To help you get a sense of how vague and complex a term “the metaverse” can be, here's an exercise: Mentally replace the phrase “the metaverse” in a sentence with “cyberspace.” Ninety percent of the time, the meaning won't substantially change. - Wired
Gestures such as incorporating a Ukrainian flag into one’s username may be merely symbolic, but when users lobby politicians online, donate money, or even offer up their own homes to refugees, their engagement with the war begins to have real-world consequences. - The Guardian
Or, to put it more clearly, how the new streaming service — into which the previous bosses had poured hundreds of millions — was shut down ten days after CNN officially became part of the newly-merged Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate (and why Discovery couldn't signal its concerns beforehand). - The New York Times
"Some of those experiments, like Headline News (now HLN), paid off in a big way; others were here and gone in about a year. But all of them started ... from the roots of a network that itself was a wild bet when it first started." - Tedium
Think Keanu Reeves in Always Be My Maybe, Anna Faris in Keanu (unrelated to Reeves, kind of), LeBron James in Trainwreck ... the list goes way back. - Time
Much like the recent Eternals, banned in a variety of countries for a gay relationship and kiss, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness with its out lesbian superhero America Chavez won't be welcome in countries that have laws banning homosexuality. - Los Angeles Times
"The movie’s deep, sometimes unnervingly honest explorations of racism ― not to mention colorism, white supremacy, colonialism and displacement ― still feel groundbreaking 30 years later." - HuffPost
And he wants it enough to launch a whole project, with Film Foundation, to show one each month for free. (Which, let's face it, is pretty amazing - classic films, or even anything before, say, 2015! - are ancient according to a lot of film fans today.) - IndieWire
Arthouses are in trouble (see the previous article). But Everything Everywhere All at Once is proving surprisingly robust - and what makes it "a bonfire at arthouses is that it’s aimed squarely at the demo that has been fueling the box office rebound ... 18- to 34-year-olds." - Deadline
It's not easy because older audiences just aren't coming back. Yet operators are starting to be a bit more optimistic. "The opportunity to see it in a theater is a better experience for just about any type of movie. We just need to reacquaint people with it." - Variety
"From automated audiobooks to digital avatars, AI systems are now replacing skilled professional performers" the union says. It warns of "dystopian" consequences unless copyright law adapts. Equity highlights a number of different ways actors' voices and likenesses may be used. - BBC
"CNN+ was reportedly drawing only 10,000 active users. Blog posts do better numbers than that. This one probably will. ... People were calling it 'CNN minus,' since it couldn't even stream the network's live coverage due to agreements with cable carriers." - New York Magazine
A nearly three-hour televised debate between French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen on Wednesday night scored the lowest ever ratings for such a match-up. - Deadline
