I’m loving this recent trend in video essays that go behind the scenes of how films are made: it’s been giving me a new appreciation for the movies that I watch, and it gives me a better understanding of just what makes a movie brilliant.
Channel Criswell takes an in depth look at how directors compose their films:
Are you awake before dawn? Good. Go outside. Look east. Bask in the astronomical wonder of seeing all the brightest planets out at the same time, pinpricks of worlds drifting up from the horizon. Missed it? Try again any morning for the next month.
Starting this morning, all five planets bright enough to see with the naked eye are rising within hours of each other to form a glittering line slanting up from sunrise. Jupiter rises in the mid-evening and stays up all night right now. Mars, Saturn and Venus come next, with Mercury barely peeping over the horizon before the the burgeoning dawn washes it out. As an added bonus, Spica is joining the planetary party as one more unusually bright twinkle. (Can’t tell Mars and Spica apart? Mars has a reddish tint, while Spica is a cooler blue.)
If you missed the view this morning (and who can blame you? Sleep is lovely!), don’t worry, you have another shot to see this tiny little astronomical miracle. The planets will be rising together in this formation from January 20th through February 20th, 2016 when their orbits will scatter them back across the sky. The daily dawn show will be easiest to see on January 25th.
The critical feature for catching the quintuplet is being able to spot Mercury before it is lost in glare. Its rise time depends on where exactly you are, but it can be as much as 80 to 120 minutes before dawn. Although it’s naked-eye visible, it can be easier to find with a pair of decent binoculars. Binoculars turned on Jupiter will also help you see its largest moons—Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Alas, even high-powered specs won’t help you spot Saturn’s rings, although they will assist you in appreciating its golden glow. If you’re going to stay out a while, use NASA’s Spot the Station to predict when the International Space Station will come streaking past your early-morning view.
This is the first time all five naked eye planets were out together since January 2005.
Unwilling to brave the cold winter mornings? We’ll get a similar view of all five planets out strutting their stuff again this summer in the evening sky. August 13-19, 2016 all five will be up in the west. Those in the northern hemisphere be warned: although it may be extremely difficult to see Mercury and Venus tucked up against dusky sunsets. Those in the southern hemisphere should have a much clearer view, although then they’ll be braving winter weather of their own.
Did you get out for the planetary dance at dawn? We want to see your photos!
Image credit: Stellarium
Contact the author at mika.mckinnon@io9.com or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon.
The launch of NASA’s Orion Spacecraft isn’t slated for another two years, but preparations are well underway for the first mission into deep space: engineers have just completed welding together the Orion crew module.
The Exploration Mission (EM-1) will take place in September 2018, with Orion perched on top of the Space Launch Systems rocket. The mission will send the unmanned module around the moon and back to test out the equipment before a manned mission.
The pressure vessel is comprised of seven large aluminum pieces that Michoud technicians began welding together in September 2015 using a highly precise state-of-the-art process called friction-stir welding.
The friction-stir welding work to assemble the primary structure of NASA’s maiden Lunar Orion capsule was just finished last week on Jan. 13.
We’re one small step closer to deep space.
Image credit: NASA
This is awesome. Alvin Garcia Flores had been born without an arm, and the folks at Limbitless Solutions printed up and provided him with one in a presentation before his entire school.
Members of the 501st Legion’s Central Garrison (which serves Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota) were on hand to present Alvin with his brand new arm.
Disclaimer: I’m a member of the 501st’s New England Garrison.
Limbitless Solutions is a non-profit organization located in Florida, with a mission to create “advance personalized bionics and solutions for disabilities.” Remember when Robert Downey Jr. delivered an arm to a child last year
He later showed him the video. Alvin’s response: “Oh, I want one of those,” Burton said. “I was kind of in a corner.”
He wrote to Limbitless. The organization agreed to build the arm.
The 501st Legion showed up with Darth Vader and a couple of stormtroopers, and presented Alvin with an arm modeled after that of a stormtrooper’s arm.
Image credit: Limbitless Solutions
If you’re a speculative fiction writer who is looking to improve their writing skills, there’s three workshops out there that are now accepting applications. These
Hosted in New Hampshire, this writer’s workshop will run from June 6th through July 15th: it’s an in depth program that focuses on students’ manuscripts. This year’s staff includes Mary Robinette Kowal (Writer in Residence), Patricia Bray, Meagan Spooner, Deborah DeNicola and Scott H. Andrews. Early applications are due January 31st (final deadline is April 8th.)
Clarion is one of the bigger names in genre writing circles, and it’s turned out some impressive alumni in its history. This year’s workshop will take place between June 19th and July 29th in Seattle, Washington. Teachers this year include Paul Park, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Bear, N. K. Jemisin, Sheila Williams and Geoff Ryman. Discounted applications are now open through February 9th.
Are you a science fiction author looking to know a little more about the universe around us? The Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop is dedicated to giving writers a boost with astronomy and physics. This year’s staff include Mike Brotherton, Christian Ready and Andria Schwortz. This year’s session will be held June 1st through the 7th at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and applications are now open through March 1st.
Image credit: A. and I. Kruk / Shuttershock
Winter Storm Jonas pretty much has the East Coast stuck inside this weekend, which means that you’re probably sitting in front of your television scrolling through Netflix. Allow us to help.
Here’s some of our absolute favorite science fiction shows that we can watch over and over again (and the storm is just the perfect excuse we need).
Awake was an underrated show that never seemed to attract the audience it deserved. Despite that, it was a brilliant show
Where you can find it: Netflix
One of the greatest science fiction shows out there, Battlestar Galactica defined what it meant for modern speculative fiction to absolutely rock. Dark, thoughtful and slightly bonkers at points, it’s one of the shows that blew us away
Where you can watch it: Hulu
The first of Marvel’s Netflix shows, Daredevil
Where you can find it: Netflix
One of the two space opera shows that SyFy debuted this summer, Dark Matter was one that I had a lot of fun watching. It’s firmly in the camp of shows like Andromeda, Firefly and Farscape, about a starship’s crew and their random adventures after they all lose their memories.
Where you can find it: Netflix
Joss Whedon’s other cancelled Fox TV show. Dollhouse
Where you can find it: Amazon Steaming, Netflix
This found footage film about a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa is a tense thriller that got everything right
Where you can find it: Netflix
The Expanse is the show that we’ve been waiting to see
Where you can find it: Hulu, SyFy.
This gem of a show is one that was just amazing
Where you can find it: Netflix
You can’t talk about binge watching a science fiction show without mentioning Firefly somewhere. It lasted for a mere 14 episodes, but it’s become one of those cult shows that’s become an outright classic ever since it went off the air.
Where you can find it: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu
Alan Rickman died earlier this week. You should watch this to honor him.
Where you can find it: Netflix
Along with the aforementioned Dark Matter, Killjoys was SyFy’s return to form this year with space opera. It’s fun, with an interesting story and some entertaining characters
Where you can find it: Hulu, SyFy
This is probably my most favored show of all time. A cop is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973, where he’s trying to figure out if he’s actually travelled in time, or if he’s just in a coma. Brilliant acting, stories and an ending that blew everyone away
Where you can find it: Hulu
This adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s famous novel is fantastic
Where you can find it: Amazon Streaming
We love this show
Where you can find it: Amazon Steaming
This is probably the show that we love the most
Where you can find it: Netflix
I got hooked on this show a while back
Where you can watch it: Adult Swim
And because we can’t have a binge list without snow-themed movies, here’s thee that are definitely worth checking out if you’re snowed in:
This was an utterly crazy, brilliant movie that we loved watching
Where you can find it: Netflix
Not the TV show, but the 2013 B-movie
Where you can find it: Netflix
This film flat out rocked
Where you can find it: Netflix
What shows are you watching while you’re stuck inside?
Adam Savage, of Mythbusters and Tested, is a known space suit geek
Witness the sheer joy:
I suspect we’ll see him in one of these for his Adam Incognito bit at Comic Con this year. His joy is justified: this would be one amazing costume to own.
Released in 1961 by William Marshall, The Phantom Planet follows an astronaut who’s captured by an invisible asteroid and shrunken down to six inches by the object’s strange atmosphere.
Give the film a watch, and enjoy along with your fellow io9 commenters!
Warcraft is hitting theaters six months from now, but the first TV spot for the film has just hit the web, showing off some new footage of the anticipated Duncan Jones movie.
I’m a huge fan of Duncan Jones’ two films, Moon and Source Code, and I’m really interested to see what he does with this.
Warcraft hits theaters on June 10th, 2016.
Behold Trumpler 14, a dazzling star cluster located 8,000 light-years from Earth. Situated within the Carina Nebula, it’s home to one of the highest concentrations of massive, bright stars in the Milky Way. But as spectacular as these stellar objects appear be, their majestic appearance comes at a price.
This family of white-blue stars are embodiments of the “live fast, die young” approach to existence. They’re just 500,000 years old, so they’re relative newcomers to the galaxy—but they’re quickly burning up their vast supplies of hydrogen. Packed close together, these luminous stars look absolutely awesome, but they only have a few million years left before they explode as supernovae.
Trumpler 14—one of the largest collections of hot, massive stars in the Milky Way.
There are about 2,000 stars in Trumpler 14, some of them several tens of times larger than our Sun. The big bright star is supergiant HD 93129Aa, one of the hottest and most brilliant stars in the Milky Way.
As they burn, these stars are hurtling high-speed particles out into space. When these winds hit surrounding material, they produce a shock wave that heats the gas to millions of degrees and trigger intense bursts of X-rays. These stellar winds affect the shape of nearby clouds of gas and dust, while also kindling the birth of new stars. And in fact, that arc-shaped cloud at the bottom of the image is a bow shock that was produced by these winds.
Trumpler 14 (circled in red) is located in the Carina Nebula.
These photos would rock as your desktop wallpaper. Go ahead and download the images in various sizes and formats here and here.
[ESA]
All images: NASA & ESA, Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia)
Maybe not! It depends, really. But since this Korean cosplayer has a head full of hair, she needed a bald cap to pull off her One-Punch Man outfit.
[Photo: Naver]
[Photo: Naver]
Over on Naver, via tipster Sang, she walks us through the steps, which should be more than familiar for anyone who’s ever used one of these for make-up effects.
[Photo: Naver]
[Photo: Naver]
[Photo: Naver]
[Photo: Naver]
[Photo: Naver]
[Photo: Naver]
The result looks good!
Tasha is a member of the South Korean cosplay collective, Spiral Cats. They do good work! And while this One-Punch Man cosplay cannot top cosplayer Sly Kucing’s
Top photo: Naver
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter@Brian_Ashcraft.
On January 24th, 1986, Voyager 2 swept past our system’s seventh planet, Uranus, on its way through the solar system. It was the first and last time we visited the gas giant, and we found it’s one of the stranger locations in our solar system.
Throughout classical times, scholars recognized only six planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, each visible to the naked eye. It wasn’t until the advent of advanced telescopes that anyone found additional worlds orbiting our sun.
While Uranus is visible to the naked eye, and had been observed throughout history, it had been identified as a star. It wasn’t until March 13th, 1781 when William Hershel observed the planet and noted it down as a comet.
“The power I had on when I first saw the comet was 227. From experience I know that the diameters of the fixed stars are not proportionally magnified with higher powers, as planets are; therefore I now put the powers at 460 and 932, and found that the diameter of the comet increased in proportion to the power, as it ought to be, on the supposition of its not being a fixed star, while the diameters of the stars to which I compared it were not increased in the same ratio. Moreover, the comet being magnified much beyond what its light would admit of, appeared hazy and ill-defined with these great powers, while the stars preserved that lustre and distinctness which from many thousand observations I knew they would retain. The sequel has shown that my surmises were well-founded, this proving to be the Comet we have lately observed”.
It wasn’t until he brought his discovery to another astronomer, Nevil Maskelyne, that they realized that it wasn’t a comet: it orbited the sun like a planet. Additional observations from other astronomers helped confirm the discovery, and Hershel was given the honor of naming the planet. He bestowed it with ‘Georgium Sidus’, or George’s Star, in honor of his king. This, however, didn’t sit well with the wider European astronomical community, and in 1782, German astronomer Johann Elert Bode
The discovery of a new planet was Earth-shattering news in the astronomical community, and would open up a race to discover new bodies
Over the coming century, astronomers made a number of observations that confirmed the planet’s orbit, five moons, a set of rings, and its unusual orientation: unlike the rest of the planets in the solar system, it had an axial tilt of 97.77°, with one pole facing the sun.
However, it wasn’t until the 20th century that Uranus got the most attention from astronomers.
In 1965, Gary Flandro, a student at the California Institute of Technology and employee at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory began working on a new project: mapping out where NASA should look for new exploration efforts. Getting to the planets would be a major efforts, and he began tracing out orbits to see what would be feasible. It was then that he discovered that: “Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune”, according to Jay Gallentine in Ambassadors from Earth: Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft “would, in the next fourteen years, in the next fourteen years, begin aligning themselves on one side of the sun.”
This was the first step in realizing a new space program, one that would eventually explore the outer solar system: Voyager. It was an ambitious project, and two spacecraft were developed for a grand tour of the outer solar system.
In 1977, both spacecraft blasted off and made their way towards Jupiter: Voyager 1 on September 5th, flying by Jupiter and Saturn before it made its way out of the solar system. Voyager 2 launched on August 20th, and flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, on its way out of the system.
On January 24th, 1986, Voyager 2 reached its closest point to the seventh planet, 50,600 miles above its surface.
While there, it uncovered a wealth of new information about the planet: in addition to examining the previously discovered moons Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon, it discovered a number of others: Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Perdita and Puck.
The probe also discovered interesting things about the planet’s atmosphere: it was extremely cold, with a composition primarily of hydrogen and helium. Among the other discoveries was that the planet’s magnetic field behaved strangely.
The encounter lasted all of 5.5 hours before Voyager departed, on its way to the next planet in the solar system, Neptune, helped along by a gravity assist.
Since then, we’ve continued to learn about the planet: we’ve seen auroras in the planet’s atmosphere
To date, no other probes have been sent to Uranus, but there have been several proposed missions
Top image credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/ W. M. Keck Observatory. Middle image: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Bottom image credit: NASA/JPL
Rock and roll and science are commonly thought of as polar opposites: one sexy and dangerous, the other nerdy and inscrutable. But a great comic-book series imagines that the world would be a million times cooler if the two were one and the same.
Originally published 1/22/16
Nowhere Men is a post-Steve Jobs comic. It taps into the quasi-religious adulation surrounding people who deliver technological advancement unto the masses and grafts that fascination onto the pop-music pantheon cycle of the last 20 years. The series’ central premise revolves the meteoric evolution of four scientists—Simon Grimshaw, Emerson Strange, Dade Ellis and Thomas Walker—into a company called Worldcorp. Decades after they achieve ridiculous amounts of money and fame, the four men are deeply estranged. Emerson Strange runs WorldCorp by himself, Simon Grimshaw runs a rival science megaconglomerate and the other two founders are missing and comatose.
Strange’s last stab at creating a world-changing legacy blows up when a secret space station explodes. Its quarantined crew—whose collective infection with a mysterious mutagenic super-virus—escaped to the surface of Earth via experimental teleporter. The changing crew members are becoming radically different creatures and part of their drama is trying to puzzle out what exactly is happening to them.
Written by Eric Stephenson with art by Nate Bellegarde, Dave Taylor, Emi Lenox and Jordie Bellaire and others, Nowhere Men takes standard-issue superhero tropes and pulls them apart. Similarities to the Fantastic Four, Doom Patrol and X-Men float up through the text and there are moments of fun science-hero-style action in these pages. But the series’ biggest inspiration is the 1960s British Invasion that saw the Beatles, Rolling Stones and other acts take America by storm. Stephenson swaps out science for music and then extrapolates a wholly changed world where geniuses are the focal points of the public imagination.
Nowhere Men #7 came out this week, ending a long series hiatus of more than a year. Re-reading the entirety of Nowhere Men made me think about the formula that seems to dictate how pop celebrity plays out in the public eye. The canniest thing that the creators of Nowhere Men do is deconstruct and repurpose that formula onto a conceit with scientists at the center. The book nails the premise of its elevator pitch so perfectly that you can only marvel at the parallels. Its characters exude outrageous messianism that you desperately want to believe in.
In sharply designed text passages, Stephenson leans on the importance of the interview as a window of insight into an admired mind. These aren’t just exposition dumps; they’re callback homages to the Esquire, Playboy, Life magazine interviews that won over legions of fans.
These artifacts of Nowhere Men’s cooler alternate reality all tease out familiar tropes of post-modern celebrity. A rise-to-fame arc crashes into a break-up—illuminated by insider retrospectives that show internal tensions—splintering off into a new band by an embittered former comrade. Here, it was precipitated by Walker’s tuned-out eccentricities and Grimshaw wanting to sell out and cook up weaponizable super-science with the government, only to be opposed by Ellis and Strange’s change-the-world idealism.
If the four original WorldCorp founders were the Beatles, then Simon Grimshaw’s Grimshaw Holdings is Wings. Other familiar beats get hit, too: the power of popularity lists/rankings, the seductive mystique of the recluse star, the symbiotic necessity of hangers-on, the “have they still got it/losing their edge” doubts.
Most importantly, Nowhere Men’s tone replicates the awe and fear that come with scientific advancement. Many of its infected characters are changing in disgusting, scary ways that make them frighteningly powerful. As with all innovation, panic surrounds these changes but possibility is there, too. Think about cell phones: decades ago, folks were worried that they’d make everyone sick with radiation, now we carry them around in pockets and purses everyday. It’s not even that the fears have been disproven, either; it’s just that their heretofore unimaginable utility has made them ubiquitous and practically mandatory. The new science things that scare us can change the world.
CL Moore was one of the only women who ever wrote for famous pulp fiction magazines Weird Tales and Astounding Science Fiction during the 1930s. Now Andrew Liptak has a great article about her life over at Kirkus, including links to never-before-seen short stories by the woman who was both a fantasy and SF pioneer. I love this bit about where she composed her stories, and how she met her husband via mail (who of course assumed she was a man based on her byline and interests):
As the Great Depression settled into the United States, Moore left the university and began work as a secretary at a bank in Indianapolis a year and a half after enrolling. She continued to write, staying after hours at the bank in the bank's balcony "where she could look out over the bank's main floor," submitting stories to various fanzines. The back of one of her later novels noted that she enjoyed writing where she had a good view . . . Moore's first professional sale in 1933 made the biggest splash: Farnsworth Wright, editor for Weird Tales magazine received her story, Shamebleau, and immediately knew that he had something fantastic. Reportedly, Wright closed Weird Tales' offices for the day in celebration upon reading the story, which appeared in the magazine's November issue, under the name C.L. Moore. While other women writing in the science fiction field at the time masked their names to compete in a male-dominated field, Moore claimed that the abbreviation of her name was more to protect her identity from her employer.
Moore continued the adventures of the story's central character, Northwest Smith, with Black Thirst, published in Weird Tales' April 1934 issue and with Scarlet Dream in May and Dust of Gods in August. The Black God's Kiss, appearing in the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales, featured a new character, Jirel of Joiry, a notable female protagonist in a sword and sorcery story.
Weird Tales readers praised Moore's characters, prose and storylines, including fellow author H.P. Lovecraft. Others in the industry took notice, including F. Orlin Tremaine, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, bringing Moore into the science fiction fold with her story The Bright Illusion in the October 1934 issue. She would continue to publish in the magazine market throughout the rest of the 1930s as C.L. Moore.
Another fellow author and admirer of Moore's work was Henry Kuttner, who had published his first story in 1936 in Weird Tales, Graveyard Rat. Kuttner wrote to Moore, unaware that she was a woman. In 1940, the pair married, marking a major change in their writing careers. Moore all but ceased to write under her own name as they collaborated extensively; their contributions to their stories are inseparable.
Read more over at Kirkus, and check out the stories.
We really love Erik Wernquist’s trips out to Mars
The music here is cool, but the visuals are even cooler: an maze leading to a strange, futuristic city. There’s definitely an Inception-like quality to this, and I love how it builds and builds.
[Vimeo]
On December 20, 2003, a torrent file was created for an ASCII version of The Matrix. In January 2016, after countless other albums, movies and TV shows have come and gone, it’s still active.
Since there’s no official world governing body of the torrent scene, the guys at TorrentFreak are the closest thing we’ve got, and having tracked the torrent for over a decade (they first wrote about it in 2005, when it only had a single seeder) they’re comfortable calling it “the oldest torrent that’s still being actively shared”.
While in 2016 it’s easy for even the most obscure stuff to find a home in someone’s HDD, a lot of older torrents are gone because back when BitTorrent had “only a fraction of the users it has now”, it was a lot harder for torrents to remain continuously active.
This, though? Well, it’s fitting. If anything was going to survive from the days of a system like BitTorrent first crawling out of the internet, it was going to be an ASCII version of the Matrix.
Cheap activewear, CamelBak hydration packs, and $40 Fallout 4 lead off today’s best deals. Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here
Today only, Amazon’s offering great prices on Champion activewear for men and women, including (but not limited to) plenty of cold weather gear to get you up and moving this winter. [50% or more off Champion activewear]
Speaking of going outside, Amazon’s running another Gold Box deal on CamelBak hydration packs, with prices starting at $36. [25% off select CamelBak hydration packs]
If you’ve somehow avoided picking up a copy of Fallout 4 up to this point, Amazon has it for an all-time low $40 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One today, no charisma points required. [Fallout 4 [PS4/Xbox One/PC], $40]
http://www.amazon.com/Fallout-4-Xbox...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...
I’ve got good news and bad news. The truly wireless Moto Hint Bluetooth headset just dropped all the way to $60. That’s bad news for people who bought it for $80 earlier this week (which seemed like a great deal at the time), and great news for everyone else. [Motorola Moto Hint Bluetooth Headset, $60]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Motorola-M...
http://gizmodo.com/moto-hint-revi...
http://gizmodo.com/motorola-sneak...
Sometimes, you just have to vacuum in every nook and cranny, if only when you’re expecting guests. This Black & Decker Dustbuster is great for that kind of detail cleaning, or even vacuuming out your car, and $33 is a solid deal. [Black+Decker CHV1510 Dustbuster 15.6-Volt Cordless Cyclonic Hand Vacuum, $33]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KASUEK8/...
I’m an unabashed fanboy of Nomad products, and you can save over $130 on a gift set of three today, courtesy of Best Buy.
Needless to say, with these tools at your disposal, you’ll be like some kind of USB charging mystic. [Nomad Holiday Gift Set, $50]
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nomad-hol...
There are plenty of multiport USB chargers with one or two Quick Charge 2.0 ports, but if you’ve fully embraced the Quick Charge lifestyle, this Tronsmart hub has five. [Tronsmart Titan 10A/90W 5-Port USB Charger Charging Station with Quick Charge 2.0, $24 with code 5USBPORT]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...
Update: Sold out
If you’ve got the cash and the counter space, Amazon’s top-selling espresso machine is down to an all-time low $480 today, $120 less than its usual selling price. [Breville BES870XL Barista Express Espresso Machine, $480]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...
Please don’t poke anyone’s eye out (said Shep, whose profile picture is a selfie taken with a drone). [Gogogu Selfie Stick, Extendable Selfie Handheld Stick Monopod, $6 with code K4B2A7DL]
http://www.amazon.com/Gogogu-Extenda...
If you’ve ever thought about pulling out your blender to make a smoothie, sauce, or dip, and then held off because you didn’t want to clean 3,000 different parts, this deal is for you.
The big advantage of Cuisinart’s 4.6 star-rated Smart Stick is that, unlike a traditional blender, you can dip it into whatever container you were already using to hold your ingredients; be it a single-serve cup or a huge mixing bowl. That saves you time, and means fewer dishes to clean up once you’re done. Reviewers also say it chops through everything from fruit to ice cubes with no trouble, so it really can be a full blender replacement for most use cases.
As always, we don’t know how long this deal will be available, so be sure to grab one before the price shoots back up. [Cuisinart CSB-75BC Smart Stick 2-Speed Immersion Hand Blender, $31]
http://www.amazon.com/Conair-Cuisina...
If you’ve been in the market for a ~250GB SSD, you’ve already had two great deals to choose from this week. If you missed out though, here’s a third. [Crucial BX200 240GB SSD, $57]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3814762023...
If you didn’t get a life-changing
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3520...
http://gizmodo.com/a-light-up-ala...
We’ve seen a lot of motion-sensing night light deals, but this one can automatically turn on when it detects a power outage, and will even work as a flashlight for up to 90 minutes while untethered from the wall. [Etekcity LED Night Light, Flashlight: Rechargeable Emergency Light, $14 with code 8FZJEC8C]
http://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-LED-N...
Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Send deal submissions to Deals@Gawker, click here
Would the original Star Wars trilogy have been better if George Lucas had steered closer to its samurai movie inspiration? It certainly would have looked cooler, as demonstrated by Bandai’s Tamashii Nations Meisho Movie Realization Boba Fett and Darth Vader figures.
We’ve been drooling over the sculpture work of Japan’s Takayuki Takeya for ages
Ronin Boba Fett and Samurai Taisho Darth Vader, distributed in North America by the fine folks at Bluefin, are two figures in the Takayuki Takeya-designed line that bring the original Star Wars trilogy more in line with the classic Akira Kurosawa films that inspired it. Basically they take the samurai influence already present in the Star Wars films and dials it up in the most wonderful way.
Samurai Taisho Darth Vader in Death Star Armor is a revamp of the original General Darth Vader figure, replacing the Imperial insignia design of his hood ornament (not the correct term) and lower armor with a stylized Death Star. Purple cord accents on the skirt and chin have been redone in a rusty red color. In keeping with the Death Star motif, the chest plate has been changed from an ornate rounded design to one resembling a skeletal rib cage.
Here’s the original:
And here’s our boy (mind the underskirt protective plastic I hadn’t removed yet):
As much as I love the classic Vader look, the skeletal accents here make for a much more imposing figure.
Though I can’t imagine Han Solo seeing that big shiny circle on his head and not making fun of it relentlessly. Of course that’s where the weapons come in. It’s hard to poke fun when your victim is busy poking you with a blade of glowing red light.
The figure comes with both the lightsaber and an unactivated hilt that clips into his waist. And in case that fails General Vader always has his backup piece.
In terms of backup pieces Vader’s got nothing on Ronin Boba Fett.
He’s got a flintlock rifle (note the removable forearm blade).
A rocket-firing (doesn’t actually fire) backpack.
Five removable blades on his legs.
A short katana with sheath.
And for maximum weapon holding and posing he comes with four extra pairs of hands. That’s ten hands total.
But more importantly than all of these little bits, he’s got the best armor in the Movie Realization line by far. Just look at the detail here. Go on, expand the picture.
The scratches, dents and imperfections in the green armor and helmet evoke ancient metal. As iconic as the base style is, I could easily imagine finding a worn version of this in a Time-Life book on ancient civilizations.
Of the two figures, Boba Fett has the upper hand in terms of both design and firepower. Black is a great color and Vader wears it well, but Boba Fett really pops with his green, maroon, brown and gold. Plus he’s got better toys. I can appreciate that. Both six inch figures run $89.99, so collecting the whole set might be out of the question for some. If you can only get one remember: Always bet on black—unless Boba Fett is involved.
Now I just need the Taiko Drum Master Stormtrooper (not its name) and I’m good to go.
To contact the author of this post write to fahey@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter@bunnyspatial.
Lazer Team, a crowd-sourced sci-fi comedy
In Lazer Team, four idiots (Burnie Burns, Gavin Free, Michael Jones, Colton Dunn) team up to save the world. They stumble upon an alien-created super suit that gives its owner unstoppable powers, but these guys break it up, each taking one of the four components. So instead of one super soldier suiting up to take them on, humanity has to count on these four guys, when the invasion finally comes. Check out the clip.
I saw Lazer Team at its Fantastic Fest world premiere earlier last year and described it as Ghostbusters meets Super Troopers
If you want to see Lazer Team, there are special screenings on January 27 before opening on a limited basis on January 29. Again, it’ll then hit YouTube Red in February. For all the theaters and info, visit this link.
We’ve seen things with these intricately intertwined time-loops of action before, but the remain fascinating to see executed. Every character is locked in their predestined routine, their actions affecting one another, but also totally separable. Plus, there’s a clown looking for its wig.
“A Brief History of Time” by CraveFX was made as a response to Pause 2016.
Weird Tales readers praised Moore's characters, prose and storylines, including fellow author H.P. Lovecraft. Others in the industry took notice, including F. Orlin Tremaine, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, bringing Moore into the science fiction fold with her story The Bright Illusion in the October 1934 issue. She would continue to publish in the magazine market throughout the rest of the 1930s as C.L. Moore.