Ready Player One is a story that takes place in the future, the year 2044 to be exact, mostly in a virtual reality game with real-world implications that will entice all serious players. The Wikipedia link contains plot spoilers, so just watch the teaser from San Diego Comic Con.
If the movie becomes a hit and a classic, expect a backlash in the year 2044 as people complain we don't have the futuristic innovations of the movie -or else relief if we don't have the deprivations shown. Based on the 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, the movie was produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. Ready Player One will be in theaters in March of 2018. -via Geeks Are Sexy
This picture was taken at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota. This is an example of the kind of gallows humor that must have gone along with the assignment to man the ICBM launch facility. Tony Gatlin painted this door in 1989. As he tells the story, the Domino's Pizza theme was selected because of the colors of paint they had available.
At the time, Domino’s Pizza was famous for its “thirty-minute” guarantee – your pizza in 30 minutes or less, or your next one was free. Perfect. I decided to appropriate the slogan for our artwork and came up with my first draft, “Rapid City to Moscow in 30 minutes or less,” but Rob pointed out that was probably a little too, um, blunt, so we changed it to “world-wide delivery” to be a little less specific.
Note there is no handle on the door. The facility was manned 24 hours a day during the Cold War, and someone had to let you in from the inside. -via reddit
“We have never had a cat this big in the 10 years I’ve been here,” said Ginny Jenrette of Chatham County Animal Services (CCAS). “I also worked at a veterinary clinic prior to this and the largest cat I had seen there was 26 pounds.”
This feline, which is being kept in an office because he is too large to fit properly inside a standard kennel, weighs in at 31.4 pounds.
The shelter is now looking for a qualified home for Mr. Handsome. To be considered, an applicant must have a veterinarian willing to watch after his health and weight. The application form is here. -via Mashable
A man stranded on a tiny island has nothing but a stick and his imagination. The stick brings that imagination to life for him. Before long, the stick is a stand-in for everything he ever had or ever thought about. Through it, he experiences joy, excitement, humor, rage, despair, disappointment, and even jealousy. That's an awful lot to pack into one wordless cartoon with only one character. Unless you count the stick.
The next DC Comics movie is Justice League. The group established its core characters in Batman v Superman, with a glimpse of Wonder Woman, who we got to know better this summer. Next they will be joined by Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg from the comics. An extended preview was released at San Diego Comic Con.
Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.
The sad part of this story is that buying a home can often be cheaper than renting an apartment. But good luck getting a down payment and a mortgage when you are on the hook for huge school loans, and good luck finding a job with security in a stable community. This is the latest comic by Dami Lee, inspired by a Tweet from duumb!
[wheel of fortune]
me: id like to buy a vowel pat: arent u a millenial me: [sigh] id like to rent a vowel
Any list of the 100 best in their field can start an argument, but when a list of the greatest American cooks started out with J. Kenji López-Alt, I knew it was legit. I discovered López-Alt because he has the answers to kitchen questions I search the 'net for, even after decades of cooking. I've learned a lot about food science from his easy-to-read posts at Serious Eats. Many of the cooks on the list have a full article about them linked, which could keep you busy for some time. For example, I discovered the story of Zephyr Wright, who cooked for Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson for decades.
Wright's influence extended beyond the White House kitchen. Back when LBJ was in Congress, the Johnsons would drive back-and-forth from Washington, D.C. to central Texas during legislative recesses. Wright suffered so many indignities on those trips due to segregation customs and laws that she ultimately refused to travel by car and stayed in D.C. year-round. While LBJ built support in Congress for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he used Wright's Jim Crow experiences to shame reluctant legislators into supporting the landmark legislation. After signing the landmark legislation, LBJ gave Wright one of the signing pens. “You deserve this more than anyone else,” he said.
Frank Zappa's 1981 tour featured a musical sequence called "Panty Rap" that you don't want your boss to hear at the workplace, due to the subject matter. He encouraged women to throw their underpants on stage. Many women responded, and bras were often thrown, too. After the tour was over, he commissioned this quilt made of the collected underwear. Emily Alana James is the artist who converted the clothing into a quilt. She tells us about the quilt project in this interview.
I was introduced to Frank only because I sent in the message through my friend that I wanted to do the quilt. He would have said yes to anyone who asked. He couldn't have cared less how it turned out, only that he followed through on what he said he would do. After all he told fans to bring underwear and he would have it made into a quilt. He told me he had intended to visit a local college in hope of finding someone. I saved him the trouble, that's all.
Look closely, and you'll see that the pattern is the queen of spades with Zappa's face.
Kai Tak International Airport operated in Hong Kong from 1925 to 1998. It was an unusual airport even for the small planes of 1925, built inside a bowl surrounded by mountains. The city grew up around the airport until it was ringed by skyscrapers as well as mountains. Then as commercial airline traffic increased, a runway was constructed outward into Victoria Harbor in 1958. Runway 13/31 eventually became the single busiest runway in the world, with 36 takeoffs and landings per hour. And those landings were so terrifying, a name was coined for them: the Kai Tak Heart Attack.
An aircraft with clearance to land on Runway 13/31 began its approach across Victoria Harbor, home to one of the world’s busiest ports, and densely populated Kowloon. Upon sighting “Checkerboard Hill”—an orange-and-white painted marker above a park—the pilot veered right. This low-altitude, 47-degree turn took place at nearly 200 miles per hour, just two nautical miles from the runway. From there, the aircraft shot over apartment buildings and bustling streets—in addition to plane-spotters on the roof of Kai Tak’s parking garage, before the wheels touched finally touched down, probably with an audible sigh of relief.
We are now in the season for county and state fairs, and the rickety traveling carnivals that accompany them. Thrill rides are as popular as ever, with the scariest ones drawing the longest lines. Mark Shrayber is terrified of carnival rides, yet he can't help but ride them. Go figure. In case you haven't been to a carnival in a while, he helpfully describes his experiences with the scariest thrill rides, with videos of each ride in case his description isn't clear enough. He ranked the Cliffhanger as number one.
Sometimes called Superman (although not nearly as scary as the rollercoaster), this ride puts you flat on your stomach and then swings you around higher and higher with each passing second. It’s fun and freeing in theory, but if you’re an anxious person you’ll spend the entire journey wondering whether you’ll a) fall off because you’re not secured in place or b) actually hit the ground when the ride rushes you to meet it face-first.
At one fair, a ride attendant (16, I asked) did not lock down my restraint and then decided not to do a security check because, why bother, you’re just going 40 feet into the sky at high speeds. She started the ride and I had to spin by her three times screaming “I’m going to die!” before she stopped the ride and sauntered by to help. “Whoops,” she said, comforting me. “You have no idea how often that happens.”
That's a little misleading; all eight rides in this list are ranked at number one. Read Shrayber's thrill ride stories, complete with NSFW text, at Uproxx.
British Airways teamed up with Comic Relief to make a new flight safety video based on the premise of people auditioning for a role in the safety video. A selection of top British performers do their best, but the director (comedian Asim Chaudhry) is more impressed with some than with others.
Honestly, when Sir Ian McKellan tells you to put on your oxygen mask, you listen. The video is actually a combination flight safety video and fundraising appeal for the charity Flying Start. It will be shown on flights beginning in September. There's also a behind-the-scenes look and some outtakes here.
The first trailer for season eight of The Walking Dead, which premieres on October 22, was unveiled at San Diego Comic Con on Friday. This video contains NSFW language, despite the fact that it's from a TV show.
There's a lot of action, explosions, shooting, and an inspirational speech or two, but not nearly enough zombies. But then, it's only a few minutes of clips that try not to give too much away. Every frame will be examined and speculated on in the next few days. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Surrealist painter Salvador Dali died in 1989 and was buried under the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. For the past ten years, Maria Pilar Abel has been fighting to be recognized as Dali's daughter. She claims she is the product of a liaison between Dali and her mother in 1955, which would make her Dali's only child. To research the claim, Dali's crypt was opened Thursday after the museum closed in order to extract tissue for a DNA test.
Narcís Bardalet, the embalmer who tended Dalí’s body after his death in 1989 and helped with the exhumation on Thursday night, said he had been delighted to see the surrealist’s best-known feature once again.
“His moustache is still intact, [like clock hands at] 10 past 10, just as he liked it. It’s a miracle,” he told the Catalan radio station RAC1.
Otherwise, Dali's body had hardened so much that an electric saw was needed to take samples. After the DNA test, the samples will be returned to the crypt. The results of the DNA test will take about a month. Read more on the story at The Guardian. -via Metafilter
Liam York (misteryorkie) is a self-taught artist who draws portraits of celebrities in inverted light. They are almost recognizable, but when photographed, and then rendered in a negative, they become true to form!
They knew what they were getting into when they posted an online poll to name a train. And the Swedish rail line MTR Express is ready to go with it. And it's proper to give props to online poll contributors after the British government backed out of naming a research ship Boaty McBoatface.
"(This is) news that will be received with joy by many, not just in Sweden," MTR wrote in a statement.
The train will run between the Swedish capital Stockholm and Gothenburg, the country's second-biggest city.
