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Economic Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Economic Times
Make superheroes great again: Superman can fly, but still can't escape the algorithm
In 1938, Superman leapt onto the pages of Action Comics #1 in red trunks and righteous fury. He stopped locomotives, lifted green Buicks over his head - and he stood for something. Now, in 2025, Superman is back in cinemas next month in James Gunn's eponymous movie with a new actor (David Corenswet).But this time around, Superman's biggest villain isn't Lex Luthor, or General Zod. It's the feed. The Man of Steel's up against TikTok thirst traps, AI-generated Keanu Reeves romcoms, and 11-sec clips of pandas falling off slides. Somewhere in between doomscrolling and watching a makeup tutorial that turns into a philosophy lecture, a trailer for the new Superman movie dropped this week. We nod. We move on. Superheroes aren't just competing for attention. They're auditioning for it. Superheroes are now metadata. The industry doesn't ask: what does this hero mean right now? It asks: how many quadrants can we hit? Is there synergy with the gaming division? Will this trend on social media?And that's how we end up with content that's been audience-tested within an inch of its soul. Every scene exists so it can be screen-grabbed. Every emotion is framed with just enough room for a reaction video. Look, everyone likes a surprise. A good plot twist, a clever reference, even a cheeky cameo. But Easter eggs used to be exactly that - eggs. Now they're the whole no longer enough to tell a story. You have to tease 10 others. A throwaway line about 'the multiverse collapsing' gets picked apart in 300 Reddit threads. Half the audience is watching the movie. The other half is watching for clues. Yes, fans love decoding things. But when every film is a trailer for another film, it stops being storytelling and starts being golden age of superhero films wasn't 'golden' because they were bigger. It was because they were grounded. Arguably, most of them were all franchise films. Batman was already on his 6th outing, Iron Man kicked off a whole cinematic universe. And Spider-Man had a cereal deal before the trailer dropped. But, back then, the films still knew how to stay Dark Knight wasn't juggling timelines. Iron Man was just trying not to get blown up in a cave. Even Spider-Man 2 (yes, the Tobey Maguire one) spent a good 20 mins exploring the emotional fallout of missing rent. Now we get shared universes, cross-promotional world-building, and plotlines with all the narrative weight of a dry PowerPoint transition. The foundation has cracked. It's all scaffolding you strip away the X-ray vision and the flying, Superman is a guy trying to figure out how to do the right thing in a complicated world. He's an alien who's spent his entire life trying to be more human. That's not just good material - it's timeless. The problem is, we've stopped treating it like it reboot wants to 'modernise' Superman. Update the costume. Grayscale the colour palette. Make him question everything. Give him a brooding backstory, and a long stare into the rain. We don't need more reinvention. We need recollection. Superman doesn't need to be made edgier. He needs to be made worth asking: why does a lo-fi 15-sec video of someone making butter chicken from scratch get more love than a $200 mn superhero film? Because one feels like it means something. The other feels like it means something else is coming in was a time when superheroes weren't trying to be viral. They weren't teasing spinoffs. They weren't selling NFTs. They were about values, sure. But they were also weird. They were unpredictable. They were occasionally absurd. A kid bitten by a radioactive spider? A man with a magic hammer? A guy who literally talks to fish? And, yet, it the stories were honest. Not perfect, not polished, not algorithm-proof. Just this: the new Superman film ends. And that's it. No setup for Superman: Epoch. No holographic tease of Brainiac. No slow pan to a glowing green rock in a government bunker. Just the story. Fully told. Curtains down. People might walk out of the theatre... satisfied. When was the last time that happened?Superheroes won't be great again because of better CGI, or cleverer scripts, or tighter multiverse logic. They'll be great again when we stop trying to turn them into streaming architecture. Give us stories. Not strategies. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. Warren Buffett-fan Pabrai is betting big on Edelweiss' Rashesh Shah. Will it pay off? Coal on one hand and green on the other; this company balances both Yet another battle over neem; this time it's a startup vs. Procter & Gamble Move over tariffs, China wields rare earths in an economic war of a different kind Is Zomato under siege? Quick commerce may be the next telecom 9 stocks from different segments of financial services sector with an upside potential of up to 37% Stock picks of the week: 5 stocks with consistent score improvement and return potential of more than 32% in 1 year Is an oil shock on its way? 14 stocks to watch carefully if the Iran-Israel conflict leads to a sustained rise in crude oil prices
Scottish Sun
11-05-2025
- Automotive
- Scottish Sun
I stumbled across a luxury car graveyard where Cadillacs & Chevys rot after owner abandoned hundreds of vintage vehicles
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) TAKING a spin through his home state, photographer Dax Ward's eyes widened as he spotted a sprawling estate of abandoned cars. But on closer inspection, he was stunned to realise the 20-acre site was packed with rotting classic cars as well as custom boats, vans and trucks. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 14 Dax Ward came across the car graveyard while driving through Arkansas Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Vintage cars have sat rotting for years Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Pictures show once indulgent vehicles weathered by the elements Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 The site is now a magnet for opportunistic thieves Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Boats and other vehicles have also been left abandoned Credit: Dax ward Photography Delving into its history of how so many vintage vehicles ended up in a graveyard on a hillside in Arkansas, Dax discovered the owner had vanished years ago. The site is now a magnet for opportunistic thieves with their sights set on selling parts. Dax said: "The junkyard owner once took great pride in his collection, even having shot a thief in the past and pistol-whipping another to protect his automotive treasure trove. "However, the owner has not lived on the property for some 20 years and rarely visits, having abandoned the location after a messy divorce. "There are many cars still remaining, but a number have been stolen over the years and the ones that remain have been stripped for parts by thieves." Jaw-dropping pictures show once indulgent vehicles weathered by the elements and sat rotting on the sprawling 20-acre ground. Antique cars including Cadillacs, Chevys, Buicks, and VWs have been taken over by rust. Dax said: "The property owner once owned a tow truck company and many of the vehicles were sold to him at very low prices from the customers who he served. "He amassed an enormous collection of valuable antique vehicles over the years, which would now be worth millions of dollars. "The collection is still valuable, but thieves regularly visit and the cars are slowly disappearing, piece by piece or body by body. Inside world-famous abandoned 'UFO village' packed with crumbling spaceship holiday homes "Local law enforcement sometimes catches intruders, but prosecution is often halted as nobody has seen or heard from the owner in years and he cannot be located, even by authorities." Dax visited the location twice, and was shown around by a neighbour who had not heard from the site's owner, a childhood friend, in years. The explorer added: "He gave me a roundup of the history of the property, the owner and automobiles, as well as describing regular incidents of thieves raiding the property. "Watching the beautiful cars, as well as valuable antiques and other rare and expensive items be stolen or picked clean over the years has left him in frustration. "Unfortunately, there is little he can do but watch. He tries to keep watch and notifies police regularly if he sees trespassers, but they often arrive too late to catch the intruders." 14 An abandoned school bus sits among the discarded vehicles Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 The abandoned vehicles sit on a 20-acre site Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 The owner had a tow truck company Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Parts have been stripped from many of the vehicles Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Antique cars including Cadillacs, Chevys, Buicks, and VWs have been taken over by rust Credit: Dax ward Photography The neighbour told Dax how the owner abandoned the site more than 20 years ago after going through a divorce. Dax said: "His ex-wife's custom Cadillac - sent to Italy and then re-imported after customisation - sits parked in the driveway of the uninhabited house, in the same spot that it was parked and left behind two decades ago. "He left derelict the posh house and many vehicles, became addicted to gambling in casinos over the border in Oklahoma and worked up a severe debt. "While exploring and documenting this fascinating location I was simultaneously awestruck by the amount of classic cars, many of them expensive and rare, and saddened by the loss of such a collection, the remnants of which sit and rot." Dax previously visited Taiwan's space-style holiday park that is now nothing more than an explorer's paradise. With its UFO-like buildings the star of the show, the resort's space-age retro splendor continues to slowly fade away. Perched on Taiwan's northern coast in Wanli, the unusual collection of buildings was supposed to act as a holiday park. But what remains is a series of bizarre, decaying structures nestled beside a beach that Dax captured on camera. 14 Dax visited the location twice and was shown around by a neighbour Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Cars have been left to the elements Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 The collection would have been once worth a lot of money Credit: Dax ward Photography
The Irish Sun
11-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Irish Sun
I stumbled across a luxury car graveyard where Cadillacs & Chevys rot after owner abandoned hundreds of vintage vehicles
TAKING a spin through his home state, photographer Dax Ward's eyes widened as he spotted a sprawling estate of abandoned cars. But on closer inspection, he was stunned to realise the 20-acre site was packed with rotting classic cars as well as custom boats, vans and trucks. Advertisement 14 Dax Ward came across the car graveyard while driving through Arkansas Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Vintage cars have sat rotting for years Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Pictures show once indulgent vehicles weathered by the elements Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 The site is now a magnet for opportunistic thieves Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Boats and other vehicles have also been left abandoned Credit: Dax ward Photography Delving into its history of how so many vintage vehicles ended up in a graveyard on a hillside in The site is now a magnet for opportunistic thieves with their sights set on selling parts. Dax said: "The junkyard owner once took great pride in his collection, even having shot a thief in the past and pistol-whipping another to protect his automotive treasure trove. "However, the owner has not lived on the property for some 20 years and rarely visits, having abandoned the location after a messy divorce. Advertisement More abandoned sites "There are many cars still remaining, but a number have been stolen over the years and the ones that remain have been stripped for parts by thieves." Jaw-dropping pictures show once indulgent vehicles weathered by the elements and sat rotting on the sprawling 20-acre ground. Antique cars including Cadillacs, Chevys, Buicks, and VWs have been taken over by rust. Dax said: "The property owner once owned a tow truck company and many of the vehicles were sold to him at very low prices from the customers who he served. Advertisement Most read in Motors Latest "He amassed an enormous collection of valuable antique vehicles over the years, which would now be worth millions of dollars. "The collection is still valuable, but thieves regularly visit and the cars are slowly disappearing, piece by piece or body by body. Inside world-famous abandoned 'UFO village' packed with crumbling spaceship holiday homes "Local law enforcement sometimes catches intruders, but prosecution is often halted as nobody has seen or heard from the owner in years and he cannot be located, even by authorities." Dax visited the location twice, and was shown around by a neighbour who had not heard from the site's owner, a childhood friend, in years. Advertisement The explorer added: "He gave me a roundup of the history of the property, the owner and automobiles, as well as describing regular incidents of thieves raiding the property. "Watching the beautiful cars, as well as valuable antiques and other rare and expensive items be stolen or picked clean over the years has left him in frustration. "Unfortunately, there is little he can do but watch. He tries to keep watch and notifies police regularly if he sees trespassers, but they often arrive too late to catch the intruders." 14 An abandoned school bus sits among the discarded vehicles Credit: Dax ward Photography Advertisement 14 The abandoned vehicles sit on a 20-acre site Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 The owner had a tow truck company Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Parts have been stripped from many of the vehicles Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Antique cars including Cadillacs, Chevys, Buicks, and VWs have been taken over by rust Credit: Dax ward Photography Advertisement The neighbour told Dax how the owner abandoned the site more than 20 years ago after going through a divorce. Dax said: "His ex-wife's custom Cadillac - sent to Italy and then re-imported after customisation - sits parked in the driveway of the uninhabited house, in the same spot that it was parked and left behind two decades ago. "He left derelict the posh house and many vehicles, became addicted to gambling in casinos over the border in Oklahoma and worked up a severe debt. "While exploring and documenting this fascinating location I was simultaneously awestruck by the amount of classic cars, many of them expensive and rare, and saddened by the loss of such a collection, the remnants of which sit and rot." Advertisement Dax previously visited Taiwan's With its UFO-like buildings the star of the show, the resort's space-age retro splendor continues to slowly fade away. Perched on But what remains is a series of bizarre, decaying structures nestled beside a beach that Dax captured on camera. Advertisement 14 Dax visited the location twice and was shown around by a neighbour Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Cars have been left to the elements Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 The collection would have been once worth a lot of money Credit: Dax ward Photography 14 Custom trucks have also been left untouched Credit: Dax ward Photography Advertisement
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Declining Detroit Three competitiveness, not free trade, to blame for plant closings, job losses
WILMINGTON, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 03: New Nissan cars are driven onto a rail car to be transported from an automobile processing terminal located at the Port of Los Angeles on April 3, 2024 in Wilmington, California. The Japanese automotive maker is being impacted by President Trump's new 25 percent imported automobile tariffs. (Photo by) I'm old enough to remember when hundreds of thousands of Buicks, Mercurys, Oldsmobiles, Plymouths and Pontiacs rolled off the assembly lines every year in Flint, Dearborn, Lansing, Detroit and Pontiac, the respective hometowns of these storied brands. The problem is that too many other people, including influential policymakers, also wistfully recall those days and somehow believe they can be resurrected. Mercury, Oldsmobile, Plymouth and Pontiac ignobly landed in the junkyard of automotive history decades ago. There hasn't been a Buick built in Flint, the brand's former hometown and birthplace of General Motors, since 1999. Buick still exists but sells only a small fraction of the approximate 800,000 U.S.-produced vehicles it shipped to dealers annually in the late 1970s and early 1980s. President Donald Trump says he's determined to restore U.S. auto manufacturing through stiff tariffs that will force domestic and foreign automakers to build all the cars and trucks they sell to American consumers here. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX While he has repeatedly flip-flopped on tariffs for other goods, such as smart phones, Trump is holding steady (at least as I'm writing this sentence) on 25% tariffs for foreign-built autos and parts. Those include many vehicles built outside the U.S. by Detroit automakers. (Whoops. The president said he's considering pausing tariffs to give the industry more time to build plants in the U.S.) 'Foreign automobile industries, bolstered by unfair subsidies and aggressive industrial policies, have expanded, while U.S. production has stagnated,' Trump said on March 26 in announcing his own aggressive industrial policy. Trump sees a hermetically sealed U.S. auto industry as the centerpiece of his plan to create a 'golden age of America.' And his hyper-loyal lieutenants charged with implementing the tariffs couldn't be more delusional in their support. '(W)e want the tires made in Akron. We want the transmissions made in Indianapolis. We want the engines made in Flint and Saginaw. And we want the cars manufactured here,' said Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro. Trump puts the blame on the decline of the U.S. auto industry squarely on free trade. Trade deficits with other countries have led to 'the hollowing out of our manufacturing base,' distorted supply chains and threatened national security, he said. His common refrain is countries that run a trade surplus with the U.S. are 'ripping us off.' (Side note: popular Chinese-built Buicks saved the brand from extinction, although Buick and other non-Chinese automakers are struggling there as of late.) Some economists agree that globalism has destroyed millions of blue-collar factory jobs in the U.S. Prominent among them is Susan Houseman, director of research at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo. Houseman has been widely noted for her eye-opening finding that liberalized trade with China in 2001 was the root cause of the staggering loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Other economists insist the decline in manufacturing employment has been a result of increased productivity made possible by the proliferation of factory robots. 'What you see is that the real story in the auto sector is automation,' Jason Miller, a Michigan State University business professor, told CNN Business. Surprisingly, there are more automotive assembly jobs in the U.S. then there were in 1994, the year the much-maligned North American Free Trade Act took effect, according to Labor Department data cited by CNN. (There are about 183,000 fewer auto parts jobs than at the start of NAFTA.) It's a different story in Michigan because of something we don't like to talk much about—the precipitous competitiveness decline of the Detroit Three automakers. Except for monster pickup trucks and gargantuan SUVs, American consumers generally prefer Asian and European brands not built in Michigan. That's tough to say for someone like me, who grew up in a mostly GM family. Ford, GM and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) sold just 5.4 million cars and light trucks in the U.S. last year, down nearly 60% from the more than 12 million cars they sold in 1999, according to a University of Michigan economic forecast. Overall, 15.8 million cars and trucks were sold last year in the U.S., dominated by foreign brands. Forecasting sales this year is a nightmare because of Trump's 25%, confusing tariffs on foreign-built cars and parts. But higher prices resulting from the tariffs could cuts sales by 700,000 vehicles this year, according to auto analytics firm Cox Automotive. In February, before the auto tariffs were enacted, U-M economists predicted the Detroit Three's U.S. market share would fall to a record-low 32.7% by 2026 following decades of declining sales. Less market share means less need for assembly plants, parts and workers. It shouldn't be surprising then that auto manufacturing employment in Michigan has plunged from its most recent high of 91,000 in 2000 to about 49,000 in February. They key to reversing that trend is for the Detroit Three to build more vehicles that appeal to American buyers lost to Honda, Hyundai and Toyota. Tariffs won't save them.
The Independent
04-04-2025
- Business
- The Independent
‘Hulk' Trump has smashed through the global economy and wiped out trillions overnight
Like something out of a The Incredible Hulk movie (except orange, not green), Donald Trump has burst out of his metaphorical shirt, let out an almighty roar, unleashed his strength and has set about smashing up the world trade system. This week has witnessed a range of economic destruction on a scale unmatched by anything since the Second World War: almost comically random tariff schedules, deranged reasoning – are they a mere tactic or a permanent fixture? – and a certain satisfaction in punishing 'friend and foe' alike. No one – not even the countries that have a trade deficit with America – were spared. Cowering in a corner we find the world's economists, consumers, great companies and investors, all terrified by what The Incredible Tariffing Hulk of Washington might do next. The World Trade Organisation ran from the scene long since. Something like $3 trillion of value has been wiped off the world stock markets, and even that may only be the start. The sheer speed and scale of what Trump is doing – if he's serious and keeps smashing through the guardrails – threatens to tip the world into recession, and America with it. The markets, distressed as they are, have not yet fallen into a full-on crash. But only because they assume that such erratic policy-making will in due course be corrected and the tariffing watered down. If not, then the valuations attached to the world's largest corporations will have to fall, for the simple reason that they can no longer make things in the most efficient manner, and thus generate the returns they need to justify anyone buying their shares. There will be a tsunami of profit warnings in the months ahead. The Incredible Trump has not only upended the post-war rules-based international trading system, but the very concept of globalisation and the operations of every manufacturing, transportation, logistics and resources company on earth. Not far behind them will be the banks and investment houses that finance and are invested in them. And when the rest of us next see a valuation of our pension pots we will see the immediate and colossal harm he's done. This is where it hits home. It's at times like these that the markets panic. It could be, as reported, that investors can't quite believe what is happening, and that any American president could abandon free market-based economics for eighteenth-century mercantilism, and set about making America look like the 1960s again. But what if he means it? What if he doesn't care about markets and the world economy in his deluded zero-sum world? What if he ramps the tariffs up again if counties retaliate? What if it escalates? Would the Tariff Hulk care? He fundamentally thinks trade is bad and the US is better off aiming for self-sufficiency. It's the one thing he thinks he knows. It is a dangerous belief. Trump has an atavistic picture of The American Dream that he grew up in, and it's of sweaty guys knocking out Buicks in Detroit. It's all about factories, workshops, textile mills, the New York rag trade, coal mines and nodding donkey oil wells, like a montage of Norman Rockwell paintings. Those are the low-paid, exhausting, dangerous jobs that Trump wants to take back from China, Vietnam and Cambodia. He has zero interest in services – despite his tech bro friends – and seems to imagine that America is better off sending its young people to make Maga hats ragwort than learn how to code AI. It's nuts. At the end of the TV episodes of The Incredible Hulk, the monster's anger would subside, his civilised side would return and he'd stroll back to something like normalcy – albeit always living with the jeopardy of that destructive persona erupting again. It's where we are with Trump now. Hoping he relents. Uncertain times.
