Taylor Swift

The new Star Wars teaser trailer dropped this morning, and I’ve got a shot-by-shot dissection for all you “Starheads” out there.

First off, could this be the Millennium Falcon from the original trilogy? Sure looks like it to me!

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

Next up, we’ve got a pretty clear shot of what could potentially be the Millennium Falcon from the original Star Wars trilogy.

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

You won’t believe what else I spotted – the Millennium Falcon. That’s right, from the first Star Wars trilogy.

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

Just when you thought things couldn’t get crazier, guess what appears on screen? That’s right – a spaceship that I believe could be the classic Millennium Falcon!

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

As if I wasn’t excited enough, Han Solo’s infamous ship the Millennium Falcon swoops onto the scene!

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

The Millennium Falcon is back, baby – and it’s better than ever!

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

Hell no… is that the mother-f’ing MILLENNIUM FALCON???

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

No way. This trailer was already too much to handle before the Millennium Falcon appears!

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

What. The. Fuck. The Millennium Falcon, guns-a-blazing!

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

And finally, we end with a shot of the all-time best space ship in Star Wars history – the damn Millennium Falcon.

Could this be the famed Millennium Falcon?

Unreal! One thing’s for sure – I can’t wait for December 2015, when the Millennium Falcon flies into theaters!

Former Sonics/Thunder C Robert Swift has had a rough go of it since crashing out of the professional ranks ; in the spring of 2013, he was evicted from his Sammamish, WA home, leading Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky to muse, “no one knows where Swift is living now, but it’s safe to assume he’s not in a good place.” Suffice to say, Swift didn’t exactly land on his feet. On Thursday, Seattle’s KOMO.com reports he’s been held on gun charges related to what seems to be a new gig as muscle for a drug dealer nicknamed “Trigg”.

King County prosecutors describe Swift, 28, as a heavily armed heroin addict who admitted to helping his drug dealer-turned-roommate collect a drug debt. That man, 54-year-old Trygve Bjorkstam, is currently facing federal drug and gun charges.

Investigators contend a military-style grenade launcher and sawed-off shotgun were seized from Swift’s bedroom during an Oct. 4 raid on Bjorkstam’s Kirkland home, located 100 yards from an elementary school. Swift was charged Thursday with unlawful possession of a short-barreled shotgun

Accused of amassing an 18-gun arsenal to protect his drug business, Bjorkstam is said to have defended Swift to police, describing him as a “good guy” who helped him try to collect a heroin debt but did not deal drugs himself.

“People have been ripping me off,” Bjorkstam told police, according to charging papers. “Rob and I are trying to put a stop to that.”

Bjorkstam explained that he was “not a big time drug dealer” and explained he started dealing heroin six months before, the Redmond officer said in court papers.

I awoke one night in Quito, Ecuador, this year and came up with a way to save a chip or two from the Apple II, and a trivial way to have the 2 grays of the Apple II be different (light gray and dark gray) but it’s 38 years too late. It did give me a good smile, since I know how hard it is to improve on that design.

That’s Woz, in 2014.

I was cold so I drew this real fast today

Film maker and composer John Carpenter is releasing his first solo album on 3 February 2015. Quoting his collaborator on the album – his son Cody Carpenter – John Carpenter says: "The best way I can describe what we’ve done is that it’s a ‘soundtrack sampler’, which is what Cody calls it. They’re little moments of scores from movies made in our imaginations."

The horror director has directed and composed the scores for films including: Prince of Darkness, The Thing, Halloween, The Fog and Escape From New York. His new album, titled Lost Themes, will be released on Sacred Bones Records. Listen to the album’s first track, “Vortex” below.

When you absolutely, positively, got to kill every Imp in the room, accept no substitutes.

If you’ve been hanging among the normally impious crowd of Doom aficionados, yesterday you may have noticed a sudden shared reverence. A Norwegian by the name of ‘ZeroMaster010′ posted a Doom 2 Ultra-Violence speedrun time of 23:03, shaving 12 seconds off the record.

Doom 2 is one of the more iconic games for speedrunning, since it was Doom’s recordable demos and end-of-level stats that sparked the practice. As such, new records don’t come easily. The previous best time of 23:15 was set in 2010, before which the record hadn’t budged in seven years.

Certain tactics recommend themselves under the tight demands of the run. Since combat wastes time, it’s always a last resort. You can think of health and armor as resources to be expended. It doesn’t matter if you get hurt, as long as you know you can reach the next Supercharge before you drop. The chainsaw, pistol, and single shotgun are seldom used–and surprisingly, so is the rocket launcher. Its splash damage is simply too dangerous.

Whenever ZeroMaster does exchange fire, it’s either to eliminate an imminent threat, or to keep from being knocked off ledges. Here are some highlights from his run:

• 0:30: ZM makes like liquid metal and squeezes through a tight place. Don’t catch your pistol on the bars.

• 1:26: Room for improvement: he misses his first attempt at this switch activation.

• 7:50: ZM bottoms out at 6% health after a close brush with a Mancubus.

• 11:35: The BFG is a considerably more complex weapon than it looks. Here ZM uses its splash pattern to maximum effect.

• 18:37: One of the few occasions when he stops to clear out a room. Otherwise the Lost Souls would knock him off the narrow ledges.

• 20:11: A couple of well-timed BFG bursts to start out map 26, The Abandoned Mines.

• 21:20: ZM exploits the fact that monsters can open locked doors to bring map 27, Monster Condo, to a quick end.

• 23:00: Here he can finally use the rocket launcher in earnest! It’s the best option for taking down that distant squad of Cacodemons, whose attacks might otherwise knock him from the ledge.

• 24:39: Some indiscriminate BFG blasts and a quick three rockets dispose of the Icon of Sin, aka John Romero.

If you’ve got Doom 2 installed and want to load up the demo, grab the file over on Compet-N. Or if bandwidth comes cheap, I’ve tucked the full speedrun vid below.

Now that that’s got your juices flowing, be sure to read my guide to the best Doom source ports before you jump back in.

Narumi works at Spinns Harajuku, so we see around the streets quite often. She’s always stylish and really friendly.

Narumi’s look here features a black and white dress by the Japanese brand Pameo Pose with fishnet stockings, loose socks, and Tokyo Bopper platform shoes. Accessories include a horns beret, a tattoo necklace, a chain necklace with rings as charms, a Dr. Martens neck pouch, and a Fjallraven Kanken backpack.

For more info on Narumi, find her on Twitter or Instagram!

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Remember: lefty loosey, righty tighty, and always go for the head.

Those of you reading in bright sunshine are encouraged to seek shade, lest you wind up looking like Patrick Stewart after a space-probe induced lifetime of epidermal damage. As an ancillary benefit, you’ll also be able to make out the subtle, distinctly un-’90s-like lighting effects in the above image. That’s what System Shock 2 can look like if you install the right patches, mods, and enhancements–a labor that’s just grown all the more rewarding.

SystemShock.org is hosting a beta Community Patch that addresses hundreds of minor (dare I say it?) imperfections in Irrational Games’ masterpiece. The patch, dubbed SCP, also enhances the game’s lighting, particle and sound effects, and even rebalances some skills and weapons, but with a careful eye toward authenticity. Here’s what the authors have to say:

SCP is intended to serve as an unofficial patch for System Shock 2 that delivers an authentic but also highly polished SS2 gameplay experience—hopefully approximating the form SS2 would have taken if Irrational had had a few more months to work on it before release. All changes have been made with the intent of respecting Irrational’s original vision. The other goal of SCP is to upgrade SS2 to take advantage of the enhanced graphical features of the NewDark engine in those ways that are beyond the means of standalone mods.

The guiding principle for SCP has been that SS2’s gameplay is fine as-is, and that its greatest strength is immersion—its ability to make players feel like they’re really trapped on board the Von Braun with all its horrors. So while we’ve tweaked game systems and made adjustments to the level geometry, the goal hasn’t been balancing gameplay, but rather eliminating those things that don’t make sense to the point that they take you out of the game. Anything illogical, gamey, or otherwise immersion-breaking, we’ve tried to correct.

SS2 fans will be fascinated by the 49-page .PDF manual, which contains an exhaustive list of changes. My favorites are those that address logic and continuity problems, as below:

• [Earth] UNN recruiter bot has no way out of his booth in the lobby. //fixed, added a door

• [Med/Sci Deck: Starting Room] No way to get patients into starting cryo pod room except by ladder, WTF. //added broken door at end of otherwise nonsensical dead-end hallway in adjacent room

• [Med/Sci Deck] Door 246 laying on the floor like it fell from somewhere, but there are no doorways missing doors anywhere near there. Should probably replace with a Broken Railing (-1075) since there is a missing section of railing above it. But then the silly pair of legs sticking from under the door would make even less sense. //fixed – added a door alcove near 232 one level up, now it should be pretty believable to say that the door has been ripped from there and thrown down on the poor squashed guy, leaving only feet. [Though as one astute SS2.org reader points out, the new door is on the hull and would open straight to vacuum! –ed.]

Thanks to its active community, System Shock 2 is fairly simple to trick out, and the rewards for your few minutes’ work are immense. If you’d like to get started, I’ve included some further links and info below.

SystemShock.org’s Newbie Modding Guide is the best place to start. In a rare show of coordination among modders, the Guide’s even been updated to reflect the new SCP.

You’ll notice the guide recommends the SS2 Blue Mod Manager, a tool that lets you activate and deactivate your mods without having to manually replace any files. It also lets you order your mods in terms of priority: the mods at the top of the list will take effect last, and thus will override any subordinate mods. So if two mods attempt to, say, replace the same texture, the one on top will dominate. Alfred Russel Wallace would feel right at home.

The Modding Guide includes a suggested order for your mods, but a user in the SCP thread made this more comprehensive list:

Doubles as a goth poetry generator: Black egg / Impact blood / Dripping goo.

However you arrange things, make sure you keep SCP at the bottom. That way SCP gets to talk with the vanilla game files it expects, while your texture upgrades, potted plants and other doodads are sure to take effect.

Mepura and Creamy Sauce are two of Harajuku most well known decoras. They are also big fans of the Japanese manga Kuroko no Basuke (Kuroko’s Basketball), as you can see from their outfits. Mepura’s second bag is covered in badges from Yowamushi Pedal.

Creamy Sauce – on the right with the tiara – is wearing a teddy bear print top from the Harajuku resale shop Kinji with a polka dot ruffle skirt, berry print knee socks, and pink bow shoes from Yumetenbo. Accessories include lots of cute clips and bows (some of which are handmade), a Kuroko’s Basketball decorated tote bag, and a Kuroko’s Basketball plush doll. Creamy Sauce told us that Harajuku’s Kinji is her favorite shop. To see more pictures of her colorful style, follow Creamy Sauce on Twitter.

Mepura – on the left – is wearing a 6%DOKIDOKI dress with a pastel tulle skirt, purple graphic tights, and pink bow shoes that she purchased online. Accessories include lots of cute 6%DOKIDOKI bows and clips, 6%DOKIDOKI heart rings, countless Kuroko’s Basketball and Yowamushi Pedal badges, a Kuroko’s Basketball plush, and a Swimmer tote bag (also covered in Kuroko’s Basketball fan goods). Mepura’s favorite brands are 6%DOKIDOKI and Nile Perch and she enjoys the music of Miyavi. For more info and pics, find her on Twitter!

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- NEWEST UPDATE –

- TO BE CONTINUED -

We ran into Japanese shironuri artist Minori again in Harajuku, and she kindly agreed to pose for us. Visit her official website and watch our documentary about Minori here.

As we’ve come to expect from Minori, she is wearing vintage, remake, and handmade items. Her whole outfit (including the hair) is blue and white, with ruffle shorts, fishnet stockings over tights, and lots of lace. She is also wearing high heels and her signature hand painted shironuri makeup. Please check out the pictures to see all of the fine details.

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Shizuku is a 20-year-old college student with a cute bob hairstyle who we street snapped in Harajuku.

Her look features a graphic heart-print cardigan from Emoda over a white ribbed Forever 21 top, a pleated skirt from American Apparel, white socks, and patent American Apparel shoes. Her tote bag is also from American Apparel.

Shizuku told us that she likes the Japanese fashion brand G.V.G.V. and the K-Pop band Exo. For more info, find her on Twitter.

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Pulling myself off the tiles this morning to the music of kumbaya made by “Morning Joe” panelists, I had one thought: Barack Obama Unbound. Your party lost the Congress and several governorships? Marvelous. Now you’re free to wave birdies under the noses of the new Senate majority leader and Mitch McConnell. Executive action all over the place, buddy. If you want your party to, as they say, stay competitive in 2016, give them a platform to run on. The Honorable Charles Pierce agrees:

There is nothing else you could do that so effectively could force the carefully camouflaged extremism that won last night out into the open. There is nothing else you could do that so effectively could energize the fault lines underlying the Republican position on this issue. There is nothing else you could do that so effectively could call the bluffs of all those anonymous Republicans who are whispering to Luke Russert that they know they have to “govern” over the next two years. (Look at the new House over which John Boehner has to be the hall monitor. Ken Buck from Colorado, who was too extreme to elect in the previous Republican wave year, got elected. Jody Hice got elected in Georgia with 67 percent of the vote. There are other land mines out there, too. There’s no governing his caucus, let alone the country.) There is nothing else you could do that so effectively could force the issue, change the narrative, charge up your stunned party, and reassert what’s left of the power of your office. There is nothing else you can do.