form

Spain turns in the opposite direction to the rest of Europe. Form part of a geological plan: closing the Mediterranean

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Spain and Portugal are dancing to a different rhythm than the rest of Europe. They are moving clockwise and the consequence is clear: a long-term closure of the Mediterranean that connects the Iberian Peninsula directly to North Africa. The convergence between continents is slow, a few millimeters a year (so we will continue needing the tunnel between Spain and Morocco), but one thing is clear: another Pangea is on the way. And the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco will be a unit. In short. Continental plates move. Some separate, others collide, and that continental drift has caused the emergence the Pangea Ultima theory. In 250 million years, there will only be one continent. There is a long way to go for that, but now, some researchers from the University of the Basque Country have analyzed geodetic data that allows them to affirm that the Iberian Peninsula is rotating clockwise. This east-west rotation is driven by the convergence between the Eurasian and African plates, and the conclusion is clear: both are moving between four and six millimeters closer each year. This information is not new, but the researchers’ discovery is to specify the processes that take place at the diffuse boundary of the two western Mediterranean plates. Thanks, Gibraltar. Although the boundaries of other plates are well defined, this does not occur in the Western Mediterranean. There, the processes are much grayer, and there is something called “Gibraltar Arch” which plays an interesting role in this tectonic dynamic. To the east of the strait, the crust absorbs the deformation caused by the collision between the Eurasian and African plates. This ‘Gibraltar Arc’ acts as a buffer, but it has a consequence: in the west of the strait there is a direct collision between the plates, while in the east it is absorbed by the Gibraltar Arc. This lack of buffering from the southwest is what causes the clockwise rotation. Rotational strain rate field. Positive values ​​correspond to clockwise rotation, while negative values ​​refer to counterclockwise rotation. Active and potentially active faults are marked with solid and dashed gray lines, respectively. Double analysis. The researchers combined two types of accuracy analyzes to obtain these results. On the one hand, those of satellite deformation through GNSS system (Global Navigation Satellite System). Analyzing the data, they measured surface displacements with millimeter precision, relying on both permanent and occasional GPS markers. On the other hand, they also analyzed information from recent earthquakes that allowed them to determine the tectonic “stresses” in the area. They are independent data sets, but by crossing them they were able to draw a series of ‘lines’ that have allowed them to better specify the boundary between the plates. So that? Well, to better understand which sectors are in direct collision between plates and which are still more protected by the Gibraltar Arc. And the neighbors? The problem is that, although they claim that it is a rapid tectonic movement, this is true in geological terms. For us it is invaluable, but it also comes into play that we only have satellite data since 1999 and detailed seismic data since the 1980s. Even so, if with such a short range of data we have reached that conclusion in the annual approach, it is because the phenomenon is not in a hurry, but it does not pause either. And the most interesting thing is that this only affects the Iberian Peninsula. It is not that we are going to separate from France, since we ‘drag’ the rest of the continent thanks to the effect of the Gibraltar Arc, but we are not turning in the same direction as other neighbors. Italy, for example, experiences a counterclockwise rotation that exerts pressure in the alpine zoneand in the anatolian plate (where most of Türkiye is), there is also this counterclockwise rotation. Hello, Morocco. While in Turkey the consequence may be more earthquakes or mountain formations, this current speed of between 4 and 6 millimeters will cause, at some point, the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco to unite. This continental collision would close the Mediterraneanbut there is a lot left for it. How much? About 100 million years. They estimate that for 20 million years we will continue at the same speed, but within about 50 million years, things will gain momentum, accelerating the process and turning the region into one of the most active volcanic and seismic areas on the planet. It’s… foolish to worry. present utility. Now, beyond curiosity, the most immediate implication that the researchers point out is a better identification of active faults or areas in which previously unidentified tectonic structures could exist. Asier Madarieta-Txurruka, one of those responsible for the investigation, explains This information indicates where to look for these structures and boundaries to determine what type of folds and faults there may be. Thus, we can anticipate the type of earthquake that there will be and its magnitude in areas such as the Western Pyrenees or the region of Cádiz and Seville in which we know that there are numerous places with significant deformationbut we do not have well identified the active tectonic structures that cause them. And, although there is still a long way to go before the Alps and a new mountain range are founded across the peninsula and all of North Africa to Arabia, knowing better what we have right under our feet is much more useful. In Xataka | We knew that Africa was going to split in half. What we didn’t know was that it would happen so quickly.

In 2025, the salary of 6,800 Valencian civil servants depends on an Access form. Only one person knows how it works

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According to has revealed According to the Audit of personnel expenses of the Generalitat Administration prepared by the Sindicatura de Comptes, the Valencian Community is experiencing a situation that is torn between the surreal and the negligence: two computer systems on which the payrolls of almost 6,800 civil servants and public employees depend cannot exchange data. The only way to achieve this is through an application made in Microsoft Access by a single person who would also be the only one who knows how to maintain and update it. SIGNO and GESPERJU2 do not speak to each other. He SIGN program (Integrated Payroll Management System and Others) is the internal computer system of the Generalitat Valenciana used for the management, calculation and payment of payrolls of civil servants and labor personnel of the Valencian Administration, including education, health and other services, allowing procedures such as direct debits and registrations or cancellations of employees. On the other hand, the GESPERJU2 program is a platform that manages the labor files of the personnel at the service of the Justice Administration of the Valencian Community, in processes such as the management of payrolls, permits and other administrative and human resources situations of its staff of judges, magistrates and Justice officials. What is expected is that the platform that manages payroll and the one that manages whether employees are on leaveon vacation or have requested a leave of absence were connected. To the surprise of the auditors of the Sindicatura de Comptes, these two platforms cannot exchange data. An “improvised” connection. As and stood out The Economistthat the officials of the Department of Justice of the Valencian Community receive their payroll on time and without errors depends only on a “patch” in the form of an application created with Microsoft Access. That’s not the auditors’ most surprising discovery, however. The person who created this application is the only one capable of updating the salary tables and other parameters necessary so that the officials’ payrolls are processed without problems. According to the Syndicate reportthis disconnection between platforms has left the Administration in a situation of “absolute dependence on a person”, in addition to “posing a high risk of continuity of operation if this person could not use this parallel application.” We imagine that at this moment, that person will be the best protected official in the Valencian Administration. Two platforms and end up doing it by hand. Another derivative is added to this unprecedented fact. The Access application has its limitations, so some payroll incidents must be done by hand by an official, so that they are reflected correctly. As the audit report noted, “the calculation of certain payroll incidents is carried out manually (arrears, three-year terms previously consolidated in General Administration positions, salary supplements for vertical replacements or guards), which increases the possibility of errors.” As described in the report, the integration problem would not be limited to Justice. Also mentioned is the risk that, due to a lack of communication between platforms, the same person who has had their position changed or promoted, could “collect two salaries simultaneously” (in the old position and in the new one) without being detected. TALIA: the great promise. TALIA is the new personnel management application that is proposed to replace the current ones and whose first phase has already would be tendered and awarded. The promise of TALIA is that personnel information and payrolls of Administration personnel will no longer live on separate and unconnected islands. However, its deployment is planned for years to come (if deadlines are met), and the precedent of delays and cost overruns in implementations like the one suffered with NEFIS in 2019. Until then, someone in the Valencian Administration will ensure that paid for the Office license. In Xataka | Companies bet everything on returning to the office. The public administration has an ace up its sleeve: teleworking Image | Unsplash (Rafael Oliveira)

Stephen Hawking left a hidden treasure that has just been discovered. The problem is that it is in the form of floppy disks

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The Cambridge University Library houses several historical treasures including letters from Isaac Newton and notebooks from Charles Darwin. Now they will take care also of manage 113 boxes with documents and memories of the physical Stephen Hawkingbut in those boxes they also found a surprise turned into a challenge: floppy disks. Lots of them. Computer pioneer. The famous physicist was an early user of those first computers in which data was stored on floppy disks. When he suffered from ALS this was a very important resource to be able to communicate and work, and now those disks that have just been discovered could contain all kinds of revealing data about Hawking’s life and work. Future Nostalgia. That’s what it’s called the project of the University of Cambridge and its library that precisely tries to safeguard all that information that in the past ended up being stored on floppy disks. Recovering such data is not easy when so much time has passed, and this project tries to educate about the best ways to preserve said information and transfer or recover it from those floppy disks. A format with an expiration date. Although one would think that floppy disks are a more secure way to store data than paper and ink, this physical medium also has clear disadvantages. The iron oxide covering the thin layer of plastic can degrade and lose its magnetic capabilities, meaning data could be lost forever. Each floppy disk is a world. With old books there are not too many problems when it comes to retrieving the information: you open them and read them (if you understand the language, of course). With floppy disks you need the hardware to be able to read them—a compatible disk drive—and also figure out how they are formatted. Leontien Talboom, responsible for this project, explained How to also clean those floppy disks was complex and there were various methods that they were exploring. These included the use of hand soap or isopropyl alcohol. Hawking used both a PC and a Mac. The disks arrived at the project in two batches. The first, with five and a quarter (5.25 inch) disks formatted on an MS-DOS based PC. The second, with three and a half disks, somewhat more recent and that were still used on an old Mac. According to Talboom, they are mainly talks that Hawking gave: “from a technical point of view they are really interesting because his talks were so big that he had to divide them into several floppy disks.” I wrote to speak. Hawking’s illness left him unable to speak for himself, so for years he used various voice synthesizers to express his ideas. Precisely for this reason he wrote so much on the computer and saved those documents on disk: this allowed him to use them later so that his synthesized voice could read said documents. Different discs, different readers. Although 5.25″ and especially 3.5″ discs were the most widespread, other formats were also seen such as eight inch discs which for example were used in the Churchill Archives Centre. Chris Knowles, one of the Future Nostalgia participants, explained how he bought a player for these discs on eBay. “It was a miracle that it worked,” but that allowed him to recover the information from those disks. Forgotten formats. They have also received some three-inch floppy disks, a much less widespread and peculiar format that had some success in the United Kingdom before the 3.5″ format was clearly imposed. To recover them, they ended up using an old reader manufactured by Amstrad that they had to modify to bring it back to life. And then there’s the software problem.. The information recovered from these disks can also pose another challenge: that it was created with software that was abandoned and even ended up disappearing. Some disks, for example, had documents written with a missing word processor called Diamond Word. That’s where a kind of “translation” comes into play to convert those files into something readable in the current era. Safeguarding our past. This work demonstrates how critical it is to try to protect and recover information from these old formats. Many of those floppy disks are 40 or 50 years old, and as Knowles says, “old emails and work calendars may not look like historical documents. They might seem banal. But they’re what Newton’s or Darwin’s letters would have looked like 200 years ago. Now they are fascinating documents that open a window to the past.” In Xataka | The 20 most important personal computers in the history of technology

We knew that the Dart mission changed Dimorphos’ trajectory. What we did not know is that its form also changed

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At the end of September 2022, the Dart mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) It made historyInterestingly, stamping against an asteroid. The milestone was not on the impact itself but on achieving with him slightly divert the trajectory of an asteroid, Dimorphos. The expected and the unexpected. In the almost three years since then, we have been learning New details on the effects of Dart’s impact on Asteroid Dimorphos. Now we know, for example, that Dart not only managed to divert the orbital trajectory of the space rock; He also achieved with his impact to make the asteroid orbit deform significantly What happened. The asteroid, explained the team, initially had an oblate form, that is, flattened in the poles, such as the earth, “the shape of a hamburger.” After the impact, Dimorphos became a rather prolata, elongated in the poles, like a rugby ball. “For the most part, our predictions pre-impact on how Dart would change the way Didymos and her moon (Dimorphos) move in space were correct,” ” explained in a press release Derek Richardson, who led the analysis of the effects of the probe. “But there are some unexpected discoveries that help provide a better image on how asteroids and other small bodies are formed and evolved over time.” Tumbos. According to the team that analyzed these orbital changes, the impact would have made dimorphs pass from a state of equilibrium with its main asteroid Didymos similar to that of our moon with the earth, to an irregular one. That is, dimorphs always gave the same face to Didymos, at least Until Dart arrived. Now the system is out of its alignment, Richardson pointed out. This implies that it can stagger changing orientation, even ending up “tumbos”, rotating chaotically and unpredictable. Asteroid formation. Thanks to studies such as the one conducted by Richardson and the team, we can access new clues about the formation of asteroids. As explained by the team, the impact released small rocks that remained in the orbit of the asteroid system. These contributed to altering the orbital movement in the system, but these changes in the gravitational balance do not seem to have altered the form of didymos. This implies, the team added, that the main asteroid of the system was rigid and firm enough to maintain its form after the formation of its moon dimorphs. The details of the work were Published in an article In the magazine Planetary Science Journal. Hera’s turn. The scientific community now has new eyes on the Didymos system, those of Herathe mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) aimed at monitoring the system and collect new data In situ. If everything continues as planned, Hera will begin in October a trip that will lead her to reach the double asteroid towards the end of 2026. The data compiled by Hera They will allow an even more exhaustive analysis of the impact of the Dart mission. This in turn will be what gives us key clues that allow us to plan missions that protect our planet from the asteroid shock. In Xataka | The European Hera probe has just sent us its first photos for the story: we orbit Mars Image | NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS APL/STEVE GRIBBEN *An earlier version of this article was published in September 2024

In the exciting world of the supernovas this newly discovered has something unique: its form is perfect

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Identifying a Supernova is an event that astronomers usually celebrate with enthusiasm. And it is not for less if we consider that it is One of the most violent events with which we can run into the cosmos. Knowing them better is very important because it can help us understand more precisely what the latest stages of The life of mass starsand also the mechanisms that explain how the material caused by stellar synthesis can lead to new star systems. The mathematical tools handled by astrophysics current nuclear fusion that take place in the nucleus of mass stars. During the stage known as the main sequence, stars obtain their energy from the fusion of hydrogen nuclei. As this chemical element is consumed, the star begins to produce helium nuclei, and, of course, its composition begins to evolve. During this process a huge amount of energy is released and the star is forced to continuously readjust to maintain hydrostatic balance, a phenomenon that is the result of the coexistence of two opposite forces capable of compensating. One of them is the gravitational contraction, which compresses the subject of the star, pressing it without rest. And the other is the radiation and gase pressure, which is the fruit of the ignition of the nuclear oven and tries to expand the star. ‘Teleios’ is the perfect supernova If the star is massive enough will begin to consume its helium reserves and produce new carbon nuclei, while maintaining the hydrostatic balance we have talked about. And if the star has enough mass will not stop in carbon production. When this element is exhausted in the nucleus, it will be readjusted, compressing and increasing once again its temperature to stop the gravitational collapse. From this moment the carbon nuclei will enter into ignition through nuclear fusion processes and the production of even heavier chemical elements will begin. While in the star’s core is being carried out Carbon fusionin the immediately superior layer the ignition of the helium is maintained. And above this, of hydrogen. The iron core suddenly contracts under the enormous pressure that all layers of material that it has above the material exerted on it During star nucleosynthesis, stars acquire a layer -shaped structure similar to that of an onion. In the nucleus lies the heaviest element, and from there we are ascending by layers finding more and lighter elements. If the star has accumulated sufficient mass there will come a time when the nucleus will be essentially constituted by iron, and from this chemical element it is not possible to obtain more energy through nuclear fusion processes. At that time the radiation and gase pressure is not enough to counteract gravitational contraction, so Iron core suddenly contracts under the enormous pressure that all layers of material that it has above. The star has lost the hydrostatic balance. At this moment all this matter loses the support that the nucleus exercised, which is now much more compact, and falls on it with enormous speed. When all that star material touches the surface of the nucleus there is a rebound effect that causes it to be fired with a huge energy towards the stellar medium, being disseminated. A supernova has just been produced. Some of them are so energetic that for a few seconds they emit more light than the entire galaxy that contains them. This was probably what happened to ‘Teleios’, the remnant of a supernova recently discovered by an astronomer team from the University of Sidney (Australia). The remnant is nothing more than the material that is spread in a region of space after the production of a supernova In the field of Supernovas, the remainder is nothing more than the material that is scattered in a region of space after the production of a supernova. It usually acquires the shape of an expanding bubble in which it is possible to identify an external and brilliant region in which the shock wave and a diffuse interior section occurs constituted by dense and cold dust and dust. The image we publish on the cover of this article recreates a supernova in the most reliable way possible, and in it we can clearly observe the two regions in which we have just inquired. Astronomers from the University of Sidney have identified the remnant ‘Teleios’ using the Australian Askap telescope (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder), and have realized something very interesting: its geometry is almost perfectly circular. It is very unusual that the material left after the production of a supernova acquires such a perfect geometry. Although these astrophysics shuffle several scenarios that could explain this morphology, in Your scientific article They propose to carry out more observations to determine why ‘Teleios’ is so different from other remnants. The identification of the conditions that have given rise to this cosmic object can help cosmologists to understand better What happens during the production of a Supernova and what parameters delimit the evolution of the remnant that will remain in space long after this great explosion occurs. In fact, these Australian astrophysicists have estimated that ‘Teleios’ is at a distance between 7,170 and 25,100 light years. Image | Generated by Xataka with Dall-e More information | Arxiv In Xataka | The CERN detector took 20 years to be built. It is one of the most complex machines created by the human being

How many books a month are too many books? The debate about reading as another form of extreme consumerism

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The mixture of the need to create constant content and the search for new forms of validation has generated a new controversy in the Tik Tok literary sector. Creators cross accusations with others about the legitimacy of reading without stopping, where is the real enjoyment and if reading more or less determines the real quality as a reader. They have not reached any conclusion, but the question is on the table: how much do you have to read to read good? Readers shock. The booktoker Beautifulone of the most often of the Spanish booktokersfera, with almost 350,000 followers She was accused by another booktoker, Palomo Gamyito erroneously normalize reading dozens of books per month. According to this other Booktoker, this infernal rhythm of readings hides a much more critical reality: we must maintain that rhythm of readings to follow the crazy rhythm of launch of the great publishers, accusing many of the main creators of content about books of being spokesmen at the service of the industry. 11 tricks to dominate Tik tok What this clash hides. Gamyi is, in fact, a booktoker who instead of talking about the Latest novelties of Romantasy and literature Young adultcomments more serious novels, such as ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ or ‘The Conjure of the fools’. In addition, it combines comments from books with videos about your own love for writing. His defense of reading little but “better” also hides an ethical positioning and a claim of gourmet readings above literary fast food. Where everything is kneaded. All this happens in the BookTook digital subculture, an increasingly numerous group of users that recommends and promotes books: from recovery of classics to comments from novelties, going through tricks to read more and/or better. Many observers believe that this current our way of reading has changed and is transforming The customs of generation Z. He Hashtag that Group these users It already adds 200,000 million visualizations, enough to consider a cultural force that conditions the large publishers, who see how gender sales like Romantasy rise when recommending them Booktokers. What have the booktokers have done. Convert the accusations of Palomo Gamyi into a viral issue, of course: it has been put on the table how many books it is reasonable to read a month, all overlooked with tips and humor. It is an issue that was already commenting Since 2024so it is not new, but the video of Palomo Gamyi has brought up what this activity has to follow the editorial rhythm together. That is, a matter of creation of novel content to grow in social networks. Too many books? From this conflict two primary themes come out. The first is whether in Spain they are published Too many books: In 2024 were 89,347according to the Ministry of Culture: an increase of 2.6% compared to the previous year already levels similar to the pre-pondemic years. It is a very high figure and puts us at the head of Europebut it generates problems: a fierce competition for the care of the reader and a very short life for the news. A problem that, perhaps, compulsive readers such as beautifulbooks are helping to prolong. A validation. The other problem of the Booktoker community that hides this conflict is the search for personal validation through quantity, something similar to Likes psychology: A reaffirmation is sought through that acceptance of strangers. The mountains of read books are also a way of generating admiration and envy by a community with which tastes are shared, no matter how much reading is not very repossed and, as Gamyi complaint, does not generate a real reflection on the work, but a mere to pass pages. The discussion has not caused the blood to the river, and most of the booktokers participating in it seem to agree that each one must read what he can (and want). Which does not prevent a long and sinister shadow on such a simple and, beneficial hobby, benefit, such as reading for pleasure. They are also readers. The BookTokers They are not a promotional creation of the industry, but a spontaneous movement born in social networks (they have their equivalents in others, such as Booktubers), and they are a sign that in post-pandemic reality, there is a generalized fever by reading. Microeditorials arise consecrated to the publication of authors and projects outside the great industry, reading clubs They have ceased to be an extravagance For library mice, and books are relief from the saturation of screens we live, even in our leisure times. Conflicts like this are the least, because in the end they refer to the important thing: we like to read. Header | Patrick Tomasso in Unspash In Xataka | There is something in the book by José Breton that has crossed a red line although we have been hooked for years to True Crime Crimes

The most millionaire form of Ferdinand Porsche’s grandson to save a slope

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Wolfgang Porsche, president of the Porsche Board of Directors and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, is raising controversy among the residents of Salzburg (Austria). The millionaire has proposed to build An underground tunnel deprived of about 500 meters under the mountain where one of its seventeenth century is located. The most striking of all, is the reason why he wants to build this tunnel: avoid a brief section of road that winds down the slope of Mount Kapuzinerberg by joining it with the urban center of the city. The new Millionaire neighbor. According to The published By the German newspaper DerstandardWolfgang Porsche bought in 2020 the villa Paschinger-Schlössl for about 8.4 million and is currently under rehabilitation works. That is, it is not even about Millionaire’s main house 81 years. The village of a palatial nature is located on a slope of the mountain of Monte Kapuzinerberg, which acts as one of Salzburg’s green lungs, and had belonged to the writer Stefan Zweig. “Complicated” access. As usual in the places built on a mountain, the narrow road with only access lane to the place, runs through the side of the mountain saving a slope with about 50 meters of unevenness. Apparently, the president of one of the largest manufacturers of German supercar distracks him to travel a brief section of mountain to reach his residence. According to local sources, the narrow access through a 16th -century wall tends to collapse due to the difficulty of access, it can be dangerous in winter. The least is the tunnel. According to published Spiegelto avoid the stretch of road, the millionaire believes more appropriate to build an underground tunnel under its mansion, so that the landscape value of the place would not be altered. This work would allow to communicate a private parking for nine cars that will be built next to the town, with urban parking located at the base of the mountain. The bureaucratic procedures for the execution of the work are already very advanced and even the millionaire would have already paid about 40,000 euros in concept of access to the existing urban parking. The neighbors see it as a privilege for rich. The Bürgerliste Local Party has questioned the modest access rate that the millionaire has paid. While the amount of your personal fortune is not publicly known, it is estimated that the fortune of the Porsche/Piëch family whose fortune is estimated in about 38.8 billion dollars. Beyond the protests for the supposed privilege of access to the new neighbor, there is legal level they have nothing to object. According to “Kellerrecht“or” Bodega Law “, the property of Wolfgang Porsche is not limited to the land and the town built in it, but also to everything under the town.” Theoretically, these lands could be used even to the core of the Earth, “said a report by the municipal technical entity. In Xataka | There are only two units of this exclusive Porsche 911. One of them was abandoned and taking dust in Dubai Image |Porsche

Steven Soderbergh: ‘I am the cockroach of this industry. I can survive any version of it’

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NEW YORK — Steven Soderbergh is not only the director and cinematographer of his latest film. In some ways, he is also its central character. “Presence” is filmed entirely from the point of view of a ghost inside a house that a family has just moved into. Soderbergh, who acts as his own cinematographer under the pseudonym Peter Andrews (his father’s name), essentially plays the presence, a floating point of view that watches as the violence that killed the mysterious ghost threatens to repeat itself. For the prolific Soderbergh, the film, which opens in theaters Friday, was a unique challenge. She shot “Presence” with a small digital camera while wearing slippers to soften her steps. The 62-year-old filmmaker chatted in a recent interview in Manhattan, in the midst of post-production on his next film (“Black Bag,” a thriller that Focus Features will release on March 14), and the start of production in a few weeks his next project, a romantic comedy that he says “feels like a George Cukor movie.” Soderbergh, whose films include “Out of Sight,” the “Ocean’s 11” films, “Magic Mike” and “Erin Brockovich,” tends to do a lot in small windows. of time. “Presence” took 11 days to film. That skill has made Soderbergh one of the most respected Hollywood evaluators in the film business. In a wide-ranging conversation, he discussed why he thinks streaming is the most destructive force cinema has ever faced and why he is “the cockroach of this industry.” Steven Soderbergh attends the premiere of “Presence” at AMC Lincoln Square on Thursday, January 16, 2025 in New York. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) You use pseudonyms for yourself as director of photography and editor. Were you tempted to credit yourself as an actor for “Presence”?SODERBERGH: No, but what I did is subtle. For the first and only time Peter Andrews has a camera operator credit. That’s not a credit I usually take because I don’t need it and I typically have another operator working with me. But I felt like this was training. It was complicated, but really fun. It was another level of performance anxiety because I ruined more takes than anyone else in the movie by a major factor. I was the one saying, “Cut. I ruined it. “We have to start over.” You made this quickly and cheaply, and then sold it to a distributor. Was working outside the system attractive to you?The beauty of projects on this scale is that I can do them without having to talk to anyone. It’s not because I don’t want comments. It’s because it’s just the trusted group and none of the psychic space is occupied by things that have nothing to do with what you’re going to film. I went from that to a more traditional project where a lot of psychic space is consumed in the process of having a studio finance your film. I like these people, it’s just that there are a lot of lawyers. Many lawyers. You’ve called streaming the most destructive force in the history of cinema. What irritates you the most about it?It removes a key reference point for an artist. It’s useful to know how something is working, or how it worked. You need to know that to gauge whether you achieved what you wanted to achieve, whether you can work at a certain level. That’s one of the most confusing things about it, the black box of it. Aside from the economic invisibility of what’s going on there — the fact that we can’t really look under the hood of how these streaming companies operate economically — there’s another kind of guardrail that’s missing that I find really useful. At the end of the day, at least, I want to know. The market will tell you how you are doing. I want to know that so I can adjust or go in another direction. Being irrelevant is not very attractive. What’s the overlap between what people seem to be responding to and what I like? Because I don’t want to do these things and have no one see them. I’ve had enough people say, “Oh, that came out?” It is a public art form. West Mulholland, from left, Callina Liang, Steven Soderbergh and Eddy Maday attend the premiere of “Presence” at AMC Lincoln Square on Thursday, January 16, 2025 in New York. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) How do you suspect the audience is changing?The good news is, if you talk to Focus Features and Neon and A24, young people are going to the movies. This is the generation of (the social network of movie buffs) Letterboxd. That’s fantastic. I hope that spreads outside of the United States. They are movie buffs and expect something unique. They want the signature, they want the seal of a filmmaker. And that is becoming a real business. One of the things, I think, that we all need to do, but especially people who cover the industry, is to stop using the studio metric for what is a success. That is not a template that you should apply to everything. Do you ever regret that the movies that made you want to be a filmmaker like “All the President’s Men” and “Chinatown” occupied a different place in the culture than movies today?There was a period of about 10 to 14 years where the best movies of the year were also the most popular movies of the year. That’s not necessarily true today. You can pick one of the movies that’s in the competition this year and say: That’s a movie from the ’70s. It’s just as good and interesting as one of those. But it’s not going to do the business that one of those would have done. It is the artist’s job to adapt. When you’re trying to control what people want to see, you’re in a place like, “If I really wish hard, it won’t rain.” The weather is the weather. To some degree, the audience is a weather system. Fortunately, … Read more

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