Bewarethewumpus

Author : Ajax

Zoë sat rigid in the steel chair. Her gaze was locked, unwavering, on the screen in front of her, which displayed a countdown. Five minutes and fifty-six seconds, a relatively short time, seemed an eternity to Zoë. Her hands tightened on the hard, uncomfortable armrests. She would know in five minutes and forty-one seconds.

Today was Expiration Day. Today she and the six other about-to-turn-eighteen-year-olds would find out precisely how much time they had left to live. Down to the second, they would know the precise moment of their deaths, supposedly to better spend their lives. Expiration would determine their class, occupation, marital options, and a multitude of other aspects of their lives. The long lived, the ones with enough years to matter, were the politicians, the doctors, the lawmakers. The short lived would become soldiers, factory and custodial workers. Fodder. The length of one’s life determined everything.

Four minutes and forty seconds. Had it really only been a minute? Despite the precisely controlled temperature of the room, sweat beaded on Zoë’s brow. Statistically speaking, with the six others in their own dark rooms, staring at their own screens, she had around a sixty-seven percent chance to get a decent lifespan. Assuming a standard deviation of years awarded compared to all previous years. Her rebellious brain chimed in.

Shut up. Just calm down. Zoë focused and, with a herculean effort, relaxed her stiff muscles. She exhaled, pushing the air from her lungs. Three minutes and twenty-one seconds. Ok, you’re relaxed. More a command than a statement of fact. She ran the numbers again in her head. Statistically speaking, she could expect thirty to fifty years, plus or minus ten years.

Two minutes fifty-two seconds. She was still nervous as hell. Some people said that if you were rich enough, or knew the right people, you could rig the Program to give your child a long life. Zoë thought that was ridiculous. Rig the Program? You’d be better off trying to rig the sun. The Program was foolproof, had to be to ensure that everyone’s expiration was fair. Besides, even if you could “buy” a longer life, Zoë’s family was in no position to do so. Her parents were just above the Orange Value line, with no excess income to speak of. No. Today, Zoë’s Expiration would be unaffected by any outside influence. Her years would be her own.

One minute, twelve seconds. Ohhh crap. Another wave of anxiety ripped through her. What if she only got ten years? The lowest score that she knew of was two, but that had only happened once. She thought.

Shuttup think about the bright side. You could be the next Mayor Sloan, and get a hundred years! Somehow, despite the fact that they were both equally likely, one seemed much farther out of reach. Listen, Zoë told herself, you’re going to get through this, you’re going to go home, and you’re going to be so so sooooo much more relaxed now that you know the answer. Your life’s about to get a whole lot more simple. You’re going to know who to hang with, you’ll know what job to get, and you’ll meet a nice guy around the same lifespan as you and have a nice solid life. Zoë calmly watched the numbers scroll down. Thirteen seconds. Five. Zoë breathed out, calmly watching the last seconds of her teenage life tick away. Three… Two… One… Zero. The blue numbers faded away, replaced by a larger golden decimal.

0.008219, it read. Zoë’s heart froze. She had three days.

Author : Edward D. Thompson

Salome slumped glumly in a corner of the locker room. Her corner. Where she usually savored the sweet taste of victory for a moment, alone, before the crowd of the press and the press of the crowds engulfed her.

Victory seemed hollow today.

She didn’t look up as the door groaned open. Not until the shadow of her coach blocked the glow of the lamps did she risk glancing at his face. The pain there. She couldn’t look him in the eye.

“I thought you didn’t care about wins.”

For five years she’d been the world’s top swimmer.

“I don’t. I do. Just not the … I don’t care if I beat anybody but me.”

And now she’d failed even that.

“Even if you’re just trying to beat your own record it’s gotta be a fair fight.”

She couldn’t look him in the eye. He was the one who’d always believed in her.

“The tests came back.”

“And what?”

He was silent. She already knew what.

“Come on. We gotta go see the committee.”

She’d failed Coach. She could smell his shame, his disappointment. Was that a side effect?

He had to help her to her feet; dry land was awkward. They made their way silently to the committee chambers. Walking disoriented her. She could feel it in her ears. That was a side effect for sure.

The committee: seven women, four men. Most of them athletes she’d admired growing up. A couple of them world class swimmers with records that had stood for decades. Till she’d come along anyway. Had all of them always played by the rules?

There was another man at the table. He smelled … dangerous.

“Miss Argent … Salome,” the committee head was not unkind, she seemed about to cry actually. She composed herself and went on. “All of us want to do better. To be better. To achieve more. And we’ve all had modifications, but …”

Salome swallowed and tried to still her shaking.

“Salome, the restrictions are there for a reason. It’s not just that it’s not fair. Ah, hell with fair. We all know you just want to go faster and stay under longer. It’s not fairness. The stuff you took is dangerous.”

Salome wanted to speak. She couldn’t find the words.

“You are barred from competition for life.” The head’s eyes teared up in sympathy, disappointment.

“But there’s a more serious matter. The DNA you stole. Mammal DNA mods have been around a long time. We all have some. Celeste, “she nodded towards a sleek swimmer at the table, “is about 5% seal and some dolphin. I have some cheetah.” The head had been a runner. “But amphibians, fish … they aren’t safe, aren’t tested. The side effects aren’t known. And …” she glanced towards the dangerous man, “they’re not public domain.”

The dangerous man stood.

“I’m afraid you will have to go with this man.”

Salome’s fear rose, but she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t breathe. A side effect?

Coach could speak though. He reeked of rage.

“Who is this? The military? I won’t let her be a lab rat or spy for these bastards …”

The head silenced him with a gesture.

“This man represents Unified Genetics. They own the patent on the genes Salome ingested. And, as those are an integral part of her DNA now, they own her as well. I’m sorry.”

Coach tried to fight, but the man was strong. Part bear; Salome could smell it. After, she just went along quietly as he led. Perhaps that was a side effect too.

Author : Bob Newbell

It was July 20th, 1969 when Neil Armstrong made first contact with the Selenites. We’d known throughout history that the Moon had life. The ancient Sumerians had noted the satellite change color over time and they had theorized, quite correctly, that it was seasonal variations in vegetation. Galileo had first described the Selenite villages he’d seen through his telescope. The Europeans and the Chinese had erected gigantic structures of wood large enough, it was thought, to be seen from the lunar surface into geometric shapes and then set them ablaze in the hope that the Moon Men would reply. None did. Later, radio signals were beamed to the Moon. The Selenites remained silent.

Now, in 2015, America had six lunar military bases to the Soviet Union’s four. The Moon was the latest battlefield in a Cold War that was heating up. That’s why I was sent up here: to win hearts and minds before the Moon became yet another Korea or Vietnam.

“I do not understand,” said Tuluvnif. He was short for a Selenite: a mere eight-and-a-half feet tall. He looked like a vaguely anthropomorphic stick insect.

“Freedom,” I said. “The liberty to speak your mind. To worship as you see fit. To live the life you want to live. You’ll lose all of that if your world falls to Soviet imperialism.”

Tuluvnif sipped the sap of one of the native trees from a small cup. “I still do not understand, Mr. Fernandez. These concepts are alien to us. Even the strange habit of your people dividing into different groups with different names — Americans and Russians, Capitalists and Communists — is difficult for us to comprehend. You even apply this practice to us by referring to The People living close to the Soviets as ‘Red Lunies’.”

I put my oxygen mask up to my face and inhaled. The air is pretty thin here. “We’re concerned your people living in what we call Mare Serenitatis near the Russian military installation my be subjected to Marxist indoctrination. What would you do if you faced a revolution and had to fight your own people?”

Tuluvnif laughed. “Could your own right hand, Mr. Fernandez, be indoctrinated to revolt against your left hand? Are you not concerned that your vertebral column and your liver might stage a coup against your kidneys?”

“I don’t think you comprehend the gravity of the situation. If you could hear what the Commies are telling your people–”

“I can.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“At this moment, on the other side of this world, a Soviet officer is lecturing The People on the dangers of American imperialism. And at Mare Australe, as you call it, a Lieutenant Durst is telling The People about the War of 1812.”

I took another hit of oxygen. “How can you know that?”

Tuluvnif pointed at a bush a few yards away. “Do you like flowers?” he asked. The bush bloomed with a thousand petals. “Or do you find the fragrance overbearing?” The flowers all closed.

“How?” I asked.

“Our world is but a single organism. The People are just one manifestation of that organism. We have endeavored to be polite hosts. We have listened, Mr. Fernandez, to your rather narrow thoughts about freedom. Likewise, you can imagine our amusement when the Russians tried to teach us about collectivism. You’ll forgive me if I ask you how you might regard a talking amoeba trying to instruct you on the ways of the universe?”

“I can imagine,” I said, embarrassed.

“Well,” responded Tuluvnif, “at least that’s one small step for Man.”

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The other day I posted about MOTHER 3 and EarthBound stuff mods for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Now a new fan creation now allows Lucas to do the Wess dance from MOTHER 3 as a taunt!

The taunt seems to have offensive capabilities too, although the dance is so long that I wonder if it’s actually useful for normal battle situations.

Here’s a better look at Lucas doing the dance, too:

I seriously have no idea how fans are able to pull this stuff off. Amazing work!

Does the latest Dad By The Sword [official site] trailer tell us much new about the first-person dad-action-RPG? Nnnooot really (you get a nice look at your dad’s bejorted leg as he kicks a monster, mind). The trailer does, however, have the best live-action sequences since Roundabout. I never knew dad was such a versatile – and prevalent – element.

… [visit site to read more]

France should respond to the U.S.’s “contempt” for its allies by giving Edward Snowden asylum, the leftist French daily newspaper Libération declared on Thursday.

France would send “a clear and useful message to Washington, by granting this bold whistleblower the asylum to which he is entitled,” editor Laurent Joffrin wrote (translated from the French) in an angry editorial titled “Un seul geste” — or “A single gesture.”

The editorial came just two days after Libération co-published a trove of documents obtained by WikiLeaks that recounted how the National Security Agency spied for years on the last three French presidents. (President Barack Obama spoke to French President Francois Hollande Wednesday and told him that — as of late 2013 — “we are not targeting and will not target the communications of the French President.”)

“Contempt” is the only word to describe the U.S.’s behavior to its allies, Joffrin wrote.

France could even the count by offering asylum to the “single, courageous man, who has been chased without respite for three years: Edward Snowden, stalked and threatened with life in prison for having told the truth.”

The WikiLeaks documents showing NSA spying of French leaders have not been sourced to Snowden. But by turning over top-secrets documents to journalists in 2013, Snowden exposed a wide range of invasive U.S. and British surveillance around the globe, and this latest revelation created a new flashpoint for the already considerable outrage.

Libération was co-founded by existentialist French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in 1973, and has remained a significant left-wing voice ever since.

If Paris offers Snowden asylum, it will be joining several other nations who have done so in the past, including Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. However, Snowden is still waiting in Moscow to hear from almost two dozen other countries where he has requested asylum.

(This post is from our blog: Unofficial Sources.)

Photo: French President Francois Hollande on the phone. Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty Images

The post French Newspaper Cites U.S. “Contempt” as Reason to Offer Snowden Asylum appeared first on The Intercept.

‘Humble’ is not a word I would rush to associate with Borderlands, given the chest-thumping, max-volume mania of 2 and the recent Pre-Sequel, but in this instance it means you can lay hands on the bulk of Gearbox’s FPS/RPG series for few-pennies.
… [visit site to read more]

On my third night in Ark: Survival Evolved [official site], when the sun had finally set and I was left alone in the seething blackness of the jungle, I saw a glimpse of my possible future. I was chopping trees in the dark, too scared to even light a fire for fear of what the warmth might draw toward me, but as another tree toppled with a groan I spied lights in the valley below. I crept closer. Silhouetted in flickering torchlight towered a tyrannosaurus rex, around which a group of hunters darted back and forth, attacking with spears and arrows. Eventually, they hunters prevailed, and, as they set upon the fallen dinosaur with tools to harvest its meat and hides, I faded back into the jungle and began chopping with renewed purpose.

Ark: Survival Evolved is an early access survival game full of these moments – the kind that fill you with trepidation and excitement in equal measure. But for every moment that adds to the enchantment of surviving on an island teeming with prehistoric life, there are just as many capable of frustrating you. Building on a firm foundation well tread by online survival games, Ark certainly has potential, much of it unrealized, but I can’t help but wonder if the claim of Survival Evolved is just too hyperbolic of a statement to make.

… [visit site to read more]

Have you encountered a bug, glitch, or hack while playing Steam’s hottest new dinosaur game? You might be sitting on $100.

ARK: Survival Evolved, a dinosaur survival game that’s been tearing up the top-selling charts for almost a month now, is trying something pretty unique for an Early Access game. One of the developers took to the Steam forums yesterday to announce a new scheme where players will be rewarded for finding exploits:

We offer $100 bounties for anyone who can provide us with hacks of any kind (which are NOT aimbots/esp/speedhacks) that can have an impact on gameplay or server stability on our official, online servers. Feel free to reach out to info@studiowildcard.com with details.

Already, one player has received cash through PayPal—the developers say the entire reporting process took about two hours before the player was compensated. I’m guessing that once reports start flooding in, the process might take a little longer.

Considering that ARK is in Early Access, and therefore is not done, it comes across as a bold move—surely, there are a number of things floating around, waiting to be reported. Cynically, one could view this as crowdsourcing quality assurance...but considering people are getting paid for their efforts, it’s hard for me to side-eye this. It reminds me of Google’s “Chrome Reward Program,” where they offer up to $50,000 to anyone that can find vulnerability in Chrome.

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I love axolotls!

Hey! I revamped the rewards for Patreon patrons this week. The rewards are full of all sorts of recurring goodies, including a patron-exclusive bonus SFAM comic every month!

Check out these rewards:

• Access to the patron-only feed, including early access to all my comics as soon as they are finished.
• A free monthly haiku, written by me, Jon Rosenberg.
• An exclusive patron-only SFAM once a month. Bonus comics!
• Monthly SFAM or Goats computer wallpaper.
• One free ebook each year for Christmas!
• The original art for one Goats strip, each year for Christmas!
• And more!

Consider becoming a SFAM patron today! Your support makes this whole comics thing possible. I can’t do it without you.

The post Just A Theory appeared first on Scenes From A Multiverse.

The FilmCow YouTube channel presents the first episode in a two-part series about a misanthropic fish-wizard named Merlin, who presents a mysterious magical door in the depths of the ocean.

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Star Trek: TNG's Jean-Luc Picard drops knowledge over Eclectic Method. (more…)

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It’s been a terrible few weeks for the black body.

We’ve just been through a stretch of days that unambiguously demonstrate that black people in this country—and one other—can’t move, think or exist as freely as their non-black counterparts. A white woman claims that she’s always felt black on the inside, to the extent that she calls her own parentage into question. Black people of Haitian heritage in the Dominican Republic face mass deportation and disenfranchisement, despite the fact that many have never known life in any other circumstance than the one being ripped away from them. And nine black congregants were murdered inside a church that’s hallowed ground for the African-American freedom struggle, killed by a young, racist gunman who said that blacks were taking over the world.

Black people aren’t taking over any damn thing. If anything, it’s felt like the existential footing essential to living our lives gets eroded in big crashing waves after events like these. We’re not free to be our fullest selves. Not when the basic psychological agency needed to publically protest or grieve gets shouted down and undercut. The deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride and too many others at the hands of police—and the activist responses to those killings—have been followed by rabid efforts to re-frame their last moments and entire lives in the worst possible way. On paper, the freedom to air out our grief exists, sure. But it’s met by responses that seek to limit it. Say what you want, black folk; the Constitution allows for that. But don’t you dare invoke the insidious subtext of institutional oppression that drives you to speak in the first place.

Rachel Dolezal is free, to a wildly unfettered degree that lets her say she’s black. She at least gets the courtesy of debate. She’s gotten think-piece articles and televised interviews dedicated to investigating the peculiarity of her individual race problem. I’ve had lot of conversations with black friends over the last few days where we acknowledge that black identity is lived in an infinite number of ways and skin tones. And even as folks bat around the idea that race is a bullshit social construct invented centuries ago to stratify human beings into castes, the mechanism of that contraption still holds some people fastly in place. Not Rachel Dolezal, though. She gets to decide what she is.

The hundreds of thousands of Haitian-descended people in the Dominican Republic staring down the possibility of being deported aren’t free. Many of these people were born in the country trying to throw them out—children of immigrants looking for a better life. They’re in the grip of a centuries-long blood feud between two countries on the same island, one where a sugar colony threw off the yoke of slave oppression. Yet, these at-risk black people in the DR are back where their ancestors started, unable to steer their own lives and plant down roots where they find themselves.

Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson, Daniel L. Simmons and Depayne Middleton Doctor were not free in their last moments of life. They died like chattel, pawns in Dylann Roof’s attempt to start a race war. Their freedom to assemble and worship got overridden by the same hoary old myths about white superiority that have driven public policy and private discrimination in America since its birth.

I started writing this in the air over Denver on the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth, a day observed as a holiday memorializing the Emancipation Proclamation. Concerned as it is with the presidential order that said black people weren’t just property anymore, June 19th is a grassroots holiday that looks back at the bleak racial legacy of the American past. It’s a date meant to celebrate the collective strength that carried black folks through slavery.

This Juneteenth didn’t feel celebratory. It felt mournful. The pains of the past are reincarnated and upgraded, parading down black folks’ collective psyche in military-grade police gear and proudly carrying the banners of Jim Crow and apartheid. Right now, what I live inside feels like a sort of shadow freedom. A trap of weariness, doubt, fear and anger that I need to mask or suppress to get through the day. It’s a decaying simulacrum of the way I see other people living—seemingly carefree and unburdened—but hollowed out by the creeping fear of the exact moment I’ll have to explain to my daughter why someone brown got killed by a cop or a racist. Lately, it’s all I can think about. And that’s not very free at all.

Image by Jim Cooke, photos via AP.

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You won’t believe this, because they’re so subtle, but every so often EB Games—the Australian outpost of GameStop— has a sale.

Like the store in the image above. They’re having a sale believe it or not, the biggest sale ever apparently. But you’d never know unless you actually walked into the store.

7/10

---

Clearly it wasn’t the biggest sale ever though, surely this one is. It has to be. It has more red. The more red it has the bigger the sale. Obviously. By that reasoning this is the biggest sale ever.

9/10.

---

Via Alex Burgess

I mean seriously, this store has to step its game up. Not even close to enough banners in this one. Bonus point, however, for the frills. A nice touch.

6/10

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This store isn’t even trying. Come on man? Clearly scrimping on its ‘SALE’ banner budget. I am, however, truly enjoying the relaxed way the banners are strewn around everywhere.

Via Dorkly

5/10

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Via Reddit
This picture is just too damn yellow.

6/10

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Blurry pic, but I’d this is a well crafted EB Games storefront. I am definitely aware that a sale is going on. There is a lot of red here.

9/10

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Tastefully lit. Beautiful contrasts between the red of the banners and the store inside.

8/10

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Uninspired. Flat. Featureless. These sales banners have too much white. This store front has datedterribly.

4/10

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Actually, this one is quite tasteful. But how am I supposed to tell if there really is a sale in here? Honestly. No commitment here at all.

6/10

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via Stealingyourpixels
“Amazeballs sale.”

“YOLO Swag Sale.”

You have to know the rules to break the rules. Pure genius.

10/10

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This post originally appeared on Kotaku Australia, where Mark Serrels is the Editor. You can follow him on Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Gemini Gunstock Carver

3D printing might be quicker with less of a mess but for those who like to work with their hands, this is an interesting tool. It’s not solely for gun stocks. With the different attachments you can replicate anything in wood; from guitar bodies to airplane propellers to human skulls. (GRH)

Source

For years, Hulu has lingered in the shadow of Netflix, and has had some trouble convincing consumers to pay $8/month for access to shows that still have commercials in them, when neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime insert ad breaks into their videos. But the service has recently begun playing nice with the very networks that have an ownership stake in the company in order to win access to better content.

First, have you ever noticed how most broadcast networks don’t make the full current season of a show available for on-demand customers or for streaming through their own sites? It’s usually just a few of the most recent episodes.

This is a practice called “stacking,” and it’s one that Netflix and Amazon approve of because it means that a TV viewer can’t just go and watch a whole season online — at least until it’s on one of their services.

But the Wall Street Journal reports that when FOX decided to put its entire first season of the hit show Empire on cable companies’ on-demand platforms, Netflix wasn’t too thrilled. The streaming service said that this free availability of the show made it less valuable for a subscription service and sought a discount on the streaming license.

Hulu — which is jointly owned by Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC), and 21st Century Fox, the News Corp spinoff that includes the FOX TV network — not only didn’t have a problem with stacking the show, it also agreed to pay more than Netflix for Empire, notes the Journal.

But the service isn’t just winning new content by paying more or being broadcaster-friendly about on-demand access, it’s doing something else that Netflix refuses to do: Give credit to the network a show originally airs on.

For example, if you watch episodes of popular FOX animated show Bob’s Burger on Netflix, the only time you’ll see the “Fox” named mentioned is at the end of the credits, only because the company’s studio produces the show. But if you watch Bob’s on Hulu, you’ll not only get a pre-show bumper advertising FOX, but then a reminder telling you when you can watch the show on FOX.

Even though Netflix has helped shows heavily serialized shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Lost gain audiences by allowing new viewers to play catch-up, the service has repeatedly stated that it is not in the business of promoting TV networks, many of whom don’t directly produce the shows they air.

But Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins tells the Journal that “We look at network brands as a benefit to us.”

And the co-chair of the Fox Television Group says that Hulu has “accepted the notion that the bigger we can build the show, the better it is likely to do on Hulu, not the opposite.”

Hulu’s biggest obstacle to getting subscribers appears to be its insistence on running ads. Unless Netflix, which has been steadfastly against the idea of interrupting its content for ad breaks, changes its tune, we have a hard time imagining Hulu gaining the same size audience.

Author : Ian Wise

The children gathered in a cluster outside the gate. The light from hydroponics reflected softly off the tops of their heads, all turned to the large black and white animal a few feet away. It dipped its head down and took a bit of grass, a tail swaying back and forth as if in a breeze. The tour guide of the Lasker City Zoo stepped in front of the children and gestured to the animal.

“This animal is called a cow. They were domesticated by homo sapiens around 12,000 years ago and used to as a source of food. In the early 21st century, they became the first livestock animal to have a fully mapped genome, which made them an obvious candidate for a domesticated protein source here.

‘Most cows used for food are housed in a warehouse and are raised brainless. They spend most of their lives in a coma. The only time you will see a cow like this — active and grazing on its own — is in a facility like ours.”

The children had read about animals, but most of the nine year-olds had never seen an animal any larger than cat. Their homes were populated by sameness as all civilians had adopted pale, powder white skin and brown eyes. The children had learned that their bodies, hairless and stocky, were adaptations to a confined space and controlled temperature. They referred to homo sapiens as primates and meant it to mean more primitive versions of themselves. The children were raised to be analytical thinkers, and there was a brief pause before a child near the front raised their hand.

“The cow looks just like the picture in our book. How come they didn’t evolve like us?”

“That is an excellent question. Animals are no longer capable of breeding, which means that any animal you encounter here is a clone. They essentially carry the same DNA they did a thousand years ago.”

“How many different kinds of animals were there?”

“Oh, thousands, I’m sure. A lot of records were lost, but I’m sure there were probably a few thousand. There are pictures of animals with horns on their faces and some documentation of entire civilizations of small creatures called ‘insects’ that built dwellings under the ground, like us. But it’s hard to say how much was fantasy.”

Locked in the archives, the library they had pulled down below, there were records of nearly nine million different species having inhabited the Earth. What was lost was where they all went, because when the lucky future citizens of Lasker fled the cancer and impending nuclear winter above, they shut it all out. 2,000 feet under ground; children of Lasker looked up to the ceiling and were forced only to wonder what used to be.

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