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Helping verbs are curious, AND fascinating
English has a big bagful of auxiliary verbs. You may have learned these as “helping verbs” in elementary and middle school, since they are sometimes described as verbs that “help” the main verb express its meaning. There are even schoolroom songs about them. They are a curious bunch.
The auxiliaries include the modal verbs (can and could, shall and should, will and would, may and might, and must). The verb that follows a modal is in its bare, uninflected form: can go, could go, must go, and so on. There are also a number of semi-modal auxiliary verbs (such as dare, need, ought to, had better, have to, and used to). Some are compound words spelled with a space and several have unusual grammatical properties as well, such as being resistant to contraction or inversion. And in parts of the English-speaking world, modals can double up, yielding expressions like might could, may can, might should, and more.
Aside from the modals, semi-modals, and double modals, the primary auxiliaries are forms of have, be, and do, which are inflected for tense (is versus was, has versus had, do versus did), number (is versus are, has versus have), and person(is versus am versus are, do versus does). These auxiliaries help to indicate verbal nuances like emphasis, the perfect and progressive aspects, and the passive voice. Here are some examples, adapted from Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea:
Those who did catch sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove … (emphatic do and perfect aspect had)
The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a long way away. (progressive aspect)
His shirt was patched so many times that it was like the sail … (passive voice)
The primary auxiliaries come before the negative adverb not and allow contraction to it.
They didn’t catch sharks.
His shirt wasn’t patched.
He hadn’t taken the sharks.
And they play a role in questions by hopping to the left over the subject
Did they catch sharks?
Was his shirt patched?
Had he taken the sharks?
or by being copied at the end in a tag question.
They caught sharks, didn’t they?
His shirt was patched, wasn’t it?
He had taken the sharks, hadn’t he?
Main verbs like see and go and walk don’t do any of those tricks.
Things get even curiouser, however, because the helping verbs have and do have doppelgangers that actually are main verbs.
The old man did his chores.
His shirt had a tear in it.
How do we know these are main verbs and not helping verbs? Well, for one thing, they are the only verbs in the sentence. For another, they can occur with other helping verbs:
The old man had done his chores.
His shirt had had a tear in it all day.
And if you make the sentences questions or negate them, you have to add a form of auxiliary do.
Did the old man do his chores?
Did his shirt have a tear in it?
The helping verb be also has a doppelganger main verb, but the forms of main verb be behave pretty much just like the helping verb. More curious behavior, keeping us on our toes. The first sentence below has past tense main verb was followed by an adjective; the other two have the past tense helping verb was.
The shark was tenacious. (main verb was)
The shark was never caught. (auxiliary was)
The old man was trying his best. (auxiliary was)
But all three was forms hop to the left in questions.
Was the shark tenacious?
Was the shark ever caught?
Was the old man trying his best?
The curious behavior of helping verbs goes on and on, with different dialects doing different things. If you’ve read many British novels or watched British television you might have noticed forms of helping verb do popping up in elliptical sentences. Here’s an example from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers: “Sam frowned. If he could have bored holes in Gollum with his eyes, he would have done.” (For a study of these forms, check out Ronald Butters’s 1983 article “Syntactic change in British English propredicates.”)
In African American English, the auxiliary done lends a completive meaning to events. You can see it in these dialogue examples from August Wilson’s Fences and from Walter Mosely’s Blond Faith: “Now I done give you everything I got to give you!” and “Didn’t she tell you that Pericles done passed on.” For more on this use of done, take a look at the chapters by Lisa J. Green and Walter Sistrunk and by Charles E. DeBose in the Oxford Handbook of African American Language.
We’ve just scratched the surface of auxiliaries. I hope you’ve become curious about these curious words.
Featured image by Alexander Grey via Unsplash (public domain)
In celebration of Pride, Artsy happily presents the Artsy Impact Auction: Artists for Pride, benefiting the Ali Forney Center. New works by a diverse group of emerging and established artists will be bid on through June 29th at 12 pm EST. TM Davy, Didier William, Jo Messer, Kyle Meyer, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Erin M. Riley, Emma Kohlmann, Caitlin Cherry, Elizabeth Glaessner, Jordan Nassar, Haas Brothers, Vickie Vainionpää, Leilah Babirye, Darryl Westly, and Nedia Were have come together in allyship to support the cause by way of sharing their talents.
Vickie Vainionpåå, Soft Body Dynamics 111, 2023
Ali Forney Center’s mission is to protect LGBTQIA+ youth from homelessness and to empower them with the tools needed to live independently. Through this partnership, the auction will directly support the critical care, direction, education, and career services that Ali Forney Center offers to these at-risk homeless youth.
Nedia Were, The Black Swan, 2022
We had the opportunity to speak with Simon Haas of the Haas Brothers, who have their Fairies Witherspoon piece featured in Artists for Pride (seen in the lead image). “This piece is from a body of work we call Fairy Berries. Each of these pieces is a little like a Faberge Egg, small and ornate,” said Simon. “These pieces are little meditations – they take a really, really long time and a steady hand, and the resulting piece is an opulent little world of its own.”
Kate Pincus Whitney, Gertrude Stein and Slice B Toklas Muss
“A lot of the work we make is playful, but an equal amount of it is intensely process-based. When I am doing beadwork or making process-intensive projects like this I am very much in a meditative state of mind,” Simon shared. “This kind of work is almost necessary for me and my mental health.
Leilah Babirye, Lady Nabuuso, 2016
Measuring 10 1/4 × 4 1/2 × 4 1/2-inches, Fairies Witherspoon is hand thrown and slip trailed porcelain detailed with gold lustre and brass plate. The underside is stamped with “HAAS BROTHERS 2020”, and it’s accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by Nikolai and Simon Haas.
Kyle Meyer, Unidentified 91a, 2023
“Being gay myself, and having experienced first hand the challenges that come with that, it is really meaningful to me to be able to support my community. I can’t imagine the added difficulty of facing homelessness caused by or made more difficult by being LGBTQIA+. This is a truly important cause, particularly in this time of increasing intolerance.” Simon went on to add that he plans to “continue being a vocally out gay man and advocating for others in my community. It is so important that we make ourselves heard and support each other in our fight for equality. The LGBTQIA+ community is not a monolith, we are a collection of communities, but by coming together and advocating for each other we can accomplish so much more than we could on our own.”
Jo Messer, Show up whenever, 2023
To learn more about Artsy Impact Auction: Artists for Pride or place a bid, visit artsy.net.
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In 1998, after a day lecturing at a conference on consciousness, neuroscientist Christof Koch (Allen Institute) and philosopher David Chalmers made a bet.
They were in “a smoky bar in Bremen,” reported Per Snaprud, “and they still had more to say. After a few drinks, Koch suggested a wager. He bet a case of fine wine that within the next 25 years someone would discover a specific signature of consciousness in the brain. Chalmers said it wouldn’t happen, and bet against.”
It has now been 25 years, and Mariana Lenharo, writing in Nature, reports that both of the researchers “agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, that it is still an ongoing quest—and declared Chalmers the winner.”
One thing that helped settle the bet, Lenharo writes, was the recent testing of two different theories about “the neural basis of consciousness”:
Integrated information theory (IIT) and global network workspace theory (GNWT). IIT proposes that consciousness is a ‘structure’ in the brain formed by a specific type of neuronal connectivity that is active for as long as a certain experience, such as looking at an image, is occurring. This structure is thought to be found in the posterior cortex, at the back of the brain. On the other hand, GNWT suggests that consciousness arises when information is broadcast to areas of the brain through an interconnected network. The transmission, according to the theory, happens at the beginning and end of an experience and involves the prefrontal cortex, at the front of the brain.
Six labs tested both of the theories, but the results did not “perfectly match” either of them.
Koch reportedly purchased a “a case of fine Portuguese wine” for Chalmers.
The post Winning Bet: Consciousness Still a Mystery first appeared on Daily Nous.
We’ve asked Rumpus editors to share the titles forthcoming between now and the year’s end that they are most eagerly anticipating. These books transport us to different worlds, give us glimpses into lives we might never otherwise know, share new perspectives to consider, and offer us respite from reality.
If a title is marked as a Poetry Book Club selection, you can receive this book before its release date and participate in an exclusive conversation with its author! Just head to our store and become a member today! Our subscription programs help keep The Rumpus running—so you can connect with your favorite writers and support The Rumpus with just one click.
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake–a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led–her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own. Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces–one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.
Forgive Me Not by Jennifer Baker
All it took was one night and one bad decision for fifteen-year-old Violetta Chen-Samuels’ life to go off the rails. After driving drunk and causing the accident that kills her little sister, Violetta is incarcerated. Under the juvenile justice system, her fate lies in the hands of those she’s wronged–her family. Denied their forgiveness, Violetta is now left with two options, neither good–remain in juvenile detention for an uncertain sentence or participate in the Trials. The Trials are no easy feat, but if she succeeds, she could regain both her freedom and what she wants most of all: her family’s love. In her quest to prove her remorse, Violetta is forced to confront not only her family’s grief, but her own–and the question of whether their forgiveness is more important than forgiving herself.
The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump
Drive by the abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts, and it doesn’t look like much. Definitely not a destination. But that’s exactly what it becomes, after a young Black Boston woman sees the country–in fact, the whole world–as an increasingly dangerous place. After losing their child and looking hard for a safe place, she and her husband begin to construct a separate society: somewhere nurturing, where everyone can feel loved and wanted, where all the Spike Lee movies play, where the children learn actual history–and somewhere underground, where they won’t need anything or anyone from the world above ground to make it work. She locates a Benefactor and soon it all begins to take shape. Two homeless men are told about the place and begin their journey by bus to get there. A young and disillusioned journalist stumbles upon it and wants in. And a former soccer player, having lost his footing in society, is persuaded to check out this place too. But it doesn’t take long for problems to develop, for conflicts to surface, for food to become scarce, for the children to crave life beyond this place.
I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times by Taylor Byas
a Rumpus Poetry Book Club Selection (subscribe by July 15!)
I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times takes its inspiration and concept from the cult classic film The Wiz to explore a Black woman’s journey out of the South Side of Chicago and into adulthood. The narrative arc of The Wiz–a tumultuous departure from home, trials designed to reveal new things about the self, and the eventual return home–serves as a loose trajectory for this collection, pulling readers through an abandoned barn, a Wendy’s drive-thru, a Beyoncé video, Grandma’s house, Sunday service, and the corner store. At every stop, the speaker is made to confront her womanhood, her sexuality, the visibility of her body, alcoholism in her family, and various ways in which narratives are imposed on her. Subverting monolithic ideas about the South Side of Chicago, and re-casting the city as a living, breathing entity, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times spans sestinas, sonnets, free-verse, and erasures, all to reimagine the concept of home. Chicago isn’t just a city, but a teacher, a lingering shadow, a way of seeing the world.
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter
A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of houseless people bathing in the bay. Start-up burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets. Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, growing or shrinking in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever closer as the world around her unravels. When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it.
Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto’s wrenching and sensational debut story collection follows a cast of mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women through a contemporary landscape thick with inherited wisdom and the ghosts of colonization. This is a Hawai’i where unruly sexuality and generational memory overflow the postcard image of paradise and the boundaries of the real, where the superstitions born of the islands take on the weight of truth. A childhood encounter with a wild pua’a (pig) on the haunted Pali highway portends one young woman’s fraught relationship with her pregnant body. An elderly widow begins seeing her deceased lover in a giant flower. A kanaka writer, mid-manuscript, feels her raw pages quaking and knocking in the briefcase.
Son has lived his entire life inside the mansion. He is a good child. He reads, practices piano, studies, and watches ghosts tend the farmland through a window in the attic. When Father decides it is time for Son to venture outside, Son’s desire to please Father overpowers his fear, and he must contend with questions he never wanted to face. What are the relentlessly grinning ghosts hiding? Has a ghost taken control of Father? What answers or horrors lie in the forest? And who will stop the mysterious encroaching shadows? Nghiem Tran’s debut inverts the haunted house tale, shaping it into a moving exploration of loss, coming of age in a collapsing world, and the battle between isolation and assimilation.
Blackouts by Justin Torres
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay–playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized–has a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories–moments of joy and oblivion–and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?
Hush Harbor by Anise Vance
After the murder of an unarmed Black teenager by the hands of the police, protests spread like wildfire in Bliss City, New Jersey. A full-scale resistance group takes control of an abandoned housing project and decide to call it Hush Harbor, in homage to the secret spaces their enslaved ancestors would gather to pray. Jeremiah Prince, alongside his sister Nova, are leaders of the revolution, but have ideological differences regarding how the movement should proceed. When a new mayor with ties to white supremacists threatens the group’s pseudo-sanctuary and locks the city down, the collective must come to a decision for their very survival.
***
During the news coverage of the COVID pandemic, I enjoyed seeing Dr Anthony Fauci on television and hearing his old-school Brooklyn accent, still shining through in his late seventies in words like Pfizer, because, data, here, and that.
But my favorite expression to listen for was his use of “down the pike” to mean “in the future.” Fauci explained once that “you don’t see for days or weeks down the pike.” Another time he said “before you know it, two to three weeks down the pike, you’re in trouble.” Discussing vaccine testing he said “So we go into phase one, it’ll take about three months to determine if it’s safe. That’ll bring us three or four months down the pike.”
“Down the pike” is an expression I grew up hearing all the time in my home state of New Jersey. And, of course, many people say it besides Anthony Fauci. Joe Biden talks about how government and the private sector should “anticipate and respond to shortages that may be coming down the pike.” If you Google “down the pike” you’ll find it everywhere, even in New York Times headlines like “Is a Trans-Atlantic Pact Coming Down the Pike?” and (with an attempted pun) “Hydrogen Cars, Coming Down the Pike.” You can find occasional instances of things coming “up the pike,” and there is an early twentieth-century slang expression “hit the pike,” meaning “hit the road” or “leave.”
Not everyone is familiar with “down the pike.” Some mislearn it as the semantically plausible “down the pipe” rather than “down the pike.” It’s “down the pike,” but where does it come from?
I had assumed that “down the pike” had something to do with the New Jersey Turnpike, the 117-mile toll highway that runs from New York City to Delaware. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority was created in 1948 and the Turnpike itself was completed in 1951. It’s been collecting tolls ever since, along with the Garden State Parkway, which was completed in 1957.
There are lots of turnpikes, however, and the word goes way back. The Oxford English Dictionary gives examples from the early 1400s. It originally meant “a spiked barrier fixed in or across a road or passage,” and was used as a defense against attacks by men on horseback.
Later turnpike became extended to the sense of a turnstile to block horses. Samuel Johnson offered this definition: “Turnpike… a cross of two bars armed with pikes at the end, and turning on a pin, fixed to hinder horses from entering.” By the late 1600s, the turnpike was a toll booth of sorts, and a late seventeenth-century Act of Parliament refers to “collecting the said [toll]… by setting up a Turnpike or otherwise.”
Turnpike, or the clipping pike, was often used to refer generally to roads in the nineteenth century, and the expression “coming down the pike” was another way of saying “coming down the road.”
By the late 1800s, figurative senses were emerging and taking hold. An 1898 story in the Dayton Herald had the line “Bowling, if dead, is the liveliest corpse that ever ’came down the pike’, as they say on the bowery.” The quote marks suggest that figurative “down the pike” was a newish expression at the time.
Pike was also used as a synonym for boardwalk or midway, and in 1903 the organizers of the St. Louis World’s Fair announced that the upcoming fair would call its promenade “The Pike,” to distinguish it from Chicago’s Midway. Perhaps St. Louis got the idea from Long Beach, California, which debuted a boardwalk amusement zone called “The Pike” even earlier—in 1902. In any event, St. Louis encouraged visitors to “Come Down the Pike,” and there was later a Broadway musical titled “Down the Pike” whose second act took place at the 1904 World’s Fair.
The figurative sense of “coming down the pike” took hold but remained sporadic in the early twentieth century. A 1905 Portland, Maine, newspaper talked about “nothing but anarchy coming down the pike” and “chaos coming down the pike.” A 1936 issue of the International Stereotypers’ and Electrotypers’ Union Journal which refers to “The fall election… coming down the pike.” Both examples are clearly oriented toward time and events rather than space.
By the 1950s the sense of “coming down the pike” to mean happening in the future was increasingly common and it took off in the 1960s and 70s, after the completion of the Interstate Highway System.
With language, you never know what’s coming down the pike.
Featured image: the New Jersey Turnpike, 1992, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)
What does a technical writer do?
When people think about careers in writing, they may focus on writing novels or films, imagining themselves as the next Stephen King or Sofia Coppola. They may aspire be a poet like Tracy K. Smith or Ada Limón. They may lean toward non-fiction, aiming to become an author like Jill Lepore or Louis Menand. But for steady work, there is nothing like technical writing for science, medicine, manufacturing, finance, retail, and other specialized fields.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 55,000 technical writing jobs in the US, projected to hit 59,000 by 2031. And while there are advanced certifications available in specialty fields and even master’s degrees in technical communication, technical writing is a career path open to writers with undergraduate degrees in English, communication, linguistics, and related fields. It usually helps though to have some experience in design, business, science, or technology.
Technical writers prepare instruction manuals, guides, technical articles, descriptions, posts, and documents for all manner of processes, products, and procedures. One student of mine working as an intern said that her first task was to write instructions for packing jars of peanut butter in shipping boxes. Another developed a safety manual for a supermarket’s deli kitchen. A third got assigned to explain procedures for using water softeners and filtration systems. And I once worked for a time documenting an automated query system for real estate listings.
When I’ve invited career technical writers to visit my classes, they’ve shared some of the work they do at any given time. They’ve written clinical evaluation reports and protocols in the medical field and instructions for financial and business systems and software. They have written explanations of how environmental data is collected and analyzed and procedures for compliance with federal and state regulations. One rewrote hospital incident reports to make sure they were understandable to staff and insurers. Another developed a design proposal for an event venue. The writing itself is tremendously varied.
A writer friend once told me, “A lot of writing is not writing,” meaning that there was more to it than words on paper. That’s certainly true for technical writing. Research and consultation are large parts of the technical writer’s work. Figuring out the needs of the users takes time, curiosity, and perseverance. Technical writers consult with designers, developers, managers, technical staff, and end-users to understand the products or processes involved. They may be responsible for recommending the most appropriate medium and design for materials and for ensuring that content is uniform across various modes of delivery.
Some technical writers may also be responsible for collecting and analyzing user feedback and usage patterns. And they may work as technical editors for projects developed collaboratively or drafted by others: scientists, clinicians, programmers, and engineers may not be familiar with writing for the general public or for their end-users.
At times, technical writers can also find themselves doing some feature writing in addition to the technical bread and butter. A writer might profile staff members explaining their work and write newsletter, blog, or magazine copy to tell the backstory of a new discovery, promote an innovative product, or explain a live-saving procedure.
Our fiction-writer colleagues like to remind us that “all writing is creative writing.” If you enjoy research and can write clearly, technical writing may be the place to put your creativity to work.
Featured image by Amy Hirschi via Unsplash (public domain)
The realization started with the word akimbo. I had first learned it as meaning a stance with hands on the hips, and I associated the stance with the comic book image of Superman confronting evildoers. Body language experts sometimes call this a power pose, intended to project confidence or dominance.
From time to time, I had encountered akimbo used to mean haphazardly sprawled, in expressions like “arms and legs akimbo,” but I assumed it was an error. And I’d seen the occasional phrasing “legs akimbo,” which referred to a splayed position.
Then I ran across “studiously akimbo hair,” which seemed to connote an intentional messiness. It was time to check some dictionaries.
I found that akimbo comes from a Middle English phrase in kenebowe, which meant “at a sharp angle.” Arms and hands had been in kenebowe since the 1400s and a-kimbo from the 1800s. In the nineteenth century we find a tailor on a bench with his legs akimbo and a man dancing with knees akimbo. There are hearts akimbo, hats akimbo, curtains akimbo, and, yes, hair akimbo. Today there’s even an action movie called “Guns Akimbo.” The Oxford English Dictionary yields a 1940s Mayfair slang use for being on one’s high horse, with the example “She got terribly akimbo.” Bent out of shape, perhaps?
By now, it was clear to me that my narrow conception of akimbo had gone askew. I got curious about what other lexical preconceptions of mine might be in disarray, so I turned to penultimate and erstwhile.
Penultimate is still defined as “next to last,” though Merriam-Webster notes that it is sometimes used as an “intensified version of ultimate,” but not usually in edited prose. Erstwhile too is still defined as “former,” though it is sometimes used as a synonym for esteemed or as a fancy way ofsaying worthwhile.
It’s not hard to see how these meanings could shift in use. When someone refers to the “penultimate scene” of a play or “an erstwhile professor,” listeners may understand these as referring to a finale or an eminence. Vagueness permits some drift in common usage, but the specificity of the older definitions provides a strong counterweight. It’s one thing for a dictionary to go from akimbo to askew, but a bit harder to get from the meaning of final to next-to-last or of esteemed to former.
A word that has shifted like akimbo is cohort. From its beginnings as a tenth of a Roman legion, the word was later extended to other bands of warriors and to people united in a common cause. Later it also came to refer to a group sharing a demographic characteristic (such as an age cohort or a cohort of students).
Since a cohort is a group and groups are made up of individuals, cohort also came to refer to one’s compatriots. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the gloss “assistant, colleague, accomplice,” and one of the citations is a bit of snark from a 1965 issue of the Times Literary Supplement: “The new American vulgarism of ‘cohort’ meaning ‘partner’.”
And by the way, even though you might be in cahoots with your cohorts, the two words don’t seem to be related. Cahoot is most likely related to the French word cahute referring to a cabin or hut, where one might form a partnership away from prying eyes.
Words shift their meanings for a lot of reasons. For akimbo and cohort, the fuzziness of their early meanings (“limbs askew” and “band of individuals”) has left room for new standard meanings. In other cases, as with penultimate and erstwhile, dictionaries have resisted including the newer, casual uses. For now.
And sometimes, there is a split decision. Recognizing that some people blur amused and bemused, Merriam Webster gives the sense “wry amusement especially from something that is surprising or perplexing.” The OED sticks with the sense of confused, muddled, or stupefied.
I’m bemused for now but waiting to see how those meanings play out in the future.
Featured image by Leon ellDOT via Unsplash (public domain)
Enlarge / Just because you're still alive in a retro-futuristic-post-apocalyptic Commonwealth doesn't mean you're necessarily witty. (credit: Bethesda / ProfMajowski)
Modders can change many things inside their favorite games, but dialogue from professionally voiced characters hasn't been one of those things—at least until recently. AI voice generation could open up new modding avenues for some games, as it has already done with one Fallout 4 mod package.
Roleplayer's Expanded Dialogue (RED) is listed in the NexusMods catalog as a "Massive expansion of vanilla dialogue," adding more than 300 entirely new lines of dialogue to the game. Those lines aim to solve an issue near to the hearts of fans of Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas: role-playing. If you're playing as a ruthless jerk, a brilliant nuclear scientist, or a strong but dimwitted dolt, you'll see more dialogue options that reflect this. Mechanically, the roll-the-dice speech "checks," which are based solely on your charisma level in the default game, can now be unlocked using related traits or skills.
If you're going to let a player be a cannibal, let them talk about it, too. (credit: Bethesda / ProjMajowski)
They're not just new labels on existing dialogue, either. RED, created by NexusMods user ProfMajowski (and first seen by us at PCGamesN), says it used ElevenLabs voice AI to generate its more in-character lines. The results can sometimes "sound a little 'emotionless,'" the creator writes, but "otherwise they basically sound like the real thing." Nothing your character can newly say now will change the game's mechanics or reactions, but it should sound a bit more in character.
Best double check those Roman numerals in your copyright notice...
The post Roman Numeral Error Shaved Ten Years Off A Movie’s Copyright appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Enlarge (credit: picture alliance / Contributor | picture alliance)
A YouTuber, Marshall Daniels—who has posted far-right-leaning videos under the name “Young Pharaoh” since 2015—tried to argue that YouTube violated his First Amendment rights by removing two videos discussing George Floyd and COVID-19. Years later, Daniels now owes YouTube nearly $40,000 in attorney fees for filing a frivolous lawsuit against YouTube owner Alphabet, Inc.
A United States magistrate judge in California, Virginia K. DeMarchi, ordered Daniels to pay YouTube $38,576 for asserting a First Amendment claim that “clearly lacked merit and was frivolous from the outset.” YouTube said this represents a conservative estimate and likely an underestimate of fees paid defending against the meritless claim.
In his defense, Daniels never argued that the fees Alphabet was seeking were excessive or could be burdensome. In making this rare decision in favor of the defendant Alphabet, DeMarchi had to consider Daniels’ financial circumstances. In his court filings, Daniels described himself as “a fledgling individual consumer,” but also told the court that he made more than $180,000 in the year before he filed his complaint. DeMarchi ruled that the fees would not be a burden to Daniels.
When linguists talk about prosody, the term usually refers to aspects of speech that go beyond individual vowels and consonants such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Such suprasegmental features may reflect the tone or focus of a sentence. Uptalk is a prosodic effect. So is sarcasm, stress, or the accusatory focus you achieve by raising the pitch in a sentence like “I didn’t forget your birthday.”
Scholars working with computer corpora of texts have extended the notion of prosody to aspects of meaning. The term “semantic prosody” was coined by William Louw in his 1993 essay “Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer: the diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies.” Building on work by John McHardy Sinclair, Louw used the term to refer to the way in which otherwise neutral words can have their meanings shaded by habitually co-occurring with other, positive or negative, words. He referred to it as a “semantic aura.”
How do you see the aura? Researchers use tools like the Key Word In Context (or KWIC) feature which produces a listing of collocates of a key word. As the term suggests, collocates are words that are co-located with the key word in the corpus and in some genre. Semantic prosody is not as in-your-face as a connotation, and as Louw’s title suggests, it can be used ironically. Perhaps because of this, dictionary definitions tend not mention prosodies in a word’s definition.
So, to take an example used by Susan Hunston of the University of Birmingham in her article “Semantic Prosody Revisited,” the word persistent often occurs with a following noun in negative contexts. We find examples like persistent errors, persistent intimidation, persistent offenders, persistent cough, persistent sexism, or persistent unemployment. That tone seems to carry over to examples like persistent talk or persistent reports. The reports and talk have a presumption of negativity to them. Hunston points out that persistent is not necessarily negative, however. One can be a persistent advocate, or a persistent suitor, or reach a goal by persistent efforts. Its aura comes from being often negative.
That carries over to the verb persist as well, I think. When Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced during a 2017 confirmation debate, the Senate majority leader’s comment that “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” was intended as a rebuke. Quickly, however, “Nevertheless, she persisted” and “Nevertheless, they persisted,” became a rallying cry of women refusing to be silenced and a renewed call to activism. The rebuke of “she persisted” was repurposed as defiance and determination.
Linguists are fascinated by phenomena like semantic prosody and the potential hidden patterns in language use. For writers who are not linguists, semantic prosody is worth pondering as one drafts and revises. How do our words shade our sentences with positive or negative associations? And how can we play with those associations to surprise readers.
Consider the example of break out, a two-word verb studied by Dominic Stewart in his 2010 book Semantic Prosody: A Critical Evaluation. What sort of things break out? Typically, it’s wars, crises, fires, conflicts, violence, insurrections, diseases, inflammations. As writers, we can reverse that tone with phrasings like “peace broke out” or “hope broke out,” giving peace and hope the sudden eruption often associated with negative events.
As readers, we ought to be aware of potential semantic prosody in the media we consume. When we encounter words like utterly, symptomatic, chill, threaten, rife, or give rise to, what subtle tones are being communicated to us? There’s not, as yet, a dictionary of semantic prosody where you can look up a word’s preferences, but you can certainly think about them.
Featured image by Pawel Czerwinski via Unsplash (public domain)
An egg farm in Arizona making money off incarcerated women. An excerpt of David Grann’s new book about a disastrous 18th-century British naval expedition. A look into why people ski. And two reads on AI, a topic that none of us can currently escape.
Elizabeth Whitman | Cosmopolitan | February 15, 2023 | 3,897 words
Even during the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that, as so often happens in America, the toll of the historic event would prove heaviest for the most vulnerable among us, including the elderly, disabled individuals, and essential workers. And the incarcerated. The virus tore through the country’s overcrowded prisons and cut their populations off from the outside world more than they were to begin with. Arizona decided to take these horrors a step further by agreeing to set up a prison labor camp — yes, you read that right — at Hickman’s Family Farms, a large egg producer. Hickman’s had long paid for incarcerated individuals to work in its facilities; the workers only got paid after the state took a huge chunk out of their wages. “This is groundbreaking,” a driver told a female prisoner as he transferred her to the camp, the first of its kind in Arizona and possibly the country, where she would live and work alongside other incarcerated women while COVID exploded. “You guys are gonna be a part of history.” Apparently, history included illness, injury, and indignity, as this investigation by Elizabeth Whitman shows — the women whose voices the story elevates were told they were necessary, and treated as if they were disposable. —SD
David Grann | The New Yorker | February 28, 2023 | 6,800 words
“The only impartial witness was the sun.” So much depends on these seven short words, and they do such a terrific job foreshadowing the mayhem to come. (I’m a sucker for survival/adventure stories. Alfred Lansing’s Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, published in 1959, was among my favorite books last year.) David Grann recounts the backstory of the Wager, a British man-o-war with a crew of over 250 that left Portsmouth, England, in 1740 as part of a squadron. Their mission: to find and loot a Spanish galleon, whose treasure was “known as ‘the prize of all the oceans.’” By the time a ship — in tatters — limps into an inlet off the southeastern coast of Brazil, only 30 men remain, “their bodies wasted almost to the bone. Their clothes had largely disintegrated. Their faces were enveloped in hair, tangled and salted like seaweed.” So, what the hell went wrong? Allow an excerpt of the prologue and first chapter of Grann’s forthcoming book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, to whet your appetite for this story of disaster and intrigue on the high seas. —KS
Jack Stilgoe | Aeon | February 28, 2023 | 5,576 words
With all the manic profiteering surrounding recent AI advances in art and writing, it’s hard not to think that someone’s cooking up a plan to make musicians obsolete. As technologist Jack Stilgoe points out, though, drumming has long resisted the creep of automation. That’s not to say we’re still pummeling calfskin with nothing but our own two hands: From the bass pedal to the Roland TR-808, we’ve sought to augment or even replace the rhythmic spine of popular music. But in genre after genre, from jazz to funk to samba, “swing” and its infinite interpretations reign supreme — and mechanization has yet to emulate soul. Stilgoe takes us through an engaging cultural history, punctuating his argument with clips of seminal moments from Clyde Stubblefield, Donna Summer, and others; it’s a paean to percussion that only a self-described “part-time mediocre drummer” could pull off. Yes, bedroom producers have all the (simulated) instruments of the world at their fingertips. And yes, in the near future we’ll probably see some horribly named AI startup that promises an improvisational predictive model that can out-Dilla Dilla. Whether any of that can move you — or make you move — remains another question. —PR
Gloria Liu | Outside | February 27, 2023 | 3,851 words
Last Sunday, I went skiing — by which I mean I largely stood in lift lines. Having forgotten my headphones, I was at the mercy of the conversations around me for entertainment. It ranged from people complaining about the traffic getting to the mountain to others ostentatiously using walkie-talkies — perhaps forgetting they were not in the military — to convey to those further afield that they were, in fact, still queuing. This piece from Gloria Liu about why people struggle through crowds for hours to pay exorbitant amounts for this limb-risking activity was, therefore, immediate catnip for me. As I devoured it, I chuckled at the characters conjured up by her vibrant prose, particularly the awkward Pit Viper-wearing couple on their first Tinder date. It’s a fun concept: Sit on a chairlift all day and see who you meet. There are no profound revelations here (besides that Jim Bob stashed some White Claws at the top of the lift), but each group is reveling in the time spent outdoors with their friends or family; the crippling amount of time and money spent worth it for these precious endorphins. When I eventually met up with friends and skied some runs, it felt worth it, too. —CW
Tony Rehagen | Experience Magazine | February 15, 2023 | 1,267 words
Is AI fatigue a thing? Because I’ve felt it for some time. Yes, there are noteworthy AI stories worth reading right now, like Ted Chiang on blurry JPEGs or the piece on drumming that Peter recommends above. But there are only so many stories about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence that I can absorb, so I’ve started to tune out. But when I came upon this story’s headline earlier this week, I couldn’t help but laugh — and decided to dive in and just surrender to it all: A data-driven IPA brewed in Australia, fine-tuned using consumer feedback collected through QR codes on cans. Genetically modified hops in the drought-plagued U.S. Pacific Northwest. An AI company ridiculously (perfectly?) called Deep Liquid. In this ultimately fun and timely read, Tony Rehagen reports on the trend of craft breweries harnessing technology, data, and research to refine their recipes. Let’s raise a glass to hops and bots. —CLR
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Convicted criminal Elizabeth Holmes is asking for special dispensation to delay her 11-year prison sentence as she decided to have two children while allowed to largely go about life whilst awaiting her trial and sentencing. Having previously attempted to "vacation" in Mexico, Holmes is now ignoring all the other women who have children and are serving time. — Read the rest
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Hickman’s had a problem. The massive egg farm in Arizona relied on the wildly undercompensated labor of incarcerated people. How would it operate during the looming lockdown? The solution, engineered by Hickman’s and the Arizona penal system, was a prison labor camp:
Hickman’s remained the only private company in Arizona allowed to use incarcerated workers on its own turf. Two national experts in prison labor who spoke with Cosmopolitan — Corene Kendrick and Jennifer Turner, both with the American Civil Liberties Union — could cite no other instance of a state corrections department detaining people on-site at a U.S. corporation for the corporation’s express use.
Within days of the plan’s approval, a roughly 6,000-square-foot metal-sided warehouse on the Hickman’s lot at 6515 S Jackrabbit Trail in Buckeye, Arizona, had been repurposed from an apparent vehicle hangar into a bare-bones “dormitory.” It sat in plain sight, about 200 feet back from the road, near the Hickman’s corporate headquarters and retail store, where an electric signboard and giant 3D chicken beckon customers in for “local & fresh” eggs. Over the next 14 and a half months, some 300 women total would cycle through this prison outpost, their waking lives largely devoted to maintaining the farm’s operations while the pandemic raged.
Eleven of these women — all incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, which one could argue is beside the point — shared their firsthand accounts with Cosmopolitan. Our nearly yearlong investigation also turned up thousands of pages of internal ADCRR emails, incident reports, and other documents exposing a hastily launched labor experiment for which women were explicitly chosen. Housed in conditions described by many as hideous, the women performed dangerous work at base hourly wages as low as $4.25, working on skeleton crews decimated in part by COVID. At least one suffered an injury that left her permanently disfigured. These are their stories.
A list of books we love by Black authors. All are absolutely worth your time, regardless of the month, some which have appeared on this list in previous years because we are still shouting their praises.
— The Eds.
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Against Heaven by Kemi Alabi
Kemi Alabi’s transcendent debut reimagines the poetic and cultural traditions from which it is born, troubling the waters of some of our country’s central and ordained fictions–those mythic politics of respectability, resilience, and redemption. Instead of turning to a salvation that has been forced upon them, Alabi turns to the body and the earth as sites of paradise defined by the pleasure and possibility of Black, queer fugitivity. Through tender love poems, righteous prayers, and vital provocations, we see the colonizers we carry within ourselves being laid to rest.
Inciting Joy by Ross Gay
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it. In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive.
The Islands by Dionne Irving
The Islands follows the lives of Jamaican women–immigrants or the descendants of immigrants–who have relocated all over the world to escape the ghosts of colonialism on what they call the Island. Set in the United States, Jamaica, and Europe, these international stories examine the lives of an uncertain and unsettled cast of characters. In one story, a woman and her husband impulsively leave San Francisco and move to Florida with wild dreams of American reinvention only to unearth the cracks in their marriage. In another, the only Jamaican mother–who is also a touring comedienne–at a prep school feels pressure to volunteer in the school’s International Day. Meanwhile, in a third story, a travel writer finally connects with the mother who once abandoned her. Set in locations and times ranging from 1950s London to 1960s Panama to modern-day New Jersey, Dionne Irving reveals the intricacies of immigration and assimilation in this debut, establishing a new and unforgettable voice in Caribbean-American literature. Restless, displaced, and disconnected, these characters try to ground themselves–to grow where they find themselves planted–in a world in which the tension between what’s said and unsaid can bend the soul.
Inheritance by Taylor Johnson
Inheritance is a black sensorium, a chapel of color and sound that speaks to spaciousness, surveillance, identity, desire, and transcendence. Influenced by everyday moments of Washington, DC living, the poems live outside of the outside and beyond the language of categorical difference, inviting anyone listening to listen a bit closer. Inheritance is about the self’s struggle with definition and assumption.
The In-Betweens by Davon Loeb
The In-Betweens tells the story of a biracial boy becoming a man, all the while trying to find himself, trying to come to terms with his white family, and trying to find his place in American society. The son of a Black mother with deep family roots in Alabama and a white Jewish man from Long Island, Loeb grows up in a Black family in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey as one of the few nonwhite children in their suburban neighborhood. Despite his many and ongoing efforts to fit in, Loeb acutely feels his difference—he is singled out in class during Black History Month; his hair doesn’t conform to the latest fad; coaches and peers assume he is a talented athlete and dancer; and on the field trip to the Holocaust Museum, he is the Black Jew. But all is not struggle. In lyrical vignettes, Loeb vibrantly depicts the freedom, joys, and wonder of childhood; the awkwardness of teen years, first jobs, first passions.
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
Set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. At its heart is orphaned maid Hirut, who finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, of betrayals and overwhelming rage. What follows is a heartrending and unputdownable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.
Moonrise Over New Jessup by Jamila Minnicks
It’s 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into all-Black New Jessup, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their “side of the woods.” In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion–or worse–from the home they both hold dear. As they marry and raise children together, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town. Based on the history of the many Black towns and settlements established across the country, Jamila Minnicks’s heartfelt and riveting debut is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America.
Please Make Me Pretty, I Don’t Want to Die by Tawanda Mulalu
Set across the four seasons of a year, these fresh and original poems by Tawanda Mulalu combine an inviting confessional voice and offbeat imagery, and offer an appealing mixture of seriousness and humor. The speaker probes romantic and interracial intimacy, the strangeness and difficulty of his experiences as a diasporic Black African in White America, his time working as a teacher’s assistant in a third-grade classroom, and his ambivalent admiration for canonical poets who have influenced him, especially Sylvia Plath. Juxtaposing traditional forms such as sonnets and elegies with less orthodox interjections, such as prose-poem “prayers” and other meditations, the collection presents a poetic world both familiar and jarring-one in which history, the body, and poetry can collide in a single surprising turn of image.
Night Wherever We Go by Tracey Rose Peyton
On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys–as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself–have decided to turn around the farm’s bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired a “stockman” to impregnate them. But the women are determined to protect themselves. Now each of the six faces a choice. Nan, the doctoring woman, has brought a sack of cotton root clippings that can stave off children when chewed daily. If they all take part, the Lucys may give up and send the stockman away. But a pregnancy for any of them will only encourage the Lucys further. And should their plan be discovered, the consequences will be severe. Visceral and arresting, Night Wherever We Go illuminates each woman’s individual trials and desires while painting a subversive portrait of collective defiance. Unflinching in her portrayal of America’s gravest injustices, while also deeply attentive to the transcendence, love, and solidarity of women whose interior lives have been underexplored, Tracey Rose Peyton creates a story of unforgettable power.
Concentrate by Courtney Faye Taylor
In her virtuosic debut, Courtney Faye Taylor explores the under-told history of the murder of Latasha Harlins—a fifteen-year-old Black girl killed by a Korean shop owner, Soon Ja Du, after being falsely accused of shoplifting a bottle of orange juice. Harlins’s murder and the following trial, which resulted in no prison time for Du, were inciting incidents of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, and came to exemplify the long-fraught relationship between Black and Asian American communities in the United States. Through a collage-like approach to collective history and storytelling, Taylor’s poems present a profound look into the insidious points at which violence originates against—and between—women of color.
Composition by Junious Ward
In his debut full length collection, Junious ‘Jay’ Ward dives deep into the formation of self. Composition interrogates the historical perceptions of Blackness and biracial identity as documented through a Southern Lens. Utilizing a variety of poetic forms, Ward showcases to his readers an innovative approach as he unflinchingly explores the way language, generational trauma, loss, and resilience shape us into who we are, the stories we carry, and what we will inevitably pass on.
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A while back we posted about comedian Mary Elizabeth Kelly's spot-on impressions of celebrity "mouth actors" (think Jennifer Coolidge, Emma Stone, Luke Wilson, and Drew Barrymore). But in her latest video (below), she mimics "tooth actors" — those who emote with their teeth — and these toothy souls are grouped into three categories: actors who show their upper teeth, who lead with their bottom teeth, and those who let their whole set of choppers shine. — Read the rest
The number of video streaming services available has increased dramatically over the past few years as everyone, including Apple, Disney and ESPN, decides they want a piece of the pie. The days when Netflix was your only option are long gone now, and while that’s great for all of us itching to discover our next favorite TV show, finding the best streaming service can also be confusing and expensive. You’re now tasked with figuring out which services have the content you want to watch, which fit into your budget, which have the most compelling original series and movies, and more.
We at Engadget wanted to make that process easier for you so we’ve compiled a list of the best video streaming services you can subscribe to right now, with our favorite picks spanning across all content types and budgets. Now, should you go out and subscribe to all of the services listed here? Probably not, unless you’re a true cord cutter aching for content. But these are the services that offer the best bang for your buck, regardless of whether you’re a live sports buff, a classic movie lover or a general streaming enthusiast.
Compared to other streaming services, no one offers more high-quality content at a single price than Netflix. Pick any category you can think of and Netflix probably has something that will fit the bill. Plus, new content is released every week and as a worldwide service, Netflix is consistently adding movies and TV shows from around the globe that can change the viewing experience in ways you may not have considered (Are you sure you’re not into K-Dramas, Finnish detective thrillers or British home improvement shows?).
Netflix is available in almost every country on the planet, and its app or website runs on most of the devices that connect to the internet. Those apps are also some of the most easy-to-use of any service. That doesn’t mean it’s always simple to choose something to watch, but when it comes to swapping profiles or simply picking up where you left off, it doesn’t get better than this. If you’re heading off the grid — or onto a plane — then you can easily download most (but not all) of its content to watch on your iOS or Android device.
If you somehow don’t have Netflix already (or someone to share a login with) then getting a taste of it is a little more complicated than it used to be. Netflix dropped its free trial period in the US a while ago so it’s important to have all your information in order before going in to create an account.
The other thing to keep in mind is that maybe if you’ve let your account lapse, the service that exists now is very different from what you would’ve seen two years ago, or five, or ten. Remaining the dominant player in subscription streaming has required adjustments to stay on top with a changing mix of content and plans to choose from.
In the US, there are four levels of Netflix you can subscribe to. All of them include unlimited access to the same content, work on the same devices and you can cancel or pause them at any time. The Basic with Ads tier costs $7 per month and it's the only option that includes advertisements. The difference between Basic ($10 per month), Standard ($15.50 per month) and Premium ($20 per month) comes down to picture quality and the amount of simultaneous streams allowed.
With both Basic tiers, you can expect 480p, aka DVD quality, and only a single stream available. If you’d like to watch streams in HD and allow for the possibility of up to two streams at once, then you’ll need to step up to the Standard package. If you share your account with multiple people or have a newer 4K display, then you may want the Premium package. You can watch content in the highest quality available going all the way up to 4K/HDR (F1 Drive to Survive, Stranger Things and Altered Carbon are some of my favorites at the level) and have four streams at once on one account.— Richard Lawler, Senior News Editor
If you think of Amazon’s Prime Video package as a Netflix-lite, or even if you’ve only used it once or twice, then you may be underestimating the options available. The ad-free (other than trailers) subscription service is available as part of Amazon Prime, which you can purchase for either $15 per month, or $139 annually. While the subscription started out as a way to get free shipping on more purchases, Amazon has tacked on benefits that extend across books, music, games and even groceries. If you’d prefer to get Prime Video only, it’s available as a standalone for $9 per month.
We’ll focus on the video service, which includes a selection of original and catalog content that is a lot like what Netflix and the others offer. In recent years Amazon Prime has increased its original output with award-winning series like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, as well as highly-regarded genre content like The Boys and The Expanse.
When it comes to where you can watch Amazon Prime Video, the list of options rivals Netflix. Streaming boxes and smart TVs, whether they’re part of Amazon’s Fire TV platform or not, are almost a given. Game consoles? Check. The only major gap in compatibility was Google’s Chromecast, and it closed that hole in the summer of 2019.
Amazon also has a significant amount of content that’s available to watch in 4K and HDR and unlike Netflix it won’t charge you extra for the privilege. The same goes for simultaneous streams — Amazon’s rules say you can have up to two running concurrently. When it comes to downloads, Amazon allows offline viewing on its Fire devices, Android and iOS.
The only downside is that Amazon’s apps aren’t quite on par with Netflix in terms of usability. While all the features are there, simple things like reading an episode summary, enabling closed-captions or jumping out of one show and into another are frequently more frustrating on Amazon than on other platforms. The company also frequently insists on bringing its Fire TV-style interface to other platforms instead of using their native controls. That can make it harder to use, although on platforms where it hews to the built-in controls, like Roku, can be easier to use.
One other thing to think about is that Amazon’s video apps link to its on-demand store, and include access to Channels. For cord-cutters who just want a consistent experience across different devices, that means you can easily buy or rent content that isn’t part of the subscription. Amazon Channels lets you manage subscriptions to Britbox, Showtime, Paramount+ and others. — R.L.
In 2020, HBO decided to take the fight to its streaming competitors with HBO Max. It supplanted the existing HBO channels, as well as streaming via HBO Go or HBO Now by refocusing on original content and rebuilding the service for the modern era. HBO Max has the advantage of linking to one of the deepest (and best) content libraries available, drawing from the premium cable channel’s archives, the Warner Bros. vault, Studio Ghibli, Looney Tunes, Sesame Street and Turner Classic Movies.
If you pay for HBO from one of the major TV providers, then congratulations — you probably already have access to the full HBO Max experience. Just activate your account and start streaming. Otherwise, you can subscribe directly over the internet. HBO Max has a free 7-day trial, and costs $15 per month (or $150 a year) for the no-ads tier.
The company just came out with an ad-supported tier, which costs $10 per month or $100 per year. Along with ads, you won't be able to download content for offline viewing. Currently, HBO Max only offers 4K HDR streaming for certain content, and only those with the ad-free plan can access it. It can support up to three streams simultaneously, and offers individual profiles.
Since launch, HBO Max has come to more TV platforms and it's now available on Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, Samsung and others. You can also stream it via a browser, Sony and Microsoft’s game consoles or with mobile apps on Android and iOS. It also includes support for AirPlay and Google’s Cast feature, which help it work with more smart TVs than just the ones listed here.
HBO Max content includes premium stuff that Warner yanked back from Netflix and others, like full series runs of Friends and The Fresh Prince, or DC Universe-related TV series and movies. The HBO library speaks for itself, with Game of Thrones, The Wire and older stuff like Band of Brothers, Flight of the Conchords or Entourage. It’s also investing in all-new content for HBO Max, like its Game of Thrones spin-off, House of the Dragon and a series based on the Last of Us video game.
We should mention, however, that HBO Max has recently canceled several shows ahead of the Discovery+ merger as a cost-cutting move. It is deprioritizing kid and family content, leading to the removal of Sesame Street spin-offs and a handful of Cartoon Network titles. Movies like Batgirl and Scoob!: Holiday Haunt has also been axed. Despite these changes, HBO Max still has one of the best content libraries of any TV streaming service and is worthy of consideration. — R.L. and Nicole Lee, Commerce Writer
Hulu started out as a bit of a curiosity — a joint venture by NBC, News Corp and a private equity firm to compete with Netflix by offering new episodes of TV shows. Then, after Disney joined up in 2009, bringing along its content from ABC and the Disney Channel, Hulu became a streaming network worth paying attention to. Today, Hulu's focus is still on recent TV episodes, but it also has a strong library of original series and films (like The Handmaid's Tale and Only Murders in the Building), as well as an archive of older TV and movies that often puts Netflix to shame.
Now that Disney owns a majority controlling stake in Hulu, following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, the service is less of a collaboration between media giants. (Comcast still offers NBCUniversal content, but it can choose to have Disney buy out its shares as early as 2024.) Instead, it's yet another feather in Disney's increasingly important digital empire, alongside Disney+ and ESPN+. That may not be a great thing for the competitiveness of streaming services in general, but for subscribers it means they can look forward to even more quality content, like all of the FX shows that hit Hulu earlier this year.
Hulu subscriptions start at $7 a month (or $70 a year) with ads. You can also bump up to the ad-free plan for $13 a month (worth it for true TV addicts). The company's Live TV offering is considerably more expensive, starting at $70 a month with ads and $76 a month ad-free, but you do get Disney+ and ESPN+ services bundled in. Hulu allows two of your devices to stream at the same time, and you can also download some content for offline viewing. Hulu Live TV subscribers can also pay $10 a month for unlimited streaming at home (and for up to three remote mobile devices).
Given that it's one of the longest-running streaming services out there, you can find Hulu apps everywhere, from TVs to set-top boxes. The company has been slow to adopt newer home theater technology, though — we're still waiting for surround sound on Apple TV and many other devices, and there's no HDR at all. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor
Disney+came out swinging, leveraging all of the company's popular brands, like Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel. It's your one-stop-shop for everything Disney, making it catnip for kids, parents, animation fans and anyone looking for some classic films from the likes of 20th Century Pictures. And unlike Hulu, which Disney also owns, there aren't any R-rated movies or shows that curious kiddos can come across.
Given the company's new focus on streaming, Disney+ has quickly become a must-have for families. And at $8 a month (or $80 a year), it's a lot cheaper than wrangling the kids for a night out at the movies (or even buying one of the Disney's over-priced Blu-rays). You can also get it bundled with ESPN+ and Hulu for $14 a month. Some Verizon FiOS and mobile customers can also get Disney+, Hulu and ESPN for free.
Disney+ supports four simultaneous streams at once, and also lets you download films and shows for offline viewing. (That's particularly helpful when you're stuck in the car with no cell service and a crying toddler. Trust me.) You can access Disney+ on every major streaming device and most TV brands. While the service launched without support for Amazon's Fire TV devices, it's now available there as well. — D.H.
Apple spared no expense with its streaming platform, launching with high profile series like The Morning Show. While they weren’t all hits initially (See you later, get it?), Apple TV+ has since amassed a slew of must-watch programming like Ted Lasso, Severance, and For All Mankind. Clearly, the iPhone maker is taking a different approach than Netflix or Disney, with a focus on quality and big celebrity names, rather than bombarding us with a ton of content. But that strategy seems to have paid off.
For $7 a month, there’s a ton of great shows and movies to dive into. But if you’re a dedicated Apple user, it may be worth moving up to an Apple One plan, which also bundles Apple Arcade, Apple Music, and 50GB of iCloud storage for $15 a month. Step up to $20 monthly, and you can bring in your whole family with up to 200GB of iCloud storage. And for $30 a month, Apple throws in News+ and Fitness+. – D.H.
YouTube TV is a great option for cord cutters who still want to watch live TV without having to sign up for a contract. It carries over 85 different channels, so it’s highly likely that you won’t miss your cable TV or satellite subscription at all if you switch over. YouTube TV even carries your regional PBS channels, which is a rarity on most live TV streaming services.
Where YouTube TV really shines is in the live sports department. Not only does it offer sports-carrying channels like CBS, FOX, ESPN, NBC, TBS and TNT, it also offers specific sports coverage networks like the MLB Network, NBA TV and the NFL Network. You can even opt for a Sports Plus package for an additional $11 a month if you want specific sports channels like NFL RedZone, FOX College Sports, GOLTV, FOX Soccer Plus, MAVTV Motorsports Network, TVG and Stadium. Unfortunately, however, YouTube TV recently lost the rights to carry Bally Sports regional networks, which means that you won’t get region-specific channels such as Bally Sports Detroit or Bally Sports Southwest.
One particularly strong selling point for sports fans is that instead of always remembering to record a particular game, you can just choose to “follow” a specific team and the DVR will automatically record all of its games. Plus, if you happen to have jumped into the match late, there’s a “catch up with key plays” feature that lets you watch all the highlights up until that point so that you’re up to speed.
YouTube TV is on the expensive side at $65 a month, which might not be much more than your basic cable package. If you want to add 4K viewing (which is currently only available through certain sporting events) plus unlimited streaming, you’d have to cough up an additional $20 a month.
It currently offers one of the best cloud DVRs available. YouTube TV’s DVR has unlimited storage plus you have up to nine months to watch your recorded content before they expire. There are also no DVR up-charges here; you can rewind or fast forward through the recorded content as you please by default. We should note, however, that the on-demand content on YouTube TV does have ads which you can’t fast-forward through.
There’s also a plethora of premium channels that you can add for as low as $3 per month, such as Showtime ($11 a month), HBO Max ($15 a month), Starz ($9 a month), Cinemax ($10 a month) and EPIX ($6 a month). You can also subscribe to an Entertainment Plus bundle that includes HBO Max, Showtime and Starz for $30 a month. Other niche add-ons include CuriosityStream ($3 a month), AMC Premiere ($5 a month), Shudder ($6 a month), Sundance Now ($7 a month), Urban Movie Channel ($5 a month), and Acorn TV ($6 a month). — N.L.
Aside from on-demand and original content, Hulu also offers a Live TV add-on that lets you stream over 80 channels without a cable or satellite subscription. It’ll cost $70 a month, but that includes access to both Disney+ and ESPN+. Pay about $6 more and you’ll also be able to watch on-demand shows without any ads, which can’t be said with YouTube TV. As of April 2022, Hulu’s Live TV option also has unlimited DVR for up to nine months. That includes on-demand playback and fast-forwarding capabilities.
Hulu allows two simultaneous streams per account, but you can pay $15 more if you want unlimited screens (and up to three remote mobile devices). If you want, you can also add premium add-ons to your Hulu plan, such as HBO Max, Cinemax, Showtime, or Starz.
Hulu’s Live TV streaming service is a great option for sports fans, as it has access to channels like CBS, FOX, ESPN, NBC, TBS, TNT and more, all of which should deliver content for fans of most major sports like football, basketball and baseball. However, Hulu plus Live TV does not carry the NBA TV or the MLB Network, so you could miss out on additional sports coverage. — N.L.
Without a doubt, ESPN’s standalone service is the best deal in sports streaming. No one can compete with the network when it comes to the sheer volume of content. The platform hosts thousands of live college sporting events, plus MLB, MLS, NHL, NBA G League games and more. There’s plenty of pro tennis as well, and ESPN+ is an insane value for soccer fans.
On top of select MLS matches, ESPN+ is the US home of the Bundesliga (Germany) and the EFL cup (Carabao Cup). It’s also the spot for the UEFA Nations League international competition in Europe.
ESPN offers a slate of original shows and the full catalog of its 30 For 30 series on the service. And lastly, ESPN+ is the home of UFC. Fight Nights, Dana White’s Contender Series and other shows stream weekly or monthly, plus the app is how you access PPV events.
That’s a truckload of sports for $10 a month. If you splurge for the Disney bundle with Disney+ and Hulu (ad-supported), you can get all three for $14 per month. — Billy Steele, Senior News Editor
Formerly CBS All Access, Paramount+ may get the most attention for originals like Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard and The Twilight Zone, but it’s becoming a sports destination as well. The app began streaming NWSL soccer matches last summer when the league returned to the pitch. CBS also announced that All Access would be the live streaming home of the US women’s league. Unfortunately, you can’t watch every match there, but it’s a start.
Soon after, CBS added UEFA Champions League and Europa League soccer to its sports slate. The Champions League is the biggest competition in club soccer, pitting teams from various countries around the continent against each other to see who’s the best. Europa League does the same, but with less glory. Paramount+ is now the home of Series A soccer (Italy) and will broadcast CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers, which the US Men’s National Team will participate in.
At $5 a month with limited commercials, or $10 a month ad-free, Paramount+ isn’t a must have sports destination just yet. You can stream NFL and other games that air on your local CBS station inside the app, but the network is still filling out a well-rounded slate. For now, it’s more of a necessity for soccer fans than anything else. — B.S.
NBC made it clear before Peacock’s debut that Premier League soccer would be available on the standalone service. What we didn’t expect was that the network would put so many games there, basically forcing anyone who’s more than a casual fan to subscribe. This is partially due to PL scheduling. In the US, that means you need the $5/month service and access to NBC Sports network (through cable TV or live TV streaming) to follow comprehensively.
NBCUniversal had a similar structure in the past where one game per time slot was broadcast on NBC Sports and NBC Sports Gold was used as the overflow. Gold was also the home to cycling, Olympic sports and more. Now the Premier League is being used to push the new service Peacock, and with the current scheduling format, even more games are relegated to streaming only. Thankfully, Peacock does offer match replays, so there’s some added value there if you can’t be parked in front of your TV all day on Saturday and Sunday. Games currently run from about 7:30AM ET to around 5PM ET (matches usually at 7:30AM, 10AM, 12:30PM and one around 2:30 or 3:00PM).
Peacock also shows coverage of US Open tennis, NFL Wild Card games and will host “select events” from upcoming Olympics in Tokyo and Beijing. There’s also a smattering of sports talk shows available for free with paid users getting on-demand replays of Triple Crown horse racing and more. — B.S.
While it's easy to find modern films on Netflix and other streaming services these days, classic cinema is often tougher to find. FilmStruck tried to solve that problem, but it couldn't find a large enough audience to survive. Now there's the Criterion Channel, which delivers a rotating array of its cinephile-approved library for $11 a month or $100 a year. (Where else can you stream something like the incredible ramen noodle Western Tampopo?)
It's a service that's built for movie lovers: It's chock full of commentary tracks, conversations with writers and directors, and some of the company's renowned special features. The Criterion Channel also does a far better job at curating viewing options than other services. Its double features, for instance, pair together thematically similar films, like the classic noir entries Phantom Lady and Variety. What’s more, its editors make it easy to find all of the available films from a single director, for all of you auteur theory connoisseurs.
Sure, it costs a bit more than Hulu and Disney+, but The Criterion Channel gives you access to a library that's far more rewarding than the latest streaming TV show. You can watch on up to three devices at once, and there's also offline viewing available for iOS and Android devices. It also supports major streaming devices from Apple, Amazon and Roku, but as far as TV's go, it's only on Samsung's Tizen-powered sets. Unfortunately, The Criterion Channel is only available in the US and Canada, due to licensing restrictions. — D.H.
Sometimes, a good horror movie is the only way to deal with the constant anxiety of a potential climate apocalypse and the seeming downfall of modern society. If that describes your personality, it's worth taking a look at Shudder, AMC Network's streaming service dedicated to everything spooky. You'll find plenty of horror classics, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but Shudder has also gotten into the original content game with unique films like Host, which takes place entirely over a Zoom call.
If you're a bit squeamish, Shudder probably won't sell you much on horror. But for fans of the genre, it's a smorgasbord of content to dive into. You can try it out free for seven days, and afterwards it's $6 per month (or $57 annually). Shudder only supports viewing one stream at a time, and there's no support for offline viewing yet. You can find Shudder on major streaming device platforms, but since it's so niche, don't expect to find it on smart TVs anytime soon. — D.H.
Woman Choosing Movie For Streaming On Tablet Computer
Caucasian woman lying down on sofa in living room at home searching for film or TV series to watch for leisure on her tablet.
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