Author: Sam Allcock

Zaid Khan, a 24-year-old software engineer, uploaded a seventeen-second TikTok video in July 2022. He explained what he called “quiet quitting”—that is, psychologically stepping back from the notion that your job deserves more than what the job description truly calls for, rather than actually departing. He wasn’t the only one who had similar feelings. He wasn’t even the first to describe it. However, the idea was debated in the Wall Street Journal and on national television in twelve nations within three weeks after the word landed and the video went somewhat viral. The phenomena had been growing for years and…

A conversation that is subtly changing the British wealth management sector is taking place somewhere in a probate solicitor’s office in Bristol, Birmingham, or Edinburgh. A young person in their late twenties or early thirties just received a gift from a grandmother in the form of cash, real estate, or a mix of the two. The paperwork for the solicitor is finished. The estate has been settled. In many instances, the young person’s initial action is not to call the financial advisor whose number was in their grandparents’ file. They get an app. The anticipated £5.5 to £7 trillion that…

There is a particular type of scene that isn’t shown on TV anymore. There is clutter in the kitchen. The door of the refrigerator has a dent from someone opening it too quickly. With a bill in her hand, the mother is on the phone with the electrical provider, stating something like “I know what date it is” in a tone that betrays years of aggravation. Dad enters at the back door wearing his work clothes. The children quarrel over something unimportant, which escalates into something more important. This season’s purchases are not being worn by anyone in the home.…

A drone steadily rises thru fog at the beginning of the video. Below, what looks to be a typical city street gradually reveals itself to be perched atop another street, which is perched atop a metro line that passes thru the center of an apartment building and backs onto a highway flyover that, at this angle, appears to be at the same level as the twenty-second floor of the tower across the gap. The camera continues to rise. There are more layers. The term “this doesn’t look real” appears repeatedly in the comments. People have been subjected to this treatment…

A Warner Bros. test screening in San Jose on a November evening in 1986 came dangerously near to disaster. The audience had just witnessed the finale of Little Shop of Horrors, the Off-Broadway musical’s adaptation, which director Frank Oz had spent about $5 million filming. It was a large-scale, effects-heavy scene in which the carnivorous plant Audrey II escapes, multiplies, and then devours New York City, Washington, DC, the Statue of Liberty, and finally the entire planet. Every significant human character had perished. The plant had prevailed. On Apocalypse, the screen turned black. The numbers on the score cards apparently…

Prior to The Lord of the Rings, New Zealand’s film industry was modest, competent, and mostly unseen by the outside world. The nation produced good movies, but it wasn’t a destination that foreign studios were directing their work toward, and it wasn’t constructing infrastructure at a scale that would enable it to compete for the kind of cash required for a $281 million fantasy trilogy. That was altered by Peter Jackson, and the alteration was not subtle. By the time the third movie was finished, New Zealand had top-notch visual effects facilities, a skilled production workforce that didn’t exist ten…

A couple in a suburban area of Phoenix corresponded via email for three weeks with a real estate agent, or someone they thought was one, regarding a three-bedroom home in a peaceful neighborhood that seemed to be everything they were looking for. The listing photos were clear and comprehensive. The virtual tour went smoothly. On the phone, the agent’s voice was kind and competent. The cost was fair. They changed the escrow account at the last minute and complied with the wire transfer instructions. The funds were taken out of their account. The home had never existed as they had…

A movie that had begun production with a budget of about $7.5 million was released by United Artists in the spring of 1980. Depending on the accounting ledger you looked at, the expenses had increased to between $40 million and $44 million by the time Heaven’s Gate hit theaters. After a week in New York, the movie was removed, recut, and then rereleased to a similar lack of interest. Due of the significant financial loss from a single project funded by a single studio, United Artists was sold to MGM the next year. The American auteur film movement, which gave…

The first test is getting to Telluride. The festival is held in a box canyon, and there isn’t a direct flight from Los Angeles or New York. After flying into Montrose or Durango, you spend an hour or more driving through mountain switchbacks, where the air becomes significantly thinner and the elevation rises until your ears burst. The town itself is small enough that you could walk around it in twenty minutes. There are Victorian shops, a main street that ends at a mountain face, screens installed in historic theaters and converted gymnasiums, and an outdoor venue at nine thousand…

A blockbuster action movie’s automobile flip scene appears on screen for a few seconds. It has usually taken weeks before those seconds exist. Stunt coordinators lay out the physics, engineers figure out where to put cannons below the truck, actors spend days in rehearsals that never wind up on camera, and safety staff rig and re-rig the setup until the variables are as controlled as possible. Next, one take. Perhaps two. If everything went according to plan, no one is seriously harmed when the automobile crashes, and the director needs the footage. If something goes a little wrong, it doesn’t…