How can a movie capture an experience that everyone in the world has heard about, but only an extremely privileged few will ever get to have firsthand?
Well, for starters, it’s got to have the right music.
That’s the task composer Justin Hurwitz faced when he signed up for First Man, director Damien Chazelle’s telling of Neil Armstrong’s journey to the moon. But while reading Josh Singer’s script, Hurwitz was most struck by how alienating the trip must have been for Armstrong.
“I really responded to this idea in the script that after Neil went to the moon, he would be very alone for the rest of his life, a stranger from the rest of humanity,” he told Mashable in an email, “because nobody else has had the experience he had, and seen the things he has seen.”
First Man wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory for Hurwitz. He’d worked with Chazelle before on three other movies, including the musical smash hit La La Land. But both knew they’d have to find “a new kind of flavor” for this story. To that end, they experimented with electronic instruments – like the theremin, stereotypically associated with the sci-fi genre.
“I really responded to this idea that after Neil went to the moon, he would be very alone for the rest of his life.”
“I love that the theremin is kind of an intersection between technology and humanity,” said Hurwitz. “It is obviously a piece of tech, and there’s a real electronic quality to the way that it sounds, but because of the way that you play it with your body, it’s so expressive and can really become an extension of how you’re feeling.”
“Plus,” he added, “We found that it could take on a real wailing or crying quality.”
It’s that quality that comes through in the track above, which plays in the movie as Neil leaves home for his trip to the moon. In a voiceover, a NASA official reads the statement they’ve prepared in case Neil and his crew never return.
It’s a powerful, poignant moment, even if, in 2018, we already know darn well how his journey ends. And for Hurwitz, the scene presented an unexpected challenge.
He and Chazelle had worked out the main themes of the movie a year earlier, and planned to score the entire film with variations on those melodies. When Chazelle and editor Tom Cross showed Hurwitz this sequence, however, it was with instructions to figure out something “totally new.”
“[Chazelle] was looking for something more dramatic and tragic than any of the themes we already had, and asked for it to be ‘operatic’ in how it would grow and grow throughout the sequence, exploding into a huge brass chord as we cut to the shot of the Saturn rocket sitting on the launchpad,” said Hurwitz.
The resulting track, “Contingency Plan,” starts out small and ends up epic. Hurwitz presents an intimate plea and a grand declaration, a celebration of big ambitions and a warning of same. It’s probably nothing like what Armstrong actually heard in the hours leading up to the landing. But it’s just the right music to make us feel, just for a moment, like we’re right there with this great and lonely man.
The score to First Man will be released with the film’s theatrical release on Friday, Oct. 12.
The Music Modernization Act (MMA) is officially law. And, as evidenced by the musician-packed Oval Office from earlier this afternoon, that means a lot of things for a lot of different people.
The former bill turned law ensures artists receive the compensation they are owed, encourages fair industry competition, and protects the intellectual property rights of studios nationwide—among other benefits.
While the journey to get MMA in place was a long, hard-fought battle between the tech and music industries, MMA’s final form will be implemented beginning January 1, 2020.
So, how will this sweeping copyright reform affect you and your daily music lineup?
Of course, MMA supporters argue newly reformed market competition will result in better music for everyone—but, when it comes to your monthly streaming service bill, you shouldn’t be seeing any change.
Yes, services like Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music will be affected. But their customers should not be.
Here’s what two major streaming service reps are saying about the historic development:
Spotify’s General Counsel and VP Business & Legal Affairs, Horacio Gutierrez:
“One of our core missions at Spotify is to enable a million artists to make a good living from what they love: creating and performing music. The Music Modernization Act is a huge step towards making that a reality, modernizing the outdated licensing system to suit the digital world we live in. The MMA will benefit the music community and create a more transparent and streamlined approach to music licensing and payment for artists.”
Pandora’s General Counsel, Steve Bene:
“Today’s signing of the Music Modernization Act is a generation-defining win for music artists, songwriters, platforms and – most importantly – the fans. This legislation is the product of both unprecedented cooperation from within the music industry, as well as a bipartisan group of champions on Capitol Hill who made this a reality. The MMA brings the rules governing music into the 21st century, and represents a holistic improvement that will benefit the entire music ecosystem.”
Check out what other music industry players have to say here.
In the process of attacking the Fed in such an unprecedented manner, President Donald Trump has alarmed senior advisers and forced them into public walk-backs. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
Facing declines in the stock market after nearly two years of cheerleading, the president is attacking the central bank chief he picked for the post.
President Donald Trump praised Jerome Powell as “strong, committed and smart” last year when he nominated the former banker to lead the Federal Reserve. Now, the president apparently thinks Powell is a dangerous lunatic.
In an extraordinary series of attacks this week, Trump called the Fed “crazy,” “loco” and said it’s “gone wild” with interest-rate hikes. And he blamed the central bank, in part, for Wednesday’s sharp decline in the stock market.
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The president kept up the assault on Thursday. “I think the Fed is out of control,” he told reporters as stocks gyrated after Wednesday‘s tumble of more than 3 percent in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
“I think I know about it better than they do,” Trump said. He expressed disappointment with Powell but said he would not fire him, something he lacks the authority to do anyway barring extreme circumstances.
In the process of attacking the Fed in such an unprecedented manner, Trump has alarmed senior advisers and forced them into public walk-backs. And he’s unnerved market watchers and former government officials who fear the sharp broadsides could undermine the Fed’s longstanding role as a politically neutral arbiter of interest-rate policy — charged with making tough decisions with a focus on the long-term interest of the U.S. economy.
“The president is wrong, obviously, in his judgment about the Fed,” said Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. “There is room for debate about the precise posture of monetary policy. But the suggestion that there is something crazy about the Fed’s decisions is absurd.”
Summers said the more serious potential impact of Trump’s comments are that they could give Powell and his Fed colleagues pause if they decide in the future they need to slow down or reverse rate hikes — a posture that likely would support Trump’s current view.
“It is important for the Fed to preserve its credibility as apolitical and independent,” Summers said. “This kind of hectoring would make it more difficult to adjust policy in a dovish direction if the Fed thought that was appropriate. Not appearing to kowtow to politics is properly part of the Fed’s calculus.”
Powell, who is in Bali, Indonesia, for meetings of the Group of 20 finance officials, has no plans to respond to Trump’s remarks, a person familiar with the matter said. People inside the central bank expected that the president would eventually attack Powell over the current modest pace of rate hikes that began under Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
For the moment, they are treating it as “noise,” according to one central bank official. Powell has no public remarks planned until Nov. 14. In the past, he has declined to directly address Trump comments but instead obliquely referred to plans to stay on the current course with any deviations dictated by economic conditions, not political pressure.
Trump’s comments forced both National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who lobbied for Trump to pick Powell, to make public statements supporting the Fed chief and downplaying the president’s attacks.
“I don’t think he’s calling out the Fed, quote-unquote. I really mean this. I think he’s giving you his opinion,” Kudlow told reporters at the White House. “He is a, obviously, successful businessman. He’s a very well-informed investor. He has his views. But he’s not saying to them, ‘Change your plan, do this differently.’ None of that stuff. He knows the Fed is independent and he respects that.”
Mnuchin, also in Indonesia for the G-20 gathering, downplayed Trump’s Fed criticism. “I don’t think there was any new news that came out of the Fed today that wasn’t there beforehand,” Mnuchin told CNN. “Markets go up. Markets go down. I see this as a normal correction.”
Trump on Wednesday night also suggested the decline was a normal correction before launching into his Fed criticism.
Market observers suggested because Trump has for so long pointed to the stock market as a report card on his administration, he felt forced to place blame on someone for a bad day in the market. Previous administrations mostly steered clear of daily market commentary out of fear of getting blamed when markets declined.
“The president’s comments confirm our view, which has been that Trump will blame the Federal Reserve for any negative economic news while taking credit himself for positive news,” Jaret Seiberg, analyst at the Cowen Washington Research Group, said in a note to clients on Thursday, noting that other presidents have criticized the Fed. “The difference is that we believe this President is willing to go much further than his predecessors in that criticism. This includes frequently floating the idea that he could fire” Powell.
Presidential criticism of the Fed is not unprecedented. President George H.W. Bush lamented the slow nature of rate cuts ahead of his 1992 loss to Clinton. And President Richard Nixon privately hectored then-Fed Chair Arthur Burns into keeping rates low. Burns complied, setting the stage for runaway inflation that forced a rapid series of rate increases by Fed Chair Paul Volcker in the 1980s.
But no president has publicly attacked the Fed using the kind of language Trump deployed this week, suggesting that Powell and his colleagues have lost their minds. The language shocked some government officials who said Trump knew before nominating Powell that the gradual path of rate hikes set by Yellen would continue under the new leadership. “There is nothing about what Jay’s done that should surprise him at all,” one senior government official said Thursday, using the Fed chair’s common nickname.
Trump rejected candidates for Fed chair who might have been more hawkish on rates than Powell, including former Fed governors Kevin Warsh and John Taylor. He considered keeping Yellen but eventually bowed to Republicans on Capitol Hill who wanted a Fed chair with GOP credentials. Many of those GOP officials had complained loudly for years about the Fed keeping rates too low under Obama.
Market observers on Thursday also noted that the reason rates are going up is in large measure because the economy is performing so strongly under Trump’s presidency. Economic growth is on pace to hit 3 percent for the year and unemployment is down to 3.7 percent, near historic lows. The Fed is hiking rates slowly to try to prevent overheating and inflation, and to preserve its options in the future should it have to cut rates to fight the next downturn.
The central bank’s target rate for overnight loans between banks, which ultimately sets rates for everything from credit cards to home mortgages, remains low by historic standards at 2 percent to 2.25 percent. The central bank is expected to raise rates once more in December.
Some market analysts suggested that Trump’s rhetoric is aimed at trying to get the Fed to hold off on another hike this year, something few expect he will succeed in doing, barring a significant slowing in the economy.
“The economy — especially the labor market — is over-heating, and the president wants it to stay hot through his re-election fight in 2020,” Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon Investments, wrote in a note to clients. “But many of Trump’s economic prescriptions invite inflation — so obviously the Fed has to take away the monetary punch bowl.”
Trump would likely run into trouble if he tried to fire Powell simply over a disagreement on rate policy. While the president does have the power to fire the Fed chair, he can only do so “for cause,” which is generally interpreted to mean some kind of improper conduct or reason to doubt the chairman’s fitness for duty.
In a case that underpins the legal status of independent agencies, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress can limit the ability of presidents to fire members of such agencies because they are “quasi-legislative” bodies.
Summers suggested the best path for Trump would be to stop commenting on the stock market at all. “We were consistent in both administrations I served in and never crowed when the markets were up,” he said. “And we didn’t regard it as a referendum on our policies when markets went down.”
It’s been a few months since Eighth Grade turned chicken nuggets into the perfect first date meal, and as the Oscar buzz surrounding the film continues to build, we’re able to take a deeper look at how this perfect piece of cinema was made.
In this behind-the-scenes clip, writer and director Bo Burnham talks about how the story began as he considered a side of social media foreign to his experience. “My small comedic career started by posting videos online and I wanted to do a story about what I think the internet is doing to the average person on it who is not being paid attention to,” he said.
Elsie Fisher, who plays anxious eighth grader/wannabe internet star Kayla, put words to her character’s “average” experience. “I think she thinks that if she acts like everyone is watching then everyone will watch.”
Burnham dives further into his mindset while approaching the critically acclaimed indie movie, noting that social media has pushed teens to mature quicker and seeing the need for a coming-of-age story that takes place in middle school, but that “was not nostalgic and was not remembered.”
Check out the clip above and catch even more never-before-scene looks at Eighth Grade (including deleted scenes, audio commentary, and a music video) on Digital, Blu-ray, and DVD, out now.
The state authorized its first self-driving car company to test on state roads this week — and no, it wasn’t Uber who received the honors.
Instead Aurora, the company working with China’s Byton vehicles, clinched the first authorization with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). Earlier this year the autonomous vehicle software maker raised $8.4 million.
The transportation department had already issued its “automated vehicle testing guidance” back in July and several companies already testing in Pittsburgh said it would work within the rules that went into effect Aug. 1.
Back then, Aurora said it would apply for the statewide testing program. Now it’s the first company approved to test driverless cars beyond Pittsburgh.
Aurora said in a blog post, “Safety is at the forefront of everything we do.” It will keep PennDOT informed about where in the state it’s testing, how it’s testing, and all about its operator safety procedures. For example, Aurora said it will always have a driver and a co-pilot in the vehicle and put operators through 12 weeks of “rigorous training.”
Uber’s self-driving car program was the darling of the Pittsburgh robotic driving scene, but after its fatal crash in Arizona in March the program stalled out. Now it’s back in Pittsburgh but in a much more limited capacity and has clearly taken a back seat when it comes to self-driving cars throughout the state.
Riverdale has never been the most chill teen drama out there, but over the course of its first two seasons its plot has been slowly riding a funicular to the top of Mount Bonkers.
What started out as a show about a very dumb boy who couldn’t play guitar and football at the same time transformed into a wild romp through a world populated with gangsters with names like Poppa Poutine, 15-year-olds leading gangs of violent bikers, and Pixy Stix-looking drugs called Jingle Jangle.
Now that Riverdale’s Season 3 premiere has aired and added cryptids, New Age witchcraft, a blatant disregard for the authorized practice of law, and Labor Day pool parties at a burned-down mansion, it’s time to accept the facts.
Riverdale isn’t a teen drama anymore. Perhaps it never was. Riverdale is a comic book show.
While it seems obvious to say that Riverdale is a comic book show, seeing as its characters and setting come from the 79-year-old Archie Comics brand, calling it one these days specifically aligns Riverdale more with shows like Gotham, The Flash, and Black Lightning than with the dramas to which it was previously compared (Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars, to start).
What Riverdale has in common with comic book or superhero shows is its willingness to present a world that feels real but has a silk-thin overlay of the absurd that allows for Cheryl Blossom to be an ace archer who snipes down gang members from the back of a truck, or more mundanely for Archie’s mother to be legally able to represent her own son in a murder trial.
It’s an out-there, stretchy genre that requires its audience to have countless “sure, we’ll go with that” moments with each passing episode.
It’s an out-there, stretchy genre that requires its audience to have countless “sure, we’ll go with that” moments with each passing episode. Archie has a gang of shirtless, masked football players hunting down a serial killer now? Sure, Riverdale. Betty has to do a striptease to the sad song from Donnie Darko to join Jughead’s gang? LOL. Ok. Yeah.
If there is a watershed moment at which Riverdale officially shed its teen drama genre, it must be the very end of the Season 3 premiere, which delivers a double whammy of comic book weirdness.
First, Jughead discovers background characters Dilton (whose most significant moment in the show so far is fencing Archie a gun) and Ben (who has had several blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos, including one that suggested he was Miss Grundy’s next rape victim after Archie) locked in a suicide pact in an act of sacrifice to The Gargoyle King.
Then, Betty Cooper witnesses her mother and sister dropping Polly’s babies into a bonfire, only for the children to magically float safely above the flames. Betty drops to the ground and immediately begins seizing. Cut to credits.
So, hey. There’s magic now. And maybe a spooky demon living in the woods. It wouldn’t be surprising if Riverdale’s supernatural twist was a lead-in to a crossover with Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which takes place in the same universe as Riverdale, but the show was moving towards comic book camp long before the new Sabrina showed her face on the small screen.
In any case, welcome to the new Riverdale. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
Oklahoma City Thunder superstar point guard Russell Westbrook has not been cleared for full practice because of a knee injury, and it remains unclear if he’ll be available for the team’s season opener on Tuesday, Oct. 16, against the Golden State Warriors, per Royce Young of ESPN.com.
According to that report, Westbrook is “progressing on schedule” and “participating in some ‘controlled contact’ portions of practice,” though “Billy Donovan wouldn’t say whether or not Westbrook is expected to be available opening night.”
This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.
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Jordanian Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz announced a cabinet reshuffle on Thursday as the government looks to push through reforms intended to revive stagnant economic growth and cut public expenditure.
Razzaz, a former World Bank economist, was appointed by King Abdullah II in June to replace Hani al-Mulki, who resigned to defuse a crisis that saw some of the largest protests in years over planned IMF-driven austerity measures, including tax hikes.
In an apparent bid to calm widespread discontent over rising economic hardship Razzaz, who had said he would re-evaluate his team after 100 days in office, reduced the 29-member cabinet to 27.
Jordan’s economic woes pile pressure on new PM
But he also kept key ministries – notably the interior, finance and foreign portfolios – unchanged, and has warned Jordan would pay a heavy price if a tax reform bill failed to pass into law this year.
Razzaz had angered unions and civic bodies when he introduced the IMF-inspired bill in September, making only cosmetic changes to one that brought down Mulki.
Seen as a better communicator than his predecessor, Razzaz had promised to restore public trust in a country where many blame successive governments for failing to deliver on pledges of reviving growth that is stuck at around two percent, cutting waste and curbing corruption.
But he installed many of the old-guard conservatives and tribal figures in his cabinet, who held sway in previous administrations, and critics – who have so far stopped short of calling for new street protests – say he has taken no clear steps to hold anyone accountable for graft.
Bloated bureaucracy
Jordan’s bloated bureaucracy is responsible for some of the world’s highest government expenditure as a percentage of GDP.
Jordan receiving $2.5bn in aid from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait
Under an IMF austerity plan it must rein in spending to cut spiralling debt standing a $37bn, equivalent to 95 percent of gross domestic product.
Razzaz said he wanted to push through the tax bill this year to retain IMF support and avoid higher servicing costs on over $1.4bn of foreign debt due in 2019.
Any rejection of the bill that parliament will begin debating next week raised the prospect of ratings downgrades, Razzaz said in an interview with state television last month.
“We will pay a heavy price if we enter next year without a tax bill,” Razzaz said, adding the reform would bring in an extra $423m in revenue.
Jordan’s economy has also been hit by regional conflict that has weighed on investor sentiment.
Phil Bredesen, a former two-term governor, is fighting to win support from moderate and conservative swing voters in his quest to carry deep-red Tennessee. | Jason Kempin/Getty Images
‘I felt torpedoed by that statement,’ one campaign volunteer said.
Tennessee Democrat Phil Bredesen is facing backlash from some of the staunchest supporters of his Senate campaign after coming out in support of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Campaign volunteers have been calling to cancel door-knocking and phone-banking shifts for Bredesen since his statement backing Kavanaugh, according to an internal spreadsheet maintained by the campaign and obtained by POLITICO. At least 22 volunteers so far have reached out to express frustration with the decision, according to the spreadsheet. POLITICO spoke with five who contacted the campaign to vent their anger.
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It’s a small fraction of Bredesen’s total volunteer force, which numbers in the thousands, according to his campaign. But it’s also just one slice of the frustration roiling Democrats since Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court last weekend.
“As a woman voter in Tennessee, I felt torpedoed by the statement,” said Rhonda McDowell, a campaign volunteer in Memphis.
McDowell, a 63-year-old travel agent, said she had volunteered twice a week for the past four or five weeks, but she told campaign staff she could not continue after Bredesen backed Kavanaugh. McDowell told POLITICO she was rethinking that decision, but only because she was worried about the effect Bredesen’s support for Kavanaugh could have on other Democrats running in Tennessee.
“I was so conflicted about it for a while but the more I think about these candidates who are down the ballot, the more I think I don’t want to cut off my nose to spite my face here,” McDowell said.
Bredesen, a former two-term governor, is fighting to win support from moderate and conservative swing voters in his quest to carry deep-red Tennessee, while also working to hold onto his Democratic base in the closing weeks of his campaign against Republican Rep. MArsha Blackburn.
But the fight over Kavanaugh has put those goals at odds. Retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who holds the seat that Bredesen and Blackburn are seeking, told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Senate floor last week that Democrats’ handling of the Kavanaugh nomination has hurt Bredesen politically. While Corker has endorsed Blackburn, he’s also close friends with Bredesen and has praised him repeatedly.
“I told him I felt the Kavanaugh hearings themselves had been been very detrimental to Gov. Bredesen and very positive for Rep. Blackburn. I wasn’t doing it to poke at him,” Corker said on Thursday. “That was certainly very, very beneficial to Rep. Blackburn because people saw and they said: Do we really want these people in charge?”
Three straight public polls have shown Bredesen trailing Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn by a significant margin, though Republicans and Democrats say private polling shows a much closer race. Democrats need to win Tennessee to have any hope at winning a Senate majority, and a victory for Blackburn would likely cement GOP control of the chamber.
“Congresswoman Blackburn is surging in Tennessee. So I think the way Kavanaugh was treated, and Dr. Ford too, has backfired and created a lot of energy,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn in an interview.
But Democrats are not writing off the race yet, according to a Democrat working on Senate races, who said Republicans are overblowing the narrative that Kavanaugh helps them win in red states.
Volunteer anger hasn’t been the only fallout after Bredesen became a rare pro-Kavanaugh Democrat. Priorities USA, a top Democratic outside group, announced it would not support Bredesen, though the group had yet to spend any money in the Tennessee race. Bredesen’s campaign was also targeted by Project Veritas, a right-wing organization that runs “sting” operations surreptitiously recording targets. The group released a video Thursday of campaign staffers saying Bredesen’s support for Kavanaugh had only been a political decision.
Mark Brown, a spokesman for the coordinated effort between Bredesen’s campaign and the Tennessee Democratic Party, released a statement saying the comments captured on video were “uninformed and speculative.” He added that the party was considering legal action against Project Veritas.
During a debate with Blackburn Wednesday, Bredesen defended his decision to back Kavanaugh, saying he took his time to evaluate the nomination and was satisfied with his support. He called himself an “equal opportunity offender” when it comes to frustrating both parties.
“I watched it very closely and finally I just came to the conclusion that all things being equal, I did not think that those allegations rose to the level of disqualification from the Supreme Court,” Bredesen said.
Asked about the campaign volunteers who were expressing frustration, Laura Zapata, a spokeswoman for Bredesen’s campaign, said he had “galvanized the largest grassroots campaign” in Tennessee.
“Real independence — not party politics — is what Tennesseans are craving and that is why Governor Bredesen is on the path to victory,” Zapata said.
Moderate Democrats argued that the party should stay in Tennessee, explaining that the election will ultimately turn on Bredesen’s record as governor bringing in jobs to the state and not on his Kavanaugh positioning. Kavanaugh hurt everyone in the Senate and everyone that had taken a position on the embattled nominee, they explained.
“Everybody took a hit. It was disgraceful. you ‘re going to put yourself in the fray right now, you’re going to take a hit,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who was governor of his state during Bredesen’s tenure and who also supported Kavanaugh.
But Jay Pounders, a singer-songwriter in Nashville, said he had planned to volunteer for Bredesen last Sunday, but contacted the campaign to cancel after Bredesen’s decision on Kavanaugh and now plans to volunteer for Karl Dean, the Democratic nominee for governor. He will still vote for Bredesen.
“He’s not going to get me to go the extra mile to help him get elected,” Pounders said.
Wil Morse, 22, a graduate student at Vanderbilt, said he called a campaign staffer to express his frustration last week, and the staffer called him back Tuesday to explain why the staffer was continuing with the campaign. Morse said he deliberated for days about whether to make the same decision. He said Bredesen’s choice was wrong, whether it was about politics or about legitimate support for Kavanaugh.
“If it’s a political decision, that means he’s compromising his values, and if it’s not a political decision, that means he doesn’t share the same values I do,” Morse said. “That makes it difficult to keep volunteering and being as supportive as I was.”
Morse later told POLITICO he ultimately decided to keep volunteering with Bredesen despite his frustration with the Democrat’s support of Kavanaugh, viewing Bredesen as a clear choice over Blackburn.
Some volunteers have walked back their anger since the initial outburst. David Kemp, 64, a real estate agent, said he had “settled down after the initial shock” of Bredesen’s support for Kavanaugh, and that he planned to donate money to Bredesen, and may even volunteer for the campaign again if he has the time before Election Day.
“That was momentary,” he said of his anger last week. “It has not changed my vote. It has perhaps dampened my enthusiasm for what we might be able to accomplish with a fellow like Bredesen in there but it is bound to be better.”
The checkout line at CVS is about to move a lot more quickly.
The popular drugstore announced Thursday it’s now accepting Apple Pay at all U.S. locations. The payment system will work at both the pharmacy and regular checkout lines.
CVS had long refrained from adopting Apple Pay since it launched in 2015, but now it seems that three years later, enough has changed to sway the company in the other direction. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced in July during a quarterly earnings call that CVS would join its long list of merchants who use Apple Pay.
For years, CVS was a supporter of a major competitor to Apple Pay called Current C, which was created by companies that include Target and Walmart. But the competing platform was riddled with issues from the start, and its reliance on QR codes made it more cumbersome than Apple’s “tap-to-pay” NFC technology. In 2017, JP Morgan bought Current C, effectively killing the platform.
CVS also avoided Apple Pay by encouraging customers to use its own app that included an in-app payment option called CVS Pay. Much like Current C, its own payment method used a QR code generated on a customer’s smartphone.
Rendering of new store with updated logo and graphics
Image: CVS
I briefly used Apple Pay at CVS today, and I’m happy to report that it worked flawlessly. I noticed the graphics on the payment processor were updated to include the new payment option, and employees at the story I visited in New Jersey were surprised to see me using it. I told them what I tell everyone: It’s actually super easy to use and my preferred payment method when available.
CVS will join BestBuy, Duane Reade, Kohls, and Staples as some of the large U.S. retailers who accept the payment method. Considering that one of CVS’s biggest rivals — Walgreens — has used Apple Pay for a while, it seems like a smart move for CVS to enable it.
Though Apple Pay may finally make it easier and quicker to check out, it’s a shame it won’t do anything for those super-long receipts.
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