firehose

This is kind of amazing. Andrew Cartmel, the script editor of Doctor Who back in the late 1980s, is forced to rewatch some special effects sequences from his time on the show and rate them according to how they look today. Poor guy. [BBC News]

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Atop Çamlıca, a hill on Istanbul’s Asian side, a 15,000 square meter (161,000 sq foot) mosque is being built. If all goes according to prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plan, the structure will be not only enormous, but visible to the entire city, too.

The mosque on Çamlıca, seen here in an artist’s rendering, would see—and be seen by—all of Istanbul. istanbulcami.com

The new mosque would be one of the most visible symbols of Turkey’s program of authoritarian building—infrastructure and housing developments with political and religious ties that hardly take public opinion into account. This trend is part of what’s been driving the last few days of protests at Gezi Park in Taksim Square, the city’s main space for public gatherings, which was slated to become a mall and could end up hosting yet another mosque instead.

Taksim Square and Gezi Park have been at the center of the recent unrest in Turkey. BBC

Erdogan’s government has devoted some 150 billion Turkish lira (paywall), or $79 billion, to seven major construction projects, including a TL10 billion airport (the city’s third and, one day, the world’s largest), new subway and cable-car lines, a third bridge over the Bosphorus strait, meant to relieve heavy traffic between the city’s European and Asian halves, and a 30-mile canal that would divert shipping traffic away from the overcrowded strait and be bigger than both the Suez and Panama canals.

Urban planning experts say these ambitious projects are long overdue (paywall). In 1980, public officials estimated that Istanbul could handle a maximum of 5 million residents. It’s now home to 13-14 million. The city’s two existing bridges, for example, were designed to handle 250,000 vehicles per day. Today, they see 600,000.

But these and other building projects across the country sometimes come at the expense of ethnic minorities and the poor. The government razed the old, predominantly Roma neighborhood of Sulukule in Istanbul and demolished Izmir’s Kadifekale district to make way for luxury housing. Turkish authorities have been accused of illegal evictions and shutting off water and electricity in buildings where people still live, as bulldozers ravage parts of the neighborhood. “There hasn’t been any effective consultation process [in the urban renewal schemes],” Andrew Gardner, an Amnesty International researcher, said in 2011.

The construction also targets Istanbul’s public spaces and historical centers. The city’s landmark Haydarpaşa train station was closed last year, ostensibly for repairs. Since then, the government has approved a rezoning of the area that would turn the area around the station into a bustling port and threaten the structure of a train station that’s more than 140 years old.

Both the aggressive approach to the construction and the choice of projects tap into fears among secular Turks that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party is moving towards a more authoritarian and Islamist form of rule. For example, Turkish daily Milliyet reported in February (via ANSAmed) that 17,000 new mosques had been built in Turkey since Erdogan took office, but the number of schools in the country had stayed the same.

That’s why the mosque on Çamlıca is such a potent symbol: To Erdogan’s opponents, it represents both his Islamist leanings and his riding roughshod over public space.

Plans for Taksim square would have converted one of Istanbul’s few green spaces into a shopping center. BBC

On top of that, there have been accusations of favoritism. Erdogan’s new business elite—among them some of the largest construction players—are newly empowered, and happen to share the prime minister’s Anatolian heritage, his party affiliations, and his conservative religious beliefs. The more than TL100 million cost of building the mosque on Çamlıca is to be paid for by donors, which may mean people or businesses currying government favor.

The massive Housing Redevelopment Association of Turkey (better known as TOKİ) hands out contracts only to preferred developers. Erdogan uses the organization as a campaign tool, touting the possibility of home ownership and enumerating the number of homes the organization has built in campaign stops. TOKİ estimated that it would have built 565,000 homes and 100 hospitals since 2003 when Erdogan beefed up the agency.

But the new developments also push poorer people to the suburbs. Lucky low-income Turks can win lotteries that will put them in line to rent and ultimately own a home for a reasonable mortgage. Residents of Istanbule’s Sulukule neighborhood had the opportunity to purchase property some 25 miles away on the outskirts of Istanbul. An estimated 50 of the 1,000 displaced families would have the funds to remain in the redeveloped district. In Kadifekale, a woman told reporters that her family was given TL40,000 for her home, but that it was too little money to buy property in the relocation zones. And after protests in one condemned neighborhood, police quelled dissent in patrols with armored cars.

There’s clearly more to the Gezi Park protests—and the violent police response—than construction. But it’s part of what’s mobilizing Turks to take a public stand.

• Edge (80/100): "Schlocky and silly in places, but potent and reflective in others, Nilin's tale has bags of heart to play off against its flamboyant bosses and existential quandaries, all grounded by a charismatic female star."
• Game Informer (78/100): "The environmental climbing sequences offer some simple fun, but the linear paths diminish any sense of exploration this otherwise would have achieved. Combat is filled with fresh ideas, but that creativity inhibits your capability in combat. Hopefully Dontnod doesn't forget any of the lessons it learned this time around, because a sequel could be truly memorable."
• GameSpot (70/100): "Remember Me is not the game its world and premise hint that it could have been; rather, it's simply a good third-person action game: entertaining, slickly produced, and flavorful enough to keep you engaged to the end of its six-hour run time."
• IGN (59/100): "Ultimately, it failed to challenge or excite me as a game, as all of its best ideas are confined to its overarching fiction rather than its gameplay."
• NowGamer (50/100): "This feels like an awkward first step rather than a finished product. As it stands, Remember Me is a series of mediocre gameplay ideas stapled to a pretty, hollow shell."

Metareview: Remember Me originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

James Herring of London-based Taylor Herring PR posted this newspaper-style job listing for a Cat Video Technologist on Twitter. According to Herring, the newspaper look of the ad was faked to gain attention on the Internet, but the job is indeed real.

Cat Video Technologist

Salary: Subject To Experience. Full Time
Taylor Herring are seeking a new member to join its rapidly expanding, content creation team.
Are you insanely tuned in to the internet?
Do you who know what makes people hit the ‘share’ and ‘retweet’ buttons?
Do you know why Ryan Gosling won’t eat his breakfast, or why Tom Selleck just can’t get enough of waterfalls and sandwiches?
Can spot the next breaking meme before the world wakes up?
Do you have a creative mind and obsessive social media habits?
Could you integrate your original ideas to run alongside a traditional PR campaign?
Do you have an excellent understanding of social media and know exactly what content works on each channel?
Creative Writing? Photoshopping? YouTubing? These skills would be good.
Relevant experience essential…
Email your CV in to recruitment@taylorherring.com along with a 6- second Vine video which sells your skills.
Closing date 21.6.13.

Imagine how awesome this would look on your business card… pic.twitter.com/PkaO0lmv4p

— James Herring (@TaylorHerringPR) May 28, 2013

David Lynch is set to release a new solo record, his second. The Big Dream is out July 16 in the states and features 11 original songs, plus a cover of Bob Dylan’s “The Ballad Of Hollis Brown.” In a press release, Lynch described the sound of the record as “modern blues,” which sounds like a marked change from his last record, 2011’s electro-tinged Crazy Clown Time.

Short clips of all the album’s tracks are streaming on iTunes, and one of the album’s bonus tracks—“I’m Waiting Here,” featuring Lykke Li—is streaming on Spotify.

The Big Dream:
01 The Big Dream
02 Star Dream Girl
03 Last Call
04 Cold Wind Blowin
05 The Ballad of Hollis Brown (Bob Dylan cover)
06 Wishin' Well
07 Say It
08 We Rolled Together
09 Sun Can't Be Seen No More
10 I Want You
11 ...

Ricky Brigante of Inside the Magic recently explored Fast Food Boulevard, a newly opened of The Simpsons’ Springfield area at Universal Orlando Resort in Florida. He says that the park has opened “Moe’s Tavern, Krusty Burger, Cletus’ Chicken Shack, the Frying Dutchman, Luigi’s Pizza and more” and that they all serve up “previously fictional food and drinks – including Duff Beer.” He notes that “the rest of the Springfield area is still under construction, including the Duff Brewery and Twirl n Hurl ride” but they “should be opening later this summer.” Be sure to see all the photos and videos of the park at Ricky’s site, Inside the Magic.

Moe’s Tavern

Krusty Burger

Full Simpsons Springfield Fast Food Boulevard Tour

photos and videos by Ricky Brigante

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Premium cable’s favorite loveable fuck-up Dominic West has been cast in a new pilot on Showtime, which will give The Wire star another place in which he can loveably fuck things up in order to attain his own shortsighted, selfish goals. In this case it’s The Affair, a potential series from In Treatment and House Of Cards writer-producer Sarah Treem that concerns a tryst between a married high school teacher (and father of four) and another, also-married woman whom he thinks may be his soul mate. “What the fuck did I do?” West’s character will ask, to which the answer will be “potentially destroyed two marriages, which will be examined separately from both the male and female perspective. You happy now, and is your happiness worth the unintended emotional toll on either of the families involved, bitch?” 

The map above is from a terrific collection of Soviet-era and other Russian board games, posted recently on archiphile Ross Wolfe‘s blog, The Charnel-House (after Wolfe spotted them on Retronaut). I’d love to know more about how these were actually played, but as maps, they are intriguing, being reimagined references to a place that itself had been reimagined in so many ways.

Sure, Everest has claimed the most lives – but its death/successful-ascent ratio is actually pretty low.

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GET THE KVLT.

More than a month after it abruptly shuttered ComicsAlliance and AOL Music, AOL is expected to announce today that it has sold the comics blog and three music websites to Townsquare Media Group. The staffs will join the Connecticut-based media and digital-marketing company, which owns 243 radio stations and a growing number of websites, including ScreenCrush and PopCrush.

UPDATE (6 a.m.): And, just like that, ComicsAlliance has returned with new content, beginning with a comics explanation of the website’s history. (Original story continues below.)

According to AOL’s TechCrunch, the deal includes hip-hop site The BoomBox, country-music site The Boot and heavy-metal blog Noisecreep, but not the flagship AOL Music or Spinner.

The purchase by Townsquare reunites ComicsAlliance and the music sites with Bill Wilson, the company’s executive vice president and chief digital officer, who helped to develop the properties during his tenure as president of AOL Media.

“I wanted to make sure you saw that we were able to acquire some of the aol music assets (and Comics Alliance),” Wilson tweeted this morning. “Very excited!”

AOL shut down the sites April 26, informing the staffs that day during a round of conference calls. The news came so suddenly that contributors were unable to publish any kind of farewell to readers: ComicsAlliance’s “final” post was a previously scheduled link roundup that appeared April 29; the item eventually drew nearly 300 comments from readers about the loss of the site.

However, the ComicsAlliance staff began teasing a possible resurrection May 20 with three posts featuring the heartbeat sequence from The Dark Knight Returns, a shot of the Pit from The Dark Knight Rises, and a page from Batman: Birth of the Demon.

Update 2: Here’s the official press release:

TOWNSQUARE MEDIA GROUP AGREES TO ACQUIRE CERTAIN ASSETS OF AOL MUSIC AND COMICSALLIANCE
Townsquare Media Group to Add Music and Entertainment-Focused Digital Properties to Diversified Asset Portfolio

Greenwich, CT – June 3, 2013 – Townsquare Media Group announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire AOL Music assets The Boot (http://www.theboot.com/), The BoomBox (http://www.theboombox.com/) and NoiseCreep (http://www.noisecreep.com/) as well as ComicsAlliance (http://www.comicsalliance.com/) from AOL Inc.  The new digital properties will join Townsquare Media Group’s national digital business, a portfolio of premium music and entertainment websites which reach over 52 million US monthly unique visitors and include Taste of Country (http://tasteofcountry.com/), PopCrush (http://popcrush.com/), ScreenCrush (http://screencrush.com/) and Okayplayer (http://www.okayplayer.com/).

AOL Music is considered a pioneer in digital music, creating The Boot, The Boombox and NoiseCreep to expand its scope into Country Music, Hip Hop and R&B and heavy metal, respectively.

ComicsAlliance is one of the most important and established online voices in the comic book industry.  The site, a three-time and 2013 nominee for the industry’s esteemed Eisner Award, has hosted its own panel at ComicCon and has been featured on The Daily Show and in New York Magazine.

“The acquisition of these assets from AOL represents the continued rapid growth of Townsquare Media’s portfolio of owned and operated music and entertainment websites,” commented Townsquare Media Group Chairman and CEO, Steven Price. “Adding these premium brands to Townsquare Media’s comprehensive offering propels our scale beyond today’s 52 million US monthly unique visitors, allowing advertisers and agencies even greater access to this highly engaged and demographically desirable audience.”

As part of the transaction, members of the AOL Music and ComicsAlliance teams will be working with Townsquare Media’s team going forward. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“The Hitcher”

Umeå, Sweden-based father and photographer Emil Nyström has created a fantastic photo series where he digitally inserts his adorable baby girl Signhild into incredible situations. To make his daughter appear to be completing adult sized tasks, Emil did a lot of digital manipulation magic in Adobe Photohop and received help from his wife (holding Signhild up for photos). He explains his inspiration for the photo series in a great interview that he had with Phlearn.

Can you tell us about the photo “Birthday Party”? How fun was this to create?! (seen below)

“I love creating all these conceptual pictures. This one we took about a month before she turned 1. I had the idea in my head for quite a while. At that time she still couldn’t stand by herself so we had to hold her up and Photoshop the hands away. She was so excited about being allowed to stand on the table and there were so many colorful things to look at. I like the editing progress in Photoshop just as much as I like shooting, so I guess I’m in the right line of work for me.”

“Birthday party”

“Fruit Ninja”

“Extreme Climbing”

“True talent”

“The friend”

“I can fix it, but it’s going to cost you.”

“True Talent”

photos by Emil Nyström

via Daily Mail, 123 Inspiration, Visual News

pixelclash:

Dragon Half (ドラゴンハーフ) - Micro Cabin - PC Engine - 1994

I love this game and I love this enemy. Look at him go! 

Greatest character portrait OR greatest character portrait?

In April it was reported that Dunkin Donuts was carrying a Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich in select eastern Massachusetts locations. Now, the Dunkin’ Donuts blog is stating that this sweet and savory offering will be available nationwide starting on Friday June 7, aka “National Donut Day.”

Here is an excerpt of an interview with chef Stan Frankenthaler of Dunkin’ Donuts:

1.) What is the story behind the creation of the Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich?

Our culinary team is always experimenting with both new and existing ingredients and flavors to come up with our creations, which many times are out-of-the-box ideas that lead to really innovative products. The Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich came about by combining some of our favorite Dunkin’ products from different sides of our business and taking it to the next level to experiment with savory and sweet flavors. It’s an incredibly unique sandwich that differentiates our brand and provides our guests with a great experience. The sandwich is fun and quirky and that’s what makes it very “Dunkin’”.

via The Big Story, Eater

INTENSE SPOILERS FOR LAST NIGHT'S EPISODE OF GAME OF THRONES. SERIOUSLY, QUIT READING RIGHT THIS INSTANT IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED IT.

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Despite a vigilant campaign of secrecy at Sony, audiences managed to catch wind of After Earth's big twist: that the once-beloved, now-detested M. Night Shyamalan directed the movie. The futuristic Will Smith vehicle—the year's second Scientologist-headlined abandoned-earth project, after Oblivion—made a not-so-spectacular $27 million, presumably because large swathes of ticket-buyers fled the theater and demanded refunds once Shyamalan's name flashed onscreen. Since they were already at the theater, said ship-jumpers must have then decided that a movie about Jesse Eisenberg doing magic and robbing banks was an okay alternative. Now You See Me, which has a pretty Shyamalan-worthy twist of its own, ended up making about $28 million—only a hair more than After Earth, but enough to be considered a surprise success, given its modest budget and the fact that it's about magicians who rob banks. Hollywood hierarchies are surely being shuffled. In ...

Cow farts: NOT AS CULPABLE AS YOU THINK.

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The most interesting interface in the film belongs to the Ultimate Weapon, because it raises such unusual challenges to interface design.

The Design Challenge

According to the movie, the Ultimate Evil arrives every 5000 years, and this is the only time the weapon needs to be fired. (Its prior firing would be around 2737 B.C.E., and if it was on Earth before then, in prehistory.) Its designers must ensure that it will be usable to users separated by around 250 (human) generations. Given such an expanse of time, how can a designer ensure that any necessary inputs will be available between potential uses? What materials will survive that long to ensure structural and functional viability? What written instructions can survive the vast changes in language and cultural contexts? How can you ensure that spoken instructions or principles will be passed down accurately from generation to generation? Presuming some lossy transmission, what clues can you give in the interface itself as to the intended use?

Mondoshawan physiology

Fortunately, the Mondoshawan physiology is not a substantial problem. In their suits they are still similarly-sized, bilateral, upright bipeds with a head where sensory organs are clustered at the top, and, emerging from the tops of their torsos, prehensile arms at the end of which are manipulator digits. This solves a great deal of what could be difficult interspecies issues. Imagine, for contrast, trying to design an interface usable by intelligent versions of both butterflies and cephalopods. Not easy. But an interface for two humanoid species: Much less difficult.

How to ensure the interface material lasts?

Certainly, the system must maintain some physical integrity over time. Passing over the creative license of “advanced alien technologies,” we see that the material for the weapon is quite-long lasting, i.e. stone and in the case of the key, metal. Additionally, the weapon is kept in a temple in the desert, a non-volatile environment suited to preserving such materials.

There are materials for the stones that could last longer and be more resistant to damage, like metal or industrial ceramics, but we do not know anything about the provenance of the weapon, and whether such materials were available.

How to hide the weapon from malefactors?

In the words of Cornelius, an evil person could stand on the platform and activate the weapon to “turn light to dark.” No one wants that to happen. The Mondoshawans hide the weapon in the Egyptian temple, and take pains to carefully conceal the presence of the door to the weapon room and its keyhole. Ordinarily Mondoshawans keep the key to the door of the room which houses the weapon to themselves offworld, but when they take the stones for protection, they leave the key with a member of a sect that worships the weapon, ensuring that the key is passed down through the generations along with the weapon’s instructions.

How to ensure the instructions persist?

Even with durable materials, if the use of the weapon isn’’t so completely intuitive as to be automatic, the instructions on how to activate it must endure transmission through time, across the lives of generations of people (and Mondoshawans). In this case, the instruction set is fairly simple; one must have access to “the” five elements for the weapon to work. Four are the familiar classical alchemical elements of earth, air, fire, and water. These are represented in the movie by four patterns of lines. The lines have subtle variations that reflect physical properties of that element. Earth was flat horizontal lines. Water was wavy horizontal lines at the base. Air was wavy horizontal lines at the top. Fire was vertical wavy lines.

The simplicity, replicability, and memetic nature of this part of the instruction set is demonstrated as we see the symbol repeated in a number of places: on the walls of the pyramid, on the sides of the stones, on the pedestals to which each stone fits, on Cornelius’’ belt buckle, and as a mark on Leeloo’’s skin. Had these symbols been more complex in nature, there would have been more risk that they would have shifted and evolved, like language does, beyond recognition and therefore use as a clue to the weapon’s function.

The instructions are also kept alive through the ages via myth and religious fervor. The characters Cornelius and David belong to a sect devoted to the Ultimate Weapon. This is clever cultural design. Humans have historically demonstrated a desire to worship, and the Mondoshawans have taken advantage of this, providing the Ultimate Weapon a group of people wholly dedicated to its preservation regardless of whether or not their generation is the one to see it fire. The rites, rituals, and artifacts of this religion that act as a backup for the instructions on firing the Ultimate Weapon, as we see when Cornelius tries to explain it all to the President.

The transmission media of memes and religious fervor are not—as we see in the film—perfect. Language and culture are lossy media. But they do get the characters close enough so that they can figure out the rest on their own.

How to make sure it can be figured out?

The weapon is initialized by placing the sacred stones on the proper pedestals. But which stones go on which pedestal? Fortunately, anyone with a visual or tactile sense can match the right stone to the right pedestal by matching the pattern. Furthermore, since the stones and their fitting are almost triangular, it is easy to tell how they should be seated. See the pilot of Sci-Fi University for more about these affordances and constraints.

The main challenge within this part of the bigger challenge is the spans of time involved. Given 5,000 years between firings, entire cultures, countries, technologies, and languages come and go in that time. How many people alive now are fluent in languages from 5 millennia past? You have to use mechanisms that don’t depend on culture, technology, or language. Physical affordances and constraints are a fine tool for these reasons.

How to let users know they’re on the right track?

When a little bit of the required element is provided to the placed stones, there is immediate feedback as small rectangles open just a bit near the tops. It is this partway state that indicates to the protagonists that, even though they haven’t completely supplied enough material, they are on the right track. This clue gives them enough of a signal that they continue trying to deduce control of the interface.

What activation materials to use?

The stones require some small amount of each element to be supplied to their topmost surface to become active. For three of the four (earth, air, water), these elements are in abundance here on Earth.

To consider the fourth, fire, takes us to strategic questions about the design.

Why this design?

It’s possible that the design of the weapon is constrained by some unknown cosmogenic power source in the stones. <handwaving>It’s mystical physics that requires that there be 4 stones and 4 pillars and smooches in the center.</handwaving> But it is of course of more use to us to imagine that it wasn’t, but some deliberate design. Which leads me to ask why wasn’t it a single big button? Well, I can see five effects this particular design has.

1. It allows you to disable the weapon

A major part of the plot involves the fact that the stones—keys to operating the machine—have been removed from Earth to keep them safe. This proves to be a major complication and a minor mystery to the protagonists, but is in fact one of main features of the weapon. Much of it is architectural and would be very difficult to move. By adding activation keys, the Mondoshawans ensured that they could disable it if necessary.

2. It tests for environmental stewardship

If three of the activation elements were not available: earth, air, and water, it would raise serious issues about the human caretakers of the planet. Do they stand on a scorched earth? Is their air ruined? Have they let the water of Earth, like what happened on Mars, evaporate into space? Any of these scenarios raise serious doubts about whether life on the planet is worth saving. Or is there to save.

3. It tests for cultural stewardship

Unlike the other elements, fire isn’t as abundant. In pre-cultural Earth, it was an accident of geothermal activity and lightning. To be able to control it to a level that it can be applied to the stone speaks of a fundamental level of cultural and technological advancement. If humans have not kept stewardship of their culture well enough to be able to control fire, it again raises the question of whether they are worth saving.

The key to the weapon room similarly tests for cultural stewardship. It looks like a fragile thing, made of thin perforated metal. Having a reverant group treat it as a holy artifact ensures that it will not get crushed or rusted, and in the process lose access to the room that contains the weapon.

4. It tests for basic intelligence

The affordances and constraints that help the characters position the stones correctly require a level of basic, intelligence as individuals. Can they do pattern matching? Do they understand simple physics? This isn’t the strongest of tests, but I’m pretty had humans devolved to primates by this point or distracted by constant war, they’d have been screwed.

5. It tests for a capacity for love

The “fifth element” (ignoring wu xing and similar actual 5-element philosophies) in this case is love. In the film Korben must overcome his reticence to confess his love for Leeloo. When he does, she realizes that humanity—including its capacity for war—are worth saving, and the weapon fires. Love is a big word of course, so it’s not clear whether familial, friendly, platonic, or even purely sexual love would suffice, but perhaps it doesn’t matter. The designers wanted to make sure that humanity still has some capacity for feeling intense care toward another. If not, why bother saving them?

It’s made a bit dubious because it’s specifically for the love of an “ultimate warrior,” a “perfect being.” Leeloo looks very much like a very fit, pretty example of one of a human, who has shown very human capacities for joy, pain, fear, delight, &c. It’s not that hard of a test for Korben to love her, except, to overcome his own sense of awkwardness and humility and openness to rejection (in front of a small crowd, no less.) If she had looked like a Mangalore it would have been a more difficult—and more telling—test of the capacity for altruistic love, but perhaps that’s not the point.

These five effects seem like pretty good reasons to design the interface to this weapon in this particular way. In total, they test to make sure there’s a humanity there worth saving. And fortunately for humanity in 2263, Korben (and the culture that produced him) prove just enough of a match.

As if that wasn’t enough, bear with me for just two more bits of nerdery about the weapon. These are a bit extraneous to the interface, but derived from study of the interface, and so may be of note to readers.

1. We can’t ignore the fact that the Ultimate Evil plummets toward the Earth in a straight line. A straight line, that is, that puts it directly in the path of the ultimate weapon, which fires a perfectly straight line. And recall that the weapon is on a planet that’s orbiting around a star, and precessing its rotational axis. This is too slim a chance to be coincidence. It stands to reason that this is not, as Cornelius says, a sentient evil bent on ending “all life” (which would just veer a few degrees out of the way to safety), but part of the same system as the weapon, designed to identify and tempt the worst of people, i.e. Zorg, and try and thwart these aspects of humanity that are ultimately tested. If that’s the case, and the Mondoshawans installed the weapon, did they, by extension, install the Ultimate Evil as well? Is this some sort of “invisible fence” meant to keep humanity in check, and destroy it if it ever evolves for the worse?

2. Many of these same issues have been addressed in the real world by the designers of containers of radioactive waste (the danger of which persists between 10,000 and 1,000,000 years) and, more positively, the the Long Now Foundation working on its main project, the Millennium Clock. For those unfamiliar with this project, it is a prospective, large-scale clock that once built, will chime every thousand years. The clock mechanism and function is intended to last for 10,000 years. The Long Now foundation is faced with similar long-term design challenges and have come to some similar conclusions as the designers for the film. The clock will be made of Bronze Age materials and technology, and it will be situated in the desert. The clock will largely be self-maintaining, but the Foundation is also developing a Rosetta Wheel containing many, many examples of existing human language, useful for decoding written instructions. The idea itself has many elements that ensure its persistence as a meme, being simple, distinct, and a powerful embodiment of an important message about the value of long-term thinking. The Long Now Foundation was begun in 01996, the year prior to the release of The Fifth Element. I am a huge fan of the Foundation and its initiatives, and I encourage readers to read further to learn more.

The new season of Arrested Development has only been live on Netflix for a week, an amount of time perfect for fans to binge watch, collectively shrug at Mitchell Hurwitz's inability to innovate an entirely new narrative style without such archaic requirements as a "watching order," and then re-watch the whole thing again. But it has been an entire week, meaning it’s already time for some intrepid viewer to complete the gargantuan task of picking all 15 episodes apart and re-editing them to fit their liking. Two different Reddit users have set about splicing the new episodes from character-centric stories into a chronological narrative of the Bluth family more akin to the first three seasons. The first user completed a recut 12-episode season that varies wildly in length, from a network-ready 21 minutes for the premiere to a 53-minute "Cinco de Cuatro" finale. It should be noted that ...

Sharon Jones is postponing the release of her upcoming record after being diagnosed with stage-one bile duct cancer. The singer has also scrapped a number of upcoming tour dates in order to have surgery, then rest and recuperate. In a statement, Jones said that, while she has a tumor on her bile duct, “We caught it really early and fast and the doctors say it’s operable and curable.”

Jones and her band, The Dap-Kings, had planned to drop Give The People What They Want Aug. 6 and haven’t yet set a new date for its release. The record is the group’s sixth.