Offtopic: Andor series is the best Star Wars.
My best guess for why they do this is that it fills time with fewer set-ups and sets, saving production costs. I can't figure out another angle for how this could be saving money per minute of "content".
The new season makes that really clear, because each 3-episode "movie" is 130ish minutes long and clearly could have been one 90ish minute film without losing anything important at all, still with plenty of time for relaxed-pace character development and such.
Modern TV is made to be consumed (I use that word intentionally, not watched) by people who aren't really paying attention to what's happening, so you need to restate any major plot point several times to make sure it sticks.
You've got 30 seconds you shot that, when the editor sits down to put it all together, definitely needs to be trimmed. But if you do that, it's 30 fewer seconds of "content". Your business measures output in terms of minutes of content, finished or watched. If you leave it in, the scene's worse, but how many viewers will stop watching because of it? Fewer than what it's worth to have that extra half-minute of "content". So it stays.
And operating this way, you can shoot 7 minutes of dialog that'd be trimmed to 4.5 minutes in a good edit (it's many individual shots, and most have at least a little on the beginning or end that need to go), instead trimming only what's absolutely necessary and get 5 or maybe 5.5 minutes out of it; do that over an entire 40 minute episode and you've saved yourself an entire longish scene that you'd have had to set up for otherwise, to fill the same time. Each set-up is expensive, so that's also saving you money despite being the same amount of "content".
It’s also a better star wars, in that it’s playing in the same space as the originals, and not a lot of things do that very well, so it’s nice to see anything doing it decently well. Andor’s competition is basically all of political action-thrillers, and that’s a crowded space in which it doesn’t really stand out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5tWbTCocA ("Camp Century, The City Under The Ice - 1964 - CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage")
(Found via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30408226#30411047 (under "Newcomer's Welcome Package: Thule Air Base, Greenland [pdf] (militaryonesource.mil)"—60 comments (nb. the OP is a dead link)))
edit: Yes, it was the PM-2A. A "portable" (but larger) version similar to the infamous SL-1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program#Lis...
It was no Chernobyl, but I'd doubt you would find many that would call the design of that particular small reactor safe. Hopefully the developers of today's small reactors have learned the lesson: "don't build a reactor that can be controlled by just one control rod which also gets stuck all the time."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42262547 ("NASA aircraft uncover Cold War nuclear missile tunnels under Greenland ice sheet (space.com)"—42 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42249801 ("California scientists accidentally find nuclear fever dream in Arctic snow (sfgate.com)"—4 commments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28374013 ("The U.S. Army tried portable nuclear power at remote bases 60 years ago (atlasobscura.com)" (2021)—152 comments)
Presumably, you mean Pituffik Space Base[1], formerly Thule Air Base, and Thule Site J?
lol given your background you should probably definitely know!
“Helix” was a fictional TV show about a bio lab in the arctic.
Jack Lifton in [0] adds the perspective that rare earth processing involves a large amount of institutional knowledge, that would take time for the US to reacquire, since we forget everything when we stopped mining many decades ago. While in the interim, China has spent its time as the world's rare earth monopoly optimizing the chemical processes, widening their moat. It's like the manufacturing question, where's it about institutional knowledge and industrial ecosystems—nothing at all like oil/gas where it's solely about where the minerals are.
You can do it all via Canadian waters and you can't do it at all without using Canadian waters so no need to even consider greenland as they don't have any waters that would speed up the transit.
Whether my assumption is right or wrong its a different vibe then the peacemaker image/vibe previous administrations have followed.
This saber rattling had the desired effect and result. More military investment in Greenland. But, using other ppl's money... Denmark.
And in Canada's case with becoming a 51'st state... they too are now committed to meeting NATO $ obligations.
Where does this idea come from that Europe wasn't spending any money on defense?
Keeping it cheaper.
When the Suez was blocked by a sideways ship[0], some of shipping went around Africa[1].
The USA also notably made it clear to the European powers that European powers absolutely didn't have any right to be the powers who controlled the Suez[2].
I also note that the official position of the Houthis is their attacks on shipping are supposed to be about Israel, the problem from the perspective of everyone else in Europe is that they're idiots hitting unrelated ships as well[3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obstruction#Ec...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Route
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_attacks_on_commercial_v...
Finally, Greenland would fall under NATO protection so who exactly would Denmark need to protect them from?
All of this complaining about NATO, or WTO, or IMF, etc... Any globalization.
People forget -> The US designed and setup these systems. These were all founded and built by the US, to project US power and interests. How can we complain now for things we designed and wanted.
It sounds like a bunch of whining. "Oh Boohoo, We got what we wanted. I'm the most powerful country on the planet because we forced globalization on everybody and now I don't like it, boo hoo."
Just one example. There are others of China and/or Russian interests buying up British, Dutch, Australian, etc companies that have existing contracts and then switching it over to their control.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/11/23/greenland-mining-ch...
rwmj•7h ago