December 19, 2024

‘Bluey’ Is About Everything, Especially Music

“I didn’t want the usual kids’ TV scoring,” he continued. “Some shows just use one track for an entire season, or a variation of it. I’d worked on ‘Charlie and Lola’ years ago, and they had a couple of musicians who played multiple instruments, and every episode had its own score. So that was the norm for me; it’s definitely not the norm for a lot of shows.”

The music of “Bluey” is a collaborative endeavor, but it is primarily the task of its composer, Joff Bush. Bush, 37, switched from jazz piano to composition as a student at the Queensland Conservatorium, and he later attended the Australian Film Television and Radio School. He leads weekly, hourslong Wednesday sessions, at which Brumm and others talk through the philosophy and the psychology of an episode while he improvises at the piano, before later writing a score. It’s work that Brumm is so proud of that he has given Bush his own character in tribute, a musician called Busker.

Far from every episode of “Bluey” uses classical music, and Bush’s tastes are eclectic. Some of its more than a hundred shows take inspiration from folk, jazz or rock, and almost all of them are then filtered through what Brumm calls the distinctively “jangly” sound that comes from Bush’s collection of old guitars and his habit of ignoring his mistakes. Even when Bush does color with the classical canon, there is a charmingly offbeat oddness to his work, something that helpfully reminds you that no real family could possibly be as agreeable, as forgiving or as functional as the Heelers, however much your children might reason otherwise.

“There’s a humanness to it, I hope,” Bush said.

THERE IS A LONG HISTORY entwining classical music with animation, one that dates back well beyond Elmer Fudd singing “Kill the Wabbit!” to strains of Wagner in “What’s Opera, Doc?” “If cartoons have become associated over time with any one musical genre, it is classical music,” the musicologist Daniel Goldmark writes in his book “Tunes for ’Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon.”

But the Warner Bros. cartoons from the 1930s to the ’50s used classical music as an “endless source of jokes at the expense of concert hall culture,” Goldmark writes. When concert music and opera were more prominent than they are now, many viewers had certain expectations about Romantic-era music — Wagner most of all — that could easily be subverted, and puncturing its pretensions with a cartoon rabbit was anyway inherently funny.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/arts/music/bluey-disney-plus-classical-music.html

Pace of Climate Change Sends Economists Back to Drawing Board

Carbon taxes and emissions trading systems have been instituted in many places, such as Denmark and California. But a federal measure in the United States, setting a cap on carbon emissions and letting companies trade their allotments, failed in 2010.

At the same time, Dr. Nordhaus’s model was drawing criticism for underestimating the havoc that climate change would wreak. Like other models, it has been revised several times, but it still relies on broad assumptions and places less value on harm to future generations than it places on harm to those today. It also doesn’t fully incorporate the risk of less likely but substantially worse trajectories of warming.

Dr. Nordhaus dismissed the criticisms. “They are all subjective and based on selective interpretation of science and economics,” he wrote in an email. “Some people hold these views, as would be expected in any controversial subject, but many others do not.”

Heather Boushey, a member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers who handles climate issues, says the field is learning that simply tinkering with prices won’t be enough as the climate nears catastrophic tipping points, like the evaporation of rivers, choking off whole regions and setting off a cascade of economic effects.

“So much of economics is about marginal changes,” Dr. Boushey said. “With climate, that no longer makes sense, because you have these systemic risks.” She sees her current assignment as similar to her previous work, running a think tank focused on inequality: “It profoundly alters the way people think about economics.”

To many economists, the approach pioneered by Dr. Nordhaus was increasingly out of step with the urgency that climate scientists were trying to communicate to policymakers. But a carbon tax remained at the center of a bipartisan effort on climate change, supported by a panoply of large corporations and more than 3,600 economists, that also called for removing “cumbersome regulations.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/business/economy/economy-climate-change.html

Facebook, Twitter and Others Remove Pro-U.S. Influence Campaign

Twitter said it had no comment on the Stanford and Graphika report. Meta did not respond to requests for comment. While the companies have regularly revealed influence operations they remove from their platforms, they have not published a report on the pro-U.S. campaign.

The only U.S. operations that Meta has previously named were domestic efforts, such as when the company revealed in October 2020 that a marketing firm, Rally Forge, was working with the conservative organization Turning Point USA to target Americans.

In an email, YouTube said it had terminated several channels posting in Arabic, Farsi and Russian to promote U.S. foreign affairs, including channels linked to a U.S. consulting firm, as part of an investigation into coordinated influence operations. It said its findings were similar to those in the Stanford and Graphika report.

Ms. DiResta said the tactics used in the pro-U.S. influence campaign resembled those used by China. While Russia often seeks to sow divisions in its online campaigns, China is more focused on promoting a rosy picture of life in the country, she said. With the pro-U.S. campaign, the goal was also “to show how awesome the U.S. was in comparison to the other countries,” she said.

The researchers were notified of the pro-U.S. online campaign by Meta and Twitter so they could analyze and study the activity, according to the report. The researchers found that the operation largely focused on messaging that favored the United States and the West through memes and false news stories, while criticizing Russia, China and Iran.

The accounts tailored their language and messaging to different regions, the researchers said. In one effort, a group of 12 Twitter accounts, 10 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook profiles and 10 Instagram accounts were created between June 2020 and March 2022 to focus on Central Asia. Some pretended to be media outlets with names like Vostochnaya Pravda. At least one account posed as an individual using a doctored profile photo based on an image of the Puerto Rican actress Valeria Menendez.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/technology/facebook-twitter-influence-campaign.html

What You Need to Know About Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

After monthly payments are made for a set number of years — usually 20 — any remaining balance is forgiven. (The balance is taxable as income, though a temporary tax rule exempts balances forgiven through 2025 from federal income taxes.)

Monthly payments are often calculated as 10 or 15 percent of discretionary income, but one plan is 20 percent. Discretionary income is usually defined as the amount earned above 150 percent of the poverty level, which is adjusted for household size. PAYE usually has the lowest payment, followed by either I.B.R. or REPAYE, depending on the specific circumstances of the borrower, said Mark Kantrowitz, a student aid expert. The new plan will change that calculus (more on that below).

There’s a dizzying variety of rules, and the existing plans aren’t a cure-all. Even though some borrowers may be eligible for a $0 payment, the plans aren’t always affordable for everyone. The formulas aren’t adjusted for local cost of living, private student loans or medical bills, among other things.

The proposed I.D.R. plan would reduce payments to 5 percent of discretionary income, down from 10 percent to 15 percent in many existing plans. Borrowers with original loan balances of less than $12,000 would make monthly payments for 10 years, while everyone else would pay for 20 years (similar to existing plans).

It would also allow more low-income workers to qualify for zero-dollar payments. The administration plans to tweak the payment formula by raising the amount of income deemed necessary for basic expenses, and thus shielded from the calculation: No borrower earning under 225 percent of the poverty level — or what a $15 minimum wage worker earns annually — will have to make a payment, the administration said.

There’s more: Unlike other existing income-driven plans, borrowers’ loan balances will not grow as long as they make their monthly payments, even when they are not required to make any payments because their income is too low.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/business/biden-student-loan-forgiveness.html

What Will Happen to Black Workers’ Gains if There’s a Recession?

“But the alternative,” Mr. Summers argued — “simply pretending” the U.S. labor market can remain this hot — “is setting the stage for the mistakes we made in the 1970s, and ultimately for a far larger recession, to contain inflation.”

“These arguments have nothing to do with how much you care about unemployment, or how much you care about the unemployment of disadvantaged groups,” he continued. “They only have to do with technical judgment.”

Many progressive economists have been sharply critical of that view, arguing that Black workers should not be the collateral damage in a war on inflation. William Spriggs, an economist at Howard University, cautioned against overstating the Fed’s ability to bring inflation under control — especially when inflation is being driven in part by global forces — and underestimating the potential damage from driving interest rates much higher.

Black workers will suffer first under a Fed-induced recession, Mr. Spriggs said. When that happens, he added, job losses across the board tend to follow. “And so you pay attention, because that’s the canary in the coal mine,” he said.

In a 2020 research paper, the economists Jared Bernstein and Janelle Jones — both of whom subsequently joined the Biden administration — laid out the increasingly popular argument that in light of this, the Fed “should consider targeting not the overall unemployment rate, but the Black rate.”

In an accompanying essay in The Washington Post, they noted that Fed policy implicitly treats 4 percent unemployment as a long-term goal, but “because Black unemployment is two times the overall rate, targeting 4 percent for the overall economy means targeting 8 percent for blacks.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/business/economy/black-workers-recession.html

The Harry Styles Show (and Some Music) Comes to Madison Square Garden

I’ve long considered One Direction to be the quintessential boy band of the fan-service era — expertly primed to respond to the demands of their devoted, social-media savvy stan army — and after catching Styles’s show on Sunday night, I’m ready to declare him the defining solo artist of that era, too. I am not sure I’ve ever seen a pop star wave so much from the stage in my entire life? Roughly a third of his performance seemed to comprise waving, pointing and blowing kisses to various sections of the audience, whose volume approximated a jet taking off. Most of the time I could not hear Styles’s voice well enough to determine if he was hitting all the notes, though the crowd’s reaction was energetic enough that they did not seem to care. This show felt, as so much of Styles’s music does, first and foremost for the fans, which — I agree — can sometimes make the man at the center of it all feel like a bit of an enigma.

CARAMANICA Let’s try to distill the Harry Styles musical proposition. He has nowhere near the determined agita of, say, Shawn Mendes; nowhere near the vocal litheness of Justin Bieber. (Also:#FreeZayn) And it goes without saying that despite the rampant Eltonisms on display throughout Styles’s solo catalog, and the (sub?)conscious echoes of John’s sartorial glamour in Styles’s Gucci gear, he has nowhere near John’s verve or panache. It is all quite a brittle foundation upon which to build this fame skyscraper.

But yes, the waving. Also the utterly-at-ease shimmying. And that thing he did mid-show where he took a fan’s cellphone and tried calling her ex on it. (Josh, if you’re reading this, you got washed, buddy — everyone at Madison Square Garden hates you.) See also: him singing “Happy Birthday” to his friend Florence. Florence Welch, of the Machine? No. Florence Pugh, his co-star in the upcoming film “Don’t Worry Darling”? Also no. Florence, daughter of Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony Music Group? Yes.

This is the essence of his appeal — his is not a top-down sort of fame. He’s the approachable but protective friend, the one who leads with good judgment and progressive wholesomeness. (At previous shows, he’s helped people come out, or to confess their love.) That’s part of why, even though public discussion of Styles often centers on his dating life or the ways he flirts with gender fluidity, his actual show is conventional and chaste. The most risqué bit was when he explained how the in-the-round performance would work. Sometimes, “we’ll be ass to face,” he said. “I’ll be sure to distribute face and ass equally throughout the show — there’s plenty to go around.” It was cheeky. Even “Watermelon Sugar,” his lightly erotic hit, was dry.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/arts/music/harry-styles-love-on-tour-review.html

Economic Aid, Once Plentiful, Falls Off at a Painful Moment

What is happening at the William Temple House is emblematic of the economic situation. Demand for food is swelling again, and officials here blame rising prices and lost federal aid. The people seeking help come from a wide variety of backgrounds: parents, retirees struggling to stretch Social Security benefits, immigrants who speak Mandarin, college graduates with jobs.

Waiting in line on a recent Wednesday, Susan B. Smith said federal aid had helped her family endure the pandemic over the last year. Direct payments, along with three months’ worth of rental assistance, “got us through a lot last winter,” she said. “Every little bit of help, we appreciate it. We just want to make it through, not starve.”

Now, most of that assistance is gone, and food and housing cost more, a reality that has forced Ms. Smith and one of her daughters, Tamela Clover, to seek help at the food pantry. Ms. Clover, a college graduate who works part time for a social services agency, said her salary had not kept pace with her cost of living: “Everything’s so expensive.”

Mr. Biden frequently acknowledges the high inflation is hurting people and has taken several steps to try to mitigate rising costs. He and his aides insist that while the pain is real, last year’s stimulus package has made the country and its most vulnerable people better positioned for any economic troubles ahead.

Administration officials point to a stronger job market, a lower eviction rate and healthier household finances than the nation has typically experienced at this point in a recovery from a recession, which the economy briefly entered early in the pandemic. They say the $350 billion that Congress gave to state, local and tribal governments should help fuel some assistance programs even after federal aid runs out.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/us/politics/food-insecurity-biden-stimulus.html

Expansion of Clean Energy Loans Is ‘Sleeping Giant’ of Climate Bill

“We have established that the private sector wants to use our resources again,” said Jigar Shah, the director of the Energy Department’s loan programs office and a former solar energy entrepreneur. “We still have to do a lot of work. We have to identify all the areas that qualify.”

One beneficiary of the new loan money could be the Palisades Power Plant, a nuclear facility on Lake Michigan near Kalamazoo, Mich., that closed in May. The plant had struggled to compete in the PJM energy market, which serves homes and businesses in 13 states, including Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and in Washington, D.C.

The Biden administration has made nuclear power a focal point of its efforts to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 2035. The administration has offered billions of dollars to help existing facilities like the Diablo Canyon Power Plant — a nuclear operation on California’s coast that is set to close by the end of 2025 — stay open longer. It is also backing new technologies like small modular reactors that the industry has long said would be cheaper, safer and easier to build than conventional large nuclear reactors.

The owner of the Palisades facility, Holtec International, said it was reviewing the loan program and other opportunities for its own small reactors as well as bringing the shuttered plant back online.

“There are a number of hurdles to restarting the facility that would need to be bridged,” the company said in a statement, “but we will work with the state, federal government and a yet to be identified third-party operator to see if this is a viable option.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/business/energy-environment/biden-climate-bill-energy-loans.html

More Than ‘Weird’: Roku Embraces Original Programming

The film is part of Roku’s effort to persuade those who use the device to access paid apps like Netflix and Disney+ to spend more time perusing the free content offered on the Roku Channel, which now includes 40,000 movies and television shows and 150 linear channels. Keeping viewers on the platform longer is a way to bolster its advertising revenue for a business that has come to rely more heavily on ad spending and content distribution than device sales. Currently, device sales contribute just 12 percent to the company’s bottom line. Keeping users on the Roku Channel is imperative to its success.

David Eilenberg, Roku’s head of originals, said in an interview that the company’s strategy in this early phase of creating new content was to assure the creative community that when Roku takes on a new project, it will be willing to spend the money to support it properly.

“The spending strategy has always been surprise and delight rather than shock and awe,” he said. “‘Weird’ is a nice indicator of that, which is the sort of the thing nobody knew they wanted until it existed. That’s a very tricky thing to commission, but when you get one of those, you put both arms around it and support it to the best of your ability.”

Roku became a trending topic on Twitter at the end of July when it released the trailer for “Weird” as part of its upfront presentation, which the company says resulted in $1 billion in commitments from the seven major advertising agency holding companies for the upcoming television season.

Yet Roku’s expansion into originals comes at a difficult time for the company. During its second-quarter earnings call last month, the company pulled its full-year guidance because of the challenging advertising environment and lowered its third-quarter estimates to only 3 percent growth in total net revenues. (The analyst firm MoffettNathanson previously estimated growth for that quarter could reach 29 percent.)

The company has sought to assure investors that it won’t be laying off employees or changing its business strategy as it deals with the advertising slowdown. That hasn’t stopped some analysts from lowering their price targets for the stock, but most remain bullish on the company’s future as the connected television market continues to grow and consumers are increasingly interested in finding all their different streaming channels in one place (much like traditional cable).

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/business/media/roku-weird-al.html

Some Colleges Don’t Produce Big Earners. Are They Worth It?

Just 43 percent of the students who start at Grambling are outearning high school graduates six years later. “Our interest is not in getting the elite financially but getting the students who would not have had opportunities at other institutions,” said Gavin R. Hamms, the associate vice president of enrollment management. “It’s deeper than the data.”

Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C., faces a unique challenge. It is a so-called work college, which means students have an on-campus labor assignment. There are community engagement requirements, too, on top of regular classwork and whatever additional job students might need to earn extra income.

The school’s graduation rate is just 53 percent, according to the College Scorecard. If those among the 47 percent enter the labor market without a degree, they’re at a disadvantage. Indeed, just 37 percent of the students who start there are outearning high school graduates six years later.

Warren Wilson’s provost, Jay Roberts, didn’t shy away from the figure in an interview. Warren Wilson has obstacles to completion — and thus to higher earnings — that most other schools don’t have. While it has reduced the campus work requirements in the last few years, the school still won’t be right for every teenager who shows up thinking that it is.

Dr. Roberts does ask that people consider other metrics, too, though. The school, he said, does better than peers on survey questions of those who do graduate about whether the school prepared them for social and civic engagement and whether they find their work meaningful.

Indeed, there are students who are by no means undecided about their studies and careers and do enter college with a reasonably clear sense about their modest financial goals. Those at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., outearn high school graduates 46 percent of the time six years after starting.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/20/your-money/college-graduate-earnings.html