Westworld is HBO’s latest attempt at a blockbuster hit. Lesley Goldberg walked us through some of the economics of the show:

• The entire first season is thought to have a budget of $100 million, with $25 million being blown on the first episode alone – on par with Game of Thrones’s Battle of the Bastards.
• Speaking of Game of Thrones – with the end of the headliner show in sight, HBO needs a new hit to keep itself in the airwaves.
• Part of the reason for the high cost is that the TV show is a remake of a movie – the rights of which are owned by Warner Bros. which negotiated a massive licensing fee in return for allowing HBO to make the show.
• The show features some mega-stars like Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris; both of whom are thought to earn $175,000 an episode.

Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.

Zaria Gorvett examined the resiliency of buildings today:

• Egypt’s pyramids have survived earthquakes, erosion, and the rise and fall of civilizations for over 4,000 years.
• The pyramids’ longevity is, in part, due to the builders not always being sure about what they were doing. And so they over-engineered everything, adding extra support structures just in case.
• The pyramids also didn’t have to be all that…practical. They were tombs, after all. And so they were essentially giant rock mountains, and it’s not like we expect our local neighbourhood hill to erode away or collapse in an earthquake.
• And the pyramids were built in a dry, arid desert. Water is tough for structures – it can dissolve acids that eat away at foundations, and if it freezes in crevices, it can create and expand fissures.
• In the modern era, older skyscrapers are probably more resilient than their newer brethren. When the Empire State Building was being built, everything was calculated by hand, and so builders put in extra just in case.
• In fact, even though the Empire State Building is only half the height of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, it weights two thirds as much.
• But credit where credit is due – today’s architects and builders put an incredible amount of thought into making sure buildings are safe. With the right maintenance they probably can outlast the pyramids, despite being orders of magnitudes larger.

Read more ponderings from industry experts at the BBC.

Ruth Graham writes that a vehicle for society to get an insight into stars’ authentic lives has slowly turned inauthentic:

• In April 2002 Us Weekly launched a series called “Stars – They’re Just Like Us” which showcased photos of celebrities engaged in mundane tasks like taking out the trash.
• Before the series, the paparazzi would either make money from red carpet photos, or follow celebrities around and hope to catch them having an affair. Suddenly, the photos they took of stars getting a latte or a parking ticket in their sweatpants, were worth something.
• In retrospect it was a continuation of the nascent reality TV trend that was gaining momentum at the time…and has now grown so big that it’s affecting American Presidential elections.
• But just as reality TV has become somewhat less authentic over the years, so has the “Just Like Us” feature. Now celebrities know that their every move will be documented, and they make sure they dress and act accordingly.
• In fact, celebrities will sometimes even call up the paparazzi and let them know that they’ll be visiting a farmer’s market, or dining at a particular table framed by the horizon at sunset – to help build their glamour, brand, and keep them in the news.
• But the paparazzi are being disrupted. Why hope that the paparazzi will get the right angles, when you can take a shot of yourself artfully folding laundry…and post it on social media for your fans to obsess over.
• It’s unclear now – perhaps even to the actors themselves – when actors are being themselves, or are acting at being some idealized version of themselves.

Read more at Slate.

Jisung Park did a remarkable study on the impact that heat has on academic performance:

• Data indicates that if on the day of an exam, temperatures are as high as 32 degrees Celsius, then students will score 4.5% less on their exams.
• Having a school year with five more hot days than normal, causes students in that classroom to lose $37,000 in lifetime earnings.
• All of this is particularly concerning since in cities such as New York, fewer than 62% of classrooms have air conditioning.

Read the full Harvard summary here.

Via: Marginal Revolution

There was an American Presidential debate yesterday! Centives is here to bring you coverage of the important issues:

• The logisticians behind the first Presidential debate required journalists to pay $200 if they wanted to use the Wi-Fi.
• Worse; they explicitly banned the use of personal hot spots created through cell phones and other devices. A $2,000 hot-spot scanner was used to find and kick out journalists breaking the rules.
• There are still workarounds. A hard wire or a Bluetooth tether can be used to create a Wi-Fi hot-spot that’s undetectable.
• And it’s a good thing that the workarounds existed. Before the debate started the $200 Wi-Fi network went down.

Read more about the (il)legality of the practice and other details at ArsTechnica.

The yanks have it easy writes Rebecca Schuman:

• British actors can do great American accents (both Christian Bale and Henry Cavill – the quintessential American heroes, Batman and Superman – are actually British) but the opposite isn’t quite true.
• This is in part because if aspiring British actors want to make it big; they have to be able to appeal to Hollywood and the massive American market.
• The Brits have more of a tradition of actors being formally trained in the art of theater – including dialects. Americans often pick it up as they go along.
• Great Britain with all of its history also has more diversity in accents than America, despite the size of the United States. The British thus learn to adapt early on to different speaking styles.

Read the full article on Slate.

Star Wars, Batman, and James Bond all have iconic movie themes that most can hum on command. But can you remember Iron Man’s theme song? Every Frame a Painting examined why Marvel’s music is so forgettable:

• In an earlier age of cinema there were moments where there was nothing but on-screen visuals accompanied by music – such as in the Star Wars opening crawl. Marvel’s movies though rush to have someone talking, leaving little time for a film’s score to breathe.
• Movies are typically scored after they are shot. In the process of editing, the film director’s will use scores from other movies as a stand in for what they want their score to sound like. Sometimes they’ll become so attached to the old score that they’ll ask their film’s composer to come up with something similar. Some remarkable examples can be heard here.
• There’s been a general cultural shift in movies where filmmakers want music to fade in the background and be unnoticeable, rather than be a main component of it.
• Composers themselves have been less interested in writing individual memorable motifs for each of the characters, opting instead for more thematic music.

Via: Kotaku

Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield wrote about electric car charging in Japan:

• At last count Japan had 40,000 electric car charging stations (to the US’s 900) and 34,000 petrol pumps.
• There’s a catch though. The count of electric car chargers includes those in people’s homes.
• While you’d think that those don’t count because they’re not accessible to the general public, there are actually various services that allow individuals to rent out their charging stations.
• Also you won’t need as many electric chargers in a country because one of the advantages of electric cars is that you can have a personal refueling station at home.
• The number of electric cars on the road in Japan is still small, but is growing fast.

Read more here.

Source: Transport Evolved

Roheeni Saxena wrote that the thing that makes teens difficult to deal with can be used against them:

• In an experiment teens were shown how unhealthy foods can be misleadingly marketed by companies.  They were then told that eating healthy is an act of rebellion and “sticking it to the man”.
• The strategy worked. Teens were more likely to pick carrots over cookies after the training.
• Health campaigns typically focus on the long term well being effects of unhealthy eating, but this experiment indicated that alternative strategies with more immediate rewards should be considered.

Read more here.

Source: ArsTechnica