Sunday, October 31, 2021

Subway Sandwich cosplay; Homer Simpson in the Hedge costume; When you trick or treat at the Bulgarian Ambassadorial residence





Poverty Barrel costume; Bunch of Grapes costume; Marvin the Martian cosplay

@alispagnola

Just wait to see IT ACTUALLY POURS WINE #HappyHalloween

♬ original sound - Ali Spagnola




They went as traffic cones; Harrow and Gideon cosplay; Salt Bae costume for a couple; Panda Keeper costume

@keelypunaniii

#fyp #halloween #halloweenlook #halloweencostume #strippacheck

♬ Hit It - Yung Skrrt




Nightmarish Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga but I'm the house too.

Covid scare at Shanghai Disneyland leads to surreal video (and visitors packed together)


A review of Steinbeck's secret werewolf novel calls it "ambitious and well written"

Jess Nevins wrote a lengthy review for the Los Angeles Review of Books:

Murder at Full Moon is narrated from the point of view of Egg Waters, a college student suspended from his school after a night of drunken tomfoolery who is then forced to work a job for a year’s time in order to gain readmission. Waters finds his job in the fictional locale of Cone City, a dismal, waterlogged, fog-and-wind-beset town somewhere in central California. He becomes the reporter for the town’s newspaper and in that role is present as mysterious crimes begin to take place. The local bon vivant, Luis Caré, has been receiving harassing notes, and somebody has been burning “PAY” into the walls of his house. Then, during a full moon, this same person kills one of the dogs at the hunting club to which Caré belongs, where Waters is a guest. The harasser then kills all but one of the hunting club’s dogs — as well as the club’s Swedish chef, burning more threatening words into the walls.

The brutish town sheriff fails to make any headway solving the mystery, so Waters turns to the sheriff’s rival, Maximilian Sergius Hoogle, a wealthy eccentric

"Inscryption is horrifying because it does things games aren't supposed to"

Detailed write-up of an intriguing game.







Today's funny posts




Animorphs cover group cosplay; Terrifying Andy Reid costume; Youngling jedi council. perhaps





Saturday, October 30, 2021

The NY Times looks at restaurants serving high-end mozzarella sticks



NYT:

The dish arrives as a pair of golden-brown rods, just like what you might see at a fast-food chain. Except that they come topped with caviar and cost $28.

(Eater's review of this particular restaurant in NY.)

Los Angeles high school football team condemned by organizing body for running up score 106-0

LAT:

[The winning team's] head coach at Hawkins in the City Section until being fired following the 2016 season when his team had to forfeit every victory for using ineligible players and the program was placed on two years’ probation for rules violations. He has seven players on this year’s team committed to major universities. All are transfer students.

...

“The refs asked them to run the clock and they refused”

Ghost cakes; Viral Socks costume; Cursed nigiri





Everyone's a Variant party; Marvel vs. Capcom Character Select Screen costume; Dilation pumpkins; Frankenstein pumpkin





New HumbleBundle is eight Numenera RPG books, adventures, and bestiaries for $1

Two corebooks and much more for just $1. (I've enjoyed a lot of stories in this world.)

Today's funny posts




Augmented reality tombstone and ghost hunt; Google's disturbing Magic Eraser; Photoshop's disturbing Strike A Pose





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




Friday, October 29, 2021

Pikmin Bloom is out for iOS and this is very funny

"You theorize that the homeless explosion in L.A. can be traced to a change in the formulation of methamphetamine in Mexico "

The LA Times interviewed the author of "Dreamland," the 2015 book about the rise of OxyContin addiction (he has a new book):

I believe that’s most definitely what’s happened. In 2008, the Mexican government decided to make ephedrine [a stimulant long used in making meth] effectively illegal. And the trafficking world had to switch to another form [known as the P2P method]. By 2012, 2013, tests [on seized meth] from the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] showed that it was all being made with P2P.

What only now is becoming clear is that P2P meth carries with it profound symptoms of schizophrenia, primarily paranoia and hallucinations. The ephedrine meth was a party drug, big in the gay community. Kind of a euphoric thing. But now this meth puts people into their own brains. There’s not a lot of that wanting to be with other folks.

So when you’re driving through L.A. and see people who are naked, people crawling on the ground, what you see is P2P meth?

Yes. Also when I see big stacks of bicycle frames, shopping carts. This stuff seems to breed hoarding in a spectacular way. It seems to turn people mad and incapable of living with other people, very quickly.

The related article is this one in The Atlantic:

[She] has been a physician for homeless people in Los Angeles since 2003. She noticed increasing mental illness—schizophrenia, bipolar disorder—at her clinics around the city starting in about 2012. She was soon astonished by “how many severely mentally ill people were out there,” [she] told me. “Now almost everyone we see when we do homeless outreach on the streets is on meth. Meth may now be causing long-term psychosis, similar to schizophrenia, that lasts even after they’re not using anymore.”

New HumbleBundle features Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth

The big bundle with Borderlands, Bioshock Infinite, and more is $12, but $1 gets you the remastered version of a well-reviewed adventure game called Indigo Prophecy.

Clearance sale on Super 7's Masters of the Universe Reaction figures

Starting at $6.99.

Today's funny posts




Fortress church; Squid Game video game; The two sides of the volcano





@zeuz_ You can’t make this up 🙃 #squidgame #gaming #fyp ♬ original sound - Zeuz








Safecracking simulator; Developing the T-1000 bullet impact FX; Bugs Bunny (15th level illusionist)









Thursday, October 28, 2021

An NFT was sold for $534.4 million tonight as an apparent publicity stunt


Slightly longer technical explanations here and here.

From a thread earlier this month:

The "Eternals" series by Gillen and Ribic is on sale right now

99 cents an issue at Amazon.

(I just picked it up. The Warhammer 40k miniseries by Gillen and Burrows was probably the most I enjoyed a comic this year.)

Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired poster show on sale now

Posted here. These three are by Rory Kurtz, Juan Ramos, and Thomas Danthony.

Fun podcast episode of "Make My Day, A Comedy Game Show"

Casey Johnston and Ashley Feinberg are the competitors.

Today's funny posts




Dune cosplay with sandworm; Harkonen pun mercifully cut from the movie; Here is the Dune mural; Dune ice cream concept





































Ever Given costume; Augmented reality timeshift; Now this is a hinge





Wednesday, October 27, 2021

It's cricket fighting season in China, and "elite fighters can end up being worth a small fortune"

NPR on how the best fighters climb the ranks to reach televised glory:

Here's how the game works. Two crickets — always males — are weighed to the closest hundredth of a gram and then paired off by weight class like prizefighters. They are placed in a clear plastic ring nearly the size of a dinner plate, with a dividing wall separating the two insects. A referee signals go time, then slides out the ring divider to let the bugs face off.

The owners poke a special reed in to lightly brush their crickets, which goads them into fighting. The critters lunge and swipe their pincer-like mandibles at each other. A referee closely monitors the tiny combatants, noting the number of attacks and retreats.

...

They are precious enough that their owners never let them fight to the death, and injuries are rare.

Vice posted a documentary a few years ago:

High school football ranking site tells coaches to stop asking for their teams to get worse scores so they'll be placed in easier divisions to win

Daily News:

Calpreps.com whose power rankings will be used in the coming days to help usher in a new playoff system in the CIF-Southern Section, stated that several coaches have recently requested that their team ranking be “artificially lowered” in an apparent attempt to be placed in a lower playoff division.

...

You don’t need to let us know that you’re undersized, outmanned, inexperienced, have low enrollment, have low effort at practice, have players with low football IQ, have few players on your roster, can’t afford nice uniforms, etc., etc.

Eastern Kentucky high school under investigation after images of students giving lap dances to staff go viral

The Courier Journal tries to figure out what a "man pageant" is, and whether it's an annual tradition for the school:

A thread about the Hazard High School events on the social media site Reddit titled "This is the mayor of my town being grinded on by a high school student dressed as a woman" has more than 450 comments and 7,600 upvotes on the website.

...

Photos that were subsequently taken down from the athletics department's Facebook page showed students in underclothing giving lap dances to faculty and staff, including Hazard High School Principal [known as "Happy"], who is also mayor of the Perry County city.

...

"Normally, the principal . . . is pretty dad-gum strict, so that surprises me, unless someone pulled something out of a hat,” [a board member] told The Courier Journal.

...

[The principal] was previously the subject of an investigation in 2008 . . . .  The principal also came under scrutiny earlier in 2008 . . . .

New HumbleBundle is four Sonic the Hedgehog games for $1

Four games plus some DLC for $1.

Today's funny posts




Trapped in an infinite church basement; Interstellar remake; Greenscreen dress





@insta360_official This is a legit “lightbulb moment”💡@pixel & #insta360go2 #insta360 #filmmaking #drone #pov #fyp #viral ♬ original sound - insta360_official




@crescentshay

making a greenscreen dress - because why have one fabric color when you can have ANY fabric color :D #diy #fashion #greenscreen

♬ STAY - The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber

Sirenhead costume; Spooky Halloween uniform; Surprise purchase

@pyromancircus

My Siren Head costume making the arounds in LA for Spooktober! 🎃#SirenHead #SirenHeadcostume #sirenheadcosplay #creepy #scary #trevorhenderson #cryptid #spookyseason #spooktober #longbeach #losangeles #monster #stiltwalking #cosplayersoftiktok #haunted #performer #stiltcostume @Gary Fay

♬ original sound - TJ Stutts




Tuesday, October 26, 2021

There's a big scandal surrounding the election of the University of Alabama's homecoming queen


Aside from the fact that the election rules seem to have been violated in various significant ways, she's alleged to have accumulated a massive amount of infraction points that should have resulted in her disqualification.

I enjoyed this write-up of Dune (2021)

It basically goes scene by scene, explaining how the movie draws on the books. This is about the palm tree scene:

“These aren’t indigenous. They can’t survive without me.” You couldn’t pay me to live in a vast desert dotted with non-native palm trees, wracked by feudal-level inequality, and beset by valuable powdered drugs. But enough about Los Angeles, folks!

"The Green Knight" movie is a $9.99 purchase right now at Amazon

on digital. (The 4k disc is listed as 42% off.)

Today's funny posts

(From 4 years ago, a Redditor asked, "Why would they name a train this?")


VR knife returns to your hand; Ghost Rider cosplay; Oregon's "Oreo Blizzard" uniform









Reinterpreting J. Jonah Jameson; She looks so happy?; The Shadow King