Thursday, October 31, 2019

Sephiroth

Venom-themed wedding cake

No-Face on the New York subway; Pineapple jack-o-lantern; Cronus cosplay




















Adventuring equipment














*More adventuring equipment.

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

New Star Wars wrestler at Healeymade



Boba Fett joins the crew.

An anecdote about trying to generate traffic to appease an advertiser



"Results of the 2019 NAEP, also known as the Nation's Report Card, showed elementary and middle school students scored worse in reading than they did two years ago"

USA Today:
The gap between the most- and least-competent students got bigger.

"Compared to a decade ago, we see that lower-achieving students made score declines in all of the assessments, while higher-performing students made score gains," Carr said.

"The Denver Post announced today it has partnered with Data Skrive to provide Colorado high school football fanatics with automated game recaps"

"With economical automation conducting the heavy lifting, The Denver Post can keep more revenue in its coffers to hire new journalists, retain those on staff and assign them to cover the value-added stories they previously lacked time to complete."

"An American Cheese Won the World Cheese Awards for the First Time Ever"

FoodandWine:
Last Friday, the winners of the 32nd annual competition—which some call The Oscars of cheese—were announced in Bergamo, Italy. More than 3,800 cheeses from 42 countries on six continents were entered, and after three rounds of judging, the Rogue River Blue from Rogue Creamery in Central Point, Oregon was named the World Champion cheese.

...

only one French cheese placed in the top 16

Ten more funny tweets













































*More funny posts.

Ten funny tweets
















































*More funny posts.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

"'Nearly All' Counter-Strike Microtransactions Are Being Used for Money Laundering"

Vice:
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players will no longer be able to trade container keys between accounts because the trade was part of a massive worldwide fraud network. Players earned cases in Counter-Strike containing weapons and cosmetic upgrades, but had to purchase the keys to open the boxes. Developer Valve runs an internal marketplace on Steam where it allowed players to trade the boxes and the keys. Valve patched the game on October 28 and explained the problem in its patch notes.

“In the past, most key trades we observed were between legitimate customers,” the statement said. “However, worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced.”

Arnold performing famous lines from movies he was not in

Jonathan Lethem reviewed Edward Snowden's new book

Here's how it starts:
In Robert Sheckley’s 1978 short story “Is That What People Do?,” a man named Eddie Quintero buys himself a pair of binoculars from an army and navy surplus outlet, “because with them he hoped to see some things that he otherwise would never see. Specifically, he hoped to see girls undressing at the Chauvin Arms across the street from his furnished room”—but he was also “looking for that moment of vision, of total attention.” Since this is a science fiction story, Quintero accidentally ends up with a pair marked “Experimental. Not to Be Removed from the Testing Room.”

The binoculars turn out to have a fabulous capacity not only for seeing through walls but also for diminishing the distance between Quintero and those he would spy on. When he peers through the experimental device just so—an effort of contorting his body into increasingly bizarre positions—Quintero is suddenly granted visions of other human beings, behind closed doors, doing “what people do.” Which turns out to be, well, weird shit. The least disturbing of what Quintero surveils is what’s now called cosplay; the most extreme consists of giddy ritual murder, and of the deliberate calling-forth of a Satanic, sexually violent “smoke-demon.” On the last page, Sheckley’s parable attains an existentialist clarity: the binoculars grant a vision of a shabby, middle-aged man in a dreary room, standing on his head, with a pair of binoculars awkwardly wedged against his face. Quintero recognizes himself:

He realized that he was only another performer in humanity’s great circus, and he had just done one of his acts, just like the others. But who was watching? Who was the real observer?

He turned the binoculars around and looked through the object-lenses. He saw a pair of eyes, and he thought they were his own—until one of them slowly winked at him.

Edward Snowden, late in the pages of his memoir, Permanent Record, describes his sensation at being personally introduced to XKEYSCORE, the NSA’s ultimate tool of intimate, individual electronic surveillance.

"The Eastman School of Music plans to go ahead with an upcoming scheduled eight-city orchestral tour of China, despite that country’s denial of visas to three members of the orchestra who are South Korean nationals"

Rochester City Newspaper:
“Cancelling would likely have a negative impact on Eastman’s reputation within China, and potentially limit other opportunities to recruit, perform, and tour for our faculty and other ensembles,” he wrote.

The school was notified in late September by tour affiliates in China that the three students had effectively been banned. Rossi explained in his letter that China blocked the students in retaliation to the United States deploying a missile defense in South Korea in 2016.

Clever visual trick in The Wizard of Oz; The Lighthouse is supposed to look like that; What We Do In The Shadows fan art























Monday, October 28, 2019

Ten funny tweets














































*More funny posts.

Sunday, October 27, 2019

"Everyday cosplay" event in Japan

From this year's show:



From last year:

Unmanned Air Force spaceplane lands after 780 days in space



Ten funny tweets














































*More funny posts.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Inktober: Panzer Dragoon and other video games






Journey puppet with light-up eyes



By Chris Sickels. This one has been sold, but there are other puppets available here.

Ten funny tweets














































*More funny posts.

Friday, October 25, 2019

The Wax Queen

"A police force which warned people to look out for a loose kangaroo has admitted it may not actually have existed"

BBC:
Officers posted a picture on Facebook purporting to show the marsupial in Bulwell, Nottingham.

When responses suggested it was more likely to be a deer or "larger than normal" dog, police insisted it wasn't.

...

The blurry photo of the creature - dubbed the "Bulwellness monster" by the Nottinghamshire Police neighbourhood team

Cheerful poster for Parasite; Circe t-shirt; A Pog Slammer worth worshiping























*Buy hologram pogs at ebay.

The Lighthouse colorized; Stylish throw blanket; Camera rig of theme park ride?











Ten funny tweets














































*More funny posts.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Lunar Dreams necklace



Available here.

"Dumping all your skill points into speech works pretty darn well in The Outer Worlds"

Chris Livingston for PCGamer:
There's a certain thrill in the idea of crafting a silver-tongued character in an RPG, someone who in a world of violent aliens and hostile factions can talk themselves out of trouble while leaving their laser pistol holstered.

I played through The Outer Worlds attempting to do just that, pumping all of my skill points into the Dialog skill, and only the Dialog skill, every time I leveled up. It didn't mean I could avoid combat—there's still tons of it—but only putting points into Dialog didn't exactly hurt me on the battlefield because those Dialog skills not only give you more options while in conversations, allowing you to lie, persuade, and intimidate, they also give you effective abilities in combat, too.

Here's how it all worked.

Last minute emergency costume: Downloadable Gooigi mask



From Nintendo.

"What did 49ers do with those gloriously muddy uniforms?"

Mercury News:
“It wasn’t too bad because we don’t let anything sit. We landed about 9:30 p.m., the truck got here at 10:30, we got the trunks and bags off, unloaded immediately, washed immediately, then took the shoulder pads and travel bags and aired them out. Anything we can wash, we wash, sometimes twice.”

Q: Did any players want to keep their muddy jerseys as a Mud Bowl 2019 keepsake?

Brunetti: “A couple guys keep their jersey every game, so I can’t say they looked at this as anything special.”

Brunetti estimated that eight players typically swap jerseys with an opponent after the game, and they’re charged the jersey’s cost. He didn’t complain about this, but it’s worth noting new jerseys require the 49ers staff to tailor new ones, such as customized wishes for shorter sleeves, a tapered belly area or a ‘V’ in the back.)

"Home Boy 88" video game console; Absurdly giant bed; The Oldest House irl





















Ten funny tweets
















































*More funny posts.

Cyberpunk Billie Eilish; A creepy moment from Ghost; The Dark Crystal crafting day






Wednesday, October 23, 2019

University of Central Florida's new space-themed uniform



Uniform and merch.

*Last year's version.

Blade Runner 2049 Interlinked posters





Baby cosplaying as Mjolnir; Original Star Wars action figure cosplay; The Addams Family group cosplay










Ten funny tweets

















































*More funny posts.