Bruce H. Russell, II

•Husband to Shannon❤️ •Dad of Clark and Eamon + numerous fabulous doggos •Attorney-at-Large •The Third Heat •Uncannable Rhyme Animal •Laser Sword Space Wizard

[Daniel Valente 🏎️ @F1GuyDan]

Valtteri Bottas’ special helmet for Monaco is based off his pet badger named Nigel who visits him every night 😂

Honestly a very cool helmet design.

[Cincinnati Reds @Reds]

June 4, 2002: The Reds select catcher Joey Votto out of Richview Collegiate Institute in Toronto with the 44th overall pick in the MLB Draft. #RedsVault

[David Rattigan @davidmrattigan]

buying this and then dying immediately and forcing my descendants to finish building it over the next 100 years

[Bruce H. Russell, II @HooBruce]

I just went 82-0, think you can go 82-0? https://t.co/oAzo7xqiSd #NBA #82and0

[Formula 1 @F1]

A run to the podium after 78 laps in Monaco! 🏃

Jenson Button is just built different 😤

#F1 #MonacoGP

[The Sting @TheStingisBack]

The “Marcus Brody cut” in Indiana Jones is a masterclass in comedic editing. It works flawlessly because Spielberg isn’t just subverting the scene, he's weaponising our own knowledge of his filmmaking style against us.
Happy heavenly birthday, Denholm Elliott

[The Sting @TheStingisBack]

Return of the Jedi (1983) Original Ending
I was sad when they replaced the Ewok song, I used to know all the "words". Always thought it blended into “Celebrate the Lord” at the end, which is odd
Still love that the original trilogy’s very last sound is Carrie Fisher laughing.

[jacob @jtimsuggs]

George Lucas staring at a practical, life-sized version of General Grievous on his Wheel Bike from Revenge of the Sith might just be one of the hardest images that I’ve ever seen tbh

[Danny Deraney @DannyDeraney]

Every year, I share this video of French caretakers who take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy, and scrub them into the letters to give them the gold coloring.

They do this for all 9,386 US soldiers who died.

France also gave us this land as American soil. #MemorialDayWeekend

[Star Wars @starwars]

This is the Way.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now playing only in theaters and IMAX. Illustrated by @SzarkaArt.

#TheMandalorianAndGrogu

[Joel Cardwell @jdcarX]

Sometimes doing beautiful things for the sake of beauty is the right thing to do.

[Culture Explorer @CultureExploreX]

The beauty of the Shambles in York comes from use.

The overhanging fronts helped shelter the walls and kept meat away from direct sun, turning daily necessity into the shape of a street people now travel across the world to see.

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

People are pining for old technologies—CD players, VCRs, Walkmans. What’s behind our longing for inconvenience? https://t.co/BiY9X4tnBd

[CBR @CBR]

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s opening episode, Sisko's speech encapsulates Starfleet's pursuit of knowledge more so than any other in the franchise. https://t.co/2cB7jDGz63

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

The annual Pentecost tradition (today!) at Rome's Pantheon is a moment of extraordinary beauty.

It occurs every year on the seventh Sunday after Easter. At noon, after the Holy Mass, thousands of rose petals are dropped through the oculus of the mighty dome.

As the petals fall, a choir sings "Veni Sancte Spiritus," known as the Golden Sequence, a masterpiece of sacred Latin poetry.

This is to celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Virgin Mary and the Apostles.

The rose petal ritual likely dates back to 607 AD when the pagan temple became a Christian church.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

For about ten years, the DVD made Hollywood more money than the movie theater did. A film could flop in cinemas and still turn a tidy profit once it hit the shelf at Best Buy. In 2005, discs sold around $16 billion in the US. Theaters made about half that.

That safety net changed the kind of films that got made. Since a strong disc run could cover a box-office miss, studios were willing to bet on smaller, odder movies. A scrappy comedy like Napoleon Dynamite or The Big Lebowski could rake in as much from disc sales as it ever made selling tickets, sometimes more. And the hours of behind-the-scenes extras Jackson misses got made for the same reason: the discs sold well enough to pay for them.

Then streaming showed up, and the disc money fell off a cliff. Sales sank more than 80%. By 2018, DVDs were down to barely $2 billion. By 2023, a full half-year of disc sales added up to about $754 million, less than a tenth of the old peak. With the safety net gone, the risky bets stopped. The mid-size movie, the $20 to $60 million film that filled theaters for decades, mostly stopped getting made. Hollywood's big studios put out 204 movies in 2006. By 2010, that was down to 141.

The digital version that replaced the disc comes with fine print. When you click "buy" on a movie, you're really just renting it. What you actually get is a license, a permission slip the store can take back. In late 2023, PlayStation warned customers it was about to wipe more than 1,300 shows they had already paid for. It backed off only after signing a fresh deal, and even that one expires in a couple of years. California now has a law, on the books since 2025, that makes stores admit the "buy" button is actually a rental.

Jackson's old box sets still sit on a shelf and still play, extras and all. The digital copies most people traded them for can vanish the morning a licensing contract runs out.

[Fandom Pulse @fandompulse]

Peter Jackson laments the death of physical media:

“You can get Blu-rays and DVDs, but they’re almost a niche product for aficionados now,” Jackson said. “Since they only sell small numbers, no studio wants to put extended features on them or to extend the cuts. We did hours and hours of behind-the-scenes material for The Lord of the Rings DVDs, and so many people have thanked me for doing them. People would watch that stuff over and over again because it inspired them to make films. That’s all gone now, and I think it’s a real shame.”

Do you still get real books and DVDs?

[All The Right Movies @ATRightMovies]

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was released 46 years ago today. One of Hollywood’s most popular films and most anticipated and acclaimed sequels, the making of story is as huge as you’d expect.

1/39

[Anthony DiGiorgio, DO, MHA @DrDiGiorgio]

This is the ultimate midwit healthcare take.

No, 32 countries have not “figured out” universal healthcare.

The UK has “free” healthcare, and roughly 1 in 3 cancer patients in England still fail to start treatment within 62 days of urgent referral.

Canada has “free” healthcare, and the median wait for neurosurgical treatment is around a year.

Australia has “free” healthcare, and over half the country still buys private insurance despite paying for a public universal system with their taxes.

Switzerland has universal coverage, because residents are required to buy private insurance. There is no government system where benevolent bureaucrats tuck you in at night with a warm blanket and an MRI appointment.

The actual lesson from other wealthy countries is not “they figured it out.”

America’s system has huge problems. Our prices are insane, insurance markets are distorted, and hospital systems are cartelized. Our regulations make care more expensive than it needs to be.

Yet we still guarantee access to even the 8% who don’t have coverage. We give easy routes to qualify for medicaid for those with disabilities.

Pretending the rest of the world solved healthcare because they slapped the word “universal” on a rationing scheme is not analysis.

It is bumper sticker policy for people who think access means having a card in your wallet while you wait a year to see the doctor you need.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.

Cette phrase change tout.

L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?

Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.

Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.

Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.

Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.

L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.

Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.

Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.

Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.

Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.

La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.

Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.

Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.

La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.