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"Independence isn’t an absolute virtue. Our constitutional order doesn’t include completely independent officials who can print money and regulate banks as they wish. ...
"The [central bank] has vastly expanded its scope of operations, propping up asset prices, monetising debt, channeling credit, directing banks how to invest, straying into climate and inequality, and denying whole business models such as narrow banks and segregated accounts. These actions are political and cross over into fiscal policy and credit allocation. It has had no reckoning with its great institutional failures, including [high] inflation and repeated bailouts.
"It is reasonable to discuss reform. Either the [central bank] must be more 'democratically accountable,' which is the same thing as 'politically influenced' when the other party is in power, or it must be reformed to a narrow, enforced and accountable mandate so it can remain independent."~ John Cochrane from his WSJ op-ed 'Trump and monetary policy'
Director John Stalberg, Jr. wanted to shoot the sequel to his 2023 hit “Muzzle” in Los Angeles.
Badly.
The saga is set in the City of Angels, and Stalberg craved the city’s authentic spirit.
He ended up filming most of “Muzzle: City of Wolves” in South Africa instead. The reasons why TV shows and films are fleeing the city.
Stalberg told The Hollywood in Toto Podcast how his L.A. plans initially collapsed. It’s a story likely shared by other indie filmmakers.
“It comes down to making the best movie possible,” Stalberg explained in a withering screed against the status quo. “When they say to me, ‘when you shoot it in L.A.’ [think] the crazy amount of permit fees, the bureaucracy, the logistical nightmare, the unions, frankly, who are just committing highway robbery on productions left and right and really spooking everyone off to run elsewhere when they mandate you pay these exhorbitant bonds and then they won’t return them.”
The New York Times shared the sad news about L.A. movie production decline earlier this year.
Productions have been filmed outside the United States for decades, but rarely has Hollywood work been so bustling overseas at a time when work in Hollywood itself has been so scant. Studios in European countries are bursting at the seams, industry workers say. And film and television production in Los Angeles is down by more than one-third over the past 10 years, according to FilmLA data.
Stahlberg got crafty to bring some L.A. flavor to his “Muzzle” films, using “splinter units” to capture local footage for the saga.
“I just drove around with my cinematographer and we jumped out of the car and we filmed the police precinct,” he said regarding the “Muzzle” franchise. That process led to some curious blowback.
“Some criticism was like, ‘Oh, he’s putting homeless people shooting up on the police precinct. That’s the fakest thing I’ve ever seen.’ That was just me filming the police precinct,” he said. “It’s all real.”
“Now, I’m trying to match that [to the South African-shot footage],” he added.
Moving the sequel outside of California had other benefits.
“Instead of getting 18 days to shoot [in L.A.], or 15 with no rebates, I get 30 days to shoot [in South Africa] … that allows me to make a vastly better film,” he said.
The “City of Wolves” production found the filmmaker trying to recreate elements of L.A. from thousands of miles away. That created its own curious conflict.
“Take me to the worst slums in Africa because I need to double for L.A.,” he said to his local film crew. “To my shock and horror, they weren’t bad enough, so I had to bring in tents into these shanty towns in Africa.”
You can hear the entire interview, including the finer points of K9 cops on and off screen, on the Hollywood in Toto Podcast.
The post Is This Why L.A. Is Losing So Many Movie Productions? appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.
From Sean Ring, “The Pope, the Libertarian, and the Angelic Doctor Walk Into a Bar…,” The Daily Reckoning (Nov. 20, 2025).
The Pope, the Libertarian, and the Angelic Doctor Walk Into a Bar…
My good friend and host of the No Way Out podcast, Mark McGrath, likes to call me the second-most famous Villanova graduate in Italy. Of course, the most famous one sits on the Throne of St. Peter and has this uncanny penchant for pissing me off.
I had high hopes for Papa Leone, as we call him here in Italy. But time and again, from blessing ice blocks to condemning nation-states for enforcing borders, he’s let me down.
Sean discusses also Hoppe’s views on immigration, and those of Thomas Aquinas. Of course, Professor Hoppe incorporates the relevant thought of Aquinas in his writings on the subject.
YEP:
Here's how the game is played:
Democratic judge rules for Democrats in unprecedented, activist way: Media celebrates rule of law from obviously impartial judge protecting justice
Panel of Republican-majority judges overturn, and restore previous norm universally accepted until…
— Sunny (@sunnyright) November 24, 2025
By the time this article is published, there will only be four days to go until Black Friday, the most magical and beloved day of the year. I hope you’ve put up your decorations.
At this time of year, tech fans can pick up bargains (while avoiding non-bargains) on products that would otherwise be outside their budget. But as an Apple fan, I always feel an inexplicable sense of second-hand embarrassment. “Will there be Apple Store discounts on iPhones?” friends ask me with naive optimism. No, I have to answer. There will just be gift cards.
That’s not to say that you won’t see any discounts on Apple products: there are plenty to be had already. It’s just that the discounts will be offered by other retailers. Buy direct from Apple and you’ll pay not one cent less than MSRP, while receiving a moderately generous gift card you can use on your next purchase. It’s almost like the company wants to help out its reseller partners by pushing business their way.
This lack of direct discounts shouldn’t come as a surprise, of course. Partly because Apple always does the gift card thing, but also because it doesn’t do bargains more generally. Certainly not in the sense of sudden, time-limited, slightly panicky price drops you have to pounce on before they’re gone. It simply doesn’t feel the need to compete, either on price or for attention; after years of nurturing a sense of community, even tribalism, Apple knows that customers will come to it, rather than the other way around.
Apple doesn’t do out-and-out cheap products, either. These days, you can find a perfectly decent Android phone for less than $250, or even $200 if you’re willing to make some sacrifices, but that’s not a market Apple is interested in. This time last year, the iPhone SE sat at the top of the budget category, starting at $429 by March, but that was phased out in favor of the defiantly mid-market (and in my opinion ill-conceived) $599 iPhone 16e. It suits Apple’s purposes to focus on selling a smaller number of higher-margin handsets, knowing that each iPhone owner represents a micro-advert to their friends. Ultra-budget phones are not aspirational.
All of this might make it sound like I subscribe to the idea of the Apple Tax, that proverbial premium supposedly added on to the prices of iPhones, Macs, and the like for no good reason other than Apple customers being gullible enough to pay it. But I don’t. Apple doesn’t do cheap, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t do value, as we’ve seen this past year in particular. Cupertino steers clear of the true budget market but consistently offers strong value with its mid-market products.
My favorite release of 2025, for example, is the Apple Watch SE 3, which delivers so much bang for its 249 bucks that I was obliged to advise readers to choose it over the fuller-featured Series 11. You don’t need to pay $399 to get an excellent watch because Apple has significantly raised its game at the lower price point.
There’s also the iPhone 17, which starts at the same $799 but has a slew of upgrades over last year’s model, including double the storage, a pro-caliber display, and a higher-end selfie camera. It’s a fantastic value.
This year’s M4 MacBook Air, which got a new chip and an upgraded camera, actually saw a price drop of $100 compared with the previous version, which is basically unheard of in Cupertino. Apple fans can now get the latest-generation Air for under a grand (or right now under $750 if you take advantage of Amazon’s Black Friday sale.) Don’t get me wrong: Chromebook prices these are not. But you won’t find a tax for the sake of a brand name either.
Having dispelled that particular myth, it becomes less of a surprise to hear reports that Apple is planning to release a cluster of cheap products in the spring of 2026. And by cheap, of course, I mean sensibly affordable: $599 for the iPhone 17e, $699-$899 for the new budget MacBook, and hopefully not much more than $349 for the newly AI-compliant 11th-gen iPad.
So sure: they’re not the sort of prices that make you set your alarm on Black Friday. They’re not doorbuster deals. But they’re good products at good prices, and that’s something to be praised all year round.
Foundry
Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.
Trending: Top stories
Here they are: the 12 most ridiculously overpriced Apple products, ranked.
How Filipe Esposito’s first iPod touch made him love Apple forever.
Mahmoud Itani finally switched from a MacBook to an iPad Pro, and he’s not going back.
John Brandon used Google Gemini to design the next iPhone. Here are the hilarious results.
Option key secrets: Get more from your Mac with these hidden shortcuts.
The iPhone Air is doomed because one guy returned it.
Alex Blake lists 6 reasons why your new Mac needs a second storage drive.
Podcast of the week
The Thanksgiving holiday is this week in the U.S., so we spent the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast talking about things to be thankful for.
You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.
Reviews corner
Best of 2025-2026: Must-have products for Mac, iPhone & iPad tested by Macworld.
Cosmic Orange gift guide: 30 gifts to match the ultra-bright iPhone 17 Pro.
The rumor mill
Apple may finally let users switch from Siri to another voice assistant.
Apple Fitness+ might get cut and rolled into a bigger Health+ service.
Don’t expect the Apple Watch to change much for the next two years.
Tim Cook is going to retire at some point, but probably not next year.
Video of the week
What was your first ever Apple product? And which one made you feel like an Apple person? For Jason Cross it was the Apple IIe–but we want to hear from you. Join the conversation on TikTok or Instagram.
Software updates, bugs, and problems
Watch out for this clever and dangerous new ‘Apple Support’ hoax.
These new AI features are coming to macOS Tahoe 26.2 and Mac Studio.
PSA for Apple fans: It’s time to update your keyboard and trackpad.
Apple hit with massive fine over Apple Watch dispute.
And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters, including our new email from The Macalope–an irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or X for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.
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