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

[MIKA27]

New Spider-Man: Homecoming Trailers Treat Spidey Like A Kid

Two new trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming just hit the web, and the focus this time is on Spidey's "internship" to Tony Stark and penchant for selfies.

The domestic trailer contains a myriad of gadgets and tricks Peter's Tony Stark-sponsored suit is capable of ("576 possible web shooter combinations," says the inbuilt AI), as well as a very good look at Michael Keaton's Vulture, who seems suitably intimidating.

A second, international trailer also dropped, in which Spidey makes good use of his phone's camera.

What stands out in these trailers is just how much of an overeager kid Peter is, ready to prove himself to the already established heroes. Spider-Man is the first teenage hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and his different approach to crimefighting should make for an interesting change of pace.

Two new posters have also been released for the film.

Spider-Man: Homecoming hits cinemas in Australia July 6.
 

[MIKA27]

Watch A Mortified Demolition Crew Accidentally Tear Down The Wrong Building

Working in demolition is tough. The pay sucks. You're constantly hauling garbage around. Every job is dangerous. And sometimes — sometimes — you accidentally tear down the wrong building.

That's what happened to a crew of city contractors in Baltimore on Sunday. The Baltimore City Department of Housing had hired them to carry out an emergency demolition of an old row house that had a big hulking crack in the wall. It was going great at first. Neighbours had even come out to watch destruction. And then, with one doomed move from the excavator, a pile of bricks topped over onto the building next door.

It took a few seconds for the dust to clear, but when it did, the neighbouring building — which was not supposed to get torn down — was utterly destroyed. Fast-forward to the 50-second mark for the money shot.

Brutally, the owner of the wrongly demolished building watched it all happen from the footpath, but he seems pretty chill about the whole thing. "We'll rebuild it," Joseph Rene, a developer who owns the former home of the Laundry Mutt — which is now a pile of bricks — told The Baltimore Sun. "We have no other option."

The city contractors did not offer the local paper any comment. Now that video of the demolition oops is racking up tens of thousands of views on YouTube, the company is surely worried about the future. That's just another fact of life in the demolition business. Doing too much demolishing is far, far worse than not doing enough.

[MIKA27]

Mysterious “Dr. No” May Have Been Serial Killer Responsible for Rash of 1980s Murders

It is one of the most terrifying modern mysteries of human psychology: what drives a person to want to kill?

Dozens of famous serial killers have made headlines over the decades in America, following the famous killings associated with H.H. Holmes and his infamous “murder castle” as far back as the late 1800s. The murders he committed during this period marked what is largely recognized as the first instances of a serial killer in America.

However, apart from the ones that are captured and held accountable under law for their atrocious crimes, there are also those killings which go unsolved, even after decades of investigation. Far more disturbing, of course, is the idea that the killers responsible for these crimes may have remained at large.

One the evening of February 7, 1987, Anne Marie Patterson was being dropped off for work by her husband at a truck stop in Venango County, Pennsylvania. As a prostitute, Patterson’s work often put her in close quarters with shady characters; however, on this particular evening, she and her husband heard a call coming via their CB radio from a particularly notorious client, who she said she just didn’t want to work with. He was so renowned for causing fear among the women who had dealt with him, in fact, that they had a sort of “code name” for this particular trucker.

They called him “Dr. No.”

“No thank you. I know you,” Patterson’s husband overheard her saying to the trucker that evening. He suspected that she might have even had trouble with the same man recently, in an incident that led to her arrest in Austintown, Pennsylvania one night earlier.

“He was calling, but they wouldn’t go to his truck for some reason,” Patterson’s husband later said. “They said he was trouble.”

That same night, Anne Marie went back to work at the Venango County truck stop, and never returned.

It was forty three days before she was finally found, her body wrapped in a sleeping bag by a highway in Barkeyville. Over the course of nearly two years leading up to her death, three other incidents involving suspected prostitutes who were found slain occurred, where the bodies of the victims were discovered dumped along Interstate 70.

The Pittsburgh Press reported the strange spate of killings in its April 19, 1987 edition, discussing the speculation rife at the time that the mysterious “Dr. No” might have been a serial killer:
 

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Serial killers are known for picking out victims with similar backgrounds or sharing some common traits, and their method of killing is often distinctive.

While not ruling out the possibility of a serial killer, investigators in Richland, Ashland and Medina counties, where the bodies of the other three women were found, have said they have yet to find sufficient similarities in the slayings to substantiate Collins’ claims.

“There’s been so much about serial killers. I’m just waiting for a copycat killer to surface any day.” and Roger Martin, a detective in Ashland County.

 

Investigators remained unclear as to whether Anne Marie Patterson had indeed known her killer, and whether it had been the same mysterious character she and the other women called “Dr. No.” According to a Warren County detective that had been working the case named Mark Duvelius, Dr. No, who was described as a dark haired man “possibly of Middle Eastern descent” between 25 to 40 years of age, actually had not been considered a suspect in the killings of Anne Marie Patterson and the other Ohio area victims. It was considered crucial at the time, however, that he be interviewed in relation to the deaths. Could there have been another individual that might have been associated with the deaths?

It was believed that at least two of the victims associated with this series of killings had last been seen entering a dark blue or black colored Peterbilt truck, which may have had a refrigerated trailer (it was suggested that Anne Marie Patterson’s body may have been refrigerated for some period before being dumped). The mysterious “Dr. No” also may have used different CB radio handles that included “Stargazer” and “Dragon.”

In 1995, a similar group of killings led to the arrest and conviction of Sean Patrick Goble, a truck driver who was sentenced to two life sentences after he was found guilty in the deaths of several women. Goble, who operated a dark Peterbilt truck, admitted that he had found his victims, mostly prostitutes that were smothered or strangled, at truck stops, and would later dump their bodies further along the highway.

Goble was only charged with the deaths of three women, in relation to crimes committed in North Carolina and Tennessee. However, the Asheboro Courier Tribune reported in 2015 that Goble was questioned by authorities in at least seven other states, and that law enforcement had shown interest in determining whether he might have been responsible for more deaths.

At the time of Anne Marie Patterson’s death in 1987, Goble, who is now 51, would have only been 21 years old. Additionally, deaths dating back as far as 1981 are believed to have been the work of the same killer Patterson may have identified as “Dr. No,” which does seem to indicate that another killer had been at large years before Goble’s arrest and sentencing.

To this day, the identity of “Dr. No”, and whether he had indeed been involved in the Ohio prostitute killings of the late 1980s, remains undetermined.

More information about these, and possibly related crimes, can be found here, here, and here.

[MIKA27]

The Secret Bar in the Grand Central Terminal has Reopened

For years, the Campbell Apartment served great, old-fashioned cocktails in a setting to match without most commuters ever getting wise to its existence. Now, new owners have decided to bring the bar out of hiding, hoping to share the cocktail bar with the public in a way it hasn’t been before. The dress code’s been dropped, the hours have been extended, the menu’s been expanded, and an awning’s been built on Vanderbilt Avenue, effectively ending the bar’s time as one of the hidden gems of New York. Honestly, we have mixed feelings. On one hand, it’s great that a drinking venue like the Campbell is open again. On the other, it seems like the new owners have slightly misunderstood what attracted people to the bar in the first place. The dress code and exclusivity are often what draw people to a place like the original Campbell Apartment and turning it into a well-advertised (maybe a little touristy) bar dilutes what makes it special. We’ll have to wait and see if the new angle is successful.

[MIKA27]

DORNOCH EXPERIMENTAL BATCH GIN

At a small distillery in Dornoch, Scotland they make gin the old-fashioned way, from scratch. They use fully floor malted barley fermented with brewers yeasts to create some truly unique gems. And their Experimental Batch Gin series shows off their talents, creating gins with loads of botanicals, some that have next to none, along with gins perfect for a gin and tonic while others are more suited for blending with ginger beer. To date, ten different experimental batches have been released, each with a different trait or flavor that makes it stand out.

[MIKA27]

Check Out These Incredibly High Resolution Maps Of The Ocean Floor

If there's one thing on Earth we don't know enough about, it's the ocean. We've only mapped around five per cent of the seafloor, and two-thirds of the ocean's animal species might remain undiscovered. It shouldn't be a surprise that we're only now able to create detailed maps of the seafloor — but that doesn't stop each new one from being mind-boggling.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released a new set of super high-resolution bathymetry data of the Northern Gulf of Mexico for anyone with a computer to enjoy. It uses 233,100km2 worth of 3D seismic data to increase the resolution of the regional maps 10 to 50 fold. It's made up of 1.4 billion 40x40 foot pixels, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management website, which is incredibly high resolution compared with what we had before.

"We know more about some other planets than about a lot of the areas of our own planet's sea floor," BOEM geologist Kody Kramer told Gizmodo.

Kramer and others were approached by scientists after the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 for some Gulf of Mexico seafloor maps. BOEM asked the oil and gas companies drilling in the region to pass along their proprietary data, then made a mosaic combining the best-quality images to make one super high-res map.

"Scientists were eager to get this high resolution data," said Kramer. "It's so much better than what's out here already for the region.

Some of the weird shapes visible in the maps don't come from plate tectonics, but from several hundred-million-year-old salt deposits. The Gulf of Mexico was once an enclosed basin, and seawater pouring in may have evaporated and formed those deposits, according to Eos. All of that salt combined with the sediment from the rivers surrounding the Gulf, lead to the array of domes and depressions in the map.

You can read more about how all the salt got there in Kramer's own words. Over here, we're still stuck on how amazing the new map is.

You might be wondering why the data cuts off at more shallow parts of the Gulf. All of this data is taken by blasting air downwards at the seafloor, then measuring the acoustic response. But data collection is actually more difficult in shallower areas, where the readings return too much noise to make a meaningful picture.

As new data comes in, BOEM will continue making improvements to the map, and they're happy to do it. "Any time we can take our massive database and let other scientists use it," said Kramer. "We are very happy about that."

You can download the data over at the BOEM website, linked here. If you're lazy, here are some more photos.

 

 

 

[MIKA27]

THIS GUY MAKES SOME OF THE CREEPIEST LEATHER MASKS IN THE WORLD

Alle Ziele makes the creepiest leather masks in all New Zealand. They look like something straight out of a nightmare.

Ziele's work entangles fact and fiction in a dark fantasy world. And because he crafts the masks from leather, they bend and contort seamlessly with the wearer's face, making the effect even more surreal.

If these don't send shivers down your spine, we don't know what will.

"My objects sometimes take hundreds of hours to create due to fact that I use hand tools only," Ziele says of his process. "No machinery takes part in the process, every stitch is done by hand and there are thousands of it in every project."

And due to the fact that he travels often, there's really no way he could move with more than hand tools. Thus, the masks will always be 100% crafted by hand, which we think is the secret ingredient to their extreme creepiness.

"With a background of having studied Biology I find my inspiration in nature where I have fallen in love with organic shapes and structures," he says.

"The character design consists of my leather work combined with body painting, costume, props, basically whatever tells the story."

Find more of Ziele's creepy masks here.

[MIKA27]

Robot Cop Walks the Beat in Dubai

Using the latest in robotics technology, the city of Dubai has officially put a robotic police officer into active duty to serve and protect.
What could possibly go wrong?

Presented at the Gulf Information Security and Expo Conference last week, the bot has officially begun his duties walking the beat on the mean streets of Dubai. Rolling around on wheels, the 1.7 meter tall robot can identify gestures and hand signals from 1.5 meters away. Armed with the latest in facial recognition software, AI, emotion detector, and other smart technologies, the ‘robocop’ can interact with people, deal with various emotional states, deal with crime reports, and give directions. It can also bow, shake hands, salute, and speak six languages including Arabic and English.

According to Brigadier-General Khalid Nasser Al Razzouqi, a director with the Dubai Police,

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With an aim to assist and help people in the malls or on the streets, the Robocop is the latest smart addition to the force and has been designed to help us fight crime, keep the city safe and improve happiness levels.

The robot also has a built in touch screen tablet in his chest. People can make payments for certain public services, report crimes, look at maps, and type in other simple search queries.

 

The Dubai police force was quite clear that this robot was not designed to replace human officers. Its function will not be to deal with active crimes, but instead deal with the public on simple tasks, such as providing directions or expediting the police report process. However, due to its integrated HD cameras and facial recognition, it may be used to help identify offenders or broadcast images of criminals using a live video feed.

Al Razzouqi concludes,

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The launch of the world’s first operational Robocop is a significant milestone for the emirate and a step towards realising Dubai’s vision to be a global leader in smart cities technology adoption.

He also hinted that the plan for the police force is to replace a quarter of its active officers with these robots by 2030. Is this just another step towards the robot apocalypse? Probably.

[MIKA27]

COOL BOND CARS THAT DEFINED AN ERA OF 007

Over half a century. That’s how long Ian Flemming’s fictional British spy has been saving the world and gracing screens for.

What started with 1962’s Dr. No with Sean Connery at the helm has today spanned twenty four films with countless martinis, Bond girls and Bond cars to mull over. And as a tribute to one of the finest gentlemen out there and arguably the most memorable 007 in the series, Sir Roger Moore, we’ve decided to gather ten of the coolest 007 cars to ever be manhandled (and destroyed) by the titular hero.

Think the list is garbage? Let us know which model you think should be in here and why.

LOTUS ESPRIT TURBO

It might not have transformed into a submarine like it did in The Spy Who Loved Me but it did get attention for its muscular alpine aesthetic complete with hatch-mounted ski racks in For Your Eyes Only. The Essex Esprit Turbo is powered by a dry sump turbocharged four-cylinder engine which developed 157 kWand 270 Nm of torque. It saw one hundred clicks from stand still in 6.1 seconds and had a top speed of 240km/h. Roger Moore was the pilot of this sexy beast.

FORD MUSTANG MACH ONE

Blink and you’ll miss it. James Bond did American muscle during his stint in Vegas in Diamonds are Forever with Sean Connery behind the wheel of this 1971 Mach One. The car helped Bond evade danger with a big V8 with 250kW and 597Nm of torque sent to the rear rubber.

LEYLAND MINI MOKE

The Leyland  Mini Moke is an iconic car which is still kicking around on some resorts these days. It wasn’t exactly a dedicated Bond car but it was certainly a favourite in the films having appeared in You Only Live Twice, Live & Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. The engine size varied from the early model’s 850cc to the 1.2-litre mark later on. It was just enough to get Sir Roger Moore around town in funky bell-bottoms.

ASTON MARTIN DB5

No one messes with the original which first showed up in 1964’s Goldfinger before making its way into six future Bond films. As the Godfather of Bond cars, the 1963 DB5 sported a 4.0-litre in-line six engine with 210kW of power that afforded it a top speed of 233km/h. It was also crammed full of gadgets including a bulletproof body, machine guns, ejector seat, wheel blades and oil slicks.

TOYOTA 2000GT

Considered as Japan’s first real supercar, the 1967 Toyota 2000GT Roadster was a beautiful piece of machinery which was custom made as a droptop for the film, You Only Live Twice. This was because Connery was too tall for the roofline. With only 351 examples ever produced, the 2000GT is insanely rare and can mostly be found in museums or hidden away in collectors lots. When they do sell at auctions, they can fetch up to US$1.2M.

AMC HORNET

Another Roger Moore piece of kit is the compact American muscle car known as the AMC Hornet. It was famously launched through the sky in an inverted barrel roll in The Man With The Golden Gun. In reality it packed a variation of engines during its production including a big 5.0-litre V8.

ASTON MARTIN VANQUISH

Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as 007 also gave him the car that was the most ridiculously equipped. The Aston Martin Vanquish in Die Another Day came with front-mounted rockets behind the grille, hood mounted machine guns and Predator-style invisibility which made sneaking up on villains quite easy. Outside the campy confines of the film, the Vanquish featured a big 6.0-litre V12 which produced 335kW and 540Nm of torque.

ASTON MARTIN VANTAGE VOLANTE

The lesser known V8 Vantage Volante from Aston Martin served as actor Timothy Dalton’s Bond car in his first appearance as 007. It evoked a tough American muscle car aesthetic even though it was British and featured a bevy of gadgets including missiles, lasers, rocket boosters and a self-destruct button. The actual car didn’t have those but it did sport a 5.3-litre V8, a 5.3 second sprint to 100km/h and top speed of 270km/h. It’s also widely considered as Britain’s first supercar which appeared in 1977.

ALFA ROMEO GTV6

Roger Moore gave this heroic little Alfa Romeo GTV6 an absolute ringing in Octopussy whilst thrashing BMW police cars in its wake. The charismatic car features a V6 engine complete with a muscular bonnet bulge paired with fastback coupe body.

ASTON MARTIN DB10

One of the latest and greatest Bond cars of them all is the non-production concept DB10 by Aston Martin. This sleek looking futuristic machine was helmed by Daniel Craig in SPECTRE and changed the game via its beautifully minimalist aesthetic. In total only ten examples were built for the film and it borrows the 4.7-litre V8 from the Vantage. One of the two of DB10 show cars which weren’t used in the film but for promotional purposes eventually went to auction and sold for £2.4 million. The bad news? It can’t be driven in public since it doesn’t meet production car safety standards.

[MIKA27]

NASA's Juno Mission Just Dropped Its First Huge Pile Of Results

There's no drama quite like space drama. And Juno's flight to Jupiter has been about as dramatic as a sci-fi thriller can get. Last October, Juno's engine system malfunctioned, causing NASA to delay the orbiter's planned approach into a 14-day "science orbit". This February, NASA decided to forego the science orbit engine burn entirely, keeping the spacecraft in its much longer 53.5 day orbit. But today, we're finally getting some good news.

NASA is releasing Juno's first scientific results, in a dump of nearly 50 papers published in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters today. The mission's plan to study the crap out of the planet has managed to offer surprises wherever possible. Be it the gas giant's gravitational field, aurorae or just the weather, Jupiter is a whole lot weirder than anyone thought it would be.

"It's a lot more complex than scientists have been assuming. That's a theme that runs through almost all the datasets that we have," Scott Bolton, Juno's principle investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Texas told Gizmodo. "One of the most exciting results is this paradigm shift — we have to rethink how giant planets work in general."

Juno has a suite of instruments for measuring microwaves, infrared waves, radio waves, visible light, Jupiter's magnetic field and other particles. The craft's enlongated orbit around the planet allows periodic up-close measurements, taken during "perijove" passes. The data helps scientists understand some of Jupiter's most important properties, including the shape of its gigantic magnetic field, how gasses are distributed inside the planet and how they move around, how much water the planet has in its atmosphere, and hopefully, the giant gassy planet's structure all the way down to its core.

The most recent analyses come from only one or two of Juno's closest approaches, so it's just a snippet of the total data to be collected from the mission (initially, Juno was slated to make 33 perijove passes, but following the decision to keep the spacecraft in a wider orbit, that number has been reduced). But initial observations show a gravitational field differing from scientist's original expectations, poles with a lot of clustered storms more chaotic than Saturn's, a magnetic field twice as strong as expected, and an incredible process for generating auroras, probably far different from Earth's.

It's important to point out that one or two passes isn't nearly enough to make many striking conclusions aside from "Jupiter is weird". "It's like you want to understand the middle of the Earth, assumed it wasn't mostly symmetric, and all you did was fly over Florida and New York," said Bolton. "You wouldn't be able to know what it was like over California or Africa or Europe."

Aside from limitations of the spacecraft's orbit and changes to the mission itself, most of the folks I spoke with thought Juno's instruments — the best that have ever been flown to Jupiter to study it — outweighed its limitations. "We're getting better data than we ever had before," Kimberly Moore, Harvard graduate student, told Gizmodo. "The question isn't what our limits are, but how much better our results are."

And if there's someone who knows about Juno's technological improvements, it's Bill Kurth from the University of Iowa. He studied radio waves with the Voyager mission almost 40 years ago, and is now working on radio wave and plasma observations for Juno. The new instruments have allowed Kurth and other radio scientists to do something Voyager scientists couldn't — fly right through some of the solar system's most intense radio emissions, emanating from Jupiter. "I think the Voyager program enabled us to write down the questions that we could answer with these followup missions," said Kurth.

Mark Hofstadter, Planetary Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, was only part of the proposal process and as a sort-of outside source felt these first results have been a "beautiful example of how science often works". Theorists create all sorts of models to try to explain data, and scientists tend to favour the simplest ones. But those models often aren't quite right. Now that observers have actually collected data, theorists need to go back and try to figure out what the heck is going on.

Hofstadter was especially excited about weather patterns that seem to go deep down several hundred kilometres below Jupiter's surface. Sure, we see the raging storms on the surface, but there seems to be even more complexity beneath.

Researchers didn't seem to be too disappointed about the longer-than-expected orbits, either, since they give folks more time to do science, Randy Gladstone, another SwRI physicist, told Gizmodo. He did point out that the spacecraft's new alignment will be tricky to deal with — it was supposed to orbit around the planet's twilight region between dawn and dusk, but now experiences full sun and full dark time. Those aren't the conditions the instruments were built to operate in. It will also be more difficult to deal with the increased exposure to sunlight while trying to look at the planet's aurora.

Ultimately, researchers hope to understand not just the largest planet in the solar system, but how planets form in general. Things like the abundance of each element on Jupiter can help scientists constrain their theories about other gas giants, said Bolton. "But you won't be able to test those predictions until you fly a mission to those planets as well."

If you're excited about Juno, you can help vote on where the visible light JunoCam should point during perijove. After new images are taken, they're dropped online where folks with the right software can process them and make some pretty incredible pictures. And if you were wondering what the planet smelled like, "it would have a stronger ammonia smell than Uranus or Neptune," said Hofstadter. So, a lot more like pee than farts.

 

[MIKA27]

The Incredible Bowling Alleys of Germany

American bowling and its European predecessor Kegel (see also: kegeln or nine-pin bowling) remain hugely popular in Europe with organized clubs, teams and alleys in almost every major city center. Photographer Robert Götzfried set out to document the phenomenon simply titled Bowling Alleys. In our opinion it’s the closest thing you can get to bowling porn without searching the dark places of the web or rewatching that iconic scene from The Big Lebowski. From a wood-lined alley inside a Bavarian beer hall in the south of Munich to enormous, American-style alleys clearly setup for cosmic bowling, Götzfried traveled around Germany documenting the cool and interesting bowling setups that showcase the evolution of the sport as well the traditional aspects that made it so popular in the first place. One thing’s for sure: if any of these places were stateside we’d be willing to bet some of them would end up on a list of best bars in America.

 

[MIKA27]

Whipping Post Boxcar Duffle

Leather crafters Whipping Post have added a new product to their line of beautiful vintage products. The Boxcar Duffle is beautifully crafted from Vegetable tanned leather, a material that only looks better with age. The timeless bag features plenty of internal space and comes with a removable zippered pocket to keep your small items safely stored, an adjustable strap, and an ID tag. You can even personalise it with a monogram up to 3 letters.    

[MIKA27]

DJI Spark Drone

The world´s largest drone manufacturer, DJI, have revealed a $499 miniature-sized personal drone. Weighing in at just over 10 ounces, the Spark is a palm-sized drone with a focus on portability and gesture-controls. It can fly up to 31 mph and be controlled using simple hand gestures (as long as it’s no more than 10 feet away), wave your hand to have move it up or down, right or left and pull it toward or away from you, while a quick gesture that resembles you taking a picture will trigger the camera´s selfie mode. It also has a transmission distance of up to 1.2 miles using a special wi-fi remote. Other notable features include a gimbal-mounted camera shooting 1080p video and 12-megapixel stills, battery life for up to 16 minutes, and built-in sensors to avoid obstacles. Available in several colors.

 

[MIKA27]

PRYNT POCKET IPHONE PRINTER

The original Prynt was the first ever photo-printing case. It was also, to put it kindly, rather large. The Prynt Pocket iPhone Printer retains the ability to print out your shots instantly but reduces the size dramatically. Compatible with all Lightning-enabled iPhones, it functions as a camera grip, with a dedicated shutter button, settings dial, and a tray to hold the Zink sticker paper it outputs. A companion app lets you apply filters, add text, and even "attach" videos to your prints that appear in the app when you point the camera at them. Available in graphite, mint green, and a light gray.

 

[MIKA27]

HOCHSTADTER'S FAMILY RESERVE RYE WHISKEY

The team at Cooper Spirits Company have released some great whiskey during the past few years, sourced from some of the best distilleries in the world. Hochstadter's Family Reserve Rye Whiskey is the latest, made from 100 percent farm-grown rye and aged 16 years in newly charred American Oak. Distilled by Alberta Distillers Limited and hand selected by the founder of Cooper Spirits, it's bottled at 123.8 proof in Philadelphia and limited to only 7,500 bottles.

[MIKA27]

This Sci-Fi Horror Short Contains One Of The Creepiest Space Monsters We've Ever Seen 

Jerónimo Rocha's sci-fi horror short Dédalo is reminiscent of Alien in both visuals and story. It follows a woman who appears to be the lone survivor of a gruesome attack on her space freighter. Her frantic struggle to survive is suspenseful as hell, but the real draw here is that alien creature, specifically its freakishly spiky nails. Claws? Talons? Whatever. Yikes!
 

[Fuzz]

Hey Mika! Did you just post a whole bunch of F1 related posts in the wrong section?

[polarbear]

6 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

Hey Mika! Did you just post a whole bunch of F1 related posts in the wrong section?

I was thinking the same thing

[MIKA27]

12 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

Hey Mika! Did you just post a whole bunch of F1 related posts in the wrong section?

YEP...... Then I realised wrong thread!

I'm slowly editing and posting over them mate 

[MIKA27]

Coordinated Boa Attacks Are A Horror You Didn't Know Existed

As twilight descends, nocturnal bat species rouse from their daily resting places to feed, creating spectacular clouds as they pour out of caves en masse. But look closer at Jamaican fruit bat colonies as they emerge from sinkhole caves in Cuba, and you may catch a glimpse of a concurrent macabre ritual: As the bats erupt from the cave, a deadly curtain of Cuban boas hangs in their path, aiming to snatch the winged creatures mid-flight.

That's right — these snakes coordinate their attacks, and the result is terrifying.

Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was guiding a bird- and mammal-watching tour through Desembarco del Granma National Park, Cuba, when he first noticed the cavern-hunting snakes. Intrigued by the bold behaviour, he decided to take a closer look.

The boas involved could all be found basking near the cave's entrance during the day, while the bats slumbered in an adjacent chamber separated by a narrow passage. As daylight faded, some of the snakes would move from their warm nooks into the passageway.

There, they would dangle their serpentine bodies from the ceiling, ready to strike as bats flew past. Other snakes would take up similar hunting positions as dawn approached, catching the bats as they returned. During each potential feeding opportunity, Dinets dutifully recorded the position of the snakes as well as their hunting success, or lack thereof.

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"There is an old dogma stating that reptiles are mostly solitary and stupid. My finding is just one of many recent discoveries challenging it."

After eight days of records, Dinets concluded the snakes coordinated their hunts, and published his results in the Animal Behaviour and Cognition. The first boa would pick its place. Then, when the next slithered up, it would position itself in near the first. And if a third snake joined in, it would hang with the others, too. Dinets considered that the snakes might all just prefer the same areas of the passage, but no snake chose the same segment twice during the entire study, suggesting coordination, not similar taste in locale.

And that coordination paid off — boas were significantly more likely to capture a meal if they hunted together. "Visual observations suggested that most bats were able to avoid flying near boas when there were one or two boas present, but with three boas present the bats had to fly either within striking distance from one of them (often colliding with the boas) or very low above the passage floor," Dinets explained in the paper.

While the snakes coordinated with one another, it's not quite accurate to say they hunted in a "pack" like wolves, as that implies a social aspect that Dinets didn't see. "I saw no evidence of direct communication," he told Gizmodo. "They just take each other's positions into account."

Still, coordination to maximise hunting success is practically unknown in reptiles (crocodilians and monitor lizards are notable exceptions). "There is an old dogma stating that reptiles are mostly solitary and stupid," said Dinets. "My finding is just one of many recent discoveries challenging it."

Intriguingly, this isn't the first cave where serpents have been observed hunting bats mid-flight. Writer, ecologist and wildlife photographer Neil Losin and his colleagues have observed a similar strategy among snakes in Puerto Rico. "We saw up to eight boas hunting at the same time, and it's certainly quite a 'gauntlet' for the bats to run," he said. But he and his team only observed and filmed — they didn't perform quantitative science to determine if the boas were coordinating their hunting.

There's also the famous Cavern of Serpents near the village of Kantenmo, Mexico, where tourists flock to see snakes snatch bats as they exit for the evening. Again, no one has looked closely for coordination. But given the number of examples of this style of cavern feeding, "it is possible that coordinated hunting is not uncommon among snakes," Dinets said. "But it will take a lot of very patient field research to find out."

[MIKA27]

NOAA Predicts More Hurricanes Than Usual This Year

Stock up on your canned beans and gumboots, folks: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook has dropped, and for the first time in years, the weather monitoring agency is predicting more hurricanes than average.

The Atlantic hurricane season, which kicks off next week and runs through the end of November, will see the development of 11 to 17 named storms, five to nine of which will reach hurricane status, NOAA predicts. To receive an official name, a tropical storm must feature windspeeds of 64km/h or higher. To reach hurricane status, that storm needs to muster enough strength for sustained winds of 119km/h or higher, while major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 and 5) clock in with windspeeds starting at 178km/h. This season, NOAA predicts two to four of those giants, which carry the most destructive potential.

"The outlook reflects our expectation of a weak or non-existent El Nino, near- or above-average sea-surface temperatures across the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, and average or weaker-than-average vertical wind shear in that same region," Gerry Bell, seasonal hurricane forecaster with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, said in a statement.

Strong El Nino events tend to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity, by inhibiting the development of the thunderstorms that seed these cyclones. Meanwhile, warm sea surface temperatures mean more energy for passing storms to feed off, plus additional evaporation of water into an atmosphere that can hold more. These are some of the reasons scientists worry hurricanes could become more intense in a warming climate, although so far, the Atlantic basin hasn't experienced a hurricane uptick clearly attributable to climate change.

While the 2017 Hurricane Season Outlook marks the first above-average hurricane season NOAA has anticipated since 2013, it's worth noting that this is just a prediction. NOAA predicts a 35 per cent chance of a near-normal season, and a 20 per cent chance of a lower-than-average hurricane showing, so there's still a considerable deal of uncertainty.

And historically, these predictions aren't always right. Last year, NOAA predicted a near-normal hurricane season, but 2016 turned out to be a doozy, with seven hurricanes, four of which achieved major hurricane status. Most memorable of those, of course, was Hurricane Matthew, the record-smashing storm that intensified into a Category 5 in just 36 hours before proceeding to rampage across the Caribbean, laying waste to impoverished Haiti and prompting one of the largest evacuations in Florida's history.

So, yes, hurricanes are scary, and we should be glad to have some of the best weather-monitoring infrastructure and brightest meteorologists in the world working to track them. Let's try and keep it that way.

[MIKA27]

This Day In History: Dracula goes on sale in London

The first copies of the classic vampire novel Dracula, by Irish writer Bram Stoker, appear in London bookshops on this day in 1897.

A childhood invalid, Stoker grew up to become a football (soccer) star at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduation, he got a job in civil service at Dublin Castle, where he worked for the next 10 years while writing drama reviews for the Dublin Mail on the side. In this way, Stoker met the well-respected actor Sir Henry Irving, who hired him as his manager. Stoker stayed in the post for most of the next three decades, writing Irving’s voluminous correspondence for him and accompanying him on tours in the United States. Over the years, Stoker began writing a number of horror stories for magazines, and in 1890 he published his first novel, The Snake’s Pass.

Stoker would go on to publish 17 novels in all, but it was his 1897 novel Dracula that eventually earned him literary fame and became known as a masterpiece of Victorian-era Gothic literature. Written in the form of diaries and journals of its main characters, Dracula is the story of a vampire who makes his way from Transylvania–a region of Eastern Europe now in Romania–to Yorkshire, England, and preys on innocents there to get the blood he needs to live. Stoker had originally named the vampire “Count Wampyr.” He found the name Dracula in a book on Wallachia and Moldavia written by retired diplomat William Wilkinson, which he borrowed from a Yorkshire public library during his family’s vacations there.

Vampires–who left their burial places at night to drink the blood of humans–were popular figures in folk tales from ancient times, but Stoker’s novel catapulted them into the mainstream of 20th-century literature. Upon its release, Dracula enjoyed moderate success, though when Stoker died in 1912 none of his obituaries even mentioned Dracula by name. Sales began to take off in the 1920s, when the novel was adapted for Broadway. Dracula mania kicked into even higher gear with Universal’s blockbuster 1931 film, directed by Tod Browning and starring the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi. Dozens of vampire-themed movies, television shows and literature followed, though Lugosi, with his exotic accent, remains the quintessential Count Dracula. Late 20th-century examples of the vampire craze include the bestselling novels of American writer Anne Rice and the cult hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not to mention numerous movies.

[MIKA27]

This Oddball Rolls-Royce Could Be The Most Expensive New Car Ever

The Rolls-Royce Sweptail, a one-off coupe designed for a specific customer who likely has unfathomable amounts of cash, could be the most expensive new car ever sold at a reported $US12.8 million. The car has been in the works since 2013, and, in all of its wildly expensive glory, is kind of strange looking.
The Sweptail buyer, described in a Rolls-Royce press release as a "connoisseur and collector of distinctive, one-off items including super-yachts and private aircraft" — like all of us, of course — went to the company and asked for a car inspired by the Rolls-Royces of the 1920s and 1930s.

He asked for a coach-built coupe with a glass roof, and Rolls-Royce showed the car off at the Concorso d'Eleganza in Italy this weekend. Here's a description of the influences on its design, written with such grossly exaggerated elegance that it's almost hard to translate into the language of us common folk:

Quote

The grandeur, scale, flamboyance and drama of the 1925 Phantom I Round Door built by Jonckheere; the svelte tapering glasshouse, dramatic dash to axle proportion and up-sweep of the rear departure angle of the 1934 Phantom II Streamline Saloon by Park Ward; the elegantly falling waist-rail, swept tail coachwork of the 1934 Gurney Nutting Phantom II Two Door Light Saloon, and the flowing roofline, rising departure angle, and again the swept tail coachwork of the 1934 Park Ward 20/25 Limousine Coupé were all considered by today's Rolls-Royce designers in the creation of this very distinctive motor car.

The Telegraph reports that the car cost around £10 million, or just over $US12.8 ($17) million at current exchange rates. The outlet also reports that it's the most expensive new car — forget about auctions or privately sold cars — ever sold, which would sound about right since the average Bugatti Chiron slots in at just under $US3 ($4) million.

But remember that if you have the money, a manufacturer will do just about anything for you. Dip your expensive, performance-oriented supercar in solid gold, if you want. McLaren even offers "almost limitless customisation" on its 720S, except for T-tops. You won't get any of those.

The point is, the number that determines the "most expensive new car ever sold" is murky no matter how you look at it. The Telegraph is also one of the few outlets reporting the $US12.8 ($17)-million price, while GQ said Rolls-Royce "refused to give ... a figure, or even a hint of one."

We may not ever know how much the Sweptail cost its owner, but we do know what it looks like: sort of like wagon with a deflated back end, which is a little strange — but, then again, we humans will think anything is strange to make ourselves feel better about not being able to afford even a small fraction of it.

Below are some photos and a video of the car, so you can feel thoroughly poor and unworthy on this fine Saturday. Enjoy yourselves.

 

[MIKA27]

Carrie Fisher Slapped Oscar Isaac So Many Times On The Set Of The Last Jedi

Have you ever found out about something and then realised it was everything you've ever needed? Because that's how I feel knowing there's footage somewhere of Carrie Fisher slapping Oscar Isaac — as General Leia and Poe Dameron — over and over again.

On the latest episode of The Late Show, Isaac reminisced with Stephen Colbert about Fisher. "Actually a large amount of the stuff I got to do was with Carrie, which was amazing," he said. "I remember the first day of shooting was a scene with Carrie. And it was still — often times that first day, the filmmakers, everybody's trying to get the tone and figure it out — and I remember it was a scene where I come up and talk to her and she's very upset with me and slaps me. And [director] Rian [Johnson] kept doing it over and over."

"It ended up being like 27 takes of Carrie just leaning in," Isaac finished. "And every time she'd hit like a different spot on my face."

Look, I think we know what extra needs to be on The Last Jedi Blu-Ray Special Edition.

 

[MIKA27]

Peter Jackson Releases Some Intriguing Concept Art For His Mortal Engines Film

Peter Jackson is hard at work on his latest adaptation: Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve's steampunk saga that could be the latest YA series to become a big screen hit. Jackson has unveiled the first real look at the world of Mortal Engines, and it looks promising.

Directed by Oscar-winning visual effects artist Christian Rivers (in his directorial debut), Mortal Engines is about a world thousands of years in the future where cities roam the globe on giant wheels, attacking and devouring each other to try and hold on to resources. Here you can see what looks to be the mysterious female Outlander (in her trademark red scarf) gazing on Traction City, where she meets a young man named Tom Natsworthy and changes the course of his life.

Jackson got the film rights for Mortal Engines back when the novel debuted in 2001, and production is currently underway (Jackson is serving as co-writer). The film stars Robert Sheehan, Hera Hilmar, Leila George, Ronan Raftery, Hugo Weaving and Stephen Lang. Should the adaptation be received well, there are plans to turn it into a franchise based on Reeve's four-novel series.