In this roundup: Turkish troubles, good tech bad tech, fickle market reaction, and Halloween tricks-or-treats.
Because it’s Halloween I’m sharing a short film for Movie Monday based on that theme. It’s probably R-rated so don’t launch it in the office without the doors shut and/or the volume down. It parodizes so many cheap horror films of the 1980s-2000s including the Final Girl trope.
I need to watch this short a couple more times. The film is billed as a single take — one long, unbroken camera shot — but I’m not certain it is. I think there may be a hidden few cuts when the location changes from one end of a room to another. Look at this analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s use of dissolve cuts in his 1948 film Rope and you’ll see what I mean by hidden cuts. Keep in mind that with digital technology, even dissolve cuts may be smoother and much less detectable than they were in 1948 with traditional film.
Turkish troubles
- U.S. State Dept: consulate family members to leave Turkey (Business Standard) — Upgrading an existing advisory issued in March and volutary departure authorization issued in July, the State Department has now ordered families of consulate employees to leave Turkey due to increased threats from extremist groups targeting U.S. citizens.
- Turkey’s oldest daily newspaper Cumhuriyet’s editor and journalists arrested and detained (Dogan News Agency) — International Press Institute and other media associations call for release of editors and journalists; Cumhuriyet’s writer Kadri Gursel is the head of IPI’s Turkish chapter and was taken into custody this weekend after a raid on his home.
- Erdogan has now fired or detained 110,000 state employees (Bloomberg) — Purge after so-called coup attempt continues to widen, targeting any potential dissenter.
- Op-Ed: Turkey’s Erdogan tying up with Russia (Al Arabiya) — Turkey’s current ruling faction may see more to gain from better relations with Russia, which won’t criticize it for human rights violations as the EU and US have done. Turkey’s increased hostility with Kurds has encouraged this shift.
Good tech, bad tech, or something in between
- Delta Airlines implements RFID baggage tracking app (Fortune) — FINALLY. I’ve been wondering ever since the furor over Walmart using RFID on inventory why airlines couldn’t use RFID and let their customers track their own bags. Only took ~16 years or so. And thank goodness this technology isn’t WiFi-enabled. Should save billions of dollars — let’s hope that trickles down to savings on tickets.
- Toyota developing a keyless access system for carsharing (Detroit Free Press) — Really? Didn’t Toyota have keyless remote fobs that were hacked just last year?
- SpaceX still investigating launchpad explosion (Business Insider) — To be fair, it’s not clear yet what triggered the explosion two months ago. Can’t say if this is good or bad technology or something else altogether. (Not going to mourn the loss of a satellite which was to provide internet to African continent via Facebook. This part I’d call bad tech. Can’t we come up with some other approach to providing internet besides a walled garden with fake news?)
The market = fickle mistress?[1]
- Could market respond like it did post-Brexit to a particular candidate’s election? (Bloomberg View) — Uh, yeah, very likely — the market doesn’t want the guy who says he wants to be unpredictable. Economists Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz published a paper this past week outlining the market’s response to swings in election polling.
- But market not worried about Clinton now? (euronews) — At least this is the EU market’s reaction today after the new dust-up about emails not sent by Clinton, not on her ‘private’ server.
Tricks or treats?
- Spooky reads: scary seance scenes in fiction (Guardian) — Could be fun to read while waiting for trick-or-treaters to knock on your door.
- What makes a good horror film? (OpenCulture) — If you’d rather watch than read something scary tonight, bone up first before surfing Netflix or Amazon for a film.
- Werewolves in classic literature (Sententiae Antiquae) — Classic literature, as in Greek or Roman, has a surprising number of references to lycanthropy. Did they tell each other these stories to scare each other around the campfire?
- Sluttiest Halloween costumes (McSweeney’s) — Of 1915, that is. In case you need a laugh and not a scare. I sure could right now; only one more week of election terror to go.
Watch out for little ghosts and goblins tonight!
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[1] Note: You’re not seeing things — I accidentally hit the Publish button before I’d updated the two market economics bits!