Full of Stars Linky

Via Frank N, and then most of the internet, a lovely zoomable view of the galaxy. (The tech behind it is super neat too!)

So the IDF livetweeted their attack on Gaza. Leave aside for a minute the rights and wrongs of the action (and yup I have some pretty strong opinions on that) – and you have another reminder of the fascinating and troubling future that is already happening, a world where the PR war is directly overlaid on the physical conflict in realtime. Did I mention that IDF opponents in Gaza were tweeting right back?
UPDATE: WHAT THE HELL? IDF gamifies war

Waiting for Elmo. (via Dangerous Minds)

And here’s 10 Sesame Street performances worth seeing. Stevie Wonder (not that clip, a different one)! Herbie Hancock! Cab Calloway! More than half of these were completely new to me. (via Vivian)

RPG folk – grab the free quickplay edition of my buddy Dale’s new horror RPG, EPOCH! It’s got some really interesting stuff going on in it. Check it check it out.

Everyone’s been sharing this highly informative Reddit thread explaining the nuances of New Zealand culture. e.g. “Something people who come to New Zealand might not be aware of is that the government provides four sheep for every person. Be sure to ask at the airport! Even if you’re just visiting, you can have four sheep to follow you around while you’re here. Some people feel quite bad that they missed out on their sheep.”

Anyone out there wanting French to English translation services? My friend Heather is in the game and now she has a website ho ho ho. (Also, editing.)

SFX covers 10 episodes every sci-fi show must have (via Craig Oxbrow)

Via Calum Dow, a cringingly funny but VERY unpleasant tale of a pregnant lady getting a massage that goes very very wrong. Better for listening than reading, but the page gives you both options.

Via Gem Wilder, 21 very awkward situations (told in animated gif form) (gif was the US word of the year!) (oh hai john key) (my favourite is the basketball player accidentally rubbing the wrong knee)

Pearce sent me this Prometheus review that’s even more scathing than my one was. A pre-Damon-Lindelof script draft has turned up online too, and the big news is, it pretty much makes sense, unlike the released version. Google for “112142280-Alien-Engineers” and you should find it.

Illustrations of dozens of characters from The Wire. As a poster.

When a woman cries, she’s emotional and irrational. But when a man rages, that’s just being direct.

A dad hacks video game to switch all the pronouns around so his daughter can have a hero character who is a girl. Groovy. (Don’t read the comments though unless you want to be exposed to much rage about how he DESTROYED THE INTEGRITY OF GAMING CULTURE RAARGH.)

The MIT game lab has produced a game that demonstrates the effects of the theory of relativity – by setting the speed of light really close to walking speed. Fascinating.

These photos will tell you all you need to know about the David Petraeus affair scandal.

If you find a free photoshop service online, be wary, because it might be the Photoshop Troll! (via d3vo)

Irish graphic designers create a group exhibition out of their most frustrating client instructions.

So last linky I shared a “Occupy fizzled out as a failure” essay. Right on cue, Occupy has launched something very real using exciting new thinking that has people talking everywhere – a plan to buy out and write off debt (debt is bought and sold at a fraction of the debt value). Making Light here discuss and dismiss one objection to Occupy’s Rolling Jubilee

And finally, Windows95 tips and tricks.

7 thoughts on “Full of Stars Linky”

  1. My favourite Sesame Street performances = James Taylor & some dude with a tuba singing Jellyman Kelly with a bunch of cute kids. Paul Simon doing Me & Julio down by the schoolyard with a bunch of cute kids.

  3. Heya, another one for your linky file (if you haven’t already got it): The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (http://www.lizziebennet.com/). They’re a retelling of Pride and Prejudice done as a series of vlogs, and are _very funny_. Also, they recently did the proposal scene and it was glorious.

    Steph

  5. I read the original Prometheus script and thought it was… OK, but not the ZOMG AWESOME that people are talking about. Certainly it shares the key element that you, Morgue, disliked about the final Prometheus – the way that humans were assigned a central place in the narrative (the engineers having essentially created humanity), rather than the Lovecraftian themes of humanity’s essential irrelevance within a greater galaxy that characterised Alien/Aliens. And the script has at least as many plot holes as the one they finally filmed.

    The comments thread on this is surprisingly good, especially with regards to how the film ended up the way it did (budget cuts, basically) – http://badassdigest.com/2012/11/12/jon-spaihts-original-alien-prequel-script-has-escaped-into-the-wild/ – worth reading through.

  7. Yeah, the Spaihts draft is not great. Particularly what it does with the classic Giger aliens, which it shoehorns in and doesn’t know what to do with. And David is quite rubbish in that draft.

    But (but!) it doesn’t commit the grave sins that so drove me batty about Prometheus, which was the complete lack of sense in the human characters (there are still a bunch of dumb decisions, but overall they are comprehensible as human beings) and the absence of any sense of logic, spelled out or not, for the alien world that was encountered (although again there are still a bunch of things that don’t add up, obviously).

    To be honest, the centrality of humanity isn’t really something I hold against Prometheus. I think it makes it a terrible Alien prequel, but it’s totally cool for an Alien remix, which is how I prefer to look at Prometheus anyway.

    I think Lindelof has some specific blind spots in how he approaches writing/plotting, and they are disastrous if not balanced or reined in by some balancing force that Ridley didn’t or couldn’t provide. Basically, he overrates the thematic weight of asking questions, and discounts the thematic importance of implicit or potential answers to those questions. A specific instance of style over substance, in other words.

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