Irreplaceable

It could have been the perfect send-off – recognition at the Academy Awards of the artistry of Japan’s peerless animator Hayao Miyazaki.The moment The Boy and the Heron was named the winner of best animated feature in Los Angeles last weekend gave Japan a chance to reflect on Miyazaki’s towering influence, and contemplate whether the 83-year-old is truly finished making films.Studio Ghibli, where Miyazaki has performed his alchemy since the mid-1980s, had barely cleared a space for its second Oscar when talk turned to his…

Prince: SymbolPrince was both a dream and a nightmare for a luthier – astonishingly talented, he would also fling guitars around for some poor stage hand to catch (as at his peerlessly casual yet brilliant 2004 performance honouring George Harrison). The “Cloud” model used in Purple Rain, and built by Dave Rusan, is every bit as insouciantly sexy as the man who played it, with a gorgeous spiral detail around the jack and an actual horn jutting out of the body, ending in its own spiral. But nothing is more iconic than the…

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino defended Twitter’s value Thursday as a “public square” a day after Instagram launched a direct competitor called Threads. “We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” she tweeted, stopping short of referring to Threads by name. On Twitter, everyone's voice matters.Whether you’re here to watch history unfold, discover REAL-TIME information all over the world, share your opinions, or learn about others — on Twitter YOU can be real.YOU built the Twitter…

WILMINGTON, Del.—The scale of concern among Tesla Inc. TSLA -1.63% board members about how to keep Elon Musk ‘s attention trained on the electric-vehicle maker loomed large during a weeklong trial over the chief executive’s pay package.A desire to motivate Mr. Musk to focus on Tesla triggered a monthslong pay negotiation that culminated in the shareholders’ approval of a 2018 CEO equity grant valued at roughly $48 billion at recent stock…

Near Protocol founder Illia Polosukhin has recently been singing the praises of cryptocurrencies in their effort to support his war-torn country. He believes cryptocurrencies offer key benefits over traditional fiat in similar situations by avoiding banks and conventional transfers, which may no longer be secure. Crypto donations can provide help directly to people and sit outside the reliance on financial institutions that may be under threat. Some crypto projects also offer key benefits as a store of wealth when a…