Bewarethewumpus

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

A gas giant named Zeus in the Organa cluster is so big that even its moons have moons. These mini-moons are called moonlets. There are 45 moons and over three hundred moonlets. It makes for very complicated diplomacy.

Resources were too scarce for outright war between all the moons but skirmishes broke out all the time. Diplomats became necessary. The Moon Council consisted of 352 representatives, one from each inhabited moon and moonlet.

One diplomat stood out from all the rest and not just by reputation. He dressed in leaves and rags and had a long beard.

His moonlet was known only as the Swamp Moon and it had a population of one: him. It was the smallest moonlet, just barely over the asteroid line.

He had proclaimed himself the Swamp Moon King. He was so ridiculous that the rest of the Moon System decided to go with Prime Ministers, Presidents, High Masters, Council Heads and Representatives rather than name themselves kings or queens. Ironically, in their attempt to avoid being anything like him, they made him the only king in the council.

He was quite old now. Many of the other diplomats here on the Moon Council had come and gone due to elections, border disputes and death yet the Swamp Moon King remained.

The Moon Council was called to order and The Swamp Moon King sat down.

“The council is called to order, by the shadow of Zeus.” Said Pretoriat Minister Reddia Morecombe, presider of Fiddler’s Moon and speaker of the house. “Firstly, let’s tackle new business. Anyone have anything to bring to the council?”

The Swamp Moon King raised his shaking, elderly hand with a rustle of leaves. The last time he’d brought something up had been three years earlier. It had been a motion to legally recognize plants as family members. It was struck down with a good deal of laughter but it was remembered fondly. The King raising his hand as always a welcome departure from the usual boredom of diplomacy.

“My time grows short and kings need an heir.” He began. The gathered diplomats smirked, entertained anew by his always ridiculous attempt at regality.

“I would like to introduce my daughter.” The council fell silent, intrigued. Daughter? Everyone knew he lived alone. “The Swamp Moon Princess.” He continued.

He opened his coms and the giant televiews pinged to life with an image of a beautiful young woman. Comely, curvy, and head held high.

But her eyes were the orange of autumns leaves and her skin was the bright green of the inside of a sapling. Her ivy hair spilled over her shoulders.

“Her mother passed away last year. She is all I have left.” Mother? A rustle of whispers blew through the hall as the gathered council talked in confusion to each other. Viewer counts from the moon network climbed as news of an actual princess spread and people switched over to see.

“Her name is Petal. But in a short time, you will come to know her as the Swamp Moon Queen. I hope you will afford her every courtesy and accept her reign as you have mine.”

“But you live alone! How on earth did you produce a daughter?” asked Leviah Miranda, Second Minister of the moonlet Mecon.

“I am a xenbotanist first and foremost. A human biologist second. Her mother, you see, was a tree.” Said the Swamp Moon King, and smiled serenely, eyes tinged with sadness.

“We hope to find a decent suitor for her before I die.” He said.

The flurry of activity that followed pleased them both greatly.

 

 

"In New York City, if you yell "where do I get the F train?" at someone they will tell you, they might even STOP to tell you. If you ask them "Excuse me, I was wondering if you have a moment, I'm from out of town and my trying to find the F train, so if you could possibly..." If you set up your question with all that, they will have walked away from you after the fifth word.

In Seattle, if you are pushing your car for some reason, men will appear without a word and help you push. You'll be pushing, and the next thing you know, there are men on either side of you." -- Cultural Secrets that I Know

According to Russian news source RIA Novosti, Edward Snowden's got a new job working as tech support for a large Russian website (according to AP) or possibly as a network administrator (according to CNN). Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, says he starts tomorrow.

Report: Snowden gets tech support job in Russia

Hint: it would have been insane and filled with nostalgia.

Okay, let's be honest. Something like a full-length Star Wars-Nintendo mash-up movie could never, ever, ever have actually happened—which should certainly make us appreciate James Farr's latest eight-minute masterpiece that much more, in which Link Skywalker faces Ganon-Darth and the evil Empire in a quest to save the galaxy and destroy the dreaded Death Star Moon. Which is, of course, controlled using a Wiimote.

SUPER SMASH WARS: A Link To The Hope [James Farr @ YouTube]

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• National demonstration: No attack on Syria - Saturday 31 August, 12 noon, Temple Place, London, UK

In June, we got a teaser trailer. This is a proper trailer. Three minutes long. Three minutes of LEGO movie heaven.

I'm not normally the type to get excited by a trailer, indeed I'm usually wary of them, but this just...this just looks like the best. It's everything you'd possibly want in a LEGO movie.

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Happy Halloween, geeks! And BONUS, my pal Ben Tippett explains the "science" of how a TARDIS works.

Save your life or keep your job? A gas station clerk in New Hampshire says he can find another job, but that he had to pull a gun on an armed robber wielding a knife shortly after midnight on Monday morning to protect himself, despite company policy against firearms in the workplace. He was fired a few hours after the incident.

According to The Nashua Telegraph, the clerk had finished helping a customer when the robber entered the store, walked behind the counter and brandished a knife.

“He had the knife cocked back. It looked like he was going to stab me,” he said. “I took several steps back, produced my sidearm, and informed him it was a bad idea and he didn’t want to do it, and he left.”

After the would-be robber fled, the cashier, who has a permit to carry a handgun in New Hampshire, called the police. He was also asked to file a report with his employers, and was fired hours after doing so, he says, despite two managers who tried to intercede on his behalf.

Nouria Energy, the company that owns and operates the gas station where the clerk worked, said in a statement to WBZ-TV that employees aren’t allowed to have firearms in the workplace for their own safety, and that they are instructed to give intruders what they ask for “in an attempt to resolve the conflict peacefully and as soon as possible.”

“We do respect the constitutional right to bear arms. However, we believe the best way to keep our employees and customers safe is to prohibit weapons in the workplace,” the statement adds. “Our training and policies are aligned with what is customary in the retail/conveniences store industries and is consistent with advice offered by security and police organizations.”

A police lieutenant says it appears the clerk took appropriate action, and encouraged anyone who carries a gun to undergo safety training.

“The first thing that we want to make sure is that people are safe,” he said. “In this situation, the clerk was presented with a deadly weapon. He was in close proximity to the suspect when the deadly weapon was displayed to him. The clerk, from the information I have, took the appropriate action in terms of how he felt threatened, in presenting the firearm.”

The cashier says that with a grandson on the way, he has no regrets.

“I can find another job,” the clerk said. “A paycheck’s a paycheck. I don’t really care where it comes from. I cannot justify in my mind trying to save my job at the risk of not ever seeing my family and friends again.”

Nashua gas station clerk halts robbery with handgun, gets fired hours later; police still looking for suspect [Nashua Telegraph]
NH Clerk Fired After Pulling Gun On Armed Robber [WBZ-TV]

After almost a year of researching marijuana and how to go about selling it legally, Washington state adopted rules yesterday for the recreational sale of pot, and everyone is watching. Well, everyone who’s interested in how to go about doing something similar in their home state or country.

Countries like Mexico, Uruguay, Poland and other locales are checking out the regulations, reports the Associated Press, which cover things like how big licensed marijuana gardens can be, security at those gardens, hoe many pot stores can open in the state and more.

Oh yes, and then there’s also a new high… TAX that is. Puns! Ahem. Anyway, Washington will tax pot highly and only allow for 90 metric tons to be produced in the state. Sales are expected to start by the middle of 2014.

The state’s liquor board members said the goal was to make pot accessible enough so that people will choose the legal stuff over the black market, but not so easy to get that it would threaten public health or safety. A state of stoners would be undesirable, in other words.

As such, the state’s new regulations require procedures like seed-to-store tracking, background checks for license applicants, and child-resistant packaging.

“We feel very proud of what we’re doing,” said Sharon Foster, chairwoman of the Washington Liquor Control Board, as she and her two colleagues approved the rules. “We are making history.”

Washington state approves rules for pot industry [Associated Press]

Author : Phillip Riviezzo

-Raw materials for construction of labor habitat modules: Sixty million stellar credits.

-Neutronium fuel for supply ship transit: Eighty-five million stellar credits.

-Third-generation hostile environment mining equipment: Five hundred million stellar credits.

-Estimated one-year wage allotment for labor staff: Twenty million stellar credits.

-Spare parts and repair budget for mining equipment: Three hundred fifty million stellar credits.

-Medical supplies and first aid budget for labor staff: Ten million stellar credits.

-Payouts in judgements from wrongful death suits by labor dependents: Zero stellar credits.

-Legal representation fees incurred during wrongful death suits: Seven hundred million stellar credits.

-Contracting of mercenary unit ‘Moltavi’s Marauders’ for onsite supplementary security: One-point-two billion stellar credits.

-Contractually obligated death and injury payouts to ‘Moltavi’s Marauders’: Eight hundred seventy-five million stellar credits.

-Bribes and kickbacks to Cluster Assembly legislators to declare striking miners as seditious: Twenty-six billion stellar credits.

-Ammunition consumed by federal army troops during forceful suppression of five-year ‘miner’s revolt’: Forty-one billion stellar credits.

-Decontamination and reconstruction of mining facilities and labor habitats: Six-point-four trillion stellar credits.

-Wall-to-wall hand-carved bedroom windows of multi-hued gemstone in a company-funded vacation home on Esperion IV: Priceless.

UK prime minister David Cameron has threatened to get a court order against the Guardian if it continues to publish the Snowden leaks. He accused the Guardian of having a "lah-di-dah, airy-fairy view" about the dangers of leaks, and said the if the paper didn't voluntarily censor itself out of a sense of "social responsibility" he would seek court injunctions against it.

The majority of the Snowden leaks have revealed crimes -- illegal spying, lying to Congress and Parliament, violation of international law. That these crimes were committed with the knowledge and approval of the highest levels of the US and UK government doesn't make them any less criminal. And what wasn't criminal was absolutely depraved in its indifference to the public good: for example, the UK government's Edgehill programme, which, with the US government's Bullrun program, sabotaged the security of software, hardware and cryptographic standards to the tune of USD250M/year.

There is nothing more cowardly and corrupt than a lawbreaking political leader who threatens the free press when they call him to account. I never liked Cameron, but with this, he's taken the Tories beyond their reputation of being "the nasty party" and turned them into full-blown Stalinists.

Cameron told MPs: "We have a free press, it's very important the press feels it is not pre-censored from what it writes and all the rest of it.

"The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain how damaging some of these things can be and that is why the Guardian did actually destroy some of the information and disks that they have. But they've now gone on and printed further material which is damaging.

"I don't want to have to use injunctions or D notices or the other tougher measures. I think it's much better to appeal to newspapers' sense of social responsibility. But if they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act."

David Cameron makes veiled threat to media over NSA and GCHQ leaks [Nicholas Watt/The Guardian]

BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK to see Tom the Dancing Bug, by @RubenBolling, every week! Members of the elite and prestigious INNER HIVE get the comic emailed to their inboxes at least a day before publication -- and much, much MORE!

JOIN or DON'T.

[nnewel]

Ohio State University outdid themselves this week with a halftime show dedicated to formations depicting scenes from a number of films including Superman, Jurassic Park and Harry Potter.

you laugh at me because im different, i laugh at you because you are a playful family of lemurs at the zoo and i am hella stoned

— rad milk (@rad_milk) April 17, 2012

Such a fertile imagination, that kid. You gotta wonder where he comes up with these ideas.

BTW, you know what they call scifi in the future? Fantasy.

We've all been there before. Load up a game only to be met with a blank space asking what should be a simple question: What would you like to name your character? Or, even before you pop a game in, your GamerTag? Or your PSN ID? Your Steam username? Five hours pass and maybe you've come up with something cool.

So, what it is? What's your handle online? And perhaps more importantly: what's the story behind it?

I've been alternating, but I love to snatch up "Tesseract" when I can. First off: it's a four-dimensional hypercube, and what's not awesome about that? Second off: it even sounds cool to say. Third off: as someone with a four-letter first name, I don't get many opportunities for nicknames but "Tess" sounds pretty delightful.

I used to use "Zereshk" a lot. It's a word in my native language—Farsi—which is a sweet and somewhat sour berry. I kind of just liked how it sounded but you wouldn't believe how many people I've run into online who get tripped up on that triple consonant at the end.

And, yes, the waving girl up there with the poor excuse for hair is my Xbox Live avatar. (Video games hate people with long hair.)

What about you guys? Share your stories below. It can even be a tale about your Kotaku name.

To contact the author of this post, write to tina@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter at @tinaamini.

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This 2012 video from Politizane does an excellent job of illustrating the massive, well-documented gap between the wealth-distribution that Americans believe they have, the distribution they would favor (regardless of political affiliation), and what America actually has: a system that rewards CEOs at 380 times the rate of their average employees.

Wealth Inequality in America (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

The first rule of Kite Club is NO HELLO KITTY KITES STEVE. JESUS. You’re making us all look lame.

— Bucky Isotope (@BuckyIsotope) February 27, 2013

From Wikileaks' collection of videos from the whistleblowers' dinner in Moscow to give Edward Snowden the Integrity Award from the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a bang-on clip explaining the state of play in America's war on whistleblowing:

It's led us to a point in our relationship with the government, where we have an executive -- a Department of Justice -- that's unwilling to prosecute high officials who lied to Congress and the country on camera, but they'll stop at nothing to persecute someone who told them the truth. And that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.

Snowden: DOJ Won't Prosecute Official For Lying, But Will Stop At Nothing To Persecute Someone For Telling The Truth

Troy Baker, who has replaced Mark Hamill as the Joker in the next big Batman Arkham video game, and who has replaced Nolan North as the ubiquitous voice-actor who seems to star in every other major game, read some lines at New York Comic Con yesterday. And not just any lines. Some lines the great Alan Moore wrote for the Joker in the seminal graphic novel The Killing Joke. Enjoy.

For more on how awesome Troy Baker is, see here (but only if you've already finished The Last of Us!)

Batman Arkham Origins will be out on October 25 on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U. It's a prequel.

Video from Comic Con captured by Batman Arkham Videos, spotted by Bleeding Cool.

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

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I write a whole lot about Pokemon here at Kotaku—and every time, at least one person asks what the deal with the franchise is. Why is it so big? Why do people care about it? What's it about, even?

Maybe you wonder these things, too—it's an especially relevant set of questions now that Pokemon X & Y are about to release. Although it may be difficult to capture why this franchise has become so beloved, here's my humble attempt at explaining Pokemon.

Where it begins for most people might differ. Maybe it was the show, back in 1997. Maybe it was this song from the show in particular and the words I want to be the very best, like no one ever was:

Maybe it was the original games, Pokemon Red and Blue.

S

Maybe it was the trading cards, and the endless attempt to collect all the shinies. Or, maybe it was all three at once—that's how it was for me, at least.

But wherever you went, there it was. Pokemon. Even then, during the late 90s, it wasn't too hard to see why. Here's this franchise about kids who go on adventures to become 'Pokemon masters,' and in practice what that really means is that you can leave home when you're like 8 years old to see the world with your friends and pets. Pretty seductive, as a fantasy. (And highly lucrative, as merchandise.)

151 was the magic number, initially. 151 different critters to choose from. 151 Pokemon, many of which look somewhat close to creatures we know in the real world...only cooler somehow. Sure, you can see that in the design, but mainly it was that these monsters could evolve and become faster, stronger, better. That was such an alluring concept. I didn't even know about Charles Darwin back then, but when the real-world concepts appeared in my life, they didn't seem implausible. It's like Pokemon, you know?

There's something about the world, too. Although there are many reasons to live with a Pokemon, the major one was to battle against other trainers. The idea is, you gain more and more experience, your companions get stronger, and eventually you challenge this society's version of bosses, which they call 'gym leaders.' Defeat a gym leader, earn a badge. Earn eight badges, and you can challenge the Elite Four—the toughest bosses in the land. Defeat the Elite Four and welp. You did it. You're the very best. Congrats!

It seems so perfect, now, to look at the badge as an emblem of success, especially for us millennials who grew up on this franchise. We can easily lump them with the certificates, the gold stickers, the trophies, or the idea that success has a specific path, a specific route, and that with enough tenacity, we, too, can make it. And then you look back and you realize that it was never like that, and Ash, the protagonist of the anime show, is still out there after a decade of trying to become a Pokemon master. Stuff like trophies haunt us, and Ash might be kind of a loser.

But while both the show and the card game still exist, most people know of Pokemon as a video game. For the better, really: most of us didn't even know how to play the card game, and the stuff that happens overs the course of a season in a show might happen in an hour or two in the games.

So let's talk about the games a little more. What is Pokemon there? The premise I described earlier is still the same, but...

Contemplation begins before you buy anything. First, there's the version; the games always come in two different versions. Pick a color, or a letter. Each one has a specific set of Pokemon exclusive to the game. But what is perhaps the biggest choice that you'll think about before you get the game is the question of what Pokemon you'll start off with. Do you want a fire Pokemon? Water Pokemon? Grass Pokemon? Choose an element, and your rival will choose whatever element defeats yours, because they're a dick. In the earlier games, you could even name them Dick if you wanted to. That's Pokemon.

Six slots means six Pokemon. Six, out of over hundreds. Paring down your choice is practically maddening. And each individual Pokemon brings with it more choices, still: what do you name them? What moves will you give them; there are dozens of choices. How will you use them in battle? And then, after you decide, you'll watch these Pokemon grow stronger and stronger. Up to level 100, maybe. Through 3 different forms of evolution, sometimes. You'll end up with a monster, but you love that monster. They're your beast, and damn it if you won't bring them with you everywhere, across multiple games. Maybe one day you'll even pass them down to your kids. That's Pokemon.

Running in the grass means meeting new Pokemon. Not all Pokemon will catch your eyes; many will simply be battle fodder, a means to gain more experience. But then that one cool Pokemon appears. You'll weaken it—not enough that it faints, but enough that its health is in the red. You'll throw a Pokeball, the device that lets you capture Pokemon. The Pokeball will close, and the Pokemon inside will try to ram its way out. The Pokeball wobbles back and forth, until eventually the game decides whether or not you caught the Pokemon inside. But before that happens, you'll be so eager about it all that you'll find yourself holding the B button down just so that the Pokeball stays closed—even though you know your button press changes absolutely nothing. That's Pokemon.

The other trainers all wait for you. The second you come into view, they'll challenge you—despite being friendly, this world is weirdly combative in a way, too. Most people will fit certain archetypes—maybe they're a nerd, or a fisherman, or a couple. Many can't seem to understand that having 6 of the same awful Pokemon is not a viable battle strategy, but you can't complain, because beating them means being given half their money. And yes, you'll take that money even if it comes from the elderly or children—don't worry, at worst their response to losing is something ridiculous like I Like To Wear Shorts! They’re comfy and easy to wear! That's Pokemon.

Somewhere along your journey, you'll hear about impossible Pokemon—creatures that created the world, creatures that govern weather, creatures that nobody has seen for centuries. It will sound magical, implausible. You will think they're just myths. And at some point, you will meet all all of these legendary creatures anyway. It's your destiny. That's Pokemon.

Does it make sense now?

(Top image via Tom Ledin)

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A fun cartoon from Pablo Stanley. In my household we have two Agnostic Atheists and two Agnostic Theists. (Via Neatorama)