This would be pretty cool if someone with some talent for large scale modeling crossed it with something like the Zombie Simulator.

Countries should have a difficulty level to transmit to, with isolationist nations like Madagascar and North Korea being very difficult, while those with largely uncontrolled borders like the US should be simple to infect.

Vectors for the spread of disease, such as infected animals, should be in some way visible... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 6:40 PM on July 20, 2008

ardgedee, it might very well just be a video loop but everyone on the internet has been calling it a trailer so far and actual context for the video is scant to say the least. I do like the idea that they might have actually sat people down in a room somewhere to watch this.

aGee, for all I know they did make that in Final Cut Pro.

Also, the full quote from the body of the joystiq.com piece:
Duke Nukem Trilogy... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 9:56 AM on July 18, 2008

Why would Anonymous take on Xenu? Most likely they were simply interested in seeing if it could even be done. Anonymous is fairly disenfranchised group of young people, many of whom aren't all that socially active, and there has always been a certain discontented disconnect between being a force to be reckoned with in the backalleys of the internet and the complete lack of any sort of real world presence despite the huge user base. Near total anonymity just isn't conducive to organizing... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 12:18 AM on July 11, 2008

This is awesome! I'd never even dreamed a complete copy might still exist. I've seen versions where they have still images describing the missing scenes, but it still leaves something to be desired, and then there are versions with alternate arrangements of the existing scenes where they try to work around the gaps and the narrative ends up being disjointed. I hope they release it with the complete score too.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 3:18 PM on July 2, 2008

I feel bad for M. Night because he just can't seem to catch a break. I don't think there's really anything wrong with his movies per se, if anything it's bad marketing on his part that leaves people expecting The Sixth Sense every time from a director who is actually very hit or miss. I've enjoyed about half of his movies now, which is good enough that I'd like him to keep making them. I'd guess what he really needs is either a screenplay he didn't write, or a chance to direct under a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 9:05 PM on June 17, 2008

Yeah, The Village was the movie of his where I got what was going on pretty much right away. I was then depressed to realize that my imagined ending was almost certainly better than M. Night's and I was going to have to sit through the whole movie anyway.

(spoilers sorta) Ok, so the village is fake and they all live at a sustainable 1800's tech level. Fair enough. What would have been interesting is if instead of it being the present, it was the near future and the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 10:33 PM on June 17, 2008

Interesting link Jinjo, but it would help if the writer was actually funny.

Couldn't help but notice he ruins his first right turn joke by returning to the leprechaun and scorpion and thus giving it a surprise ending instead of a straight up absurdist one. Also, I really enjoy right turn jokes, but if you drag them out too far they just turn into a shaggy dog joke. For a really good right turn joke, check out this video called Knock Knock. The one I'm thinking of is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 10:52 AM on May 25, 2008

I certainly hope that happens abc. I was just thinking how Think Geek would make an absolute killing on these.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 7:52 AM on May 22, 2008

Metafilter: I'm the asshole.

But really, this comic is splendidly good.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 4:44 AM on May 17, 2008

Similar thoughts on the subject.

Still only somewhat amusing.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 3:19 PM on May 7, 2008

Ouch, this hits a little close to home. I play The Kingdom of Loathing as my major MMO of the moment, and the economy in KoL is the closest I can think of to the one in the article. Granted, they're not really the same at all, but money undeniably has a more direct place in KoL than it does in most online games. (I'll keep my explanation simple for the non-gamers in the audience, but when I talk about money I'm mentally converting from millions of Meat, and when I say equipment I really mean... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 11:30 PM on May 6, 2008

This thread makes me a little queasy. The more I hear of law and punishment, the less I find myself endeared to either. I live in a very safe community so perhaps my opinion is irrelevant, but the subject at the heart of this discussion is a heroin conviction and I can't help mulling it over.

I've got three friends who all ran afoul of hard drugs and then cleaned up again; cocaine, heroin, and meth respectively. The differences between them and the woman in this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 1:09 PM on May 2, 2008

Like I said OmieWise, I live in an area with very low violent crime, so my perception of this will necessarily be different from yours. On the other hand, as a largish midwestern city, meth production and mariuana coming down from Canada are big law enforcement concerns here (drunk driving being the most common thing to be prosecuted as far as I know) so it isn't like we don't have drug crimes that our community is grappling with, we just don't have the related gun violence. I don't know what... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 1:42 PM on May 2, 2008

This was kind of amusing, but at the same time kinda schlocky. I much preferred the documentary that was posted here a while ago about actual real doll owners. The words "lonely" and "relationship" pop up in the articles about this project, but really all I'm seeing is attention seeking, narcissism, and sexualization; it's all very superficial and jokey really, it lacks the pathos that the documentary captured. I mean, contrast how lewdly the doll is treated here in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 10:44 PM on April 30, 2008

Burma Shave by Tom Waits

"Burma Shave is an American shaving-cream company, like Colgate. They advertise on the side of the road and they have these limericks which are broken up into different signs like pieces of a fortune cookie. You drive for miles before you get the full message.

"PLEASE DON'T"... five miles...
"STICK YOUR ARM OUT SO FAR"... another five miles...
"IT MIGHT GO... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 1:06 AM on April 23, 2008

Demoli: As far as manga goes, a run of comics is usually produced by one studio or even by a single writer/author who does the whole project. This means that there is usually much less to worry about in terms of continuity or changes in the tone of a comic. There is also usually some kind of endpoint in mind, which is something that is anathema to the way Marvel and DC have structured their business.

Personally I find this sort Crisis stuff silly. Superhero comics are... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 11:10 PM on April 17, 2008

I'll second Dr. Curare's anecdata. I know a talented researcher that went back to graduate school to pursue a different career after her guilt over the sacrifice of too many lab animals for research turned into a full blown phobia that the animals were judging her for her complicity in the actions. Even now, years later, she is too uncomfortable to go into a house that has dogs in it.

I can understand the importance of animal testing (I have a family member involved in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 3:53 AM on March 31, 2008

On the bright side, this sort of levels the playing field against the imminent threat of BigDog rending your leg from its socket in your maddened attempts to kick the diabolical black devil machine over so you can flee to the relative safety of one of the last remaining human outposts. You can just regrow that leg again. And your arm. and spleen... and shattered spinal column....

Oh, Science!, what fearsome whimsies wont you pursue?
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 4:58 PM on March 18, 2008

Same here DU. I was even specifically expecting a bear, but it was such a close visual match to the team in black that I actually looked at the bugger for a second just before he stepped out of frame and I still didn't realize that he was out of place.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 11:45 AM on March 18, 2008

I absolutely love this stuff. People have hit most of the really good ones already, but I'm fond of this artists take on the evil sun, his gallery has some other good ones, like Wendy O' Koopa.

From the OP's third link, this reimagining of the bobomb is adorable.

Another cool realistic Mario by someone on deviantart. And an interesting Mario papercraft project where the person recreated a level.

The youth of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 11:38 PM on March 17, 2008

This game is a work of sadistic beauty. No matter what setting you play it on, it will be as hard as any game you've ever played, and if you have an appreciation for these kinds of things you'll start to laugh out loud at some of the more clever traps, even as you gnash your teeth in frustration. It's almost like a nightmare version of nostalgia, where all the hardest victories of a childhood wasted on video games come back to be faced again with no room for error.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 4:11 PM on March 11, 2008

It seems reminiscent of the early arctic explorers who risked life and limb to venture into the most inhospitable climate on Earth. We've got research stations there now finally, but in the early days we were so technologically under equipped and many brave people died trying.

This proposal is doomed to sadness I think. That's doesn't mean at all that it isn't worth pursuing, just that the boldest steps are sometimes bittersweet. We'd make a tenuous foothold there... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 11:41 PM on March 7, 2008

What's even more shocking is that not one of them, not one, is actually guilty of breaking any law.

I'm pretty sure this exact line, almost word for word, was used the last time we had one of these threads. I hate this attitude. You know what's really shocking? And I'm not using the word "shocking" in a cute sarcastic way here. What's shocking is that people get caught up in these drug witch hunts who haven't broken the law, and they go to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 1:50 PM on March 6, 2008

There is something so cliché and kind of sad about marines literally, ya know, going over to Iraq and killing cute innocent puppies.

On the bright side, it's hard to think how this could possibly make things worse.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 4:20 PM on March 4, 2008

As I was reading this article one of my dogs started barking. I assumed that she was just barking at something that had gone by outside the house so I told her loudly to knock it off. She can usually tell when a person is walking by outside, but sometimes she'll overreact to cars or things because she's bored and really enjoys acting fierce. Then again, she never barks this late at night, I thought. This time she went straight back to barking again despite my warning, and I realized once I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 11:12 PM on February 29, 2008

This thread is kinda depressing. Still, when I go to the bookstore there are -always- people in it. Same goes for the library to a slower and lesser extent, but it isn't like it just stands unused. My friends all read books, and while I'm generally horrified when someone reveals that they've never read a book for fun, those people are rarely someone I particularly like being around anyway.

As for the whole Harry Potter thing, I'm pretty certain that some of those who... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 9:31 AM on February 21, 2008

Is it wrong that I immediately thought of fuligin too? Now someone just has to develop this as a textile so I can get a bitchin' Autarch cape. Needs some whiter than white too. Tangentially: in comparison Wolfe's descriptive capabilities don't seem much better than the guys from Spinal Tap. ;_;

*starts singing... badly*
I'm black y'all, and I'm black y'all, and I'm blacker than black, and I'm black y'all.

I'm blickedy black... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 9:38 AM on February 20, 2008

This sort of invasiveness disturbs me greatly and I'm not sure what to do about it. The article was interesting but I feel like the author was too busy being paranoid to be rational about his privacy. The truth is that you can't just drop off the grid for a single week, and that you would probably have to make some fundamental lifestyle choices in order to make it work.

The first thing is cameras - it's true that they can be used to track you, but many many of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 12:45 PM on February 16, 2008

Red Meat on ventriloquist dummies
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 1:20 AM on February 15, 2008

I have to admit I've been following this with some amount of interest. I guess it's just the guilty little thought, prompted by wishful thinking if by nothing else, that perhaps this is simply trial run and the most interesting antics are yet to come.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 1:39 PM on February 11, 2008

The bar for committing internet suicide has been set pretty high. Stripping naked, shaving your head, applying ritualistic face paint and then blowing your brains out while listening to Bjork - now that's a suicide! Threatening to maybe kill yourself in 90 days if you aren't actually a viral marketing scheme or a lonely attention whore... well it barely makes a ripple. She's probably do better to threaten to kill and eat a rabbit if she wants attention. Or maybe balance things on its head.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 7:19 PM on February 10, 2008

See also: Half life:Full Life Consequences 2:What Has To be Done
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 5:08 AM on February 5, 2008

Jonh Freeman, Gordon Freeman's brother said, "No Gordon. You are the headcrabs!"

And then Gordon was a goast.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 5:53 AM on February 5, 2008

This is like flOw only creepy, arthouse incoherent, and not really all that fun to play.

For people stuck on the dodging part, rotate your cursor around the ball to make it spin in one direction or the other. You can dodge much easier on the left side of the screen as well, which is helpful to know.
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 5:51 AM on February 4, 2008

How much real money would it take to buy enough video game money to hire some native porters to carry my stock of virtual penises around?

$2-4 in lindens (meaning L$500-1000) would probably be enough to entice a local to carry your collection of penii around on a golden platter, though considering SL, I suspect there'd be someone willing to do it for free if you'd only be so nice as to put them in chains. But if you're set on paying, perhaps try... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 12:30 AM on February 1, 2008

4 minutes and 29 seconds of that? Really? Really???
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 8:15 AM on January 31, 2008

I went to see Ikiru a few years back at a local film festival out of a love of Kurosawa's samurai films, without having any real idea what the movie was about. I ended up being surprised not just at the modern setting and ruminations on mortality, but at the power the film had for me emotionally. It plays with your expectations by being very upfront about the characters condition, and then extending beyond the point where a story will generally wrap things up succinctly.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 10:27 PM on January 29, 2008

Stunt: Yeah, it certainly looks like it has had the benefit of careful production to it (which doesn't necessarily rule out crazy and reckless) since they use smoothly panning shots that had to be planned out, and at least on one occasion I saw they switched angles before the explosion which means they did multiple takes to get that look. That being said, everything is cooler in slow motion!
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 2:27 AM on January 27, 2008

I have mixed feelings about griefers in general; one the one hand what they do can occasionally be inspired, amusing, much deserved, or for the common good, but for the most part it is a mean spirited impulse masquerading as anything other than that.

It really isn't helpful to refer to griefers as if they were simply one entity either. There is certainly a qualitative difference between someone who makes themselves a pain as a PKer in a game, or between a forum troll,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 12:41 AM on January 25, 2008

I find myself amused and irritated not so much by the fact that this is a hoax, but simply because they didn't have the courtesy to flesh it out fully and create the other three supposed images in the series. Those would have actually been interesting to see.

This reminds me a bit of the subliminal image that was inserted into some Coca Cola posters years ago. The page that link came from has a few more examples of similar hidden images in advertising.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CheshireCat at 1:05 PM on January 14, 2008