Monday, December 31, 2018

At the Rose Parade, "Almost every single car that passes by is just getting absolutely LIT UP by kids throwing marshmallows and silly string!"









And speaking of the Rose Parade:
I am Jewish. I wear glasses. I am bisexual — and I'm the Rose Queen

Rapid fire t-shirt cannon

Above the clouds in Abu Dhabi




"The Woman Who Made Aquaman a Star"

Vulture (from September):
“I just do not understand the grown men who are so into comics.”

It’s not that Fradon doesn’t appreciate her fans. The artist, who drew DC’s Aquaman for most of the 1950s, enjoys appearing at conventions (though of late, she’ll only attend those in driving distance of her Catskills home). She gets a kick out of the occasional hyperspecific commission request

...

“When I was drawing him back in the ’50s, he was nice and wholesome, with a nice haircut and pink cheeks. Very handsome. I had a crush on him. And you can see what happened to him! It got more and more violent, and then he lost his hand, then he had a beard and he looked psychotic.”

...

It was a while before Fradon realized that there were virtually no other female artists in the 1950s comics industry. “There were two of us,” she says, referring to colorist Marie Severin, who worked primarily for EC and Marvel. “As soon as I got up to DC, people started asking me if I knew Marie, because she was, you know, the only other one.”
She's 91, and available for commissions.

Town tries to redeem itself for hanging an elephant

H-C (from August):
Erwin has long suffered from a blow to its reputation as the town that executed – by hanging – an elephant. That particular pachyderm, a traveling circus elephant by the name of Mary, was hanged for a fatal attack she made on one of her keepers during a stop in Kingsport, Tennessee, in 1916.

...

Like last year, the eight elephant sculptures — whimsically painted by local artists — will be auctioned in October to raise funds for the The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, as well as other local charities

Ten funny tweets





































Saturday, December 29, 2018

Supercut of Ted Danson patting people's shoulders as he exits scenes in The Good Place

Ten funny tweets





A bald eagle landed on two Notre Dame fans before the start of the Cotton Bowl










SI:
He flew circles around the stadium during the singing of the anthem and was then supposed to land near his handler at a selected spot in the stadium. Instead, he picked Armas’s shoulder and then, moments later, had a second accidental landing two sections over on the outstretched arm of Tuyen Nguyen, a lifelong Irish fan originally from Vietnam. “I’m a Philadelphia Eagles fan,” Nguyen says. “When I saw the bird land [on Armas], I thought, the bird had to be very tired. So I put my hand out to see what happens. And it landed on me. It was very interesting. I was very excited. It was amazing. I couldn’t even believe it.”

How the writings of Pliny the Elder led to Europeans consuming ground up criminals and homeless people for about 300 years in the name of "Medicine"

A thread:



(Wikipedia's entry.)

Following directions to a secret shrine

Lady GaGa's war mech




Friday, December 28, 2018

Wargaming miniatures roundup




























A post shared by Martin (@chromaticabomination) on








"Aaron Rodgers' 2018 struggles mirror Zack Greinke's experiment with FIP"

APC:
Zack Greinke is one of my favorite baseball players of all time. Not everyone shares that opinion, as Greinke has some social anxiety issues and he rubs a lot of people the wrong way; but he’s a fascinating quote-machine and almost certainly one of the most cerebral, and interesting people in baseball. Greinke has always had a deep interest in scouting and Sabermetrics

...

Perhaps my favorite thing Greinke ever did, was to conduct an experiment with his pitching over the course of a few seasons. Greinke has been good for ages, but it was never enough for him to be good — he also wanted a deep understanding of why he was good and how he could get better.

For those of you who don’t follow baseball, we know that there are a few things that pitchers have control over and a few things they don’t. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, and modern research has revealed that it’s more like there are some things they control a great deal, and some things they control less — but the point stands, and at the time Greinke did his little experiment he relied on FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching):

...

Greinke’s theory was that by focusing on the elements of FIP, that he could make himself even more efficient than he already was. That’s not how it worked out.

...

So why didn’t Greinke’s strategy work, and what does any of this have to do with Aaron Rodgers?

Thursday, December 27, 2018

Spider-Gwen cosplay

"Nemesis Gorira" (Optimus) available for preorder



At the BBTS.

"Migingo Island rises out of the waters of Lake Victoria like an iron-plated turtle"

"The island is barely 3,000 square yards in area, its residents crammed into a hodgepodge of corrugated-steel homes, with seemingly little but a few bars, brothels, and a tiny port to boast of."

"The best free games of 2018"

PCGamer:
Muscle World might be the strangest game released in 2018—but it never feels weird for the sake of it. Playing as a bald bodybuilder wearing a teeny pair of pants, you enter an intimidating underworld that you have to conquer in order to become the ultimate champion. If it sounds like a comedy game, it somehow isn't, boasting an ambient soundscape and overall moody atmosphere reminiscent of most of From Software's games. In fact, King's Field II was the major influence on Muscle World.

In this otherworldly, dreamlike action RPG, you have to climb across the ceiling to reach scattered islands hanging in the endless gloom of a massive cavern. Managing your stamina meter adds an element of tension to your traversal, but the game swerves into full-on horror the moment you see a rival bodybuilder climbing menacingly your way.