Special one-night-only screenings on April 11. In additional theaters and on digital April 21. http://littlericharddocumentary.com/ Produced by Bungalow Media + Entertainment for CNN Films and HBO Max, in association with Rolling Stone Films, director Lisa Cortés’ Sundance opening night documentary LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock …
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Popular CulturePost + Comments (175)
The celebration of maximalist excess that will be the 2026 World Cup just got a little bit bigger. Having already ballooned the world’s biggest soccer tournament to 48 teams, FIFA has now withdrawn its proposed plan to have three-team groups in favor of keeping the four-team groups that the World Cup has historically had. This means that, when the dust clears in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, there will have been 104 games played to crown a champion. For reference, the 2022 World Cup—and every other World Cup with 32 teams, dating back to 1998—had a pitiful-by-comparison 64 matches…
By moving back to four-team groups, FIFA is resolving the most pressing issues of the 2026 World Cup, but it is opening up more problems that come with the gargantuan nature of a 48-team World Cup. The first is one of time: How do you fit in 104 games into a month, as every World Cup has usually fallen into that time frame? The answer appears to be that you don’t: FIFA is currently planning to stretch the tournament out nine more days, while shortening the pre-tournament training window from 23 days to 16. In theory, this should keep the tournament at around the same amount of time for players, albeit with more of a crunch from the end of the club soccer season…
In all, though, this feels like a net positive of a change for a World Cup that is already such a big undertaking and a big shift from the traditions of the tournament. Throwing in more games is, on paper, a boon for fans, especially those from countries who will likely not scrape through to the knockout rounds. Speaking as a Venezuelan, I would have been disappointed if my country had made it to the World Cup for the first time ever, only to go home after just two games. As for the strain that a longer World Cup will put on the club soccer seasons, both the preceding one and the one that follows, well … FIFA already made it clear that it doesn’t care about that with the mid-season 2022 World Cup, so this change falls in line with the organization’s current philosophy: more money for them, more problems for everyone else.
Popular for me, at least:
This is a prototype of the spacesuit that astronauts plan to wear on @NASA’s #Artemis III mission to the moon, scheduled for 2025 https://t.co/BImhtxDffT pic.twitter.com/cudhrsEyDo
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 16, 2023
it's super cool that they're focusing both on fitting significantly more body types *and* significantly improving range of motion.
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) March 16, 2023
I enjoy that they made the display article black because it looked cool–but the ones worn on the moon will be white. also little to no rearward visiblity in case of an alien attack, smh pic.twitter.com/qmmUg5oQ8u
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) March 16, 2023
(Special reference to the 1:30 mark)