Elon Musk, the forbidden Predator game, collective hysteria, a video game in 12 hours, a space game by mail in the 90s, a ship cemetery and several other things. A weekend compilation to procrastinate without guilt. Enjoy!
The new image that amazes astronomers is not from the James Webb: NASA has published a new image of one of the strangest and rarest objects in the observable universe. A vision so sharp that it looks like a capture from the James Webb Space Telescope, although it is not. The object is called Zeta Ophiuchi, one of the few known 'runaway stars', an extremely rare type of celestial body whose origin we still do not know with total certainty. Scientists estimate that there are only about 10,000 stars of this kind in the Milky Way, an insignificant number.
… but let's talk about Elon Musk: There is nothing that journalists like more than a fanfare. For more than a decade, the press has lived in a constant honeymoon with a tycoon who is basically a headline-making machine. In 2018, Musk said that in ten years he would 'probably' have managed to establish a permanent base on the surface of the planet Mars. It would be the precursor to a city of one million inhabitants planned for 2050. A million inhabitants on Mars! Who can resist such a headline?
Predator, the 1987 video game banned for minors in Germany: The inclusion of the video game on this list implies that the game cannot be sold to minors in Germany due to its content, nor can it be played on any public computer or where there may be minors watching. A difficult decision to explain, which was probably because the game depicts some scenes from the movie, such as the members of the command hanging naked in the jungle, but given the graphics of the time, it seems quite disproportionate in every way.
'I want your Instagram username': first there were threatening messages, then the police burst into his house and, finally, he ended up dead: The Palo Alto Police Department, in the United States, received a 911 call. The caller told the operator that he had killed his girlfriend and then barricaded himself in his house, in a quiet, affluent neighborhood. Before hanging up, he threatened to shoot any officer who came too close to the house. The police quickly traced the number 415 and discovered that it belonged to Chris Eberle, a Netflix executive.
K2, a garbage dump at 8,000 meters of altitude: "We are a group of idiots who climb mountains to satisfy their ego." "The debate is increasingly recurrent and sows more controversy. Mountaineering continues its path towards becoming a mass sport, with the consequences that this implies and we see with increasing frequency: mountains crowded with people, accidents caused by the recklessness or ignorance of those who launch themselves towards the highest without the necessary knowledge... and nature as the great victim."
Lose all hope: I am surprised by the speed with which the climate monster is approaching us. Global warming simulations are being revised upward, because the models repeatedly became obsolete for being overly optimistic. Feedback mechanisms have been underestimated (permafrost melting, reduction of the surface, and therefore the albedo of the polar ice caps, a higher proportion of water vapor in the atmosphere...). We have a big problem. And the worst of all is that this problem is insoluble.
How to create a video game in 12 hours and not die trying: I consider that the true value of the experiment is to document the process so that people interested in this noble art receive a little nudge that definitively convinces them to get to work. Mythifying certain artistic practices is more the result of previous ignorance than of the actual difficulty involved in mastering them, and gamedev is no exception. May this dramatic arc serve to show that the steps to follow are much more mundane than one would expect and that, beyond obstacles and impediments, anyone can enter this world as exciting as it is frustrating.
VGA Planets – the cooperative space game by mail: In the mid-90s I ran into an acquaintance from high school, he was carrying a floppy disk, so I asked him what he had on it and he explained that he had a turn from a space game he was playing with some friends, in which each of the friends had a space civilization and they all had to do their turn at home and take it to another friend's house who would combine them and resolve what had happened. As you can imagine, I asked him to pass me that game, which turned out to be the PBM (Play By Mail) VGA Planets.
The expedition to the depths of the largest 'ship cemetery': "Nobody knows what's there." "Skerki is a great ship cemetery, where sailors have been shipwrecked almost since they began to sail," explains Fitor a few days before embarking for the waters of Sicily. "In the eighties, Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, found some Roman shipwrecks of incalculable value in that area. They were at great depths, more than 500 meters. What happens in the Skerki bank is that it is an area of very dangerous currents, with shoals that almost level with the water."
How to create a video game in 12 hours and not die trying: I consider that the true value of the experiment is to document the process so that people interested in this noble art receive a little nudge that definitively convinces them to get to work. Mythifying certain artistic practices is more the result of previous ignorance than of the actual difficulty involved in mastering them, and gamedev is no exception. May this dramatic arc serve to show that the steps to follow are much more mundane than one would expect and that, beyond obstacles and impediments, anyone can enter this world as exciting as it is frustrating.
VGA Planets – the cooperative space game by mail: In the mid-90s I ran into an acquaintance from high school, he was carrying a floppy disk, so I asked him what he had on it and he explained that he had a turn from a space game he was playing with some friends, in which each of the friends had a space civilization and they all had to do their turn at home and take it to another friend's house who would combine them and resolve what had happened. As you can imagine, I asked him to pass me that game, which turned out to be the PBM (Play By Mail) VGA Planets.
The expedition to the depths of the largest 'ship cemetery': "Nobody knows what's there." "Skerki is a great ship cemetery, where sailors have been shipwrecked almost since they began to sail," explains Fitor a few days before embarking for the waters of Sicily. "In the eighties, Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, found some Roman shipwrecks of incalculable value in that area. They were at great depths, more than 500 meters. What happens in the Skerki bank is that it is an area of very dangerous currents, with shoals that almost level with the water."
The Russian space program after the ISS: ROSS orbital station and PTK-ROS crewed spacecraft: Borísov favors continuing with the ROSS project, which, as we saw last January, is now a station in a highly inclined orbit that will initially consist of two large modules of 20 tons each and, later, four main modules. In any case, we insist that, for the moment, there is no firm evidence that Russia will withdraw from the ISS before 2030. What is clear is that Roscosmos is betting on ROSS as the successor to the ISS, which in itself is a surprise given the complexity of the project.
Oni, the outcast spirits of Japan: In the Japanese archipelago, oni are one of the most recognizable mythical beings with their horns, their loincloths and their long iron clubs (kanabō). Due to their frequent evil nature, their name is usually translated as demon, but to differentiate them from the evil fire spirits called akuma (悪魔), it is more common to interpret them as ogres. Although this term dispenses with religious connotations, the oni (鬼) remains a being with unique characteristics that transcend those designated to the ogre.
A case of collective hysteria among adolescents shakes New York (2012): Doctors diagnosed her with Tourette syndrome on the eve of last Christmas. The situation worsened when it became known that 14 more students, 13 girls and one boy, all teenagers, all from the same school, LeRoy Junior-Senior High School, suffered the same symptoms. Young Brownell then decided to post everything that was happening to her on YouTube. The case was first picked up by local media and soon became national news.
Videos
Fishing boat sinks at the dock, the origin of DOOM, Predator: The Musical, Fever The Ghost, kitchen utensil salad, fire tornado in Los Angeles, the worst padlocks, band with cardboard instruments, Soda Stereo and Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give De Música Ligera (En Vivo), contactless manufacturing using acoustics, The Three Stooges and the Incredible Hulk, the most brutal knockouts of Mike Tyson, horses walking on water, Rick and Morty Season 6 Trailer, living monster mural, Carrie (Broadway musical 88), science fiction of the past, whales killing a great white shark for the first time on camera, and the short Conversations With a Whale.
Galleries
The world before AutoCAD, Pulitzer-winning photographs, pretty well thought-out ornaments — and I don't put ornaments anywhere — masochist illustrations from 1960, Lovecraftian cannibalism, the 'atomic house', MANY MORE COMICS THAN YOU CAN READ IN A LIFETIME, painting on a Swiss mountain, larval fish underwater, a cat that was once famous, the Animated Dumpster of the Week and the Visual Dump. Oh, and to finish, a page to keep procrastinating at length.
https://old.neoteo.com/spider-man-inspiro-la-monitorizacion-electronica-de-presos/And well... here we are. I pour myself a whiskey and go to bed. I hope you liked it!
