STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[Puros Y Vino]

On 3/19/2019 at 10:59 PM, MIKA27 said:

Terminator 6 Is Called Terminator: Dark Fate...Yes, Really

 

While I'm glad Cameron and Hamilton are back, this movie seems to reek of the "virtual signaling" that plagues our media these days. After all, why not get all political about a movies having strong female leads by ensuring that a series that had a STRONG FEMALE LEAD gets challenged. 

[MIKA27]

Latest trailer for John Wick 3: Parabellum is sheer guns-and-glory mayhem

 

[MIKA27]

The soldier who removed his own bladder stone, and other medical history marvels

While researching his 2017 book on the history of heart surgery, medical journalist Thomas Morris perused hundreds of journals from the 19th century. One day, a headline on the page opposite the one he was reading caught his eye: "sudden protrusion of the whole of the intestines into the scrotum." It was a bizarre case from the 1820s, involving a laborer run over by a brick-laden cart. The resulting hernia forced his intestines into his scrotum, and yet the laborer made a full recovery.

Once he got over his initial amused revulsion, Morris was struck by the sheer ingenuity displayed by doctors in treating the man's condition. And he found plenty of other similar bizarre cases as he continued his research, with people surviving truly horrifying injuries—a testament to the resiliency of the human body. "Doctors, even when they had less than a tenth of the knowledge we do today in terms of treating major trauma, could still come up with innovative and ingenious solutions to acute problems," he said.

Many of the most interesting medical cases Morris uncovered are featured in his hugely entertaining compendium of medical oddities, The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth, and Other Curiosities From the History of Medicine. Regular readers of his blog (tagline: "making you grateful for modern medicine") will revel in stories about a sword-swallowing sailor, a soldier who removed his own bladder stone, a man with combustible belches, a woman who peed through her nose, and a boy who inhaled a bird's larynx and started honking like a goose. All are delivered in elegant prose, punctuated with the author's distinctive dry wit. Morris has collected 500 or so of these frequently jaw-dropping cases thus far, and only included 70 or so in the book. So a sequel (or two) isn't out of the question.

The titular case concerns numerous 19th century instances of people experiencing an increasingly painful toothache, followed by a sudden crack, akin to a pistol shot, as the tooth exploded, conferring instant relief. The burst was sufficient to nearly knock over one young woman, partially deafening her for several weeks after.

Why did the teeth explode? Several theories were proposed, such as tooth decay causing a build-up of gas that led to a fracturing of the tooth, perhaps from the chemicals used to make early fillings. But there's no record of any of the patients experiencing exploding teeth having had fillings. The cause remains a mystery to this day, and no case has been reported in the medical journals since the 1920s, according to Morris.

One of the more memorable cases Morris describes concerns a 25-year-old man in San Francisco, who was critically injured in 1858 when an old shotgun exploded in his grasp, driving a large slug of iron into his chest. A celebrated surgeon of that era, Elias Samuel Cooper, didn't have access to modern technologies like x-ray imaging to help him locate the metal, which had lodged just under the man's heart.

So he opened up the ribcage and just started rummaging around. Initially he did this without anesthesia, although when it came time to reach into the chest cavity and remove the slug, Cooper mercifully provided some (likely ether). "The idea that a surgeon in 1858 would put their hand underneath a patient's heart—I'd never come across anything like that in many years of researching heart surgery," said Morris.

An entire section is devoted to treatment of various objects stuck into people's orifices—like the 16th century monk who inserted a perfume bottle up his rectum, presumably to "relieve the cholic," or so the monk claimed. "There is an amazing constant propensity of the ability of humans, particularly young men, to do really stupid things involving sticking foreign objects into their orifices," said Morris. "There are entire treatises on foreign bodies from the 19th century and earlier, listing hundreds if not thousands of cases." Modern emergency rooms see this sort of thing on a regular basis, so clearly human nature hasn't changed much in the ensuing centuries.

Over the course of several decades in the 19th century, surgeons became increasingly daring in terms of what they thought they could do for their patients, until several high-profile disasters prompted a spate of ethical soul-searching to balance innovation with the needs of patients. Among the most noteworthy: a Chinese man suffering from a seriously engorged scrotum who opted for surgery even though the condition didn't seem to be life threatening. He spent hours in agony on the table, with no anesthesia (and a roomful of spectators), and eventually died from shock and blood loss.

"That operation prompted an exchange of letters in the professional journals afterwards," said Morris. "There were some surgeons who were absolutely scathing and felt it was a terrible dereliction of duty to have submitted this man to the operation."

While there is plenty of humor and witty asides in the book, Morris is adamant that it was never his intention to simply mock the doctors practicing in these earlier eras. "I think it's all too easy to laugh at the idea that they used to use leeches or all these poisonous [things like] belladonna and deadly nightshade," he said. "Whatever a doctor did in 1780 was part of a system of thought they'd been taught by their teachers and passed on to their students. You're talking about people who didn't have a tenth of our understanding of microbiology or disease mechanisms. I think it's wrong to judge historically without taking into account that context."

 

[MIKA27]

‘Deadwood: The Movie’ Official Teaser Trailer

 

[MIKA27]

MAGNUS WALKER 1972 PORSCHE 911 STR II COUPE

Magnus Walker lives the dream — coming to LA from England with nothing, building a fashion empire, and revolutionizing what it means to be a diehard Porsche enthusiast. Never afraid to add his own flair to a vintage Porsche, Walker's personal style is reflected in his cars, none more than his 1972 Porsche 911 STR II. Probably his most famous build, this 911 has been featured on shows and magazine covers, and is Walker's "best build to date" — a quote from the man himself. An air-cooled 3.2-liter flat-six makes 275 horsepower mated to a 915 transmission, just as Porsche intended. An updated suspension along with a new black interior give it road handling ability well beyond what a stock 911 of this vintage would be capable of while retaining the non-assisted dynamics these cars are famous for. Offered with no reserve, this is a one-time chance to own one of the most unique outlaw Porsche's on the market.

 

[MIKA27]

JAMES BOND BOOK COVER PRINTS

Originally created as book covers, these archival-quality art prints add a fresh, colorful layer to the iconic Ian Fleming's James Bond legacy. Each limited-edition print features a different Bond girl from the respective title, and are printed on thick, 100% cotton rag paper that's signed and numbered by the artist Michael Gillette. The hand-torn border adds a distinct look to each, and they can be float mounted or matted. Each is officially licensed by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. We've chosen to offer our favorite Bond titles, including Casino Royale (the first book in the series), Dr. No (the first Bond film), Goldfinger, Quantum of Solace, For Your Eyes Only, and Moonraker. Available in both large and small formats. Other than Gillette himself, Uncrate is the only authorized retailer of these James Bond prints. $95

[MIKA27]

Single Malt Whiskey: Sherry’s Unexpected Savior

The demand for whiskies aged in used sherry barrels is keeping Spanish winemakers in business.

Sherry is dying a slow death in front of our eyes.

It’s now hard to believe that it was once a staple in bars and cocktail recipes, but in fact the Sherry Cobbler was truly a sensation in the 1800s. “The great feature of civilization is—a sherry cobbler,” stated an article in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from January 1845. The article went on to lament the fact that no one knows who created the drink. “Yes, he who first taught rude man to lay sparkling crystals of ice beneath the delicious Sherry, and to flavor the liquid with sharp slices of lemon, and then to imbibe it, not by coarse Thracian draughts, but gently, lightly, and playfully through rustic straw, is totally unknown.”

But sales of the fortified wine have recently dropped in the U.S., according to the IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, by a terrifying 40-percent from 2005 to 2018. And worse, the category is forecasted to continue to shrink over the next three years.

However, in a bizarre twist of fate, sherry producers, called bodegas, are still busy, since they’ve found another lucrative client for their liquor: whiskey makers.

No matter where you make whiskey, it usually has to be aged in a barrel. And traditionally a number of Scotch brands would buy used barrels from sherry makers and fill them with new whisky. The wood would give the liquor a delicious raisin note and an enjoyable dryness.

The other big supplier of barrels are American whiskey makers. Bourbon and rye can only be aged in a brand-new barrel. Once they’re used by distillers and emptied, they’re sent around the world—from Mexico to the Caribbean to Ireland to Scotland.

Thanks to the whiskey boom over the last two decades and the meteoric rise of single malt Scotch, the demand for sherry barrels has exploded. It’s now common for a brand to buy barrels from a Spanish cooperage and pay a bodega to fill them with sherry and warehouse them for several years. The barrels are then emptied—the bodega keeps the sherry—and are shipped to Scotland where they’re filled again with Scotch.

But the most sought-after sherry barrels are the ones that have been used for decades—some are even a 100 years old. These veterans have been part of a solera system, where sherry is transferred from one barrel to the other, blending new and old wine. Each barrel is never completely emptied before it’s refilled.

Another thing that is contributing to the popularity of sherry casks is that in an attempt to satisfy the demand for new products and to innovate, a number of whiskey brands now age their spirits in a variety of barrels. So, one whiskey may spend time in two or, even, three different kinds of casks. And it’s not just Scotch distillers who are doing this but also American whiskey makers who are increasingly maturing their single malts in a range of casks.

One popular combination is using both a new American oak barrel and a sherry cask. The Seattle-based Westland has been doing this since 2014 for its Sherry Wood American Single Malt Whiskey, which has won numerous awards. The distillery uses sherry barrels since “it’s part of the tradition of single malt,” says Westland Distillery's master distiller Matt Hofmann. “From day one, I wanted to do it.”

Hofmann says getting sherry barrels wasn’t that easy at first before they finally found a broker who could get them a set of truly vintage casks that are nearly a century old. “And they look like it,” he says, and “they’re terrifying to move around.”

But he’s quick to admit that the use of former sherry casks is “unsustainable,” since traditionally sherry makers would only retire one after years and years of service. The barrels are now worth so much, that wineries are closing and selling their solera systems to the highest bidder.

Westland Distillery is working with a number of vineyards to help them keep making high-quality wine. “It’s great that our industry can help sustain and even restore the sherry wine business but what’s important to consider is how that is done,” he says. “If our industry’s sole intention is to simply replicate flavor profiles of the past with no regard for the quality of the wine currently being made, we’re missing the real opportunity to play a part in advancing Andalucia’s sherry tradition through varietal typicity and terroir-driven approaches. The business of sherry-matured whiskies supports bodegas and their bottom lines, but if in the end all they’re left with is low-grade sherry—or worse yet, vinegar—we’re missing the point.”

It only seems fair that whiskey is helping to keep alive the sherry industry, since it played a significant role is its downfall. Let me explain.

Back in the late 1800s, a tiny insect, called phylloxera, destroyed vineyards across Europe. The sherry producers were, of course, affected and drinkers were forced to explore their other alcohol options.

Whiskey makers in Scotland, Ireland and America seized the moment and introduced their spirits around the world. Historically, whiskey wasn’t as popular as Cognac, rum, gin, port or sherry. But even after a phylloxera-immune root stock was found in Texas and vineyards across Europe were replanted, whiskey had taken hold and established itself as a bestseller.

As whiskey’s fortunes climbed ever higher, sherry had a harder time finding a place in the modern world.

But drinking trends come and go—who could have predicted the rebirth of classic punch?—and it’s certainly more than possible that sherry will stage an epic comeback. In the meantime, whiskey’s success will certainly keep the bodegas busy.

[MIKA27]

How Filmmakers Created Fake Newsreels In The 1920s

Illustration in a 1923 magazine showing how newsreel footage of an earthquake in Japan was faked 

A horrifying magnitude 7.9 earthquake hit Japan on September 1, 1923, killing over 140,000 people. And while news of the devastation reached newspapers around the world by the next day, there was no way to get film footage from Japan to the United States that quickly.

But that didn’t stop filmmakers from making fake films to show in theatres around the U.S. — like a fake newsreel of the earthquake in Japan that was rushed to theatres in a matter of days.

Here in the early 21st century, Americans are obsessed with fake videos, as our politics becomes more unhinged and the technology to create so-called deepfakes becomes more common.

But the distinction between “real” and “fake” was just as loose in the first couple of decades of American cinema, believe it or not. People were sometimes watching movies of recreated news.

Producers of newsreels from the 1900s until well into the 1920s didn’t feel like they had to document a real event for that scene to count as news. Recreations were just fine, even if you didn’t tell the audience that what they were seeing was fake.

The December 1923 issue of Science and Invention magazine included an illustrated spread of filmmakers from Bray Studios, founded circa 1914, and explained how they cut up real photos from the disaster in Japan and constructed a miniature scene that could be shown in theatres.

Quote

Broadway wants it movie news quick, so the Bray studios performed the Japanese earthquake — in miniature — and gave Broadway its thrill ten days before the real pictures reached the American shores. A still picture of sections in the devastated region was taken and the buildings and landscape of the foreground reproduced in miniature. The whole was placed on springs as shown so the quaking effect could be obtained.

How did they get still photos but no film across the Pacific Ocean so quickly? News organisations were able to send pictures around the world thanks to an early fax-like technology. Science and Invention magazine even wrote about it in 1926. So it was simply a matter of getting a photo of the news wire and creating an elaborate scene of devastation.

The magazine explained how the filmmakers would create buildings “mounted on cardboard and cut out,” placing the small fake home on springs so that it would wobble as they moved the table with fans to simulate wind. They even used a mixture of sulphur and saltpeter, sprinkling it on the miniaturized display while they filmed in order to achieve the look of fire.

The magazine claimed that the scene was depicted as “how it probably happened,” rather than as being authentic, but we don’t know for sure. As far as I can tell, there are no surviving prints of this newsreel.

By the 1930s, audiences largely expected their newsreels to be filled with real footage, even if that wasn’t always the case. Today, many are worried that deepfakes will distort our vision of reality and create an environment for fascism to thrive.

But those people should probably open their eyes and look where we are and how we got here. There weren’t any deepfake videos that swung the presidential election in 2016. And we’re still seeing fascism taking hold around the world here in 2019.

Deepfakes or not, sometimes the most important element of any information war is a sceptical mind. But given the idiotic rhetoric, we’re already seeing in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, I’m not getting my hopes up.

[MIKA27]

Gigantic T. Rex Skeleton Found In Canada Is Officially World's Biggest

Updated measurements of a large fossil found in Saskatchewan nearly 30 years ago confirm it as the world’s largest known Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Remarkably, the new work suggests T. rex and other dinosaurs grew to a greater size than is typically appreciated.

New research published last week in The Anatomical Record describes “Scotty,” a T. rex skeleton otherwise known as specimen RSM P2523.8. Scotty is now officially the largest and most aged T. rex ever discovered, and the most gigantic of any of the known two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs known as theropods.

At an estimated 8,870kg, it’s also the biggest dinosaur ever discovered in Canada. The new study was led by paleontologist Scott Persons from the University of Alberta.

Scotty’s skeleton was discovered near Eastend, Saskatchewan in 1991, but work to remove it from the ground didn’t fully start until 1994. It took paleontologists nearly a decade to excavate the fossil because it was encased in compact, cement-like sandstone. The extra effort to excavate the bones, plus the sheer size of the specimen, resulted in further delays.

That said, the paleontologists were able to recover around 65 per cent of the T. rex specimen, which terrorised Cretaceous Canada some 66 million years ago.

Early attempts to characterise the skeleton between 2008 and 2014 were marred by inaccuracies owing to the fact that the fossil hadn’t been fully prepared for analysis. Consequently, and as Persons pointed out in the new study, Scotty “has never been formally described and its skeletal proportions scientifically quantified.” The new study is now the first to offer detailed and accurate measurements of the skeleton, including a comparative analysis with other known T. rex fossils.

Measurements of Scotty’s legs, hips, and shoulder point to a T. rex of enormous size. Persons and his colleagues relied on an equation developed by other researchers to infer its body mass, using the circumference of the femur, or thigh bone, to glean the amount of weight the legs could reasonably support. In this case, Scotty’s femur suggested a weight of 8,870kg, which is nearly 20 tons. At 13 meters in length, Scotty may not have been the tallest or longest T. rex that ever lived—but it was certainly big in terms of mass.

Analysis of the growth patterns in Scotty’s bones suggests the dinosaur died in its early 30s, making it the most elderly T. rex skeleton ever discovered. Extensive injuries were detected throughout the body, pointing to a particularly brutal life. Scotty had broken ribs, an infected jaw, and bite marks on its tail, the latter of which appeared to be inflicted by a rival T. rex, the new study suggests.

Persons and his colleagues compared Scotty’s skeleton to 11 other well-preserved T. rex skeletons, including Sue—a specimen otherwise known as FMNH PR 2081. Sue’s bones were found in 1990, and it was once considered the biggest T. rex skeleton, a title that now belongs to Scotty. Sue weighed in at 18,651 pounds (8,460 kg), which is around 5 per cent lighter than Scotty.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for the description of this awesome T. rex fossil, as have many paleontologists,” Steven Brusatte, a University of Edinburgh paleontologist not involved with the study, told Gizmodo. “It is one of the largest and oldest T. rexes out there, and it gives us a glimpse at just how big T. rex got during those last years of its life.”

Brusatte said the new study provides good evidence that a 13-meter-long, 7-to-8 ton body plan was “as big as the King got—but that’s pretty big,” adding that T. rex is still the “biggest pure meat-eating animal that has ever lived on land as far as we currently know.”

Indeed, other large theropod species, such as Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, Giganotosaurus carolinii, and Tyrannotitan chubutensis, may have been larger than T. rex, but more fossil evidence is needed for paleontologists to be sure. For now, T. rex remains king.

As an interesting aside, paleontologists have noticed substantial size variations among the T. rex fossils. Some scientists have proposed a classification scheme based on two forms: “gracile” T. rexes with long and slender skeletons and “robust” T. rexes featuring stockier builds and greater bulk. Other paleontologists say these size discrepancies can be explained by individual variation or age. Another possibility is sexual dimorphism, in which females are larger than males. The reason for the hypothesized larger female T. rexes could have something to do with the increased physical demands of having to lay and protect eggs.

A fascinating conclusion reached in the new study is that the sizes of T. rex and other dinosaurs are being understated by paleontologists. The reason, according to the authors, is that very few dinosaurs managed to survive into full maturity. Consequently, there are more fossils of younger, smaller dinosaurs than there are of bigger, older dinosaurs, resulting in a kind of selection bias. Looking at Scotty’s skeleton, with its wide-ranging display of injuries, life as a dinosaur was clearly tough—even when you’re a T. rex.

John Hutchinson, professor of evolutionary biomechanics at the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College and an expert on T. rex physiology, was a bit blasé about the new study.

“If you read between the lines in past studies and this new one, the Scotty specimen is not appreciably larger than other known specimens—at best, maybe 5 per cent larger, and that is with a wide margin of error,” Hutchinson told Gizmodo.

Which is fair; the margin of error for the weight estimates presented in the study are at a whopping plus-minus 25 per cent. What’s more, “some bones are smaller than known skeletons, while others are larger,” said Hutchinson, so “we do not learn something truly major, unambiguous, and new about the size of T. rex from this specimen.”

Paleontologist Thomas Carr from Carthage college, also not affiliated with the new study, said the absolute difference in size between Scotty, Sue, and others may not be great, but the Scotty specimen raises the ceiling for the maximum size of T. rex, which is now higher than previously thought.

“That changes our picture of what is within the range of possibility for these large animals and expands our understanding of the biology of large theropods at that extreme end of the size range,” Carr told Gizmodo. “Without Scotty, our estimate of the ceiling of the maximum size would be inaccurate—Scotty sharpens that picture.”

[MIKA27]

A Gollum Prequel Might Be The Most Fascinating Yet Egregious Lord Of The Rings Video Game

Lord of the Rings’ relationship with video gaming is a weird one. Whether it’s in the direct realms connected to the movies or in the far-flung adaptations straight from the source, balancing what makes a game fun with the ethos of Tolkien’s material is often a treacherous tightrope—which is what makes the idea of a Gollum game so weirdly enthralling.

The Hollywood Reporter has word that Middle-Earth Enterprises — a division of Saul Zentz that covers licensing for video games and other paraphenalia directly for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit novels, and was recently caught up in a big lawsuit alongside Warner Bros. (which owns the licence for games based on the Peter Jackson film adaptations) with the Tolkien estate—has unveiled a new partnership with German game developer Daedalic Entertainment to make The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, for PC and consoles.

A prequel that charts the fallen Smeagol’s journey after acquiring—and becoming slowly enthralled by — the One Ring before he encounters either Bilbo or Frodo in Tolkien’s iconic novels, Gollum will, according to Daedalic, incorporate the duality of the character by having a player-choice system that allows them to make decisions that are either Smeagol-centric ones, or Gollum ones. Think Mass Effect’s paragon and renegade system, but, like, you know, with voices inside your head.

It’s weird, and, as I said up top, kind of egregious as an idea for another prequel addition to the wild world of Tokien-based adaptations. But still, there could be something in the idea of getting to watch Smeagol, as your avatar, slowly but inevitably degrade as a character the longer the ring’s influence takes hold on him.

The power fantasy of video games is often about watching your character grow stronger and more capable, and the idea of seeing that in the inverse offers at least a potentially interesting thought experiment. Whether it’ll make for a good game remains to be seen, however. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is currently expected to release in 2021.

[MIKA27]

No Man’s Sky is coming to VR

It’s finally happening: more than two years after launch, sci-fi exploration game No Man’s Sky is coming to virtual reality. It’ll be available as part of a free update this summer on PlayStation VR and Steam VR. “I guess it’s not a huge surprise, but all of the team here is in love with everything sci-fi,” developer Hello Games explained in a blog post. “Virtual reality feels like a little science fiction become real, and has always seemed like a perfect fit for this futuristic game of ours.”

The new VR option won’t have a separate game mode; instead, you’ll be able to play the entire game as it currently exists in virtual reality. “By bringing full VR support, for free, to the millions of players already playing the game, No Man’s Sky will become perhaps the most owned VR title when released, which is weird to think about,” says Hello. “The team is working so hard to live up to the expectations that creates. We are excited for that moment when millions of players will suddenly update and be able to set foot on their home planets and explore the intricate bases they have built in virtual reality for the first time.”

The new VR support is part of the recently announced Beyond update for the game, which features three key components. The first will offer a “radical” new online multiplayer experience for the game, while the second is VR. The third pillar of the update has yet to be revealed.

Though it had a bit of a rocky launch, developer Hello Games has steadily improved No Man’s Sky since its 2016 debut, adding things like multiplayer support, base building, new underwater worlds, and alien archaeology. Meanwhile, the studio also recently announced its next game, a much smaller-scale experience called The Last Campfire.

 

[MIKA27]

FERRARI P80/C ONE-OFF SUPERCAR

Ferrari’s production vehicles are undoubtedly some of the best to ever have hit the pavement. But if they are still a little too commonplace for you and you’ve got deep enough pockets, the Italian brand will actually build you an even more magnificent bespoke one-off — like the P80/C supercar you see here.

Based on the 488 GT3, this entirely unique, one-of-a-kind, track-only monster was styled by Flavio Manzoni with intimate input taken from the exceedingly-lucky customer. Built around a 3.9-liter twin-turbo V8 (which gets 661 horsepower in the road-going production car), this ride has custom bits from tip to tail. That includes a longer “catamaran-style” geometry for better handling, improved aerodynamics, a beefy rear spoiler, a gargantuan rear diffuser, a minimalistic pair of headlights, and carbon fiber body panels. The inside has also been stripped down as much as possible — save some cushy carbon fiber and Alcantara bucket racing seats — making this a pure driving machine and little else. We’re not sure who the lucky customer is but we hope this car sees as much track time as it deserves.

 

[MIKA27]

This $30 Bourbon Was Just Named Best Whiskey in the World

There are so many great bottles of whiskey that we want to drink that we’d have an incredibly difficult time picking a solid winner. We’ll leave that to the more than 40 professionals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition that sampled more than 3,000 spirits last weekend during the 2019 competition. For only the second time in the two decades of competition, bourbon edged out all the Irish, Japanese and Scottish whiskys to take home the title of Best in Show Whiskey. It gets better. The winner wasn’t some $2,000+ grail bottle you’d have to skip a mortgage payment (or two) to pick up on the secondary market. The current best whiskey in the world according to the competition is Henry McKenna 10-year Single Barrel Bottled-In-Bond Bourbon, a bottle that is relatively available across the country and carries a price tag of between $30 and $40. It’s a great bottle that deserves a spot on any bar, so head out and pick up a few before prices skyrocket or it becomes impossible to find.

[MIKA27]

Can You Pick Out All the References in This Mega Twilight Zone Poster?

Think you know The Twilight Zone? Time to put that knowledge to the test with a little Where’s Waldo? flair.

Artist Jordan Monsell has created a poster containing references to all 156 episodes of the iconic series, which is being rebooted on CBS All Access starting April 1. It’s called Fifth Dimension and will first be available at WonderCon in Anaheim, CA this weekend. Here’s the full piece.

“I started by going back and watching every episode that I hadn’t seen,” Monsell said in a press release. “And there were a bunch! We had a few VHS tapes of classic episodes in the house when I was a kid, like ‘To Serve Man’ and ‘The After Hours,’ but I had no idea there were so many episodes!”

Monsell said that found most of the rest on Netflix, but had to order DVDs for season four, and was surprised at just how relevant the show remains to this day.

“Fifth Dimension” will be available at WonderCon this weekend (Table DL-31) as well as online at Monsell’s Etsy shop: Silhouettes (and Illustration) by Jordan. He will also be at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, CA for a signing on April 14th at 4:00 p.m. PST.

Give up on trying to figure out which episode is which? Well, Monsell also kindly provided this spoilery key.

[MIKA27]

Watch Dolph Lundgren Lead a Band of Soldiers Against an Army of Zombies

If the zombie apocalypse is upon you, there are few better people to help you survive it than Dolph Lundgren. And that’s exactly what he’ll do in the new movie Dead Trigger.

Opening in theaters and on demand May 3, Dead Trigger seems pretty straightforward: A virus has turned humanity into flesh-eating zombies, so an elite solider, played by Lundgren, leads a team of badasses to kill them all.

No your eyes don’t deceive you. There are some other familiar faces in there too. Autumn Reeser, Romeo Miller, and even Isaiah Washington appear in the film. So maybe it’s more than just the over-the-top midnight movie it looks to be...or maybe it’s just that. Hard to tell from that trailer, but we’re all in favor of seeing soldiers mow down zombies, especially when they’re taking orders from Ivan Drago and He-Man.

Directed by Mike Cuff and Scott Windhauser, and written by Heinz Treschnitzer, Dead Trigger is out May 3.

[MIKA27]

Forget Everything You Know About Sake

A number of innovative Japanese breweries are changing the way sake is made and you can taste the difference.

I’ve had a somewhat bumpy relationship with sake, starting with bad, cheap, warm glasses in dodgy, pseudo “Asian” restaurants in Scotland.

Things changed when I began to regularly visit Japan and discovered that sake wasn’t flabby and pungent, but light, clean, and delicately complex. This revelation was then ruined thanks to a late-night drinking competition. I lost. Badly. The forfeit was drinking a carafe of sake in one go. It wasn’t wise. I’m not proud. The resulting hangover meant I couldn’t face sake for almost two years. After a suitable period of penance, I began visiting breweries, trying to get my head around the process of creating the rice-based beverage.

It quickly became obvious to me that this was one of the world’s greatest beverages. It was fresh, lightly fruity, aromatic; it went with delicate Japanese food.

Then Japanese friends began to mutter about how a small group of producers were making examples that were heavier, and less linear. Sake with some weight and funk? Count me in.

All of which explains why I was recently standing in lightly-falling snow in Kyoto at 5 AM waiting for my fellow writer (and Japanese resident) Nick Coldicott to drive us one hour west to Hiroaki Oku’s Akishika kura. “He’ll change your mind about what sake is,” Nick had promised me.

The temple-clustered city soon fell away, the mountains steadily encroached. We’re driving towards Nose (no-seh), little more than a ribbon of houses in a high plateau ringed with hills.

We head into the rice fields. It’s bone-chillingly cold. February is the season for brewing, not growing. Oku-san looks around. “My family have farmed here since the Edo period [17th century] and started Akishika in 1886.” He has been master brewer (toji) for 15 years, in which time he has changed production and practice dramatically. There’s now a permanent, five-strong, staff, rather than the common practice of hiring temporary help for the brewing season. When the brewing is finished the team starts to work in the fields.

“We’re at 820 feet above sea level, which is ideal for growing rice as there is a 10-degree temperature difference between day and night,” he explains. “All of Akishika’s rice comes from here—either my own 50 acres, or from 20 other farmers. My aim is to be wholly self-sufficient.”

Unusually for Japan, it is also organically grown, a move that has cut yields by 70 percent, but as I’ll discover, this is a producer driven by flavor and quality with an overarching goal of discovering what is possible from this valley. It is a holistic view, which is rare in today’s sake industry.

This field is an important element in this story. Oku-San makes a single-field sake from this land, using the Omachi strain of rice. “Rice is like grapes for wine,” he says. “Some grapes are good for eating, some for wine. It’s the same with rice and sake. I use five varieties, but the main ones are Yamada Nishiki and Omachi. They make full-bodied sake.”

Back inside the kura, brewing is well underway. Steam wreathes a giant rice cooker. A bag of rice is pulled out, dangling like a giant dessert. Oku-san, bandana in place, stands watching as a carpet of rice slowly works its way along a conveyor belt. He seems to be examining every grain.

As the rice passes, he sprinkles a powder on it. This is the marvelous koji fungus [Aspergillus oryzae], which will convert the rice’s starch to fermentable sugars. At the end of the belt, the rice is bundled into bags. A succession of waiting brewers throw the bags over their shoulders and then rush to a point unknown. We follow the last of the men into a steam-filled, cedar-lined, room.

Here, the rice is being formed into a long pile, which is then covered with a blanket making it look like a sleeping person on a futon. The mound will be left alone to allow the koji to get to work. Flavor creation begins right here as the chosen rice variety, temperature, koji, and time all begin to work together.

We follow Oku-San to another room filled with small, open-top fermenters. Inside each is a  pillowy mass of white bubbles.

Unlike beer or whisky, where you add hot water to convert a grain’s starch to fermentable sugar before adding yeast to ferment it into alcohol, in sake these two processes happen simultaneously. The koji-inoculated rice is added to the fermenter with some water, and once it starts to break down and ferment, more rice and water are added in three increments.

To kick-start the process, most brewers add some lactic acid to the first batch of rice, yeast, and water. Oku-San however has revived the yamahai method of allowing natural lactic bacteria to do their own thing. It’s similar to using a sourdough starter in baking rather than fast-acting yeast. “It takes a lot longer,” he admits, “but making a moto [starter] gives a more structured and full-bodied sake, so it’s worth it.”

Any conversation with Oku-san always loops back to flavor, which informs the type of rice he chooses as well as the use of moto, the yeast strain (he uses five types), and the temperature and length of the fermentation. (For the record, he keeps the temperature cool to make the yeast struggle, which brings out fruitiness in the finished sake.)

Unusually, he also does all of his milling in-house and polishes the rice significantly less than is the norm. The trend has been to highly polish the rice in the belief that the more of the husk is removed, the purer the flavor and, the logic goes, the higher the quality.  

“Because we grow rice we know how much work goes into producing it. We want to have its flavor, which is why we don’t mill it as much. We choose to have healthy fields and varieties, which are good without high levels of polishing.” He then adds with a laugh, “why waste the rice?”

Anything that I’ve learned previously about sake is quickly being unlearned. Oku-san doesn’t add alcohol (making all of his sake junmai) or charcoal filter the finished product, but racks the sake off of its lees (yeast particles) before pressing it.

Oh, and all of his sakes are aged in bottles for at least three years. “At five-to-ten years, our sake starts to shine,” he says. Just how much, I’m about to discover for myself.

At this point, you’ll also have to forget what you know about sake. These aren’t the sleek, polished (in both senses) fine-boned, supermodel sakes that have become prevalent. This is a new world.

We kick off with a Kimoto Yamatanishiki from 2015 that starts with a woodland aroma reminiscent of fresh mushrooms and drying grasses, before chocolate (yes, chocolate, in sake) emerges alongside a warm, almost biscuity, quality. It’s umami rich before shifting to fresh green apple-like acidity.

The next glass is the single-field sake from 2014. There’s a similar power here, but greater depth as rich, dark fruits combine with cocoa powder, and hints of shiitake mushrooms. The palate flicks between artichoke, green plum, blackberry, and huge, chewy, umami. The acidity has moved forward, adding a layer to the complex mid-palate, adding complexity. “Omachi gives this complexity,” Oku-san explains. “Yamada Nishiki a straight ‘A’ student. Great, but without as much character!”

Already, it’s clear that Akishika’s sakes are like walking out of your front door and finding yourself in a different landscape where your compass doesn’t work.

The third comes from 2012, but here minerality and acidity are uppermost. It has a dusty aroma, like tomato leaves in a hothouse, and is explosive on the tongue, brimming with a mad energy. That acidity will help it last for years.

There’s a twinkle in his eye when he pours the final pair. The first is lightly pétillant, with bright fresh citrus and elderflower on the nose and, absurdly, a palate that’s filled with lush tropical fruits like mango and guava. I’m shaking my head in disbelief.

“Now try this,” he says.

There’s dark almost overripe fruits: plums, raisins, clay, rice and then a sudden handbrake turn into acidity. The umami is there, as is a sweeter touch, then the rich fruits return—there’s even a whisper of chocolate, as if everything comes full circle.

“The first one was the fermented moto. That’s why it’s sweet and sour, yet fruity,” he reveals. “The second is the moto, plus the first addition of rice.”

It’s sake making of the highest order. By ageing, pushing umami and acidity, different yeasts and rice varieties Oku-san is playing a potentially risky game with balance, yet for all their full-throttled qualities that vital equilibrium has been achieved.

Some of what he does can be seen to have parallels with minimal intervention winemaking and brewing, which sadly often means a laissez-faire approach. What he does is the opposite: Rejecting the norms of using pesticides, buying polished rice, adding lactic acid or alcohol and charcoal filtering. And thanks to bottle ageing, the nature of his intervention has been magnified—and has been transformed. It necessitates paying even closer attention and constantly using your senses, something most “natural” winemakers would do well to learn.

Sake is still enduring tough times in Japan. Sales have fallen and breweries have closed. His sakes offer hope that things might turn around. “Back in the day, it used to be said that sake was an accompaniment to food,” he says. “Nowadays, that idea is changing and food and sake are seen as both bringing out the best in each other. It’s reflected in the flavors.”

I think back to something he’d said when we were in the field. “We’re surrounded by mountains and forest, so the food here is based on meat: deer, wild boar and vegetables. Our sake’s flavors have been dictated by the food.”

His sakes now have a cult following in Japan among a new drinkers looking for maximum expressiveness, as well as in a few export markets: Australia, the Netherlands, Singapore, the U.K., and the U.S. (where they are available via Miron Wines and Spirits). When Noma ran its pop-up in Tokyo, Akishika was on the menu, and was the only sake that its founder René Redzepi and team served when they then decamped to Australia.

Akishika shows that sake needn’t be just one thing. Rich, rewarding, complex, and, even more importantly, deep, they taste of place.

 

 

[MIKA27]

Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Diver

Prestigious watch makers Bell & Ross have introduced a new matte black version of their dive watch with a full ceramic case. The 42mm case and bezel are all-black ceramic, interspersed with white markings, minute markings on the bezel and Super-LumiNova for the hour indices and hands. For a little color, the hour hands are painted with orange Super-LumiNova, as is the depth rating at 6 o´clock. This makes the watch highly legible and also striking to look at. The BR 03-92 diver watch has a 300 metres depth rating and comes with two straps, one in woven black rubber and one with ultra-resilient black synthetic fabric. Also featured is the stainless steel version.$3,990.00

 

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Game Of Thrones Gets A Haunting Teaser In The Graveyard Of Winterfell

The battle hasn’t happened yet, but it looks like the war is already lost. A terrifying new Game of Thrones teaser shows us the graveyard formerly known as Winterfell. And yes, we know, artistic licence — this isn’t necessarily a spoiler for things to come. But if this is the way things may go for our beloved heroes, let’s just say it’s going to be a Long Night.

[MIKA27]

Jim Jarmusch's Star-Packed Zombie Movie The Dead Don't Die Looks Like A Deadpan Delight

Maybe it’s wrong to get overly excited about a movie based solely on its trailer, but The Dead Don’t Die — the upcoming zombie film from indie auteur Jim Jarmusch, which stars Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Steve Buscemi, and an eclectic array of other actors — looks pretty goddamn amazing.

Jarmusch has been making movies since 1980, and though he’d often dipped a toe here or there into genre (Elvis’ ghost in 1989's Mystery Train, the edge-of-reality ramblings of 1995's Dead Man), he went full-on supernatural with 2013's dreamy vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive. So why not zombies next?

This first trailer suggests The Dead Don’t Die won’t innovate too much on the classic undead narrative, setting its story at the beginning of an outbreak as the residents of a small town (including its bespectacled police force) try to figure out WTF is going on.

But Jarmusch’s offbeat sense of humour, buoyed by that cast — stuffed full of Jarmusch regulars, including rock legend Iggy Pop as a zombie and Tilda Swinton as a funeral director with mad sword-slicing skills — makes it appear that The Dead Don’t Die could achieve Shaun of the Dead levels of greatness.

With Zombieland 2 coming later this year (without O.G. cast member Murray, who presumably didn’t want to overload his schedule with projects revolving around flesh-chomping ghouls), it’s a very good time to be a zombie-comedy fan.

The Dead Don’t Die does not of yet have an Australian release date.

[MIKA27]

Great White Sharks Appear Perfectly Healthy Despite Lead, Arsenic, And Mercury Coursing Through Their Veins

Great white sharks aren’t the unstoppable killing machines of Hollywood’s imagination, but studies have continuously shown that they’re definitely badasses of evolution. A new paper out this week adds to that resume, finding that great whites can easily withstand levels of heavy metals that would kill most other animals, all without any apparent health problems.

Marine biologists at the University of Miami and elsewhere studied blood samples from 43 great white sharks that were captured and released during a 2012 expedition to the coastal waters of South Africa. These samples were tested for the presence of 14 heavy metals like lead, as well as 12 trace elements such as arsenic and mercury. Along with the samples, they also had detailed recordings of the sharks’ overall health, based on measurements of their body size and immune system taken at the time.

The sharks on average had high amounts of lead, arsenic, and mercury in their blood, including levels of the latter two that would be enough to outright kill or seriously harm other vertebrates. But there was no link between higher heavy metal levels and the sharks’ body size and weight, indicating that they had no influence on growth and development. There was seemingly no effect on their immune systems either, judging by the sharks’ stable levels of certain types of immune cells.

“The results suggest that sharks may have an inherent physiological protective mechanism that mitigates the harmful effects of heavy metal exposure,” lead author Liza Merly, a marine biologist and senior lecturer at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said in a statement.

Other research has shown that while great white sharks aren’t completely immune to things like cancer, their bodies are especially good at self-healing and avoiding age-related ailments, thanks to a very impressive set of genes.

Indeed, their greatest weakness is actually humans, since hunting and overfishing have dwindled their population over the years (shark fins are a popular alternative medicine treatment).

Still, while heavy metals might be not a concern for great whites, they definitely are for the many other species of marine life that they feed on. So the researchers say it’s possible we could use these sharks as an aquatic canary in the coal mine, one that can tell us how polluted the surrounding ecosystem really is. This pollution could then have consequences for the humans who poisoned the environments in the first place.

“Basically, if the sharks have high levels of toxins in their tissues, it is likely that species they eat below them will also have toxins, including fishes that humans eat,” co-author Neil Hammerschlag, a research associate professor at UM’s Rosenstiel School and Abess Center for Ecosystem Science & Policy, said in a statement. And unlike sharks, we humans tend to fare poorly when exposed to a lot of lead, arsenic, and mercury. 

[MIKA27]

The Final Pet Sematary Trailer Wants To Remind You That "Dead Really Is Better"

 

[MIKA27]

New Trailer For Annabelle Comes Home

Annabelle Comes Home is opening in theatres on June 27, 2019. 

[MIKA27]

The Silence Is About Creatures Who Kill You If You Make A Sound, An Amazing Idea

Last year around this time, a movie about creatures that would kill you if you made a sound was released. This year, the same exact thing is happening.

This year, though, that movie is called The Silence and it’s coming to Netflix this month.

The film is based on a 1999 novel from Tim Lebbon, which means it predates last year’s film, A Quiet Place, by some time. Plus, when you watch the trailer, you’ll see that while the overall ideas are similar, this is a very different take on the material.

So, unlike A Quiet Place, The Silence seems to tell more of the origin of this soundless world instead of a story from later in the timeline. The creatures don’t seem to be supernatural in nature either. More likely, they’re just kind of really messed up bats.

Then, based on Netflix’s description, Kiernan Shipka’s character has some kind of mysterious power because she lost her hearing at an early age.

So there are a lot of differences between the films, besides the fact that The Silence was written almost 20 years prior. But, of course, the idea of a family (which here includes Stanley Tucci, Shipka and Shipka’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina co-star Miranda Otto) dealing with this world is certainly familiar.

This is just a wild guess, but what A Quiet Place probably did for The Silence is give Netflix confidence to say, “Hey, people like this kind of movie. Let’s make our own.” And if The Silence is half as entertaining as that one, we should be in for a treat.

Directed by John R. Leonetti (Annabelle), The Silence hits Netflix April 12. A Quiet Place 2, which this is not, will be out in another year. So we’re going three for three.

[MIKA27]

Greenland's Most Imperiled Glacier Has Stopped Retreating -- For Now

When scientists talk about Greenland losing ice, they are talking, in no small part, about Jakobshavn glacier. A frozen river that drains roughly 7 per cent of the Greenland Ice Sheet along the west coast, Jakobshavn has been thinning and retreating in a dramatic fashion for about 20 years, and is the single largest contribution to the ice sheet’s climate change-driven slim down. But in 2016, the glacier did an about-face.

For the past few years, Jakobshavn has been re-thickening and re-advancing toward the sea, according to research published Monday in Nature Geoscience.

This doesn’t mean all is well with Jakobshavn — it still appears to be losing more mass than it’s gaining, and the slowdown is likely to be temporary — but it is causing researchers to rethink the factors that control the movement of this fast-flowing river of ice.

“It’s a grand experiment 20 years in the making on large scale,” lead study author Ala Khazendar, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Earther, describing the glacier’s sudden acceleration and equally sudden slowdown.

The drama with Jakobshavn began in 1997, when the glacier awoke from a period of stability and its floating tongue, or ice shelf, started to thin rapidly. In 2003, what was left of that shelf snapped clean off.

Things continued to snowball from there, with the glacier picking up speed and spewing more icebergs, causing its front to retreat farther and farther inland as its surface dropped by over 150 meters. Some suspected Jakobshavn’s future was one of unstoppable, ever-quickening demise.

Evolution of the calving front of Jakobshavn glacier over more than a century. Following a period of stability from the mid 20th century to the late 1990s, Jakobshavn began to retreat rapidly.

Now, Jakobshavn has thrown scientists a curveball. Using airborne altimetry measurements along with satellite imagery, Khazendar and his colleagues have shown that the glacier’s thinning started to slow around 2014. By 2016, it had completely reversed course and its front 19 miles (30 kilometers) were thickening at rates comparable to the earlier thinning. By 2018, the thickening had spread 50 miles (80 kilometers) upstream.

“My first reaction was hey, we made a mistake,” Khazendar told Earther. He explained that his team was working with a new dataset from NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission, and they had to verify the findings with a separate dataset collected by NASA’s Operation IceBridge before they could be confident in what they were seeing.

The OMG data, which includes ocean temperature information, helped shed some light on the likely cause of the reversal: It occurred right as a cold-water current making its way up Greenland’s southwestern coast reached the bay adjacent to Jakobshavn’s fjord.

From 2014 to 2016, temperatures in that bay dipped nearly 2 degrees Celsius, back to where they were in the 1980s. While the ultimate cause of the cool water intrusion is uncertain, one hypothesis is that it has to do with a switch in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a recurring climate pattern that can trigger cooler or warmer conditions across a wide area.

Khazendar said that while air temperatures also seem to be playing a role, “ocean temperature variability was the dominant factor” in the new analysis.

Jason Box, a professor in glaciology and climate at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland who wasn’t involved with the paper, said that its conclusions “make sense” and build on work from 2008 showing that the initial acceleration of Jakobshavn glacier was trigged by an intrusion of warm, subsurface ocean waters.

Mathieu Morlighem, a glaciologist at the University of California Irvine who also wasn’t involved, made a similar point.

“We have known for about 10 years now that almost all marine terminating glaciers of Greenland are retreating, thinning, and accelerating as a response to warmer water reaching glacier termini,” Morlighem wrote in an email.

“What the authors did here is show that this mechanism also works in the other direction: under certain conditions, if the ocean water cools, glaciers could re-advance on relatively short time scales.”

Box cautioned that the “good news” as far as ice loss goes is “very temporary because like El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation and its effects are superimposed on a longer-term warming trend.”

Morlighem agreed. “What is happening to Jakobshavn is probably a temporary hiccup,” he said.

Hiccup it may be, but the findings still highlight there is more to this glacier than meets the eye. It’s been hypothesized that the geometry of Jakobshavn — it’s tethered beneath sea level on bedrock that gets deeper farther inland — makes it inherently unstable. This paper tells us there are other factors that influence how quickly it will recede in a warming world.

Given the glacier’s outsized contribution to sea level rise, pinning down all of those factors and how they work together will be critical.

[MIKA27]

Are Dive Bars an Endangered Species?

Before there were fancy craft cocktail bars, Americans learned to drink in dive bars.

These humble establishments are a sacred tradition, dispensing affordable shots of potent whiskey and pints of cold beer to the thirsty masses. They likely date back to a subterranean Buffalo joint that opened in the mid-1800s along the banks of the city’s canal. Soon the term and style of bar spread across the United States. The popularity of dives usually ebbs and flows with the state of the country’s economy but they’ve always attracted a diverse and eclectic crowd. Sadly, in many cities rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods mean that dive bars are now often closing or are being renovated.

On this episode of award-winning podcast, Life Behind Bars, co-hosts David Wondrich and Noah Rothbaum discuss the origins and the state of dive bars. They also share a few of their most colorful dive bar experiences. Cheers!

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