by 
Updated on December 10, 2021
Here’s a look at some interesting articles from the previous week.
Media
Friday Foster returns
The newspaper comic “Dick Tracy” is still ongoing, most recently under artist Joe Staton (a Bronze Age DC Comics artist). Currently, the strip’s brought back the character Friday Foster for a new storyline… not to mention the first time Friday’s appeared in a good number of years. Friday was one of the first African-American women to headline a newspaper comic strip, with her own strip running in the early to mid-70s.
Yet another argument for movie theater intermissions (or home video)
The Hollywood Reporter ran an article about how increasingly longer movies are “testing the patience of audiences.” Of course, that’s a strong argument for watching movies at home on video, versus at a movie theater—the only entertainment source left that refuses to run any type of break or intermissions. In my opinion, that’s likely either to pack in an extra showtime (more profit for studios, however small) and/or stubborn directors refusing to compromise.
Technology
Amazon announces its own keynote
Not to be outdone by Apple, Amazon’s announcing its own product keynote scheduled for September 25. Engadget states to expect a bunch of Alexa-tied device news.
Is the “gig economy” as we know it doomed?
California’s about to pass a law that requires counting “gig economy” workers as, well, actual employees. Unsurprisingly, Uber and Lyft plan on fighting this tooth and nail. As if Uber didn’t have enough of an image problem. (Lyft to me seems somewhat less problematic, though it might be from Uber being the more dominant of the two in the ride-sharing space.)
Can’t say this is a bad thing. If the “future of work”/the “gig economy” is basically glorified temp/freelance work, then the people doing such work should benefit as much as possible.
