Leighton Meester photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
Time travel can be treated as a serious plot device; think Hulu’s 11.22.63. It can also be silly as hell, as in the Bill and Ted films or Hot Tub Time Machine. A new Fox pilot from the Last Man on Earth producers, Making History, sounds like it’ll hew to the latter classification.
The potential series centers on three friends who find a way to travel through time in search of truth, justice, and riches, which complicates their lives in 2016. They visit some of the greatest moments of the past as they try to resolve their personal problems, while history and pop culture comically collide.
So far the biggest name cast is Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester, with Adam Pally (Happy Endings, The Mindy Project) as her co-star. Not much was noted about Meester’s role in her casting announcement today, but here’s what an earlier TV Line article said about Pally’s part:
Pally will play the role of Dan, a nerdy computer science professor at a small college who is credited with inventing time travel. He methodically uses stolen music, movie lines, and popular culture to great acclaim in the past, where people find him interesting, dashing and gallant. We see two Dans — the “nerd rage” guy having a hard time in the present, and the cooler more carefree guy in the past.
Are you tired of hearing about how awesome it is that we’ve discovered gravitational waves? LIGO is so last month, right? Here’s something to make the topic seem fresh and wondrous again: a delightful a cappella parody music video, set to the tune of The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face,” by A Capella Science.
A Capella Science is the creation of physics aficionado Tim Blais. As Blais told the folks at Perimeter Institute, he joined his mom’s church choir when he was just three “and simultaneously discovered Bill Nye the Science Guy.” So combining music with science comes pretty naturally to him. He got the idea for A Capella Science while procrastinating one night over his master’s thesis in string theory.
The result was “Rolling in the Higgs,” a parody of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” about the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson. Blais had no idea it would go viral. “If I’d known so many people would see that video, I would have sung it better,” he confessed. He’s been making a cappella parody videos ever since, spending a good 200 hours of work on each one.
Given his love for physics, it’s not surprising that his latest effort is all about LIGO and the chirp heard ‘round the world—the first direct detection of gravitational waves, and the first evidence for binary black holes. Check it out:
And here’s his classic parody of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” inspired by his master’s thesis, for good measure (“Bohemian Gravity”).
Space is a pure void Why should it be stringy? Because it’s quantum not classical Nonrenormalizable Any way you quantize You’ll encounter infinity You see
Rock on with your bad aca-self, Mr. Blais. Rock on.
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet art by Christopher Doll
Yeesh, this is a scary, weird year to be living on planet Earth. And we haven’t gotten those danged off-world colonies set up yet, for some reason. There’s no escape! Except, as Emily Dickinson would advise, to say “frig it,” and read a book. So here are 16 friggin’ great books to help you forget about 2016.
1) The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chamber
We called this book “probably the most fun that you’ll have with a space opera novel this year.” It’s the story of a young clerk who gets a job on an interstellar ship called the Wayfarer, that’s just gotten an exciting new mission: Opening a tunnel between two very different parts of space. This is the story of a group of people on a year-long space voyage, and how they become a family.
This thriller is just non-stop excitement. What do you do when a small proportion of the population can out-think, out-maneuver, and just plain massacre everybody else? Nick Cooper joins a special agency dedicated to controlling the “Brilliants,” just as one of them slaughters 73 people in a crowded restaurant. We praised the “fast-pace and gripping story,” and the cinematic feel of the narrative.
So many fantasy novels have a great setup and then just kind of flop around like a fish on the pier. But A Darker Shade of Magic is the exception—a book with a brilliant setup, that absolutely follows through, and is just too much fun for one book. There are four different universes, and a few magical individuals can travel from one to the other. But the rulers of magic-blighted White London are seeking unspeakable power, and only a magician from the more magically enlightened Red London can stop them... with the help of would-be pirate Lila Baird. The sequel is also great.
The guy who created the music service Rhapsody wrote a novel about music and copyright law, and it’s... actually quite funny. I know, weird. But the premise is killer: A bunch of aliens discovered that humans are especially good at making music, and so they’ve been quietly collecting every bit of music produced on Earth for decades. Until they find out about Earth copyright law. Because the aliens want to respect our laws, they owe us more wealth than the entire galaxy contains, to make up for their piracy. Orrrrr... they could just destroy the entire planet, instead.
These days, Martin’s name is not really synonymous with “wacky fun times.” Which is too bad, since he’s actually a funny, engaging writer when he’s not plunging everyone you love into endless misery and unending winter. This collection of three linked novellas about Dunk and Egg, a hedge knight and some weird bald kid, is just brilliant adventure fiction, with hints of Martin’s usual preoccupations about statecraft and the nature of power just lurking around the edges.
Valentine didn’t just make Catwoman cool again—she also wrote a super-fun political thriller, set in a future where the line between diplomats and celebrities is basically gone. A glamorous young diplomat named Suyana survives an assassination attempt, but is forced to team up with an ambitious paparazzo named Daniel to survive. [Full disclosure: Valentine is an io9 contributor, and a friend of mine.] We praised this “lightning-fast thriller” for its cool ideas as well as its pace, which starts “with a bang: you’re barely twenty pages in when the shots start firing, and after that, she barely lets off on the throttle.”
OK so this is a middle-grade book, which means it’s technically for kids. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a ridiculously fun, super-exciting adventure. Karn is a nerdy kid whose dad expects him to run the family farm—but Karn just wants to play a complicated, fancy board game instead. And meanwhile, Thianna is a half-frost giant girl who gets bullied by all the other frost giants because she’s so tiny. (Only seven feet tall.) In other words, it’s about a gamer and a weird girl who have to team up to save the world. And it’s just non-stop fun.
McGuire’s long-running series of urban fantasy novels feature a world where faerie courts are right there in the city, and you could almost find them if you just knew where to look. The first book, Rosemary and Rue, sucks you in on the very first page when half-faerie detective October Daye is investigating a case and gets herself caught in a horrible trap. And then the world-building carries you along, as you meet the King of Cats and discover all the weird magical stuff in this alternate San Francisco.
This book has such an off-beat premise, it really shouldn’t work—and yet it does, beautifully. In Hines’ world, a select group of magicians can pull anything out of a book and make it real. Including “sparkle vampires” from Twilight, and various other items from books. The result is a ridiculously geeky story about people who spend way too much time obsessing about science fiction and fantasy books—except for them, it’s a source of immense power. (And responsibility.)
Caution: This book is probably more violent than most of the others on this list. It includes some pretty hardcore violence, which might not be “fun” in some people’s books. That said, it’s a super-exciting ride—Nettie Lonesome is a young girl who grows up being abused by her step-parents, until she kills a vampire and starts being able to see magical creatures everywhere. Soon, she’s disguising herself as a boy, in the vampire’s clothing, and becomes first a cowboy and then a ranger. There are some deep themes about identity and stuff here, but also just nonstop wild action.
Aaronovitch’s book series about a cop who becomes the final apprentice to a police wizard, who deals with all the magical problems in London that regular coppers can’t handle, is just as much fun as you’d hope. The plot keeps chugging along and grabbing you by the throat with its urgency—but meanwhile, it’s just as much fun to watch Peter Grant screw up and grope his way through encounters with river gods and other magical entities.
This military science fiction trilogy has been rocking our galaxy, with the story of Promise Paen, a space Marine who’s forced to return to the homeworld she left long ago. But more importantly, the evil Lusitanian Empire has designs on the Republic of Aligned Worlds, and Promise gets caught up in the middle. Read an excerpt here.
Here’s another one that’s a bit more violent—this book is basically an action movie on paper, about a badass girl named Chabi who basically never loses a fight. Until she gets drawn into the orbit of a mysterious rich guy who runs a magical hotel where he wants to stage the greatest prize fight of all time. The action sequences in this book are some of the greatest things I’ve read in ages.
We called this book “pure tasty fantasy candy,” and that pretty much sums it up. Kelsea has been hidden away in a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere, being cared for by two foster parents, because she is the heir to the throne of the Tearling. But there are tons of people who will stop at nothing to keep her from taking the throne—and once she has it, she must decide whether to keep paying tribute (slaves) to the neighboring kingdom, or risk a war.
And here’s a YA book, from the master of “grim dark” fantasy. Yarvi is disabled, due to an injured hand, and nobody expects him to take the throne of his father’s kingdom—until his father and brother both die, and he has no choice but to become King. But ruling is no easy matter, and Yarvi ends up going to hell and back. That sounds dark and terrible, but this is actually a page-turning adventure novel in which Yarvi’s cunning and brilliance are fun to watch.
Weighing in at just four-and-a-half pounds, Otto Dieffenbach’slatest flying creation is a remarkably lifelike replica of Bjørn Alexander Brem, the lead singer of an Osl0-based band called Gothminister. The easiest way to tell the two apart is to remember that the real Bjørn can’t fly.
Watching it gracefully hover is even creepier than when the singer makes a low-altitude flyby. But Otto specifically designed the craft to be able to hover in tight spaces, presumably allowing it to be used in concert venues as part of a performance.
Most spelling mistakes are innocent, fleeting, and only mildly embarrassing. Then there are the ones that result in a loss of over $800 million during a bank heist. Those ones suck.
Reuters reports that a basic spelling error prevented an almost billion-dollar theft from Bangladesh’s central bank last month. Hackers managed to break through the bank’s internal security and made off with the credentials needed to make transfers. They then took that information to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where they made more than 30 requests to transfer funds to “entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.”
Though about $80 million made it through—making this one of the biggest bank heists on record, according to Reuters—a request to send $20 million to a non-profit organization in Sri Lanka raised red flags.
The reason? Hackers reportedly misspelled “foundation” as “fandation.” Whoops!
Deutsche Bank, which was conducting the transfer, asked the Bangladesh central bank about the mistake, leading to a realization that something was off. Meanwhile, the abundant number of transfer requests to the New York Fed also raised suspicions, and the American wing also contacted the Bangladeshi bank.
According to one official, the money saved added up to between $850 million and $870 million.
Of course, the Bangladesh central bank still lost a painfully large sum of money, and according to Vice, they’re going after the Fed to get it back. “The Fed had the responsibility to keep the money safe,” Shamim Ahamad, the press minister at the American Bangladesh Embassy, told Vice. “We are suspecting that Chinese hackers have done it.”
The country’s finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, had even stronger words, according to the Dhaka Tribune. “The fault that caused the hacking was in the Federal Reserve of United States, so we will file a case in the international court against the US Fed,” he said.
The Fed, meanwhile, is basically shrugging. “To date, there is no evidence of any attempt to penetrate Federal Reserve systems in connection with the payments in question,” said a spokesperson said in a statement. “There is no evidence that any Fed systems were compromised.”
Note to hackers (and self): Use spellcheck more often.
When your debut movie makes over $2 billion, your career is sure to get a bit of a boost. That’s certainly the case for Daisy Ridley, who is not only currently shooting Star Wars Episode 8 but also being considered to play Lara Croft in a new version of Tomb Raider.
Deadline reports that Ridley is one of several young actresses being eyed for the rebooted film, which has been in development for several years. Of course, Angelina Jolie played the badass female archeologist in two movies, in 2001 and 2003, but around 2009, a new version of the film series began to percolate. Things escalated when the game franchise got its own super successful reboot in 2013 and just last year, they hired Norwegian director Roar Uthaug to direct and Geneva Robertson-Dworet to write the script. (Oddly, neither is mentioned in the Deadline report.)
The main name here is Ridley who, after Star Wars Episode VIII, only has one movie on her schedule: Star Wars Episode IX. She’d have time to play the role, the ability and the audience recognition. Overall, she’d be an amazing choice. But you have to wonder, depending on where the Star Wars series takes Rey, will she be too close to Croft for Ridley to be interested?
The new Tomb Raider film is currently without a release date.
The long-running saga of Jena Malone’s mysterious Batman v Superman role is seemingly over. After being rumored and rumored for ages—and after Malone was cut from the film’s theatrical release altogether—Warner Bros. has accidentally revealed her character’s identity in a very dumb way.
The news comes from a screenshot posted to Reddit of a Warner Bros. community survey issued to fans, asking what characters they’d like to see more of in Batman v Superman’s marketing. Despite being cut from the film (and saved for its R-rated home release), Malone is on the list of actors... and credited as playing Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl.
Oh dear, Warner Bros.
Now, it very specifically says “Barbara Gordon” rather than “Barbara Gordon/Batgirl,” as it labels Henry Cavill’s “Clark Kent/Superman.” Presumably Malone wouldn’t have been suiting up in Batman v Superman. Additionally, just last week director Zack Snyder said she’s definitely not Batgirl in the wake of the news about Malone being cut from the theatrical release:
I think we should keep it private, but it’s nothing that’s been talked about. She’s definitely not Robin or Batgirl. I’m happy to say that.
I guess he meant to add “...yet!” at the end of that sentence, because why include Barbara Gordon unless she’s going to be Batgirl eventually? Then again, Zack Snyder says a lot of things that are a little silly.
It’s a question every Lord of the Rings fan asks him or herself eventually: If giant eagles could give Frodo a ride home after he dropped the One Ring into the fires of Mt. Doom, why couldn’t they have given him a ride there and saved everybody a lot of trouble?
The theory, which we first encountered here, states that hitching a ride with the eagles was Gandalf’s plan all along! It certainly seems more reasonable than making a Hobbit hike all the way to Mordor.
It’s here—your next major look at Marvel’s big superheroic dust up, Civil War. You’d think someone would be pleased, but no, Teams Cap and Iron Man are far too busy being glum at the thought of fighting each other for what they believe in. Oh, and a certain friendly neighborhood arachnid, of course.
There is so much new footage in this new trailer, it’s honestly a huge surprise, even with Spider-Man’s inclusion. Check it out below:
There’s a lot more of the idealogical debate between Iron Man and Captain America, and the cost of the destruction superheroes cause. But there’s still a ton of action, including an incredible chase sequence between Black Panther and Winter Soldier, Black Widow beatdowns, of course, the amazing shot of Ant-Man flying into battle on Hawkeye’s arrow.
Still? Nothing quite tops our spectacular introduction to Spider-Man—making an incredible entrance on Iron Man’s side. Good lord, this looks like a ton of fun.
Captain America: Civil War releases May 6th— and tickets are on sale now.
When she shoots, Samus Aran doesn’t miss. That’s one of the fundamental truths of the original Metroid Prime, the first-person sci-fi game that came out on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. You lock her gun onto a target and fire. She hits it every time.
The game’s designers changed Samus’ aim when they re-released Prime seven years later on the motion-controlled Nintendo Wii. They let you soft-lock Samus’ gun, generally keeping a target in her sights while requiring you to finesse her aim and focus her shots. In other words, they allowed Samus to miss.
Thankfully, you can turn that off, because it’s just not right.
You, dear reader, might be someone who’d fail to brand a shriekbat with a wave beam from 30 yards, but not Samus Aran. And Metroid Prime isn’t a game about players triumphantly being you. It is a game about being the best interstellar bounty hunter and archaeologist in the galaxy.
The first Metroid Prime holds up today in 2016, where you can still play it on a GameCube, a Wii or, as I recently did, on a Wii U running a downloaded copy of Metroid Prime Trilogy. I’ve long considered the game a favorite but hadn’t played it much since release, not until early 2015 and then returned once more this month to finish the Trilogy version. I never reviewed it before. Might as well review it now!
When Metroid Prime was first hyped a decade and a half ago, its creators groped for the best term to classify it, eschewing “first-person shooter” for “first-person adventure.” If the phrase hadn’t been taken they could have tried “role-playing game.” Few games before it or since were as effective at letting you embody a role, in this case a woman of few words whose world you see through the visor atop her signature armor.
Her next two Prime adventures are more slickly presented, more complex and maybe–I’ve yet to replay and reassess them–better. But Prime is the originator barely blemished by age of one of the most successful efforts to make a gamer be a game character. The game rarely drags and to an incredible degree still stuns and satisfies.
Prime’s presentation of a world seen through a visored helmet was designed for maximum immersion. You aren’t supposed to feel like you are controlling a video game character. You are supposed to feel like you are Samus Aran, and that the things happening to her are happening to you.
When you explore the lava-filled Magmoor Caverns, jets of steam briefly fog your view.
When an electrified enemy attacks you, your display cuts to static.
When you finally gain the ability to see the world as one giant X-Ray and reflexively put your/her hand up while getting shot by an enemy, you’ll see her–your–bones.
When light flashes just the right way, you see yourself.
You even eventually see what it’s like to get attacked by a Metroid in first-person:
These would all be mere high-tech parlor tricks if they didn’t serve the purpose of establishing Metroid Prime as the world’s first great Samus Aran Simulator. We are Samus, chasing space pirates and the monster Ridley onto the alien world of Tallon IV, where we will scan flora and fauna to determine what is what. We are Samus, wasting few words as we slowly upgrade our suit so we can see heat signatures, shoot freeze beams and extend a grappling hook made of energy. We have what she’d have: a map, a brain and impeccable aim.
The game starts with a microcosm of what will follow, an effective proof for what in 2002 was a revolutionary idea: that Nintendo’s 2D Metroid games of the 80s and 90s could play as well and maybe better in a first-person mode.
In the 2D adventures, players used Samus to explore caverns and shoot exotic enemies while looking for upgrades that allowed her to reach previously inaccessible areas and defeat previously unbeatable foes. We spent a decent amount of time lost in dark, hostile locations, checking a map to deduce where to go next.
In the prologue, Samus lands on a space station to investigate a distress call. She has a lot of her special abilities already, but the station is quiet. As Samus, the player needs to investigate by exploring ever deeper into the station’s halls and chambers. Soon enough, you’re switching between your scan visor and combat visor, using the former to get text descriptions of the things you’re seeing, the latter to shoot enemy aliens. The action picks up, but the flow is more forensic investigation than gunfight. (The sequel has an even more investigation-oriented intro, establishing an even slower pace for a first-person game, but let’s save that for the Metroid Prime 2: Echoes review.)
The intro sequence is moody and filled with creeping danger. Players might initially and mistakenly think that the developers are going for cinematic seriousness, that they’re chasing the interactive-movie experience that many game makers in that PlayStation-dominated era were going for. The prologue pierces that presumption quickly enough by reintroducing Metroid’s goofiest gimmick, the ability for Samus to roll into a ball.
The morph ball is pure video game, allowing a single button press to change you from Space Indiana Jones to Space Boulder. Like many of Nintendo’s best gameplay ideas, it’s narratively ridiculous but mechanically sound. It lets the developers block a hallway with wreckage but let you roll through an air duct to proceed. Moments of careful walking can turn into rapid rolling.
In terms of Prime’s ongoing Samus simulation, this is key, because Samus Aran is not just an action hero; she’s a puzzle solver. Her world is a series of interlocking puzzles, and her abilities make her into a walking, jumping, ever-upgrading key.
By the time the prologue is over, Samus has bailed from the space station and flown her spaceship down to the planet Tallon IV, where the rest of the game will take place. Stripped of her grappling hook and morph ball transformation, Samus is de-powered and at the bottom of an upgrade latter it’ll take more than a dozen hours to climb. She retains her ability to scan the environment, learn from it, and occasionally shoot stuff, and that is pretty much all she needs.
Armed with a three-dimensional map, you, as Samus, begin exploring. As you do, you hit roadblocks that cause you to imagine the upgrades that will allow you to progress. The unreachable ledge you find near Samus’ landing site will become reachable when you gain the ability to jump higher. Metal doors will need to be blasted; ice must somehow be melted. You can’t always guess correctly, but the game trickles out eurekas as you recognize how a new upgrade you’ve found might interact with something strange you saw earlier. About six hours in, for example, you will gain the ability to magnetize your morph ball. Immediately after that, you realize what all those weird metal strips you’ve been seeing elsewhere in the game are for.
This structure of video game as a generator of successive epiphanies is carried over from the 2D Metroids but feels more marvelous inside a 3D world. Seeing the world from within, the environment slowly loses the claustrophobia of inscrutability and attains the expansiveness of opportunity. More and more of what you observe beyond your visor makes sense. You scan more of it, gain the ability to access more of it, understand the logic of it better and become more comfortable moving through it more quickly and with increased purpose.
Few other games accomplish this epiphany-based design inside a 3D world. It has few imitators, even now. The subsequent games in the trilogy built on its concepts, but few other games do. I consider the recent first-person puzzle game The Witness a worthy if unintentional successor. That game is too frequently compared to Myst even though it better resembles Prime’s great progression of self-empowerment in a beautiful, vexing world through the upgrading of the player’s ability to understand the language of its puzzles.
Being Samus Aran in Prime would be a bore if the game’s puzzles were bad and its mysteries were tedious. That’s rarely the case. Prime’s interlocking chambers are masterfully arranged and pleasing to sort out. It helps that the virtual physicality of Samus’ movement through the world feels good. Her jumps, even in first-person, are confident, her morphball-rolling decisively swift. A late-game sequence leading to obtaining the Plasma Beam demonstrates Prime at its best. Players return to a massive room they’ve been through many times before, but now they have the tools to unlock its secrets. Samus, by this time armed with a grapple beam and a magnetic morph ball, can turn what looked like incidental architecture into toeholds for one of the game’s most satisfying climbs.
Metroid prime benefits from being three-dimensional, but it also greatly benefits from being first-person. In retrospect, Metroid needed the deeper transition from 2D series to first-person series that more intimately pulled players in than Nintendo’s Mario and Zelda series needed when evolving from 2D to 3D. The late-90's Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time still kept players outside their iconic heroes, still had us controlling them like puppets. That helped us manage the position of Mario’s feet or Link’s item-wielding hands. But it’s what Samus could see that mattered most and so Metroid Prime succeeds in being built around that idea. It uses the perspective that most efficiently lets you see what the hero can see, the better to soak up the most information about her world.
There’s never too much information, either. Shockingly little goes to waste or is presented as mere garnish. This is core to Prime’s art and sound design. Nearly every room looks distinct. Nearly every wall or object has a purpose, be it to hide a secret or suggest something about Tallon IV’s history. The intentionality of Prime’s art is abetted by design so imaginative that area after secret-filled area is still satisfying to look at today .
Samus’ hearing is unexpectedly important, too, also benefitting from the simulation of you being in her head. Many of the game’s rooms contain a low humming sound, an aural hint that there is an extra energy tank or missile upgrade hiding in its walls. You might need to blast a panel with as super missile or use a bomb to blow open a hatch and drain a lake. In an homage to Super Metroid, there’s an elevated glass hallway you’ll pass through multiple times before you figure out you can blow it up and explore the area outside of it. There’s a power-up accessible below, because of course there is.
As you find each hidden power-up, the room it was in stops humming. That leads to a satisfying sense of progressing by making the game quieter. Prime subtly urges players to rid many of its gorgeous rooms of that ugly low hum, that electric sound that interferes with scenic serenity. That feeds back into Samus’ identity as less of a traditional first-person video game destroyer and more of a puzzle-solver and bringer of order. It’s no accident that much of the game’s occasionally-hostile wildlife can just be left alone, especially as Samus becomes more powerful. She isn’t quite a peace-bringer, but she’s also no war-monger.
Prime is at its weakest when sending players from one side of its world to another for an unsatisfying reward. An end-to-end quest to get the Gravity Suit is the low point, though a late-game fetch quest to find a dozen hidden artifacts rivals that. (Correction - 4:27PM: Gravity Suit, not Varia Suit!) The tedium of the latter task can be ameliorated if you are observant enough to find some of the artifacts earlier in the natural course of playing. The knock is that Metroid designers can fall too in love with forcing players to backtrack. The counterpoint is that they can’t produce those epiphanies without backtracking. You won’t feel the excitement of figuring out that the new item you got can open the old barrier that stumped you if you haven’t first encountered the old barrier.
Throughout your adventure, Samus is alone with the wildlife of Tallon IV and a smattering of enemies. You’re just this lady exploring this place, solving its puzzles. You are Samus, but she is also, in a way, you. She’s by herself, trying to make sense of things. Occasionally she’ll grunt as she is knocked back by an enemy shot. She’ll briefly scream if she dies. As you start back up from the last save point, the camera briefly shows her at a distance before swinging around and back into her helmet. Her eyes are yours once more.
Robot developed by Toshiba stands at a welcome desk inside a tourism fair in Berlin (Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images)
Remember travel agents? Or Victrola repairmen? Their jobs disappeared as society became more technologically advanced. And a new study shows that most Americans believe robots will replace many human workers soon. But they overwhelmingly think their own jobs are safe.
The new Pew Research Center study found that most Americans strongly believe that the age of robotics will drastically change the job market in the next 50 years. But a health majority (80 percent) believe that their own industries won’t be affected by this automation revolution.
“Robotic automation is something people sense is going to happen in the vague future, but I don’t think they’re necessarily drawing that connection to their own employment prospects, or their kids’ employment prospects,” Aaron Smith, an author of the Pew study, told the Wall Street Journal.
Overall, older and highly educated people are more skeptical that robots will be taking jobs away from human-Americans in the next 50 years.
From Pew Research:
Some 35% of 18- to 49-year-olds think it unlikely that robots and computers will do much of the work done by humans, compared with 27% of those ages 50 and older. And 37% of those with a college degree think that this outcome is unlikely (compared with 28% of those who have not attended college), as do 38% of Americans with an annual household income of $75,000 or more (compared with 27% of those with an annual household income of less than $30,000 per year).
The feelings of Americans on this issue were relatively consistent across different occupations. Essentially, most people think their jobs will be untouched by the robot revolution, and blue collar workers in the United States are the least likely to believe that their own jobs will be replaced by robots.
For instance, 41% of workers whose jobs involve mostly manual or physical labor expect that their current jobs will “definitely” exist in their current forms in 50 years, as do 34% of those who describe their current occupations as “professional.” By contrast, just 23% of those who currently work in a managerial or executive role expect that their current jobs will exist unchanged for the next five decades. But overall, a substantial majority of workers across a range of categories express confidence in the long-term staying power of their current jobs or professions.
Those who worked in government, education, and the nonprofit sector were most likely to be skeptical that their jobs would be replaced.
Graphs from the Pew Research Center based on surveys conducted in June and July of 2015
So whether you think your own job will be replaced by a robot or not, only time will tell. We’ve seen upheavals in some sectors that have been relatively swift (as was the case with travel agents at the turn of the 21st century) and other automation processes that ebb and flow.
In the case of the latter, BMW recently decided that they’d hire more human workers in favor of robots, ostensibly because so many of the tasks were too difficult for robots. But the unspoken part of the story is that globalization has suppressed wages to the extent that hiring dozens of cheap workers is often less expensive than a robot in some fields.
The robot revolution is here. But tech adoption and automation are never set on a predictable and predestined course. Will your job be taken by a robot? At least on this issue, Americans are still optimistic that they won’t be.
Is the Postman suddenly giving out marital advice? He is! He’s also offering parents tips about nerdy child psychology for some reason! But he still has time to discuss Rey’s parents, why comic movies only get the names right, and why the hell the hero named after a flying mammal doesn’t fly. He will also stop talking in the third-person… now.
Game Stop
Matthew V:
Dear Mr. Postman man,
My wife and I are fans of ASOIAF, having read through them all, and we watched the first two seasons of the show. Now we’re debating whether to watch season 6 when it premieres or watch seasons 3 through 5 first.
My wife doesn’t want to watch the 6th season unless we catch up because GRRM says they’re “different stories” now. I think [catching-up] is dumb since we know what’s already happened. Plus I did some reading, and except for some plots being shuffled from book order, it seems that the show and books are pretty much at the same place.
What should we do?
There are two arguments, one on each side, that you two aren’t thinking of.
On the “catch up first” side: Dude. The Game of Thrones TV show is really good. It’s not perfect, and it certainly has its issues, but if you skip three seasons you’re only denying yourself some fantastic TV. Even if you know that Jon and Night’s Watch fight the Wildings in a desperate battle at the Wall, don’t you want to see it? Or the fight between Prince Oberyn Martell and the Mountain? I certainly knew what was going to happen, and it was still totally awesome. Also, last season’s battle at Hardhome was literally one of the greatest episodes of TV I’ve ever seen—a masterpiece of pacing and editing—and nothing even close to it appears in the (published) books. You are missing out.
On the “just watch season 6” side: This is the season where things are almost completely new. We’re getting some answers, including apparently what happened at the Tower of Joy. If you don’t watch every episode as it premieres, you are absolutely going to get spoiled by the millions of viewers that don’t lag behind. If you are any type of Game of Thrones fan, this is clearly untenable.
So here’s the solution: Marathon seasons 3-5 before season 6 premieres on April 24. You have almost a month and a half to watch 30 episodes. Easily doable. You are also legally required to follow this advice because it is correct. Get to it.
Rey Ban
Jenny E.:
Hi Rob,
Regarding Rey’s parents, don’t you think it’s in the franchise’s best interest to NOT have her part of a family we’ve heard of before? From my perspective, giving her a lineage unrelated to the current/past cast of characters means the opportunity to write (sell) a zillion stories about her family without treading on anything that had been developed even in the non-canon expanded universe.
“Best” is subjective. While I understand (and personally agree with) the idea it would be better for the entire Star Wars galaxy not to revolve solely around a single family, there’s an equally valid argument that people care about the Skywalker clan, and thus making Rey some form of Skywalker is not only a better solution, but necessary to the franchise. If this is the case, Disney’s going to run into trouble eventually, because Skywalker drama is going to get redundant and boring.
For the time being, though, if Rey is a Skywalker of some sort, Disney can still sell a zillion stories about her family. These stories will just star Luke and/or Leia, which, honestly, Disney was going to do anyway. They’d definitely sell better than stories about Rey’s unknown parents Steve and Denise.
Kid Stuff
George H.:
I’m a classic Transformers fan with a young son. He just turned five and I’ve been waiting to introduce him to the original G1 cartoon that I grew up with. I know it’s really for me, not him, but I would love to share this cartoon I loved growing up with him
I’ve tried to watch it with him a couple of times and he’s not interested and it’s bumming me out. I tried showing him some of the more recent cartoons, thinking maybe it was the old animation that he couldn’t get into, but he didn’t care. I’ve also gotten him a variety of Transformers toys, but he’d just rather play Disney Infinity.
Is there a way to get him interested in the good Transformers? Or am I being a jerk for trying to force it on him?
Well, it’s not great that you’re trying to force it on him, that’s for sure, and it’s likely contributing to his aversion to all things Transformer. It’s like a parent trying to get their kid to eat broccoli for the first time. Kids don’t know what broccoli tastes like, but they know their parents are trying suspiciously hard to get them to eat it, and back away slowly. The same thing is at least partially happening here.
The other thing that may be going on is that your kid doesn’t give a crap about transforming robots. If that’s the case, you gotta let it go. Trying to force him to like it is just going to make both of you miserable, and him resentful, too. Please remember all the nerd kids in the ’80s who were forced by their parents to play sports that they wanted nothing to do with. This is absolutely the same thing, with the only difference being that sports parents were at least making their kids get some fresh air.
The right thing to do here—which also happens to be the only way your kid might get into Transformers—is to let him come by it naturally, if at all. What you can do is watch your classic Transformers cartoons, and maybe if he sees you’re interested, maybe he’ll start to get interested as well. (I have a friend whose kid became a Beatlemaniac at age 4, all by watching his dad play Beatles Rock Band over and over). Also, if he’s into video games, there are some solid Transformers options out there, especially the recent (G1-centric!) Transformers: Devastation. If he sees you play that, he may want to join in, and if he plays those characters for a while it’s quite possible he’ll want to know more about them.
The caveat to all of this is that I am childless and thus have, less than usual, any idea what I’m talking about. On the other hand, I have a cat, and if he sees I am interested in any book or comic, he is fascinated and immediately comes and sits on it, so I’m not wholly without experience.
I Recognize the Name...
Nathaniel K.:
Dear Mr. Postman, sir.
In quite a number of superhero films and TV shows, it is rather common to introduce a character who has the same name as a character from the comics, but is completely different in backstory, personality, moral alignment, etc.
Why does this keep happening?
Because other than Marvel Studios, pretty much everyone in Hollywood thinks that comic books are dumb. Obviously, they understand that movies based on comic books make tons of money, and they like that. So they use the main character’s (or characters’) name and likeness, and a few specifics to maintain brand recognition. Everything else? Hollywood assumes it knows better.
Oh, it’ll keep the names of minor characters because it appeases the fans and hey, they have to be named something. But there’s no way dumb comic book writers know better than the producers and directors who get paid millions to make these movies! So Jimmy Olsen is a handsome, non-nerdy, award-winning photojournalist hanging out in National City. Bane is a buff version of Goldfinger. Dr. Doom is suddenly a computer nerd with an attitude problem-turned-half-melted crash test dummy. Parallax becomes some kind of Space Cheeto. Ma and Pa Kent are weird assholes who care nothing for their fellow man.
Not all of these decisions are bad, of course, but think how many DC movies there have been over the years. Has a single one of them ever approached being accurate to the DC comics universe, in the same way the Marvel Studios movie has? No. They’re all Elseworlds tales. Again, they aren’t all necessarily bad, but for the most part Marvel Studios has taken their comic stories—stories they know have worked—and adapted them for the screen, and gotten a pretty consistent success rate.
Bat-Fight or Bat-Flight
Deggsy’s Midnight Runners:
Dear Mr Postman,
While perusing some Facebook photo of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman in a lift with the caption “That awkward moment when you have to take the elevator because one of your friends cannot fly” (Hi-Larious!) it occurred to me: given that the Batman has facilities for creating all manner of devices, and given that he’s dressed as the only flying mammal, why doesn’t he have some sort of flying mechanism, a jetpack or antigrav harness? He’s as rich as Iron Man so he can afford it, he wouldn’t need a Batmobile or Batplane, and he can get around as quickly as the rest of the Justice League. (Yeah, I get that he glides, but big whoop!)
It’s entirely an aesthetic choice by DC, and not by Bruce Wayne. If Bruce Wayne were alive and psychotically punching all the criminals he could find, he would absolutely have a jetpack or rocket boots or some other manner so he could fight his airborne enemies, if not get around Gotham City more quickly than his grapple-gun or Batmobile. If the man has a Bat-cloning machine with Bat-memory programmer, then he’s a man who has recognized the advantages of having a personal method of flight.
So it’s DC’s call that he doesn’t have one, and there’s a simple reason why: He’s human. He’s the only full human of DC’s Big Three, and he can’t fly for the basic reason that Superman and Wonder Woman can. It doesn’t matter that technology exists—especially comic book technology—that would give him this power, it matters that Batman would lose a fundamental aspect of himself, his human physical limitations, that sets him apart from DC’s other heroes and makes him so compelling.
Let’s put it this way: People give Superman grief for being too overpowered to be interesting all the time. If Batman, who is already a tactical genius, could fly or was invulnerable like Supes, he would be even more overpowered.
Kylo Ren Fair
Tobias F.:
Mr Postman sir,
While this may seem like a simple ‘who’d win in a fight’ type, I feel the answer is essential to understanding the state of the Star Wars universe as of The Force Awakens: Who’s stronger between Darth Vader and Kylo Ren?
Obviously training and the like would come into play here, meaning Vader would likely come out on top in any actual fight but in terms of pure power? Kylo Ren was ready to extract the location of Luke Skywalker from Rey’s memory and psychically interrogated/tortured her for information. There was also that awesome bit where he stops Poe’s blast in midair and continues to have a conversation. I think the only time Vader has ever came close to this was his rage at losing Padme at the end of Revenge of the Sith.
This has come from a debate with a friend, who argues that it comes down to the visual effects being better but I think it’s more reflective of the state of the Force as a whole - it has become stronger. This would also explain how easily Rey gets to grips with persuasion and combat. Any thoughts?
First, we can safely say the Force in TFA is stronger than it’s been for several decades, and maybe even since the fall of the Jedi. The movie is named The Force Awakens, for goodness’ sake. The new Lucasfilm appears to view the Force as an entity which can wax and wane, while in the original trilogy it seemed to be a fixed element of the fabric of the universe. (There is, of course, no third interpretation.)
Even if the Force has woken up and had coffee, and given Kylo Ren a boatload of extra potential Force power, I’ve got to go with Darth Vader. In a lightsaber fight, Vader’s combat skill would absolutely trounce Kylo Ren.
It’s not like Vader wasn’t still plenty powerful during the original trilogy. Kylo Ren may have stopped a laser in mid-flight, but in ESB Han shot Vader at the Cloud City dinner and Vader’s hand just ate the blast. Absorbing blaster fire seems like it would be much more difficult than freezing it in mid-air. Additionally, if you’re reading Marvel’s Darth Vader comics—which are 100 percent in canon—Vader is a terrifying badass who can take out a fleet of Rebel ships while on foot and push over an AT-AT like it was a folding chair.
Fun thought: If the Force is really much larger in the sequel trilogy than it was in the original, then Luke’s power level should also be crazy in Episode VIII. Like, lift islands out of the sea powerful. Or direct a highly important map to a random girl on a random while chilling on an island planet powerful. Should be fun, by which I mean it will likely make me wet my pants in delight.
Artist’s concept of astronauts on Mars / NASA/ JPL-Caltech
Researchers have successfully grown a crop of tomatoes, peas, and radishes harvested in Martian soil—and with those comes an answer to one of the big questions we have about how to farm in space.
Since 2014, researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, led by ecologist Wieger Wamelink, have been experimenting with growing vegetables in NASA’s simulated soil from Mars and the Moon. They had some early success with germinating plants in both the lunar and Martian soils. But now they’ve managed something bigger.
Tomatoes, peas, rye, garden rocket, radishes and garden cress were all successfully harvested from simulated Moon and Martian soil—and there was also one surprise in that harvest. The vegetables grown in the Martian soil were almost exactly the same size as their Earth counterparts, and there were barely any differences in total biomass by the harvest date, according to Wamelink.
Comparison of peas grown in Lunar (1st), Martian (2nd), and Earth (3rd) soil / Wieger Wamelink
Of course, even with a successful harvest in Martian soil out of the way, there would still be significant obstacles to actually setting up a farm on the surface of Mars. Not only are there are all the technical, budgetary, and timing issues of getting a mission up there, but you also have the problems of setting up life support and a farm. Martian farms would need clean sources of water, reliable light (perhaps electrically-driven), and big swatches of enclosed space, none of which would come easily.
This experiment tells us that solving all those tricky problems is worth that effort. Because, when we do, there is soil up there that could support vegetables of similar sizes to the ones we have on Earth. There’s also another big question that these new Martian vegetables could finally answer for us: How do they taste? Alas, the mystery of whether the dry, Martian soil picks up any surprising flavors remains for a little while longer.
Tomato plants grown in Martian soil / Wieger Wamelink
“We had crops and harvested them, tomatoes, rye grains, radish, rocket, cress, but did not taste them yet,” Wamelink told Gizmodo. “First we have to make sure that it is safe to eat them because of the heavy metals that are present in the soils and may end up in the plants. This year’s experiment will therefore all about food safety and nutritional value.”
However, once they’ve finished testing heavy metal content—assuming all looks good—Wamelink tells us that the next round of vegetables will get a taste test. For the moment, though, it’s still more a question of survival than taste.
Dubai’s skyline is an ever-growing collection of impressive towering skyscrapers, including the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. And you know what loves tall buildings even more than tourists do? Lightning.
Instagrammer faz3, also known as Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (the Crown Prince of Dubai), captured this amazing lightning show over Dubai at 1,977 frames per second, turning what is normally a split second occurrence into a beautifully drawn-out ballet of bolts splintering their way across a dark stormy sky.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new Spider-Man may be the biggest bombshell from the latest trailer for Captain America: Civil War, but there’s plenty more to discuss. Here’s all the information we discovered during our careful examination of the footage. Did we miss anything? Add your thoughts in the comments!
“This job, we try to save as many people as we can,” say Captain America as we see a remote, frozen location.
Two guards, facing the wall. They’re probably simultaneously opening this door. What could be so scary that it needs this kind of security?
Oh. Bucky, a.k.a. the Winter Soldier. That makes sense. “Sometimes that doesn’t mean everybody,” Cap finishes, exhibiting guilt for not being able to save Bucky. “But you don’t give up.”
The editing suggests Bucky is behind the door, but why would he go back to this kind of facility after Cap 2? Maybe this is a flashback?
Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) takes Cap, Falcon, and Widow through the destruction the Avengers are at least somewhat responsible for. First is the “Chituari Invasion” from The Avengers. You can see it created $18.8 billion in damages and cost 74 lives.
Next, “The Fall of SHIELD” in Washington DC from The Winter Soldier. This wasn’t quite as bad, with only $2.8 billion in damage and 23 dead.
Finally, the “Ultron Offensive” in Sokovia from Avengers: Age of Ultron. This was the worst yet, totaling $474 billion in damages and 177 dead. “Okay, that’s enough,” says Cap.
“People are afraid,” says Ross as we see the destruction of some kind of conference—a peace conference maybe? The Sokovia Accords? We don’t know. But it seems like T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther (played by Chadwick Boseman), is there and is not happy.
“That’s why I’m here,” says Tony Stark over the reveal of an underwater structure of some sort. “We need to be put in check.”
“Whatever form that takes I’m game,” Stark continues. Uhh, it’s a prison. Is this where Tony wants to put his fellow Avengers? Looks like the movie version of the Raft, SHIELD’s underwater prison from the comics.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” says Cap. “If I see a situation pointed south I can’t ignore it.” Is that why Tony is standing in the prison with a black eye? This black eye will come back in a few scenes and be a key tracker to the order of events in the movie. This particular scene may be from near the end.
Cut to Bucky fleeing on a motorcycle, Black Panther in pursuit, Captain America in pursuit of him, and then this:
Gotcha, Bucky. You have to assume Panther blames him for the previously seen destruction.
“I know we’re not perfect, but the safest hands are still our own,” says Cap, as Bucky tries to shoot Tony in the face. Maybe those hands aren’t exactly “safe.”
A few quick edits suggest that Bucky shoots down Tony’s best friend Rhodey, a.k.a. War Machine. Are we seeing a pattern here?
But this background of this shot seems like War Machine’s injury is the result of the massive airport battle we’ll see in a bit. “I was wrong about you,” Cap says to someone. “The whole world was wrong about you.” Is he talking to Tony?
Now the trailer really kicks in. We see Crossbones’ army at the IFID, the Institute for Infectious Disease.
Black Widow is on the ground. We believe this action scene is from the beginning of the film, which becomes the final straw for everyone in regards to large-scale superhero destruction.
“They’re coming for you,” says Tony to Widow from a balcony at Avengers headquarters, suggesting this is from earlier in the film. “I’m not the one the only that needs to watch their back,” she replies. But aren’t they on the same side?
“This doesn’t have to end in a fight, Tony,” says Cap. Tony replies with a knowing, sad look in his black eye and then slaps Cap in the face. More importantly though, what is in that yellow compartment behind them?
“You just started a war,” says Tony, shooting missiles from his shoulders.
A few quick action beats, then a battle between Panther and Bucky. It’s unknown whether it is before or after the motorcycle chase from earlier, but the takeaway here is the helicopter is firing at Panther. Who’s in there? And is this the same helicopter scene as in the other trailer, where Cap grabs and holds onto one?
Black Widow looks at destruction on an airfield. Again, this seems like fallout from the fight we’ll see at the end of the trailer.
Scarlet Witch controlling the Vision, which is heartbreaking when you realize they were married in the comics. Also, isn’t Vision virtually indestructible? Apparently not.
One of the trailer’s true money shots. Hawkeye shoots his arrow and on the tip? Ant-Man, who lands on Iron Man’s armor. That won’t be good for Tony. Also a nice nod to the iconic Ed Hannigan cover to Avengers #223.
A cutaway to show Crossbones beating on Cap a bit from the start of the film.
“Stay down. Final warning,” says Tony. A broken, battered Cap stands up and replies, “I could do this all day.” (A call back to Cap 1, as reader Michael M. reminded us.) It’s likely this is an extension of the three-way fight from the first trailer that included Bucky.
Captain America combo!
Then, finally, Team Cap battles Team Iron Man before the title card. These shots have a few more finished effects than the same shots in the last trailer, plus we get that epic, new final reveal of all 10 heroes in the same frame. This would be a great end to the trailer except...
“All right, I’ve run out of patience,” says Tony. “Underoos!” In comes Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, in his new suit. “Hey, everyone,” he says, not just to the Avengers, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the world.
The questions here are, if Spider-Man is at the battle at the airport from the previous shot, is he fighting? Is this before the big showdown? Plus where did he come from? Where was he hiding?
We’ve been writing about Kubo and the Two Strings since we first realized it existed. Since then, with each subsequent look, the stop-motion animated film from the people behind Coraline and Paranorman looks more and more amazing. The latest trailer is no exception.
In fact, this trailer makes Kubo look like a fantasy adventure on the scale of Lord of the Rings, just with stop-motion animation and based on an original story:
This movie has it all: an incredible cast, beautiful visuals, fighting origami, samurais, dragons, magic guitars, impressive archery, humor, action—we could go on and on. Instead, we’re going to try to patiently wait for Kubo’s release on August 19.
Even though there were early rumors that Warner Bros. might back a Brinks truck up to Christian Bale’s home in order to have him appear as Batman in the new DC movie universe, Zack Snyder says that was that never going to happen—but that doesn’t mean Bale still couldn’t have appeared in BvS.
Speaking with the magazine Film Ink, Snyder was emphatic that this universe and the Dark Knight trilogy do not occupy the same universe, saying, “This is a total and opposite reality from the Chris Nolan movies. It’s another universe, so we couldn’t hire Christian Bale [as Batman] if we wanted to, because he doesn’t exist in our world.”
However, Snyder considered having Bale show up as another character, just as a weird nod to the separateness of their worlds. He continued:
Maybe we could hire him to play another part. We did talk about that briefly. I just wanted to hire Christian to play another part to make that obvious. Christian could play, like, Alfred with age makeup. No! Of course not. But you know what I mean. Even people at the studio would say, ‘Who are you getting from the other movies?’ And I was like, ‘Hey, come on guys, let’s all understand, it’s a different world.’ In the Batman universe that Chris Nolan created, Superman would have a hard time existing. That that’s why we did a reboot on the universe, so we could allow these characters to exist together. We needed to do that to have Batman exist in this world.”
So, on the one side was the studio who wanted to create a linked universe with the Dark Knight and, on the other was Snyder saying it was a reboot. You know what? Snyder was completely correct in his assessment. Given the way The Dark Knight Rises ended, it would have been really strange to try to connect that to Man of Steel or Batman v Superman. Or even weirder to try to make Man of Steel take place simultaneously with one of the Nolan Batman movies.
Of course, having Christian Bale show up as a different character in Batman v Superman would have just been trolling. Can you imagine the crazy theories people would have generated just from his appearance on the set? Be so grateful this didn’t happen.
Fourteen-year-old Kaylie Kilpatrick and James Hanna dress like Donald Trump during a campaign rally in South Carolina (Jim Watson//AFP/Getty Images)
There’s something new happening in this presidential election cycle. Yes, Donald Trump has upended political convention in just about every way imaginable. But as a celebrity-cum-politician he’s allowed a new kind of 21st century populist revelry to take root: Political cosplay.
Sure, there are some precedents for people dressing up as their favorite political candidate in the past. But compared with what we’re seeing in 2016, there’s no contest. When people wore Richard Nixon masks back in the 1970s they weren’t celebrating the man so much as ridiculing the establishment and the crookedness of it all.
Two demonstrators wearing a President Nixon mask and a Henry Kissinger mask give a Nazi salute in front of the Supreme Court building on July 24, 1974 (AP Photo/John Duricka)
The idea of political candidate dress-up as celebration rather than farce can only happen when your system is so upside down that candidates are beyond parody. Such is the case with Trump—obviously. He’s made of Teflon. He’s a cartoon character, and his younger supporters are more than happy to step into the man’s coif.
This is the natural future of American politics, as Trump has exposed the ridiculousness of it all. Politics has always been a circus. But Americans have fully embraced the opportunity to dress up as the clowns, with confidence that they’re not the punchline—the idea that the system isn’t rigged is the joke.
Trump supporters at a rally in Las Vegas (AP Photo/John Locher)
Even when protestors dress up as Trump you can’t tell that they’re protesting. They look exactly like the supporters. I honestly can’t tell if this guy at a Trump rally in New Hampshire back in February is a supporter or a protester:
Trump cosplay in Manchester, New Hampshire (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Or take a look at the guy below. Getty Images identifies him as a protester. But can you really tell the difference?
Trump protester (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Of course, this Trump cosplayer in Virginia looks like a solid supporter:
Trump supporter at a rally in Radford Virginia on Februrary 29th (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
And there’s this guy at a Trump rally in Mobile, Alabama, who’s obviously a supporter, even if his wig is a bit too crimson:
Trump supporter dressed in a red wig (Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)
And here’s a supporter from a rally in Lowell, Massachusetts:
Trump supporter in Massachusetts (Photo by Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images)
And another at a rally in South Carolina:
Young Trump supporter trying to speak with the man himself (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Many of the people dressing up as Trump look like teens, well-versed in cosplay culture. Then there’s the children. Oh Lord, think of the children. They, of course, have no say in the matter. But their parents are dressing them up as Lil’ Trumps across the nation.
The real Donald Trump gestures to a 5-year-old dressed up as him at a rally in Georgia (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
And some of them sure are cute, politics aside. But not all of them are happy about it.
Donald Trump holds a Lil Trump he “pulled from the crowd” in New Orleans (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Whatever impact Trump has on the future of politics, it would seem that there’s something even more important than being a political outsider: Being a character on par with a comic book villain so that cosplayers can dress up to support you.
Trump masks of the more Nixonian variety being produced in Mexico (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)
During a Trump administration every day is Comic-Con, and it’s the biggest, best Comic-Con in history.
An arched section of the Perito Moreno Glacier collapsed in front of thousands of awe struck spectators in Argentina earlier today.
Some 3,000 tourists had gathered at the site in anticipation of the collapse. The Perito Moreno Glacier, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is located in the Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina. It’s also one of the largest tourist attractions in the country. The massive ice formation is over 19 miles (30 km) in length, but the ice arch was a popular destination for sightseers who marveled at the 820-foot-wide (250 meters) structure. But alas, it is no more.
Dramatic footage shows the ice bridge collapsing from a height of 230 feet (70 meters) into the river below, causing waves to swell and crash into the glacier.
Experts say the collapse has nothing to do with climate change, and that it’s a natural consequence of physics. According to Archimedes’s principle, the buoyant force exerted on a body immersed in fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. When that force causes the ice to detach from the shore, water starts to filter through, causing an irreversible breakdown.
If you’re attending this year’s SXSW, you can get tattooed by Harley Quinn.... or at least her marketing team. There’s some kind of “Harley’s Tattoo Parlor” event being set up to promote the Suicide Squad movie; we don’t know if it’s offering real tattoos or temporary ones, but I do know that it’s given each of the film’s cast members their own tattoo design—and some of them are actually pretty awesome.
Not all of them, mind you, but a lot! So here they are, ranked from the best to worst.
1) Katana
Holy crap, this is just a great tattoo. I’d get this tattoo. Katana’s mask looks less silly and more badass as an art design than it does on her actual face, and the Japanese elements are both tasteful and cool. The red on the swords is an extra-nice touch.
2) Diablo
Tattoos of skulls are always a safe bet, style-wise, which is why a lot of these Suicide Squad tats will feature them. The best is absolutely Diablo’s design, which incorporates horns, flames, and weapons. Nothing wrong with any of that. Also, a tattoo of a skull with a scythe tattooed on its forehead? That’s some next level thinking right there.
3) Harley Quinn
Simple and classy, much unlike Harley Quinn herself. Admittedly, it’s an esoteric combination of items—a heart, a gun, a bat—that doesn’t make much sense together unless you’re already aware of her character and proclivities from the film, which is problematic. But artistically, it’s still very well designed, and “ROTTEN” is a fantastically descriptive word to permanently etch on your body.
4) Killer Croc
Killer Croc’s look in the movie is pretty mediocre—he looks like a guy with alien make-up on, and not the terrifying monster Batman faces off with—so it’s nice he’s gotten such a classy, kickass tattoo. This also looks like something that would be offered in a real tattoo parlor already, and the “KILLER” banner is perfectly paired with the croc head. This tattoo would look awesome on anybody—except for Killer Croc, ironically. Crocodile men cannot get crocodile tattoos without looking like crocodile assholes.
5) Joker
This tattoo also legitimately looks like it could be—and possibly is—already offered in tattoo parlors around the country, even more than Croc’s. The skull-and-jester theme is ubiquitous in the tattoo world, mainly because of the Insane Clown Posse, which knocks this down a few pegs. If you can get over its inherent Juggalo-ness, the “Joker-ness”, if you will, is tastefully limited to a peek of a card, a larger-than-normal mouth on the skull, and a few HAs. It’s more subtle than I expected for the Joker, and I appreciate it.
6) Captain Boomerang
On the other hand, there is nothing subtle about this tattoo that is subtle, and I love it. I love that it’s of a fist holding a boomerang, I love that it has a second boomerang on the bottom, and I love that it literally says “BOOMERANG” up top, just in case you didn’t get it. While Killer Croc with a croc tattoo would be like a band wearing its own t-shirt to the concert, if Captain Boomerang had this tattoo it would be amazing, because it would simply proclaim his incredible love of boomerangs without the slightest concern of what anybody else thought. Also, it’s aesthetically pleasing, design-wise, and that ain’t bad.
7) Slipknot
While Slipknot’s tattoo is also pleasingly symmetrical, it’s really just a pile of weapons. It’s kinda cool, but it doesn’t have any real personality to it. All it says is “I am a guy who likes committing violence.” You know who also likes committing violence? Everybody else on the Suicide Squad, that’s who.
8) Enchantress
It’s a damn shame this tattoo has “ENCHANTRESS” splayed across the botoom, because without it—or another, more enigmatic word or phrase there, like “MAGIC IS REAL”—it would be good. The occult design is cool, although overall it still seems a bit too large and too busy. But getting the name of a character on you is a huge no-no. Imagine anyone’s awesome Batman tattoo, and now think of how terrible it would instantly be if the words “BATMAN” were right below it. See what I mean?
9) Deadshot
Deadshot’s mask is boring. As hell. It’s also not a particularly iconic image, which means folks unfamiliar with the comics character may think you’re an aficionado of gun-toting hockey goalies. Tragically, if the mask had been replaced with a large skull but kept everything else, including the bullseye, the bullet holes and especially Deadshot’s eye-targeting thingie, it would probably be in the top three.
10) Rick Flag
The only thing worse than getting your own name tattooed on you? Getting your job title. If you’re a librarian you don’t get a tattoo that explicitly says “librarian,” if you’re a CEO you don’t get “CEO,” and whether you’re a private first-class or a four-star general, you don’t get your rank tattooed on yourself either. That’s something only terrible people with crippling self-doubt issues who need their importance permanently embellished on their skin to reassure themselves and “prove” to everyone else they’re a big deal would do. Because you know why? If you ever get a different job (or rank) you look like an idiot. This thing might as well read “ASSHOLE” because that’s just as accurate.
