Bewarethewumpus

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Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer

The lumen panels are set to ‘candlelight’ and the susurrus of the climate control system is muted to barely a whisper. The room is twilit, draped with banners from a hundred victories. In a depression on the floor, an ornamental pool has been reborn as a cushion- and pillow-lined nook for a wearied and bloody command couple to find a moments respite.

An indistinct figure with flaxen hair tilts a face of rare beauty to gaze up at the chiselled lines of a face that could have been hewn from granite – and would have seemed softer had it been so.

“How do I die?”

“It will be a thing of surprise and expectation, an act unforeseen, yet suddenly so obvious to those staggering with grief. ‘Such a bright soul could not last in the tawdry environs of today’, they will say.”

“Michael?”

“He will be as one felled by a mighty blow, but the need to be there for your armies will save him. Duty will ever be his salvation after you are gone.”

“Will I bring peace?”

“Alas, no. There will be a cessation of hostilities. A funeral so rare because of the theretofore unseen gathering of intergalactic luminaries. But then the recriminations will start and rattling sabres will counterpoint venomous rhetoric. The year granted by your death will be recalled as you bestowing a gift upon the troops, even in your passing.”

“What of my killer?”

“He – or more correctly, it – is a companion of doers and movers throughout history, a creature that feeds on the rare essences generated by true heroines and inspirational leaders. But all of that is merely entrée to the haut cuisine created by the storm of emotion over each notary’s death. Thus what started as happenstance has become modus operandi. It is the lover and killer of those who make mankind great.”

“Will it miss me?”

“Forever. Every slaying wreaks decade-long havoc upon its mind, for all that the ecstasy of gourmet fare thunders within. You will be sorely missed.”

“Can you protect me, as you have done so many times before?”

“To defend you would require the end of me.”

“I know my killer very well, don’t I?”

“You do.”

“I started with the wrong question, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“When?”

“Close your eyes.”

The molecularly-aligned edges pass through sleight fields, body armour, dermal weave and titanium-laced bone with only the slightest frissance of impact. The resonance that realigns the edges is unperturbed as the weapon describes a swift reverse question mark in her heart, sundering chambers and cleaving erythrocytes.

She feels a quiver under her breast, but knows the knife is sharper than pain: death will take her before sensory trauma registers.

Author : Feyisayo Anjorin

When I was a child growing up in Akure, surrounded by hills and tall trees, and green fields, I believed the book of genesis. The first book of the bible was said to be about the beginning of everything. The first things, the newness, the freshness, the revelation. If life indeed has an end, the beginning must be like the morning of it.

We know a lot about beginnings in this place. A beginning of growth, a beginning of rot, an iroko tree could fall for the need of a power; flowers bloom in their time and wither. We know those mornings of rosy dreams and bright flags, when we were drunk on hope, when we were certain of our reason to believe the best.

There was a time when Africa was reborn; a new Africa from the ruins of slave trade, colonialism, and apartheid. Like a baby, and later like a child, we had our excuses. And we could be excused. The misunderstanding of the differing tribes and tongues could cause wars and start fires; we followed our rulers slavishly while children starved and became skeletons, and vultures waited, looking down, waiting for our dead.

We were poor because of the white man’s oppressive system that we hope to change. Soon change is coming. Soon. We were sure.

Now we’ve gone a hundred years into the twenty first century life. Akure, Calabar, Mangaung, Monrovia, Gweru, wherever; we are all Africans because we can still count our giant trees and green fields. We still have a home for lions, and monkeys, and rhinos, and rats, and bats. We have a home for them without needing zoos. Not everybody is as fortunate. All some people have now are videos and pictures of “wildlife”. Sorry for mentioning that word; but this is Africa.

Maybe we are not really behind because we still have to import almost everything needed to be twenty first century savvy.

And then this issue of the law enforcement robots. It doesn’t bother me one bit. The police were a mess before them. There was a time some terrorists abducted over two hundred teenage girls in Chibok and it took the army over a year to get them back. Happy young girls; innocent and vulnerable. Some came back with babies, some pregnant, some came back with HIV and STDs; they had all been raped. They were all scarred for life.

The law enforcement robots were imported two years ago. To be sincere, I’m baffled by their human rights records because of their slavish dedication to the law. I’m not happy that the tossed the most revered Yoruba monarch into the car trunk. I’m against the injury inflicted on those alleged to be resisting arrests. I believe they do issue too many speed fines. They need to put a human face on these things.

But you can see clear signs of sanity here! There was a time when the law meant nothing to government officials and to citizens. It was chaos and we were getting too attached to lawlessness; which was toxic!

This is Africa and our peculiar problems need drastic solutions and adjustments.

The law enforcement robots of Africa have now been programmed to shoot dead any African head of state that tries to go beyond the term of office.

I was glad to hear it as the sun rose this morning on Radio Alalaye while sipping palm wine by the window. I waited there, listening to the online analysis on the benefits and ills.

I got more palm wine. This is just a beginning.

What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings. D. Brian Burghart, editor of the Reno News and Review, has spent two years compiling Fatal Encounters, a croudsourced national database of police violence and publishing stories with his findings.

Saving money costs money. Period.

Some prosthetic limbs are so advanced they can be controlled by the brain, but no bionic arm or leg will ever be truly be life-like until they have "skin" that can feel. This new artificial skin developed by a team of American and Korean researchers,...

This Rottweiler puppy can’t get enough of its prisoner kitty.

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Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog

brentalfloss has released a new music video – this one is about EarthBound and Jeff and also has some neat graphics!

You can also get the song on Bandcamp here.

Thanks to everyone who sent in news about this!

From children's book to web series to Telltale adventure game to a four-year stint as an incredibly quiet thing, Homestar Runner was one of the first really important things on the internet. Where did it come from? Atlanta, of course.

Specifically Dunwoody, Georgia, where series creators Mike and Mark Chapman (the Brothers Chaps) attended school with my little sister. This is important, as it was a major factor in my getting an interview with the pair back in 2008. Only about half of the questions were "So how's your sister?"

Six years later, HomestarRunner.com is slowly returning after a four-year hiatus more-or-less explained in the video above. In case you have no idea who Homestar Runner, Strong Bad or The Cheat are, now is a very good time to hit up the website and watch everything. Every single thing. I envy you the experience.

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Author : Martyn Dade-Robertson

“How about AtJohnaxith?”

“What”

“AtJohnaxith. I know its similar to AtRachelsynth and AtJonoheist’s youngest AtJaneith but they won’t mind will they?”

“This is not a good time darling–aaaaa”

AtMarystrum lay back on her bed, arched her back and dug her nails into the arm of the attending midwife. AtCiscoric sat beside her, tapping absentmindedly at his compuroll and muttered, to himself:

“Crap. One hit. Already taken”

“Why do we have to do this nowwwww oh GOD!!!!”

“It just doesn’t feel right. The little guy can’t come into the world without a name. We should have done this ages ago”

AtCiscoric reclined in a Foamafirm birthing chair, looked out of the window and let the sounds of his wife’s labor wash over him. The gentle electropan-pipe music playing in the background and the dimmed lights were not easing his mind. This should be one of the greatest days of his life but it just wasn’t going how he’d planned.

“It was so much easier for our fathers’ generation. They just took from the measly selection of available names and put them together. With the addition of few extra vowels and the right consonants you could create something unique without too much trouble. Now it feels like very letter combination is taken already”.

“Cisci darling seriously…”

“As for my great grandfather. His name was John. JOHN! There must have been dozens of them.”

AtMarystrum was panting quickly now. The midwife consulted the fetal heart monitor app on her bracelet before flipping back to a game app in which she flung smiley-faced sperms at a grumpy looking egg. “Everything’s normal” she said – to sound professional. The bed would, after all, take care of the hard stuff. She was to birthing what flight attendants where to piloting. Leave the flight to the autopilot and serve the drinks. Although the drinks here were served by a machine down the corridor.

“Your twitter feed’s gone crazy darling.”

AtMarystrum, who didn’t have enough breath to argue any more, responded with a low guttural moan.

@Elizabtheen: go girl! @Marystrum
@Michamiliod: Have you thought about taking an existing name and putting two X’s in the middle. #Michamxxiliod #BBY_NMS.
@Margaranium: @Michamiliod Aren’t you supposed to be working @Marystum?
@Michamiliod: @Margaranium Hadn’t you heard @Marystrum has just gone into labor.
@Michamiliod: RT@Ciscoric: @Marystrum has just gone into labor.
@Elizabtheen: why haven’t you twtd in 2 hours @Marystrum?
@Rachelsynth: Don’t make it too long. You never get retweeted with a long handle #BBY_NMS.
@Janicooldomincohemp: RT @Rachelsyth: Don’t make it to long. You never get retweeted with a long handle #BBY_NMS.
@Franciltornalo: RT Janicooldomincohemp: RT @Rachelsyth: Don’t make it to long. You never get retweeted with a lo
@Elizabtheen: You ignoring me? Scrw you @Marystrum!

“They want a status update honey. Do you want me to tweet something on your behalf?”

There weren’t enough vowels to translate the noises emanating from Marystrum’s lips and bowels and AtCiscoric couldn’t find a suitable emoticon. He instead opted for the approximate translation:

@Marystrum: Nearly there!

@Elizabtheen: Push!

@Michamiliod RT: @Elizabtheen: Push!

@Margaranium: RT: @Michamiliod RT: @Elizabtheen: Push!

@Rachelsynth: RT: @Margaranium: RT @Michamiliod RT: @Elizabtheen: Push!

@Janicooldomincohemp: RT: @Rachelsynth: RT: @Margaranium: RT @Michamiliod RT: @Elizabtheen: Push!

@Franciltornalo: RT: @Janicooldomincohemp: RT: @Rachelsynth: RT: @Margaranium: RT @Michamiliod RT: @Elizabtheen: Push!

“AtCiscoric…Sir…Mr AtCiscoric?”

“Yes?”

AtCiscoric looked up, startled to be torn away from his data flow.

“Would you like to meet your son?”

A tiny figure was being cradled by the PostNatal’s mechanical conveyor which rocked him back and forth through the Blow-dry and Baby Shine. AtCiscoric put down his Compuroll and looked towards Marystrum, who’s pained expressions were now transformed to ones of joy.

“Would you like to hold him”.

His son, now swaddled in a white antibacterial towel, was offered up to AtCiscoric on the PostNatal’s elevated platform. Calm but gasping its first breaths, the baby looked up at its father. Its eyes were blinking and unfocused but recognizable to AtCiscoric as his own. AtCiscoric held the boy, struggling to grasp the enormity of the event and working out how he should react. Then he knew. Settling the baby down, he returned to his compuroll, logged out of Twitter and created a new account:

@Cistoric_2: Hello World!

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Dec. 5, 2014 -- A Delta IV Heavy rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida carrying NASA's Orion spacecraft on an unpiloted flight test to Earth orbit. Liftoff was at 7:05 a.m. EST. During the two-orbit, four-and-a-half hour mission, engineers will evaluate the systems critical to crew safety, the launch abort system, the heat shield and the parachute system. Photo: NASA

NASA's new Orion spacecraft made a flawless launch, a glorious flight to space, and a "bull's-eye" splashdown today. The journey was "the most perfect flight you could ever imagine," said Mission Control commentator Rob Navias.

Watch the stunning launch video:

The entire operation was as close to perfect as it gets. The unmanned Orion craft launched successfully atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket today, Dec. 5 2014, at 7:05 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Orion splashed down some 4.5 hours later in the Pacific after a breathtaking test flight that reached 3,604 miles from earth, and in doing so, heralded a new era of manned spaceflight.

Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) is the first flight test for NASA’s new deep space capsule and represents a critical step on NASA's journey to Mars.

"There's your new spacecraft, America," said Navias when the Orion capsule prepared to splash down some 270 miles off Mexico's Baja California peninsula.

Don't miss our earlier dispatch from Cape Canaveral by Sawyer Rosenstein, and here's the official NASA blog with a blow-by-blow of today's wonderful, historic flight. Go Orion! Some photos from NASA today, in more or less reverse chronological order.

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The Satanic Temple is a controversial religious organization whose main purpose is not to worship Satan, but to bring awareness to the varieties of religious freedom in the United States.

The spokesperson and co-founder of the Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, was interviewed in 2013 about his motivation for creating the organization. When asked if the Satanic Temple is primarily a satanic or a satirical group, he responded

That is a common question. I say why can't it be both? We are coming from a solid philosophy that we absolutely believe in and adhere to. This is Satanism, and to us it couldn't be called anything other than Satanism. However, our metaphor of Satan is a literary construct inspired by authors such as Anatole France and Milton—a rebel angel defiant of autocratic structure and concerned with the material world. Satanism as a rejection of superstitious supernaturalism. This Satan, of course, bears no resemblance to the embodiment of all cruelty, suffering, and negativity believed in by some apocalyptic segments of Judeo-Christian culture. The word Satan has no inherent value. If one acts with compassion in the name of Satan, one has still acted with compassion. Our very presence as civic-minded socially responsible Satanists serves to satirize the ludicrous superstitious fears that the word Satan tends to evoke.

Recently, the Satanic Temple sent Satanic coloring books to the Orange County School District in Florida requesting distribution to children after a Christian organization was allowed to hand out Bibles.

The Satanic Temple also claims to be a strong believer in reproductive freedom for women. They are taking advantage of the recent Hobby Lobby ruling on religious freedom to seek a religious exemption for those who believe that women should not be forced to listen to information with no scientific basis prior to receiving an abortion.

The Satanic Temple's FAQ states in response to the question "Is this a hoax?":

So inured is the general public to the idea that there is only one monolithic voice of "the" religious agenda that any attempt at a counter-balance — or assertion of a minority voice — is often viewed as necessarily a mere targeted provocation against those who enjoy an unquestioned tacit assertion of sole squatters rights in the religio-political dialogue.

I believe in Jibbers Crabst.

View

(414): I'm worried about your health. And your boobs. Actually, health, then boobs. Health first, boobs second. And third.

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Youtuber Tony Zhou at Every Frame a Painting does a wonderful analysis of what makes Jackie Chan's action—and comedy—work so damn well.

You might remember Tony's examination of Michael Bay's techniques.

Here, take a look at his analysis at action and comedy in Jackie Chan films:

If you like this video, check out more more of Tony's videos on his YouTube channel.

Jackie Chan - How to Do Action Comedy [Every Frame a Painting@YouTube]

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

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ANNOUNCEMENT: We will cease taking Augie preorders on December 15.

New Comic: Tradition

Researchers studying the universe are ramping up to take the "image of the century" — the first ever image of a supermassive black hole.

Since the 18th century, astronomers have discussed the possibility of exotic objects in space so massive that their gravitational grip swallows everything that dares to get too close, including light. We call these objects, black holes, but in truth we do not know what a black hole really is because we've never actually seen one.

While the evidence for the existence of black holes is compelling:

"We have abundant evidence that black holes — or something very much like them — exist," Todd Thompson, astronomy professor at Ohio State University, told Business Insider earlier this year. "This evidence comes from the orbits of stars around the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy."

Scientists will continue to argue the contrary until physical, observational evidence is provided.

Now, a dedicated team of astrophysicists armed with a global fleet of powerful telescopes is out to change that. If they succeed, they will snap the first ever picture of the monstrously massive black hole thought to live at the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

It will be the "image of the century" according to scientists at the MIT Haystack Observatory, one of the 13 institutes from around the world involved with the project.

This ambitious project, called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), is incredibly tricky, but recent advances in their research are encouraging the team to push forward, now.

The reason EHT needs to be so complex is because black holes, by nature, do not emit light and are, therefore, invisible. In fact, black holes survive by gobbling up light and any other matter — nearby dust, gas, and stars — that fall into their powerful clutches.

How to glimpse a black hole

So, how do you see something that is invisible? The answer leads us to the most advanced sub-millimeter telescopes in use today — telescopes that detect wavelengths of light longer than the human eye can see.

The EHT team is going to zoom in on a miniscule spot on the sky toward the center of the Milky Way where they believe to be the event horizon of a supermassive black hole weighing in at 4 million times the mass of our sun.

Every black hole has a point of no return, called the event horizon. Once light, or anything else in the universe, passes the event horizon, it never escapes and is swallowed up. Forever.

We can still see the material, however, right before it falls into eternal darkness. The EHT team is going to try and glimpse this ring of radiation that outlines the event horizon. Experts call this outline the "shadow" of a black hole, and it's this shadow that the EHT team is ultimately after to prove the existence of black holes.

"If we see the shadow, that will be the most powerful evidence we have that [black holes] do exist," MIT's Shep Doeleman told PBS.

A difficult task

This shadow, however, is incredibly small from our perspective.

The spot on the sky where the team is looking is the size a grapefruit would appear on the moon, as seen from Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope couldn't even see something this small.

That's why the EHT team turned to radio dish telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, California, Chile, and Spain that, when combined, can resolve details more than 2,000 times finer than Hubble.

Recently, other EHT researchers, at the University of Arizona, simulated what our galaxy's central black hole and its shadow should look like, to get a better idea of what they might expect from their observations.

"That ring of light makes the black hole easier to find than if we were looking for complete blackness," Dimitrios Psaltis, of The University Of Arizona, said in a statement. "These simulations also help us find ways to distinguish this signature from all this swirling plasma around the black hole."

As shown in the clip below, the black hole at our galaxy's center is emitting jets of extremely hot plasma in confined columns at opposite ends. These columns are known as jets and have been observed around other objects throughout the universe. The EHT team wants to see beyond these jets, to the event horizon.

Using the university's powerful supercomputer, they created a black hole that is even more scientifically accurate than the visually stunning black hole in Christopher Nolan's latest film "Interstellar."

"Our team of four here at the UA can produce visuals of a black hole that are more scientifically accurate in a few seconds," Feryal Ozel, also of the University of Arizona, in the statement. Some of the visuals in "Interstellar" took a special-effects team of 30 and up to 100 hours for the computers to process.

Building the telescope team

To further improve their chances of seeing a black hole's shadow, the EHT team is continuously adding new telescopes to their global network. This is because the sensitivity of their measurements increases with each additional telescope, allowing them to measure finer and finer detail.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — the world's most powerful submillimeter array — is slated to join the EHT project soon, along with additional telescopes in Mexico and the South Pole.

Last July, scientists installed the world's most precise atomic clock, costing $250,000, at ALMA's Operations base. The clock will sync ALMA's telescopes to other observatories of the EHT to ensure their recordings are accurate to within milliseconds. In fact, this atomic clock is so precise it will still be accurate to within a second 100 million years from now.

"The Event Horizon Telescope is the first to resolve spatial scales comparable to the size of the event horizon of a black hole," University of California, Berkeley astronomer Jason Dexter told Universe Today. "I don't think it's crazy to think we might get an image in the next five years."

CHECK OUT: These Incredible Images Show What Humanity Will Look Like When We Colonize The Solar System

READ MORE:  The Incredible Story Of The Women Who Were Meant To Be The First Astronauts But Were Left On Earth

Join the conversation about this story »

Glenn Beck's readers are ever so pissed. In case you don't know, the Satanic Temple is actually an atheist pranking group.

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“When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.”

- Chris Rock in New York Magazine