So on the one hand, yes, I totally want to watch live-action Cowboy Bebop starring an actress "best known as Sweet Shalquoir in the Dark Souls II video game". But on the other hand, there's literally nothing that Syfy can't manage to fuck up.
Given the enormous popularity of Cowboy Bebop and Star Wars‘ Boba Fett, one would think pop culture would be up to its rocket packs in space bounty hunters. But somehow these interplanetary antiheroes have yet to become the Next Big Thing. That might change, however, with the premiere of Syfy’s Killjoys on June 19 at 9/8c. The show’s ten-episode first season comes courtesy of Lost Girl creator Michelle Lovretta and Temple Street Productions, the folks behind BBC America’s hugely successful Orphan Black. With a pedigree like that, expect Killjoys to couple smart humor with cutting-edge thrills as it tells the story of three badass bounty hunters chasing their warrants throughout “the Quad,” a star system poised on the edge of a class war. Is it Firefly for the Occupy Movement? Take a look at the show’s first trailer and see for yourself:
Killjoys features English actress Hannah John-Kamen (best known as Sweet Shalquoir in the Dark Souls II video game) as the cunning, flirtatious Dutch, whose wisecracking exterior is said to mask a mysterious past. Warehouse 13 vet Aaron Ashmore plays Hannah’s goodnatured colleague John Jaqobis, the pacifist of the group who apparently still proves pretty handy in a fight. And look out, Han Solo and Mal Reynolds–Brothers & Sisters‘ Luke Macfarlane rounds out the team as the cynical heartthrob and ex-GI D’avin, an expert tactician and two-fisted fighting man.
If Killjoys finds the right mix of interstellar hijinks and real-world gravitas, Syfy may finally have a space series on its hands to rival such fondly remembered shows as Farscape and Battlestar Galactica.
A few days ago I wrote about sodium azide, a nasty chemical that has been put to a nice use. As usual, io9 commenters one-upped me by bringing up dioxygen difluoride — also known as Satan's Kimchi, or FOOF. Learn all about the chemical that requires you risk life and limb just to synthesize it.
Kindle Cover Disasters is one of the most delightful single-serving Tumblrs to cross our screens in a while. The allure is less about taking sick pleasure in mocking the hard work of random internet people (which is pretty lame), but more focused on our own awe at the sheer diversity of the DIY fiction ecosystem. It provides some wonderful insight into how authors envision their own books when they don't have a publisher telling them how things should look, which tends to result in a rather depressing homogeneity.
Scrolling through Kindle Cover Disasters, one author stands out: the delightfully-named Max Wood, a rather prolific author of supernatural gay erotica (which happens to be a deeply diverse and SEO-driven genre). And by far his most striking cover is that for Pounded by the Biker Rainbow Come to Life. The book would seem pretty self-explanatory, but one question remains: Is that sunglass-wearing biker rainbow chill or not? The question has become so contentious around the office that Motherboard's Sarah Emerson and Derek Mead decided to debate.
Look at this guy. LOOK AT HIM! Look how chill he thinks he is. Look at how chill everyone thinks he is. Well, hes not.
Now, you might be thinking, "Sarah, are you seeing what Im seeing? This is literally the international symbol of Chill, and hes wearing cool-ass shades and leisurely mounting a powerful motor vehicle. Not even a lizard slurping on a pia colada while sunning itself on a luxury yacht could touch the chill of this guy. And youre right! And thats why Im right.
Let me tell you, theres only one thing less ~chill~ than furiously banging out 300 words on the merits of Chill, and that is someone who thinks they are chill. The kind of person who says things like, Just kickin it, and thinks that wearing a LiveStrong bracelet is a good life choice. The type of guy who unsolicitously pats you on the back even though you are obviously a hermit who shuns human affection, and the sort of woman who chides you for not eating more than one piece of pizza and, like, oh my god I devoured five slices last night and Im still so hungryyy!
The type of rainbow dick who slaps on some sunnies, sits back on a Harley, and watches as the world burns under the heat of an apocalyptic chill wave.
I said it once, and Ill say it again: Chill people are just crazy people, deep down inside. And as we cling to them like a raft in an ocean of neuroses, we only drag them down deeper into their own insanity.
Look, Im not arguing that Chill is dying, but when rainbow dicks are leading the vanguard of good vibez, it makes you wonder if Chill hasnt already been dead for a long time.
( )
CHILL
As a self-professed explorer of chill vibes, I find myself having trouble pinpointing what singular feature makes this rainbow phallus, which is actually the ghost of a guy named Rico, so blatantly chill. Like pornography, which this probably is, you just know it when you see it.
The sunglasses are an obvious choice. The motorcycle may be strangely stretched, and the floor left under the wheels adds to the one-dimensional paper cutout effect, but we all know choppers are chill.
And then there's Rico's lean. Goddamn that's a good lean! Rico's post-death being is an incorporeal blur of hot ghost sex, and yet you can STILL see him crossing his arms boss-style while he leans on that cardboard hog and sizes up our "mourning hippy" protagonist. That is clearly very chill!
Earlier this week a story by Alana Massey made the rounds in which she very capably eviscerates the concept of "chill" as a positive attribute in the hellish vortex of nitpicking Seinfeldian nonsense that is modern dating. It's an enjoyable read, and makes very strong points that I agree with. But it also is based on a definition of "chill" that is entirely incorrect.
Massey rails against guys who describe themselves as "chill," which is fair, because all of the guys she describes sound like fuckboys. A person who texts a love interest to say that he or she "admires" that person's "chill" clearly has little grasp of how the word should be used, but that's beside the point.
"Chill" in a dating context is not chill at all; it's a 311-scented security blanket for someone terrified of spending an appreciable amount of time with one person because, hey, they have that one weird tooth and you never know, someone more attractive might slide across my screen the next time I'm dating while taking a shit.
What Massey is really railing against are wishy-washy assclowns who, attempting to reject their life of coddling in the pursuit of coddling, have co-opted the hard-learned language of good vibes for their own mid-20s self-reimagining. A person isn't chill because they listened to a Dennis Brown album once, or because they say "no stress" in low-stress situations, or for any other physical attribute that you throw on because it might help score babes at Coachella.
Someone who is truly chill has learned, through the rough and tumble nature of actually living life, to accept who they are, who they want to be, and the sheer difficulty of getting from one to the other. Shades aside, that's what makes Rico so chill. Even as an incorporeal being, Rico the rainbow dick is laser-focused on riding his motorcycle and gettin' some, but it's not like he's making a big show of it. And that is very chill.
The reason for U.S. support for the Saudis’ war on Yemen is even worse than you would have thought:
American officials said they supported the Saudi campaign mainly because of a lack of alternatives.
“If you ask why we’re backing this, beyond the fact that the Saudis are allies and have been allies for a long time, the answer you’re going to get from most people — if they were being honest — is that we weren’t going to be able to stop it,” said an American defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was discussing internal government deliberations.
“If the Saudis were willing to step in, the thinking was that they should be encouraged,” the official said. “We were not going to send our military, that’s for certain.”
In other words, if the U.S. can’t stop a client from blundering into an unnecessary war, our government thinks it should throw its support behind that war and help the client to make a terrible mistake. Of course, there was a clear alternative to backing a dangerous military intervention in Yemen: refusing to provide any support for it. If the U.S. couldn’t bring itself to criticize the attack publicly, it could at the very least not help the Saudis with their campaign. As it is, the U.S. is backing a war that it doesn’t control. Almost no one thinks the campaign will be successful, and it is is likely to make the region less secure than it was before. No U.S. interests could possibly be served by this.
In the meantime, the Houthis are advancing in spite of the Saudi campaign, and the campaign has inadvertently proved to be a boon for jihadists:
The Houthis, portrayed as Iranian proxies by the Saudis but few others, have continued their advances despite nine nights of Saudi-led airstrikes. On Thursday, Houthi fighters captured a presidential palace in the southern port of Aden, killed a Saudi soldier in a skirmish at the border and wounded five others.
Islamist militants, meanwhile, capitalized on the chaos caused by the airstrikes to free a leader of Al Qaeda and hundreds of others from prison and to partly seize control of a crucial city in the south.
The war on Yemen is just a week old, but it is already backfiring and harming regional security. The U.S. should not only stop assisting the Saudis with this reckless war, but it should be pressing them to recognize the harm they are doing to their own security in the process. Besides the enormous harm that is being done to Yemen, the war has the potential to destabilize Saudi Arabia as well:
But analysts say it also risks destabilizing Saudi Arabia, a crucial ally in the region, and increasing the Houthis’ reliance on Iran.
“I don’t think they have thought through how to solve the problems in Yemen, or even how to manage it,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. “I don’t know how the Saudis can insulate themselves from Yemen and the violence that will come out of it.”
It is typical of most military interventions that they are not carefully thought through, but it seems especially true in this case. It’s not surprising that the Saudis failed to do this, but it makes the decision to attack that much worse. The U.S. has no excuse for indulging the Saudis in this recklessness. The administration has committed the U.S. to this fight with no thought about the negative consequences that would follow or the risks to U.S. interests that this war might pose.
Like every generation before them, millennials endure the scorn of their amnestic elders with obliviousness and eyerolls. I’ll concede that bitterly railing about “kids these days” is the prerogative of anyone over 45 forced to listen to Miley Cyrus, but I truly think intergenerational amity is a worthy and plausible goal—and...
How many of you watched Marvel’s Agent Carter this winter? The eight-episode series aired during Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hiatus, and it was brilliant. Beyond the action and danger and fabulous hats, the story was inspiring.
Peggy Carter is a remarkably well-written character, and she had some memorable and meaningful quotes. Sometimes I would hear them and think, “That line would make an excellent tattoo.” One of those lines was from the season finale when Peggy told a co-worker, “I know my value.” It resonated with many people, and one of them turned the quote into ink:
Be sure to flip through the rest of the gallery for Inked Wednesday to see Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island, Bluntman and Chronic, and more.
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Have geeky ink of your own you’d like to share with the class? Leave a link to photos of your tattoos in the comments or send them to me on Twitter. Be sure to let me know the name of the tattoo artist!
April Fool’s Day is imminent, which means that we’re about to see A) lots of unfunny people making awful attempts to prank everyone; and B) some people—often including big tech companies like Google and Blizzard —creating some brilliant things. Here’s one example of the latter.
Peggy Carter (Agent Carter) | Source: Alexandria Mattingly
