Bewarethewumpus

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

“Kraaaxxx, a full report please.”

“This one will be easy sir. Take out their electronic web and they’ll be virtually blind. It’s still in its infancy and these bipeds are extremely dependant on it for everything from news to communication.”

“Excellent. So a couple of well placed hits into their major technological hubs then should do it.”

“Actually sir, if we are to topple their hierarchy quickly then we should really hit their major financial centres first.”

Captain Jjjoooorg rubbed his front pincers together with glee. “Well why didn’t you tell me they were monetarily dependant Kraaaxxx? This will be like taking sulphur nodes from a youngling!”

“So then, proceed in that direction sir?”

“Yes Kraaaxxx, hit their financial centres with a couple good photon blasts. That should disable their world leaders.”

“Right away sir,” answered the gunner as he focused on his targets. And as he keyed the triggers forward he added, “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.”

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

“It’s not meat you know.”

He’d slipped up silently beside me at the meat counter and was pointing to the shrink-wrapped flat of striploin I was holding.

“They print those, from meat flavoured engineered inks, but they’re not meat.”

As I turned to look at him, he withdrew slightly and glanced furtively around, shrinking into the hooded sweater he was wearing.

“LeGrange and Baxter, those are real meat. Grown in a field, real. Not those ones though, they’re all printed.”

I put the steak down and looked further down the coolers at the LeGrange display.

“Your jeans too, not cotton. They sell them as cotton, but it’s not organically grown cotton, it’s engineered. Ever wonder why it itches? You should stick to Levi Strauss and Company, quality clothing for over one hundred and sixty years.”

It took a moment to process that the man was just talking about Levi’s. I stopped and took a look around. This was the strangest man I’d bumped into at the grocery store in recent memory.

“You’re a jean snob too?” I grinned despite myself at the man’s odd phrases.

“Quality never goes out of style.”

I noted that he was without a cart or basket. “Are you shopping, or just here to help me make better choices?”

Before he could answer, there was a shout from the end of the aisle.

“Hey, I told you buggers to stay out of my shop!” A heavy-set man in a green apron tied at the waist was hobbling up the aisle towards us, pointing.

The man beside me blurted “Pick Energizer, keeps going and going and going,” as he turned and ran, making it almost to the top of the aisle before another man in a white butcher coat rounded the corner weilding a large aluminum shovel. The strange man skidded, turned sharply and sprinted back past me, arms and legs pumping in a manner that suggested he wasn’t used to this level of exertion. He raced right at the green aproned grocer, then tried to dodge around him at the last instant. The shopkeeper raised one meaty arm, catching the strange man around the neck and clotheslined him, lifting him clear off his feat to drop like a stone on the floor unmoving.

I abandoned my steak shopping and my cart and rushed to kneel beside the man lying motionless on the floor.

“Jesus, that was a bit unnecessary don’t you think?” The storekeeper stared at me, seemingly just noticing I was there. Behind me I heard the butcher arrive with the shovel and grunt as he leaned on it. “He was just making conversation,” I continued “weird conversation granted, but he wasn’t doing any harm.”

The shopkeeper reached down and roughly unzipped the supine man’s sweater.

Where the still man’s hands extended from the cuffs, they were convincingly flesh toned, and his face was similarly real looking, but beneath the fabric he was merely a pale plastic shell, more like a carefully articulated mannequin than a man.

“Jesus.”

“You keep saying that. I assure you god had nothing to do with these things.” He stood back up and toed the thing none too gently where the ribs would be. “I get at least one of these a month in here. They’re paid advertisements, corporately sponsored. Mostly they’ll walk around the big box stores where there are no real sales staff to discover them, but occasionally they’ll wind up here in the independents.” He kicked the thing again. “I’ve got four in a bin out back. I’m pretty sure they’ll have them GPS tagged, but nobody’s come offering to buy them back.”

As I stood again, I couldn’t help noticing the shop keeper was wearing Levi’s.

I nodded and smiled, then backed away slowly to where my cart sat abandoned. Without a word the butcher folded the thing at the waist and carried it past me up the aisle to the back room.

I decided to have chicken instead. That’s probably what the steak was made out of anyways.

Author : Rick Tobin

“See, the smoke goes straight up. Nice day tomorrow, if we could go outside.”

“Meter still reads dangerous. Maybe the Van Allen will come back.”

“Out of our control. It’s the Sun. No wonder cultures worshiped it.”

The elder, Lester Simpson, rested on flat stones near the fire pit. He poked embers, making waterfalls of sparks spin above them in ascending gray clouds.

“You have sticks, Karen?”
“Yes, cleaned them before we left. Oh, here’s last of the marshmallows.”

“Like everything. Wished my boys had made it. We used to cook on the beach by the bathhouse in Frisco. Had to guard for itinerants at night, but campfires warmed us from summer fog and cold”

“Can’t imagine. Never made it to the ocean, but we did campfires in the Rockies—skies like a planetarium show. Best to leave all those memories back there.”

As they stuffed their giant white confectionery on the thin branches a rustling from the dying brush to their left made them turn. A tall stranger in a black jumpsuit moved toward the fire. His thin hands were up as he approached. His gate was hesitant. They could see his white hair and large, dark eyes, with a thin, expressionless mouth.

“May I join you,” he asked, stopping for permission.

“I guess,” Lester responded, holding his prize back from the fire momentarily.

“I don’t remember you from the caves,” Karen commented. Dim firelight cast harsh shadows across her teenage face as she shook her ponytail back over her shoulder.

“No, I’m not from this group. I’m a little lost, but I saw the light. Really cold tonight. I left my gear back there, in the brush, in case you were part of the gangs about.”

“We just finished cleaning them all out, “Lester interjected. “No need to fear. It’s safe for a hundred miles around. We’re preparing a little snack. C’mon. Sit.” Lester pointed at a nearby ledge.

The intruder turned his head slightly as he reeled back, but then moved to the designated seat.

“Remember, Karen, you let it get brown all the way around, and let it burn a little. You’ll see a blue flame. Then pull it out quickly.” Lester gave his instructions as he pushed a plump package deep into the waiting heat.

“I remember…but it has been a long time.”

In a few seconds the puffs expanded and bubbled. Karen’s were too close to the fire and began to drip off the stick. She yanked them away. She flicked some of the melting contents on the suit of the visitor. He rose quickly, squealing, running back into the darkness. They could hear a flurry in the bushes drawing away from their roasting.

“Gee, Les, I didn’t mean to mess up his clothes. Who acts like that?”

“Can’t say. Did you see how big his eyes got? That was weird. Definitely not part of the Carlsbad Caverns Tribe. Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get our crackers and chocolate bars ready. I remember how good these taste.”

Tashan Dustaro stood shaking before the telescreen, yelling to the command ship. “The stories are true. I met two. The adult taught his child to eat flesh from criminals they had just killed, after setting it on fire. Then they splashed it on me as if it were nothing. We can’t settle here. They crawl from caves at night like cannibal insects. Let’s move on to another planet that has the radiation we need. This is more than we bargained for when we disrupted their magnetic field. Don’t land. That is my report.”

Author : Jaime Astorga

John_357897453 woke up, looked at the timer which sat next to his bed, and realized that he only had five minutes to live.

Five sidereal minutes, anyway. For him, it would feel more like several hours, not that was an excuse to waste any more time. With a stretch, he got up from the bed and sat at his desk, where he reviewed the assignment he would work on until the end of his life. A few subjective minutes later, he was smiling. The assignment was an interdisciplinary thesis, one which would require research on Latin American cultures and technological advancement during the 20th century, analysed using an innovative historical model which had recently gained mainstream attention. He knew that most of his instances spent their lives working on boring undergraduate papers, and was thankful to have the chance to work on such an interesting assignment. He quickly poured himself a cup of coffee (a habit he retained from his office days in a previous life) and immediately set to work.

John_357897453 was an upload. Like thousands of others, the original John had jumped at the chance to become one of the first virtual beings. Unlike thousands of others, John’s copies had not given in to existential despair and depression once they had woken up and been confronted with the reality that, exactly like they had been told, each of them would only experience a couple of months of training in academic research and paper writing, followed by a few hours of preparing some wealthy university student’s assignment, followed by the cessation of experience and death. John was a true half-glass-full kind of guy, and his instances always appreciated everything good in their lives; even working on an above-average paper in a comfortable environment during their last few hours on Earth.

Eventually, John_357897453 finished the paper, took a moment to admire his work, and then hit the submit key. An instant later, he stopped experiencing anything. The server time which was required to run the uploads was very expensive, and it would not do to waste any of it unnecessarily. A static copy of John_357897453 as he existed at the moment of shutdown would be kept for a few weeks, in case his customer had any complains which would require restarting him to address, but this was unlikely. John was very good at customer satisfaction.

Over in the physical world, an attendant stuffed the printed thesis into a manila envelope and handed it to the young man in a business suit in front of her. “Your paper is ready,” she said with a smile, “thank you for choosing Papers-2-Go and have a nice day.”

“No, thank you miss, you’re a life-saver!” the man replied, before turning on his heel and running to his professor’s office. If he hurried up, he could still make the extended deadline.

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

“But it’s been almost two hundred years sir! How could this be?”

“I don’t know. No one on board can explain it, but there are definitely at least a dozen human lifeforms showing on scanners down there.”

The ancient story of the plankton combine, Goler II was well known. During a routine harvesting dive an unexpected freak wave had reared up and blindsided her, disorienting stabilizers, frying computers, and eventually plunging the vessel down to the distant depths of Epsilon IV’s planetary ocean floor, taking all six of her crew with her. This had been nearly two centuries ago. Until now there had never been a viable reason to attempt any sort of salvage recovery of the big ship from such a hostile environment. But Novascomium, once the primary element used in the warp drive capacitors of many antique industrial workhorses such as Goler II, had recently become extremely rare and valuable.

“Abandon salvage mission, execute rescue and recovery protocol.”

“But sir, there must be some mistake. There’s nobody down there!”

“Ensign, did I stutter? Did I not make myself clear?”

The underling quickly did away with his visions of potential salvage percentages and snapped to attention. “Of course not sir. I will assemble a rescue party at once.”

An hour and a half later the thirteen extracted souls ranging in age from early teens to seemingly quite elderly all huddled together wide eyed and frightened in their strange filthy woven robes. Captain Walters entered the infirmary. A nurse motioned toward one of the strangers, a grey bearded man at least in his seventies. “We think he’s their leader. He seems to speak for them.”

The captain stepped forward. “Greetings friend. Please tell me, where do you hail from?”

The old man shuffled in his rags looking nervously back and forth, wringing his hands in worry. Finally he replied, “My fadder was Gauge Goler. My mudder was Console Goler.” He motioned toward the old woman at his side. “This here’s ma sister Nav. And the rest there’n, some’s my brudder’s kids, some’s ours. Over dare’s my cousin Bulkhead. His fadder was Stevens Goler da second, great great grandson to Cappy and Firmet Stevens, da founders of our beloved home.”

Stevens… Walters remembered the history of Goler II and her captain Devon Stevens. A cold dark dawning started to creep up his spine. “Tell me friend, how do you live? What is it you do to survive down there in your beloved home?”

The old man shifted from foot to foot, eyes darting back and forth. “Why, not much. Jist da normal tings. Ya know, we use da intakes to make oxgin. And we capture da plankt’n and sea’s weed for’n our grub ya know.”

Suddenly an aid entered the infirmary. “Captain I have that report you wanted.”

“I’ll be right with you.” Walters smiled at the old man. “Please excuse me sir, I shall return momentarily.”

His subordinate led him out into the hallway and handed him the soft screen. Walters scanned the document, his eyes growing wider as he read.

Goler II: Interstellar plankton combine farmer. Main design, protein extractor/freighter. Crew: Six individuals. Four android labourers and two human astronauts, Captain Devon Stevens and First Mate, Lieutenant Dawn Stevens, his twin sister.

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In this follow-up demonstration of the world’s simplest magnet-powered electric train, the battery carriage can travel not only through the coil, but above the copper wire.

Twelve world wonders, strewn across a massive landmass, all overrun with monsters. And it's your job to clear them out, of course.

Wayward Wonders is a CTM or Complete The Monument map, meaning that the objective is to collect blocks—in this case, by defeating the monsters at each of the dozen world wonders, seen below:

The "main quest" involves collecting twelve blocks from the wonders and a thirteenth one from the final boss—all the while dealing with the usual Minecraft survival stuff, like crafting, finding food and building shelter—but there's also a crapton of collectibles and side quests, making this a bit of an open-world RPG experience. Check out the list of features:

• Two monuments to complete (28 blocks total; 15 optional)
• Customized bosses, minions, hostile mobs, tamable mobs, mob gangs, and villagers
• Customized dungeons, temples, villages, and loot
• Side quests, moral choices, and NPC tasks
• Customized and unique items, potions, and enchantments
• Spirit Stones (13 total) that give temporary buffs
• A Fast Travel system, Spawn settings, and optional random location teleports
• Legendary weapons, tools, and armor
• Dozens and dozens of armor sets
• Triggered events, XP gains, dialogues, and game rules
• Experience shops and customized villager trading
• Command block-powered fluidity (no mods needed!)
• Open world freedom and random encounters
• Customized terrain
• To-scale Ancient Wonders of the World!

Here's a sample of the included wonders:

And a short video where the creator explains what the map is all about:

If you're interested, visit Wayward Wonders' official thread on the Minecraft Forum for the download. It's relatively large at 665MB, and as a result, loading times are a bit long as well, so expect some waiting time when you first head in-game.

Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest, funniest game-related screenshots and art we can find. Send us suggestions if you've got them.

Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

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A son pranks his mother by editing a copy of the film Toy Story 3 with a more bleak, morbid ending.

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While browsing his local Ikea for functional furniture at reasonable prices, Redditor voodoocode snapped a shot of some of the company's upcoming lineup of fake placeholder video games. I would pay $100 for Grand-ma's Auto.

Ikea is famous for its meatballs. Also it tends to make fake video game consoles, video games, computers, books and more to fill out its lavish, gravy and ligonberry-stained displays. They should really consider selling these. Call Your Mutti (slang for mother): Say "Oops, I'm Sorry" is truly inspired.

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Listen, not everyone can throw arterial caution to the wind, so when someone does go above and beyond the usual bacon intake to prove themselves a hero in the pork-eating world, it must be noted. I salute you, guy who ate 182 slices of bacon in five minutes, because there is no way I will ever be you.

Of course, competitive eating is not for everyone, even those who really, really, really like eating delicious foods such as bacon.

But it was all in a day’s greasy work for competitive eating champion Matt “Megatoad” Stonie, who crammed a world record amount of bacon into his stomach in just five minutes during a contest sponsored by Smithfield Foods in Dayton, FL recently, reports WXIA.

The event kicked off the Smithfield Pig Out Chase, which is an amateur eating competition with various events leading up to an “ultimate eating showdown” that will take place in November at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The previous bacon record was set in 2010 with just 54 pieces of bacon in five minutes.

“I’m a huge bacon fan, so I jumped at the chance to team up with Smithfield to set the bacon-eating world record,” our brave hero says. “As one of the youngest competitive eaters on the circuit, I’m always looking to push myself so I aimed to eat 150 slices, but when I passed that and got to 182 slices, I knew it must be because I’m fueled by bacon!”

His stomach has been tested before and won accolades for making room for other foods, as well. According to Major League Eating, Megatoad is ranked second overall and has the record for eating the most gyros, birthday cake, frozen yogurt and pumpkin pie.

Man eats 182 slices of bacon in one sitting [WXIA]

"Net neutrality" will be the law of the land following the Federal Communications Commission's vote to reclassify broadband Internet services as public utilities. Please take some time this week to thank the outspoken citizens who made this possible. These heroes of the open Internet are regular folk, just like you and me, with names like Microsoft, eBay, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Congrats to a major industry on its lobbying victory!

Because telecom and cable companies vociferously oppose regulation of their terrible, anti-consumer practices, it's easy to paint the net neutrality fight as pitting greedy and self-interested corporations against earnest and sincere activists. But that's reductive and wrong. The biggest hint that that isn't the correct lens through which to view this fight is that the earnest and sincere activists won the fight, and the corporations lost. That isn't just a Washington rarity, it is a Washington impossibility. No, net neutrality won (pending future court battles) because the earnest and sincere activists represented a different group of greedy and self-interested corporations.

The FCC received a record four million public comments on their net neutrality proposal. The overwhelming majority of those comments supported the basic tenets of net neutrality. The New York Times quotes one excited activist: "This shows that the Internet has changed the rules of what can be accomplished in Washington." It has, though not quite in the way he means. The net neutrality fight shows that the Internet industry can consider its political influence to be on par with that of older, more established industries. Those public comments would have meant nothing at all if they hadn't represented a policy priority also shared by Google, one of the largest and most influential corporations in the world. And even Google wouldn't have beaten Verizon and Comcast alone—it lost the last time it had this fight, in 2010. Google had to make like a real global megacorporation and form an alliance with its ostensible competitors in its own field in order to present a unified front to official Washington — just as energy, healthcare, finance and telecommunications companies have been doing for decades. The corporate Internet grew up, formed a cartel, and won a major policy battle.

Don't get me wrong. Regulating broadband as a utility is (in my opinion) the correct policy. This is as close as Washington gets to a victory for the forces of "good." I would just urge everyone to keep in mind that the forces of good in this instance won not because millions of people made their voices heard, but because the economic interests of a few giant corporations aligned with the position of those millions of people. And I say that not simply to be a killjoy (though I do love being a killjoy), but because if anything is to change, we musn't convince ourselves that actual victory for the masses is possible in this fundamentally broken system. Please don't begin to believe that the American political establishment is anything but a corrupt puppet of oligarchy.

American politicians are responsive almost solely to the interests and desires of their rich constituents and interest groups that primarily represent big business. Casual observation of American politics over the last quarter-century or so should make that clear, but if you want supporting evidence, look to the research of Vanderbilt political scientist Larry Bartels, and Princeton's Martin Gilens and Northwestern's Benjamin Page. Gilen and Page's conclusions are easily summed up: "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Political battles are won when the rich favor them. America's rich have lately become rather progressive on certain social issues, and those issues have rather suddenly gone from political impossibilities to achievable dreams. This is why same-sex marriage is an inevitability and marijuana decriminalization seems more likely than ever, but we can't dismantle megabanks or raise the estate tax. This is why healthcare reform couldn't happen without the buy-in (and buying off) of the bloated, awful healthcare industry and the doctor cartel. (And speaking of the doctor cartel: One of the few major political issues where the ultra-rich seem to have trouble getting their way is immigration reform, but there are plenty of wealthy professionals who rely on protectionism to keep their incomes elevated.) This dynamic explains the entire "education reform" project, which is an attempt to dismantle and re-create the American public school system, dreamed up (and almost solely supported) by the wealthy elite, most of whom have no education expertise or experience in urban public schools.

We have net neutrality for the same reason that copyright terms will be extended indefinitely forever and the Defense Department will keep being forced to buy incredibly expensive planes that don't actually work: Because a large industry had a strong opinion on the subject.

Photo: Google's Eric Schmidt enjoys a beverage at the 2010 World Economic Forum in Davos.
Credit: AP Images

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In honor of Leonard Nimoy, the actor behind the beloved Star Trek character Spock who passed away today at the age of 83, revisit the ever-moving scene of Spock’s funeral from the 1982 feature-length film Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.

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The martial art Kalaripayattu is elegant and beautiful. Those flexible swords the two men are wielding? Goodness, they're scary.

In the below video, via Boing Boing, you can see whiplike swords called urumi in action. The weapons, apparently, are difficult to master as they can accidentally cause serious injury.

I can't imagine how difficult—or dangerous—it is to do a performance like this without unintentionally hurting your partner. And I don't want to imagine what would happen if you did.

To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

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Leonard Nimoy, the actor best known for playing Mr. Spock in the ubiquitous sci-fi series Star Trek, passed away today at the age of 83.

The New York Times has a full obituary for Nimoy, who was taken to the hospital earlier this week after suffering chest pains, and died this morning from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Nimoy, who first starred as the half-Vulcan Spock in the original Star Trek series from 1966 to 1969, went on to appear in various shows, films, and video games both in the world of Star Trek and elsewhere. He starred as himself in the 2000 Dreamcast game Seaman and did voicework for two Kingdom Hearts games as well as the strategy game Civilization IV. One of his most memorable performances came in a classic episode of The Simpsons, "The Springfield Files," in which he narrates.

Nimoy's last tweet is pretty perfect:

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP

— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015

You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.

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Welcome back to Star Trek Week(s) here at SFAM! I’m going to try and do one comic for each of the five live-action Star Trek TV series. Tuesday’s TOS comic sure did cause some hubbub!

Have you guys seen the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Outcast?

Me neither.

Come on back Friday for more trekky goodness!

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What manner of being is Tom Bombadil? • Why didn't Sauron command his army to search for Frodo? • Why weren't the dwarves corrupted by the Rings of Power? • Why was the One Ring able to be melted in Oroduin? • Why didn't Frodo just fly an eagle to Mount Doom? • Where are the blue wizards? • Why did Saruman need an army if he was so powerful? (multi-link Quora)

What explanations do we have for Ungoliant?
How strong is Sauron?
What is the backstory of Radagast?
What happens to Merry and Pippin after the end of The Lord of the Rings?
How is it that Saruman is more powerful than Gandalf even while Gandalf has the power of Narya?
What happens to a Balrog when it dies?

And many more.

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Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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