In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Universal Pictures and its art-house sibling, Focus Features, set off alarm bells in Hollywood by ending the long-held practice of giving theaters an exclusive window of about 90 days to play new movies. Instead, their movies, which have since included “Jurassic World: Dominion,” “Belfast,” “Cocaine Bear” and […]
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More Than Likes is a series about social media personalities trying to do positive things for their communities. On a gloomy April afternoon, Jaeki Cho arrived at Renee’s Kitchenette in Woodside, Queens — the borough where he was raised — ready to work. He wore a loosefitting navy blue suit, with an off-white beret and […]
Read More More Than Likes is a series about social media personalities trying to do positive things for their communities. On a gloomy April afternoon, Jaeki Cho arrived at Renee’s Kitchenette in Woodside, Queens — the borough where he was raised — ready to work. He wore a loosefitting navy blue suit, with an off-white beret and […]
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Within hours of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announcing his presidential run on Twitter on Wednesday, participants in the audio event celebrated the achievement. David Sacks, a venture capitalist who moderated the Twitter conversation, declared it “by far the biggest room ever held on social media.” After the event, Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, said in […]
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What is a misconception people have about the movie theater business that you’ve tried to correct but didn’t succeed? Ticket prices. Even through all the innovations and improvements in the technology, and the sound systems and the premium screens — all the ways that we’ve improved the cinema experience over the last decade or two, […]
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When the Georgia authorities attempted to clear protesters from forested property near Atlanta in January, to make way for the construction of a $90 million police and fire training facility, a confrontation with a group of activists who deride the project as “Cop City” led to a barrage of gunfire. One state trooper was wounded, […]
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Rachel Aaron, a 24-year-old who works in public relations in New York, recently dressed up for a work event at Bloomingdale’s. In the era of “get ready with me” videos on TikTok, it was a golden opportunity to create content. Ms. Aaron, who has just 3,300 followers on TikTok, filmed herself chatting to the camera […]
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The Memphis Grizzlies suspended the All-Star guard Ja Morant on Sunday after he was shown holding what appeared to be a gun during an Instagram Live video over the weekend. In a statement, the team said Morant had been suspended from all team activities while the N.B.A. reviewed the situation. The Grizzlies were eliminated from […]
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Even from afar, the snapping turtle perched on rusted chains in the Chicago River looked gargantuan. Kayakers enjoying a spring outing recorded the plump reptile, marveling at its wrinkled and chunky legs and its shell, which barely covered its thick green body. In the video, which was posted on Twitter this month, one of the […]
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At the opening of the video, the audio is strangely muffled. Juan Alberto Vázquez, the freelance journalist who captured the footage, begins recording from outside the train car where Daniel Penny has a 30-year-old homeless man named Jordan Neely in a chokehold. A couple of other passengers help restrain Neely, making sure he cannot wrestle […]
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Just over a week after thousands of television and movie writers took to picket lines, Netflix is feeling the heat. Late Wednesday night, Netflix abruptly said it was canceling a major Manhattan showcase that it was staging for advertisers next week. Instead of an in-person event held at the fabled Paris Theater, which the streaming […]
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Over the last week, media companies conveyed an air of business as usual. On Thursday, HBO hosted a red carpet premiere for a documentary, while the Fox broadcast network announced a survivalist reality show called “Stars on Mars” hosted by William Shatner. “3 … 2 … 1 … LIFT OFF!” the network’s promotional materials read. […]
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Like other social media companies, Twitter has once again found itself in a position akin to that of traditional newspaper editors, who wrestle with difficult decisions about how much to show their audiences. Though newspapers and magazines generally spare their readers from truly graphic images, they have made some exceptions, as Jet magazine did in […]
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In October 2021, Google promised to stop placing ads alongside content that denied the existence and causes of climate change, so that purveyors of the false claims could no longer make money on its platforms, including YouTube. And yet if you recently clicked on a YouTube video titled “who is Leonardo DiCaprio,” you might have […]
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When the most recent Hollywood strike took place — 16 years ago — the internet had not yet transformed the television and movie businesses. Broadcast networks still commanded colossal audiences, and cable channels were still growing. The superhero boom had begun for movie studios, and DVDs generated $16 billion in annual sales. Since then, galloping technological […]
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A High-Tech New Opportunity Growing up, Taiping could hardly have imagined making a fortune by any means, let alone by talking into his phone. Born in the plains of Inner Mongolia, a region in northern China where temperatures can plummet to minus 20 degrees, he left school after fifth grade, working as a herdsman, security guard […]
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Writers scrambling to finish scripts. Rival late-night-show hosts and producers convening group calls to discuss contingency plans. Union officials and screenwriters gathering in conference rooms to design picket signs with slogans like “The Future of Writing Is at Stake!” With a Hollywood strike looming, there has been a frantic sprint throughout the entertainment world before […]
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In 2011, a gorilla named Zola gained internet fame when the Calgary Zoo posted a video that showed him spinning in circles on his knuckles and heels with what appeared to be a huge grin on his face. Zola, the so-called break-dancing gorilla, returned in 2017, this time in a video showing him whirling around […]
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When the Ukrainian social media influencer Anna Tsukur started building her business as a fitness guru several years ago, she made choices to maximize her appeal — focus on women, shoot in inspiring locations like Bali and, above all, speak in Russian. That was then. After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, she decided that as […]
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An online community of a few thousand subscribers that followed a YouTube celebrity named wow_mao had for years occupied a small, very male-centric corner of the internet. It was hosted on Discord, a social media app, where young people who were fans of wow_mao swapped humorous digital images and told edgy, sometimes tasteless, jokes. Over […]
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“Look there, Ivan is going for a walk,” said a Ukrainian commander in an underground bunker. He was watching live drone video on Tuesday of a dozen or so Russian soldiers stepping into a farm field on the outskirts of Bakhmut. He sat up in his chair for a closer look. Artillery strikes were called […]
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It seemed like a typical first day of class. In January, Matthew Prince, a public relations executive at Taco Bell who teaches at Chapman University in Southern California, was telling 80 students what to expect from his influencer marketing course as he walked them through the syllabus projected onto a screen at the front of […]
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By Cade Metz Cade Metz has been writing about advances in artificial intelligence for more than a decade. Ian Sansavera, a software architect at a New York start-up called Runway AI, typed a short description of what he wanted to see in a video. “A tranquil river in the forest,” he wrote. Less than two […]
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A popular Russian military blogger who was one of the most influential voices backing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was killed on Sunday when an explosion ripped through a cafe in central St. Petersburg, Russia’s Interior Ministry said. The blogger, known as Vladlen Tatarsky, was at the Street Food Bar #1 Cafe for an event in […]
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In one video, the athlete pauses, assesses the height and leaps. He tries to free-climb up the side of a building, before jumping back to the ground. In another, he leaps across a roof, his shadow stretching out long in front of him. This gymnast, though, is a cat. Specifically, he’s Gonzo of @gonzoisacat. He […]
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Benjamin Franklin invented lightning rods in the 18th century, and the devices have been protecting buildings and people from the destructive forces of lightning ever since. But the details of how lightning rods function are still the subject of scientific research. Although modern lightning protection systems involve extra equipment that makes them more efficient, the […]
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New surveillance video released on Wednesday shows a group of sheriff’s deputies rushing into Irvo Otieno’s jail cell in Henrico County, Va., and physically overpowering him, with one of them appearing to punch down multiple times before the officers carry his limp body out to a transport van. The video was recorded on the afternoon […]
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Television and movie writers want raises, saying that Hollywood companies have taken unfair advantage of the shift to streaming to devalue their work and create worsening working conditions. The companies bristle at the accusation and say that, while they are willing to negotiate a new “mutually beneficial” deal with writers, the demands for an entirely […]
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Surveillance video from a state psychiatric hospital in Virginia shows a group of sheriff’s deputies and medical staff piling on a handcuffed man, Irvo Otieno, and pinning him for nearly 11 minutes until his death on March 6. The video, which was obtained by The Washington Post before its expected release on Tuesday, shows at […]
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The N.B.A. suspended Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant for eight games without pay for conduct detrimental to the league after he appeared in an Instagram live video on March 4 “holding a firearm in an intoxicated state” while visiting a nightclub near Denver, according to a league statement. Morant has not played since March 3, […]
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Since he was elected to Japan’s Parliament in July, Yoshikazu Higashitani has spread celebrity gossip on his YouTube channel, explored the sights of Dubai and handed out snacks to children displaced by an earthquake in Turkey. One thing he has not done is show up for work. On Wednesday, he was expelled from Japan’s upper […]
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