Did you know the outside world exists? The weather has been so nice, I’ve been rediscovering this for myself. I’ve taken a few longer walks (around an hour) in April heat, which is 70-80f, and about perfect.
My Big Dog has needed to revisit some of his training lately too. He’s really bad about fence fighting, which sounds more dramatic than it is…he just lunges so hard for fences and makes these horrible howly-yelpy noises at dogs on the other sides of fences. This is a totally common behavior in dogs. They get really frustrated by leashes/fences preventing them from socially normal behaviors. But it’s causing him a lot of angst, making him difficult to walk, and honestly puts him in danger because a pitbull can’t look bad like that.
Luckily he is a full peanut butter marshmallow. He’s taking to his training reminders well. So far, it’s all good experiences, and that’s my goal.
I’m also making really good progress on editing Fated for Firelizards. I’ll probably push an itch.io update with some new art and typo corrections before the actual ebook arrives.
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In Tennessee, Volkswagen workers are unionizing. (Balloon Juice) Woo woo!
Meanwhile, Starbucks employees’ union efforts are facing the Supreme Court. (NPR)
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Apparently, the reason Cybertruck accelerator pedals are failing is because of…soap. (NPR)
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BookRiot breaks down how Google is diluting their News feed. At this point, most Google products are unusable to me.
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Unsurprisingly, pregnant women are increasingly being turned away from emergency departments in America. (The Guardian)
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Niger wants American troops out. We’re withdrawing. (WaP0)
I note this because, as an American, I really don’t know what the military is up to or where we are most of the time.
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Remember when Google’s motto used to be “don’t be evil”? They sure don’t!
Quartz: Google tells staff not to ‘debate politics’ after firing workers who protested Israel contract
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Bright Wall, Dark Room talks about The Sixth Sense. Is something in the water? I’ve been thinking I’m long overdue a rewatch on this one.
[I]t’s also a meditation on something deeper than a cleverly crafted gotcha moment. It offers up a sympathetic, often harrowing examination of how children handle the things they see but can’t process. It reminds us that childhood can be magical, full of sights and sounds that don’t even seem possible. It can also be terrifying, when you’re left to assign meaning to the parts of life you don’t know how to grapple with yet.
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We won’t be seeing Prison Architect 2 until at least September. (Engadget) The publisher, Paradox, has been having a bad year. I’ve heard extremely bad, unplayable things about Cities: Skylines 2 (also Paradox).
It’s fine, really. PA1 has been a disaster of bugs throughout its lifetime. Giving the sequel more time to cook is good. And I’m still playing PA1, so I’m not exactly hurting for another.
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A then-11-year-old kid in England uncovered fossils of Giant Ichthyosaurs. (Smithsonian)
Now a 9-year-old from Derbyshire has won a “gull shrieking championship.” His picture in the article is divine.
It’s all downhill from here, kiddos! Literally life never gets better than being recognized for your shrieking abilities and finding dinosaurs. Literally.
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Am I reading a science article or watching The Thing again? Some bacteria, including certain strains of E. coli, actually seek out human blood. (Quartz)
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The Film Stage highlighted movies new to VOD and streaming. I’m not in a hurry to see Dune 2, but I am actually excited to watch the Extreme Brain Candy called The Beekeeper. I might watch Immaculate too.
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I laugh lovingly because the hedgehog is okay now, but some lil dude got a bacterial infection and swelled up into a poky basketball. (The Guardian) I guess it hurts so I’m not laughing that much. But the hedgie is okay! I promise. We can laugh at the pics a little bit.
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Here’s a round-up from Digby’s Hullaballoo about how unhappy Trump must be during his trial. The tl;dr is that he has to listen to people talk crap about him and he can’t say anything. It’s almost as good as if he had to step on LEGO.
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Over on YouTube, Zack Snyder talks about how he wanted Tom Cruise to play Ozymandius in Watchmen. Tom Cruise, however, wanted to play Rorschach.
…I’m sure he did.
Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach is one of the greatest comic book movie casting moments in history, fwiw.
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An unexpectedly interesting read from The Guardian is this piece about blue jeans. Have you heard how they were made by Levi’s in America back in the Wild West days or what-have-you? Some historic paintings from elsewhere in the world may disagree.
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A Netflix algorithm axed ideas for a Knight’s Tale sequel. (Variety) First of all, if algorithms are making those kinds of decisions at Netflix? It explains basically everything. But I think it was right in this case. That’s so much Heath Ledger’s movie. How do you do a sequel that can only remind us how much it hurts that he’s gone, when Netflix mostly produces hollowly soulless algorithmic drivel?
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Settlers of Catan has gone solarpunk. (NPR) How do you expand without over-polluting?
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Smithsonian Mag: Extensive Desert ‘Lava Tubes’ Sheltered Humans for 7,000 Years, Archaeologists Find
As someone who has been writing about cthonic Dwarrow, I’m very interested in this. But I also think it’s interesting from a sci-fi perspective, since we’d need to live in tunnels (basically) to survive a place like Mars, which has no magnetosphere.
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Refinery29 introduced me to the term Gorpcore. I thought they were joshing at first, but it looks like the actual term.
