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

[MIKA27]

Joe Manganiello Will Play Deathstroke In The Batman Solo Movie

The character’s surprising arrival in the DCEU was only recently revealed, but now we know who’ll be playing the man behind Slade Wilson’s mask: True Blood‘s Joe Mangienello.

Geoff Johns confirmed the casting as well as Deathstroke’s role in the Batman movie, first reported by The Wrap, to the Wall Street Journal in an interview today. Johns declined to confirm when the Batman film is planned to be released, or whether the blurry teaser footage posted by Ben Affleck last week was for the Batman film or for a cameo appearance in the currently-filming Justice League movie.

Manganiello was rumoured for the role almost immediately after Affleck first revealed the footage, thanks to the actor’s presence in London (and, of course, because he followed director Zack Snyder on Twitter).

MIKA IMO - PERFECT!

[MIKA27]

Redout Could Be The New King Of Anti-Gravity Racing

Anti-gravity racing is a genre that doesn’t get love nearly as often as Wipeout and F-Zero fans would like. Developer 34BigThings smothers the genre with affection with Redout.

Redout is a low-poly anti-gravity racer that recently launched on Steam to rave user reviews. It’s a tribute to the anti-gravity classics, combining elements of those games into something that’s both familiar and brand-new.

Redout is an unforgiving racer that demands the most of its pilots. From the start of career mode, players must juggle steering, strafing, braking and turboing in order to earn first place. Progress through career mode nets cash used for upgrades and power-ups, allowing players to create a racing machine tailored to their style. Then it’s on to the second of four racing classes to do it all over again, only faster.

Here’s a race on a course I’ve raced through several times, in a vehicle I’ve broken in:

And here is a race on a brand-new course, diving my first car in the next racing class:

Redout features an extensive career mode with 20 tracks and multiple modes to attack them in, four different vehicle classes each from six racing teams and online multiplayer racing for up to 12 people.

As an added bonus, Redout also features VR support. As a massive fan of the genre who has tried this, how do you feel about getting really queasy?

 

 

[Fuzz]

46 minutes ago, MIKA27 said:

@FuzzThe Best Accessory Of Hot Toys' Batman '66 Joker Figure Is His Painted-Over Moustache

 

Hot Toys is well known for their lifelike face sculpts. If only I collected 1/6th scale... but this may push me into it.

Tweeter Head recently did a fantastic Julie Newmar Catwoman statue.

[MIKA27]

Tesla Makes Autopilot Safer With Radar

The onboard radar was added to all Tesla vehicles in October 2014 as part of the Autopilot hardware suite, but was only meant to be a supplementary sensor to the primary camera and image processing system. Tesla now believes it can be used as a primary control sensor — without needing the camera to recognise anything.

“This is a non-trivial and counter-intuitive problem,” Tesla says, “because of how strange the world looks in radar”.

Photons of that wavelength travel easily through fog, dust, rain and snow, but anything metallic looks like a mirror. The radar can see people, but they appear partially translucent. Something made of wood or painted plastic, though opaque to a person, is almost as transparent as glass to radar.

On the other hand, any metal surface with a dish shape is not only reflective, but also amplifies the reflected signal to many times its actual size. A discarded soda can on the road, with its concave bottom facing towards you can appear to be a large and dangerous obstacle, but you would definitely not want to slam on the brakes to avoid it.

Tesla says the big problem in using radar to stop the car is avoiding false alarms. Slamming on the brakes is critical if you are about to hit something large and solid, but not if you are merely about to run over a coke can. Having lots of unnecessary braking events would at best be very annoying — and at worst cause injury.

Tesla revealed in a blog post how it intends to solve this problem:

The first part of solving that problem is having a more detailed point cloud. Software 8.0 unlocks access to six times as many radar objects with the same hardware with a lot more information per object.

The second part consists of assembling those radar snapshots, which take place every tenth of a second, into a 3D “picture” of the world. It is hard to tell from a single frame whether an object is moving or stationary or to distinguish spurious reflections. By comparing several contiguous frames against vehicle velocity and expected path, the car can tell if something is real and assess the probability of collision.

The third part is a lot more difficult. When the car is approaching an overhead highway road sign positioned on a rise in the road or a bridge where the road dips underneath, this often looks like a collision course. The navigation data and height accuracy of the GPS are not enough to know whether the car will pass under the object or not. By the time the car is close and the road pitch changes, it is too late to brake.

This is where fleet learning comes in handy. Initially, the vehicle fleet will take no action except to note the position of road signs, bridges and other stationary objects, mapping the world according to radar. The car computer will then silently compare when it would have braked to the driver action and upload that to the Tesla database. If several cars drive safely past a given radar object, whether Autopilot is turned on or off, then that object is added to the geocoded whitelist.

When the data shows that false braking events would be rare, the car will begin mild braking using radar, even if the camera doesn’t notice the object ahead. As the system confidence level rises, the braking force will gradually increase to full strength when it is approximately 99.99 per cent certain of a collision. This may not always prevent a collision entirely, but the impact speed will be dramatically reduced to the point where there are unlikely to be serious injuries to the vehicle occupants.

The net effect of this, combined with the fact that radar sees through most obstacles, is that the car should almost always hit the brakes correctly even if a UFO were to land on the freeway in zero visibility conditions, Tesla says.

Taking this one step further, a Tesla will also be able to bounce the radar signal under a vehicle in front — using the radar pulse signature and photon time of flight to distinguish the signal — and still brake even when trailing a car that is opaque to both vision and radar.

“The car in front might hit the UFO in dense fog, but the Tesla will not,” Telsa says.

[MIKA27]

Controversial Maya Codex Is The Real Deal After All

Scientists have been arguing over the authenticity of an ancient document called the Grolier Codex for 50 years. A new analysis published in a special section of the journal Maya Archaeology has concluded that the codex is indeed genuine, making it the oldest surviving manuscript from the pre-Colombian era.

Perhaps you’re not familiar with the Grolier Codex. It’s the surviving pages of a 20-page book, made of stucco-coated bark paper folded into an accordion shape. The pages are painted with typical Maya iconography — gods, warriors, slaves, and hieroglyphs, for instance — and include a calendar charting the movement of the planet Venus.

Legend has it that looters ransacking a cave in Mexico came across the badly damaged pages in the 1960s, along with a turquoise mask, a sacrificial knife, and some blank pieces of fig-bark paper. That’s according to a Mexican collector named Josue Saenz, who claimed he was contacted by the looters and taken by plane to a remote airstrip to collect the items — although at least one archaeologist, Donna Yates, has called this account “fantastical”.

Saenz’s questionable account and subsequent actions cast doubt on the authenticity of the fragments from the start, even though the other artifacts have since been shown to be genuine. Scientists tested the codex in 2007, but couldn’t decisively settle the matter of its authenticity, partly because while many of the materials used were pre-Colombian, some of the wear and tear in the pages seemed artificial.

It was possible a gifted forger may have used materials from the right period to throw off archaeologists. And radiocarbon dating revealed the blank pages of bark paper found with the codex pegged them to around 1230 AD.

“It became a kind of dogma that this was a fake,” co-author Stephen Houston of Brown University said in a statement. “We decided to return and look at it very carefully, to check criticisms one at a time. Now we are issuing a definitive facsimile of the book. There can’t be the slightest doubt that the Grolier is genuine.”

Along with Harvard University’s Michael Coe, and Mary Miller and Karl Taube of the University of California, Riverside, Houston reviewed all the known research on the codex.

That included assessing the manuscript’s origins, the carbon dating results, the various deities depicted, how the bark paper was made, the Maya blue pigments, and thin red sketch lines underneath the paintings, among other aspects. The team concluded that a forger in the 1960s simply could not have known all the details required to create such a forgery. Many of the deities shown in the codex hadn’t even been discovered then, for example, and scientists didn’t successfully make Maya blue in the lab until the 1980s.

There are three other known (authenticated) ancient Maya manuscripts, known as the Dresden, Madrid, and Paris Codices, in addition to the Grolier Codex. There are variations among them, but all include astronomical calendars tracking the movements of heavenly heavenly bodies. And radiocarbon dating shows the Grolier predates the other three.

“A reasoned weighing of evidence leaves only one possible conclusion,” the authors wrote. “Four intact Mayan codices survive from the Precolumbian period, and one of them is the Grolier.”

[MIKA27]

The New Ouija: Origin Of Evil Trailer Features One Of Creepiest Creepy Girls Of All Time

Though the 2014 Ouija movie was a big hit, it was bad and everyone expected a sequel to be crap. The release of the first trailer for Ouija: Origin of Evil changed that, delivering some truly terrifying and surprising visuals. The second trailer does more of the same by focusing on Doris, the possessed girl at the center of the film.

She’s played by young actress Lulu Wilson and, if Ouija lives up to these trailers, Doris is going to find herself on the same page as Carrie, Samara, and other young, creepy horror villains. Check it out:

Directed by Mike Flanagan, Ouija: Origin of Evil is actually a prequel to the first movie. It’s a period piece set in 1964 about a mother (Twilight‘s Elizabeth Reaser) and her daughters who run a phony séance business. Then they get a new prop for the show: a Ouija board which takes a liking to one daughter in particular.

 

[MIKA27]

Mysterious Secret Passage Found In Ancient Ruins

Secret passages hidden in ancient ruins are a mainstay of fantasy and adventure stories, usually leading to powerful magical artifacts or caches of booby-trapped treasure. Previous archaeological research has revealed secret passages in the Egyptian Pyramids and Mexico’s Teotihuacán ruins, but unfortunately no face-melting Arks of the Covenant were found.

Luckily for archaeological treasure hunters, Turkish news outlet Hurriyet Daily News has reported the discovery of an ancient secret passage within the excavated ruins of a Hittite archaeological site. The site has been in the process of being excavated since its discovery in 2014 by archaeologists from Ankara University in Turkey.

The site of the Hittite sanctuary which contains the secret passage.

The ruins are part of Turkey’s first “national excavation field,” an area known as Alacahöyük. This area was a center of the Hittite civilization which thrived throughout Eurasia and North Africa between the years 1600 and 1100 BCE.

According to Ankara University professor and lead archaeologist Aykut Çınaroğlu, the secret passage might have had a ritualistic or ceremonial function, although further excavation is needed before any theories can be confirmed:

We are carrying out excavations right now; we have not finished yet. We started from the gate opening to the sanctuary, trying to open it. This is a [passage] from nearly 2,300 years ago. We have dug 23 meters so far but think that it is longer. Cleaning work is continuing, too. We will see what we will find in the end.

The first Hittite skeleton was also found at the site, which might clue archaeologists in on the genetic makeup of the Hittites. Before the 19th discovery of Hittite archaeological sites, most of the knowledge of Hittites was based on sections of the Old Testament. After the founding of Turkey, interest in the Hittites grew as more and more Hittite artifacts were found. These discoveries led archaeological historians to speculate that the Hittites evolved from prehistoric civilizations that settled in the areas that now make up Turkey, Syria, and some of the Arabian Peninsula. The Hittite civilization is believed to have dissolved during the Late Bronze Age Collapse and dissolved into several smaller city-states.

 

[MIKA27]

Cause of the Great Plague of London Confirmed

A mystery has surrounded the true cause of The Great Plague of London in 1665. The Black Death” was the last major plague to hit the UK but has left an indelible mark on the country’s history.

After all, this insidious outbreak killed off 100,000 Londoners, one-quarter of the city’s population in 18 months. The bubonic plague Spread by fleas, it was highly contagious and few who were affected survived. Theirs was an agonizing death with severe headache, vomiting, inflamed glands in the groin, inflamed tongue and the victim’s skin turned black in patches.

Vanessa Harding, Professor of London History at Birkbeck, University of London says of Londoners at the time.

Not many people who actually got it survive but some do. And it seems to be quite easily transferred from person to person even if we’re not sure currently about the agency or way in which this actually happens. But there are also what we might consider public health measures , which from their point of view include killing cats and dogs, getting rid of beggars on the streets, trying to cleanse the city in both moral and practical terms. The people who do best are those who get out of London.

Dead men (and women) do tell tales. Excavation on a rail line on the Crossrail site, at the Bedlam Burial Ground (New Churchyard) at Liverpool Street in East London has unearthed evidence of the fatal pathogen. Neatly buried coffins and a mass grave, totaling 3,500 skeletal remains were unearthed by archaeologists.

Alison Telfer from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola) says,

We found about three-and-a-half thousand burials at this site. We’ve been working here for the last fine-and-a-half years on and off and we’re hoping we’ll be able to get positive identification of this plague on a number of individuals.

Analyzing the skeletons from the Crossrail dig.

The search for the definitive cause of the plague involved gathering the skeletons from the dig, a process that continued last year. The skeletons were taken to the osteology department at Mola, where they are stored.

Michael Henderson began examining the skeletons for clues. He explains,

They’re carefully boxed, individual elements, legs separately, arms separately, the skulls and torsos. We excavated in the region and three and a half thousand skeletons, one of the largest archaeologically excavated to this date. A vast data set that can give us really meaningful information.

The bones were laid out in anatomical order and the teeth were removed. Henderson adds,

The best thing to sample for DNA is the teeth; they’re like an isolated time capsule.

Tooth enamel preserves the genetic information of any bacteria that was circulating in the individual’s bloodstream at the time off death. Stable isotope analysis of strontrium and oxygen, for example, can tell the scientists if the victims were native Londoners or visitors. Carbon and nitrogen isotopes can reveal whether the victims ate meat, vegetables or seafood. Microbiome DNA reveals the amount of airborne particles and pollutants they breathed.

The teeth were sent for ancient DNA analysis to the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. At the Institute, molecular palaeopathologist Kirsten Bos drilled out the tooth pulp to search for 17th century bacteria. She found five positive results from 20 individuals tested. She says,

We could clearly find preserved DNA signatures in the DNA extract we made from the pulp chamber and from that we were able to determine that Yersinia pestis was circulating in that individual at the time of death.

We don’t know why The Great Plague was the last major plague in the UK and whether there were genetic differences in the past, those strains that were circulating in Europe to those circulating today; these are all things we’re trying to address by assembling more genetic information from ancient organisms.

Scientists hope to learn more about the victims, the bacterial cause and the spread of plague.

Don Walker, senior osteologist at Mola says,

It (the plague) does not behave that way today. It’s much slower and spreads less dramatically. Could it be that there was some form of mutation? Or was it to do with host susceptibility and response? Were humans carrying greater disease loads in those days (eg, tuburculosis) and had poor nutrition made them more vulnerable?
We want to know if there was a local/European plague focus – a reservoir of the disease within a rodent population – or were there separate waves of plague coming from Asia. Current evidence suggests the former.

This year marks the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, which is thought to have stopped the plague.

By he way, have no fear that the bubonic plague has been resurrected during the excavation and analysis. The plague does not survive in the ground.

[MIKA27]

KOVAL WHISKEY BARREL-AGED GIN

While gin works best in cocktails, you might be surprised at how delicious barrel-aged gin can be when enjoyed neat or over ice. Koval Whiskey Barrel-Aged Gin is a great candidate, made using the same recipe as the distillery's dry gin. It's then placed in barrels that at one time held Koval whiskey for a full six months. The time in the barrel not only gives the spirit a nice, brown color, but also soothes the piney flavors that the dry gin exudes. Packaged in this beautiful bottle with intricate argyle die-cutting and bronze foil patterns.

[MIKA27]

Your New Live-Action Marvel Ghost Rider Has Been Revealed

Ghost Rider, Marvel’s fire-covered, bat-out-of-hell character, is no stranger to live-action. Nicolas Cage played the character in two movies, and now, five years later, Ghost Rider is back in the burning flesh and the first official look is here.

As you probably know, Ghost Rider will soon be coming to ABC’s Marvel show Agents of SHIELD. He’ll be played by Gabriel Luna, but not as the original Johnny Blaze version. This is the Robbie Reyes version, which is from a more recent Marvel Comics run. 

Ol’ Flame Head is pictured here with his smoking hot 1969 Dodge Charger, another change from the traditional motorcycle. According to SHIELD executive producer Jeff Bell, introducing the character “opens up a whole different kind of storytelling for us”. Um, yeah it does.

Ghost Rider represents a character whose origin has no basis in reality. Pretty much every other character in the universe, even Vision, Thor or Hulk, at least attempt to make sense. (One is artificial intelligence, one is from another planet, the other enhanced by gamma radiation.) Even SHIELD’s Inhumans were made that way by science. But Ghost Rider has no “logical” explanation. How that will play out in this reality-based world should be interesting to follow.

Agents of SHIELD returns to TV in the US on September 20. It airs on Channel Seven in Australia.

[MIKA27]

An Exclusive Look Inside The Beautiful Art Of Jock

If you’ve been on the internet before you’ve probably seen the gorgeous poster work of British artist Jock. Or maybe you’ve seen it in comic series like The Losers, Wytches, or his work on Batman and Judge Dredd. Now the artist is releasing a whole book filled with his amazing work, and we’ve got a sneak peek.

Collecting insight from the artist (real name Mark Simpson) alongside samples of both his unpublished sketches and published art, The Art of Jock is a celebration of the artist’s vivid style, in partnership with Mondo — where many of his poster tributes to pop culture history have been released — and Insight Editions.

The book also includes samples of early sketch ideas for some of his art, as well as commentary from frequent collaborators such as Scott Snyder and Alex Garland. Check out a few of the incredible pieces inside the book.

Judge Dredd. Photo provided by Insight Editions from The Art of Jock

Cover art for Vertigo Comic’s “Scalped”. Photo provided by Insight Editions from The Art of Jock. 

Unlettered art from “Batman: The Black Mirror”. Photo provided by Insight Editions from The Art of Jock

Concept art from Jock’s work on “Ex Machina”. Photo provided by Insight Editions from The Art of Jock.

The Art of Jock is out tomorrow.

[MIKA27]

The New Predator Film Just Got Even Cooler With the Addition of Benicio Del Toro

Oscar-winner Benicio Del Toro is keeping his genre flag flying. After appearing in Guardians of the Galaxy and filming Star Wars Episode VIII, he’s now in talks to star in Shane Black’s upcoming film, The Predator, the latest addition to the popular franchise.

What role Del Toro will play in the film is being kept under wraps, along with the specific plot. All that’s being said is he’ll “star.” He could be the Predator, for all we know at this point.

Black, who helped write the first film, is directing from a script by Fred Dekkar. That’s a reversal of their roles on 1987's cult classic The Monster Squad, where Dekkar directed and Black wrote. The two have long been friends and collaborators.

The scifi film, which is rumored to be part sequel, part reboot, is likely to start filming next year. It’s currently scheduled for a February 9, 2018 release.

[MIKA27]

Here's The Ken Block Gymkhana Video The Aussie Government Didn't Want You To See

Ken Block makes amazing gymkhana videos. But NSW Police didn’t want Ken Block to make this particular gymkhana video — the one you see right up there — in Sydney. So the Hoonigan team went to New York instead, leaving Australia in its dust. Here’s the video they made — the video that could have featured the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and all our most famous city’s iconic landmarks.

Ken Block’s Gymkhana Nine was filmed to coincide with the launch of Forza Horizon 3, set in Australia — so it made sense for Gymkhana Nine to be filmed in Australia. In Sydney in particular, according to Jalopnik, who say that the Hoonigan racing team were denied a permit to film stunts in and around the Sydney CBD and across the Harbour Bridge, with police deeming the shutdown for the stunts “not possible”. Gymkhana Seven, though, was filmed in Los Angeles — closing part of the city for a couple of days — as was Gymkhana Eight in Dubai.

Hoonigan’s Matt Tuccillo told Jalopnik that “the police down there started to make things difficult with the permitting process for the locations we were trying to secure, both public and private. Apparently we were going to be ‘bad’ for Australia and as we got closer and closer to filming we started to lose more and more locations that we had secured, ultimately forcing us to abandon the concept.” Hoonigan even offered to film and publish a high-profile public safety announcement for NSW Police speaking out against unsafe driving, but that wasn’t enough.

More from Jalopnik:

Tuccillo said the original concept for the video was to shoot in a mix of industrial and raw spaces, full of “locations that were iconic and instantly recognizable as Australia” like the Sydney Opera House.

That was not to be. A police spokesperson said that this request was deemed “not possible,” though they did not elaborate. Police said it was suggested the crew shoot on nearby Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbor instead, but those permit applications were never submitted.

The reason for that, Tuccillo said, is that Cockatoo Island would have been a supremely slow and boring place to shoot the video.

If you ask me, Australia really missed out on being part of this one. It’s awesome.

 

[MIKA27]

First Look At Batman's New 'Tactical Batsuit' From Justice League

Zack Snyder tweeted an image of what he called “the new Tactical Batsuit”. Love the goggles, Batman.

The suit was being used in filming a few months ago when we visited the set, but according to this tweet, it’s done now.

I’ve got to say, I think it’s pretty good-looking. Better than the Batman v Superman suit. Or the armoured one with the stubby ears. And definitely better than the weird dream one with the trench coat. Man, I’m just realising how many suits he had in that movie.

Toys run everything.

[MIKA27]

Archaeologists Discover Perfectly Preserved 168-Year-Old Ship In The Arctic Ocean

An arctic research mission claims that it’s discovered the HMS Terror, one of two Franklin Expedition ships that sunk during a doomed attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage. Incredibly, the 168-year-old wreck would probably not have been found if it weren’t for information provided by an indigenous crew member.

As reported in the The Guardian, the Arctic Research Foundation discovered the HMS Terror in Nunavut Bay. “Resting proud on 24 metres of water, we found HMS Terror — 203 years old, it is perfectly preserved in the frigid waters of the Northwest Passage,” noted Arctic Research Foundation spokesperson Adrian Schimnowski.

Underwater footage shows the ship in excellent condition, with all three masts still standing and nearly all hatches closed. A pair of wine bottles, tables, a desk (with its drawers open) and empty shelving were seen inside the wreck.

The ship was abandoned in sea ice in 1848 during a failed attempt to find the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to Asia. All 129 crew members were lost, nearly three years after the Franklin Expedition set out from England. Two years ago, it’s companion ship, the HMS Erebus, was discovered by underwater archaeologists from Parks Canada. Inuit oral history helped researchers narrow its location.

The HMS Terror was finally located 96km south of where archaeologists thought it had been lost. Finding nothing, the Martin Bergmann-led crew decided to take a detour to Terror Bay after hearing a story from an indigenous crew member named Sammy Kogvik. He told the crew that he noticed a large piece of wood sticking out of the Terror Bay’s sea ice while on a fishing trip several years ago, and that it resembled a ship’s mast. It turned out to be one hell of a tip.

The archaeologists had assumed that the HMS Terror was trapped in ice somewhere between King William Island and Victoria Island, but its location much further to the south is altering our understanding of what happened during the doomed mission.

Now that both Franklin Expedition ships have been found, there’s still one lingering mystery: The final resting place of Sir John Franklin himself. And once again, it’s here where oral tradition can help; legend has it that Franklin was buried in a vault somewhere on northern King William Island. Probably a good place to start.

[MIKA27]

Watch The F-16's Autopilot Mode Save An Unconscious Pilot's Life

The US Air Force has declassified a harrowing video showing the heads-up display of student pilot who passed out during a tight manoeuvre. Mercifully, his F-16 was equipped with a ground collision avoidance system, saving him from certain death.

It’s called the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto-GCAS for short. It took nearly 30 years for the USAF to develop this system, requiring the help of NASA, Lockheed Martin and its own Air Force Research Laboratory. The USAF introduced Auto-GCAS into its F-16 fleet in late 2014, and it has already saved at least four pilots, including the one in this video.

Auto-GCAS works by continuously comparing a prediction of the plane’s trajectory against a pre-existing terrain profile. If the system predicts an imminent collision with the terrain profile — as it does at the 26-second mark of this video (you can see the two chevrons come together) — the autopilot kicks in. Writing in Aviation Week, Guy Norris explains what happened:

In this instance, an international F-16 student pilot was undergoing basic fighter manoeuvre training with his USAF instructor pilot in two separate F-16s over the U.S. southwest. The student rolled and started to pull the aircraft but experienced G-induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC) as the F-16 hit around 8.3g. With the pilot now unconscious, the aircraft’s nose dropped and, from an altitude of just over 17,000 ft., entered a steepening dive in full afterburner.

After only 22 sec., the F-16 was nose-down almost 50 deg. below the horizon and going supersonic. The shocked instructor called “2 recover!” as the student passed 12,320 ft. at 587 kt [675 mph, 1,086 kph]. Two seconds later, with the nose down in a 55-deg. dive, altitude at 10,800 ft. and speed passing 613 kt [705 mph, 1,134 kph]., the worried instructor again calls “2 recover!” In a little less than another 2 sec., as the now frantic instructor makes a third call for the student pilot to pull up, the Auto-GCAS executes a recovery manoeuvre at 8,760 ft. and 652 kt [750 mph, 1,207 kph].

And that’s when the student pilot finally woke up, pulling back on the stick. The radar altimeter suggests a minimum altitude of about 900m which, at that speed, isn’t a whole lot of breathing room.

A close call indeed — and kudos to the USAF for developing such an amazing system. It probably won’t be much longer before these high-speed fighter jets become fully autonomous, replacing us feeble humans.

MIKA: I love technology 

 

 

[MIKA27]

North Korea Asks For Help In The Wake Of Its Devastating Flood

In a rare admission that life isn’t paradise within its borders, North Korea is asking for international aid in wake of devastating floods that state media claims to have impacted tens of thousands. Information released Sunday by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirms that North Korea is dealing with a big natural disaster.

The flooding, which is concentrated along North Korea’s northeastern border, was triggered by torrential rainfall brought on by Typhoon Lionrock, a powerful, long-lived tropical cyclone that impacted North Korea, Japan and agricultural lands in China late last month. At least 133 North Koreans have been killed so far, 395 are missing and over 140,000 are in need of “urgent assistance”, according to the UN.

The timing of the disaster and the cry for help is a bit awkward. It comes just days after North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test to the universal condemnation of the international community. Some have speculated that North Korea’s state media announcement — which was released on Sunday, in English — was intended to draw the sympathy of the very same nations now considering imposing even stricter sanctions to effectively cut off North Korea’s power.

Regardless of whether broadcasting this disaster was a ploy to manipulate international opinion, North Korea’s need for help in wake of the flood appears to be genuine. Nearly 40,000 homes have been levelled and an estimated 16,000 hectares of arable land are inundated.

“The floods came through with such force, they destroyed everything in their path,” Chris Staines, who heads the Red Cross delegation in North Korea, told the AFP, adding that it was a “very major and complex disaster”.

[MIKA27]

John Oliver Agrees That Birds Are Dicks

HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” is currently on hiatus, but that hasn’t stopped Oliver from ranting about how birds are awful.

In this clip, posted to the show’s YouTube channel, Oliver explains just a few reasons that birds should piss right off.

[MIKA27]

These New Images Of Jagged Rock Formations On Mars Are Just Incredible

NASA’s Curiosity rover is currently exploring the “Murray Buttes” region of lower Mount Sharp, where it captured these beautiful colour images of eroded rock formations. The pictures are so crisp and detailed, it’s as if we’re right there on the Martian surface.

Curiosity captured these images using its Mastcam on Thursday, September 8. The images reveal Martian buttes and mesas — the eroded remnants of ancient sandstone that first formed when winds deposited sand after Mount Sharp had formed.

The layering within the sandstone is referred to as “cross-bedding”, and it’s a sign that the sandstone was deposited by wind as migrating sand dunes. Mars features an incredibly active and dynamic surface, one that’s still undergoing changes.

“Studying these buttes up close has given us a better understanding of ancient sand dunes that formed and were buried, chemically changed by groundwater, exhumed and eroded to form the landscape that we see today,” noted Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada in a statement.

NASA plans to take some of the images snapped at the site to create several large colour mosaics, which we’re seriously looking forward to.

These new images represent Curiosity’s last stop at the Murray Buttes, where it has been romping around for the past month. The rover is now headed south, driving up to the base of the final butte as it exits the area and makes its way higher up the mountain.

[MIKA27]

Yes, You Need to Start Drinking This Whiskey in a Can

I was talking with a famous Kentucky bourbon distiller once, and we'd had a few drinks, when I decided to ask what he did with the whiskey he made that just didn't taste too...well, good. "Why, we send that shit to Australia," he cracked. What he meant was his crummiest whiskey went overseas to be turned into RTDs (industry jargon for Ready to Drinks), canned or bottled pre-mixed drinks that are wildly popular in certain countries.

Jim Beam makes them. Jack Daniels, too. So does Wild Turkey. Johnnie Walker has one, and no, it's unfortunately not a Blue Label and Coke. What's interesting is that most of these products aren't even sold over here in America, and if they are, they are generally ignored by the public. I'm not even sure where exactly they would be stocked. RTDs are indeed a significant part of Australian drinking culture, though.

Introduced to the country in the mid-1990s, by 2011 RTDs were accounting for a whopping 20 percent of total Aussie alcohol sales. Cheaply-priced and easy-drinking, they had become so favored amongst the Australian youth—and, ahem, the underage—that in 2008 the government instituted insanely high taxes on them, hoping to curb consumption. It worked, somewhat, but RTDs in Oz remain a $218 million industry that continues growing. Which makes it even more odd that the RTD is not really a player in American drinking, accounting for a meager 2.8 percent of booze sales. This is especially surprising considering America's famed propensity for culinary laziness—remember, we live in a country where pre-made simple syrup is actually a thing you can buy. (It's called "simple" for a reason, folks.)

Let me back up for a second. There was actually a time when certain RTDs were red hot in America, though these weren't of the whiskey and whatever variety. You might remember the wine cooler craze of the '80s, when sickly sweet, brightly-colored bottlings from companies like Bartles and Jaymes were selling so well they were called the "salvation of the spirits industry." "Alcopops" like Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Breezer, Mike's Hard Lemonade, and even the Bud Light [insert fruit here]-a-Ritas became their spiritual successors in the '90s and up 'til today, at times selling quite well but never lauded by beverage connoisseurs.

With flavors that sound more like suntan oils and packaging in pouches often more apt for Capri-Sun, perhaps now you see why "RTD" is such a dirty word to many adults. And why the modern, slightly-less-cheesy, whiskey-based RTDs of today can't get much foothold in this sophisticated drinking era of $15 craft cocktails and $30 bottles of barrel-aged beer. What adult with a job, a spouse, maybe some children, is going to spend his Saturday night pounding BuzzBallz?

(Actually, that might be fun.)

Things may finally be about to change, though. A new player is actually trying to enter this rocky, canned RTD market in the States, and they're hoping to finally class things up a bit.

"Most canned RTDs are low quality, low integrity, and low proof. We're not competing with those products," Robyn Greene tells me. Greene is the senior VP of marketing and innovation at the Cooper Spirits Company, an independently-owned, artisan beverage company out of Philadelphia, long famous for disrupting the spirits industry with avant-garde offerings, like St-Germain.

Earlier this month, Cooper released cans of Hochstadter's Slow . Based on a pre-prohibition recipe Cooper's been bottling since 2013, Slow & Low combines aged straight rye whiskey with—flowery marketing copy to follow—"air-dried navel oranges from Florida, 100-percent raw honey from Western Pennsylvania, Angostura Bitters, and a small dose of rock candy."

Forget those air-dried oranges, though, because the packaging is what is worth going gaga over. Slow & Low comes in one-of-a-kind, specially-designed 100 mL cans so small I can hide one in my fist like I'm a street magician—and I don't exactly have large hands either (they aren't Trumpian tiny, but I can't palm a basketball). I'm not one for getting duped by packaging "innovations," as they say in the business, but this is too cool to ignore. One negative is that the can lacks a top you can pop, instead having a design more akin to an airline can of tomato juice, with a ring pull you have to peel back and immediately discard.

Of further importance: While most of those aforementioned canned RTDs are less than 5 percent ABV—perfect for secretly drinking in your parents' rec room—Slow & Low is a legit boozy cocktail at a fearsome 84 proof. Like, when I took my first big gulp from the can, I winced. This is clearly a sipper, I immediately learned. It is tasty, though, don't get me wrong, like a suped up Old-Fashioned, and equally potent, too. You can drink Slow & Low straight from the can, but it might be better to pour over ice to mute the heat a little bit. Then again, that may ruin the whole discreet-alcoholism-on-the-go concept of these bad boys.

Whatever the case, Slow & Low seems destined to be the product that will hopefully kickstart a higher-end, whiskey-based RTDR (Ready to Drink Revolution) in America. Or, at least greatly improve your chances of sneaking booze into a football game this fall.

[MIKA27]

CINEBODY IPHONE CAMERA BODY

For years now we’ve seen countless iPhone camera add-ons be released onto the market. Telephoto, wide angle, macro – you name it. Now, with the introduction of Cinebody, smartphone users can now get their hands on a serious add-on for the video function on their smartphone.

This body manages to look and feel like an old-school super 8 camera while still retaining all of the quality you’d expect from an iPhone video. All you need to do to get going is to slide your iPhone in, launch the free Cinebody app, plug in the aux cable, and you can get shooting. With the combination of the software and hardware from this company, you can add on external lights, adjust frame rate, focus, and even add on aftermarket lenses. Who needs a selfie stick when you can film with this? Prices start at $200. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

2017 PEUGEOT 3008 DKR

Following their January and July wins in the Dakar and Silk Way rallies, respectively, Team Peugeot Total and Red Bull have unveiled their next racing successor, the 3008 DKR. This vehicle, which is based on Peugeot’s newest upcoming SUV of the same numerical denomination, stays true to the brand’s philosophy that a vehicle doesn’t necessarily need 4-wheel drive in order to take on even the gnarliest stretches of terrain. It also boasts a few notable improvements upon its predecessor, apart from the drivetrain and obvious aggressive styling.

For starters, the company claims that their win in Dakar gave their engineers the ability to increase the reliability of both their vehicles’ mechanical strength and electronic processes, fine-tuning them to the nth degree. They’ve also increased the drivability of the SUV’s 3 liter V-6 twin-turbodiesel engine – offering greater torque at lower revs. The geometry and dampers of the vehicle’s suspension have also been tweaked to better suit the changing terrain of both cross-continental races. And they’ve even added air conditioning, so their racing team doesn’t have to suffer beneath the heat of the sun during their 12-hour long racing stretches. The 3008 DKR will face its first test in the Morocco Rally, starting October 3rd of this year.

 

[MIKA27]

Empire Spirits Project Smoked Gin

If gin just isn’t your thing because you’re used to the piney, overpowering flavor profile that juniper can give the spirit, you’ll be extremely interested in Empire Spirits Project American Gins. Dreamt up by a former chef from Le Bernardin, Jake Sawabini, each of ESP’s three gins uses special botanical pairings to marry juniper with other unique flavors. The highlight of the bunch is the first-ever American smoked gin. By using applewood smoke, peppercorns, and caraway, the assertive gin has a smoky backbone and a totally unique taste. Distilled in Yonkers, Smoked took home a silver medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and is perfect for any campfire-loving boozehound.

[MIKA27]

URWERK TIME HUNTER WATCH

Most watches just tell time. The Urwerk Time Hunter Watch not only tells you what time it is, but allows you to track its precision. Since most watches are calibrated on a constantly-turning arm in controlled conditions, they might not be keeping accurate time depending on how you wear yours. The Time Hunter's electronic brain keeps track of how many seconds you might be losing per day, and lets you adjust it accordingly via the EMC function. In addition, it also tracks the movement of the balance wheel, letting you ensure it's operating correctly. An impressive marriage of electronics and mechanics, all housed in a black-coated titanium case.

MIKA: This is for the 1%

[MIKA27]

Star Wars Reimagined By The World's Best Concept Artists 

A little while ago, ArtStation ran a competition with Industrial Light & Magic asking some of the world’s best artists to “imagine key moments, new vehicle designs, character and droid designs, and epic battles within the Star Wars universe”. The winners have now been announced, and they are fantastic.

As you’d expect! The best entries for the competition came from men and women who work on Hollywood movies and AAA video games for a living (Matt Rhodes, for example, has worked on Mass Effect and Dragon Age), so marrying their talent with the chance to draw some cool Star Wars shit was always going to result in some amazing images.

There were winners in the competition (which you can see here), because this was a competition so technically there had to be, but really, taking a look over the wider range of illustrations that placed or were honoured by ILM (224 artists made the final stages of the competition) shows that nearly everyone was a winner.

You can see some highlights from the showcase below.

MATT RHODES

MARIO ALBERTI

MORGAN YON

PAUL DAINTON

FRED PALACIO

IGOR BULYGIN