Sam.rj.coley

Cloud Atlas by Dat Tran

As kids in the eighties and nineties we dreamed of being zapped into the worlds our favourite 8-bit creations. Now, thanks to Aled Lewis, we get a glimpse of what our world would look like if the pixelated heroes and villains of classic video games were able to roam in reality.

The pixel-art images were featured on Lewis’ Behance page with the following statement:

“A mash-up of video game characters and photographic scenes. As a kid I would become completely immersed in there crude pixel environments and they would seem very real! I thought it would be fun to try to express how gamers see these worlds. I spent many hours gaming with my siblings and friends when I was growing up and this aesthetic has really come to represent that time.”

What video game character do you want to see come to life?

(via Visual News)

The post An 8-Bit Fantasy Come True appeared first on Snapsort.

At least she understood me this time.

-Submitted by Amanda

-Submitted by Jacob

I have discovered what I humbly consider to be the most perfect use of the gif wall medium possible: The reaction shots of Oscar losers. As they are broadcast, you simply cannot take them all in since they're spread out on the screen in tiny boxes, and last but seconds. They're just flickers of emotion. I think that placing them side by side on infinite loops works best to fully read the reactions of disappointment, bitchiness, feigned cheer and actual cheer. As much as losing an Oscar (or winning even) is kind of an emotional Rorschach for the nominated actors, reading their expressions is a Rorschach for the viewers. Except for the really bitchy ones. Those we can all agree on.

Below are so so many examples of fallen dreams. Each row is all of the (present) members of one year's given category (I'm only using actors and actresses here). On far right, I've included the reaction of the winners just for good measure. Have fun laughing at their pain!

hodinkee:

fonrenovatio:

Living the lifestyle.

Amen.

This Classic Wondermark was originally published April 28, 2009!

Shaun of the Dead. Hot Fuzz. The World’s End. These movies make up the Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy, and they share more in common than the creative team of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright.

They all tell the story of the Monomyth, otherwise known as the Hero’s Journey:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

-Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Not familiar with this concept? Long story short, it’s a narrative structure that’s shared by many of our most memorable stories, from Gilgamesh to Star Wars. Some follow this structure on purpose; others by accident. Take a few moments to review the Wikipedia article and orient yourself to the seventeen stages. If you’re still a little fuzzy about what these stages look like in modern movies, check out this mapping of the Star Wars and Matrix trilogies to these stages as well.

Now, are you ready to Cross the Threshold and see how this maps to the Cornetto Trilogy? Probably not, because this is pretty insane. But here it is anyway (click for even larger version):

A few important things to keep in mind while reading this:

• The story elements don’t neatly follow the chronological order of the seventeen steps of the Hero’s Journey.
• This is no exact science. There may be better ways to map the story elements of the three movies to the seventeen steps.
• This is all probably not an accident. Director Edgar Wright filed a post on his blog about wanting to include a highly self-aware scene in Scott Pilgrim Versus the World in which Scott describes his own Hero’s Journey. He also name checks Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces in this post.

So what this all mean? In a nutshell, the Hero’s Journey effectively functions as a satirical element of these movies. Part of the satire may be in calling out the frequent usage of the Hero’s Journey in genre movies, but to me, most of the satire lies in the movies’ implicit reminders that achieving self-actualization and escaping from the mundanity of daily life is actually harder than what we see in these genre movies. Lacking a call to adventure, a crossing of a threshold, or an ultimate boon, we have no structure to defeat the real forces of conformity and mundanity in our lives. They may not be zombies, psychotic villagers, or robots, but they’re real, and that makes them more fearsome enemies than anything a storyteller can throw against a hero.

Readers: what do you think? Do you have any suggestions for better ways to map the movies’ plot points to the Hero’s Journey? Do you think the Hero’s Journey acts as a satire in the Cornetto Trilogy, or is it just a convenient way to tell a good story? Let me know in the comments!

Special thanks to Fenzel and Stokes, who came up with this idea on the Overthinking It Podcast, and Stokes, who filled out most of the steps for Shaun of the Dead.

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A classic, I think you'd agree

I used to get quite worked up about how the papers covered employment statistics. Whatever they were, we'd get made up headlines about how migrants had stolen ALL the jobs splashed across the front pages. Yesterday, some new employment figures were published and I got all nostalgic, so I looked to the tabloids to see if they were still pulling the same trick.

Turns out all sorts of things have been happening in the tabloid 'foreign worker scare story' petri dish while I've been away. I feel like a scientist who comes across a forgotten specimen at the back of a cupboard to find it's...mutated.


Surprisingly, there haven't been any shouty headlines about how foreigners have taken ALL the new jobs following the most recent figures. That's because the era of migrants taking all the jobs is over. Didn't you know?

Well it's over in the Mail anyway. In February there were fanfares for the government as the paper reported 'At last, most new jobs are filled by British workers thanks to stricter immigration policies'. At last! And all thanks to the policy covered the year before in 'Finally, British workers come first: Jobs for migrants slashed by half in visa clampdown'. Finally!

Of course, in the coverage of the most recent figures the paper is aghast at the number of jobs going to foreigners, but 'Number of people in work reaches record high of 29.7million but a third of new jobs go to foreign nationals' is at least clear that it's only a third of the jobs being filched these days.

Over at the Express though, things are different. The paper doesn't seem to have mentioned the number of migrants getting jobs in its coverage.

Three weeks ago though, long after the Mail declared that British workers were getting most new jobs, cack crack columnist Leo McKinstry informed us in 'Mass immigration is plunging our nation into crisis'* that:

It is ridiculous that when unemployment stands at almost 2.5 million more than half of all new jobs still go to foreigners.

Wait a minute? Doesn't he know it's the dawn of a new age and most new jobs go to British born people now? Maybe not. In June, in 'Male migrants enjoy higher levels of employment than men born in Britain', the Express told us:

An estimated 225,000 people among the 423,000 who found work in the last year were not born in the UK, showed data released by the Office for National Statistics.

Are migrants taking most new jobs or a third of them? Which paper is right? The answer is both. And neither.

In the Mail's triumphant piece from February, the paper used the same figures it always used to for its scare stories, but focusing on comparing stats from October to December 2012 with those from the same period in 2011. Most people added to the workforce in that period really were born in the UK.

So how is the Express right too? The piece from June looked at the same figures as the Mail did, but compared stats from January to March 2013 with the ones from the same period in 2012 - the next three month period on from the Mail's figures. The proportion of people from outside the UK in that period was much higher. Which means the figure has dropped again so the Mail can get its 'one third' number and the Express has just decided not to report it, right?

Uh, no.

In it's most recent coverage, the Mail seems to have ditched its traditional method for talking about foreigners taking jobs. If the paper had used the usual methods comparing the latest quarter's figures with last year they'd have got the same proportion that allowed Steve Doughty to yell 'Foreigners take two out of three new jobs as statistics reveal nearly 200,000 vacancies were filled by those born overseas' back in January 2011. In fact even the total number is higher, at 204,000.

Instead of looking at the same stats, the paper has switched from measuring the rise in the number of people in the workforce born outside the UK to measuring foreign citizens. But this number has always been lower.

Back in the day, the Mail had a different narrative to push. We needed to be scared about the number of foreigners Labour had let in to ruin the country then. Now, it has to tell us that the tories are great and are saving us from the worst of the swarthy hordes. Switching the measure makes that possible.

The Express, however, hasn't changed so much. Since its Political Editor announced he'd be standing for election as a UKIP MEP, the paper has no reason to prop up the coalition where it can be outflanked on the right, so it'll carry on telling us mass migration is going to bring on the zombie apocalypse.

One thing that neither paper has done this time, which used to be a fun staple, is pick another arbitrary time period to measure. It's one way the papers could claim migrants had taken ALL the new jobs.

What if we compare the current quarter with the previous one? We'd see that the total number of people in had risen by 112,000 - while the number of those born overseas has risen by 136,000. Whoah! That's over 100%! Back in 2007 when the Express made a similar calculation that showed foreigners took more new jobs that were actually available, it led to a front page headline. Now, nothing.


(Of course, that might be because the PCC slapped them on the wrist and made them take the story down from their website, but they used the same method to calculate their scare stories ever since).

Measuring how many new jobs had been stolen by foreigners since Labour came to power was another favourite. So, what happens if we look at what has happened since the last election?  Comparing July to September 2010 with the most recent figures shows that the number of people in work overall has risen by 426,000, while the number of people born outside the UK has risen by * pffft! * SHIT! 2,256,000! That's, that's over 500% of new jobs that have been snatched by foreigners!

Of course, no they haven't. These figures are just as crap as they always were. It's just interesting to see the tabloids not bothering with them any more.

This could be because they have a new target now. The Romanians and Bulgarians. Dun-dun-durrrn! Today the Express yelped 'Number of Romanian and Bulgarian workers in Britain soars 36 per cent', while the Mail squeals '100 Romanians and Bulgarians take a job in Britain every day, official figures show'.

If you put it another way, you could say that the percentage of Romanian and Bulgarian nationals in the workforce has risen from 0.31% to 0.42% but that doesn't make as scary a headline.

Nice to see the're still up to some tricks, I guess.

• Here's a link to the ONS employment statistics, where you can find tables for all the figures I looked at today. Knock yourself out. Go on. Knock yourself out. I dare you.

*This is just four days after he told us 'Mass immigration is destroying the fabric of society'. That's what I hate about McKinstry. Too timid to tell us what he really thinks about immigration.

why did the chicken cross the road

to get its baby monkeys ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahaha

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How do you wake up Jessie J ?

Poke her face

Wow that’s crazy

beeishappy:

_{TCR | 2013.08.01 Grab-Ask 5800: Stephen devises a system to help navigate the sexual rules of a modern workplace.}

best-of-funny:

hobbitdragon:

ddollley:

I just made the most inhuman noise

WHEN IT REALIZES THE PERSON IS STILL THERE AND GOES BACK TO BEING ‘DEAD’

X

The film industry’s move to Hollywood, early on in the 20th century, was not entirely an accident. Out west, good weather was more constant, the light better and the scenery more varied than on the East Coast. Hollywood, then still a sleepy hamlet 10 miles north of Los Angeles, was conveniently central between the bustling city and the natural splendour further afield.

Depending on how far afield you’d want to carry your tripod, that splendour could be a stand-in for a surprisingly wide swathe of the world.

• The mountainous areas adjacent to Lake Tahoe in the north have doubled for Siberia, the French Alps and Switzerland.
• The Sacramento River has stood in for the Mississippi, the southern Bay Area apparently passes for Alaskan river country, while further inland bears a strikingly enough resemblance to New England.
• The New England coast, meanwhile, is located immediately south of San Francisco, not far from the Nile River valley (appropriately north of Africa, but confusingly close to the Swiss Alps, a bit further inland).
• Santa Barbara is good Spanish California country, while the Ventura/Oxnard area passes for the Coast of Spain. The Palos Verdes peninsula has been the cinematographic double of Wales.
• Venice, Italy is adequately rendered by the area not too far from Venice, California. Holland, incredibly, is located a bit more to LA’s south, while the Channel Islands have stood in the South Sea Islands’ stead. Further south are Long Island Sound, the Malay Coast and, just north of San Diego, again, Spain.
• South to north, inland, are the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea and South Africa (all adjacent to the Salton Sea), Sherwood Forest, the Kentucky Mountains and, close to the Nevada border, Wyoming Cattle Ranches.

This map, apparently produced by Paramount Studios in 1927, does not mention the corresponding films. Can anybody suggest any of the movies these locations refer to? The map does mention, without further context, the 19th-century Californian poet Bret Harte.

Many thanks to Brian Kavanaugh, Lee Breisacher, Noah Feehan, Jim Eikner, Ben Jefferies and Dan Beaver-Seitz for sending in this map, found here on Flowing Data.

I am an avid fan of George R. R. Martin's series Game of Thrones (both the books and the show). I have recently purchased a replica of the Iron Throne as seen in the television show, and need a partner to play out an elaborate fanatsy.
In my fantasy, I am Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, and Rightful Heir to the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms. After crossing the Narrow Sea and defeating the forces of Westeros, it is within my power and right to slay all of those who betrayed my family and denied me my rightful place for so many years. The most vile enemies of house Targaryen, House Stark and House Baratheon must pay the highest price. All of those who fought against the Mother of Dragons are slain - all except one. When I come to Robb Stark, out eyes lock and something moves inside of me. I realize I need to have him, want him, and I can tell he is thinking the same. I order my guards to throw him in the dungeon and later that night, I have him brought to me, in the throne room. There, on the Iron Throne I've so recently won, I make wild and passionate love with him, repeatedly.
Please only respond to this post if you look like Robb Stark! I would appreciate pictures, but please, no names. In order to stay as true to the fantasy as possible, I ONLY want you to refer to yourself as Robb Stark. You will need to provide your own clothing. Please keep in mind that you will have recently participated in a battle and been thrown in a dungeon, so you will not be wearing your nicest furs.
I'm looking for a Stark in the streets but a wildling in the sheets.

• Location: New Orleans
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests