Friday, April 30, 2021

That MLS team abandoned the "virtual signage" plan

Earlier this week:



Now:

Capcom made a musical puppet show filled with gore to promote Resident Evil Village



Today's funny posts




Path of Exile concept art gallery; Famicase cover making of; Shocking video game mechanic




Popeye zine featuring bizarre old strips; Nightwing cover; Generic cover




Thursday, April 29, 2021

Behind the scenes moment from Bram Stoker's Dracula, or a teaser for the next season of What We Do in the Shadows?

MLS team insists fans wear blue so virtual advertisements will look better on tv?

He imported a tiny, retired, Japanese fire truck and shows it off around San Francisco

SFChronicle interviewed the owner, who loves driving it around:

Q: How did you end up with a tiny Japanese fire truck?

A: I was not looking for a Japanese fire truck. But I do own another Japanese car. I imported a Nissan Skyline from Japan about three years ago, a right-hand-drive car. And when I did that I ended up learning about the system. How the importation process works. How the whole registration process works.

Under federal law we can import anything that’s 25 years old. … Once I figured that out, I realized I should get something completely alien to the United States. Something that we’ve never seen, that we have no analogy for and is very uniquely Japanese. And that led me to a little Kei (or micro-vehicle) fire truck.

....

They’re really cheap and it’s really easy. It’s one of those things that seems really intimidating until you do it. If anyone’s thinking about it, I’d say do it.

...

Q: In an emergency situation, could the tiny fire truck put out a fire?

A: Absolutely. The answer to that is absolutely yes. And that’s a scenario we plan for. 


Dozens dead and many more injured after a stampede at an Israeli religious celebration

NYT:

By some estimates, about 100,000 people were crammed together near midnight to celebrate the holiday of Lag b’Omer, when ultra-Orthodox Jews traditionally convene at the tomb of a prominent rabbi from antiquity on Mount Meron. The festivities include dancing and bonfires.

....

Some said people started fleeing after either a grandstand or a roof collapsed. Others said some of the celebrants had slipped on some steps, setting off what the news site Ynet described as a “human avalanche.” 

Today's funny posts




"In all cases, he is invited"

The Guardian wrote about small American towns passing ordinances against all abortion:
The towns and their leaders differ, but there is one constant: [visits from a] traveling preacher

...

“I don’t have an abortion story, I’m a 35-year-old virgin. But I’ve seen the impacts of suicide and the throwing away of life in general,” [he] said. “That’s why I’m so passionate about the subject of abortion.”

[He] has crisscrossed the south over the last year of the pandemic in a 2008 Ford F-150, hoping to spread the ordinances beyond Texas. In all cases, he is invited, and only shows up when there is significant support.

...

Widespread attention propelled the ordinances forward as conservative media began to cover [his] successes. It also gained him the monied backing 

Hidden windshield wipers; Tiny penthouse; Move over Jack Reacher, here's Jack Widow










He made Seinfeld's jacket with the lining; Skate park of the damned; Cursed Pop Tarts







Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Rocket photography



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Marvel's high fashion Hellfire Gala Guide is a free download

The Hellfire Gala Guide is a free download, and so is Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 1. Star wars collections, like the Tales anthology series are also still 99 cents per volume.
 

New t-shirts at Last Exit to Nowhere including one based on "Tenet"

New tees include ones based on "Tenet" and Amazon's "Tales from the Loop."

Also, there's a one day sale on Lost Boys tees with the code LOST20.

Today's funny posts




Time for my favorite art show of the year, Famicase 2021

253 entries. Quickest way to find artists' sites is with this hashtag.

Towering parfait; Duolingo toilet paper; Mr. Barricade explains the art of safe intersections




Run your own Jeopardy game over Zoom; Filming Kano's necksnap; Low polygon dog




Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Today's funny posts




Amazing hype video for a hockey team; Art from a 60's edition of Lord of the Rings; Skull pin














Monday, April 26, 2021

"Collective" is a documentary about the Romanian healthcare system, but feels like a suffocating found footage horror film

Available on Hulu, it follows reporters and bureaucrats as they probe the medical treatment receive by victims of a deadly club fire, and peel back layers of corruption like an onion. Honestly it would feel right at home in the Alien universe.

A Russian man kept winning on a Chinese boy band reality competition show while begging voters to vote him off

Straits Times says he was stuck on the show for months after signing a contract that would force him to pay a penalty if he quit:

His lack of enthusiasm played out in half-hearted singing, rapping and dancing alongside the other, more eager contestants.

Performing under the stage name Lelush, he urged the public to vote him out, saying he did not want to be among the 11 winners of the show, who are contractually obliged to form a boy band.

...

Fans, some earnest and some ironic, dubbed him "the most miserable wage slave" and celebrated him as an icon of "Sang culture", a popular concept among Chinese millennials referring to a defeatist attitude towards everyday life. 

Another write-up:

As in Japan, South Korea, and other parts of Asia, fan groups have carved out a large niche in Chinese popular culture. Existing for the sole purpose of elevating the online popularity or album sales of a celebrity “idol,” such groups often adopt cute names in hopes of winning over new recruits. But because Sidorov was such an unconventional contestant, his fans chose an unconventional name for their collective: sunsi, which means “shredded bamboo shoots” and is also a homophone for “mean fans.”

A Warhammer demon painted so that its "real" color scheme can only be perceived in the negative


*See more miniatures.

A 101st Airborne unit trip to Poland "went off the rails" after soldiers decided to visit a strip club

Star and Stripes:

A U.S. Army Apache helicopter unit’s planned visit to World War II sites in Poland devolved into a drunken escapade at an off-limits strip club, leading to the suspected drugging of a battalion executive officer who went missing

...

After partying into the early morning hours, no one could make contact with [executive officer], who wasn’t in his room at the IBB Hotel Dlugi Targ, the investigation report said.

That’s when [officers] organized a search party, calling on all staff ride attendees to meet in the city center and retrace their steps from the night before.

“The group ultimately met up outside the Obsession Club, where [the executive officer] was allegedly last seen, to begin the re-tracing process,” the report said.

The no Zoom rule at the Oscars applied to Anthony Hopkins

Indiewire:

the no Zoom rule also applied to “The Father” star Anthony Hopkins. When the producers shuffled the order of the awards, leaving the high-stakes Best Actress and Actor awards to last (after Best Picture), the evening’s Big Upset, the climactic moment, flopped like a flat souffle: no acceptance speech from Hopkins. The oldest acting Oscar-winner ever, 83-year-old Hopkins was asleep at home in Wales. (He posted his own acceptance speech the next morning.) He had no desire to travel to hubs in Dublin or London, his reps confirmed, who pleaded for him to be allowed to Zoom. (Another winner, 89-year-old “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” Costume Designer Ann Roth, also did not travel to an Oscar hub.) 

Great interview largely focusing on the design of characters from Marvel's X-Factor

Long, two-part interview with Louise Simonson and Walter Simonson. Here's what they said about the designs of Apocalypse and Archangel:

AIPT: This wasn’t one of my planned questions, but while I have you both here–what’s inside the tubes that are part of Apocalypse’s costume? In a past edition of X-Men Monday, X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White suggested they might be energy conduits.

Walter: Oh, out of his elbows to his back?

Louise: I don’t have a clue. What about you, Walter? Anything he wants to be there, I suspect.

Walter: I think it’s green ichor–thats what it is. But other than that, I haven’t got a clue. They look really cool. 

...

Walter: It was. And I will tell you the truth, I have no idea where that design [for Archangel] came from. I hate to say that because it’d be interesting to know. I can give you chapter and verse for Beta Ray Bill’s design and name, but I cannot tell you where the Archangel design came from. I don’t remember looking at stuff. I mean, I look at a lot of stuff, especially when I’m trying to design something–I’ll go out and just look at stuff for inspiration. I have no idea. Maybe the piping on Patrick McGoohan’s jacket in The Prisoner from 1967–but I don’t think that was it.

Also:

Mostly, you expected to put this stuff out and have it evaporate the following month when the next issue of that book came out, and then that issue would evaporate. And there was no real sense, at least not for me, of creating material that was going to be around longer than the newsprint it was printed on.

So I don’t think I created any characters with an expectation, “Oh, this is going to be the next big thing.” I just tried to create the characters that I thought would work in the comic and it helped me tell a good story, knowing that those stories would evaporate when the issue went away. 

Today's funny posts




Main character's coat; Roller Coaster to Hell tiki; Mushroom kitchen




Sunday, April 25, 2021

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(Snopes.)










*More funny posts.

Extreme deals on Star Wars comic book collected editions

It's been a while since Amazon offered these 99 cent deals for collected editions. Some of these collections are hundreds of pages of comics for 99 cents.






Creepy music video by the director of The Invisible Man







Today's funny posts




Ashtray sculpture; That scene was directed by a child?; Rick Dalton's comeback movie













Saturday, April 24, 2021

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*More funny posts.

The people posting slander online and the people who help remove it are often one and the same

From a long article at the NYTimes, detailing the shady characters contacted.

The businesses that say they can remove the libelous posts are sometimes owned by the same business owners hosting the posts. Other times it's arms-length--the removal service pays to advertise on the libel-hosting site and pays the site to remove the libel. And paying a removal service might just tell them that if they repost the libel somewhere, they can be confident you'll pay more to take it down. It all works because Google and Bing highly promote the sites in search results:

For about one-third of the people, the nasty posts appeared on the first pages of their results. For more than half, the gripe sites showed up at the top of their image results.

...

Sometimes search engines go a step further than simply listing links; they display what they consider the most relevant phrases about whatever you’re searching for.

One woman in Ohio was the subject of so many negative posts that Bing declared in bold at the top of her search results that she “is a liar and a cheater” — the same way it states that Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States. For roughly 500 of the 6,000 people we searched for, Google suggested adding the phrase “cheater” to a search of their names.

There is some hope of getting such results removed:

There is another way to lessen the posts’ impact. In certain circumstances, Google will remove harmful content from individuals’ search results, including links to “sites with exploitative removal practices.” If a site charges to remove posts, you can ask Google not to list it.

Google didn’t advertise this policy widely, and few victims of online slander seem aware that it’s an option. That’s in part because when you Google ways to clean up your search results, Google’s solution is buried under ads for reputation-management services like RepZe.

...

Other people who have used Google’s form reported similar experiences: It mostly works, but is less effective for images. And if you have an attacker who won’t stop writing posts about you, it’s almost useless. 

Great character detail about Barry Sonnenfeld

From a review of his biography:

Sonnenfeld spends a lot of time in restaurants, and carries in his wallet a laminated photo of a steak to show how he wants it done.

The original vision was for Danny DeVito to play Chili Palmer, btw. And here's a correctly deleted scene from Get Shorty:


Today's funny posts




Disney's free-roaming Groot robot; Ghost Rider has a new steed; Watch the whale get its giant bandage




This week's best Warhammer 40k miniatures and other hobby creations




Friday, April 23, 2021

Post-pandemic New Yorker cover concepts by students

From a longer thread:





Today's funny posts




Ping pong table shaped like Easter Island; A good vase; Ancient rhino



(It's real.)







"Uncut Gems" poster; When you realize you're in a Philip K. Dick story; The deli has t-shirts