Tag: Amazon

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At Large Letter From An Editor

Sweet Dreams

Eurythmics’ Annie Lennox (Photo: Library of Congress)

Did you see the video of President Trump singing the Eurythmics’ 1980’s hit, “Sweet Dreams”? He’s really pretty good, to be honest. Except honesty has nothing to do with it. The video — all of it, including the imitation of Trump’s voice — was created by a Google artificial intelligence program, an algorithm trained on Trump’s voice and speech patterns and tasked with creating this bizarre cover song.

The video was only online for a couple of days, but it’s just another example of what we’re all going to be facing in the coming years: The fact that most human creative endeavors can be replicated by artificial intelligence, including novels, screenplays, television scripts, videos of politicians or celebrities (or any of us), pornography, political propaganda, advertising jingles, emails, phone calls, “documentaries,” and even the news. It’s going to be a huge influence in our lives, and it has an enormous potential for creating mischief via disinformation and the manipulation of “reality.”

That’s why seven companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection AI, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI — met with President Biden last Friday to announce a voluntary commitment to standards in the areas of safety and security. The companies agreed to:

  • Security test their AI products, and share information about their products with the government and other organizations attempting to manage the risks of AI.
  • Implement watermarks or other means of identifying AI-generated content.
  • Deploy AI tools to tackle society’s challenges, including curing disease and combating climate change.
  • Conduct research on the risks of bias and invasion of privacy from the spread of AI.


Again, these were voluntary agreements, and it bears noting that these seven companies are fierce competitors and unlikely to share anything that costs them a competitive edge. The regulation of artificial intelligence will soon require more than a loose, voluntary agreement to uphold ethical standards.

The U.S. isn’t alone in trying to regulate the burgeoning AI industry. Governments around the globe — friendly, and not so friendly — are doing the same. Learning the secrets of AI is the new global arms race. Using AI disinformation to control or influence human behavior is a potential weapon with terrifying prospects.

It’s also a tool that corporations are already using. I got an email this week urging me to buy an AI program that would generate promotional emails for my company. All I had to do was give the program the details about what I wanted to promote and the AI algorithm would do the rest, cranking out “lively and engaging” emails sure to win over my customers. I don’t have a company, but if I did, the barely unspoken implication was that this program could eliminate a salary.

It’s part of what’s driving the strike by screen actors and writers against the major film and television studios: The next episode of your favorite TV show could be “written” by an AI program, thereby eliminating a salary. Will the public care — or even know — if, say, the latest episode of Law & Order was generated by AI? Will Zuckerberg figure out how to use AI to coerce you into giving Meta even more of your personal information? (Does it even Meta at this point? Sorry.) You can be sure we’ll find out the answer to those questions fairly soon.

And we’ve barely even begun to see how AI can be utilized in the dirty business of politics. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign used an AI-generated voice of Donald Trump in an ad that ran in Iowa last week. Trump himself never spoke the words used in the ad, but if you weren’t aware of that, you might be inclined to believe he did. Which is, of course, the point: to fool us, to make the fake seem real. It’s coming. It’s here. Stay woke, y’all.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something …

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

“Alexa, Thank My Driver”

Photo: Wicked Monday | Unsplash

“Alexa, thank my driver.”

These words rubbed me the wrong way last week when Amazon announced a campaign to allow customers the opportunity to say “thank you” and send a $5 tip to their delivery driver. Not that giving thanks is a bad idea. We should all show more gratitude more often. It’s just that coming from one of the most profitable companies in the U.S. — and on the heels of reports of a lawsuit launched against it, for withholding employee tips of all things, in addition to impending layoffs which include jobs in its Alexa division — it sounds like a bit of a joke.

For the 12 months ending in September 2022, Amazon exceeded $502 billion in revenue and $11 billion in net income. Billion. In a society where instant gratification has become the norm, and where with a few mouse clicks or screen taps, we can have just about anything we’d ever need or want delivered to our front doors in a matter of hours or days, the irony of asking a robot to say thank you to the humans doing all that work does not escape me.

According to Amazon’s announcement: “Starting December 7, any time a customer says, ‘Alexa, thank my driver,’ the driver who delivered their most recent package will be notified of the customer’s appreciation. And, in celebration of this new feature, with each ‘thank you’ received from customers, drivers will also receive an additional $5, at no cost to the customer. We’ll be doing this for the first 1 million ‘thank yous’ received. And, the five drivers who receive the most customer ‘thank yous’ during the promotional period, will also be rewarded with $10,000 and an additional $10,000 to their charity of choice.”

Okay, sounds good. But what’s $5 million to Amazon — a corporation that netted $33.3 billion in profits in 2021? While this year thus far has shaped up to be the first in recent past that the company has shown a decline in profits (2021 showed a 56.41 percent increase from 2020; 2020 an 84.08 percent increase over 2019), that amount is but a drop of water in the ocean.

According to ZipRecruiter, the average national salary for Amazon delivery drivers is $43,794, depending on location, with an average of $41,050 per year in Tennessee. There are also a slew of Amazon Flex drivers — a program that launched in 2015 as the uptick of services like Uber, Lyft, and the like saw more people using their own cars to make extra cash. Those Flex workers are independent contractors who do not receive reimbursement for gas, mileage, parking fees, etc. — and who, Amazon reports, earn $18 to $25 an hour, again depending on location and how quickly they complete their deliveries. Not bad for an hourly rate, but factor in gas, vehicle wear and tear, and physical demands, and you’ve gotta wonder what that balances out to. Of course, people choose to work at Amazon and could seek employment elsewhere at any time. But that’s not the point. Folks who work in the warehouses and in shipping and delivery are among the most integral parts of the business. Do consumers need to log on to an app or ask an electronic device to ensure they’re appreciated or properly compensated?

The “thank my driver” campaign hit its limit just one day after the launch, with Amazon announcing December 8th, “We have received more than 1 million ‘thank yous’ concluding the promotion offering $5 per ‘thank you’ to eligible drivers. You can still share your appreciation by saying, ‘Alexa, thank my driver.’ We are thankful for the enthusiastic response to the promotion and the appreciation shown to drivers.”

So yes, of course, continue to thank your driver. (Although I’m curious if they’re being inundated with constant, now-annoying notifications.) Maybe put a little care package out with snacks or a gift card. But this whole thing reeks of a PR stunt to show Amazon as a company that cares for its workforce. And maybe it does. It could be a great place to work; I wouldn’t know. But I do know that its founder, Jeff Bezos, is reported to be the fourth-wealthiest person in the world, and that doesn’t happen without a certain level of smarts — and, I dare say, greed.

While we’re in the spirit of gratitude, if the opportunity arises, be sure to express thanks to your other delivery drivers, postal workers, restaurant servers, retail associates, and everyone else who keeps the ships afloat, especially this time of year. And consider stopping in a locally owned shop for some of your holiday gifting needs this season. They could use the support much more than Amazon.

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News News Feature

The Amazon Challenge

Unbox your Amazon order history. (Photo: Sean Robbins | Unsplash)

One of my favorite financial writers, Jacob Lund Fisker, had an interesting process to determine what sort of things to own. He was on the early crest of what we might now call minimalism (though he disputes that characterization) and even today focuses on owning things he uses hourly or at least daily. He has particular contempt for things owned more than six months without being used (get rid of it), things idle for more than a year (get rid of it!), and my favorite category, “I didn’t even know I owned this” (he recommends “get rid of it!!!” with three exclamation points).

I noticed recently that amazon.com order history is very detailed, can be easily extracted, and never is purged. There is nothing special about Amazon orders, or online vs. in-person buying in general, except it is rare to have such comprehensive buying info all in one place. I have Amazon purchases I can review going back to the year 2000 — a unique time capsule. Just like the addresses in my Amazon address book, it is a diary of my life and where I have been over the years. Here are some thoughts on what I see in my data from a financial perspective.

One large category is consumables like food and furnace filters, which mostly can be ignored. However, I have learned that it’s worth checking the price at local grocery stores since sometimes the cost of shipping baked in can have a big impact on the final price.

I wish I had all the money back that I spent on DVDs and CDs, since they have no place in my life anymore. I also wish I had the money back that I spent on most books — I love reading, but I could have borrowed most of these from a library (you can get anything via interlibrary loan!). Afterward, I could have bought only the ones that proved meaningful to me, as the vast majority sit idle or have been donated over the years.

One of the most satisfying categories is DIY supplies (sometimes expensive) that solved important problems and saved significant money, like a new starter for my 1999 Accord or a new faucet cartridge that saved a visit from the plumber.

My favorite category, just like Fisker, is things bought years ago and still used frequently, like the flip-flops I see sitting in the corner I bought in 2013 or my wife’s sunglasses from 2014 she still wears daily. Things in this category are shockingly few and far between. I’m actually going through the thousands of things I have bought to see how many are still in service by vintage year. Maybe we’ll have a follow-up article with some of that data — I’d like to learn how to buy more of this stuff and less of everything else.

A sad category includes the things used once or even never. Usually these are very specialized solutions that either did not work or proved to be too unrealistic or cumbersome. Sometimes they are simply impulse purchases that probably would never have been ordered if I forced myself to keep them in the cart for a week.

Even worse, there are problems that could have been solved with items on hand. For example, I have approximately a zillion HDMI cables at the bottom of a tangled bin somewhere, but I’ve continued to buy them over the years because it’s easier than tracking one down. This is probably an example of one of the worst aspects of consumerism.

My Amazon safari was eye-opening, and everyone’s experience is likely to be different. All spending decisions are based on trade-offs — spending vs. saving, time vs. money, money vs. emotions, consumption vs. conservation, and so on. Seeing the good purchases I have made was rewarding and seeing the countless purchases I have no use for today — or maybe never did — will hopefully help guide me in the right spending direction going forward.

You should take a look yourself if you use Amazon frequently — you too might find it a fun journey down memory lane as well as a sobering reflection of your own financial history!

Gene Gard is Chief Investment Officer at Telarray, a Memphis-based wealth management firm that helps families navigate investment, tax, estate, and retirement decisions. Ask him your questions or schedule an objective, no-pressure portfolio review at letstalk@telarrayadvisors.com. Sign up for the next free online seminar on the Events tab at telarrayadvisors.com.

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News News Blog News Feature

Amazon Plans Two Mid-South Facilities

An Amazon fulfillment center, photo courtesy Amazon.

Amazon is upping its presence in the Mid-South with two new facilities: a delivery station in North Memphis and a fulfillment center in Byhalia, Mississippi.

The company expects to employ hundreds at each facility and will pay a starting wage of $15 per hour plus benefits.

The delivery station on Hawkins Mill Road is expected to launch next year. It is part of Amazon’s last-mile delivery efforts to speed up deliveries for customers in the region. Packages are transported to delivery stations from fulfillment and sorting centers, and then loaded into vehicles for delivery to customers.

Amazon has more than 250 delivery stations in the U.S., four of which are in Tennessee.

“Amazon has confidence in our city and our workforce,” said Ted Townsend, chief economic development officer for the Greater Memphis Chamber. “With the addition of hundreds of new jobs at their North Memphis facility, Amazon will now employ over 5,000 Memphians. Working together to bring those jobs to Memphis include our partners at the State of Tennessee, City of Memphis, Shelby County, MLGW, TVA, EDGE and Workforce Midsouth.”

The company says it has invested more than $8.9 billion across the state, including infrastructure and compensation, which has contributed an additional $8.7 billion to the Tennessee economy and has helped create more than 12,700 indirect jobs on top of Amazon’s direct hires.

The Byhalia fulfillment center, expected to open later this year, will use new technologies to pick, pack, and ship larger customer items such as mattresses, kayaks, grills, and exercise equipment.

Amazon says it has created more than 2,000 full- and part-time jobs in Mississippi since 2010. The company says it has invested more than $120 million across the state, including infrastructure and compensation. These investments have contributed an additional $100 million to the state’s economy and have helped create more than 1,000 indirect jobs above Amazon’s direct hires.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

To Those Who Can’t Stay Home

CREDIT: Courtney Hedger | Unsplash

As I write this from my couch, nearly a year into working from home due to the pandemic, I am experiencing both burnout and gratitude.

On the one hand, working from the confines of my 750-square-foot rental home, I feel — quite literally — boxed in. The days bleed together as I change from one pair of pajamas to another, staring at a laptop, eyes glazed over, with little actual human interaction or external stimuli. Digital documents, emails, Slack exchanges — everything and everyone has morphed into nothing more than words on a screen. If it weren’t for deadlines and production days and the physical calendar on the kitchen wall where I scrawl notes and reminders, I’d likely lose track of which day was which all together. And I’ll admit that I have on more than one occasion in recent weeks.

Courtney Hedger | Unsplash

Outings are minimal. Necessary items can be ordered online for delivery or pickup. Like clockwork, the mailman arrives, my dogs bark loudly to alert of his presence, and the [insert whatever random thing was purchased] is here without me having to get into my car or brush my hair or speak to another person. The only traffic jams I’ve experienced in a year are the pile-ups that often happen in the small hallway where my three dachshunds scurry under foot to race to their food bowls at breakfast and dinner. They help me keep track of the hours with their internal clocks. But what day is it again? When did I last shower? What’s the point?

It starts to feel a little doom-and-gloom when you realize how the days bend into one another, especially in winter. Those neighborhood walks I so enjoyed in warmer weather apparently kept me sane, or at least somewhat content. The sunshine, the sights and sounds … Now it’s gray and wet and cold, and when will it be spring again? What month is it?

Now on to the gratitude. I am hyper-aware of how privileged I am to have had the opportunity to navigate these hazy, dazed work-from-home days, within the virus-free walls of my tiny house. So many — including the delivery drivers who’ve kept our pantries stocked, our gifts en route to their recipients, our non-essential purchases on our porches — have known no such luxury. So many — including my sister, a single mother of two who is working her way toward an assistant manager position at a local grocery store — can not simply stay home and have the world come to them. The kids must go to school or daycare. Bills must be paid, gas in the car, food on the table. The show must go on, the slog continues, and those who have kept the gears in motion on the outside have had to live their lives the same as they did pre-pandemic. Except while wearing masks eight hours a day. Except while potentially exposing themselves to a deadly virus. There’s an entire segment of our population that does not have a choice.

I want to take a moment to salute every single essential worker. From restaurants to retail, from healthcare to warehouse workers — we see you. I hope with every fiber of my being that each of you stays healthy while you’re out there risking your lives for our Amazon orders and cheeseburgers. I hope that you do not take the virus home to an immune-compromised family member or loved one. I hope that while you’re out there making sure the ships still sail that the people you encounter are showing gratitude and respect. You deserve more recognition than I can give you. The world as we know it could — and likely would — collapse if not for your continued efforts. And I know those efforts are made out of necessity. Thank you for keeping the shelves stocked, preparing food for us, caring for the sick, and delivering whatever it is we think we need while we’re stuck at home.

As I write this, it’s a Thursday afternoon. I’m in a robe and houseshoes. My dogs are piled up around me napping. I am safe. I am healthy. I am grateful.

Shara Clark is managing editor of the Flyer.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

When Fake Becomes Real: J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius

“The World Ends Tomorrow and YOU MAY DIE!” So begins SubGenius Pamphlet #1, the mysterious missive that launched J.R. “Bob” Dobbs into the cultural consciousness. The story of the unlikely creation of the Church of the SubGenius and its sprawling influence is told in a new documentary by producer/director Sandy K. Boone.

The “church” was the brainchild of two friends from Fort Worth, Texas. Douglass St. Clair Smith had been voted “weirdest” student in his high school. Steve Wilcox worked for AT&T. They were both self-proclaimed outsiders in the straight-laced Texas of the late 1970s, so when they met, they became fast friends.

Slackers — Dr. Philo Drummond (left) and Rev. Ivan Stang come clean in J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius.

The two were fascinated with all kinds of extreme beliefs and outsider art. They bonded over a common love of the psychedelic music of Captain Beefheart. This was the age of televangelists and the rise of Evangelical Christianity. Wilcox had been raised in a fundamentalist household and was intimately familiar with the culture, even though he rejected his parents’ religion.

The idea was to create a parody version of the pamphlets and flyers, such as the tracts from cartoonist Jack Chick, that littered public spaces in Fort Worth, so they created a fake religion that was supposed to seem just as insane as the kooky pamphlets they were satirizing. To do that, they needed a deity. Since their own artistic skills weren’t up to snuff, and they couldn’t afford to hire an illustrator, they turned to clip art, the open source IP of the day. In a book from the 1950s intended for use by salesmen, they found an image of a smiling white man clenching a pipe in his teeth. They named the image J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, and invented a backstory for him.

“Bob” (the quotation marks were mandatory) was a supernaturally gifted salesman who was contacted in the 1950s by a “wrathful alien space god from a corporate sin galaxy” who called himself JHVH-1. The mission of “Bob” was to bring Slack to the world. What Slack was, exactly, was left to the imagination, but in Wilcox’s words, “You know when you don’t have it.”

All religions need an adversary. The target audience for the pamphlet was defined on the front page: “Do people think you’re strange? Do you???” Since the two artists were in Dallas, conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F. Kennedy were fresh on their minds. Thus, the Conspiracy of Normals, intent on stealing Slack from the abnormals, was conjured into existence.

Smith renamed himself Rev. Ivan Stang, and Wilcox adopted the moniker Dr. Philo Drummond. The pamphlet included an address for the SubGenius Foundation with a pitch to send $1 in return for “Eternal salvation or triple your money back!” As Ivan Stang says in one of the many archival interviews in the documentary, “If Jim Jones convinced 900 people to kill themselves, we thought maybe we could convince 900 people to give us a dollar.”

Much to their surprise, they convinced a lot more than 900 people. Word spread quickly, and a network of artists creating copycat artworks sprang up around the country. “Bob” became an icon of ’80s counterculture. The first meeting of the SubGenius, which Stang dubbed a “devival,” attracted Devo founders Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale. A radio show called The Hour of Slack soon followed. “Bob” popped up in the oddest places, such as on the wall of the set of Peewee’s Playhouse. Baffled journalists didn’t know if the SubGenius crew was joking or not, and Ivan Stang, who took over running the ramshackle church, wasn’t about to tell them. The devivals became chaotic touring shows, with bands like Doktors for Bob pioneering what would become known as noise music.

As Boone’s insightful and spritely paced documentary reveals, the genius of the SubGenius was deconstructing the elements all real religions shared and reconstructing them in a funhouse mirror. But much to Stang’s dismay, he found that even a parody religion attracted sincere followers. At a massive devival in San Francisco known as The Night of Slack, Stang was accosted by a SubG who demanded to know where the real “Bob” was. Like any religion worth its creed, schisms developed, and people took the “us vs. them” narrative way too seriously. In the documentary, Stang says he decided to break character and tell the real story of the church in order to avoid creating a new Scientology after he’s gone.

In many ways, the SubGenius were ahead of their time. The church was an early adopter of the internet, and “Bob” is a proto-meme. Slack lives on as the name of a popular business conferencing app. But as the documentary points out in its closing minutes, cult-like organizations such as QAnon learned the wrong lessons from the SubGenius: No matter how nutty a group seems, if it gives them a sense of belonging, people are willing to believe.

J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius is available on Amazon Prime Video and Vimeo On Demand.

Categories
News News Blog

Amazon Posts 500 New Jobs for Olive Branch Center

Need a job? Amazon has 500 of them.

The retail giant posted the jobs for its new, 1-million-square-foot fulfillment center in Olive Branch on Tuesday, July 28th.

The full-time jobs start at $15 per hour. They also come with a benefits package that includes health, vision, and dental insurance, a 401(k) with a 50 percent company match, up to 20 weeks paid parental leave, and Amazon’s career program that pre-pays 95 percent of tuition for courses in high-demand fields.

The fulfillment center will be located at 11505 Progress Way in Olive Branch. Workers there will pick, pack, and ship large customer items, like sports equipment, patio furniture, fishing rods, pet food, kayaks, bicycles, and larger household goods.

Job candidates must be 18 years or older and have a high school diploma or equivalent to be considered. Learn more here. Or, sign up for text alerts by texting PITNOW to 77088.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

From Netflix to Criterion: All You Need to Know About What’s Streaming

Those of us who are not doctors, nurses, or EMTs or others on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19 are faced with some time on our hands. The only silver lining to the situation is that our new reality of soft quarantine comes just as streaming video services are proliferating. There are many choices, but which ones are right for you? Here’s a rundown on the major streaming services and a recommendation of something good to watch on each channel.

Stevie Wonder plays “Superstition” on Sesame Street.

YouTube

The granddaddy of them all. There was crude streaming video on the web before 2005, but YouTube was the first company to perfect the technology and capture the popular imagination. More than 500 hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Cost: Free with ads. YouTube Premium costs $11.99/month for ad-free viewing and the YouTube Music app.

What to Watch: The variety of content available on YouTube is unfathomable. Basically, if you can film it, it’s on there somewhere. If I have to recommend one video out of the billions available, it’s a 6:47 clip of Stevie Wonder playing “Superstition” on Sesame Street. In 1973, a 22-year-old Wonder took time to drop in on the PBS kids’ show. He and his band of road-hard Motown gunslingers delivered one of the most intense live music performances ever captured on film to an audience of slack-jawed kids. It’s possibly the most life-affirming thing on the internet.

From Netflix to Criterion: All You Need to Know About What’s Streaming

Dolemite Is My Name

Netflix

When the DVD-by-mail service started pivoting to streaming video in 2012, it set the template for the revolution that followed. Once, Netflix had almost everything, but recently they have concentrated on spending billions creating original programming that ranges from the excellent, like Roma, to the not-so excellent.

Cost: Prices range from $8.99/month for SD video on one screen, to $15.99/month, which gets you 4K video on up to four screens simultaneously.

What to Watch: Memphian Craig Brewer’s 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name is the perfect example of what Netflix is doing right. Eddie Murphy stars as Rudy Ray Moore, the chitlin’ circuit comedian who reinvented himself as the kung-fu kicking, super pimp Dolemite and became an independent film legend. From the screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski to Wesley Snipes as a drunken director, everyone is at the top of their game.

Future Man

Hulu

Founded as a joint venture by a mixture of old-guard media businesses and dot coms to compete with Netflix, Hulu is now controlled by Disney, thanks to their 2019 purchase of Fox. It features a mix of movies and shows that don’t quite fit under the family-friendly Disney banner. The streamer’s secret weapon is Hulu with Live TV.

Cost: $5.99/month for shows with commercials, $11.99 for no commercials; Hulu with Live TV, $54.99/month.

What to Watch: Hulu doesn’t make as many originals as Netflix, but they knocked it out of the park with Future Man. Josh Futturman (Josh Hutcherson) is a nerd who works as a janitor at a biotech company by day and spends his nights mastering a video game called Biotic Wars. A pair of time travelers appear and tell him his video game skills reveal him as the chosen one who will save humanity from a coming catastrophe. The third and final season of Future Man premieres April 3rd.

Logan Lucky


Amazon Prime Video

You may already subscribe to Amazon Prime Video. The streaming service is an add-on to Amazon Prime membership and features the largest selection of legacy content on the web, plus films and shows produced by Amazon Studios.

Cost: Included with the $99/year Amazon Prime membership.

What to Watch: You can always find something in Amazon’s huge selection, but if you missed Steven Soderbergh’s redneck heist comedy Logan Lucky when it premiered in 2017, now’s the perfect time to catch up. Channing Tatum and Adam Driver star as the Logan brothers, who plot to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Inside Out

Disney+

The newcomer to the streaming wars is also the elephant in the room. Disney flexes its economic hegemony by undercutting the other streaming services in cost while delivering the most popular films of the last decade. Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars flicks are all here, along with the enormous Disney vault dating back to 1940. So if you want to watch The Avengers, you gotta pay the mouse.

Cost: $6.99/month or $69.99/year.

What to Watch: These are difficult times to be a kid, and no film has a better grasp of children’s psychology than Pixar’s Inside Out. Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is an 11-year-old Minnesotan whose parents’ move to San Francisco doesn’t quite go as planned.

Cleo from 5 to 7

The Criterion Channel

Since 1984, The Criterion Collection has been keeping classics, art films, and the best of experimental video in circulation through the finest home video releases in the industry. They pioneered both commentary tracks and letterboxing, which allows films to be shown in their original widescreen aspect ratio. Their streaming service features a rotating selection of Criterion films, with the best curated recommendations around. You’ll find everything from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent epic The Passion of Joan of Arc to Ray Harryhausen’s seminal special effects extravaganza Jason and the Argonauts.

Cost: $99.99/year or $10.99/month.

What to Watch: One of the legendary directors whose body of work makes the Criterion Channel worth it is Agnès Varda. In the Godmother of French New Wave’s 1962 film, Cleo from 5 to 7, Corinne Marchand stars as a singer whose glamorous life in swinging Paris is interrupted by an ominous visit to the doctor. As she waits the fateful two hours to get the results of a cancer test, she reflects on her existence and the perils of being a woman in a man’s world.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Wuz That … ?

CREDIT: GilbertC | Dreamstime.com

When my brother was a little guy, he’d look through the new Sears Wish Book and make his Christmas list. He didn’t write it down, it went more like, “I want everything on these two pages except that. That’s for girls.” As an adult, my list is just as easily made. I’d like to have the freedom of a toddler to run around and look adorable without pants as opposed to being asked to “leave quietly” because I’m “disturbing the other customers in the cheese shop.”

But I am nothing if not a giver, so as I begin making a list of presents I will not buy my family and friends this holiday and instead order something at the last minute from Amazon Prime because, hey, free shipping and no pants, I have also made a list of things I want to give my beloved Memphis. Understand, I’m not offering what you fancy types call “solutions.” This is pure slacktivism. I’m just saying what I want and leaving it up to people who actually know about stuff and how to do it. I’m a facilitator. The ideas guy, if you will.

GilbertC | Dreamstime.com

My first wish is that we find another name for the flyover. That’s what it is, not what it is to us. Your old beater in high school had a name, right? Mine was the Blue Booger. I have proposed to several people that we start calling it the Grinder. We’re the home of the Grindhouse, right? And don’t you grind your teeth into meal when you’re stuck at the junction? I got those sort of blank, polite looks like when a kid in church tells the nice lady next to him that morning his daddy stubbed his toe and screamed, “JESUS HORATIO CHRIST ON A RAFT!” Then, once I drove up it, I decided on the Tower of Terror. Y’all ridden that thing yet? It’s cool as all get out. Just don’t look down. But last night I decided that Memphis should never be without the Zippin Pippin, so we could call it that.

When driving along Winchester, my husband and I play a game I call Wuz That. Wuz that a Circuit City? Wuz that a grocery store? Thousands upon thousands of square feet of empty buildings just sit there. Meanwhile, a show called Memphis Beat was filmed in Louisiana. Work with me here. I’ll tie these things together. I think Memphis should be Movie City. I don’t pretend to understand the problem with giving the film industry the kind of breaks Georgia and Louisiana do, especially since we threw so much cash at another industry that upper management dances around with their tax credits making it rain in the boardroom. Those buildings could be soundstages, post-production, animation, craft services (we are a food city, after all), whatever. Memphis has a few tall buildings to be leapt in single bounds, swampy areas for battle, Rhodes College — especially in fall — looks like the perfect New England school where two awkward nerds can fall in love. Then there are those production facilities I was talking about where giant purple horses can battle blue lizards to colonize Des Moines and turn Americans into Ood-like creatures who wail to communicate. But I don’t want to give too much of my screenplay away.

Cars are on my list, too. Get off the pot and build a damn parking garage for the zoo. At least allow me a bus route there that doesn’t take me to Collierville first. My husband, being a budget- and environmentally-conscious fellow, wanted to commute by bus to work. The commute involves starting in East Memphis, making three turns, and going straight down Getwell a few miles. Most of his commute is a straight shot. Right past a bus terminal. The 8-mile commute takes about 15-20 minutes in the car. By bus? TWO HOURS AND TWO MINUTES. In fairness, there is another route to get him to work by 7:30 a.m. that only takes an hour and 52 minutes. I understand that a public transportation system won’t expand and improve if people don’t use it. I also understand that if it doesn’t expand and improve, people won’t use it. If the Greenline has taught us anything, it’s that if you build it, they will come. And please, for the love of Pete, hurry up and make those trolley tracks of use for something other than getting your bike tire stuck in them and breaking a collarbone. Unless a secret cabal of Memphis’ world-class orthopedic professionals are in cahoots with MATA to shift business their way. I’m all for revenue, and I like secret plans.

Also: Boscos must never ever never take the black bean and goat cheese tamale off the menu. I’m willing to trade renaming the flyover for that one.

Susan Wilson also writes for yeahandanotherthing.com and likethedew.com.

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News The Fly-By

Amazon Grace

Tennessee’s tax-free honeymoon with Amazon is officially over.

Tennessee residents will now see an additional charge on their Amazon purchases, as the online retailer is now required by the state to collect sales tax.

For years, Amazon purchases made by Tennessee residents were tax-free at the time of purchase. Emails were sent out annually, letting consumers know how much they had spent on Amazon purchases the previous year so taxes could be filed accurately, but it was up to the shopper to include those taxes in their tax forms.

According to Amazon, in certain states where the website does not have a “physical selling presence” and there are no laws specifically requiring sales tax to be added, the retailer is not required to collect such tax.

That’s due to the Internet Tax Freedom Act that was reenacted by former President George W. Bush in 2007. However, states are still able to enact laws requiring online retailers to collect sales tax.

Senator Jim Kyle of Memphis, who opposed the tax in committee, said requiring the sales tax has not been shown to deter online shopping, and Amazon collecting taxes will not make small businesses more competitive with online vendors.

“It’s still a tax increase that this Republican-led government has brought us,” said Kyle, a Democrat. “You can spin this however you want to, but people like you and me are paying for it.”

Republican Senator Brian Kelsey, who voted in favor of the tax, didn’t return calls for comment.

In Tennessee, the previous deal struck by former Governor Phil Bredesen allowed Amazon to build two distribution centers in the state, creating 1,500 full-time jobs and, despite the “physical selling presence,” the deal made it so that Amazon would not be required to collect taxes.

The current governor, Bill Haslam, signed a bill in 2012 that required Amazon and other remote sellers to not only collect state tax on goods, but also to build a new distribution center and maintain at least 3,500 full-time positions until 2016 — an additional 2,000 jobs than was in the previous agreement with Bredesen.

“There are a lot of contributing factors that go into our thought process as we decide where to place our fulfillment centers,” said Nina Lindsey, a spokesperson for Amazon. “Most importantly, we want to make sure a fulfillment center is placed as close to the customer as possible. We look closely at the local workforce, and we’ve found great talent in abundance across [Tennessee].”

The bill grandfathered in the two distribution centers in Chattanooga and Charleston built in 2011. Distribution centers in Murfreesboro and Lebanon opened last year. Last November, The Tennessee Journal reported an expected $8.8 million increase in revenue from the tax.

Tennessee joins 18 other states in being charged tax on online sales. Mississippi and Arkansas residents, however, remain free from tax collection by the online retailing giant.