Friday Ephemera
Thank goodness he’s wearing a safety harness. (h/t, Rita) || Insertion of note. (h/t, Obo) || When tarpaulin attacks. || Unprovoked shark attack interactive map. (h/t, Things) || A caterpillar transforms. || Caffeinated energy ham. || “As sure as my name’s Boris Karloff…” || A brief history of Soviet calculators. || Lordy, that’s a big one. (h/t, Dicentra) || Shimla, India. || Irony. || Return of the social justice kittens. || Animated book covers. || Today’s word is binary. || Shibboleth names, by which the elevated identify their social inferiors. (h/t, Coudal) || Oh dear. || I detect dissonance. || “Neither age nor death need stop performers from working.” || And finally, Love Will Tear Us Apart, a tweaked rendition.
I detect dissonance
“
VDFGM is for everybody, not just for the few.”Tim Newman here and here on the subject.
Typepad is breaking those links by making them https instead of http. Once more with feeling, Tim Newman here and here on the subject.
Well, nothing say “I am a serious, thoughtful, sober adult woman” like posing nude for politics.
(trigger warning)
Thank goodness he’s wearing a safety harness.
Someone’s getting fired.
Caffeinated energy ham.
For a minute I believed it. 🙂
Morning, all.
For a minute I believed it. 🙂
It is, I think, oddly plausible.
Tim Newman here and here on the subject.
As the poster is one of four, and as suggested over at Tim’s, I suspect that it’s chiefly to deflect accusations of racism. Because apparently that’s what matters. But yes, the standard obfuscation is hard to miss.
And don’t get me started on Simon Schama.
Typepad is breaking those links by making them https instead of http.
I reported the error two weeks ago. As you can see, above, it affects comments too.
This.
https://twitter.com/EssexCanning/status/1058120052573159425
Lordy, that’s a big one.
Many more like comments, of course they didn’t bother to read that 10% of the sale goes to wildlife preservation projects in Zambia and Mozambique, but hey, let’s be offended.
Today’s word is binary.
What an asinine statement.
“And the answer is…”
“What is a made up statistic, Alex.” Seriously, calling “mild hypospadias”, “intersex”, is absurd; I am not forking out 8.95 frogskins for the whole article, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find they are calling female alopecia of menopause “intersex” in order to pad the definition and hence the stats.
A sadly accurate commentary.
Heh.
“And finally, Love Will Tear Us Apart, a tweaked rendition.”
I denounce them for appropriating the culture of miserable pasty-faced white blokes. (And doing it bloody well, dammit…)
“Signs of the apocalypse, #3,081.”
I try to avoid The TLA of Inanity whenever possible, but that was a genuine LOL. Mind you, they don’t say what it’s trusted for.
I meant to throw this one in a couple of weeks ago: If educational videos were filmed like music videos.
I think I’d have to say yes too.
“The world’s largest purchaser of fax machines.”
Symbolism!
“The world’s largest purchaser of fax machines.”
Do these machines make a Ping! sound?
I swear Peter Cushing was already dead in the original 1977 Star Wars.
I swear Peter Cushing was already dead in the original 1977 Star Wars.
A few months ago, I sat through the dreary and uninteresting Rogue One simply to see the digitally resurrected characters. The Peter Cushing duplicate was, shall we say, a partial success, but the Carrie Fisher clone was jarringly unimpressive, especially given its positioning at the supposed climax of the film.
I’m glad people are finally realising that Star Wars is dead, although in reality Star Wars died almost 40 years ago.
For anyone having trouble logging in via Twitter, I’ve been sent the following from Anna at Typepad:
This is a public service announcement.
We aren’t quite out of the uncanny valley just yet. I suspect that for faces, especially close-up faces in HD, we never will be.
I still can’t quite get over how many people missed that Rogue One wasa 90 minutes of “US bad, ISIS good, m’kay?”
…but the Carrie Fisher clone was jarringly unimpressive…
It’s interesting. I wonder if the character would have looked better had Carrie Fisher played her and then they worked the digital magic to make her younger and thinner. I didn’t see the Ant Man movie where they did it for Michael Douglas but the work on Robert Downey Jr. in the Civil War movie was impressive. I checked and she was still alive while they were filming, wonder if it was a hubris thing?
In the 21st century
This from one of the comments there:
She/he/it is serious, based on its twitter feed.
We aren’t quite out of the uncanny valley just yet. I suspect that for faces, especially close-up faces in HD, we never will be.
The digital Peter Cushing was the better of the two, and used more confidently, but the uncanny valley effect became quite noticeable whenever he turned his head. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it was that didn’t work, and I don’t intend to re-watch the film to find out, but watching the illusion, as an illusion, took over from being immersed in the story, such as it was.
That said, there’s a world of difference between, say, the motion-capture work on Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, which was often remarkable and not at all jarring, and the almost comically bad CG Steppenwolf in the Justice League film.
Because a rock staying in Zambia will make them rich, I suppose. Of course Rock has always been there in Zambia, since like forever. Wonder why Rock never bothered to teach them how to prosper through science and industry? Well now that Rock is exposed I’m sure it will get to work on doing so. See, this must be the problem. All the other rocks taken from Zambia were science and industry teaching rocks. And they left to teach science and industry to the white man. This Rock should stay. All hail Rock!
but the work on Robert Downey Jr. in the Civil War movie was impressive.
Yes. I liked how they shot the scene so that he slowly moved towards us, filling more of the frame, as if daring the audience to spot imperfections. And the technology has presumably improved since then.
I’m glad people are finally realising that Star Wars is dead
Amazon is said to be working on Ringworld, although those two things in the same sentence is concerning. Still, it’s a better work for a thoughtful, long form “television” series than the big screen blockbuster, so here’s hoping.
Regardless, the whole Trek Wars thing needs to just end already. Star Trek’s socio-political trajectory always blew, but naturally they just had to beat it there with ‘Wars.
Christianity is a life style choice and not needed to live
There’s truth to that, just not as anyone suspects the writer intended: Western civilization’s greatest failure was in not ensconcing its formative philosophies in some immortal, continuous form to constantly refer to their logic and reason and automatically reject all inferiors.
Today’s right is substantially the reactionary political manifestation of that failure. Christianity became too much of a life style choice. No, it’s not needed for lunatics to live – it’s needed for civilization to live.
I still can’t quite get over how many people missed that Rogue One wasa 90 minutes of “US bad, ISIS good, m’kay?”
Hmmm? Oh, no, that fiasco never even got as far as trying to invoke Daesh.
The Disney video game designers know where money can be found, so they do focus on that . . . . but also unfortunately, the game designers and the accountants don’t quite focus clearly enough these days.
The Disney video game designers know where money can be found
You haven’t played either of the Battlefront games, I’m guessing.
The Disney video game designers know where money can be found
You haven’t played either of the Battlefront games, I’m guessing.
I’m more of a Go addict than a video game player.
However, when I’m watching what’s supposed to be a narrative movie wind up instead be an obvious playing outline of Player #1 moves through the door and past NPCs 1 through 5 to do nothing more than reach doohickey A and twist it to the left so that Player #2 can run out to reach the end of fifty feet of exposed catwalk to insert key #3 into . . . . etc.
That’s not storytelling.
That’s an accountant deciding that a game designer outline comes first so that the marketers can next swing into action as the, ah, 120 minute videogame commercial gets displayed in the theatres . . . .
Why does D’Artagnan pick three fights and then wind up meeting all three opponents at once, instead of having to fight his way past each of the three, one at a time, using different weapons each time?
Because Dumas is a storyteller, not a video game designer.
I’m more of a Go addict than a video game player.
Maybe don’t type quite so much about how video games work, then. I’m just saying.
I wonder what would constitute a *provocation* for a shark attack. A fly-by in a jet perhaps?
I’m more of a Go addict than a video game player.
Maybe don’t type quite so much about how video games work, then. I’m just saying.
Why? We’re discussing movies, storytelling, and keeping track of a narrative thread, rather than video games.
Christianity is a life style choice and not needed to live
There’s truth to that, just not as anyone suspects the writer intended: Western civilization’s greatest failure was in not ensconcing its formative philosophies in some immortal, continuous form to constantly refer to their logic and reason and automatically reject all inferiors.
And a set of instances recently turned up to give you support for that.