Monday, April 29, 2024

Today's news and jokes







Several players entered the stands at an Indoor Football League game yesterday



It starts at the three hour mark, the game commentators describe it ("Somebody lost a wig"), and opine the players were trying to interrupt a fight involving their relatives.

They could give lessons based on this guy's leadership excellence

Miniature butterfly chair based on Crimson Peak

Sunday, April 28, 2024

Today's news and jokes

I wish they'd release footage of his predraft team interviews. Teams must have been so confused about what he was about



IndyCar team caught cheating in a race, claims it was an accident

Drivers can utilize the cars' push-to-pass button for an extra 50hp boost, but the cars' software is supposed to prevent use of the button on starts and restarts. However:

During last weekend’s event in Long Beach, the series found the three cars from [one team] were able to bypass that software restriction and use push-to-pass at any time.

...

[The team] issued a statement . . . after the matter was made public by the series and blamed a software oversight

...

[The team] also acknowledged [two of its three drivers] chose to use the illegal access to push-to-pass power, which calls into question whether the unfair advantage was known to exist in advance.

AP:

During an emotional 25-minute news conference at Barber Motorsports Park ahead of this weekend’s race, the two-time series champion insisted he is “not a liar” and didn’t intentionally break the rules.

...

“That’s wrong. If he thought that, why didn’t he push it at the start?” [another driver] said. “He didn’t push it at the start. He pushed it on the restarts. You would think when everybody is stacked up the most, you would push it. So that’s a lie.”

...

“I can guarantee you, it’s not just [the driver] in this,” [said another driver] said. “Obviously what he did was wrong, but I truly feel like him taking the fall for something that he needs a team of people to help with -- he can’t do it alone -- I think it’s a bit unfair to him.”

One suggestion

"If the DRS opened up [in F1], that's more visible you'd have everyone going 'what's going on'. So, I would like to understand how it was missed at the time and make sure that in the future there's the right information being looked at.

"I think on a restart is a little bit trickier because so many things are happening to see what car has got more speed, but they've all got onboard cameras, you can see the button getting pushed. So that's one thing from a series standpoint.

Saturday, April 27, 2024

Great repaints on Ripley and Spider-Gwen action figures




New Humble Bundle featuring Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher comics

Starts at two volumes for $1.

Cosplay of the Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon chimera

I see the Netflix series has reached the big reveal--worth avoiding spoilers because, at least in the wonderful comic, it was an incredibly impactful moment. Cosplay WIP and lots of fan art below:

Today's news and jokes

(Source)



Remote control facehugger

Friday, April 26, 2024

Interactive Animatronic GLaDOS



A detailed write-up.

It's time for Famicase 2024



I posted a few more I liked below the fold:

Light-up Mjolnir is 65% off in the weekend sale

Infinity Gauntlet and Black Panther's helmet on sale, too.

Today's news and jokes







Two great images of Los Angeles




Custom figure of Krang and his android body in the Lord of the Rings universe



Thursday, April 25, 2024

"The Ukrainian Air Force is using iPads, or similar tablets in the cockpits of its Soviet-era jets to enable rapid integration of modern Western air-to-ground weapons"

TWZ:

The fact that the size of the tablet, attached horizontally, blocks out key instruments in the cockpit suggests that it displays a variety of flight-critical data, as well as being used for navigation.

...

it seems that the same tablet is also vital for the employment of several Western-supplied air-to-ground weapons

...

its Soviet-era fighters lack the kinds of data bus interfaces that would ensure seamless compatibility with any of these three weapons.

This is something we have discussed in the past and we also concluded that a tablet was a likely part of the solution.

Libraries have to pay an insulting premium to provide digital files

NPR:

[Seattle Public Library's collection services manager] pointed to Brittney Spears’ 2023 memoir "The Woman In Me" as a prime example of the budget challenges that e-books pose. [SPL] paid the book’s publisher $17.81 for each physical copy it bought, a few dollars cheaper than what an individual would pay in a bookstore.

Electronic copies were a totally different story. The e-book and e-audiobook are about $17 for a consumer, but the library paid more than three times that price: $64.99 for an e-book and $59.99 for a digital audiobook.

...

That price tag is only the start of the story. Publishers largely don’t allow libraries to own digital books outright — they have to license them for a set period of time or a set number of checkouts.

In the case of "The Woman In Me," each copy is only rented to the library for two years, then they have to pay again to keep using it. 

Sending a package decorated like a die to see which side ends on top when it's delivered




Today's news and jokes









Ray Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans Bubo vinyl figure (chrome) up for preorder

Other deluxe creatures based on his movies, too.

Illustration of a very vampiric Blood Angel




A World Eater by the same artist:





And speaking of Space Marines, a good thread explaining why an all male Clone Troopers force makes sense thematically in Star Wars, and not in Warhammer 40K: