@Gonetooosoon @vurnt22 Apparently he's been interested in filming At the Mountains of Madness for a long time, but hard to get backing.
English
Christian Miller
10.5K posts
Christian Miller
@CMMwine
Proprietor of Full Glass Research, specializing in food and beverage. Research Director for the Wine Market Council & UC Davis instructor. Tweets are my own.
Berkeley Katılım Mart 2012
113 Takip Edilen608 Takipçiler
It would take a director who 🖤’s The Cthulhu Mythos- not as titillation, but as a seriously considered cosmology. The Horror of the Universe’s utter indifference. The idea of humanity’s creation as the byproduct of processes that would drive us mad if we even got a hint of them.
Tom@codger504
@vurnt22 Lovecraft might be untranslatable to film. Once you separate the idiosyncratic language from the rest, you’re left with a monster movie. What we conjure in our imaginations is far scarier and vast and nightmarish than any film can achieve.
English
@vurnt22 Wikipedia: Alien writer Dan O'Bannon said the film was "strongly influenced, tone-wise, by Lovecraft...one of the things it proved is that you can't adapt Lovecraft effectively without an extremely strong visual style ... you need a cinematic equivalent of Lovecraft's prose."
English
@vurnt22 I think At the Mountains of Madness conveyed the alien hostility of inner Antarctica in a way that could translate very well into film. Ditto the decay of Innsmouth. And Kaddath would make a lovely animated film.
English
This is a nice example of what economists mean when they talk about externalities, that the "free market" often can't or won't price accurately.
Aakash Gupta@aakashgupta
Let me explain exactly why every new subdivision in America looks like the top photo, because the math is wild. A mature tree increases a home's value by 7 to 19 percent. On a $400,000 house, that's $28,000 to $76,000. A single shade tree produces the cooling equivalent of ten room-size air conditioners running 20 hours a day. One tree on the west side of a house cuts energy bills by 12 percent within 15 years. The bottom photo is worth more, costs less to live in, and sells faster. This has been documented by the University of Washington, Clemson, Michigan State, and the USDA. The data is not in dispute. Removing those trees saves the builder roughly $5,000 per lot. Concrete trucks need twice the dripline radius of every standing tree. Utility trenches need flat ground. A bulldozer flattens 200 lots in an afternoon. Preserving trees adds weeks and thousands per home. So the developer pockets $5,000 in savings and the buyer eats $50,000 in lost value for the next two decades. The person making the decision and the person paying for it have never been in the same room. The Woodlands, Texas is the proof of what happens when they are. George Mitchell bought 28,000 acres of Houston timberland in 1974 and preserved 28% as permanent green space. He forced McDonald's to build behind the tree canopy. That McDonald's became one of the highest-volume locations in Texas. The first office building, designed to reflect the surrounding forest so you couldn't see it from the street, leased completely. The Woodlands median home price today: $615,000. Katy, a comparable Houston suburb that clear-cut: $375,000. Named #1 community to live in America two years running. Fifty years of data. The trees are worth more than removing them saves. Developers clear-cut anyway because they sell the house once and leave. You live in it for 30 years.
English
Christian Miller retweetledi
@wblakegray Ha, I had a similar experience with CA Chardonnay in the 20-teens and more recently with Riesling. So much fun to rediscover the classics (at least the good versions)!
English
In 2013, Chianti Classico Riserva was one of my favorite wines in the world.
Then I stopped drinking it for 12 years for reasons I explain in the story.
I revisited the category in February, and it's still great: good wines, good values. Check it out!
wine-searcher.com/m/2026/03/chia…
English
Christian Miller retweetledi
Absolute insanity - the Trump administration wants to pay nearly $1 billion of taxpayer dollars to a private French company to *not* build wind farms off the East Coast
English
@wblakegray I'd guess yes too, assuming the recommender was something of an outlier in perception of weight. But much more promising IMHO is AI trained on specific, narrow, curated datasets. The current dominant model of expecting vast LLMs to do anything/everything seems dumb & wasteful.
English
@CMMwine Well, this is the question. Last month I got a wine I didn't love because when I said I wanted a "light red," the person I told had a different internal definition. Would AI have done better? I'd say in that case, yes: I meant lighter than average, not lightest on the list.
English
They're going to hate me but ... depending on the somm, AI might be better. I'm sorry.
AI will never be as good as a Master Sommelier, but they're never on the floor.
I love a good somm's personal touch. But if I get some dismissive know-it-all who doesn't listen ...
Eric Asimov@EricAsimov
In restaurants, artificial intelligence enters the wine selection process. nytimes.com/2026/03/19/din…
English
Christian Miller retweetledi
@wblakegray AI trained on large public datasets will accomplish #1-2 to if your personal preferences are either very broad or follow the data consensus. Given your breadth of experience, I'd guess less likely to do #4-5. Depends on how you personally interface with it. Caveat: not AI expert.
English
@CMMwine What should a good somm recommend?
1) Something I will like
2) Something I will like
3) Something that fits the food
4) Something I wouldn't think to order myself
5) Something to expand my worldview
But first, get No. 1 and 2 right.
English
@wblakegray Given woeful headlines, people forget or are unaware that (depending on source & measure) 25 to 40% of wineries are still growing. Requires innovative new product, or innovative targeting of under-addressed niches, or superior competence in core marketing/sales activities.
English
This is a bit wordy (sorry, Jim), but he makes an interesting point.
Jim is a PR guy who told 3 lesser-known wine regions to be cautious in this economy. All of them disagreed and want to push full-steam ahead.
Worth reading.
jimsilver.substack.com/p/they-want-to…
English
Christian Miller retweetledi
A three-year-old company operating out of a WeWork with reportedly fewer than five employees is being considered for up to $25 BILLION in nuclear energy funds from a trade deal Trump brokered with Japan.
The company has never built a nuclear plant or completed a nuclear project of any kind.
What does this company bring to the table? The father of its CEO donated $2 million+ to Trump and the GOP, and one of its advisors is a former RNC co-chair and Trump appointee.
In this Administration, that’s apparently all you need.
English
@wblakegray Or imagine being some grocer heading back from the wholesale depot with supplies, getting that same call because of some AI hallucination or bogus data.
English
Imagine the Mossad calling you, telling you they know where you are, and that you are marked for death.
Iranian police captain: “Brother, I swear on the Koran, I’m not your enemy. I’m a dead man already. Just please come help us.”
nypost.com/2026/03/18/wor…
English
She's right up there with Lebron and Iggy in the "Who Me?" face hall of fame. But with a much nastier foul.
Troll Football Media@TrollFootball2
Her: Whyyyyyy? That's my 1st tackle The tackle:
English
Christian Miller retweetledi
Devolution of GOP: from Bush I's painstaking planning and alliance building to Bush II's mission (not quite) accomplished to Trump's mindless flailing.
English
How many swallows to unload a VLCC & move the oil from A-B?
- The average coconut holds approx 500ml (thanks Google)
- VLCC = 2 million barrels.
- 1 barrel = approx 159l
So 318,000,000l to be moved.
We need 636,000,000 coconuts & swallows. Unsure if African or European 🐦
English
@JamesSurowiecki Keep in mind: Hegseth may be too stupid to know the literal meaning of "no quarter", he just thinks it sounds tough.
English
Under the War Crimes Act of 1996, any conduct prohibited by Articles 23, 25, 27, and 28 of the 1907 Hague Convention is a war crime under U.S. law. Article 23 of that Convention says it is forbidden "to declare that no quarter will be given" - exactly what Hegseth did.
English
A declaration of no quarter is an explicit violation of Article 23 of the Hague Convention and therefore a war crime under U.S. law, specifically the War Crimes Act of 1996. And there is no statute of limitations.
Acyn@Acyn
Hegseth: No quarter, no mercy for our enemies. Yet some in the press just can't stop. More fake news from CNN reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war's impact on the strait of hormuz. The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.
English