March 6, 2017
Imagine a petrified Jello mold made by Wilma Flintstone for a dinosaur.
Right now, in a vault controlled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, there sits a 752-pound emerald with no rightful owner. This gem is the size of a minifridge. It weighs as much as two sumo wrestlers. Estimates of its worth range from a hundred bucks to $925 million. Over the past 10 years, four lawsuits have been filed over the Bahia emerald. Fourteen individuals or entities, plus the nation of Brazil, have claimed the rock is theirs. A house burned down. Three people filed for bankruptcy. One man alleges having been kidnapped and held hostage. Many of the men involved say that the emerald is hellspawn but they also can’t let it go.
Bubba’s Book Club
Neil Peart, OC, is a Canadian-American musician and author, best known as the drummer and primary lyricist for the rock band Rush. He also reviews books. [more inside]
They are but little but they are fierce
Cats take dogs' beds whenever they wish [music and outraged woofing]. It's so widespread that there's a subreddit devoted to it.
(via HuffPo)
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
Improve any novel by changing its second line to “And then the murders began”, a proposed addition to Elmore Leonard's rules for writers, though possibly more related to Raymond Chandler's (possibly not serious) "When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." - Some more rules of writing.
How things end
So what happens? An absolute diaspora of ending models. Games where you're expected to die. Games where you literally have to die. Games which remember your past achievements into future tries. Games which try to delete themselves when you're done. Games with permadeath, games with semi-permadeath, games with undeath. Idle RPGs which you play when you're not there, and never finish. Roguelikes and roguelites and roguelikelikes. The only way in which a game is guaranteed to end is when the player abandons their device. Everything else is game design: Alexis Kennedy (Fallen London) on the progress of progress and the history of endings.
"Hi, I'm Robert Osborne"
Robert Osborne, Turner Classic Movies Host and Film Historian, Dies at 84 As TCM’s primary on-air personality, Osborne occupied something of an unique position in the history of television: Where once it was common for channels to provide hosts for the movies they programmed, TCM is now the last U.S. movie network to regularly feature hosts who offer information about a film before it begins. [more inside]
The Future of Body Horror
"The body horror genre is not just for those of us whose sensibility is tickled by the grotesque. Far more than being merely stomach-turning, it runs fantastically and viciously rampant with the anxieties we all have about our own physical vulnerability." In The Future of Body Horror: Can Our Art Keep Up with Our Suffering?, Davey Davis revisits The Thing and contemplates the genre's role in reflecting sociopolitical dynamics and fears of individual & collective safety, vulnerability, violence, and embodiment.
Oh, no, it’s Dave again.
Lesson one: People will flush anything down a toilet
Building hyperrealistic sculptures of insects that don’t exist
"Japanese artist Hiroshi Shinno builds hyperrealistic sculptures of insects that don’t exist." Via Colossal: "...perfect forms of imaginative species that look as if they were built from vibrant leaves and delicate flower petals. Even this aspect of the creatures are false, as each leaf or petal was cast from resin and painted with acrylic paint before being placed on the model’s brass base. [more inside]
“you can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat”
"Meat Cakes" Are A Thing [Kotaku] Who said cakes have to be made of sugar and spice and crap like that? Behold, meat cakes.
One week, 100 people 2017
Every aspiring artist has heard the advice, ‘Carry a small sketchbook at all times!’. We’re all told ‘Practice drawing every day!’. This is of course great advice. But sometimes we need a little extra motivation.OneWeek100People is an annual sketch challenge first proposed by Marc Taro Holmes, in an effort to encourage urban sketchers to get more practice including humans in their art. The challenge: Sketch 100 people in one week. [more inside]
Seeing Stars
Grieving is knowing something to be true without fully accepting it. My phone proved a necessary distraction. I played endless rounds of solitaire, placing a jack on a queen, moving a six here, putting an ace up, unfurling new cards. Shockingly soon, a trophy popped up on my screen. I’d played 1,000 games.
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