kate

If you can’t quite fathom the renewed popularity of Hasbro’s 30-year-old My Little Pony franchise — in animation, comics and merchandising — and the accompanying “bronies” phenomenon, you may not be ready for what comes next.

According to The New York Times, the toymaker is extending its brand with Equestria Girls, which recasts the characters from the animated My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic as human teenagers. It will launch with My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, a full-length animated movie premiering in June at the Los Angeles Film Festival before being released in 200 theaters nationwide. Naturally, a DVD will follow.

The premise is fairly straightforward, as far as these things go: Twilight Sparkle must travel to an alternate universe to find a stolen crown, only to discover there she’s been transformed into a human girl. And so she must not only figure out who committed the crime but also navigate high school.“Our goal is to stay true to who those characters are,” Meghan McCarthy, the movie’s head writer, tells The New York Times. “It’s new but still an extension of our mythology.””It is a major strategic initiative for us,” offers John A. Frascotti, Hasbro’s chief marketing officer, which means we probably shouldn’t be surprised when IDW Publishing announces a My Little Pony: Equestria Girls comic.

As part of its upfront presentations Monday in New York City, Fox screened a new trailer for Axe Cop, an adaptation of the hit webcomic by brothers Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle premiering July 27 as part of the network’s new late-night animated programming block.

If you’ve read the source material, or watched any of the previous teasers, you pretty much know what you’re in for with Axe Cop, although this trailer features Parks and Recreation‘s Nick Offerman offering some wisdom for the ages: “I want you to listen very carefully: There is something even better than friends — killing the guy who killed your friends.”

Part of Animation Domination High-Def, Axe Cop also features the voice talents of Megan Mullally, Patton Oswalt, Ken Marino and Peter Serafinowicz. ADHD premieres Saturday, July 27 at 11 p.m. ET/PT.

A soldier stationed in Afghanistan, wrote to Dark Horse Comics. About a very special Free Comic Book Day. One name has been changed.

Dear Mr. Richardson,

About a month ago, I sent you an email proclaiming my love for comics and the products of DARK HORSE. You replied with 64 pounds of greatness. I’m not sure if you knew how much they weighed but the boxes were marked when I received them yesterday on 03 MAY 13. 64 pounds of books showed up and I could not stop smiling. Maybe it was the “I never want to grow up” kid in me, or maybe it’s the fact that there are amazing people in this world that I have never met, willing to do great things for lonely soldiers. But then again, maybe it is the fact that today is 04 MAY 13, and it’s FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. What perfect timing. Right now there are people gathered around a makeshift short box flipping through comics and I have to keep reminding them, “YES THEY ARE FREE!”

Additionally, I had one of my soldiers, PFC “Smith,” who is just a socially awkward person. He means well but its just hard for him to connect with others. Being here in Afghanistan has made it tougher for him. When I asked him to help me carry the boxes and sort through the hundreds of books, his eyes lit up. And then when he walked out of my room and said “my comic collection just grew by 75%” What a nerd, but I care for him, and I’m glad I could deliver some happiness to him in a dark world, with a lot of help from you. If I can get everyone to stand still for a picture, I will try my best, and send it. You guys rock. Soldiers are smiling in AFG and DARK HORSE made it happen.

On a personal note, all the books you sent, HELLBOY, BPRD, ABE, and all of MIKE M’s work is just amazing. Tears rolling over here my friend. My responsibilities, stress, and emotions are high. Patrick you made the day and the deployment better, I thank you.

God Bless,

And MAY the Fourth be with You.
SGT Robert Entenmann

Free Comic Book Day In Afghanistan

On Friday, May 10, a top official with the Internal Revenue Service dropped a bombshell. IRS staffers had singled out conservative organizations with "tea party" or "patriots" in their name that were seeking tax-exempt nonprofit status, subjecting them to extra scrutiny to see if they were abusing the tax law as it relates to political activity. They grilled these conservative groups about their members, their donors, their public statements, and who they employed. And there is no evidence yet that the IRS systemically treated non-conservative groups with the same level of attention.

Speaking to a group of tax lawyers, the IRS official, Lois Lerner, who oversees the agency's exempt organizations division, publicly apologized for the IRS's actions. Ever since, Democratic and Republican politicians have been falling over themselves to condemn the IRS. President Obama said that, if the allegations are true, "there's no place" for such behavior. Members of Congress have pledged to investigate any potential wrongdoing and grill the agency's leaders. "Heads need to roll" if the IRS unfairly targeted tea partiers and other conservatives, said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Here's a primer on what you need to know about the IRS scandal.

How did this get started? It began back in March 2010, when the tea party movement was all the rage. According to a leaked timeline (PDF) from a draft report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, IRS staffers began flagging applications from groups with politically themed names like "We the People" and "Take Back the Country." Staffers also targeted groups whose names included the words "tea party" and "patriots." Those flagged applications were then sent to specialists for a more rigorous review than is typical.

The IRS gave extra scrutiny to 298 groups applying for tax-exempt status, the Washington Post reported. Seventy-two of those groups had "tea party" in their title, 13 had "patriots," and 11 had "9/12," shorthand for the 9/12 movement started by conservative TV host Glenn Beck.

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serenity-moon:

Tuxedo Mask: Dramatic Entrances

An early look at some of attractions at indoor complex, opening in July

This summer, Shonen Jump classics Dragonball Z, Naruto, One Piece, Toriko, Bleach, Hunter x Hunter, Gintama, and Kochikame will spawn indoor amusement park attractions at J-World Tokyo, located in 6,168 square meters  on the third floor of Ikebukuro’s Sunshine City World Import Mart building in Tokyo. Get a look at the plans after the jump.

From the Quanta Academia de Artes in Brazil and Caio Majado comes fifty-nine recreations of Rob Liefeld’s creations for Image, Extreme, Maximum and Awesome… all by professional working Brazilian artists,

WYLDER by Adriano Batista, WARCHILD by Felipe Watanabe

VOGUE by Pietro Antognioni, VANGUARD by Magno Costa

TWILIGHT by Thiago Soares, TROLL by Ronaldo Barata

TROLL by Flávio Luiz, THERMAL by Wilson Jr.

TASK by Germán Peralta. TAG by Geraldo Borges

SUPREME by Thiago Martins, SUPREMA by Eduardo Schaal

SUNDANCE by Diego Munhoz, STRONG ARM by Jefferson Costa

STASIS by Nestablo Ramos, SMASH by Gustavo Duarte

SHAFT by Julio Brilha, SEOUL by Olavo Costa

SENTINEL by Rod Reis, SEAHAWK by Renato Guedes and Marcelo Maiolo

RUBBLE by Magenta King, ROMAN by Marc Fields and Oloiam

RIPTIDE by Marcelo DiChiara, PSILENCE by Gil Tokio

a PROPHET by Davi Calil, PHOTON by Artur Fujit

 

OVERT-KILL by Ale Araujo and Ronaldo Barata, MASADA by Al Stefano

LINK by Tainan Rocha, LETHAL by Brão

KODIAK by Marcelo Castro, KNIGHTSABRE by Roger Cruz and Marcelo Maiolo

Fifty-Nine Brazilian Artists Draw Fifty-Nine Versions Of Rob Liefeld’s Characters

Kotaku reports that the same sex relationships enjoyed by male characters in the Japanese game Tomodachi Collection: New Life have been patched out. Last week it came to light that male characters in the cutesy Japanese life sim for the 3DS could have relationships with each other. Nintendo promised a patch but many had hoped that the game would patch those same kinds of relationships for females into the game.

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Whether it’s a PC monitor or a smartphone display, indie game-makers tend to thrive on smaller screens. But when Josh DeBonis and Nik Mikros worked up the idea for their co-operative strategy/platformer hybrid Killer Queen, they went really big. So big they had to make their own unique stand-up machine for it. But, don’t worry: you don’t need quarters.

Like Bennett Foddy’s Speed Chess—the crazy remix of the classic game made by the creator of maladroit 100m dash simulator QWOP—Killer Queen debuted at the New York University Game Center’s No Quarter exhibition, which commissions new games from creators that get presented to a curious public. Killer Queen mashes up the layout and feel of Joust and Super Mario Brothers but complicates things letting you harvest, kill or snail-ride your way to victory. Yes, you get to ride a giant snail. Watch the video. It’ll explain things.

theyetee:

Lunar Express
by machmigo
$11 on 05/08 at The Yetee

Cute ^^

There’s the Cuban, the lobster, the California Burger . . . and Chef Dan at ESPN Club on Disney’s BoardWalk can’t help but keep inventing new “extreme” burgers-more a meal than a sandwich. One of the newest is the PB&J Burger, a stack that starts with creamy peanut butter on a Kaiser roll and builds with an Angus Burger, bacon, pickled jalapeños and a generous slather of house-made blackberry. His latest is the Farmhouse Burger, beginning with potato pancakes instead of bread, then everything for a big breakfast is included: a fried egg, sausage, oven-roasted tomatoes, arugula – and an Angus Burger, of course. Take a look at my pal John Graham’s video.

Another Crazy New Burger at ESPN Club on Disney’s BoardWalk at Walt Disney World Resort by Pam Brandon: Originally posted on the Disney Parks Blog

I remember being endlessly entertained by the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled to space or discussed my swim lessons and how I absolutely should be allowed in the deep end of the pool, especially since I was such a talented doggy-paddler.


I didn't understand why it was fun for me, it just was.


But as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the same.


I played out all the same story lines that had been fun before, but the meaning had disappeared. Horse's Big Space Adventure transformed into holding a plastic horse in the air, hoping it would somehow be enjoyable for me. Prehistoric Crazy-Bus Death Ride was just smashing a toy bus full of dinosaurs into the wall while feeling sort of bored and unfulfilled.  I could no longer connect to my toys in a way that allowed me to participate in the experience.


Depression feels almost exactly like that, except about everything.

At first, though, the invulnerability that accompanied the detachment was exhilarating. At least as exhilarating as something can be without involving real emotions.


The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief.  I had always wanted to not give a fuck about anything. I viewed feelings as a weakness — annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn't have to feel them anymore.

But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there's a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they don't feel very different.


Which leads to horrible, soul-decaying boredom.

I tried to get out more, but most fun activities just left me existentially confused or frustrated with my inability to enjoy them.


Months oozed by, and I gradually came to accept that maybe enjoyment was not a thing I got to feel anymore. I didn't want anyone to know, though. I was still sort of uncomfortable about how bored and detached I felt around other people, and I was still holding out hope that the whole thing would spontaneously work itself out. As long as I could manage to not alienate anyone, everything might be okay!

However, I could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.


Everyone noticed.


It's weird for people who still have feelings to be around depressed people. They try to help you have feelings again so things can go back to normal, and it's frustrating for them when that doesn't happen. From their perspective, it seems like there has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you've simply lost track of, and if you could just see how beautiful things are...


At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.


But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they'll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray — a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you're having this weird argument where you're trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope just so they'll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.


And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.


The problem might not even have a solution. But you aren't necessarily looking for solutions. You're maybe just looking for someone to say "sorry about how dead your fish are" or "wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though."


I started spending more time alone.


Perhaps it was because I lacked the emotional depth necessary to panic, or maybe my predicament didn't feel dramatic enough to make me suspicious, but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control right up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing.


It's a strange moment when you realize that you don't want to be alive anymore. If I had feelings, I'm sure I would have felt surprised. I have spent the vast majority of my life actively attempting to survive. Ever since my most distant single-celled ancestor squiggled into existence, there has been an unbroken chain of things that wanted to stick around.


Yet there I was, casually wishing that I could stop existing in the same way you'd want to leave an empty room or mute an unbearably repetitive noise.


That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was deciding to keep going.


When I say that deciding to not kill myself was the worst part, I should clarify that I don't mean it in a retrospective sense. From where I am now, it seems like a solid enough decision. But at the time, it felt like I had been dragging myself through the most miserable, endless wasteland, and — far in the distance — I had seen the promising glimmer of a slightly less miserable wasteland. And for just a moment, I thought maybe I'd be able to stop and rest. But as soon as I arrived at the border of the less miserable wasteland, I found out that I'd have to turn around and walk back the other way.


Soon afterward, I discovered that there's no tactful or comfortable way to inform other people that you might be suicidal. And there's definitely no way to ask for help casually.


I didn't want it to be a big deal. However, it's an alarming subject. Trying to be nonchalant about it just makes it weird for everyone.


I was also extremely ill-prepared for the position of comforting people. The things that seemed reassuring at the time weren't necessarily comforting for others.

I had so very few feelings, and everyone else had so many, and it felt like they were having all of them in front of me at once. I didn't really know what to do, so I agreed to see a doctor so that everyone would stop having all of their feelings at me.


The next few weeks were a haze of talking to relentlessly hopeful people about my feelings that didn't exist so I could be prescribed medication that might help me have them again.


And every direction was bullshit for a really long time, especially up. The absurdity of working so hard to continue doing something you don't like can be overwhelming. And the longer it takes to feel different, the more it starts to seem like everything might actually be hopeless bullshit.


My feelings did start to return eventually. But not all of them came back, and they didn't arrive symmetrically.

I had not been able to care for a very long time, and when I finally started being able to care about things again, I HATED them. But hatred is technically a feeling, and my brain latched onto it like a child learning a new word.


Hating everything made all the positivity and hope feel even more unpalatable. The syrupy, over-simplified optimism started to feel almost offensive.


Thankfully, I rediscovered crying just before I got sick of hating things.  I call this emotion "crying" and not "sadness" because that's all it really was. Just crying for the sake of crying. My brain had partially learned how to be sad again, but it took the feeling out for a joy ride before it had learned how to use the brakes or steer.


At some point during this phase, I was crying on the kitchen floor for no reason. As was common practice during bouts of floor-crying, I was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular and feeling sort of weird about myself. Then, through the film of tears and nothingness, I spotted a tiny, shriveled piece of corn under the refrigerator.


I don't claim to know why this happened, but when I saw the piece of corn, something snapped. And then that thing twisted through a few permutations of logic that I don't understand, and produced the most confusing bout of uncontrollable, debilitating laughter that I have ever experienced.


I had absolutely no idea what was going on.


My brain had apparently been storing every unfelt scrap of happiness from the last nineteen months, and it had impulsively decided to unleash all of it at once in what would appear to be an act of vengeance.


That piece of corn is the funniest thing I have ever seen, and I cannot explain to anyone why it's funny. I don't even know why. If someone ever asks me "what was the exact moment where things started to feel slightly less shitty?" instead of telling a nice, heartwarming story about the support of the people who loved and believed in me, I'm going to have to tell them about the piece of corn. And then I'm going to have to try to explain that no, really, it was funny. Because, see, the way the corn was sitting on the floor... it was so alone... and it was just sitting there! And no matter how I explain it, I'll get the same, confused look. So maybe I'll try to show them the piece of corn - to see if they get it. They won't. Things will get even weirder.


Anyway, I wanted to end this on a hopeful, positive note, but, seeing as how my sense of hope and positivity is still shrouded in a thick layer of feeling like hope and positivity are bullshit, I'll just say this: Nobody can guarantee that it's going to be okay, but — and I don't know if this will be comforting to anyone else — the possibility exists that there's a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you are laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed. And even if everything still seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe it's just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly not even bullshit.

Blizzard is turning a bad situation into a good one by donating the money made from a money duping bug in the real money auction to a children's charity. Diablo III production director John Hight announced via the game's official forums this weekend the charitable contribution to the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. He said that those who made money of the exploit would have their ill-gotten gains donated as well as its transaction fee that it charges in the real-money auction for the game. The company did not disclose just how much money was made off of the glitch:

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Merida sketch card done in between work. Sometimes when I get digital art fatigue I feel like I need to bust out the markers.

Nilin can learn Flash Kick, Spinning Bird Kick, and Dragon Punch

A big part of Remember Me's combat has to do with customizing your own moves in the Combo Lab. Well, Capcom is tossing in some classic moves from the Street Fighter series as a pre-order incentive, gifting protagonist Nilin with the ability to bust out a Flash Kick, Spinning Bird Kick, and Dragon Punch. Video and more past the break.

The Bad Lip-Reading YouTube channel has blown up over the past couple of years, sending up clips from movies, television shows, music videos and news and sporting events with often-hilarious overdubbing. After targets ranging from Gov. Rick Perry to Beyonce to The Twilight Saga, the anonymous mastermind has now turned to The Walking Dead, AMC’s adaptation of the long-running comic series created by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard.

At more than five and a half minutes, the montage is one of the longer videos — so if you think Bad Lip-Reading is best delivered in small doses, you may want to parcel out your viewing. There are definitely some inspired moments, such as when a walker gnashes her teeth, proclaiming what animals she likes (sharks and skunks, for the record), and, just like the original version of the series, Andrea, is really, really annoying.

Also: Nothing in the entire series is more disturbing than Dale telling Shane, “I know what it takes to make you hot.”

“We don’t like the picture of the guy wearing the tie because it looks like it’s pointing to his crotch.”

-

A client who rejected each and every tie picture afterwards for the same reason. It was for a tie advertisement.

In Kevin Drum's latest feature, he imagines a bleak future where robots begin taking all of our jobs. Though he predicts this will happen about three decades from now, the concept obviously isn't new. The word "robot" first appeared in a 1920s Czech play (see below), which concludes with human destruction. The plot line started to seem more realistic when robots began performing complex industrial tasks. By 1961, a giant robot arm called Unimate took a welding job on the General Motors factory floor. Throughout the last century, robots—both imaginary and real—have fascinated us with their skills, quirks, and eerie human-like qualities. The timeline below highlights some of the most memorable machine moments and personalities.

1921 - Rossum's Universal Robots

The word robot first appeared in 1921 when Czech playwright Karel Capek's drama R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) premiered in Prague. The story follows the employees of a factory producing cheap and efficient robotic labor. While Capek is widely credited for the word's invention, he attempted to correct the record in a 1933 article for the Czech newspaper Lidove noviny:

It was like this: the idea for the play came to said author in a single, unguarded moment. And while it was still warm he rushed immediately to his brother Josef, the painter, who was standing before an easel and painting away at a canvas till it rustled.

"Listen, Josef," the author began, "I think I have an idea for a play." "What kind," the painter mumbled (he really did mumble, because at the moment he was holding a brush in his mouth). The author told him as briefly as he could. "Then write it," the painter remarked, without taking the brush from his mouth or halting work on the canvas. The indifference was quite insulting.

"But," the author said, "I don't know what to call these artificial workers. I could call them Labori, but that strikes me as a bit bookish."
"Then call them Robots," the painter muttered, brush in mouth, and went on painting. And that's how it was. Thus was the word Robot born; let this acknowledge its true creator.

The Czech word "robota" is roughly translated as servitude or drudgery. Tragically, the robots go far beyond their servant role, eliminating every human on Earth except the factory's old architect, Mr. Alquist. With the building manuscripts torched and his mind going, Alquist hopes the machines can figure out how to reproduce themselves and live on as "the shadow of man."
 

1927 - Maria

In a utopian city in the future, workers toil below ground to keep things running smoothly above. With a potential worker uprising looming, the city's founder instructs his lackey scientist to construct a robot that looks like one of the workers, Maria, so it can crush the rebellion. The metallic star of German filmmaker Fritz Lang's famous silent film Metropolis inspired many other movie depictions of robots, including C-3PO. 
 

1942 - Three Laws of Robotics

Prolific science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov penned the Three Laws of Robotics in his 1942 short story “Runaround." The rules demanded machine obedience and non-violence, tenets that his fictional robots and many others have since puzzled over in countless books, films, and essays. Here, Asimov gives a brief breakdown: 

1948 - Elmer and Elsie

The British neurologist and robotics expert William Grey Walter fashioned a pair of the first autonomous machines capable of complex behavior in 1948. Nicknamed Elmer and Elsie and constructed with old alarm clocks, the tortoise-sized bots' moves were dictated by light and touch sensors. They were particularly fond of women's legs, often drawn toward the reflective nylons. 

1961 - Unimate

The first industrial robot Unimate, a giant 4,000 pound mechanic arm, took its place in the assembly line at General Motors in 1961. Mostly limited to die-casting and welding, Unimate was the first hint of an impending encroachment of machines on the manufacturing realm.

1962 - Rosie

Set in the futuristic dreamland of 2062, “The Jetsons” home is dutifully cleaned by their robot maid Rosie. In 2011, Keith Wagstaff at Time wondered why it had taken so long to manufacture a real Rosie. Wagstaff notes that artificial intelligence just isn't far along enough to complete complex physical tasks without some human assistance, and configuring your environment just so a robot can do chores seems like a time suck. But as processing power continues to increase exponentially, our Rosie might be here sooner than you'd think.

1968 - HAL 9000

HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) 9000 depicts the evil side of artificial intelligence in Stanley Kubric’s 1968 cult classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. In charge of guiding the spaceship Discovery One on its voyage to Jupiter and adhering to the crew’s orders, HAL famously defies astronaut David Bowman’s request to open the pod bay doors. "I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me," HAL says, "and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen." Check out this eerie exchange below:

1970 - Shakey

Developed at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), Shakey emerged as the first robot capable of planning out how to execute complex tasks. In 1970, Life magazine ordained it the "first electronic person."

1977 - R2-D2 and C-3PO

R2-D2 and C-3PO stole the show in George Lucas' Star Wars: A New Hope. The pair of droids was so popular that they were later cast in an anti-smoking PSA. For a compilation of scenes set to Bill Withers' "Just The Two of Us," look no further:

1978 - Marvin the Paranoid Android

Due to the vast intelligence of Marvin's planet-sized brain (approximately 50,000 times more intelligent than a human), he suffers from dark depression and boredom. Marvin can easily solve "all of the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except his own, three times over…" The character was invented by British humorist Douglas Adams for the BBC radio program "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" and later explored in the popular book series and 2005 film. For an introduction to his melancholy, check out the compilation from the recent movie below:

1983 - Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2

Chinese restaurant Two Panda Deli in Pasadena, California, recruited a pair of Japanese robot waiters, Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2 (for $20,000 each), to deliver Chow mein to customers and bust out disco moves. Police radio interference compelled them to splatter orange chicken and whirl furiously around in circles. Complex customer requests were also often met with the terse reply: "That’s not my problem."

1984 - Terminator

In The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a cyborg killing machine from the future programmed to go back in time, find, and kill Sarah Conner in 1984 Los Angeles. The original trailer:  

1986 - Johnny 5

The 1980s classic Short Circuit veered away from the robot-as-murderer plot, and focused on the more delicate side of the machine. After a dramatic lightning strike, experimental military robot Number 5 gains real emotions and intelligence, escapes from his lab, claims the name Johnny 5, and, with the help of a new friend, avoids a burdensome reprogramming. Here, Johnny 5 learns about the meaning of death:

1996 - ABE

The Autonomous Benthic Explorer (ABE), a deep-sea-diving scientific vessel used to locate, map, and better understand hydrothermal vents and volcanoes, was launched on its first expedition. Its travels along the ocean floor produced data that has helped scientists explain the development of the Earth's crust. The ship was lost off the coast of Chile in 2010.

1997 - Packbot

Robotics company iRobot began testing its Packbot, which was eventually used to search for survivors in the 2001 wreckage of the World Trade Centers and Pentagon. The robot was also deployed to defuse road-side bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 3,500 are currently assisting US soldiers. To learn more about battlefield robots, check out our recent story here.

2000 - da Vinci Surgical System

The FDA granted approval to Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci Surgical System in 2000. During surgeries, a doctor uses a combination of foot pedals and joysticks to move the operating equipment, which can make very precise incisions. It is commonly used for hysterectomies and prostate removals.  The da Vinci system performed approximately 450,000 procedures in 2012.

2002 - Roomba

After perfecting bomb disposal, iRobot naturally moved onto household cleaning. The company introduced the roving automated vacuum cleaner Roomba in time for the 2002 Christmas season. People like it so much, they dance (in the commercials, at least):

2008 - Wall-E

After a massive human exodus from Earth, Pixar’s Wall-E traverses the badlands cleaning up the garbage left behind. It's a tremendous job for such a small bot:   

2011 - Watson

IBM supercomputer Watson embarrassed Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter by taking home the most cash during their three-day matchup. Watson had quite a run, and even got to say, "'Chicks Dig Me.'"

2012 - Google's driverless car

After Nevada DMV officials went for a joyride on desert highways and down the Las Vegas strip, the state became the first to issue a driver’s license to a car, instead of a human. Armed with video cameras, radar sensors, lasers, and a computer system, the Toyota Prius was developed by Stanford artificial intelligence expert and Google Vice President Sebastian Thrun. Driverless vehicles are expected to hit the public market by the 2020s.

2012 - Pet-Proto

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and robotics company Boston Dynamics programmed Pet-Proto, an autonomous humanoid robot capable of jumping onto and off of ledges, carefully avoiding holes in the ground, and climbing stairs in a laboratory environment.

2012 - LS3

DARPA and Boston Dynamics also successfully tested the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), a warthog-like automaton designed to lug up to 400 pounds of army equipment over war-torn terrain. It responds to verbal commands and can pursue a unit's leader.

In one of the most bizarre stories we've heard this week, Capcom's UK Marketing department will fill a swimming pool full of blood, gore and other body parts to promote the release of its next Resident Evil game in London.

The "first ever blood filled swimming pool" can hold about 55,000 gallons of water and will feature (fake, of course) human torsos as floatation devices, intestines as lane markers, and all kinds of gruesome objects floating in the water including bloody bandages, eyeballs, tendrils and blood clots. Zombie lifeguards will also be on hand...

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Fox have officially announced that 24 will be back on screens next year. They’ve booked in both Kiefer Sutherland and showrunner Howard Gordon, who was boss from 2008 until the series’ cancellation.

But there are some changes. For one thing, there are only going to be twelve episodes.

Which means one of a few things. Least likely, I think, is that each episode will be two hours long. Most likely is that the run will only cover twelve hours in the one day.

Somewhere in the middle is the possibility that they won’t be running in “real time” anymore, but I really don’t expect this.

This series is going to be subtitled Live Another Day, which at least works as a nice riff on the Bond title, Die Another Day.

Perhaps this will be a smash and really light a fire under the old 24 movie plans. More likely, this is what we’ll get instead of a big-screen installment.

24 Returning Next May For 12 Part Series, Live Another Day

Card Hunter closed beta hands on: Classic D&D filtered through a card game, and it’s amazing

The upcoming seventh season of Burn Notice is to be the last. I can’t work out the perfect Sam Axe pun but you’d think there is one, wouldn’t you?

USA Networks have given the show a final thirteen episode run, kicking off on June 6th. They promise that these last episodes will:

raise the stakes even higher, leading up to a spectacular series finale

Hopefully a fitting conclusion and a good dose of Bruce Campbell into the bargain.

Thanks to TV Line for the heads up.

Burn Notice’s Next Season Is To Be Its Last

Gnomeo & Juliet animation director Henry F. Anderson III helms family adventure at Sega Sammy subsidiary

Over at Mother Jones, everyone is talking about Jennie Lamere, who just won a Boston hackathon hosted by TVNext. What she created is a program called Twivo, which allows you to censor certain spoilery tweets, so that you don’t get your favorite forms of entertainment ruined just because you haven’t caught up with your DVR yet. But there’s more to this already very impressive story.

[How long would you imagine that program took to create?]

What’s more intriguing about Jennie’s story is the hackathon she entered had 80 additional competitors... and all of the other contestants who finished their projects and competed against her were male. In fact, most of the other contestants were working in groups to code their programs, while Jennie Lamere created hers solo in ten hours. That’s 150 lines of code, for a program she conceived the night before the competition, executed in ten hours. And she is only 17 years old. She won in the subcategory “best use of sync-to-broadcast” and then won “best in show,” beating out professional developers sent by the event’s sponsors.

Happily, she received more than just a few fabulous prizes for her efforts—the tech company Furious Minds is going to market her product, and Twivo might be the next helpful extention you download for your Twitter account. Noting the imbalance of gender in the competition is causing people to look up and take notice; while Jennie Lamere likely has a bright future ahead of her in computer sciences, she will often be the only woman in the room. We can only hope that her presence will encourage other women to follow in her footsteps, paving the way for a more women in the world of technology.

She is certainly taking the initiative on her own: when she returned from the hackathon, she brought the code she had created to her computer science class (she attends an all girls high school in Massachusetts) and showed everyone how she put the program together. Lamere hopes that next time, more girls will join her at the hackathon. We can only hope with her.

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Emily Asher-Perrin is sadly not a hacker. You can bug her on Twitter and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

Redditor Tuatara0 posted the above image to the gaming subreddit on the massive social network and we just had to share it as our inaugural "Best Thing Ever of the Day" post.

As you can see, "Firefly" star (and your favorite thing in the world) Nathan Fillion snapped a pic with a pair of "Legend of Zelda" cosplayers at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. In the photo Fillion is straight up murdering Link while a swooning Zelda falls in his arms. Now THAT'S serenity...am I right?

Sorry.

Nicely done, Fillion and friends.

Related Video:

Watch: The Cast of 'Firefly' Talks Fans

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This isn't a real post. I'm going to post the real post tomorrow. But it feels like there should be some sort of intermediate thing to prepare everyone for the abrupt change of speed ahead.

Here's a picture of an airplane.

I realize that airplanes don't look like that, but this has been a hard year for me and learning how to draw planes accurately wasn't exactly a priority. I maybe could have chosen to draw something else, but I started drawing the plane, and there was already too much momentum.

Anyway, I feel like this is becoming way more about planes than I had anticipated. Let's move on.

If, at any point over the last eighteen months, you've wondered what was happening to me and why it might be happening, my post tomorrow should explain everything.

I've been working on it for the better part of a year (partly because I wanted to get it exactly right, and partly because I was still experiencing it while attempting to explain it, which made things weird), and I'm relieved and excited and scared to finally be able to post it.

At this point, you're all probably wondering what is it? What's in the post?? Is it airplanes? And no, it unfortunately has very little to do with airplanes.* It's a sort of sequel to my post about depression. It is also about depression. In parts, it might get a little flinch-y and uncomfortable, and if I succeed in making you laugh during those parts, you're going to feel real weird about yourselves. But it's okay. Just let it happen. I WANT it to happen. Because it makes me feel powerful, and also because there are flinch-y, uncomfortable things everywhere. Seeing them is inevitable. If we can laugh about some of them, maybe they'll be less scary to look at.

Okay, so that's what's going to happen tomorrow. Hopefully this transition post makes the experience less jarring for everyone.

*As it turns out, there is a plane. I had forgotten about it (it's small and not the main focus of the post) and the coincidence was entirely unintentional. I'd never tell you there aren't going to be planes while being fully aware that there's a plane.

I’ve spent most of my life aching for great superheroine portrayals on film. To see some of my comic book heroines reflected back to me on 40-foot screens. With a few awesome exceptions (X-Men, X2) I have been disappointed again and again (Catwoman, Elektra, Sue Storm in Fantastic Four, Batgirl in Batman & Robin, Poison [...]

Last month on our sister blog Comics Should Be Good, columnist Kelly Thompson wrote a piece titled “6 Sublime Superheroine Redesigns” that profiled several recent costume makeovers she thought effective and true to the characters. In the post and the ensuing comments, talk abounded about the subject of superheroines often being saddled with revealing costumes that lean more toward fan service than suitable crime-fighting gear. Some posters argued there’s a current trend toward female characters having less-revealing costumes than in the past — Psylocke’s recent wardrobe redesign by Kris Anka was cited as an example — and that it’s an overreaction by publishers and designers that panders to feminists.

Anka took umbrage with some of the comments, and it opened the floor to an interesting debate about the look of superheroes. On the surface it questions the near-universal portrayal of female superheroes in more sexualized garb, but also attempts to draw a line between drawing a superhero as sexy without necessarily being sexist.

“A character can still be considered “sexy” even if it doesn’t fit with your tastes,” Anka posted on his blog. ” To say that by giving a female character a piece of fabric to cover her ass cheeks up is ruining her sexiness, ALL that means is that YOU think that an exposed ass is sexy. There is absolutely no way to make a blanket statement about that. Some people think a baggy shirt on a girl is equally as attractive as an uber skin tight shirt.”

From Anka’s perspective, his approach to designing a new costume for a superhero never has sexiness as a factor.

“Sex appeal ONLY comes into play when the characters PERSONALITY dictates that as a factor,” says Anka. “The CHARACTER must be first and foremost the inspiration and guideline for all the decisions made when trying to design the clothing.”

Anka’s redesign of Psylocke in X-Force dispenses with the revealing swimsuit garb the character has worn since 1989 in favor of a more practical suit that, while still skintight, is less a bikini and more a form-fitting catsuit. Although Psylocke’s pre-1989 look was more demure than the Lee design, some commenters took issue with the change and how it is out of nature for the character. But Anka disagrees, saying his decision was character-specific and offers a counter-point where showing skin is part of a character’s personality.

“My go-to example of a character that should be showing skin is, of course, Emma Frost,” Anka points out. “Here is a character who prides herself on her looks. She is an incredibly confident character mentally, and likes to show off herself physically. Emma Frost flaunting it works because it works for HER. She likes control, she likes power, and one of the best tools for that is her body. She can turn heads with her body, she can command attention with it. She wouldn’t even need to use her telepathy to have someone lose focus. Emma Frost is incredibly intelligent, she knows what she is doing. There has to be a REASON for the skin.”

Anka goes on to reference male superheroes like Colossus and Namor, whose costumes are relatively skimpy, and how that works for the characters and their personalities. Anka’s complete essay is a great read, and well worth checking out on its own.

What do you think?