H(👁️)m(e)r

I finished watching “1899” through to the final episode. I had a sense about that ending. Started it as a study of LED “volume,” but it’s very well made. The music is excellent. I also watched the making-of. A 360-degree rotating stage, and a base set built in modular, pizza-like sections, fascinating. There’s clearly some ingenuity needed to keep the backgrounds from looking too “Unreal”like. Bringing together a global cast during the pandemic, dealing with quarantine, abandoning location shoots and turning to the “volume”—that resonates deeply. On DS2 as well, gathering a worldwide cast in Los Angeles during COVID was a challenge. There were several instances where cast members tested positive shortly after arriving in the U.S. So still, no Season 2? What are Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the creators of “DARK,” working on next?

Trump has proposed a $1.5 trillion defense budget — a 40% increase, the largest since WWII. In exchange for more war he wants to: -Cut the EPA budget by half -Cut $10.7 billion for housing -Cut $8.5 billion for K-12 programs -Cancel $15 billion for clean energy -Cut $2.5 billion for clean drinking water -Eliminate $1.6 billion for youth job training -Cut $3.5 billion from the Labor Department -Eliminate $395 million for senior employment -Eliminate $775 million in food assistance grants -Eliminate the National Endowment for Democracy -Cut $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health -Eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) In all, cuts to domestic programs would account for a 10% reduction in discretionary spending.

🦔While Oracle was sending 6am termination emails to between 20,000 and 30,000 employees this week, the company had filed roughly 3,126 H-1B petitions to hire foreign workers in fiscal years 2025 and 2026, including 436 filed this year alone. H-1B petitions are required when companies seek to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations like technology. Amazon, which has cut 30,000 corporate employees since October, filed 2,675 H-1B petitions over the same period. My Take The official justification for H-1B filings is that companies need specialized skills unavailable domestically. The honest explanation in most cases is cheaper labor. H-1B workers are often paid less than their American counterparts for equivalent roles and are tied to their employer through visa sponsorship, which limits their ability to negotiate or leave. Oracle didn't lay off 18% of its workforce because those people lacked skills. It laid them off to free up $8-10 billion in cash flow to service AI infrastructure debt. Filing hundreds of foreign worker petitions in the same period is a cost structure decision, and the people who got that 6am email and then saw these filings have every right to be angry about it. Hedgie🤗

Can someone explain why the Artemis launch video feeds didn’t look as good as this?