benzado

Alan wont stop calling me Trollbridge

Tue, 21 May 2013 02:08:33 -0400

So I am starting an online campaign to get everybody to starting calling him “Alan Puke-Zinski” starting immediately. Join me.

Do you seriously think you can hurt Alan by calling him names?

Threaten to steal his gold if he ever again sets foot on a bridge.

vintagetoyarchive: CATALOG SHOPPE: 1975 STAR TREK...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:02 -0400

vintagetoyarchive:

CATALOG SHOPPE: 1975 STAR TREK Freezicles

This may have also been the plot of an original series episode.

Google Starship

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:53:46 -0400

Google I/O begins tomorrow. It’s a big annual conference for developers and the like, hosted by Google. The Google New York office is hosting “Google I/O Extended”, where people who can’t be in San Francisco for whatever reason are going to watch Google I/O events on a big TV.

I’ll be in the New York office.

One of the items on the program is a game that will run for the duration of the conference. Here is the description:

If you’re interested in playing the Ship Wars: Reactor game, please bring your laptop and charger with you. Ship Wars: Reactor is a logic-based game built exclusively for I/O Extended events at Google offices. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: graphically program a small crew of robots to run your very own starship. For a chance to win a prize, you will virtually compete against attendees in other offices to ensure yours is the most efficiently run starship in the virtual universe.

The meaning of this is pretty clear. Buoyed by their success in self-driving cars, Google is building a starship piloted by robots, and is using this exercise to recruit engineers for the project, The Last Starfighter-style.

Stop Giving Your Money to Rich People on Kickstarter

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:48:16 -0400

Stop Giving Your Money to Rich People on Kickstarter:

nicolemarietherese:

Alan Jones on why Kickstarter campaigns for ‘Wish I Was Here’ and ‘Veronica Mars’ have set a terrible precedent

This definitely qualifies as yucking other people’s yums but it explores some stuff that’s been bumming me out about kickstarter. Crowd-sourcing is about people with small scale financial means but without large-scale power being able to help art happen. That’s awesome. But when you throw celebrities and actual studios into the mix, there’s another power element there that - I think - makes it possible for well-meaning people to be taken advantage of, to be less discerning and more trusting on a frontier that doesn’t actually have a ton of legit oversight. (On the other hand, who am I to decide somebody else is being taken advantage of?)

Anyway. Point is, Kickstarter is getting messy. And it’s kind of interesting to see what happens next.

Alan Jones thinks Zach Braff is “abusing” Kickstarter because he is using it to raise money for a film when he could clearly finance it himself, probably, we think, maybe, based on what his income was six years ago when he was still regularly working on television.

What’s really going on here is that Alan Jones doesn’t like Garden State (“has aged rather poorly”, he says) and doesn’t think Braff deserves the money that his fans are voluntarily giving him. Jones doesn’t really have any other legitimate complaint.

If you need a $100,000 to make a film, it doesn’t matter to your accountant whether you borrow the $100,000 from one person or borrow $25 from 4,000 people. But if you are making the film, which situation would you rather choose?

$100,000 is a significant pile of cash, even if you’re rich. Unless this is a gift from your family, whoever gives you that money is probably going to want something in return. They are going to be anxious that the film you create actually makes enough money for them to get their investment back, plus a profit. They are going to have opinions about how the film turns out.

On the other hand, those 4,000 people only gave you $25. If the film sucks, or is never even made, well, that sucks. But it’s only $25.

Yes, I already know how Kickstarter works, you say. My point is that spreading financial risk and artistic independence are tightly related. What makes Kickstarter novel is not the spreading of risk, but the ability to spread the risk out so thinly that, in the worst case scenario, nobody gets badly hurt at all. So the following from Alan Jones doesn’t really make any sense:

Although Braff’s stated goal on the project was to avoid having financiers meddle with his vision of the film, it’s really more a way for Braff to avoid taking any personal financial risk on the project. … Even if he doesn’t have $2 million to spare right now, he could almost certainly get a loan for that amount, especially if the film is fully insured.

As I noted above, Scrubs ended years ago and Braff hasn’t done anything as high-profile since; it is highly unlikely that he has $2 million just sitting in a savings account. So how does Alan Jones thinks bank loans work? Somebody from the bank evaluates the project and if they don’t think they will earn back all of the loan principal plus interest, they won’t loan the money. How many films make a profit? If a bank actually issued this loan the loan officer would almost certainly take an interest in the content of the film. The fact is most banks wouldn’t even bother. That’s why most films aren’t financed with bank loans.

Mr. Jones goes on to complain about the rewards that people have voluntarily paid for:

For $10,000, one lucky “backer” gets to have a line in Braff’s movie. Usually, that sort of thing is called acting, and on a “larger-scale” project, the actor receives money instead of giving it out. So not only is that “backer” giving $10,000 to a rich person, (s)he’s also taking money away from some needy Los Angelino Starbucks barista that could use the gig.

This is a logical fallacy. There is no guarantee that whatever throwaway line they are offering as a reward would otherwise be in the movie at all. (Also, did you notice that the higher reward levels tend to have more of a influence over the content of the project? This is not a coincidence.)

More likely, that one line would have traditionally gone to the niece of a $100,000 “investor”. (Also, Starbucks offers its employees health insurance, so I don’t think “needy” is a fair description.)

The idea that just being in a Zach Braff movie, any Zach Braff movie, is worth $10,000, is an insult to the collaborative nature of filmmaking; it’s insulting to the people that use services like Kickstarter and IndieGogo because they actually need the money; and it’s insulting to fans who are told that they need to sacrifice, with no potential for a financial return, if they want to see their favourite TV show return to life for a couple more hours.

No, Alan Jones. What is insulting is deriding the people who are sincerely excited for a project, enough to invest their own money, simply because you don’t care for the director. (Note that is only insulting to pay for a line in “any Zach Braff movie”.)

Jones seems to think that the people who actually need the money would have gotten it if it weren’t for Zach Braff’s project sucking it all way. Did he consider that maybe a lot of his fans (who apparently have no taste) learned about Kickstarter for the first time thanks to his project? And that maybe some small percentage will browse around and find some interesting projects by people they don’t know from a successful prime time television show?

And if that doesn’t happen, doesn’t that mean those people never would have given money to those needy artists anyway? So who exactly is losing what here?

It’s unfair to ask these artists to compete with the likes of Warner Bros.

But that’s what they are doing, 100% of the time! Even if Kickstarter carefully ensured that only the poorest artists with the most integrity were allowed on Kickstarter, those artists are still competing with Warner Bros. and Paramount and Nintendo and Zynga and McDonalds for people’s money and attention.

Yes, it kind of sucks that Zach Braff is already famous and so he has an easier time getting attention for his Kickstarter than you do. But how many projects are funded by people just browsing around Kickstarter randomly? It is a tool, to help you raise money, but the responsibility for convincing people to hand over their money is yours. That always involves having some work already out there, so that people have something to back up your claim that you can do what you say you want to do with their money.

Yeah, it’s unfair that it is easier for famous people than “needy” people. But that’s not unique to Kickstarter. If anything, Kickstarter is a massive improvement here.

I don’t know what Alan Jones wants. He says filmmaking is business, and only those with capital to risk should reap the rewards. (See: his entire sixth paragraph.) But he also believes that crowd funding a project is a noble and honorable way to create art. So why exactly is it bad if Warner Bros. uses it to finance a film?

P.S. Nicole, I didn’t really address your concern, which is valid, but you might like to know that the average Kickstarter donation is $25. I imagine eventually somebody will get ripped off at the $1,000 and Kickstarter’s lawyers and/or the government will begin regulating the environment, but it may take a while.

"Xenoarchaeology is a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in the works of science..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:48:30 -0400

“Xenoarchaeology is a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in the works of science fiction. The field is concerned with the study of material remains to reconstruct and interpret past life-ways of alien civilization. Xenoarchaeology is not currently practiced by mainstream archaeologists due to the current lack of any material for the discipline to study.”

- Xenoarchaeology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Iron Man 3

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:00:17 -0400

Iron Man 3 is a film that explores the question, “Who or what is Iron Man?”

At the start of the film, Tony Stark is struggling with how to handle the events of The Avengers. He has witness some pretty incredible stuff, including bickering Norse gods from outer space and invading aliens from another dimension, meanwhile he is, as he describes himself to Pepper, “just a man in a can.”

(It’s Monday, but if you haven’t seen the film yet, scroll on by.)

At the end of the film Tony feels he has answered the question, but is it clear to you? In the movie we see almost every conceivable configuration of an Iron Man suit:

a suit worn and controlled by Tony Stark
a suit worn and controlled by another person
an empty suit remote controlled by a person
an empty suit acting autonomously
a suit acting as prisoner transport: the person inside has no control over it

All of these incarnations of Iron Man were fun to watch, but have they watered down the idea of Iron Man? Why does Tony ever need to be inside the suit?

You should follow @pentametron on Twitter.

Sun, 05 May 2013 01:01:46 -0400

You should follow @pentametron on Twitter.

patbaer: ourvaluedcustomers: To his friend… Was just talking...

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:47:39 -0400

patbaer:

ourvaluedcustomers:

To his friend…

Was just talking about this last night. Not as good as the original, but still a good movie.

Back in September the Overthinking It Podcast interviewed Michael C. Gross, the man who designed the Ghostbusters logo, among other things.

Gross made a point that I had not considered before: Ghostbusters was not intended for children. However, in light of its success, Filmation decided to revive their similarly-named 1975 TV show in the form of a new animated series for kids, Filmation’s Ghostbusters. This drove Columbia to respond with a cartoon of its own, The Real Ghostbusters.

As a result, when Columbia decided to do a sequel five years later, the target audience had changed. Parents would be bringing their kids to see Ghostbusters II, and so the tone of the movie couldn’t remain the same as the original.

ipeetrs: Hear me when I comeKing of the bongo, king of the...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:07:58 -0400

ipeetrs:

Hear me when I come
King of the bongo, king of the bongo bong

joshpatten: Annual post.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:07:41 -0400

joshpatten:

Annual post.

beauty-of-the-beasts: Penguin Gang - By Unknown

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 01:03:24 -0400

beauty-of-the-beasts:

Penguin Gang - By Unknown

Each type of nerd

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:40:02 -0400

Each type of nerd

This used to be what a Wired cover looked like.

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:37:01 -0400

This used to be what a Wired cover looked like.

shortbreadsh: erikawithac: I have been applying for jobs constantly for the last four months and...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:22:28 -0400

shortbreadsh:

erikawithac:

I have been applying for jobs constantly for the last four months and have literally not gotten so much as a call back. I haven’t gotten an interview for ANYTHING, barista, produce stocker, data entry, nothing. At what point do you just give up and just become a homeless loser?

PS my laptop harddrive just died AGAIN and my warranty is expired so thats cool its not like I needed that anyway

It’s funny that you should ask because I just read that America’s job participation rate for people aged 25-55 is the lowest it’s been since 1984 (ie it’s just gotten worse since the recession started). Any time the “unemployment rate” “drops” it’s just because people give up looking. It’s depressing.

It’s even worse than that.

kellyqehudson: Find the funny WHAT

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:32:05 -0400

kellyqehudson:

Find the funny

WHAT

"Bitcoin is exactly the mandate from the masses that Dennis would have approved of. The central banks..."

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:43:41 -0400

“Bitcoin is exactly the mandate from the masses that Dennis would have approved of. The central banks of the world are the moistened bints lobbing scimitars around the place. They exploit the workers by hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.”

- sednet, Linode Forum :: BitCoin Discussion

johneveretttrowbridge: huffposttv: This is Julia...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:47:22 -0400

johneveretttrowbridge:

huffposttv:

This is Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ favorite “Veep” line.

Do you have an absolute favorite line from the show?
Oh, Season 1 … I like the croissant/dildo line. It’s one of my favorites. I think it’s really just — [Laughs] — one hell of a classy line. I think this season — well, there are many coming that you haven’t heard, of course — “Jolly Green Jizzface.” That was pretty fabulous.

Perfection.

definitely my favorite quote from Veep. I would give anything to see the outtakes of this scene.

That’s a weird analogy. Is this a callback to an earlier scene/episode where she is frustrated by how ineffective and messy a croissant is when used as a dildo?

sebsational: landandseaa: Did I make my coworker take this...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:42:14 -0400

sebsational:

landandseaa:

Did I make my coworker take this laughably awkward photo of me in my office so I could post it on Tumblr? Why yes, yes I did.

F everyone’s I: I took this. Isn’t it framed well?

Subject is backlit, lots of clutter on the right side with nothing to balance it on the left, where did her left arm go?

Poorly written children’s show

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:13:44 -0400

Scientist: The other scientists will love to study our little friend here.
Boy: But Dr. Chu, he's not a discovery, he's my friend!

Chris Griswold: Thoughts after seeing Jurassic Park in 3D

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 03:00:09 -0400

Chris Griswold: Thoughts after seeing Jurassic Park in 3D:

uncannybrettwhite:

timmylovesjulie:

1. Why was the triceratops sick?
2. Jeff Goldblum is the best.
3. John Hammond should have died at the hands (or jaws) of the beasts, Dr. Frankenstein style.
4. I really wish we could go back in time and re-do Jurassic Park 2. There was a lot of potential for this as a…

I loved “Lost World” when it came out. I was in middle school and not a discerning viewer. It had dinosaurs and was a sequel (this was well before sequels were assumed; only a few films got sequels!). By the time JP3 came out, I was older (senior in high school maybe?) and I started to see sequels as more of a cash-in than stories that needed to be told. I hated JP3 as a senior in high school, have not seen it since.

The thing is, I don’t think that “Juarssic Park” was set up to become a franchise! Or even a trilogy! The first movie is the definition of a complete story. Unlike Star Wars and all of the Marvel movies, which are set in universes where danger and bad guys and weird things can literally happen every where, the action and plot of “Jurassic Park” is entirely hinged on this one island. The only way to keep the action going is to have people continually keep going to this one island over and over again.

Plus “JP1” totally says pretty much everything that needs to be said about the dangers of the dinosaurs and the philosophies behind playing god and what not. So not only do the sequels, by nature, have to tell more stories about more people going back to a random island in the middle of nowhere, they have to do so with much less intelligence and grace than “JP1” because “JP1 kind of used up all the smarts gas. The debates in the first half of “JP1” are so well written and acted, and by the end, every single person leaves the island with a “Yep, that was a dumb idea” attitude.

Then there’s the fact that sequels demand actors to return which, after “JP1”, it’s nearly impossible to get any of those survivors back. You immediately think those people are stupid for going back to dino island! They seemed to have learned something! I guess they didn’t? I read the summary of “JP3” last night, and seriously, Alan Grant goes back to the island because they promise to fund ANOTHER dig of his? Seriously?! That’s just the same reason as in “JP1”! I can’t remember why Malcolm goes back in “JP2.”

“Jurassic Park” is not a world or a universe, it’s one weird corner of “our planet” that is so separate from the rest of the world that return visits and sequels have so many logical leaps to make, they don’t really have a right to exist.

I’ll see “JP4,” but like, it should be called “Jurassic Park IV: We Keep Going Back To This One Island That Has Dinosaurs On It.” Also, I know there were two islands. Having two islands filled with dinosaurs was such a ridiculous justification for “JP2.”

what about a jurassic park sequel where it is just about the shareholder lawsuit against john hammond and the whole cast returns to testify

or hey what about that other company that paid dennis nedry for the dinosaur embryos? they would have a motive for going back to the island that isn’t 100% stupid