Watch that pile of feelings there in the middle of the floor.

The picture and the request came in to the Korean Facebook page We Do Phoshop and said, "Please erase me so it looks like the baby is flying." And here's what they got:

Anyone who's been to the site before would know that these guys interpret such requests in their own way. The results are wonderfully silly! The site is in Korean, so Kotaku selected and translated some of the funniest for our amusement. Link

You know how warm and cuddly and special Alan Moore gets when they makes movies from his work?

Well imagine how happy and chipper he’ll be if there is a weekly League of Extraordinary Gentlemen TV show on Fox.

THR is reporting that Fox —which produced the generally petryfyingly awful LOEG movie, a film so misguided it drove Sean Connery away from the movie business entirely—has put in a pilot order for a comic based on the Moore/Kevin O’Neill classic about public domain good guys and bad good buys who band together to fight other public domain bad bad guys.

Michael Green (Green Lantern, Kings, The River, Heroes, Smallville) will serve as writer and executive producer and, should the project go to series, showrunner. 3 Arts’ Erwin Stoff (The Matrix, Kings) will also executive produce. Neither Moore nor O’Neill will be producers on the series.

YA THINK??!!?!??

The project comes as classic literary characters including Jekyll and Hyde and others continues to be popular on the small screen. NBC for its part attempted a Jekyll and Hyde drama (Do No Harm) last year, which was canceled after two episodes. Showtime, meanwhile, is prepping Penny Dreadful, a monster origin story drama series featuring classic monsters from Dracula like Dr. Frankenstein and more. NBC will also launch its own Dracula series in the fall with Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Producers Don Murphy and Joel Silver were involved with LoeG when it was a movie—no word on their involvement this time, but they’ll probably get a percentage.

I will say I do hope this TV show gets a greenlight if for NO OTHER REASON than that Top Shelf—current publisher of new League materials—will make lots and lots and lots and lots of money. DC COmics, previous publisher, will also make lots of money, and that’s okay too.

You think the Iron Throne looks like this? YOU KNOW NOTHING!

Read more...

Type the Konami Code in on the homepage of the British Vogue website, trust me.  You will not be disappointed.  When you do, you can see an array of very fashionable velociraptors in a variety of hats, that an unknown genius has arranged to slide across the webpage in response to the videogame cheat code.  I like to think of them as the residents of Jurassic Park Avenue, strolling around in wonderfully coordinated ensembles, photo-bombing unsuspecting models, and gnawing on intestines.  Head past the jump for more screenshots from the British Vogue website.

(via Kotaku)
Previously in Dinosaurs

• Dinosaur Pancakes
• T-Rex Feces Headed To The Smithsonian
• Jurassic Park Art Show

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Ever wonder how Game of Thrones manages to create a Westeros that looks so other-worldly and authentic? Then check out this gallery comparing the real filming locations of the show with what those same places look like with a little CGI thrown in. The Dubrovnik, Croatia set looks pretty spectacular on it’s own, but check out how a little pinch of TV magic can make a beautiful old city into another world entirely.

[View All on One Page]

(via Kotaku)

[Internetwork Notes]

Slate ran a piece yesterday that's adapted from Brett Martin's book Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos to Mad Men to Breaking Bad, focusing on what the cast of The Wire got up to when the cameras stopped rolling. One group hung out at Clarke Peters's townhouse salon, where Peters ("natural police" Lester Freamon) cooked big vegetarian meals and kept canvases around for guests to watercolor. Another group hit a cluster of strip clubs every night; Andre "Bubbles" Royo hired a squadron of the dancers to act as cheerleaders at a softball game. Dominic "McNulty" West always tried to dick up Lance "Daniels" Reddick's takes. Idris Elba learned that Stringer Bell was getting killed off by reading the script, and didn't think that was cute at all.

The article dishes even more dirt -- and that's just one show. Anyone who's read the book, hit us in the comments, but it's just gone on my Amazon wishlist regardless.

New Book Goes Behind The Scenes Of The Wire appeared first on Previously.TV

[New Show Fact Sheet]

Mommy, Where Did The Bridge Come From?

Once upon a time no one knew nor ever imagined the Danish were making TV shows. We assumed they were busying themselves making cheese and Lego but then along came the hit drama Forbrydelsen, which mixed a police procedural with political machinations and snowflake sweaters.

Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the Danes took Forbrydelsen to the CERN supercollider and smashed the show's atoms into the political drama Borgen and the crime drama Broen/Bron (we'll call it The Bridge from now on).

What's the gist of The Bridge?

Detectives from the Danish capital of Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmö team up after a murder victim is found on the exact border between the two countries in the middle of the Øresund Bridge. Then it gets weird.

Weird How?

Well, that's as much as we want to tell you, because the journey is pretty balls-out crazy, but have you watched Luther? You know how Luther starts out like a relatively normal police procedural but by the middle of the first season it goes cray-cray and you were all, "Oh shit, this is so over-the-top awesome!"? The Bridge is like that, but it embraces its Lutherism from Minute 1. It's absurd in all the best ways.

Weird Why?

DR, the Danish TV corporation that co-produces The Bridge with Sweden's SVT1, has a policy of requiring each show to contain a storyline that dramatizes a significant and/or potentially controversial social issue. In Forbrydelsen (brought to the U.S. as The Killing, but don't hold that against the original), there is a murder investigation that dips into the topic of immigration; on Borgen (a sort of de-Sorkinized West Wing), they tackle, among other things, the treatment of indigenous people (in Greenland) and militarization. The Bridge, the youngest of these big three Danish dramas, decided to integrate pretty much every major ethical issue they could get their hands on and weave them all together in a frenetic ride that's fun and also takes the piss out of the mandate itself.

Impromptu No-Nonsense Self-Pleasure Break!

Sorry that was so sudden but it happens like that in the show. You'll get used to it.

Main Characters

Team Sweden: Saga Norén

Character Math: Maria Bello + 2 Datas Worth Data - The emotion chip he found now and again

Likes to: Work by the book, wear same pair of leather pants all the time, efficiently utilize her inherited avocado green Porsche to get to her destination, have sex when it is time to have sex and then get back to work.

Not a fan of: Makeup, nuance, socializing.

Fun to hear her say: "Ja!" Ja! "Nej!" Nej!

Team Denmark: Martin Rohde

Character Math: A geologist who has misplaced his Tilley hat + Lovable Circus Bear

Likes to: Snack it up, make chit-chat.

Not a fan of: Red tape.

How You'll Spend 99 Cents After You Watch The Show

The use of The Choir of Young Believers's "Hollow Talk" in the opening and closing credits. You'll develop a Pavlovian response to the end of each episode as the music crashes in.

[ NOTE: If your RSS reader does not show a video here, please click here to view it on Previously.TV. ]

Sudden At-Work Change Of Clothes!

Stinky shirt.

Awkward moment.

Off we...

...go.

Okay.

Who's remaking it?

Everyone wants a piece of this story, and the first wave of localized versions is hitting this year, with more to come in the future.

FX is making The Bridge

Sky Atlantic & Canal+ are bringing us The Tunnel

Where To Next?

Move the map around and click on the pins to explore international versions of The Bridge (pro tip: check out the south pole!). You can also view it in a larger map.

Your Primer For The Bonkers Crime Drama 'The Bridge' appeared first on Previously.TV

When I grow up, I want to be a dog. Don't you?

Making the bed would become so much easier.

Link

Drain the Oceans

How quickly would the ocean's drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space was created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? How would the Earth change as the water is being drained?

–Ted M.

I want to get one thing out of the way first:

According to my rough calculations, if an aircraft carrier sank and got stuck against the drain, the pressure would easily be enough to fold it up^[1] and suck it through. Cooool.

Just how far away is this portal? If we put it near the Earth, the ocean would just fall back down into the atmosphere. As it fell, it would heat up and turn to steam, which would condense and fall right back into the ocean as rain. The energy input into the atmosphere alone would also wreak all kinds of havoc with our climate, to say nothing of the huge clouds of high-altitude steam.

So let's put the ocean-dumping portal far away—say, on Mars. (In fact, I vote we put it directly above the Curiosity rover; that way, it will finally have incontrovertible evidence of liquid water on Mars's surface.)

What happens to the Earth?

Not much. It would actually take hundreds of thousands of years for the ocean to drain.

Even though the opening is wider than a basketball court, and the water is forced through at incredible speeds,^[2] the oceans are huge. When you started, the water level would drop by less than a centimeter per day.

There wouldn't even be a cool whirlpool at the surface—the opening is too small and the ocean is too deep.^[3] (It's the same reason you don't get a whirlpool in the bathtub until the water is more than halfway drained.)

But let's suppose we speed up the draining by opening more drains. (Remember to clean the whale filter every few days), so the water level starts to drop more quickly.

Let's take a look at how the map would change.

Here's how it looks at the start:

And here's the map after the oceans drop 50 meters:

It's pretty similar, but there are a few small changes. Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Great Britain, Java, and Borneo are now connected to their neighbors.

And after 2000 years of trying to hold back the sea, the Netherlands are finally high and dry. No longer living with the constant threat of a cataclysmic flood, they're free to turn their energies toward outward expansion. They immediately spread out and claim the newly-exposed land.

When the sea level reaches (minus) 100 meters, a huge new island off the coast of Nova Scotia is exposed—the former site of the Grand Banks.

You may start to notice something odd: Not all the seas are shrinking. The Black Sea, for example, shrinks only a little, then stops.

This is because these bodies are no longer connected to the ocean. As the water level falls, some basins cut off from the drain in the Pacific. Depending on the details of the sea floor, the flow of water out of the basin might carve a deeper channel, allowing it to continue to flow out. But most of them will eventually become landlocked and stop draining.

At 200 meters, the map is starting to look weird. New islands are appearing. Indonesia is a big blob. The Netherlands now control much of Europe.

Japan is now an isthmus connecting the Korean peninsula with Russia. New Zealand gains new islands. The Netherlands expand north.

New Zealand grows dramatically. The Arctic Ocean is cut off and its the water level stops falling. The Netherlands cross the new land bridge into North America.

The sea has dropped by two kilometers. New islands are popping up left and right. The Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico are losing their connections with the Atlantic. I don't even know what New Zealand is doing.

At three kilometers, many of the peaks of the mid-ocean ridge—the world's longest mountain range—break the surface. Vast swaths of rugged new land emerge.

By this point, most of the major oceans have become disconnected and stopped draining. The exact locations and sizes of the various inland seas are hard to predict; this is only a rough estimate.

This is what the map looks like when the drain finally empties. There's a surprising amount of water left, although much of it consists of very shallow seas, with a few trenches where the water is as deep as four or five kilometers.

Vacuuming up half the oceans would massively alter the climate and ecosystems in ways that are hard to predict. At the very least, it would almost certainly involve a collapse of the biosphere and mass extinctions at every level.

But it's possible—if unlikely—that humans could manage to survive. If we did, we'd have this to look forward to:

So guess where I am

In 1957, the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham came with an optional minibar in the glove compartment because....

No, there's no good reason for this feature. Though, cleverly, the shot glasses were magnetized on the bottom to prevent them from tipping over. That's the only smart thing about this option. It's one of 10 bad car design features rounded up by Michael Ballaban of Jalopnik. You can read the rest at the link.

Link

Edward Tufte is a statistician, sculptor and professional in the field of data visualization. He calls his artwork "a prankish concoction of cartoonish engineering." His "Airstream Interplanetary Explorer" is ready to bring comfort to long journeys. It features a parody of the famous plaque from the Pioneer spacecraft is designed to trick aliens into believing that humans can levitate objects.

Link -via American Digest

The following is an article from Uncle John's 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader.

Ever heard of North Sentinel Island? Probably not …even thought's one of the most unusual places on Earth. What makes it so odd? The people -they've been there a long time, completely cut off from the rest of the world.

MAROONED

Late on the night of August 2, 1981, a Hong Kong freighter navigating the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal ran aground on a submerged coral reef. The ship, called the Primrose, was hopelessly stuck. But there was no danger of it sinking, so after radioing for assistance, the captain and crew settled in for a few days' wait until help arrived.

The following morning, as it became light, the sailors saw an island a few hundred yards beyond the reef. It was uninhabited, as far as anyone could tell: There were no buildings, roads, or other signs of civilization there -just a pristine, sandy beach and behind it, dense jungle. The beach must have seemed like an ideal spot to wait for a rescue, but the captain ordered the crew to remain aboard the Primrose. It was monsoon season, and he may have concerned about lowering the men into the rough sea in tiny lifeboats. Or perhaps he'd figured out just which tiny island lay beyond the reef: It was North Sentinel -the deadliest of the 200 islands in the Andaman Island chain.

SOME WELCOME

A few days later, a lookout aboard the Primrose spotted a group of dark-skinned men emerging from the jungle, making their way toward the ship. Was it the rescue party? It seemed possible …until the men came a little closer and the lookout could see that every one of them was naked.

Naked …and armed, but not with guns. Each man carried either a spear, a bow and arrows, or some other primitive weapon. The captain made another radio distress call, this one much more urgent: "Wild men! Estimate more than 50, carrying various homemade weapons, are making two or three wooden boats. Worrying they will board us at sunset."

A WORLD APART

(Image credit: Captain Robert Fore)

After a tense standoff lasting a few more days, the crew of the Primrose were evacuated by helicopter to safety. They were lucky to get away: It was their misfortune to have run aground just offshore of one of the strangest islands on Earth, and probably the very last of its kind. Anthropologists believe the men who appeared on the beach that morning in 1981 are members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years. That's 35,000 years before the last ice age, 55,000 years before the great woolly mammoths disappeared from North America, and 62,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza. These people are believed to be the direct descendants of the first humans out of Africa.

The outside world has known about North Sentinel Island for centuries, but the islanders have been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world all that time, and they fiercely maintain their isolation to this day. No one knows what language they speak or what they call themselves -they have never allowed anyone to get close enough to find out. The outside world calls them the "Sentineli" or the "Sentinelese," after the island. It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers, but no one knows how many people live there.

HOME ALONE

North Sentinel Island is amazingly well suited to both support and isolate a tribe like the Sentinelese. It's too small to interest settlers or colonial powers, especially when there are bigger, better islands within a few hours' sailing time. And unlike many of those islands, North Sentinel has no natural harbors, so there's no good place for a ship to take shelter from a storm. Furthermore, the island is surrounded by a ring of submerged coral reefs that prevent large ships from approaching. This was especially true during the age of sail, when ships had no way of quickly maneuvering out of harm's way once they realized that the reefs were there. Narrow openings in these reefs allow small boats to slip through and land on the beach, but these are passable only in good weather and calm seas, which occur as infrequently as two months out of the year. For the remaining ten months, the island cannot be safely approached from the sea.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY

(Image credit: Flickr user Christian Caron)

At the same time that they keep strangers out, the coral reefs help keep the Sentinelese in, because the reefs create several shallow lagoons that are teeming with sea life. The food provided by these lagoons is so plentiful that the Sentinelese have never needed to fish in the deep sea waters beyond the coral reefs. They propel their dugout canoes through the shallow lagoons by poling along the bottom, but they cannot navigate in water deeper than the length of the poles. They've never invented oars, without which they cannot leave the island.

The Andaman Islands, North Sentinel included, sit at the crossroads of ancient trade routes between Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Ironically, this may have further encouraged the isolationist tendencies of the Sentinelese, because their dark skin and African appearance would have made them the targets of any slave traders who might have tried to land on the island over the centuries. Periodic contact with such outsiders would have only intensified the tribe's hostility toward the outside world and their desire to be left alone.

WHO ARE YOU WEARING?

One more thing that has protected the Sentinelese from outsiders: the age-old belief that all Andaman Island tribes were cannibals. There is no evidence that any of them were, except that some tribes wore the bones of their ancestors as jewelry (including the skulls), which they wore strapped to their backs. It would have been easy to mistake such people for cannibals. Who'd stick around long enough to find out that they weren't?

By the time the Greek astronomer Ptolemy wrote of an "Island of Cannibals" somewhere in the Bay of Bengal in the second century AD, sailors were already giving the Andamans a wide berth. Marco Polo didn't help matters in the 1290s when he described the Andamanese as "a brutish and savage race… [who] kill and eat every foreigner whom they can lay their hands upon." Claims like these certainly did help to keep strangers away. And considering how fiercely the Sentinelese and other Andaman tribes defended their islands, it's probably a lucky thing they did.

STRANGERS BEARING GIFTS

(Image credit: Flickr user Christian Caron)

The first real threat to the natives of North Sentinel Island appeared in 1858, when the British established a penal colony at Port Blair on nearby South Andaman Island, and set out trying to pacify the local tribes -the Great Andamese, the Onge, the Jarawa, and eventually the Sentinelese. One technique the British used was to kidnap a member of an unfriendly tribe, hold him for a short period, treat him well, and then shower him with gifts and let him return to his people. In doing so, the British hoped to demonstrate their friendliness. If the first attempt didn't work, they'd repeat the process with as many tribesmen as it took to turn an unfriendly tribe into a friendly one.

In 1880 a large, heavily-armed party led by 20-year-old Maurice Vidal Portman, the British colonial administrator, landed on North Sentinel and made what is believed to be the first exploration of the island by outsiders. Several days passed before they made contact with any Sentinelese, because tribe members disappeared into the jungle whenever strangers approached.

Finally, after several days on the island, the party stumbled across an elderly couple who were too old to run away, and several small children. Portman brought the two adults and four of the children back to Port Blair. But the man and the woman soon started to get sick and then died, probably from exposure to Western diseases like smallpox, measles, and influenza, to which they would have had little or no resistance. So Portman returned the four children to North Sentinel Island and released them with gifts for the rest of the tribe. The children disappeared into the jungle and were never seen again.

INDIA'S TURN

After this experience, the British left the Sentinelese more or less alone, and focused their pacification efforts on the other tribes. When India won its independence from Great Britain in 1947, the Andaman Islands were handed over to India, but the Indians ignored the Sentinelese, too, for about 20 years.

Then in 1967, the Indian government launched its own large-scale expedition to North Sentinel Island, complete with plenty of armed policemen and naval officers for protection. The visit was less aggressive than the British had been 87 years earlier (no kidnapping), and it was more scientific (an anthropologist named T.N. Pandit was a member of the party). But they never made contact with a single Sentinelese soul -once again, the tribe members vanished deeper into the jungle whenever the outsiders approached.

RE-GIFTING

That began a decades-long policy of "contact visits" by the Indian government to North Sentinel Island. From time to time during the short calm-weather season, an Indian naval vessel would anchor outside the coral reefs and dispatch small boats through the openings in the reefs to approach the beaches. Approach the beaches, but not land. The boats had to be sure not to come within an arrow's flight of the beach or risk being attacked by the Sentinelese.

These strangers, like the British before them, came bearing gifts -usually bananas and coconuts, which do not grow on the islands, and sometimes other gifts, including bead necklaces, rubber balls, plastic buckets, and pots and pans. Once the visitors approached as closely as they felt was safe, they would toss the items overboard to wash upon the beach. Or, if the party were large enough to frighten the Sentinelese into retreating into the jungle, it might even land on the beach, but only long enough to drop off the gifts and beat it out of there before the Sentinelese attacked. When a National Geographic film crew lingered too long during one such visit in 1975, a Sentinelese warrior with a bow and arrow shot the director in the thigh, and then stood there on the beach laughing at his accomplishment.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

It wasn't until the early 1990s, after more than 20 years of such visits, that the Sentinelese finally relaxed their guard -just a bit- and allowed the boats to come closer. Sometimes unarmed tribesmen stood on the beach while the people on the boats tossed the coconuts overboard. A few times, they even waded out in the water to collect the coconuts in person. Even so, they did not allow the visitors to stay long. After just a few minutes, the Sentinelese would signal with menacing gestures or "warning shots" -arrows fired with no arrowheads attached- that the visit was over.

LEAVE 'EM ALONE

That was about as close as the Sentinelese ever came to opening up to the outside world. In the mid-1990s, the Indian government decided that its policy of forcing contact with the Sentinelese made no sense, and it ended the visits in 1996.

(Image credit: Indian Coast Guard)

The visits made no sense to India, but they were actually dangerous for the Sentinelese. With so little resistance to Western diseases, the islanders risked not just the death of individuals with each contact with outsiders, but the extinction of the entire tribe. That was the experience with other Andaman Island tribes: When the British established their penal colony on South Andaman Island in 1858, the native population of the Andaman Islands was nearly 7,000 people. But the British arrival was followed by a succession of epidemics, including pneumonia, measles, mumps, and the Russian flu, which decimated the tribes. After more than 150 years of exposure to Western diseases, their numbers have dropped to fewer than 300 people, and continue to decline. Some tribes have gone completely extinct. The Sentinelese, by refusing contact with the outside world, are the only tribe that has avoided this fate.

WAVE GOODBYE

The Sentinelese even survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the deadliest in recorded history, with few or no casualties. Thought the tsunami killed more than 230,000 people in surrounding countries, it appears that the Sentinelese were able to sense the coming of the tsunami and escape to higher ground before it arrived. When an Indian Navy helicopter arrived three days after to check on their well-being and drop food parcels on the beach, a Sentinelese warrior came out of the jungle and warned the helicopter off with a bow and arrow, a clear sign that the Sentinelese did not want help from outsiders.

(Image credit: Indian Navy)

KEEP OUT

Today the Indian government enforces a three-mile exclusion zone around North Sentinel Island with regular sea and air patrols. Heavy fines and jail time await anyone caught trespassing in the zone. And if that isn't enough of a deterrent, the Sentinelese continue to defend their island as fiercely as ever. In 2006 two poachers who'd spent the day fishing illegally inside the exclusion zone dropped anchor near the island and went to sleep, apparently after a night of heavy drinking. Sometime during the night the anchor came loose and the boat drifted onto the coral reefs. The Sentinelese killed both men and buried their bodies on the beach. At last report the bodies are still there; when an Indian Navy helicopter tried to recover them from the beach, the Sentinelese fought it off with bows and arrows.

EYE IN THE SKY

Today anyone with a laptop and internet access can use Google Earth to spy on places that are not meant to be seen by outsiders. You can look at satellite photos of Area 51, the secret military air base in the Navada desert. You can look at Mount Weather, a secret facility in Virginia that is rumored to be the place that members of Congress are evacuated in times of national emergency. You can even peer down on secret watersides on the outskirts of Pyongyang, North Korea, that are the playground of that country's Communist Party elite.

(Google location found by commenter bismuth83)

But when you look down on North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal, all you can make out is the wreck of the Primrose, still stuck on the reef where it ran aground in 1981. You can't see the Sentinelese, their dwellings, or anything else that might shed light on how many people there are on the island, or how they live their lives. The dense jungle canopy that covers every inch of the island except the beaches conceals everything: Even when viewed from outer space, the Sentinelese remain free from prying eyes.

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Belgian artist Adrien Noterdaem has "Simpsonized" characters from many different fictional worlds. His latest project is the characters from Game of Thrones, which he is adding to his blog Draw The Simpsons. See a gallery of the characters at Uproxx. Link

There are currently not one, but two ebook bundles that let you pay what you want for a bunch of science fiction ebooks. Head over to the Humble eBook Bundle and StoryBundle to grab several books for potentially little money.

Read more...

Another contender for World’s Worst Person!

An anonymous reader writes "Sixteen years ago, the Mars Pathfinder lander touched down on Mars and began collecting about the atmosphere and geology of the Red Planet. Its original mission was planned to last somewhere between a week and a month, but it only took a few days for software problems to crop up. The engineers responsible for the system were forced to diagnose the problem and issue a patch for a device that was millions of miles away. From the article: 'The Pathfinder's applications were scheduled by the VxWorks RTOS. Since VxWorks provides pre-emptive priority scheduling of threads, tasks were executed as threads with priorities determined by their relative urgency. The meteorological data gathering task ran as an infrequent, low priority thread, and used the information bus synchronized with mutual exclusion locks (mutexes). Other higher priority threads took precedence when necessary, including a very high priority bus management task, which also accessed the bus with mutexes. Unfortunately in this case, a long-running communications task, having higher priority than the meteorological task, but lower than the bus management task, prevented it from running. Soon, a watchdog timer noticed that the bus management task had not been executed for some time, concluded that something had gone wrong, and ordered a total system reset.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It has been some time since the mayor permitted us access to his collection of 1970s pharmaceutical postcards. Here's one for the summer:


The text on the reverse of the postcard:

"A child's skin is vulnerable and can easily burn, which could impair the flavour. To avoid damaging the skin first blanch the child for fives minutes then generously apply Son Oil. Add salt, pepper and newts to taste, then leave the child in the garden during the hottest part of the day. Whimpering usually means that the child is ready to be transferred to the grill or oven. Warning: Illegitimate or unbaptized children burn more quickly."

Jon Ronson's late-2012 GQ piece on competitive eating contests is worth revisiting, given yesterday's Coney Island July Fourth hot dog homage to gluttony, that holiest of American attributes.

I am totally repulsed by these things, to the point that I can barely read the article and won't look at photos or video. This was worth it: Ronson calls the eaters "meat-smeared squirrels."

"Joey thinks your happiness is the reason you rarely win," I tell Bob.

"Oh, he knows it," Bob says. "I was talking to him Tuesday night. He said, 'Why aren't you training for the cupcakes?' I said, 'Joey, I got to pick up my daughter, drive her to dance class, drive my other daughter to basketball...' " A faraway look crosses Bob's face. "But when I'm at the table...I can't let on in an interview how seriously I take it, because I'd probably be committed to a mental hospital."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Time slows down," he says. "You don't hear the announcer. You just have this...flow."

"When were you last in that altered state?" I ask.

"Probably when I did ninety-five hamburgers [sliders] in eight minutes," Bob says. "I was just totally locked down." He pauses. "I know it's viewed as horror, shock, a sideshow. But when people see us up there, it blows them away. Which is why the groupies are insane."

"Groupies?!" I say.

"I'm thoroughly happily married, so I'm on the sidelines," says Bob. "But I've seen stuff. Doors open."

"I'd imagine it would be a turnoff," I say.

"Me, too." Bob shrugs. "But no."

[HT: @andyorin]

Did you know that Joey Chestnut makes an estimated $200,000 annually from competitive eating? It is his only job. I learned that fact from following @darrenrovell.

With South Korea’s August 1st release date of Snowpiercer fast approaching there is now plenty of new marketing material making its way online.

In addition to the trailer Brendon posted last month and the images he put up a couple of days ago we now also have a new trailer and a selection of featurettes, all found by The Film Stage.

First up here’s the new and rather brief trailer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was sold at just the mention of Bong Joon-Ho when this film went into production, but even if I wasn’t that minute easily would have done it. Potent stuff.

And now onto the featurettes. Unfortunately there are no English subtitles for these but some sections are in English and even for those that aren’t, there’s still plenty to see – even if you’re not able to understand being said.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the first to suggest that there’s something a little reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher in what we’ve seen of Tilda Swinton‘s costume design and performance. I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for someone to broach that somewhat tricky subject in an interview.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The discussion of class in the above certainly gives me a lot of hope for this film dealing with some pretty interesting ideas. And from the next video it certainly seems like the film heads in the direction of a revolution.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And finally, an animated sequence. It’s a little unclear whether this is an animated prologue or just a nifty bit of animation created to help sell the film. Perhaps we have some Korean Bleeding Cool readers who might be able to fill me in?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whilst South Korea will get this film in August the UK and America will have to wait a little longer for this one. How long? Try asking The Weinstein Company, as they seem to be dragging their heels a bit on this one.

International Teaser For Snowpiercer And Over Ten Minutes Of Featurettes

Not Literally, they of Doctor Who music videos and the Harry Potter-themed advice series “Ask Hogwarts,” has turned their nerdy gaze on Game of Thrones to fabulous result. Based on Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” (stay with us), “A Character I Used to Know” pays tribute to the major deaths of Season 1 and the emotional scarring they caused fans.

I’d like to think an equivalent video for Season 3 would just be four minutes and 31 seconds of sobbing.

(via MTV Geek!)

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Yes, that Michael Jackson. In the '80s. And yes, it's America's fault, obviously.

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An anonymous reader writes "A server error has meant that for the past few months, a man not associated in any way with social gaming powerhouse Zynga has been getting customer support emails. When Zynga failed to return his messages, he started replying to the customers himself. Hilariously." Sadly (though perhaps some of his correspondents would disagree), the glitch has now been fixed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

killingforsport-eatingthebodies:

captain-snark:

manafromheaven:

biteythevillain:

lawfulawful:

velocipedestrienne:

Ugh you guys I was so confused for like ten seconds. Apparently I’ve forgotten how to read headlines.

GOD

SNORT

HAHAHAHAH

I am uncomfortable with how long it took me to read this correctly…

I fucking write headlines for a living and it took me an entire minute to figure out what that actually said fuck

We've seen real women transform themselves to look like Barbie dolls. But what if a Barbie doll were changed to look like a real woman? Artist Nickolay Lamm did just that, by creating a doll with the proportions of a typical 19-year-old woman (according to CDC figures). As you can see, she is shorter, has a neck that's not scary-long, and comes with a woman's posterior. See more pictures at The Feed. Link -via Daily of the Day

This past June 30th, as part of the Darth Valley Challenge — an insane annual event where people run through Death Valley in their favorite Star Wars costume — Jonathan Rice ran a mile in 6 minutes and 36 seconds. It was 129 degrees at the time, so that might actually be a world record!

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Crazy Ideas That Are Borderline Genius [via]

Previously: Useless Things You Don’t Need to Know