Alecbugg

You want to learn some fun facts about how to fight off sharks? Turn to Mary Roach.

Roach writes journalistic popular science books that take deep dives into single topics, all of them with evocative monosyllabic titles. Stiff was about the history of corpses. Spook was about the science of the afterlife.

Her latest book, Grunt, covers military science. It’s not about the science of weaponry — there are no guns or bombs here — but the science that goes into developing military uniforms and teaching soldiers how to survive in a submarine and putting genitalia back together.

It’s a treasure trove of weird, obscure military science trivia; every chapter has at least one line that will make you sit up and say, "Huh. Who knew?"

Below are some of the best facts from Roach’s book:

Military uniform designers have more decorative backgrounds than you might think

Specifically, Roach cites Annette LaFleur, the US Army’s top staff fashion designer, and her colleague Dalila Fernandez.

LaFleur started off designing swimwear, which means, as Roach points out, that she has "expertise with high-performance active-wear fabrics and an understanding of the specialized activity they’re needed for."

Fernandez, meanwhile, comes from the world of high-end wedding dresses. That one might seem like more of a stretch, but Roach makes a compelling case:

A wedding gown entails multilayering of expensive specialty fabrics for an outfit whose useful lifespan may come and go in a single afternoon. Much like a bomb suit.

But there is no good reason for the Army’s obsession with berets

The Army has a lot of knowledgeable experts working on designing uniforms, but now and then someone further up in the chain of command will pull rank.

That’s what happened with berets. Although field data showed that visored cloth caps would be the best headwear for the Army — they’re cool, light, easy to stuff in a pocket, and they shade your eyes — an Army chief of staff decided on black wool berets instead. Why? Well, Roach explains, "he dug the look."

The same thing happened with the Universal Camouflage Pattern the Army developed in 2005:

The idea had been to develop a single camo pattern that would provide concealment for troops in desert, urban, and woodsy settings. The Natick Camouflage Evaluation Facility came up with thirteen pattern and color combinations, duly sent overseas for field tests and feedback. Before the data was in and the study completed, a highly placed general went ahead and picked a pattern. It was not even one of the ones being tested. The new camouflage performed so poorly in Afghanistan that in 2009, the Army spent $3.4 million developing a new and safer pattern for troops deployed there.

Don’t even mention NASCAR to the people who make armored combat vehicles

A general made that mistake once with Nicole Brockhoff of the Army Research Laboratory. Her job is to protect people in fast-moving vehicles from crashes, and surely, the good general reasoned, the folks at NASCAR must know something about that.

But as Roach points out, "the bottom of a personnel carrier is traveling many, many times faster than a NASCAR race car." Plus, NASCAR drivers are strapped in and braced with their heads facing straight ahead to prevent damage to their spines. You can’t do that in military vehicles, because the drivers need to be able to scan the road in all directions. "General, with all due respect," Brockhoff said, and then trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

You get the impression Brockhoff is pretty sure NASCAR is filled with wimps.

The Army got really into a plan to basically turn soldiers into cyborgs

The Army’s solution to every problem is to throw equipment at it, to the point that soldiers complain they have too much equipment. So the Army started figuring out what kind of equipment it needed to solve that problem.

Their favorite solution? A wearable hydraulic exoskeleton known as the Human Universal Load Carrier, or HULC. It attaches to your legs with braces, leaving you free to bound around while it carries your equipment for you.

But so far, no one’s come up with a solution for the problem that inevitably arises when you run around in leg braces for a few hours: shin splints. Plus, the thing’s battery life sucks: It’s good for "five hours, presuming you’re moving slowly (2.5 mph) and on a level terrain." So the army’s dream of turning its soldiers into super-strong cyborgs remains currently unworkable.

There was a secret plan to win World War II with stink bombs

The military devoted significant resources to developing a smell that it could "distribute among Chinese resistance elements for the purpose of humiliating Japanese officers." The result was called Who, Me?, and it is, Roach reports, bad but not that bad: "It’s sulfury, but not in a jokey-farty rotten egg way. It’s got a meaner, spikier disposition."

It failed to humiliate the Japanese, and although the military quickly formulated a Who Me? II — "with skunkiness substituted for fecal odor" — it was never used. By the time it was ready for the field, the bomb had already dropped on Hiroshima.

Sharks are not actually that interested in attacking shipwrecked humans

The Navy has looked into creating shark repellant (unsuccessfully), but not because sailors are often attacked by sharks (they’re not). It’s a morale thing. The Navy is concerned that those who would otherwise enlist are put off by the idea that they might get eaten by sharks.

Well, worry not, says Roach. Sharks will sometimes eat human corpses, but it’s rare they’ll go after something that’s alive and kicking:

A floating sailor could dispatch a curious shark by hitting it or churning the water with his legs. ([A statistical analyst who specializes in shark attacks, David] Baldridge observed that even a kick to a shark’s nose from the rear leg of a swimming rat was enough to cause a "startled response and rapid departure from the vicinity.")

Getting six hours of sleep a night for two weeks is just as bad as staying up for two days straight

Actually, it’s worse, according to the Submarine Force's Force Operational Notes Newsletter (Special Crew Rest Edition). When you don’t get enough sleep, your ability to function keeps going down until you’re basically drunk — and two weeks of six-hour sleep has the same effect as two days of no sleep. But, Roach points out, "unlike the up-all-nighters, routine six-hours-a-nighters see no need for caution. They’ve felt mildly exhausted for so long it’s become their normal."

This is obviously important information for submarine crews, who routinely handle heavy machinery and weaponry in an environment where disrupted sleep is the norm.

But let it be a lesson to us all, particularly those of us who are used to cheerfully getting by on six hours of sleep a night and then wonder why we always feel a little bit drunk.

How a classical show treats a classic game with respect

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I have a good idea that you can NOT steal, but which you may hear. Are you ready? Here it goes:

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verbalvomits:

All in a day’s work

1. You can find Genji's room in Nepal

It's easy to tell that Nepal is Zenyatta's hangout, what with the floating robot monk statues everywhere and all. But what the game doesn't tell you up front is that it's Genji's home, too. See, after being mortally wounded in a fight with his brother Hanzo and patched up with cybernetics, Genji came to Nepal to find peace with his old self and new prosthetic reality. That's where he came under the mentorship of Zenyatta, and the two have been close ever since. You can hear them refer to this relationship in pre-game chatter if you listen closely. 

Since Nepal is Genji's adopted home, you'd figure he'd find a place to carve out for himself. And sure enough, you can find that on one of Nepal's three control mode maps. 

On the Nepal map known as "Village" (which you might know as "The One Where the Control Point is a Tiny Room of Death), near the control point on the second floor you can find a peculiar room decorated with recognizable artifacts. On the right you can find a painting that should look familiar. 

Sword-wielding brother? Check. Bow and arrow bro? Check. Giant dragon? You bet. It's not a coincidence -- this seems like a direct callout to the Shimada family. 

It would seem as though Genji ninja-d his way back home to swipe a few choice artifacts. 

On the left we can see a certain sword, and on the right -- aww. That's a snapshot Babyface Hanzo and Babyface Genji in better days. We don't get a lot in the way of characterization or development for the Overwatch cast outside of a comic here and and an animated short there, so it's nice to see something truly revealing hidden on one of the game's maps. Relics of Genji's past tell us that he still values that part of his life, including the brother that tried to murder him.

2. There's a giant dancing robot in Volskaya Industries

I don't know if you noticed but outside of the Volskaya Industries map there are a ton of giant robots. Seriously, it's like Pacific Rim 5 out there. They're all part of Russia's Syvatogor mech program, built to protect the country from the threat of asshole omnics like Bastion. 

However you feel about their politics, you gotta admit these robots can jam. 

It's tricky, but you can catch one mech pilot doing "The Robot" and pulling off some other moves in the furthest edge of the background. We don't know who's inside, but rest assured they're probably drift compatible with D.va. 

3. Plenty of movie & TV references

Overwatch isn't shy about making pop culture references. In fact, they're downright shameless. Most of the obvious bits come from random one-liners from the crew  -- Winston remarks "Don't get me angry," acknowledging the similarities of his Rage Mode ability with that of notorious green monster Mark Ruffalo. Other in-jokes are peppered throughout levels, often on signage. Route 66 is home to plenty of signs for  "Deadlock Propane and Propane Accessories," a clear shout-out to gas grill salesman Hank Hill. 

Some of the references are quite a bit older however, like this poster found in Hollywood:

"Some Like It Bot" is a dead-ringer for the Marilyn Monroe classic "Some Like It Hot," down to the instruments and high heels. 

A little more modern-day but still obscure is a clever reference to Bill Murray favorite Groundhog Day, found in Route 66's diner. 

When pulled over by cops after a joyride on his third consecutive day, Murray's Phil Connors jokes with the arresting officer by starting up a drive-thru order. "Too early for flapjacks?" has since become something of an annual meme, one that somebody at Blizzard is apparently a fan. 

This last one is a little shaky, but someone brought up a convincing link between Overwatch and Big Hero 6. 

On the left you can see Zenyatta's "Hello" emote, which is a circular "wax on" wave. As it so happens, that's exactly the same way that fellow robot Baymax waves hello. It might be a coincidence, but the two synthetic lifeforms are pretty similar in personality and vocal cadence that the connection is tough to deny. All we know is now I want Baymax in Overwatch and I'll never be happy again. 

4. A touching tribute to a deceased fan

Many developers (including Blizzard) have taken to honoring fallen fans by representing them in-game, and that's just what happened with a recent patch in Overwatch. Blizzard must have heard about the tragic story of Wu Hongyu, a 20 year-old fan who was notorious among his friends for being a big fan of Captain America and of course video games. One day before Overwatch was set to release, Hongyu was killed while trying to stop a thief from stealing his friend's motorcycle. Following his death, local government bestowed Hongyu with a "Courageous Citizen Award," and Overwatch developers planted this lovely tribute in Lijiang Tower. 

On the display of spacesuits, the center piece reads "Hongyu" in Chinese characters. The words above the suit roughly translate to "immortal hero" -- or as Mercy would say, "Heroes never die."

5. Animated aftermath

If you're into Overwatch, chances are you've seen at least one of Blizzard's excellent animated shorts by now. If not, you really owe it to yourself to set aside a few minutes and check them out; not only are they entertaining and well-produced, but each short has a visible impact on the map in which they take place. These details really help the levels feel like they have some meaning and history beyond "one time a Junkrat killed four people with his ult here." 

The Genji/Hanzo-focused short "Dragons" is set on what players will recognize as the Hanamura map. This is where the Shimada brothers throw down.

The place gets pretty torn up during the fight; in addition to some shredded lanterns and ninja stars stuck in the wall, you can see an arrow meant for Genji's head still stuck in the ground. You can't remove the arrow by shooting it, so for now it's a permanent scar on the otherwise lovely wood paneling. 

Then there's the short "Alive," in which Widowmaker successfully pulls off her assassination mission. 

Mondatta was one of Zenyatta's allies, a peaceful figure that was championing unity between man and machine. Widowmaker smiled as she gunned him down. Now a martyr, Mondatta greets players on King's Row in giant golden statue form. It's kind of ironic, given what the payload on King's Row contains, but we'll get to that later. 

Maybe of the most fun of the shorts, "Recall" stars a lonely Winston twiddling his thumbs until Reaper and his goons come to call. 

The short takes place in the attacker's spawn of Watchpoint: Gibraltar, and it's easy to spot Winston's office and the window through which he chucked a hapless merc. True to form, Winston's desk is still covered in jars of peanut butter.

6. Shameless Blizzard developer cameos

Not content to reference pop culture, Blizzard has also taken to shining a light on themselves. Over in the crew quarters of the Gibraltar map, you can find what appear to be the names of several developers. Programmer Paulo Pinto can be seen above at the left, and Senior Environment Artist Philip Klevestav snuck his way in there in the middle. It's kind of a shame there wasn't room enough for all of Overwatch's development team, since most players won't ever bother to watch the credits for a multiplayer game. 

While those callouts are pretty obvious, Blizzard was a little sneakier with the arrivals board at the Numbani airport. 

In general it's a pretty expected mix of imaginary places (Dorado, Numbani) combined with real-world locales like New York and Tokyo. But a couple of them stand out in particular; for instance, why would the Cork, Ireland airport be featured over the Dublin airport? Does an Irvine, California  airport even exist? The explanation, of course, is that several of these locations correspond to Blizzard offices -- specifically Irvine, Cork, Seoul, Paris, Austin, Shanghai and San Francisco. And of course it totally makes sense that Irvine, the headquarters of a company that likes to take its time, would have the only flight on the list that's delayed. 

7. The secret stories behind those payloads you're escorting

Overwatch doesn't exactly tell you what you're doing most of the time. Sure, you're told to "attack objective A" or "escort the payload," but uh, what exactly does that mean? The answers aren't found in any kind of narrative-driven campaign, but in details tucked away around the environments. Watchpoint: Gibraltar is probably the easiest one to figure out. The payload is literally labeled "Satellite Drone." If that didn't give it away, there are some other hints dead-center. 

As we established earlier, the attacking team on Gibraltar starts in Winston's lab, complete with broken window. You can find all sorts of suits and gadgets laying around, but the important part here is the blackboard. Written in chalk you can find step-by-step instructions for what exactly escorting the payload means -- in this case, it's guiding a satellite drone to a rocket at the end of the level, which will reactivate the members of Overwatch, some of which uh, will already be there helping to escort the payload. 

Each escort mission is a little different, however.

On Dorado, the attacking team is tasked with moving a rusty old hovertruck that's hauling a large and mysterious device into a large and mysterious pyramid-shaped building. Some supplementary material on Blizzard's site tells us this building is a power plant supplying clean energy to the city. And judging from the large monitors in one of the side rooms (seen above on the left), the device being escorted in this case is some kind of battery or energy coil. 

When it comes to Route 66, the payload is of the regular ol' live ordinance variety -- but how it got there is a bit more interesting. 

Attackers on Route 66 begin in a diner that seems to have been a hideout for the Deadlock Gang, McCree's previous posse. Even though their comrade left for Overwatch, they were still up to their old tricks. On the right side of the diner, you can see a detonator and blueprints for what appears to be specially-placed charges designed to blow up a bridge. Sure enough, that part of the level is covered in wrecked train cars. The payload in this case would be the target of this high-stakes heist, likely a bomb of some kind. 

Other payloads are a little more transparent about their contents. 

On Numbani, you can clearly see what appears to be the Doomfist Gauntlet encasted in an indestructible cylinder on the payload. Those who remember the original Overwatch animated short will recognize the device as an object valued by bad guys like Reaper and Widowmaker. There are also plenty of posters of Doomfist around Numbani, hinting at a series of owners for the gauntlet. Hopefully one (or all) of these Doomfist-wielders will be playable at some point. 

The most disturbing payload however, has to be the one at King's Row. 

There aren't a whole lot of hints in-game about the vehicle you're escorting, but Junkrat does have a pre-game voice line when attacking on the map: "So we're delivering a bomb to scrap some 'bots, and I'M getting paid for it." So you're blowing up robots? Zenyatta doesn't sound like he'd be cool with that. But the developers confirmed in an interview that what you're doing is driving into the home of the local omnic population and nuking them all with an electromagnetic pulse. Ever notice that electric crackle and blue explosion when you win a match on King's Row? That's the EMP. 

Rigging a satellite and restoring power to a city seem like admirable missions. But nuking a neighborhood of innocent robots is an act of terror, straight-up, made all the more disturbing by the possible involvement of omnics like Zenyatta and Bastion. Even if you win your assault on King's Row, you still kind of lose.

8. Diablo references everywhere

This game is drenched head-to-toe in winks to other Blizzard properties. Any time you see a sign or a poster or a book on a table, it's probably a reference to one of a few key franchises. Multiple Diablo in-jokes can be spotted in the Route 66 Diner, such as the display for "Diableaux Hot Sauce." 

Squint hard at one of the checks on the wall next to the hot sauce sign and you can make out a familiar name. 

That's the signature of none other than Deckard Cain, also known as "That Old Guy in Diablo Who's Always Yammering On and Always Leaves A Satchel With a Journal Entry Wherever He Goes." The date the check was written is notable too -- May 15, 2012 is the release date of Diablo III.

Jumping over to Hollywood for a second, check out the branding on the trailer at the end of the map:

No doubt that's a reference to Diablo's avenging angel Tyrael. I guess it has a better ring to it than "Winnebago." 

And finally, you can find another callout to Diablo in the Dorado level, only this one looks a bit different:

One of the many colorful, shootable pinatas strewn throughout the map was crafted in the visage of Mr. Box Art himself. This time, his loot is edible.

9. There's a couple Hearthstone easter eggs too

No doubt you've noticed the abandoned workstations with Hearthstone playing on their monitors. They can be found on several maps, and they're not exactly hiding. Forget for a minute that it's a total dick move to leave in the middle of a match -- there's another Hearthstone reference you might have missed. 

Regular playing playing cards are scattered about maps like Route 66, only these have Hearthstone card backs. Yep, even when Blizzard characters play poker, they're still playing Hearthstone. 

10. Starcraft nods were also inevitable

The arcade machines in Hanamura's attack spawn area are barely worth mentioning here as "hidden details" or "easter eggs." They're pretty much screaming their references to your face. A little easier to miss, however, is the name and logo of the arcade, found right outside; under "16-Bit Hero" stands a pixel-ized version of Raynor from the Starcraft series. As you might have guessed, Overwatch is filthy with allusions to Blizzard's key sci-fi franchise. 

Even the Zerg get representation. 

In the attacker's spawn for Temple of Anubis, a mounted skull of a Zerg Hydralisk rests on the wall. It has confusing and frankly terrifying implications for the Overwatch universe, but it's there all the same. 

The countertop in Route 66's diner seems to fly in the face of any shared universe hints. 

"Craft From the Stars" sounds like something your grandma would call StarCraft, but that's the title of the comic that features renders of Raynor and Kerrigan straight from official Blizzard promo art. 

Look over the counter and at the soda fountain and there's yet another Zerg shoutout. 

Furthest over to the right, what looks kind of like an evil Dreamcast logo is actually the symbol for the Zerg race. A couple spigots over to the left is a delicious-sounding beverage called "Dr. Boom," -- but we'll get to more Warcraft references later. 

11. The Lost Vikings get their due

The Lost Vikings are kind of the Red-Headed Stepchildren of the Blizzard universe, their last game releasing on the SNES over two decades ago. The trio of spacefaring ruffians have recently re-surfaced in MOBA mashup Heroes of the Storm, however. That seems enough to have earned them a spot in Overwatch. 

On the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, near the attacker spawn, a few names stick out. Olaf Stout, Erik Swift and Baleog Fierce each refer to the Lost Vikings themselves.

12. And World of Warcraft, of course

No collection of gratuitious Blizzard easter eggs would be complete without their perrennial moneymaker, World of Warcraft. The series is well-represented in every corner of the game. The cameras in Hollywood, for instance, appear to be branded "Kilrogg." That seems like a nice tribute to one of the Warcraft orcs called Kilrogg Deadeye, but at the same time it's also an insult. See, many of the movie posters around the map have branding that indicate they were filmed "IN AMAZING KILROGG-VISION 3D" -- which is ironic, because as someone with only one eye, Kilrogg would not be able to enjoy 3D movies. 

All the same, it's still pretty neat that one of the Kilrogg cameras follows the payload through the map. 

The Horde gets more facetime in the Temple of Anubis. They're pretty much everywhere. 

The symbol for the Horde (seen above on the right) is carved alongside hieroglyphics on the map. You don't have to look hard, since it seems to be on every surface at the second control point. 

Unfortunately, where there's Horde, despicable Alliance scum must follow. 

The Hollywood map is set at the Goldshire Pictures studio lot, which prominently features the Alliance symbol as its own crest. Goldshire itself is certainly derived from the human town of the same name, seen in the early game when playing World of Warcraft. The name of the putrid Alliance slum is plastered everywhere on the map, from movie posters to street signs. *shudder*

Onto better, more decent things. Like Murlocs. 

A giant, noodle-guzzling Murloc greets you outside of the Hanamura arcade, the apparent mascot for Rikimaru ramen.

Then there's the ship on Temple of Anubis. 

Do Overwatch ships have bombshell ladies or angry sharks? Nah. Just feisty Murlocs, complete with textualized versions of their trademark gurgling. 

Like Zerg, Murlocs seem to exist at least in some form in the Overwatch universe. You can even find some on the Hollywood map. 

That looks like a box for Rikimaru ramen, complete with a UFO-driving Murloc. Now that's a hero we'd like to see in-game.

13. The easter egg Blizzard doesn't want you to see

Overwatch went through tons of changes from the beta up to release, and continues to see tweaks in content and balance. One change fans noticed, however, was a little different. In an early version of the game, one of the outhouses on Route 66 had... an extra feature. Namely, there were magazines in there. Magazines with photos of Overwatch females. 

This strongly implies the local no-goodniks of the Deadlock Gang were using the likeness of Mercy and Symmetra as spank material. Not long after the folks at Reddit spotted this lewd masturbation easter egg, it was excised from the game. Go to that same outhouse now and nothing's in it. Maybe the Deadlock Gang finally figured out they can take their cell phones in the shitter. 

Blizzard didn't communicate a whole lot about this particular map modification, so it makes you wonder whether an artist snuck the magazines in there without the knowledge of some key members of the team. Judging by their reaction to that whole "Tracer butt pose" debacle, someone higher up probably thought that the detail didn't line up with their vision for the game. It's probably for the best, because if the easter egg still existed we'd probably all still be arguing about it instead of complaining about assholes who pick sniper on attack escort. 

via enxee

Everyone's playing Pokemon GO - and while the game is mostly nice and friendly, there's also an element of competitiveness and tribalism: TEAMS. The three teams are:

• Team Mystic (aka the blue team, represented by Articuno)
• Team Valor (aka the red team, represented by Moltres)
• Team Instinct (aka the yellow team, represented by Zapdos)

Of the three, Team Instinct has stood out as the least common choice for players and the most often ignored in rivalries. But it's a great team, equally deserving of respect amongst other Pokemon GO players.

Overall, it seems that Team Instinct is in the minority most places - where gyms are typically dominated by members of Team Mystic and Team Valor. As a result, no one really takes them too seriously.

via 8bitbouncer

But those who belong to Team Instinct know that's not the case - while others underestimate them for their low numbers, together they're equally strong as any of the other teams.

Basically, it's the House Mormont of Pokemon GO:

via saturos47

Their motto is "There is no shelter from the storm" - although, at the moment, the storm isn't raging quite that hard.

via SnooTube

And still, some consider membership in what is viewed as the Hufflepuff of Pokemon GO teams as a source of shame:

via delluminator

While Team Instinct isn't the largest team, it's the team that's made some of the most important Gym wins:

via maude_ville

the fact that Westboro Baptist Church is a gym being controlled by a Clefairy named LOVEISLOVE is my fav. #PokemonGO pic.twitter.com/7wrf4f67aQ

-- Drew Boehmker (@IfUSeekDrew) July 9, 2016

And since it's small and a consistent underdog, Team Instinct members know they need to stick together - because together, Team Instinct can accomplish anything (even get all three Eeveelutions at once):

Team Instinct members - take pride in what makes your team special: resoluteness, wisdom, and...knowing when to stay out of the battles.

When you're team instinct pic.twitter.com/vFBmdo92Jq

-- Pokemon GO! (@iPokemonGO) July 12, 2016

But most importantly, Team Instinct tries to pride itself on rising above the petty rivalries that dominate the conversations of team allegiance. There are times when competition needs to be put aside for the greater good - and here's a perfect example of that spirit: 

This graffiti (supposedly perpetrated by a member of Team Mystic, although many are convinced it was a frame-job) on a park map was spreading around social media earlier, as an example of the nice Pokemon GO community finally succumbing to the poisonous aspects of the tribal nature of teams.

But members of Team Instinct, Valor, and Mystic joined forces to clean it up.

via AliceGrey1

Basically, don't take the team stuff too seriously - but if you do have to choose, it's INSTINCT OR EXTINCT!

via nuzleaf-apologist

One player has stumbled onto something

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How to Make Sushi (by Molg H.)

ESPN is planning to skip TV providers and sell "a package of live programming" directly to consumers over the web, according to a new report from The Information. But the over-the-top offering won't include NBA, NFL, or any other big-league content; rather, ESPN will stick to "niche" leagues and select college sports for the streaming package.

The hugely popular sports network has conducted experiments like this before. In 2015, ESPN let online viewers purchase access to its extensive Cricket World Cup coverage — no cable or satellite subscription required. Here again, it sounds like the company is preparing a narrow streaming bundle as yet another test of the direct-to-consumer model.

ESPN and parent company Disney have been early...

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1. People are losing all sense of social norms (but, like, in a good way)

via thatwa5epic

2. It has made the lives of police officers a lot different, since the kinds of people prowling around parks at 2am are now mostly nerds searching for Pinsirs.

via alexandriiiaf

via sunderboltt

via NTPFES

3. People are going to GREAT LENGTHS to do what's necessary. #TeamMystic

via mrsgreatnews

5. ...and some people are going to even GREATER LENGTHS. Like, this guy, who battled on the same gym BUT saved himself the kayak rental fee.

via SoulEntropy

6. And it's leading to some NEXT-LEVEL trolling.

via ifuseekdrew

7. Egg-hunters of the world are finally learning CONVERSION RATES (it's about 3 miles btw)

via thenbrown

8. Speaking of egg hatching...

via jammich

via xagesz

9. Tech geeks' Pokemon Go game is unreal

via hyperion995

10. It may be detracting from some people's dating lives...

via k_nasty

11. ...or VASTLY IMPROVING DATING LIVES! (she thought he was just taking a normal nice picture of her)

via lebaron360

12. Although, for the sake of some love lives, maybe just turn it off.

via candycornbackflash

13. And speaking of true love - God bless this poor wife who let her husband play Pokemon Go AS SHE GAVE BIRTH.

via bringther1ot

14. But here's the biggest takeaway of Pokemon Go - it's bringing people together.

via bayreutherhell

via bableg

Gyms and lures on PokeStops have drawn together huge groups - the game is getting people outdoors, socializing, and having fun together. Hell, look at what happened in Australia over the weekend: over 2000 people showed up in the same spot for a Pokemon Go gathering.

via Guy Blomberg

However, there ARE some bad people out there who would use Pokemon Go for evil purposes - so be safe.

15. It's hard to deny - at this point, Pokemon Go is completely changing the way people are interacting with the world. Nintendo took a long time to make a splash in mobile gaming, but when they did, it was worth the wait.

via mike1305

Thanks, Mike (from Spain)

The post The dock boss appeared first on Bits and Pieces.

owlturdcomix:

DAE feel like but a conduit for their Clefable’s rage?

image / twitter / facebook / patreon

Pikachu, we choose you

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Four suspected; police say they — *sunglasses* — caught them all

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Wrong spell, Harry. (via kshandoo)

Off the top, I’ll apologize to folks who dislike it when we mix real sports in with the scripted stuff. But if the National Basketball Association (NBA) keeps looking like Vince McMahon or Eric Bischoff is pulling strings behind the scenes, you might get more of these.

Today’s example - Kevin Durant, the most prized free agent on this Summer’s market, has opted to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder to sign with the Golden State Warriors.

This gets sports entertainment-y for a few reasons:

1. Oklahoma City is the only pro team Durant ever played for, and despite never winning a title, he and fellow All-Star Russell Westbrook (who KD leaves behind - for now) created a legacy in a town without much pro sports history via their partnership. This has prompted allegations of betrayal.
2. The Warriors beats the Thunder in the Western Conference finals, contributing elements of rivalry.
3. Golden State may have lost the title to LeBron James’ Undertaker-obsessed Cleveland Cavaliers a few weeks back, but had the best record in NBA history during the regular season, are led by the first ever unanimous Most Valuable Player and their fan base looks like a techie version of Ted DiBiase’s country club. In other words, they’re major heels right now.

So how else would the internet (or, at least, one beautiful lunatic who goes by the Twitter handle “Brother Negro”) react to this?

But that’s not the best. This next is one is his masterpiece:

And while it’s not as famous a betrayal in the mainstream, the Young Bucks couldn’t resist putting their own version into the mix, with Westbrook as AJ Styles and the Warriors as the Bullet Club:

Who says pro graps has no crossover appeal?

The gas giant is still a mystery. That’s why NASA is so excited it got a satellite into the planet’s orbit.

NASA has shot humans to the moon, sent robots to Mars, and even sent a probe beyond the borders of our solar system. All these have been herculean efforts. But this July 4, when the Juno spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Jupiter, Scott Bolton — Juno’s principal investigator — proclaimed, “We just did the hardest thing NASA has ever done.”

A true ranking of the difficultly of NASA feats is impossible. But Bolton’s comments were not hyperbole. Inserting Juno into orbit around Jupiter was a huge, risky $1.1 billion gamble for the space agency — even more treacherous than another notable recent feat, the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Here’s why.

First off: Why even send a probe to Jupiter?

Even though Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, scientists know remarkably little about it.

Basic questions about the planet they’d like to answer include:

• Does Jupiter have a solid core?
• How does it generate such extreme levels of radiation?
• How did Jupiter form and evolve?

Juno is equipped with nine scientific instruments, including sensors that can measure gravity, probe deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere, and test the planet’s magnetic fields, as well as various cameras to capture the planet across a range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Jupiter is made up of the same basic ingredients as the sun — mainly hydrogen and helium. Scientists are hoping a close-up investigation of its surface can reveal some history of the origin of our solar system. What’s more, the galaxy may be littered with other gas giants we haven’t yet discovered.

“Juno is not only going to help us better understand Jupiter, it’s going to help us better understand the universe around us and our place in it,” Barry Mauk, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a press statement.

Juno’s 1.7-billion-mile journey to Jupiter began in August 2011. The GIF below traces the path Juno took on its journey. You’ll see that about two years into its flight, the orbiter passed back around the Earth for a gravity assist. That propelled Juno to around 165,000 mph, making it the fastest man-made object ever built, and gave it the energy to reach Jupiter within three years.

NASA

When Juno approached Jupiter, it hit the brakes and slowed to around 130,000 mph, a record speed for a craft being inserted into orbit.

Jupiter can fry electronics to a cinder

There’s a reason NASA has never sent a probe to fly so close to the surface of Jupiter: The planet has a magnetic field that can fry electronics to a cinder.

Just like Earth has a protective bubble of radiation (a magnetosphere, which is what creates the aurora light shows around the poles), Jupiter has one too. But Jupiter’s is much, much more massive and more powerful. “Its magnetic field extends so far into space that, if it glowed in visible light, Jupiter would appear to be twice the size of the full moon in our night sky,” the New Yorker explains.

Juno will study what inside Jupiter creates such a massive field of magnetism. But doing so puts the probe in danger.

This field can send electrons flying at nearly the speed of light. At that velocity, they can “go right through a spacecraft and strip the atoms apart inside of electronics,” Heidi Becker, Juno's radiation monitoring team lead, said at a July 4 press conference.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

For Juno to get close to the surface of Jupiter, it had to sneak in where the magnetism is weakest: near the poles. Once inserted near the poles, Juno can orbit underneath the most intense areas of radiation and protect its sensitive electronics.

Here’s NASA’s visualization of the maneuver. It’s like threading a needle in the deep reaches of space.

NASA

In order for this needle threading to work, Juno’s thrusters had to fire for more than 35 minutes to slow it down. It had to be incredibly precise, as Juno was aiming for an opening “that’s tens of kilometers wide,” Rick Nybakken, Juno’s project manager said at the July 4 press conference. “We’re going to hit that within 1.2 seconds, after a journey of 1.7 billion miles.”

Juno will repeat this careful approach for 37 orbits — the length of its mission before it plunges into the surface of the planet. To continually sneak in at the radiation opening at the poles, Juno has been put on a highly eccentric, elliptical orbit around the planet. For the first part of the mission, each revolution around Jupiter will take 53.5 days.

NASA

Here’s an illustration of what that looks like from Juno’s perspective.

Even with this sneaky orbit precaution, Juno will be subjected to the radiation equivalent of receiving “a hundred million X-rays in less than a year,” Becker said. To protect the orbiter’s sensitive electronics, NASA engineered a 400-pound radiation vault made of titanium (an appropriate metal considering Jupiter’s mythical namesake).

Jupiter has a poorly understood ring that could have destroyed Juno

Radiation was a known obstacle. But perhaps the biggest potential risk of the Juno mission was less well-known: Jupiter’s rings.

The Galileo mission in the 1990s made some observations of the rings of dust and debris that surround Jupiter, but NASA scientists still don’t know how close to the surface these get to the planet, nor do they know the distribution of material within them (some of the debris may be from meteorites captured in orbit around the planet).

Since Juno was flying at around 130,000 mph, collisions with this debris would be catastrophic. “And if it gets hit, even by a big piece of dust, a small piece of dust, it can do very serious damage,” Bolton said at the July 4 press conference. “That’s one of the big gambles.” Juno has been reinforced to survive some impacts, but it was especially vulnerable in its approach to Jupiter, when it had to expose its relatively fragile main engine.

NASA/JPL/Cornell University

When will we begin to see some data from Juno?

For the approach into orbit, NASA had to turn off most of Juno’s scientific instruments. They have to be turned back on. According to Science Juno should be able to start making scientific observations after its first 53-day orbit, which will be around the end of August. Around October 19, Juno will fire up its thrusters again, and will accelerate its 53-day orbit into a 14-day orbit to gather data more quickly.

It takes around 48 minutes to transmit data from Jupiter to Earth. Bit by bit, we’re going to learn the secrets of this gas giant — whether Jupiter likes it or not.

Watch: Nasa’s 3-billion-mile journey to Pluto, explained

Stop what you’re doing right now – well, not right now, finish reading this first and be sure to answer the survey – and go watch Amazon’s new All Or Nothing: A Season with the Arizona Cardinals.

It is a Prime video production, but available to the public through the end of the summer (I believe).

NFL Films and Amazon were granted unprecedented access to the Cardinals for the entire season last year. This is way more access than Hard Knocks (training camp) or 24/7 (a few weeks in the middle of the season) has ever been given.

Bruce Arians had always annoyed me, mostly because of his dumb glasses and hat, but he instantly won me over in the show’s intro:

Take me, Bruce. Do with me what you will.

I’ve made it through about three of the eight episodes so far and it’s absolutely tremendous. It’s not edited into quite the cohesive narrative that HBO is able to produce with their series – its a bit more sprawling than the condensed aforementioned shows – but Jon Hamm, playing the role of Liev Schrieber, provides the voiceover work to keep things moving in a logical progression. In many ways, it’s better, because you’re not watching a tightly-edited story about the Arizona Cardinals, you’re actually watching the Arizona Cardinals and an exploration of Arians’ love of the word motherfucker. This sets the bar for programs of its kind. From the war room on Draft Night, to the locker room on game day, to the Owner and President’s car and plane rides (he flies the private corporate jet), to the field and GM’s box, they covered everything. It’s the perfect show to get you amped up for training camp, even if you can never imagine Doug Pederson saying “don’t park in a bitch” when scolding his team about the reserved parking spaces at the team’s practice facility.

You can watch the motherfucker here. There’s also a family friendly version for the bitches here.

If you’re going to fail, do it fabulously. [video] 

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Video: Kitten Makes Great Escape to Visit Puppy

One of the scariest moments for a wrestler is the rare occasion when a fan decides to get involved. You never know what they’re going to do—just last month one woman pulled a gun on a heel at a small indy show in Georgia—and the wrestler’s response is universal: subdue them by any means necessary.

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