kate

Cels from “Get a Horse!”. See the short in theaters before Frozen.

“BTW, can I pay you in surplus CD cases?”

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The thing about Becca Golins’ little dice guardians is that even if those dice are removable and useable, how am I supposed to get them? They’re sleeping. I can’t wake them up when they’re sleeping. All I can do is stand here internally screaming about how cute they are.

This is like having a cat in your lap, except I can still play D&D with a cat in my lap.

(via Nerd Approved.)

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About a year ago, I was reading an anthology that collected almost fifty science fiction stories, a high percentage of which were recently published. Some offered exciting, thought-provoking ideas of the future. Many did not: the far-future felt like today, IN SPAAACE.

This failure of the imagination is one I encounter too often, and it can happen in many ways. The one I want to talk about is the depiction of families: namely, that they are almost always families of one man and one women—straight, cisgender—with a child or two.

Families across Earth exist in great variation, from extensive kinship networks to only a few relationships, connected by genetics or choice. People of all sexualities and genders join together in twos, threes, or more. Family-strong friendships, auntie networks, global families... The ways we live together are endless.

[But that’s not the case in science fiction. At least not yet.]

Yet in science fiction, families—where they appear at all—are normally small, one man and one woman, with children or parents. There is little sense of an extended family beyond these immediate relationships, or that people other than one man and one woman might form a family. And this is a norm.

It can certainly be argued that some plots, especially in shorter works, don’t support the opportunity to meet the protagonist(s)’ extended family. Not all stories need mention who is attracted to whom. It would be a poor argument to suggest that these explanations (and others) cover the entire breadth of storytelling. Where are the quick mentions that a character has mothers or fathers instead of just one of each? Where are the soldiers who want the war to be over so they can visit their aunts and uncles and cousins and meet their new great-nephew, rather than just their partner and child? Where are the stories rooted in family, their conflicts and revelations drawn from these relationships?

These stories exist, but they are few and far between. I want more.

I want there to be no norm.

I want more families like the sedoretu of Ursula K. Le Guin’s stories “Mountain Ways” and “A Fisherman of the Inland Sea” and others, set on the planet O: a marriage unit of four, shaped by strict rules. I want the importance of extended families, as in Aliette de Bodard’s “Scattered Along the River of Heaven,” “Immersion,” “The Weight of a Blessing,” and On a Red Station, Drifting, where existing family structures are extended into the future (and sometimes your great-great-aunt is a spaceship). I want Mako Mori and Stacker Pentecost, found-family fighting together.

Pacific Rim (2013) is an interesting film among the standard Hollywood output because it centres family and co-operation. The film makes it clear that the lone hero won’t work: they tried that and the lone heroes died. When the paired pilots become celebrity heroes, they start losing the fight against the aliens. It is won when you see the crews who maintain the Shatterdome and Jaegers being addressed by Stacker Pentecost alongside the pilots. The named characters can’t walk through the Shatterdome without passing crew at work. And the pilots are family units: the Wei triplets, the married Kaidanovskys, the father and son Hansen team, the Becket brothers and, later, Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori. The faults with the film could be listed at length, but to me it’s strikingly different to what I’m used to in a Hollywood science fiction film.

One area where it’s lacking is in LGBTQ+ characters. Their absence in science fiction is utterly unrealistic. I don’t believe a future without trans* people, non-binary-gendered people, women who love women, men who love men, people who love people of all genders—forming families in all sorts of configurations. These people exist now. The only explanation for their complete absence in the future is systematic eradication—which, to be quite honest, is not a future I want to read about.

While there are a number of authors writing LGBTQ+ characters in the future, including in families, their work remains a marked minority. This is why I’m eagerly anticipating the anthology Fierce Family, edited by Kay T. Holt and Bart R. Leib: a speculative fiction anthology focusing on strong families, specifically ones with one or more LGBTQ+ person. But I want to read these stories without having to turn to a themed anthology.

I’m not calling for an end to family-less stories or far-future families of one man and one woman. I’m calling for variety.

I’m asking science fiction writers to think about the full array of families that will exist in their futures—and then start writing more of them.

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Alex Dally MacFarlane is a writer, editor and historian living along the Thames estuary. Her science fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, The Other Half of the Sky and Stone Telling. She is the editor of Aliens: Recent Encounters (2013) and The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (forthcoming in late 2014).

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Suckers Apparel has a whole collection of superhero-themed garments so you can fight crime while looking fabulous. The icing on the cake: it’s called “Super Suckers.” They saw the opportunity and they took it.

(via: Fashionably Geek)

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Anybody who hasn't played Psychonauts should (after reading this) go and play it right away. The 2005 puzzle-platformer from the marvelously twisted mind of Tim Schafer has become a cult classic due to its wonderful writing, unique gameplay and superb cast of characters.

It's those characters which might be what people remember the most about the game, and today developer Double Fine unveiled a brand new set of ten miniature figurines of some of the main players. Clockwise from the left we've got Coach Oleander, the mad Boyd Cooper, iceman Sasha Nein, the groovy Milla Vodello, quack Dr Loboto, janitor Ford Cruller, Sheegor (with Mr Pokeylope!), the squirrel-destroying Dogen and of course our hero Razputin and his definitely-not-girlfriend Lilli.

They're great little reproductions, capturing a lot of the character and flair of the original designs. If you're interested in picking them up, the Double Fine Shop is making them available as random blind boxes for $7 each, or as a complete set of ten of $70. Hit the link if you want to pick them up, just try not to step on the puppy orphanage on your way.

[via Double Fine's Tumblr]

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Being effortlessly wise is a quality we generally associate with mystics, gurus, and people called The Dude. But if you’ve had a chance to hear what Ursula Le Guin has to say about genre writing, writing in general, or just the act of being a person in the world, you’ll feel like you’ve found your guru.

The latest issue of The Paris Review contains a fantastic interview with Le Guin, conducted by the author John Wray. A fan of genre literature and an equally big fan of Le Guin herself, Wray seemed to Socratically draw out some gems from Le Guin. Here are some highlights:

[Read more]

Part of what makes Le Guin such a compelling figure in this interview is how honest she is with what she did and didn’t know about writing, the world, and the importance of her work as it was happening. Most telling of all is the notion that Le Guin initially felt unaware that she was trapped in the male-dominated supposed “Golden Era” of science fiction, but broke free nonetheless. As she explains in the interview, many of her early works had male-protagonists, as though she was working inside a pre-established model for science fiction. But with one particular short book, The Eye of the Heron, Le Guin describes how her unconscious desire to break the mold pushed through. From the interview:

“My hero was from the Gandhian society, a nice young man. And then there was a girl, the daughter of the boss of the criminal society. And the nice young hero insisted on getting himself shot, about halfway through the book. And I said, Hey, you can’t do that! You’re my protagonist! My own unconscious mind was forcing me to realize that the weight of the story was in the girl’s consciousness, not the boy’s.”

She also beautifully summarizes the process of approaching The Left Hand of Darkness, and mentions she was not the first author to approach the subject of such a gender-bending imagined world:

“…Well gee, nobody’s done that. Actually, what I didn’t know is that, slightly before me, Theodore Sturgeon had written a book called Venux Plus X. It’s worth checking-out, a rare thing, an early male approach to considering gender as—at least partly—social constructed. Sturgeon was a talented warm-hearted writer, so it’s also interesting in itself. Stylistically, he was not a great writer, but he was a very good storyteller and a very good mind…”

This notion of exploratory themes repeating and manifesting themselves in different ways in science fiction is echoed in another passage in the interview:

“And one nice thing about science fiction—I think it’s still true, it certainly was when I came into the field—was that we could steal from one another quite freely, not in the plagiarizing sense, but in the ideas and how-to-do-something sense. What I always compare it to is baroque composers, who used to pass their ideas around all the time, even pass tunes around.”

Another small, and giddy detail from this interview: Le Guin went to high school with another totally famous science fiction writer! After talking a little bit about the (mostly) positive impact Philip K. Dick had on her, Le Guin mentions: “Did you know we were in the same high school?” Apparently she never actually met him then, and has confirmed with others who went to the high school that NO ONE really knew him. And even as adults, though she corresponded with him, she never met Dick in person.

Maybe this anecdote proves that sci-fi writer’s lives imitate the themes of their work. That Philip K. Dick was a ghost at Ursula Le Guin’s high school seems to oddly dovetail the image of Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen as grade school chums, as much as it also relates to Harlan Ellison as a punk kid confronting Isaac Asimov at a convention. These connections seem correct, meaningful. Or as the interviewer John Wray mentions:

“That’s how one can identify a sci-fi author, I guess—tentacles coming out of the pigeonhole.”

To which Le Guin replies: “That’s right.”

The entire interview is chock-full of fantastic insight and cool anecdotes about Le Guin and her famous writing cronies. Ruining some of the awesome things she says at the end of the interview would be a crime. Grab one for yourself! In terms of discourse about genre colliding with literature, it doesn’t get much better than an interview like this.

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Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com.

Edit #2: Added image of Painted Theatrhythm Sephiroth

Edit: Added image of Painted Theatrhythm Tifa

Prototypes of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy figures were seen at the latest Tokyo Game Show. Square Enix's booth had prototype figures of Cloud, Tifa and Sephiroth. Even though they weren't painted, already we could tell that they would be amazingly adorable.

Even though Theatrhythm Final Fantasy wasn't my favorite Final Fantasy game, I did really like the character design. They look like hand painted wooden dolls, how is that not cute? Well, now over at Hidemi Matsuzuka's Facebook, he's released an image of a painted Theatrhythm Cloud.

Seeing this painted makes the figure look so much better. The figure just might look better than the video game character. Since releasing the image of Cloud, Matsuzuka has also released images of painted Tifa and Sephiroth.  

Admittedly, my favorite Final Fantasy character is Squall, so if they ever come out with a Theatrhythm Squall figure my voice would reach the highest pitch possible as I squeal over it. Please, someone make that happen! 

[via Hidemi Matsuzuka's Facebook]

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Wait, did science publishing maverick Michael Eisen just borrow a tactic from the late internet whiz kid Aaron Swartz?

Why yes, he did.

The headline for my new profile of Eisen wasn't meant to be taken literally. As I explain in "Steal This Research Paper! (You Already Paid for It.)," Swartz was indicted by the federal government for trying to do just that: He'd gained access to MIT networks to "liberate" millions of copyrighted scientific papers, most of them bankrolled by taxpayers through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies. Swartz and others in the open-access movement believed that the public should be able to view publicly-funded research without forking over stiff access fees to science publishers. Seems like a no-brainer, huh?

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People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with different people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time. —Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

If you have something you don't want anyone to know about, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. —Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt

The conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is that nobody cares about online privacy, except maybe creeps, wingnuts, and old people. Sure, a lot of us might say that we don't like being tracked and targeted, but few of us actually bother to check the "do not track" option in on our web browsers. Millions of people have never adjusted their Facebook privacy settings. According to a recent Pew survey, only small fractions of internet users have taken steps to avoid being observed by hackers (33 percent), advertisers (28 percent), friends (19 percent), employers (11 percent), or the government (5 percent).

What's going on here? The short answer is a lot of pretty twisted psychological stuff, which behavioral scientists are only now starting to understand.

Our uneasy relationship with the internet begins with the fact we don't really know who can see our data and how they might exploit it. "Not even the experts have a full understanding of how personal data is used in an increasingly complicated market," points out Carnegie Mellon University public policy professor Alessandro Acquisti, who researches the psychology behind online privacy perceptions. Behavioral economists often refer to this problem as information asymmetry: One party in a transaction (Facebook, Twitter, advertisers, the NSA) has better information than the other party (the rest of us).

The upshot is that we can't agree on what our privacy is worth. A study last year by Acquisti and Jens Grossklags of the University of California-Berkeley found that people were willing to accept wildly varying sums of money in exchange for giving out their email address and information about their hobbies and interests—from $0 to $100,000.

Our struggle to weigh the importance of online privacy reflects a classic case of what economists call "bounded rationality." That is, the ability to decide things rationally is constrained by a blinkered understanding of how those decisions might affect us.

Because becoming an expert on privacy issues is so time consuming, we tend to fall back on a variety of shorthand ways to make decisions based on our own impressions. One well-documented example is that people tend to conflate security and privacy. They might assume, for instance, that their privacy is protected by merchants that offer encrypted online transactions. Or they may interpret the mere presence of a privacy seal or privacy policy on a website as sign of protection.

Our bounded rationality on privacy matters makes us more vulnerable to all sorts of persuasion tactics aimed at getting us to disclose things. Behold the following behavioral examples of how, even if we really care about online privacy, we're easily prodded into behaving as though we don't.

1. Our willingness to sell our privacy is greater than our willingness to pay for it

To test this notion, Alessandro Acquisti's researchers recently went to a shopping mall, where they offered passersby one of two free gift cards. People were given either a $10 gift card that would allow them to shop anonymously or a $12 gift card that would link their names to their purchases. Next, those who first received the $10 card were asked if they wanted to swap it for the $12 card, effectively selling their privacy for $2. And those who first received the $12 card were asked if they wanted to trade it for the $10 card, effectively buying their privacy for $2. Though the choices were basically equivalent, Acquisti found that shoppers who started with more privacy (the $10 card) valued it much more than those who started with less (the $12 card).

This helps to explain why so many people willingly sell their privacy by, say, signing up for a grocery store rewards card or a free email account, while so few will pay to protect it by, for instance, using anonymity software, which costs time to research, install, and use.

2. We reflexively accept default privacy settings

From 2005 through May 2011, Acquisti's team tracked the activities of 5,076 Facebook users. Over time, the users gradually decreased the amount of information they shared publicly—until 2009. That's when Facebook changed its default privacy settings to make profiles more public, but also encouraged users to review their settings and adjust them for more privacy if desired. Look what happened:

3. We're caught in a Privacy/Control Paradox

In 2011, Carnegie Mellon researchers mimicked what happens on social-media websites by asking students to answer 10 sensitive questions about personal behaviors such as stealing, lying, and taking drugs. The students could decline to answer any of them. One group of students was told in advance that their answers would be automatically published. A second group was asked to check a box if they agreed to give the researchers permission to publish all their answers. And a third group was asked to check a box next to each question to give permission to publish that specific answer—a condition that emulates what happens on blogs and social networks. (See the image at the top of the story.) Though each approach was functionally the same, the third group, the one who was given the most granular control, divulged twice as much sensitive information as the first group. Members of the second group were also significantly more willing to share, even though they knew all of their responses would be public.

These findings strike at the heart of what's known as the Privacy/Control Paradox: The feeling of control that you gain by checking a permission box before you publish, say, that bong hit photo, actually makes you more willing to share it with strangers than you otherwise would have been. In other words, the mere offer of control over your online privacy may induce you to be more reckless with it.

4. We fall for misdirection

Many social networks give users granular control over how their data is shared among users, but very little control over how it's used by the services themselves. This is a classic case of misdirection—the magician's trick of calling attention to one hand while the other stuffs a rabbit inside a hat. A Carnegie Mellon study published in July found that misdirection caused people to disclose slightly more information about themselves than they might otherwise.  

5. We're addicts

Some of the same psychological quirks that cause people to smoke cigarettes also explain why they don't stop sharing personal details online. In short, we value immediate gratification, discount future costs, believe our own risks are less significant than the risks of others, and have trouble calculating the cumulative effects of thousands of small decisions. People "who genuinely want to protect their privacy might not do so because of psychological distortions well documented in the behavioral economics literature," Acquisti writes. And "these distortions may affect not only naive individuals but also sophisticated ones."

6. IGNORANCE is bliss

Ignoring privacy threats and sticking your head in the sand might actually be a good idea. Consider the recent revelation that the NSA targets people who use Tor anonymity software—just because. So why bother to become a privacy expert? Caring too much about privacy, as Google's Eric Schmidt has implied, might be taken as a sign that you have something to hide.

This "ah, fuck it" approach is known to behavioral economists as rational ignorance. "Even those that are privacy sensitive among us may rationally decide not to protect their privacy," Acquisti explains. "Not because they don't care, but because it's just too hard. You could be trying to do everything right, and your data could still be compromised."

Maybe that's why you clicked on this story, but probably still won't change your Facebook settings.

Gargoyle story about "Demon Vice-Commander" Hijikata Toshizō drawn by Aлёша's Rururu Kondoh

What if your mother and father were superheros created by Jack Kirby? That is, what if your dad was sort of a cross between Marvel Comic’s Thor—complete with lightning powers—and DC Comic’s New God, Orion? Your mom, she’s sort of a cross between Sif and Wonder Woman, and your family lives in a celestial city—half spaceship and half castle—that floats in the infinite void? That’d be a pretty great life, wouldn’t it? Sort of a shame to have to leave it, but then…it is your thirteenth birthday. Time for a Ramble, time for you to leave the technomagical paradise of your home and go down among the mortals to earn your stripes as a hero.

This is the story of Paul Pope’s Battling Boy; a godling, sent off to find his way with just his natural talents and a suitcase full of magical t-shirts.

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Of course, our demigod protagonist isn’t alone on his quest—not entirely. Earth has a hero. Haggard West: part Silver Age Batman, part steampunk Tony Stark, part Mitchell Hundred as the Great Machine. Or rather, the operative word in that sentence should be “Earth had a hero…” because Haggard West is dead. The question that everyone asks: is his daughter Aurora ready to step into his shoes? Aurora was her father’s Robin, his Speedy, his sidekick in waiting—but she’s a bit young to move from understudy to a starring role. Then again, so is our eponymous hero Battling Boy…

I know I’m getting a little bit out of hand with constantly comparing everything here to six or seven other things, but you really get a sense of the scope of Pope’s influences. He’s drawing from a deep well; heck, he’s drawing from an ocean. Do I even detect a hint of Fletcher Hanks? There is a lot of a little bit of everything in here, but it isn’t a kitchen sink approach; Paul Pope might be an incredible interdisciplinary talent, but it isn’t a hodgepodge of seemingly contradictory ideas. Rather, Pope sifts down to find the core thread of these ideas and weaves them together towards a greater whole. (It sort of reminds me of the mythopoeia of Broxo but, if anything, even more so.)

Is it Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age? Well…yes? Yes to all those things. What are we calling the Modern Age at the moment? The Renaissance? Well, much the same way that Grant Morrison weaves Renaissance narratives by just accepting that a comic character’s backstory is entirely canon—Silver Age shenanigans especially, even if the modern incarnation is relentlessly banal and gritty—we get Pope doing a similar thing, both in terms of story and visually. The saturated colour panels really just are so…well, so Jack Kirby that I had to mention it in the first line of the review.

The richness of detail in Battling Boy allows Pope to be referential without needing to slow down. Actually, referential is the wrong word, as is homage or parody. Battling Boy isn’t a collection of tropes or clichés, or a stitched together Frankenstein’s monster of allusions to other works. I said Renaissance and I stick by it; this is influenced by a range of sources, and those influences are laid bare, because Paul Pope stands on the shoulders of giants—and he stands tall on those shoulders. He can evoke the Blackhawks or the Howling Commandos by having the science soldiers of the 145^th go out to go kaiju hunting without that needing to be a 1:1 association with them. Nor is this Astro City, which is built on being a pastiche, on being meta-textual and says something about the comics it emulates. Battling Boy is its own thing, a world tree with roots that go deep into the history of the medium

The one downside of Battling Boy is actually an upside in disguise: this is just volume one. On one hand, that keeps us away from the epic confrontations and narratively fulfilling conclusions that you can feel coming down the pike. On the other…well, it means more Battling Boy. I am really into Battling Boy—did I already mention that it is like Walt Simonson decided to do indie comics, or like Moebius decided to pick up the adrenaline of manga?—so I am anxious and eager for more. Getting to the end and seeing the big bad of the book meet a Bigger Bad just means that the scope of the story is going to be bigger, which means a larger canvas for Battling Boy. Which is good news, because I don’t doubt for a moment that he can fill it.

Battling Boy is available October 8th from First Second.
Read an excerpt of the comic here on Tor.com

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Mordicai Knode thinks the best compliment you could give anybody working with words and pictures is probably a favorable comparison to Jack Kirby. You can find Mordicai on Tumblr or Twitter.

If you’re confused about Obamacare, you’re not alone. Over the past several years, every survey on the subject has revealed that Americans consistently fail to correctly identify the provisions that are actually in the Affordable Care Act. In April, a poll found that 40 percent of Americans weren’t sure about whether Obamacare was still law at all.

Administration officials are racing against the clock to reverse those incorrect public perceptions, ramping up their outreach efforts before the health law’s new state-level marketplaces open for enrollment this upcoming week. As the open enrollment period draws near, you may be wondering how it affects you or what you need to do. Or you may simply want to understand more about the law that’s dominating the news. Here are simple answers to 20 questions about Obamacare that may have you mystified (click on each question to jump down to the answer, or just scroll down to read all of them):

***

1. Will Obamacare end up costing me money?

2. What if I already have health insurance?

3. If I’m keeping my current health insurance, does Obamacare benefit me?

4. Health insurance is so hard to figure out. How can I even tell what’s in my plan?

5. Why did I get a check in the mail from my insurance company?

6. Are dental or vision insurance plans affected by the new law?

7. What are the “exchanges,” and should people like me join them?

8. If I want to sign up for a new government-organized health plan, how can I?

9. Why am I hearing so much about October 1? What does that date mean for me?

10. What if I can’t afford any health coverage?

11. If I don’t want to get insurance, am I going to have to pay?

12. What happens to my insurance if I change jobs?

13. Is Obamacare still at risk of getting repealed or defunded?

14. Is it true that Obamacare keeps getting delayed?

15. Who will wind up benefiting most from the new law?

16. How do gay couples factor into Obamacare?

17. Is it true that Obamacare will force me to switch doctors/ make my company cut my hours/ violate my privacy/ end employer-run health insurance as we know it?

18. Will my spouse lose his or her health coverage under Obamacare?

19. What’s the timeline for rolling out all of these features? What’s already happened and what are we still waiting for?

20. Where do I go to ask more questions?

***

1. Will Obamacare end up costing me money?

It depends, but probably not as much as you’ve heard on the news. If you already have insurance through your job, Obamacare probably won’t directly affect your monthly premiums — and could actually end up saving you money in the long run by eliminating your co-pays for preventative care, like regular check-ups and STD screenings. If you don’t have insurance, on the other hand, you’ll be eligible for a plan on Obamacare’s new marketplaces and you’ll have to pay a premium for it. That’s more expensive than paying no monthly premium, but arguably cheaper than going uninsured and having to pay out-of-pocket for all of your health services. Depending on your income (and whether or not your employer offers an insurance plan), you could receive federal subsidies to help cover part of that premium.

There’s been a lot of talk about “rate shock” in reference to the marketplaces, but multiple studies actually project that the new Obamacare plans will be cheaper than expected. To calculate your premium, you can use this helpful tool from the Kaiser Foundation:

2. What if I already have health insurance?

The big changes under Obamacare mostly affect the Americans who don’t already have insurance. If you already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, or Medicaid nothing about that will change. You’ll continue to have the same plan and it will continue to be administered in the same way. (You should receive a notice from your insurance company explaining whether or not your plan is compliant under Obamacare, and notifying you about the new exchanges opening next month.) If you’re self-employed and you buy your insurance on the individual market, you might want to compare your current plan to the new plans that will be offered on Obamacare’s marketplaces — you could be able to choose a cheaper option.

3. If I’m keeping my current health insurance, does Obamacare benefit me?

Yes. Even if you’re not enrolling for one of Obamacare’s new programs, the health law has some benefits for you. There are two major things that fall into this category:

1. Before you get sick. All of the stuff that qualifies as “preventative care” will now be available to you at no out-of-pocket cost. That means no copay on a whole battery of tests including blood pressure screenings, vaccinations, and STD/HIV screenings.

If you’re a woman, there’s a lot in this part of the law for you. Birth control — of all types — is now available to women without a copay. Not only does that mean you don’t need to shell out cash to get the pill, it also means you can get an intrauterine device (IUD), the most effective form of birth control, without paying anything out of pocket. If you want to have a baby, you’ll also feel the benefits of the law. More maternity care will be covered by the new law and, when your baby is born, your insurance company will now cover the cost of a breast pump.

The preventative care aspect of the law also provides women with HPV vaccines, mammograms, STD screening, and domestic violence counseling. An estimated 27 million women are benefiting from these new provisions.

Note: Some individual plans, called ‘grandfathered’ plans, will be exempt from this provision.

2. If you’re ill or hurt. People who already have suffered a major illness or accident know that insurance companies can be terribly unforgiving. But Obamacare mandates insurance companies aren’t allowed to deny you insurance if you have any pre-existing condition. That means, no matter what your medical history looks like, you’ll be able to sign up for it. The law also eliminates lifetime caps on on healthcare spending. So, you’ll be able to get all the essential care you need if you get sick, without worrying that your insurance company will cut off the money you need to get better.

Note: ‘Grandfathered’ plans will be exempt from the pre-existing condition aspect of this part, but not the lifetime limits.

4. Health insurance is so hard to figure out. How can I even tell what’s in my plan?

Under Obamacare, health insurers will be required to provide you with a “summary of benefits and coverage” that explains — in plain English! — what’s included in your plan. Insurers will also need to offer a standard glossary that defines some commonly-misunderstood health insurance terms, like “co-pay” and “deductible.” The hope is that Americans will be better equipped to compare different plans, and decide which insurance option is best for them, when they understand the insurance jargon better.

5. Why did I get a check in the mail from my insurance company?

If your insurance company sent you a reimbursement check, it’s probably to make up for the fact that you’ve been paying for its administrative costs instead of your health care. Obamacare requires insurance companies to strike a balance in this area, devoting 80 to 85 percent of the money you spend on your insurance premiums to providing health care and just 20 to 15 percent of it to their own overhead and profits. If they spend more on that second category, they’re required to pay that money back to their customers. It’s called the “medical loss ratio,” and since its implementation in 2011, this Obamacare provision has saved Americans more than $1 billion.

6. Are dental or vision insurance plans affected by the new law?

Unfortunately, there is no dental coverage as part of Obamacare, unless you qualify for Medicaid. Some are pushing for the inclusion of vision in the new health exchanges, but it is not currently part of the plan.

7. What are the “exchanges,” and should people like me join them?

The state-level exchanges, one of the essential tenets of the health reform law, are marketplaces where multiple insurers will compete to provide health plans. Each state and the District of Columbia will have its own insurance exchange, and all of the plans offered within them will be required to offer a set of “essential benefits” to ensure they’re not too skimpy. Along with Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion, the exchanges are the vehicle that will extend insurance to the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured.

The important thing to understand about the exchanges is that they intend to provide coverage only to the people who can’t get it elsewhere — such as through their job, or through another federal program like Medicaid — and they’ll extend federal subsidies to help those people afford the cost of buying that coverage. Americans earning annual incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level (in other words, up to $94,000 for a family of four) will qualify for federal assistance to help them buy plans on the marketplace. You can use this site to figure out whether you’ll get a subsidy based on your income.

The most recent projections say the premiums for these plans will be even cheaper than originally predicted. Among the Americans who are currently uninsured and will be able to purchase plans on one of Obamacare’s exchanges, an estimated six in 10 of them won’t need to pay more than $100 per month to get coverage.

Undocumented immigrants will be barred from purchasing plans on the new health exchanges, even if they have benefited from deferred action. Some immigration reform advocates are pushing to change that on the state level.

8. If I want to sign up for a new government-organized health plan, how can I?

The enrollment period for the new insurance exchanges begins on October 1 and goes until March 31. During that time period, Americans will be able to sign up for new Obamacare plans by either logging onto healthcare.gov, mailing in a paper copy of an application (to find out where to mail it, click here), or meeting with a “navigator” in person at one of the many enrollment fairs that are kicking off around the country. The navigators, who are specifically tasked with assisting Americans with signing up for health care plans, are available to answer questions for the people who are confused about what they should do. You can reach them by calling the hotline at 800-318-2596, and they’ll help you fill out an application if you’re having trouble with it.

There’s been a lot of confusion swirling around Obamacare, and the federal government doesn’t expect a rush of people to sign up for the exchanges right away. Enrollment will likely be a slow and steady process. After the initial enrollment period ends, another one will open up in October 2014. But if you want health coverage by January 1, you need to sign up before then.

9. Why am I hearing so much about October 1? What does that date mean for me?

October 1 has been all over the news because that’s the date when Obamacare’s state-level exchanges officially open for business. Starting on that date, Americans will be able to purchase one of the plans offered in the new insurance marketplaces. But in reality, the date itself probably doesn’t mean that much for you. It’s a big symbolic day for the Obama administration, but Americans aren’t required to take any action on October 1. If you want to sign up for a plan in the exchanges, you have until March to do so. If you already have insurance through your job or through another government program, you don’t need to do anything at all because the exchanges don’t affect you right now.

10. What if I can’t afford any health coverage?

If you can’t afford health coverage right now, Obamacare hopes to change that for you. There are two main ways the health reform law could accomplish that.

First, if your income falls below 138 percent of the federal poverty line (for reference, that’s about $15,415 for an individual and $26,344 for a family of three), you could be eligible for expanded Medicaid coverage under the law. But it depends. Although Obamacare initially intended for the Medicaid expansion to be universal, the Supreme Court ruled that it should be optional — so now, not every state is participating. Check this map to see if your state is going to expand Medicaid.

Second, you could be eligible for federal assistance to afford an insurance plan in the new insurance marketplace in your state. Thanks to the federal subsidies available to help Americans buy plans on the newly-created marketplaces, most of the options will be relatively inexpensive. About six in 10 people will be able to buy one of those plans for less than $100 per month. You can find out whether you’ll qualify for a federal subsidy by using this calculator.

11. If I don’t want to get insurance, am I going to have to pay?

You will have to pay a penalty if you don’t sign up for health insurance. Why? Because taxpayers will be fronting the cost of your care if you wind up getting sick or hurt and need to go to the hospital, and that will be a lot more expensive than the penalty you’re paying. In 2014, the tax penalty for an adult will be $95 or 1 percent of your family income. For a child, the cost will be $47.50, with a total family cap at a $285 fine. By 2016 and beyond, it will cost you 2.5 percent of your family income, or $695, whichever is higher. Again, there is a cap on how much you’ll have to pay: $2,085 for a family.

Realistically, though, the law creates enough options that you shouldn’t forgo care because of cost. If you don’t think you can afford to get health care, look into the Medicaid expansion. If you don’t qualify there either, and you really can’t afford it, you should know that there are financial hardship exceptions from the penalties. There are also penalty exemptions for the undocumented, the incarcerated, and people with religious objections.

12. What happens to my insurance if I change jobs?

Should you quit or get fired and don’t have a new job you’re going to right away, you can go into the exchanges. COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act, will also still exist, but for most people it will be the less advisable option. That government program is meant explicitly to provide health insurance for people who have reduced hours, are transitioning between jobs, have lost their jobs for any reason, or are coping with death or divorce. But it requires you to cover the entire cost of your monthly premiums, which is much more than most people are used to paying for employer-based insurance. The exchanges will probably be cheaper.

If your income level is low enough, you could also qualify for Medicaid under its new, expanded definition.

The process of changing insurance with a new job will look a lot like it does now. If you want to go into the health exchanges instead of take insurance from your new employer, you’ll be able to do that. People who have the option of getting qualified health coverage elsewhere, like through an employer, won’t qualify for any federal subsidies to help them buy a plan on the exchange. But if you do want to try a new employment opportunity that doesn’t come with stable insurance benefits, or start your own business, the exchanges could give you better options for your coverage than you had before.

13. Is Obamacare still at risk of getting repealed or defunded?

Republicans would like to think so, but it’s nearly impossible at this point. The U.S. House of Representatives has voted 42 times to dismantle the law, but hasn’t succeeded once. The Democratic-controlled Senate won’t agree to get rid of the law in its entirety. Most recently, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) performed a sham 21-hour “filibuster” in an effort to force the Senate to agree to defund the health law. But that ultimately won’t work either — the money designated to fund Obamacare’s most important provisions has already been appropriated, and can’t be removed unless the law is totally repealed.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a strong opponent of Obama on most things, recently said on the Senate floor that it’s time for Republicans to move on. “I don’t like it, it’s not something that I wanted the outcome to be,” he said in reference to to health reform law. “But I think all of us should respect the outcome of elections, which reflects the will of the people.”

Even though Republicans haven’t been able to completely repeal Obamacare, they are successfully slowing the law’s implementation on the state level. Anti-Obamacare lawmakers have rejected the law’s optional Medicaid expansion, slashed the budgets for outreach efforts to teach Americans about the law, enacted a whole lot of red tape to impede Americans from easily signing up for new plan, and ultimately confused the public about the nature of the law. That type of sabotage is impeding health reform in some ways, but it’s not doing away with it completely.

14. Is it true that Obamacare keeps getting delayed?

There has been a lot of news about individual Obamacare provisions getting delayed. Some people may assume that means the health law is being slowly dismantled, or put off for an additional several years. Republicans typically seize on this type of news to make the case that Obamacare isn’t working, and call for additional delays. Don’t be fooled, though. The Affordable Care Act is an extremely complicated law with a lot of moving parts, but ultimately, the biggest provisions are still moving forward. So far, the administrative issues along the way have been relatively minor in terms of the scope of the entire law.

There will likely be more hiccups along the way. As the enrollment period opens for Obamacare’s new exchanges, industry experts predict there will probably be other issues that need to be ironed out — but that doesn’t mean the whole law is collapsing.

15. Who will wind up benefiting most from the new law?

There’s no clear-cut answer to that question. People who can’t afford insurance right now will obviously benefit a lot, because they’ll gain more options for getting coverage. A lot of people who have been locked out of the insurance market because they have a pre-existing condition, or because their medical care has become too expensive and insurers won’t keep paying for it, will also gain affordable coverage that wasn’t available to them before. And people who already had insurance through their employers will gain an expanded pool of benefits, like preventive check-ups and cancer screenings, at no additional cost to them. Women definitely stand to benefit, since insurance companies will no longer be allowed to charge them more for the same care that’s offered to men. Young adults no longer have to worry about going uninsured right after graduating from college because they can stay on their parents’ plans until the age of 26. Seniors on Medicare are getting cheaper prescription drugs.

Find out more about how the health law specifically impacts you here.

16. How do gay couples factor into Obamacare?

The law itself mandates that insurance companies can’t discriminate against gay couples. So, if you are already on or are signing up for a private insurance plan and you want to get coverage for your same-sex partner, you can — just as long as your plan includes some form of spousal benefits.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, the government now recognizes same-sex couples for federal benefits. That means that if you and your same-sex partner are in a state that recognizes your marriage, you’ll be able to join the exchanges as a family unit. If you are eligible for Medicaid, the government is also working on creating a system that recognizes your legal marriage and treats you as a family unit.

17. Is it true that Obamacare will force me to switch doctors / force my company to cut my hours/ end employer-run health insurance as we know it?

Many of these “downsides” to the law are being pushed by people who don’t like it for political reasons, but that doesn’t make them true. No, your doctor is not now going to be forced to ask you about your sex life. The new government-run plans aren’t going to put all your personal information at risk. And all the buzz you’re hearing about having to switch doctors because of the law is overblown. It is possible you might have to switch doctors in the coming years, but that has more to do with the state of the health insurance industry than with the specifics of Obamacare. As the LA times explains, forcing patients to switch doctors “has been happening anyway because insurers are under enormous pressure from big customers to cut costs.”

Obamacare is also becoming a scapegoat when it comes to the prospect of your employer potentially cutting your hours or moving people from full- to part-time. Any employer you hear about that is cutting people’s hours is just pretending Obamacare is the reason so they don’t look like the bad guy. Very few employers have cut hours citing Obamacare, and many actually say they’re planning to hire more workers just in time for the full Obamacare rollout.

And, in terms of Obamacare ending employer-based insurance, there’s no need to panic there, either. Yes, the law will provide more options than we used to have. It will probably gradually shift people away from employer-run plans, too. But even generous predictions estimate that the vast majority of people will still get insurance through their jobs over the next decade. One potential impact of the law is that more people will have the flexibility to look for a new job now that they know they won’t be tied to their employer-provided insurance for coverage.

18. What happens to my spouse’s coverage under Obamacare?

Spouses will not lose coverage when Obamacare rolls out. A few big companies have captured headlines by announcing they want to move spouses off of insurance plans and into the newly-created exchanges. In those very few cases, spouses may have to switch plans, but they aren’t losing coverage, they are just changing providers. Either way, in the vast majority of cases, employer based insurance will continue as it always has.

19. What’s the timeline for rolling out all of these features? What’s already happened and what are we still waiting for?

Believe it or not, a lot of Obamacare has already gone into effect. The first provisions took place way back in 2010. In June of that year, Obamacare closed the so-called “doughnut hole,” and Seniors who fell into that gap in Medicare coverage received a $250 check in the mail. That was the very first provision to be rolled out, but it’s far from the last. The majority of the law will go into effect by 2014, when the exchanges are set up. The very last aspect won’t roll out until 2018, when certain “Cadillac” insurance plans — top-of-the-line health plans that cost tens of thousands of dollars — will get an added tax. The White House has a fairly comprehensive timeline of dates for Obamacare’s rollout here.

20. Where do I go to ask more questions?

There are a ton of options for where to get information on Obamacare, but a great place to start is at www.healthcare.gov — www.cuidadodesalud.gov for Spanish-speakers — or at www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform. The Kaiser Foundation, too, can give you more specific guidance if you still have any questions. And, on top of all that, another neat aspect of the new law is that your state is now required to employ people called “navigators,” whose sole job is to help you navigate the massive new law.

The post 20 Questions You Have About Obamacare But Are Too Afraid To Ask appeared first on ThinkProgress.

On an Internet whisker-deep in cat photos, cat videos and cat memes, Grumpy Cat is the indisputable king — or, rather, queen, as the peevish feline is actually a female named Tardar Sauce. She has her own meme manager, her own book, her own book tour, a litter-pan full of web awards, a movie deal [...]

ON A FRIGID DAY in January 2011, a surveillance camera captured footage of a young man sneaking into a wiring closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Once inside, he retrieved a laptop he'd plugged into the university's network. He then cracked the door to make sure the coast was clear and split, covering his face with a bicycle helmet to conceal his identity.

Over the previous several months, according to a subsequent federal indictment, Aaron Swartz—internet prodigy, RSS co-inventor, Reddit co-creator, and a fellow at the Center for Ethics at Harvard—had stolen nearly 5 million academic articles, including about 1.7 million copyrighted scientific papers held by JSTOR (as in "journal storage"), a digital clearinghouse whose servers were accessible via the MIT net.

To Swartz and his supporters in the "open access" movement, this was a noble crime. The taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the world's largest funder of biomedical research. Researchers are not paid for the articles they write for scholarly journals, nor for the time and expertise they donate by peer-reviewing and serving on editorial boards. Yet the publishers claim copyright to the researchers' work and charge hefty fees for access to it. (The average subscription to a biology journal costs $2,163.) It is "a moral imperative," Swartz argued in his 2008 "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto," that students, scientists, and librarians download and disseminate copyrighted scientific research to "fight back" against "this private theft of public culture."

Swartz had intended to place the pilfered papers on file-sharing networks, free for the taking. Instead, he was arrested and charged with multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1986 law written with WarGames-style hacking and Cold War espionage in mind. Facing decades in federal prison, the 26-year-old, who'd struggled with depression for years, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment in January.

Continue Reading »

If you’re like us, then you probably didn’t think you needed another pop culture convention to choose from? Well, that was before we heard about DrawnCon, a brand new convention created especially for the creators and fans of Western animation. Coming to the Nashua Radisson Hotel on November 2 and 3, it will focus on the current crop of popular animated shows on TV and online—My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Bravest Warriors, Gravity Falls, Young Justice, and the like:

“From the Saturday morning cartoons you remember as a kid, to modern favorites like Adventure Time and Archer, Western animation is undeniably one of the most popular and commercially successful genres in the North American market. The question of what makes it so successful, however, stems from a number of points—the accessibility; the dedication of the content creators; the vast amount of material available – it’s impossible to pigeonhole.”

The grassroots event will feature everything you’ve come to expect and love from organized gatherings of its kind, including animation culture roundtables, costume contests, special guests including Bravest Warriors character designer Bob Flynn and Emmy-nominated voice actor Jessica DiCicco (Adventure Time, Pound Puppies, Gravity Falls) and events like the DrawnConcert, a Saturday night rave featuring DJ Alex S., DJ Calcos, and Exploding Heart Technique.

Tickets can be pre-ordered on the DrawnCon website ($45 for adults and free for children under 13) and visit the official DrawnCon Facebook and Twitter pages for event updates.

Also: Shinobu Hashimoto's Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I biography

Client: Can you create the Terms, Privacy Policy, and Contact pages now?

Me: I need you to provide the content for those.

Client: Can you just use dummy content for them for now?

Me: They’ve been up since I started the site with dummy content. I need you to provide me with the correct content so we can launch today.

Client: Well can you just create them using dummy content for now? I’m travelling.

Me: They’re already created. I just need you to give me the real content for the launch.

Client: Can you just use dummy content for now?

Me: I… yes, I can. But, to be clear, it won’t be the correct content. Just filler text.

Client: Why?

Me: That’s what dummy content is.

Client: Are you sure?

stochastic-mollusk:

kiss | camayu [pixiv] 

When French Canadian animators David Forest, Carl Beauchemin and Thomas Chrétien started a Kickstarter for their short film Le Gouffre earlier this month, they set a modest budget of $5,000 Canadian. The figure was just enough to cover the costs of completing the eight minute piece, which they have been working on full-time since quitting their jobs in January 2012.

The film, about two travelers building a bridge across a vast chasm, reached 200% of its funding goal in less than two days, and has gone on to raise over $19,000, or nearly 400% of its goal. Picking up attention from sites like Branchez-vous and the Québécois edition of The Huffington Post, as well as being featured as “Project of the Day” on the Kickstarter website and receiving a contribution of $1,000 from the animation department of the trio’s alma mater, Cégep du Vieux-Montréal.

Work-in-progress clips and images of Le Gouffre are being posted on the team’s production blog, including the progression of a more “painterly style” that they are attempting to add to the look of the production, by way of reprojection camera techniques.

With the campaign running until October 9th, the trio has set their stretch goal at $20,000 to help enter the film into festivals, launch their next project, and assist in paying off their debts accumulated during production.

Q: Can you tell us about Kamen Rider Fourze? I understand if it's too painful to discuss. -- @Desgardes

A: Kamen Rider Fourze is the single best piece of superhero mass media in the past ten years. And considering that the past ten years also brought us stuff like The Dark Knight, Batman: The Brave and the Bold and that Avengers movie that everybody likes, that's no small thing for me to say.

As for how I know this -- and why Des here refers to it as a painful subject -- it's because the final episode of Kamen Rider Fourze made me cry harder than anything else I've ever seen. That last episode of Brave and the Bold put tears in my eyes, yes, but Fourze had me sobbing so hard that my neighbors started building an ark and gathering up all the beasts of the land in pairs lest my tears cause a flood that wiped away the sins of man.

Continue reading…

Company hopes to raise US$76,000 to make 21-minute 1st episode

22 rules of storytelling, from an ex-Pixar story artist

Nickelodeon announced this afternoon that they’ve greenlit two new series: Bad Seeds (above) by C. H. Greenblatt (Chowder) and Pig Goat Banana Cricket from the team of illustrator/comic artists Dave Cooper and Johnny Ryan. Twenty-six episodes of each show will be produced out of Nick’s animation studio in Burbank, California.

Online reaction may have played a role in Nick’s decision to greenlight Pig Goat Banana Cricket for series production. The teaser pilot for the show was posted online in August 2012, a couple years after it had been made, and the positive response led to renewed interest from the network, according to co-creator Ryan.

Here are the official descriptions of the shows:

BAD SEEDS
Harvey, a sweet and well-meaning bird, makes two new best friends, Fee and Foo, the wildest kids in the forest. Although their friendship seems unlikely, their connection only grows as they push each other out of their comfort zones and into endless adventures. Created, written and directed by C.H. Greenblatt (SpongeBob SquarePants, Chowder).

PIG GOAT BANANA CRICKET
This show features a series of absurd interwoven stories about four friends and roommates, Pig (the fool), Goat (the artist), Banana (the wise-guy) and Cricket (the brain). Created by Dave Cooper and J. Ryan and executive produced by David Sacks (The Simpsons, Regular Show) who co-writes with J. Ryan. Dave Cooper also art directs the series and the pilot was directed by independent animator Nick Cross.

In addition, Nick announced two new animated series pickups for its Nick app:
WELCOME TO THE WAYNE
An animated comedy about two adventurers set in the lobby of the weirdest apartment building on the planet. Created and written by Billy Lopez (The Wonder Pets!).

JUNIOR EYE
Three junior high school friends are committed to solving the myths that plague their classmates’ daily lives. Created by Will and Aaron Eisenberg, whose previous project (Eric Finley: Comment Counselor) won Ashton Kutcher’s “Dream Bigger” filmmaking competition.

Here’s a bit of a surprise… DC’s Constantine is in development for NBC TV by David S. Goyer and Daniel Cerone. The character’s recent move from Vertigo to the New 52 may make a lot more sense from DC/WB’s perspective in light of this development. Brendon will be along in a few hours to dig into this further, I suspect. In the meantime, here’s the word from Deadline.

Warner Bros. TV and DC Comics are on a roll this development season with a third high-profile project. Constantine, a drama based on the characters in DC Comics’ John Constantine stories, has sold to NBC with penalty. It is written/executive produced by The Mentalist executive producer Daniel Cerone and David S. Goyer, the go-to writer for Warner Bros.’ feature DC adaptations. Constantine centers on John Constantine, an enigmatic and irreverent con man-turned-reluctant supernatural detective who is thrust into the role of defending us against dark forces from beyond.

 

Constantine Series In Development For NBC TV From David S. Goyer And Daniel Cerone

February's "Sometime on a Snowy Day" Blu-ray to also include stage production by cast

American feature animation just got a little more adult. Sony Pictures will release its first R-rated animated in 2015. The CG pic, Sausage Party, is being written by actor Seth Rogen, along with Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir. This will become the first wide-release R-rated US animated feature since the 2007 movie based on Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Sausage Party will be helmed by Conrad Vernon, the co-director of Shrek 2, Madagascar 3 and Monsters vs Aliens, and Greg Tiernan, the director of the TV series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. Nitrogen Studios Canada in Vancouver will handle the animation production.

The film, which is being described by its producers as “raunchy,” will star a sausage on a quest to discover the truth about his existence:

After falling out of a shopping cart, the hero sausage and his new friends embark on a journey through the supermarket to get back to their aisles before the 4th of July sale.

Co-financing on the film is being provided by Annapurna Pictures, the production company run by Megan Ellison, the daughter of billionaire Larry Ellison.

Cross another dream off the bucket list, because the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms just created a new form of matter that could potentially be used to create real lightsabers. (They report no progress on The Hoverboard Initiative, however, and the clock is ticking...)

Scientists at the lab are reporting that they’ve successfully managed to get two photons to interact with each other and form a “photonic molecule” that acts as if it has mass but maintains the properties of light. Photons as a rule contain no mass and don’t interact with each other, which is why two beams of light pass right through each other. Lightsabers aside, the creation of a “photonic molecule” is actually a Pretty Big Deal.

[The science behind these lightsaber molecules.]

The lab achieved the creation of the molecule by reducing a cloud of rubidium atoms to near absolute zero (0 degress Kelvin). Particles, atoms, and molecules do very weird things when brought to this low-energy state, allowing for such oddities as near-cessation of entropy, superconductivity, superfluidity, and condensates.

This temperature is achieved by a process called laser cooling, which means that anything that uses lasers is automatically cool, which can reduce the temperature of atoms to a billionth of a Kelvin. (Outer space is a relatively balmy 2.73 Kelvin in comparison.) The lab then passed two photons through the supercooled cloud of rubidium atoms. The energy of those photons excites the cloud of rubidium because the photon just pulled up into the driveway with grandpa and OMG the backseat is FULL of presents yay grandma’s here!, and slows the photons as their energy passes from atom to atom.

Where it gets really weird is when the two photons interact with the atoms at the same time, producing an effect known as a “Rydberg blockade.” This behavior means that the atoms get a little overwhelmed (like, emotionally) and can only interact with one of the photons at a time. This means that the photons have to essentially push and pull each other along as they travel through the cloud of atoms imparting their energy.

That means the photons are interacting with each other by using an atom as an intermediary, forming a structure that acts like a molecule but probably looks like a sandwich. A delicious sandwich made of light.

Photonic molecules could conceivably interact with each other, opening up the possibly of creating two beams of photonic molecules that would interact with each other. Figure out a way to make those beams stop when they’re about two feet long and you’ve got yourself a sword!

Maintaining this lightsaber presents its own difficulties, since the molecules have to be constructed in a supercooled vacuum, which is presently beyond the reach of handheld devices such as lightsabers. There’s also the matter of containing the photonic molecules within a shortened beam, which might require a containment field of some variety and/or a better understanding of the photonic molecules themselves.

And in the end, photonic molecule lightsabers just might not be as satisfying as the lightsabers we’re accustomed to. You could bash at things with it, but a beam made of these molecules wouldn’t cut anything. On the upside, there’d be no chance of accidentally cutting your limbs off, or doing that to anyone else.

It’s also far more safe than the other option we have for making lightsabers: trapping superheated plasma in beam form. Photonic molecules wouldn’t burn your face off just by being in proximity to them, so that’s a big upside.

In terms of practical uses for photonic molecules, researchers aren’t really looking at lightsabers. More practically, the creation of photonic molecules might ease the way towards quantum computing, at which point we will all have to buy new phones.

But we were going to do that anyway, weren’t we? The future is here!

---

Chris Lough is the production manager of Tor.com and wants money made of photonic molecules so that whenever he took out his glowing money everyone would be all, “That guy’s something!” Then he would pay for his Orangina and leave, with a tip of his hat and a wry smile for all.

This year’s toon from Walt Disney Animation is Frozen, loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen‘s The Snow Queen. You’ll see how loosely from this trailer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The previous English-language trailers kept most of this material under wraps. This is certainly the first time we’ve seen Frozen‘s human characters talking in English.

It’s interesting that they make some of this about Anna’s choice of suitor, but then cap it off by indicating, actually, she may like her independence. It’s almost like they’re chasing the good word that came with Brave‘s reinvention of Princess movie tropes.

No point denying there’s a bit of a love triangle in this film, though, even if it does matter far less than the story of two sisters right at the heart of the thing.

There’s still a lot more to reveal, mind you; I saw a good chunk of the film and published my interview with producer Peter Del Vecho a few days ago. That’s a good place to start digging into what this film is really about.

Full Trailer For Disney’s Frozen Gives A Far Better Idea Of What The Film Actually Entails