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Today β€” 26 June 2024MetaFilter

the imitation game

By: mittens
26 June 2024 at 11:49
"Japanese scientists have found a way to attach living skin to robot faces, for more realistic smiles and other facial expressions. [...] The prototype may appear more Haribo than human-like. But the researchers say it paves the way to making convincingly realistic, moving humanoids with self-healing skin that will not easily rip or tear." (BBC, paper)

I can't believe I get to insert my favorite Alan Turing quote, which has been in my profile forever, but my moment has come: "No engineer or chemist claims to be able to produce a material which is indistinguishable from the human skin. It is possible that at some time this might be done, but even supposing this invention available we should feel there was little point in trying to make a 'thinking machine' more human by dressing it up in such artificial flesh."

Louis, have you heard of zis amusing new dance, "ze floss"?

26 June 2024 at 11:33
AMC's Interview with the Vampire has been renewed for its third season in the run up to the final episode of season two this weekend. [Note: all links may contain spoilers!]

Despite rave critical and audience reviews, IWTV has struggled to gain traction, which may be partially due to AMC's lack of marketing and poor scheduling which has resulted in the show not being eligible for the 2024 Emmy season. It may also have something to do with the way the show has always been unapologetic about its queerness, as well as the complex traumas faced by its main characters. But it's clear AMC is definitely hoping for more from these vampires. They've invested in the entire catalogue of Anne Rice's IPs (including the recently greenlit show about the shadowy supernatural organization The Talamasca, and the sadly lackluster Mayfair Witches) and with the news that IWTV will soon be coming to Netflix in the US, I know I'm hoping the future stays bright for these nasty children of darkness! (For anyone who wants to watch or rewatch the series, please join us on FanFare to discuss it and lie together on the floor while we're overcome with emotions.)

From Lagering to Lager

26 June 2024 at 11:28
The Past, Present, and Future of Lager Yeast (Good Beer Hunting) No matter how much scientists and historians have searchedβ€”and they've literally hunted in forests, cellars, and old brewery buildings, and have run all the DNA testing that's available to themβ€”a void has existed at the heart of what is the world's most popular and most consumed beer. But just within the last year, the latest detective work and scholarly research have led to a compelling new theory about lager's true origins. After many centuriesβ€”spanning lager's 14th-century beginnings to its present-day ubiquityβ€”have we finally solved the foundational mystery behind the world's best-loved beer?

'If there's nowhere else to go, this is where they come'

By: Wordshore
26 June 2024 at 08:24
Guardian: The average public library is not only a provider of the latest Anne Enright or Julia Donaldson: it is now an informal citizens advice bureau, a business development centre, a community centre and a mental health provider. It is an unofficial Sure Start centre, a homelessness shelter, a literacy and foreign language-learning centre, a calm space where tutors can help struggling kids, an asylum support provider, a citizenship and driving theory test centre, and a place to sit still all day and stare at the wall, if that is what you need to do, without anyone expecting you to buy anything.

ugly love machine

By: HearHere
26 June 2024 at 06:13
The manifesto opens with the kind of pun Vonnegut could never resist. "Gentlemen," the professor writes, "As the first superweapon with a conscience, I am removing myself from your national defense stockpile. Setting a new precedent in the behavior of ordnance, I have humane reasons for going off." The manifesto goes on for another page and a half. The tone is Norbert Wiener's, [wiki] but the politics are even more overt. [sciencefriday]

this post is inspired by a recent comment by torokunai linking current thinking about Machine Learning to Kurt Vonnegut's first published novel. the FPP quote is from an unpublished earlier work (Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers, having discovered Sirens of Titan at a young age). Westworld [fanfare] came to mind, thinking about all of this. happy to see that was by design: "Westworld co-producer Jonathan Nolan has credited Vonnegut with inspiring the show's player piano, referring to it as a touchstone image of the show's first season." [the conversation; playlist, denofgeek] Nine Inch Nails (inspiration for the post title [wiki]) when the simulacra starts to fray at the edges, things begin to rock [season 3, content note: violence] Common People, originally (bonus: cover by Star Trek's Captain Kirk) Westworld previously on the tech [illanoise.edu]

"All poetry starts with geography"

By: chavenet
26 June 2024 at 03:59
Maybe you want to know where William Duffy's Farm is? Or the Indian River? Or perhaps Xanadu? Or where The Garden lies? Or MANAHATTA? No matter what poetic place you're seeking, The Poetry Atlas knows the way.

Organized by Poet, Poems by title, or Poems by first line, or search for a location. [Unfortunately, the full text of the poems is usually not available right there on the site; most can be found at the Poetry Foundation or Poets.org] Here are the poems mention above: Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota Indian River Kubla Khan A Bird, came down the walk MANNAHATTA

5000 picks/second

By: Dysk
26 June 2024 at 03:41
Mattias Krantz is a Swedish engineer who modifies instruments mostly by having really dumb or funny ideas, and then being stubborn and persistent enough not to give up where any sensible person would. He has done a number of weird and whacky pianos (including one previously featured on mefi) but has more recently moved on to guitars: a petrol-powered electric, an acoustic strung with Madagascan spider silk, and a spinning necked guitar which he then tries to play. Now his most recent guitar project is all about speed: picking speed, specifically. Here is his concept for a thousand-pick auto-picking guitar, like a hair metal hurdy-gurdy. [MLYT]

"Wow, pinecone!" It's an apple.

By: JHarris
26 June 2024 at 03:14
Tales In Mushroom Village is a Chinese computer-animated TV series from 2009. It's considered partly lost media. 2009 was 15 years ago, but that was the year Pixar's Up came out, and Toy Story was 14 years old by then, so the animation can't be that bad... right? Here's a trailer (2 minutes). Two compilations have been uploaded to Youtube (A, B, both 1h40m, Chinese with terrible English subtitles) How long can you survive them? There's also a trailer for a sequel series called Tales In Mushroom Village II: Alien Visitors, which you'd be forgiven for thinking was a completely different bad CGI thing edited into the original, but its oh so all too very much real.

I won't mince words: it's baaaaad, y'all. But it can be enjoyable to watch bad things, if you're of a certain diseased frame of mind. I have had that illness for a long time; maybe some of you are sufferers too. Each of the two long videos has five episodes. Things to look/listen for in the first episode alone: Disturbing character design throughout "What a bad lucky day! You will be accused by me." Unexpected cameos by Zelda music Unnecessary transitions in a shot, to the same shot Four Chinese sentences that get translated into "Ugh..." The ice cream cone that becomes a banana in an edit The door step that's clearly too tall for any character to climb "Bad brother, compensate us..." "Mum, he must compensate us." Endless rabbit whining Rabbits here have tapering tails instead of cottontails Baby rabbits suddenly spinning around the Fox elder's head Sheriff Volcano-head "Village head, my grandpa has said the misunderstanding is the devil! Or you'll be the devil!" "I have heard that impulse is the devil." Naonao sleeps at night resting stiffly on his bed in his clothes with his baseball cap over his face "Get up everybody...! Do cleaning...!"
Yesterday β€” 25 June 2024MetaFilter

The woman who wrote a letter to King George V about schools

25 June 2024 at 21:36
The forgotten political warrior whose letter to King George V helped Aboriginal kids back into schools. A woman whose great-grandmother refused to give up on better access to education says acknowledgement of her family's New South Wales south coast healing place has brought a sense of justice.

In 1926, a Yuin woman from Moruya on the NSW south coast sat down to pen a letter to the King. Jane Duren was writing to King George V asking for her grandchildren to be allowed to attend Batemans Bay Public School. That letter, signed and stamped, would be received by Buckingham Palace, endorsed by the Australian Governor-General, and end up as an important artefact of cultural change in the state's archives. "I beg to state that it is months and months since those children were at school and it is a shame to see them going about without education," she wrote. "Your Majesty, we have compulsory education. Why are they not compelled to attend school?" Up until the 1970s, an Indigenous student could be removed from a school if a non-Indigenous parent complained. Ms Duren thought that ridiculous β€” and she had written as much in previous letters β€” to the Minister of Education, the Child Welfare Department, her local Member of Parliament, and the Aborigines Protection Board, but with no outcome. This letter, however, would have a different fate. Buckingham Palace forwarded the letter to the Governor-General who endorsed the letter and sent it to the NSW state government, which in turn passed it onto the Aborigines Protection Board β€” about whom Ms Duren was complaining.

Butt seriously: why you might be pooping wrong

25 June 2024 at 15:21
I make my living dealing with assholes. Usually they're attached to nice people seeking help for a host of common issues causing them pain or embarrassment. Many of my patients are young and LGBTQ+, needing relief from injuries caused by improperly executed anal sex, or treatment for anal STIs. But I also frequently see people of all genders and sexual orientations who are seeking help for conditions caused by constipation, childbirth and even poor weightlifting techniques. An excerpt in The Guardian adapted from Butt Seriously: The Definitive Guide to Anal Health, Pleasure, and Everything In Between by Dr. Evan Goldstein.

I see damage from over-wiping with rough toilet paper, or rashes or fungal or bacterial irritations caused by overuse of wet wipes. I meet people suffering from hemorrhoids, who are scared when they see unexplained blood in the toilet bowl. I talk to patients who just don't feel sexy because of unwanted hair or irregular pigmentation. Ultimately, one thing seems to be universally true: no one feels happy, healthy or beautiful if their ass isn't happy, healthy and beautiful. So that's what I do – give people their happiness, health and self-confidence back, one butt at a time. And since we spend a considerable amount of our life pooping, it behooves us to understand there is a correct technique for doing it. I call this lesson Pooping 101.

One nation under bareback

By: chavenet
25 June 2024 at 15:18
To mark Pride month, Pornhub collaborated with the LGBTQ+ culture site pride.com to round up data on what kinds of gay porn have amassed popularity with viewers, although they didn't release exact information about their data collection or sample sizes. As we've noted before, yassified masturbation surveillance isn't exactly the most ideal scenario, but it's here and it's certainly queer. from Vintage Cowboys and Cruising: What Gay Porn Viewers Are Searching For by State [Them] [CW: PornHub, Big Data]

What is language attrition?

By: bq
25 June 2024 at 12:38
"When I moved to the Netherlands a long time ago (I was 33 years old at the time), I was determined to learn Dutch quickly. I did not, of course, expect to become perfect – I knew I would occasionally fumble for words, my grammar would at times be erratic, and many (if not most) conversations with strangers would quickly lead up to the inevitable question "Where do you come from?" This, after all, is what usually happens when you learn a new language later in life – and tons and tons of research are there to support this. What I did not expect was for the same things to happen to my native German." This website created by Dr. Monika S. Schmid, Professor of Linguistics, University of York, shares information about the science of language attrition, what it looks like for adults, children, and other groups, anecdotes, media coverage, celebrity examples, and research tools.

The Plagiarism Machine

25 June 2024 at 11:01
"What I learned from this experiment is that flooding the internet with an infinite amount of what could pass for journalism is cheap and even easier than I imagined, as long as I didn't respect the craft, my audience, or myself. I also learned that while AI has made all of this much easier, faster, and better, the advent of generative AI did not invent this practiceβ€”it's simply adding to a vast infrastructure of tools and services built by companies like WordPress, Fiverr, and Google designed to convert clicks to dollars at the expense of quality journalism and information, polluting the internet we all use and live in every day." I Paid $365.63 to Replace 404 Media With AI

"Luckily, after going through this process, I also learned that while doing this is profitable to some, the practice relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of what journalism is, what makes it good, and therefore gives me more confidence than ever that a fully automated blog will never be able to replace 404 Media, or other investigative news outlets."

"I shake the system and change it and evolve people"

By: chavenet
25 June 2024 at 04:04
Arash Missaghi seemed immune from consequence. His voluminous court records show no convictions, no jail time and no successful lawsuits against him in Canada, while providing few – if any – indications why criminal charges against him were withdrawn on multiple occasions. from Businessman killed in Toronto triple shooting defrauded hundreds of victims, netted at least $100-million, records show [CW: suicide, murder, fraud]

'He was everywhere and nowhere all at once': The elaborate web of triple shooting victim Arash Missaghi [The Star; ungated] Arash Missaghi and Canada's Largest Abandoned Mansion [Freaktography] Paradise Lost [Toronto Life, 2018] Law Society of Ontario v. Mehta, 2019 ONLSTH 154 [CanLII] This post sponsored by seanmpuckett's #LinkMe

AI as Self-Erasure

By: misterbee
24 June 2024 at 23:21
Humanity's will to disappear is being installed in the omni-operating system. I was at a small dinner a few weeks ago in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Seated next to me was a man who related that his daughter had just gotten married. As the day approached, he had wanted to say some words at the reception, as is fitting for the father of the bride. It can be hard to come up with the right words for such an occasion, and he wanted to make a good showing. He said he gave a few prompts to ChatGPT, facts about her life, and sure enough it came back with a pretty good wedding toast.

UK's 2nd biggest city is so broke they can no longer keep the lights on

24 June 2024 at 22:16
The UK's second-biggest city is so broke they can no longer keep the lights on. Birmingham was once a powerhouse industrial city but now the UK's second city is a shell of its former self as rubbish lines the streets, the lights stay out and children grow up below the poverty line.

Once nicknamed "the workshop of the world", Birmingham was an industrial powerhouse in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's where William Murdoch invented the first gas lantern, a technology later used to light streets across the world. But today the UK's second-largest city can no longer afford to keep its own streets brightly lit. In September Birmingham City Council issued a 114 notice, effectively declaring it was bankrupt. To claw back $600 million over the next two years, the council has approved a range of unprecedented budget cuts that will see streetlights dimmed and rubbish collected only once a fortnight. The cuts will also see 25 of the city's libraries close, money for children's services slashed and a 100 per cent funding cut to the arts and culture sector by 2026.
Before yesterdayMetaFilter

Beneath your feet, a living planet

By: mittens
24 June 2024 at 18:56
"Contrary to long-held assumptions, Earth's interior is not barren. In fact, a majority of the planet's microbes, perhaps more than 90 percent, may live deep underground. These intraterrestrial microbes tend to be quite different from their counterparts on the surface. They are ancient and slow, reproducing infrequently and possibly living for millions of years. [...] Subsurface microbes carve vast caverns, concentrate minerals and precious metals and regulate the global cycling of carbon and nutrients. Microbes may even have helped construct the continents, literally laying the groundwork for all other terrestrial life." The Mysterious, Deep-Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet, an excerpt from Becoming Earth, by Ferris Jabr.

LinkMe: Rogue Posting Edition

By: CMcG
24 June 2024 at 16:23
comment "LinkMe:" followed by the link and maybe a one sentence description for context. Everybody has tacit permission to turn your link into an FPP if they'd like, first come first serve, with a nod back to the original LinkFilter comment. Previously...

Per the recent MetaTalk about this, I thought I would try what I suggested and just make another LinkMe post and see what happens.

Every elevator in the Myst series, ranked

24 June 2024 at 15:13
Every elevator in the Myst series, ranked An hour long deep dive into the environment and puzzle design in the Myst series, centered upon its elevators. (Warning: Contains spoilers for all 5 games in the Myst series)

This might be the nerdiest thing I've seen in this fandom in a long long time! I love the little digressions like exactly what counts as an elevator, and the creator's obvious affection for the games.

Today, there is no such formula

By: chavenet
24 June 2024 at 15:13
For writers, the stakes are do or die: A debut sets the bar for each of their subsequent books, so their debut advance and sales performance can follow them for the rest of their career. For editors, if a writer's first book doesn't perform, it's hard to make a financial case for acquiring that writer's second book. And for you, a reader interested in great fiction, the fallout from this challenging climate can limit your access to exciting new voices in fiction. Unless you diligently shop at independent bookstores where booksellers highlight different types of books, you might only ever encounter the big, splashy debuts that publishers, book clubs, social-media algorithms, and big-box retailers have determined you should see. from Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch? [Esquire; ungated]

map β‰’ territory

By: zamboni
24 June 2024 at 15:02
Welcome to the Principia Mathematica Maps and Table Site (PM-MATS). The goal of this project is to make clear structural connections between different parts of Principia and to make analyzable data about the theorems, definitions, and primitive postulates in its text.

We do this by providing three digital tools: A map of Principia that allows you to see the whole book. 9,944 mini-maps (one for every starred number in Principia) that show you everything used to prove it and everything that it is used to prove (❋13.1 for example). A table of Principia that allows users to search for specific starred numbers, sections, chapters, and more, and also allows exportation of search results to JSON or CSV files. Via Trivium

Being a good neighbour

By: bq
24 June 2024 at 13:40
Fred Rogers breaks the color barrier in a kiddie pool with Officer Clemmons in 1967. Fred Rogers Previously. The only known violation of Betteridge's Law of Headlines: Is Mister Rogers' Neighborhood the greatest television show ever made? by Emily St. James for AV Club. Segregation & Swimming Timeline in the United States. An episode of the podcast 5-4 discussing the Supreme Court case Palmer v. Thompson, in which the court decided that the Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit the city of Jackson, Mississippi from avoiding integration by closing its public pools.

Moral Progress is Annoying

24 June 2024 at 11:18
Many genuinely good arguments for moral change will be initially experienced as annoying, argues a recent piece in Aeon magazine.

Two philosophers from Purdue University paint a psychological picture of "affective friction" resulting from moral change: Even when the difference between an old norm and a new one replacing it seems trivial, the disruptions caused by the shift can create feelings of anxiety, awkwardness – and anger. The article puts its readers on notice that, going forward, many of us should expect to feel annoyed: Changing the social world for the better will very often mean changing some old, harmful norms and replacing them with better ones. And very often, that's not going to feel good. Much of the time, it's going to feel preachy. It's going to grate on your nerves. It's going to make you roll your eyes. A lot of moral progress is going to be annoying. Ugh.

Hybrid Bharatham State of Mind

By: Gorgik
24 June 2024 at 11:04
Usha Jey and friends dance to Empire State of Mind. "When I was younger, I was like, 'I love hip hop, but I'm not showing you exactly who I am.' And when I was doing kuthu, which is a Tamil folk dance, I was like, 'Something is missing.' But when I'm doing Hybrid Bharatham, I feel like 'This is me.' I'm balancing those cultures, so it's the perfect reflection of my life," explains Jey. "I like Hybrid Bharatham because the process of creating it is fun. The balance and everything is a game for me, and I think people enjoy what I create because I'm having fun."

The above quote is from this article from a few months ago. Last year she also released an extended version of the previously

Meanwhile in Great Britain, it's Always Time for Hedgehogs

24 June 2024 at 08:49
Today's contender for Most British Headline of the Year. It's not the first Guardian article featuring hedgehogs this year so far. Or the first 2024 UK hedgehog story to make it to the Blue. It's not even the best hedgehog news to come out recently.

They take their hedgehogs very seriously in this country. They have their own preservation society and you can buy specialist food for them in pet shops and grocery stores. You can install a hedgehog hotel on whatever land you have access to, or participate in various hedgehog-tracking efforts. Of course, our spiky friends are not limited to these green and pleasant shores. The Germans have elected the hedgehog animal of the year, while in China there's a whole new species of 'hog to get excited about. Even the Ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about the wisdom of the hedge: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

The White Divide

By: mittens
24 June 2024 at 07:40
"Over the past 30 years, the American political landscape has been characterized by a growing divide between rural and urban voters, almost as if they're on two opposing teams [...] But the divide is confined largely to white Americans, Mettler and collaborators have found in an examination of the racial and ethnic facets of the trend." (The original study is behind a paywall, but the LSE had a write up as well.)

ff0: semantic drift

By: HearHere
24 June 2024 at 06:20
"Having worked out the different stages of this development we are now in a much better position to understand how the word silly could have developed from 'blessed' or 'blissful', which were very positive (especially in the Middle Ages), into something as negative as its present-day meaning of 'foolish'. The key is to realise that while the development as a whole is very drastic, the individual steps are not. Thus, 'blissful/blessed' is not that far removed from 'innocent/harmless'. More precisely, blissful or blessed people and things are often also innocent and harmless, and (again particularly in a medieval mindset) vice versa." [pdf: Lancaster] previously

'Sometimes we imagine things.'

By: chavenet
24 June 2024 at 04:01
The idea had come to Queneau on a visit to Greece in the early 1930s. There he learned about the dispute between adherents of the two rival forms of the Greek language: the archaic, revivalist Katharevousa, harking back to classical Greek, and the modern, vernacular Demotic. Queneau recognised a similar gulf between literary French and the contemporary spoken language: 'I came to realise that modern, written French must free itself from the conventions that still hem it in.' What was needed was an overhaul, an attentiveness to everyday speech, which would bring about a new written language, a 'néo-français', corresponding to the language as it was actually spoken. from How to Speak Zazie [London Review of Books; ungated]

The article is eventually a review of Queneau's The Skin of Dreams Queneau, previously

How do you cope with heatwaves ... and it's your free thread

By: Wordshore
24 June 2024 at 03:03
It's getting dangerously, fatally, hotter. In Bamako, Athens, Santiago, Mexico City, Podgorica, Mecca, Rio de Janeiro, Paraburdoo, Delhi, Toronto, San Salvador, Beijing, Dubrovnik, Skikda, Rome, Cairo, Trenton, and many other places, 2024 temperatures are deadly and breaking records. What are your techniques, strategies, methods, neat tricks for dealing with the heat? Or just write about whatever is on your mind, in your heart, or on your plate, because this is your weekly free thread, fellow MeFites.

Investigating India

24 June 2024 at 00:10
Armchair travel India's ecology and climate change with Sam Matey in a wonderful heavily photographed ten-part travel report that deep dives into India's wildlife, people working in the field and efforts to ameliorate the challenges. The last piece, the hottest day in Delhi's History is an excellent introduction to Matey's framing of the environmental catastrophes we face - recognizing the scale, finding the stories and most of all, pointing out the helpers.

9th Grade Oyster Farmer

23 June 2024 at 21:46
In the past two decades, the oyster population in Mississippi's Gulf waters has been devastated by both natural and manmade disasters. Among those working to restore oyster habitats is ninth grader Demi Johnson, who was recently recognized by the National Geographic Society for growing more than 1,000 oysters, which are likely to spawn millions more.

Falling like Timber

By: Pachylad
23 June 2024 at 19:26
Todd in the Shadows' Trainwreckords episode on Justin Timberlake's baffling Man of the Woods, cementing his seemingly permanent step away from the spotlight and a look at the critical drubbing his reception has gotten over the past half-decade or so.

Previously with Todd: One-Hit Wonderlands on "Barbie Girl", "Relax", Trainwreckords episode on Nickelback's No Fixed Address, 'Songs that stop on the word 'stop'' compilation

Would be comical if it wasn't so pitiful and disturbing in equal measure

By: chavenet
23 June 2024 at 14:48
Military contractor Erik Prince started a private WhatsApp group for his close associates that includes a menagerie of right-wing government officials, intelligence operatives, arms traffickers, and journalists. We got their messages. from Off Leash: Inside the Secret, Global, Far-Right Group Chat [The New Republic; ungated] [CW: the quiet part, out loud]

Among the group's hottest topics: β€’ The "Biden Regime," which a consensus of Off Leash participants who weighed in view as an ally of Islamic terrorists and other anti-American forces that needs to be crushed along with them and its partners in the deep state, such as former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, who "deserves to burn in hell," Lara Logan shared with the group chat. β€’ The shortcomings of democracy that invariably resulted from extending the franchise to ordinary citizens, who are easily manipulated by Marxists and populists. "The West is at best a beautiful cemetery," lamented Sven von Storch, whose aristocratic German family fled the country after World War II to Chile, where their son was raised before returning to the land of his ancestors, where he married the granddaughter of the Third Reich's last de facto head of state, who was convicted at Nuremberg. β€’ Israel-Palestine, a problem that Michael Yudelson, Prince's business partner at Unplugged, which markets an allegedly supersecure smartphone, said should be handled by napalming Hamas's tunnel network. "I would burn all those bastards, and have everything above ground, everything left of Gaza, collapse into this fiery hell pit and burn!" he wrote. β€’ The Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom Yoav Goldhorn, who was an Israeli intelligence officer until last year and now works for a Tel Aviv–based security contractor headed by former senior national security veterans, thinks should be "dealt with" as soon as possible to ensure they don't grow from "an inconvenience to a festering mess [that] will eventually require an entire limb to be amputated." β€’ And most of all, Iran, which participants agreed, with a few exceptions, also needed to be wiped out. Saghar Erica Kasraie, a former staffer for Republican Representative Trent Franks when he served on the House Armed Services Committee and whom, according to her LinkedIn profile, she advised on Middle East issues, urged that the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders be targeted by weaponized drones that "take them out like flys ."

3 golden age science fiction authors walked into a military institution

By: bq
23 June 2024 at 12:05
Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, and Robert Heinlein at the Philadelphia Navy Yard: In 1942 three of the country's leading SF writers – Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and L. Sprague De Camp – all started working together at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The US had just entered WW II, and everyone wanted to contribute. Heinlein and De Camp were too old and too unfit to fight, and Asimov hated the getting-shot-and-dying part, but they still wanted to chip in. They were three of the most imaginative people in the country, so what did the Navy actually have them doing?

Monsters of Flip

By: JHarris
23 June 2024 at 11:27
Whether you're a wizard looking for a dark lair or a dragon needing a place to hoard gold, sorcerers and monsters alike need the Dungeon Flippers, fantasy real estate agents Maulie and Cleaveland. It's a new cartoon by Travis Fowler, and the pilot episode, "The Ace of Wands," is on Youtube. (17 minutes)

CYOA Design, Choices, Patterns and Bottlenecks

23 June 2024 at 08:17
Choice inflection points in gamebooks/interactive fiction/CYOA come in many varieties. There a few standard storyline options in "finite-state" interactive fiction, where you don't keep track of changing statistics, or otherwise do anything other than make choices. Branches and bottlenecks are fundamental to choice paths in these things. Note that spin-off interactive fictions are sometimes belabored with extraneous factors that influence the work's structure. Aspects of making interactive fiction have appeared on the site before (green, greener; blue; bluer).
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