robert Caro, he’s years past his deadline on the fifth volume of his epic LBJ saga. If LLMs had been around when he began telling the president’s story almost 50 years ago—and he had actually used them and not turned so many pages—the whole cycle probably would have been long completed. But not nearly as great.

[denimbex1986]

'...In season 2, Gaiman and his co-writer John Finnemore takes us beyond the pages of the original book and focuses on the millennia-lasting connection between the book-loving angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and the demon Crowley (David Tennant), who cares more about saving humanity than he'd care to admit.

While fans are certainly eager to see more of Aziraphale and Crowley, actors Sheen and Tennant were also more than happy to reprise their roles. "It was very pleasing to slip back into those slightly too-tight trousers," Tennant joked to me about donning Crowley's wardrobe once more. I talked to him about "Good Omens 2" before the SAG-AFTRA strike, and we touched on how season 2 even came to be, what it was like to have Jon Hamm's amnesiac Gabriel throw a wrench into Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship, and — for a brief moment — about fan fiction.

With the first season, there was the source material from the book, but season 2 is new territory. How did Neil [Gaiman] pitch season 2 to you, and when did he pitch it to you in the process?

It gradually came into focus over a couple of years, probably. I mean, from the initial idea that there might be more story to tell, which probably had its genesis way, way back as a sort of fantasy idea, really, where we were shooting [season] 1.

And then [season] 1 came out, and I think from that point, there was a slow realization that actually there might be more to come. Neil was clearly excited at the idea, and I think Amazon were keen to do it. And Michael and I were thrilled that we would get to return to [these] characters. We always thought it was a one-off. That was how it was pitched. That's what we were contracted for. When we started off on that journey, there was never a sense to go further, but what a treat that it was going to. And I think Neil would drop us little nuggets down the months and years, really.

Then there was a point, now when would it have been? I was in Romania filming "Around the World in 80 Days." Michael was, I can't remember where he was, but we had a Zoom call together where Neil read us the first scene, the opening scene, which is, if you've seen it, you'll know we meet a very youthful Crowley and Aziraphale, very much way back at the beginning of time. And Neil read that out to us over a Zoom call and then gave us a quick sketch of what the rest of the series was going to be. He told us some of the other writers that he was working with, and some of the early ideas, and he told us how it ended. That was all worked out, and it just felt delicious, really. I mean from that moment on, it just felt like it was always meant to be. It felt like it was such a perfectly formed idea. I think it's fair to say that Michael and I didn't need much persuading.

One thing I love about both seasons is that Aziraphale and Crowley are definitely an odd couple, but in "Good Omens 2," they're an odd couple who gets a toddler — at least in the first few episodes with Gabriel.

Yes, yes. That's a very good logline. Yes. The odd couple with a toddler.

I have a toddler, and some of the lines, I was like, "Is Neil in my house taking audio of my child?" Because you had the established dynamic with Michael for Crowley and Aziraphale in the first season, how did the dynamic change in those scenes with the two of you and with Gabriel when he's in that toddler state?

Well, I suppose it's Gabriel's very presence that changes it, isn't it? I mean, he's the grit in the oyster there, because I think they've just about managed to figure out a way of existing separately and together without their head offices ruling their lives. They're living with existence in the shadows on Earth and actually having probably quite a reasonable time. I mean, Crowley's living in the back of his car, which isn't ideal, but they're bumping along, and they can spend time together with less of the threat of being told off for it.

The absence of heaven and hell has actually been quite a good thing for them on the whole. So to have Gabriel revisiting is a bit of a disaster. Especially — I mean, he did try to discorporate Aziraphale and that Aziraphale was actually Crowley at the time, and that's not something Crowley's wanting to forgive. So to have Gabriel back in their midst and inexplicably amnesiac at the same time, it's not really what they needed and it's not helping them to keep their heads down. So it's brilliant in terms of setting these characters off on a new story and taking them to places they didn't imagine they would ever have to go. It's a fantastic device and like you say, yes, it's a bit like the odd couple with a kid, or two supernaturals and a baby, something like that. And I think that's the joy, isn't it? If there's characters that you know and love, you just want to spin them into a situation that they've not been in before and sit back and enjoy it.

Another thing in season 2, and I'm going to keep this spoiler-free, but there are a lot of flashbacks to other points in time, which you got a little bit of in the first season. But I think we get more of it here, and one of the things with those flashbacks is that you, especially as Crowley, get to wear the most magnificent costumes. What was that like for you, to embody these clothes and portray Crowley through all those different points in time?

Who wouldn't get a kick out of being able to reimagine what that version of Crowley would've been? Because unlike Aziraphale, who tends to be a bit more conservative in the way that he addresses whatever period he's living through and in some ways sort of changes very little, Crowley leans into wherever he is and tries to find the zeitgeist of the moment and chew it up and spit it out a little bit. So from a design point of view, that's great fun. Obviously, Kate Carin, our costume designer, was allowed to run riot, because you get to design a period look and then add another 25% on top of it. And Stevie Smith, who designs my makeup on it, gets to find new ways of sticking facial hair on me. And it's hugely fun to play, and hugely fun for everyone to create.

And those little stories — the stories within the story — to get to see those characters at different points in their existence, it's a treat. It was always Michael and I's favorite bit of the first [season], that sequence — episode 3 where you saw them traipsing through history. And so it was delicious that there was more of that in season 2, and they're very much crafted at specific points in the story to illustrate an element of how Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship has developed over the millennia and why they are where they are now. So they're not just indulgences for us all. They're very specific plot points to tell.

I'm sure there's fanfic out there that's similar to what we see of Crowley and Aziraphale, and it's interesting to see the official version of it.

Yes. I mean, I've experienced some fanfic in my time. I think it's best, probably not for me [to read]. Sometimes you find yourself doing some very, very extraordinary things. So perhaps I'll leave that ....

No, I think that's wise on your part. And then for my last question, it just looks like you're having fun when you're playing Crowley —

I wouldn't want you to imagine anything other than very, very hard work. Very difficult, very dull, very boring. I'm never enjoying myself at all.

Yeah, no, of course not! But for Crowley, is there anything you do to get into that mindset?

It was interesting going back for series 2, because there's been quite a gap between filming 1 and 2, and I was a little bit concerned that the voice or the walk or whatever else it might be have slightly left me. But once I was staring at Michael Sheen's bleached white hair and his ... oh, I could be rude. I'm not going to be rude. So no, it all sort of seemed to come back fairly easily, to be honest. I felt, there's certainly, it's a very pleasing character to inhabit and all that full cynicism that he splashes around himself, which actually hides, I would say, a heart of gold, although Crowley would never admit that himself. It was very pleasing to slip back into those slightly too-tight trousers. It really was a pleasure. It was great fun.'

[ettawritesnstudies]

Big Announcements in Today's Post!

If you want to support my writing and publishing process, or you appreciate my blog and the work I do to support indie authors, becoming a member is an easy and consistent way to contribute! Plus, there's cool rewards for all the tiers - more details in the blog itself or on my Kofi. If you can't become a member at this moment, the shop is still up!

I also have an affiliate bookshop.org link now! I chose to partner with them over Amazon because we all hate Amazon and their stranglehold monopoly over the publishing industry, but they also contribute their profits to local and independent bookstores. If you buy a book through my affiliate link, I also get a portion of the sales. If you see one of my reviews or interviews and the book looks interesting, consider buying it through this link!

If you’re still reading this far, thank you 💛 I know the self-promotion and shilling of wares is super annoying in this day and age of constant advertisement with so many people and brands vying for your attention. Even if you have nothing to contribute financially, I appreciate each and every person who visits this blog. No matter how insane my life is about to become in the next year, I intend to keep putting out consistent, quality, free posts that build up the indie author community and connect with fellow bibliophiles. These are just ways to let me keep doing what I love doing, hopefully with a little less stress about my publishing budget/schedule.

I also want to give a special thank you to my wonderful fiance, Eric, who encourages me to keep doing this. We're getting married in June and weddings are also very expensive, but he's the one who told me to go ahead with my publishing plans, even when I considered pushing it off another year. Because of him, Runaways will be coming to you all in October 2025, and so many exciting things beyond that. I have a ton of other projects in the works as well and I can’t wait to make them a reality.

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday super talented Scottish film director and writer Lynne Ramsay.

Born in Glasgow on 5th December 1969, Ramsay studied photography at Napier College, Edinburgh. In 1995, she graduated from the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, where she specialised in cinematography and direction.

After cutting her teeth on several shorts, Ramsay wrote and directed the film Ratcatcher in 1999, starring Tommy Flanagan, it’s a gritty film set in early 70’s Glasgow, it is really worth a watch, it tells the story of a wee laddie affected by his part in the drowning of another, it’s a bleak film but captures Glasgow at a time when the tenements started to be emptied for schemes that went up on the outskirts. Another fab film by Lynne Ramsay is Morvern Callar, based on the excellent Alan Warner novel set in Oban.

Lynne Ramsay’s last feature film was a decent effort You Were Never Really Here, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a man who tracks down missing girls for a living, it gets 6.8/10 on IMDb and is well worth a watch and it received a seven-minute standing ovation at Cannes, you will find it on Amazon Prime. In 2019 she made a short documentary called Brigitte, it’s framed round a candid conversation between the photographer Brigitte Lacombe and the film maker discussing their process and fascination with images as well as Brigitte's close relationship to her sister Marian Lacombe. The film has had a couple of good reviews and rated 6.9 on IMDB.

Ramsay is considered one of the British most original and exciting voices working in Independent cinema today, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Edinburgh for her contribution to Scottish film in 2013.

Lynne is far from being a prolific filmmaker, but she admits to being a perfectionist, better to be that than to churn out film after film at the behest of Hollywood. She said in an interview she has a script under her belt and is seeking backers to make it, but has given nothing away to the content.

Lynne has 3 projects on the go at the moment all in Post Production. Polaris,set in Alaska during the 1890s, an ice photographer meets the devil is the most eye catching and Joaquin Phoenix again is the lead actor.

[batmannotes]

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One

Available exclusively on Digital on January 9

4K UHD in limited edition steelbook packaging and Blu-ray arriving on January 23

Parts Two & Three of the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Trilogy to debut later in 2024

Based on DC’s iconic comic book limited series ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, join DC Super Heroes from across the multiverse in the first of three parts of DC’s new animated film Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One, which marks the beginning of the end to the Tomorrowverse story arc.

Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the all-new, action-packed DC animated film features some of DC’s most famous Super Heroes from multiple universes including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, who come together to stop an impending threat of doom and destruction. The film will be available to purchase exclusively on digital on January 9 and on 4K UHD in limited edition steelbook packaging and Blu-ray on January 23.

Fans of this superhero adventure will also be able to indulge in a range of bonus features including interviews with the filmmakers on how they created a comprehensive universe across seven films.

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two and Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three will be available later in 2024.

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One features returning popular voice cast members: Emmy winner Darren Criss (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, Glee) as Superman & Earth-2 Superman, Stana Katic (Castle, Absentia) as Wonder Woman & Superwoman and Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, The Boys, The Winchesters) as Batman/Bruce Wayne. Aside from the returning voice cast, a star-studded ensemble takes shape including Matt Bomer (White Collar, American Horror Story: Hotel) as The Flash/Barry Allen, Meg Donnelly (Legion of Super-Heroes, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,) as Supergirl & Harbinger, Jimmi Simpson (Star Trek: Prodigy, Westworld) as Green Arrow and Zachary Quinto (Heroes, Star Trek) as Lex Luthor.

Additional cast includes: Jonathan Adams as Monitor, Ike Amadi as J’onn J’onzz/Martian Manhunter, Amazing Man & Ivo, Geoffrey Arend as Psycho Pirate & Hawkman, Zack Callison as Dick Grayson/Robin, Alexandra Daddario as Lois Lane, Alastair Duncan as Alfred, Matt Lanter as Blue Beetle & Ultraman, Ato Essandoh as Mr Terrific, Cynthia Hamidi as Dawnstar, Aldis Hodge as John Stewart/Green Lantern & Power Ring, Erika Ishii as Doctor Light/Dr. Hoshi & Huntress, David Kaye as The Question, Ashleigh LaThrop as Iris West, Liam Mcintyre as Aquaman & Johnny Quick, Nolan North as Hal Jordan, Amazo & Homeless Man, Lou Diamond Phillips as The Spectre & Owlman, Keesha Sharp as Vixen and Harry Shum Jr. as Brainiac 5.

SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:

Physical and Digital

Crisis Prime(r): The filmmakers reveal in detail their intricate plan to create a comprehensive animated universe across seven films, concluding with the events of the three-part adaptation Justice League Crisis on Infinite Earths.

The Selfless Speedster: Explore The Flash’s legendary role in the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” comic series, the creative process that brought him to life in the animated adaptation, and the vocal performance behind his heroic and romantic story.

Digital Only

Silent Treatment – Film Clip fromJustice League Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two

Preorder now at Amazon.

[musicartaworld]

Ignacio Arfeli - Posthumanism

Ignacio Arfeli

is a techno producer and DJ originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, but currently residing in Lisbon, Portugal. His artistic development was significantly shaped by his move from Buenos Aires to Berlin, and later to Lisbon. Berlin, in particular, had a huge impact on his creativity and network within electronic music.

Although he is relatively new to the scene, he has already made a name for himself with his powerful, innovative style within the techno genre. He is known for his ability to combine dark, raw techno with melodic elements and emotional depth. His style brings a fresh, modern energy that appeals to both dance floors and listeners. His creativity and constant search for new sounds make him a standout artist within the electronic music scene.

Ignacio Arfeli has undergone an impressive journey in the techno scene in a short period of time. Early in his career, he received support from heavyweights like Adam Beyer, ANNA, Maceo Plex, Pan-Pot, and Victor Ruiz; as well as Eric Prydz, who played his tracks at festivals and clubs worldwide. His track 'Singularity' was released on the prestigious label Drumcode, as part of the compilation 'A-Sides Vol. 12'. This was a significant milestone, as it was Arfeli's first demo that was immediately picked up and led to his breakthrough. In addition to Drumcode, he also released music on labels such as Terminal M, Codex, and Volta Records, confirming his versatility and production quality. He launched 7even Radio, a platform where he shares cutting-edge techno and further develops his artistic vision.

performances

His performances, like recently at EPHIMERA Tulum and Culture Box in Copenhagen, showcase his ability to take an audience on an intense, hypnotic journey. He does not choose the easiest path, but rather a sound that sticks. His sets are not a mere collection of loose tracks, but carefully constructed musical journeys. He plays with tension, rhythm, and atmosphere, drawing the audience in completely. Arfeli is known for his ability to surprise the audience with unexpected breaks, melodic layers, or industrial accents. Despite his intense style, Arfeli remains remarkably attuned to the energy of the room. He senses when to speed up, slow down, or strike an emotional chord. This keeps his sets fresh and captivating, even for seasoned techno enthusiasts. His background as a producer clearly shines through in his live sets. He mixes with surgical precision and knows exactly when to build up or release tension.

Control Your Dreams Releasedate: April 25, 2025 Label: Memoro

Visualizer by Krrissje's Music Mania

Posthumanism

by Ignacio Arfeli is an immersive techno release that appeared on April 25, 2025, via the label Memoro. The track falls within the genre Peak Time / Driving Techno, with a tempo of 135 BPM. In terms of atmosphere, it perfectly aligns with Arfeli’s live sets: dark, hypnotic, and with a futuristic undertone. The title 'Posthumanism' also seems thematically to refer to a world where technology and humanity merge, a concept that fits well with his layered, atmospheric production style.

Previews:

Interviews:

New track: Ignacio Arfeli - Places We Know

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[shipwreckedwithcaptainmarrow]

My book I just published! Over four years worth of research, traveling the coast, interviewing random locals in seaside towns, and much effort. As described on the book's back blurb above, it's a historical analysis of pirate folklore from Florida to Virginia's northernmost shores. The inside contains nearly two hundred entries of claims of pirate hauntings and buried treasure tales associated with pirates, that date from the 1700s, newspapers of the 19th century, old brochures and folklore books, modern word of mouth tales, and online claims. Each entry is presented as the tale is known, followed by my own notes regarding historical context surrounding the claim and of its' validity. Further each tale is analyzed as to where it came from, what year it began circulating, and so on. More than just a folklore book, it's a history book 'on' the folklore. The book recently went Live on Amazon for a number of countries outside of North America, however the listing is still in the process of becoming live for those in the US and Canada. I'll update again once it's available for us here! https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Ghosts-Buried-Treasures-Southeast/dp/B0CJDBLTT6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZAJ6SRVDZYKU&keywords=pirate+ghosts+%26+buried+treasure+marrow&qid=1695689334&sprefix=%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1 If you do decide to make a purchase, please consider leaving an honest review, even short one-sentence reviews help indie authors considerably. Thanks mate!