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The Strange History of the Die Hard Movies

The Die Hard series may be quiet at the moment, but there's a unique story behind the writing of each one…

As any action fanatic will tell you, Die Hard is among the best films of its type ever made. Tautly directed by John McTiernan, deceptively well shot by cinematographer Jan de Bont, and full of charismatic turns from Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, and Bonnie Bedelia, it’s seldom been bettered, even by its sequels.

The key to the first film's success, and the sequels in their best moments, is hero John McClane. Tough, sarcastic but ultimately human, he cuts a very different figure from the beefed-up, larger-than-life heroes of 1980s and 90s action cinema. When John McClane gets shot or injured, he actually feels pain. It's something we were keenly aware of in the 1988 original, but gradually ebbed away as the Die Hard franchise drifted from thriller territory and into the realms of pure action.

It's important to remember, though, that the Die Hard series hails from an era before the carefully-planned cinematic universes we see today. The original Die Hard could have been a very different film, and the sequels also have some interesting stories behind them.

Let's take a closer look...

Die Hard (1988)

Written by Steven E. de Souza and Jeb Stuart, the screenplay for Die Hard was based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. Thorp was inspired to write the novel, about German terrorists taking over a Los Angeles office block, after watching The Towering Inferno, one of the most successful of Irwin Allen's star-laden disaster pictures.

Although Nothing Lasts Forever’s basic high-rise thriller concept was ported across to the movie Die Hard more or less intact, the characters were somewhat different in the novel. The protagonist in Thorp's story was named Joseph Leland, a retired police officer who’s unhappily divorced. Further, it’s his daughter rather than his wife who’s the hostage in the building, which belongs to the mythical Klaxon Oil rather than the Nakatomi Corporation in McTiernan’s movie.

Interestingly, the character of Harry Ellis is remarkably similar to the one in the film; he’s a smug cocaine user, immediately disliked by the hero, and at one point colludes with the terrorists. And like Ellis in the movie (memorably played by Hart Bochner), the one in the book comes to a fittingly sticky end.

When it was first optioned, Nothing Lasts Forever was going to be made as a vehicle for Frank Sinatra, who’d already starred in an adaptation of Thorp’s earlier novel, The Detective. Sinatra would have again played Joe Leland, an elder hero who probably wouldn't have spent quite as much time crawling through ducts and swinging from fire hoses.

For many years, there was a story circulating that Nothing Lasts Forever was going to be retooled as a sequel to Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1985 action opus, Commando. Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza, who also wrote the screenplay for Commando, firmly laid that rumor to rest in an interview with us in 2013. "None of that is true," he said. "Let’s put that rumor to bed right now, as there was no connection between those movies!"

De Souza went on to explain that his real, never-used screenplay for Commando 2 had more in common with the recent Schwarzenegger-Stallone flick, Escape Plan: Schwarzenegger's John Matrix becomes a security specialist, and has to rescue his daughter from some bad guys holed up in a building he himself designed. It's possible that the common factor of an action thriller set in a building may have led some readers to make a connection with Nothing Lasts Forever, and thus a new urban legend was born.

At any rate, de Souza and Jeb Stuart adapted Nothing Lasts Forever as Die Hard, with the central character written as a younger yet still cynical cop by the name of John McClane. Bruce Willis was signed up for a princely $5 million, and the rest is action movie history.

Die Hard 2 (1990)

Although written by one half of the first film’s writing duo (Steven E de Souza, with new partner Doug Richardson), the script for Die Hard 2 was taken from another novel, this one called 58 Minutes by Walter Wager. First published in 1987, 58 Minutes provided the basic spine of the film’s story: the hero has to take out a group of terrorists in an airport before the plane carrying his wife crashes.

Richardson and de Souza reworked the story to include John McClane and his wife Holly, as well as William Atherton’s slime-bag journalist Dick Thorburg from the first movie. It's arguable, however, that John McTiernan's absence was keenly felt. In the hands of director Renny Harlin, Die Hard 2 became bigger, louder, more violent, and considerably more expensive: with a budget of $70 million, it cost more than twice as much to make as the original.

Trivia: the French release of Die Hard 2 (sort of) retained the title of Walter Wager’s novel, since it was called 58 Minutes Pour Vivre, or 58 Minutes To Live.

Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995)

Like Die Hard and Die Hard 2, the third film in the series originally began life as another property entirely – and in fact, several screenplays were considered and rejected before its producers settled on the one filmed by a returning John McTiernan in 1995.

The first screenplay considered was called Troubleshooter, and originally written on spec by one James Haggin. This would have seen McClane fight terrorists on a Caribbean cruise ship, but the idea was ditched when the producers learned that a film called Under Siege, then still in production, had a similar plot. In a notable instance of Hollywood recycling, Troubleshooter’s story was later revived for the rather dire Speed 2: Cruise Control.

Later, writers including John Milius, Doug Richardson, and John Fasano each had a crack at writing a Die Hard 3 story or script, but none passed muster with Bruce Willis. The problem, it seemed, was finding a scenario that hadn’t already been thought of – in the wake of Die Hard’s popularity, movies such as Cliffhanger and Executive Decision were billed respectively as Die Hard on a mountain or Die Hard on a plane, for example. 

Eventually, a script was found, written by Jonathan Hensleigh, who’d already cut his teeth on the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles before working on a spec script called Simon Says. Written with young action star Brandon Lee in mind, the script was picked up by Warner as a possible fourth Lethal Weapon movie, which would presumably have seen Murtaugh and Riggs head to New York to put a stop to Simon the terrorist’s bomb triggering antics.

Instead, the story was retooled as another McClane adventure, which would explain why the movie feels somewhat different from the previous two movies. McClane’s fractious, fast-talking partnership with Samuel L. Jackson’s Zeus Carver (whose character was actually female in one draft of the script) feels very much like Murtaugh and Riggs’ love-hate patter, and while it's highly entertaining (and well put together by McTiernan) the city-sprawling violence is a world away from the towering claustrophobia of Die Hard.

Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

Once again continuing the tradition of looking far afield for Die Hard story ideas, Live Free or Die Hard’s plot was loosely based on an article called "A Farewell To Arms," written by John Carlin and published in Wired magazine. And once again, the script began life as something else entirely; this time, it was called WW3.com, and was a high-tech thriller by David Marconi, who previously wrote Enemy Of The State.

Originally intended for release in the late 90s, WW3.com was postponed following the 9/11 attacks. At one point, Luc Besson was slated to produce the movie on behalf of Fox for an intended release in 2002. Again, this never happened. Eventually, Doug Richardson took the script and reworked it for John McClane’s character, though other writers would become involved in subsequent rewrites, including Mark Bomback, Kevin Smith and an uncredited William Wisher, writer of Terminator 2.

Interestingly, there were two other potential Die Hard 4 scripts floating around at one point, both called Die Hardest, both written on spec by Ben Trebilcook, and both rejected. One would have been set in Tokyo, where McClane’s son worked for the Nakatomi Corporation, while the other was set in the Caribbean, and would have seen McClane and his daughter fighting shipwreck looters.

Another weird yet true fact: the film’s original title was Die Hard: Tears Of The Sun. Bruce Willis later took the Tears title and attached it to the war film he made in 2003 with director Antoine Fuqua.

A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)

Now we come to the most recent and gloomy chapter of the Die Hard saga. The first in the series to be based on an original script and not a story hooked in from elsewhere, A Good Day To Die Hard took John McClane to Moscow for an adventure with his son, Jack. It's probably fair to say that just about everything that distinguished the previous Die Hard installments from other action films was checked in at Domodedovo airport and never seen again.

The fifth Die Hard was directed by John Moore, whose previous films included the remake of The Omen and videogame Max Payne. Screenwriter Skip Woods, meanwhile, was the pensmith behind Swordfish, Hitman, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. According to an interview with Crave Online, Woods' first brush with the Die Hard franchise actually came a few years earlier, where he was hired to do a bit of uncredited dialogue work.

Bruce Willis and Woods hit it off during the shoot, and it was Willis who called the screenwriter up about writing the fifth film. "So when he had this idea for [Die Hard 5], he actually called me up and said, 'I have this idea about his son, rescuing his son.' That was his whole idea, and I kind of went back and forth on it and it just sprang to life."

The idea of John McClane teaming up with his son had emerged during the days of Die Hard 4, so it's probably unsurprising that it would resurface a few years later. Early drafts of Woods' script were, however, much darker than the story that eventually emerged in 2013. In it, McClane's son is killed, and McClane heads to Moscow (or Afghanistan in one version of the script) to find out who the culprit was. Might we have been in for something quite bleak, like a Russia-set Get Carter?

Sadly, we'll never know, because it was ultimately decided that killing Jack McClane was "too dark." This wouldn't be the first time the Die Hard series would flirt with harshness, only to recoil at the last moment: Die Hard With A Vengeance originally had a far more brutal and abrupt ending, which was famously replaced with something more crowd-pleasing.

From Woods' perspective, it seems that Willis had a considerable amount of sway over Die Hard 5's story details and dialogue, with the star offering plenty of suggestions as to what McClane should say and when. John Moore seems to back this up; in an interview with Empire, he said, "People say was Bruce difficult to work with... it's another D word. It's demanding. The thing about this guy is he's the fucking dog at the gate in terms of what's appropriate for Die Hard. Cute self-reference and things like that, he's fucking lethal. No third Gruber, no second cousins, no cute in-jokes."

Widely panned by critics, A Good Day To Die Hard was by some distance the shortest film in the franchise to date; the previous entries were all over two hours long. A Good Day To Die Hard ran for just 97 minutes, much of it full of explosions and outlandish stunts. While the 12A version released in UK cinemas trimmed around the bloodier moments of excess, most of the things that make for a great Die Hard film were sorely lacking in the first place.

Die Hard 6?

Before Die Hard 5 came out, Willis seemed enthusiastic about making a sixth and final film in the franchise. The new film is called McClane and it will be directed by Len Wiseman. The movie will see Bruce Willis serve in a bookend sequence, with a younger actor taking over the role to tell of the character's early days. It's not clear if they'll look to spin off a new chapter in the franchise after this, but first, let's see if Die Hard 6 ever actually gets made.

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Happy Death Day 2U Trailer

Happy Death Day may not have broken the box office with Avengers: Infinity War level might. However, the Groundhog Day-influenced 2017 Blumhouse horror flick managed to achieve something impressive in its own right, manifesting as a big bang for the studio’s buck, with the micro-budgeted ($4.8 million) movie managing to reap $55.6 million at the domestic box office, which adds to a total of $122.6 million worldwide. Consequently, sequel prospects quickly glistened.

The sequel, titled Happy Death Day 2U, saw original film helmer Christopher B. Landon back in the director's chair, this time working off his own script. He's joined by a returning producer in studio head Jason Blum. Angela Mancuso and John Baldecchi return as executive producers, joined this time by Samson Mucke.

Happy Death Day 2U is scheduled to be a bloody Valentine's Day destination with its release date set for February 14, 2019.

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Image Comics' Bone-Chilling Infidel Is Coming To The Big Screen

Though Image’s Infidel is one of the publisher’s newer titles to recently hit stores, TriStar is already moving full-steam ahead with a big screen adaptation, and the studio’s just found a director to helm the film.

Written by Pornsak Pichetshote with illustrations from Aaron Campbell and José Villarrubia, Infidel tells the story of Aisha, a Muslim-American woman, as she and her neighbours come to realise that their apartment building is being menaced by a malevolent, racist presence targeting them for their ethnicities.

Variety reports that Paradise Now and The Mountain Between Us’ Hany Abu-Assad has been tapped to direct the film, with Juliet Snowden and Stiels White attached to adapt the script.

Between Infidel, the Candyman remake, HBO’s adaptation of Lovecraft Country, and the Mary J. Blige-led Body Cam, it’s looking as if there’s about to be a new wave of fascinating horror stories that use genre to explore the complexities of race and bigotry in America.

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Ghost Recon Wildlands Gets a New Trailer for Special Operation 3

Ubisoft has released a fresh new trailer today for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands‘ upcoming addition called Special Operation 3. While not a lot is being said about the content, we do know that it will include a brand-new PvE mission, new PvP maps and classes, a new Photo Mode, as well as improvements to the Prestige Economy which were all based on community feedback. More details will be released next week, but for now, enjoy the trailer!

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In a Crowded Celebrity Booze Market, Metallica Made One Worth Drinking

Metallica plays concerts on a rotating stage. As the band thrashes through two-hour-plus sets of face-melting, adrenaline-pumping mayhem, the circular stage at the center of the stadium with Lars Ulrich's drumset planted firmly in the middle slowly turns a full 360 degrees. By the end of the show, every fan, between sporadic, ecstatic mosh pits, will have seen him play head on. Every fan will have had face time with lead singer James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett, and bassist Robert Trujillo. It's a show built around the fans, encompassing the fans, perfected in nearly 40 years on the road.

In August, Metallica released its own whiskey brand, Blackened, the first liquor from the band. It, too, is immersed in music. Created in collaboration with master distiller Dave Pickerell, a rockstar himself in the whiskey world, Blackened is serenaded with the band's discography new and very, very old until it vibrates, soaking in the controlled, thumping energy as flavor from the barrel. The spirit itself was born not of some later-in-life rocker despair, as the money dries up and the last farewell tour winds down, but rather an effort to make a modern whiskey for younger folks to embrace as their own, says Ulrich. And unlike, say, Bob Dylan's unenthusiastic sponsorship of Heaven’s Door, the band is fully behind it.

“I love it,” Ulrich told me over the phone a couple weeks back, during a short break from their current tour. “It's given me a new relationship with whiskey, obviously because you're super proud with what you've done. And the idea that you can reach for a bottle and go, I'm pouring some of my own beverage, that's pretty cool.”

In a market crowded with celebrity boozes, it's a whiskey worth drinking, from a band that wouldn't know how to put out a boring product if it tried.

Dave Pickerell was a titan in craft distilling. He was the master distiller at Maker’s Mark for fourteen years before leaving to pursue his own projects, including the renowned WhistlePig. Awhile back he got a phone call from a drinks guy, who told him, hush-hush like, that there was a celebrity liquor deal that might interest him. After a long talk and the signing of a non-disclosure agreement, Pickerell, a longtime Metallica fan, learned that the aforementioned deal was with Metallica itself.

“There was sunshine coming out my ears,” he told me in Philadelphia in October, hours before we headed to see the band perform at the Wells Fargo Center.

For Metallica, Pickerell wanted to do something completely new. Back in his younger days, he’d once stood in a chapel as the organist hammered out the lowest notes on the register. He’d felt the building shake and his guts tremble, and kept that knowledge for future use: “I knew that ultra-low frequency has the energy to move molecules.”

Metallica operates on ultra-low frequencies. “It's like somebody dropped a bomb on the center of the stage” when the subwoofers went off, Pickerell said. What if, he wondered, those subwoofers could move the molecules in whiskey?

Pickerell, along with a team of scientists and Sweet Amber Distilling, the company Metallica started to make a spirit, ran tests, strapping transponders to whiskey barrels, turning on the music, and measuring things like gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. After 10 weeks, that whiskey pulled the good caramels and lactones from the insides of the barrel walls much faster than it did in barrels that hadn't been subwoofed, he said. The resulting flavor was different—astonishingly so. And not only that, but different music led to different flavor profiles.

“You can taste the music," said Pickerell. "I've done blind tastings with people, and they can clearly differentiate between two batches, and the only difference is the playlist."

If you scoff at all this as marketing bologna, Pickerell said Sweet Amber Distilling applied for a patent, and once that was approved, planned on submitting the data to scientific journals for the whiskey bigwigs of the world to test out for themselves.

But November 1, seven days after that concert in Philly, Pickerell died. The cause of death was hypertensive heart failure. Metallica was stunned, and so was the distilling world.

Pickerell is gone, but the work of producing Blackened continues.

"After the extremely sad passing of Master Distiller Dave Pickerell, Blackened will continue to move forward as a brand to honor Dave’s legacy and partnership with Metallica that he deeply treasured. Sweet Amber is proceeding with plans outlined by Dave and the band to open a distillery in the Bay Area in 2019. It’s our hope that the Dave Pickerell Distillery will be a testament to Dave and his final project,” John Bilello, CEO of Sweet Amber Distilling, said in a statement to Esquire Friday.

Even before it was made official, Ulrich wanted to carry on.

“I think that in the same way referencing when we lost Cliff, our bass player, in 1986, it felt like that the path to honor his legacy was to move forward,” he said. “To throw in the towel would be a surrender to the principles that he stood for.”

As it stands now, Blackened is a blend of quality whiskeys, ryes, and primarily, bourbons, already aged, and finished by Pickerell in black brandy barrels. Transponders on the black brandy barrels pulse Metallica music through the whiskey blend. The frequency (not volume) of the music causes the liquid to move, pulling flavor more quickly from the barrel, a process Pickerell dubbed “sonic enhancement.” (It is not, he emphasized, a rapid aging process, as some have called it.) As of December there are eight batches either sold out, currently shipping, or in the finishing stage, each serenaded with a different playlist. The naming convention starts with Batch 081, after the year Metallica was formed, and runs through Batch 088. Blackened 081 is spicy with a kick, best enjoyed on the rocks. The playlist that made it, which kicks off with "Eye of the Beholder" and ends on "Disposable Heroes," was cataloged by the entire band. Blackened 85 is sweeter, smoother, and tastes best straight. Trujillo created its playlist. 

Metallica has changed plenty throughout a run that's lasted nearly four decades. Their mid-'80s days of mainlining Smirnoff and Jack and Cokes are done; "Alcoholica," as they were famously nicknamed, is no more. Ulrich still enjoys a drink—"obviously in moderation, boys and girls" he adds—while Hetfield is 16 years sober. There have been well-received albums, and less well-received albums. And the audience has changed, meaning it's not just the same old guys who've been screaming along since the first live show in 1982. There are a lot of young people at their shows, even pre-teens, and a lot of women. "It looks to me like it's 50/50 boys/girls, and that wasn't always the case. Trust me," Ulrich tells me.

But some things stay the same.

"In its best moments, when you can lose yourself in the music, lose yourself in the safety of the other three guys in the band, knowing you're all in this together, and when you break down the barrier, the physical barrier, between you and the audience, it's an incredible thing," Ulrich says. "The fact that that still happens 37 years in is very cool."

Blackened, a whiskey crafted by music, breaks down that barrier a little more. 

 

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Watch This Guy Blow An Upside-Down, Fire-Spewing Smoke Tornado Inside A Bubble

If the internet has benefitted humanity in any way, it’s by spotlighting people’s amazing-yet-questionably-useful talents. Is blowing bubbles and filling them with upside-down smoke tornadoes that spew fire a lucrative pursuit? I don’t know, but I sincerely hope bubble artist Dustin Skye finds a way to make some coin from his unique skillset.

Using specialised tools instead of those plastic wands included with industrial-sized bottles of bubble solution, for this trick Skye creates multiple chambers which he fills with butane gas, smoke, and mouth-blown currents. When they’re eventually all combined, an inverted smoke tornado forms, drawing the butane up and out of the bubble through a hole where it’s ignited and burns as it’s expelled into the air.

It’s a marvellous trick, and one you absolutely should not try at home. Seriously, Skye probably shouldn’t be playing around with butane gas like this either, but he’s obviously spent a lot of time practicing and perfecting his craft. You have not, and there’s no reason to try this yourself. Go think up another original bubble trick if you want a few moments of YouTube fame — minus the explosive gases.

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Puma Is Re-Releasing Its 32-Year-Old Smart Shoe That Was Lightyears Ahead Of Its Time

The concept of today’s smart, connected wearables just didn’t exist back in the 1980s when text-only operating systems like MS-DOS were still popular. But that didn’t stop Puma from releasing what was possibly the world’s first modern fitness tracker by strapping a chunky computer to the back of a sneaker. Thirty-two years later, Puma is bringing those kicks back with the same design, but with updated tech inside.

The Puma RS (Running System) Computer shoes were created way back in 1986 and helped introduced the idea of keeping tabs on your performance during a run—which is functionality that everything from your smartphone to your smartwatch offers today. But in 1986, squeezing everything onto a nearly invisible chip wasn’t an option, so the Puma RS Computer sneakers had a distinctive bulge on the back containing the electronics needed for counting steps, tracking calories burned, and a port for dumping workout data to an Apple II or Commodore 64 desktop computer using a clunky cable.

Unsurprisingly, the shoes didn’t exactly fly off shelves back in 1986, and Puma only produced them in limited quantities. But their distinctive design, and the fact that the RS Computer sneakers were so ahead of their time makes them the perfect bait for nostalgia seekers, and Puma is ready to cash in on the ‘everything old is new and novel again’ trend.

On December 13, the shoemaker will re-release its RS Computer sneakers, limited to just 86 individually numbered pairs and only available at select Puma and other sneaker stores in Berlin, Tokyo, and London. The physical design and appearance of the sneakers hasn’t changed much, but Puma has upgraded the technology it uses with a three-axis accelerometer, enough memory to store 30 days worth of workouts, Bluetooth for wirelessly connecting the shoes to a smartphone app, and a USB port for charging. And while it’s technology that’s common and relatively cheap these days, don’t expect these sneakers to be, given how few Puma is making again.

 

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Watch Russian Cosmonauts Inspect Mysterious ISS Hole In 'Unprecedented' Spacewalk

Russian cosmonauts are preparing to inspect a mysterious hole on the exterior of a damaged Soyuz capsule, a complex spacewalk that could take upwards of six hours to complete. The mission is scheduled to start at 11:00 am ET, and you can watch it live right here.

As TASS reports, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Prokopyev will be taking a close-up look at the exterior of the Russian-built Soyuz MS-09, which is currently docked to the International Space Station. Back on August 29, a minor air pressure leak was detected inside the ISS, the result of a 2 millimetre “microcrack” on the hull of the Soyuz spacecraft. The incident posed no risk to the astronauts, and the hole was quickly patched. The cause of the hole, however, is still unknown—and the incident has sparked considerable controversy.

The spacewalk is being shown in its entirety on NASA public television.

Initially, the hole was thought to have been caused by a micrometeorite, but on closer inspection, it appeared that the hole was caused by “a faltering hand,” said Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin several days after the incident, adding that it “was done by a human hand—there are traces of a drill sliding along the surface.” The Roscosmos chief said the defect may have occurred on Earth during the manufacturing process, but he didn’t rule out other possibilities, such as an ISS astronaut causing “deliberate spoilage.” Soon after these comments, Russian media began to float the theory that NASA deliberately sabotaged the ISS, as Ars Technica reported.

The hole in the Soyuz MS-09 crew vehicle prior to patching with an epoxy-based sealant. Scratches and several false starts at drilling suggest a “faltering hand,” in the words of Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin 

For today’s spacewalk, Kononenko and Prokopyev will be inspecting the external surface of the capsule in the area around the hole. The mission will be “unprecedented by its complexity,” said Rogozin earlier today in a tweet. To inspect the area, the cosmonauts will have to temporarily detach some thermal insulation and the meteorite shield protecting the capsule. The plan to “open up the spacecraft’s meteorite shield will be carried out in outer space for the first time in the history of cosmonautics,” reports TASS.

Once the area is exposed, the cosmonauts will make a visual inspection of the area and take photographs. They’ll also collect some surface samples around the hole and bring them back to the ISS for analysis. The Soyuz capsule itself is scheduled for re-entry back to Earth on December 20.

Fingers are crossed that all goes well during today’s spacewalk, and that Roscosmos and NASA will finally be able to put an end to this unfortunate episode.

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New Stranger Things 3 teaser confirms 2019 release, reveals episode titles

 

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Marvel finally drops first trailer for Avengers: Endgame

 

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Newest Godzilla: King Of The Monsters Trailer Heralds A New Age Of Kaiju Gods

As artful as the first trailer for Warner Bros. upcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters was, it was sorely lacking in the way of epic, city-destroying kaiju battles, a disappointment considering just how many classic monsters are slated to appear in the film. The second trailer, thankfully, is a remedy to all that.

While there’s obviously going to be a human component to the film, Warner Bros. knows that what we’re really all here for are the monsters and, goodness, just look at them go.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters hits theatres May 2019.

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Andy Serkis Doing Gollum As A Brexit-Hungry Theresa May Is The Last Thing You Will See Before You Die

Things have not been going too swell for British Prime Minister Theresa May as of late. After a majority of ministers within the House of Commons voted to find the British government in contempt of Parliament (for the first time in history) for not publishing details about May’s much-maligned Brexit plan that was meant to be voted on this week, the Prime Minister is once again on the defensive.

This week, May postposed a vote on the current Brexit bill that would almost certainly have failed, after Parliament came to the conclusion that the British government had willfully kept vital information about the significant financial impacts the plan had for the country. Now, May and the Conservative Party are busy trying to hurriedly fashion a Brexit plan with a better chance for survival.

One can only imagine what kind of deep, reflective thoughts must be running through Prime Minister May’s mind at a time like this. To whom does she owe her allegiance? To the party or to the people? It’s the kind of crushing inner struggle that only the most tortured of souls could ever truly hope to understand—someone like, say, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings’ Gollum, as played by one Andy Serkis.

It’s less than likely that May will ever speak openly about the conflicting emotions battling inside her as she fought to keep the UK away from the EU while also keeping her job, but Serkis’ performance as the politician feels like it’s pretty spot on.

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Good Boy Who Survived The Camp Fire Guarded His Family's Home For Nearly A Month

A good boy who survived the deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s history was found weeks later, apparently guarding the site of what was his family’s home.

For roughly month after the Camp Fire tore through Paradise, nearly completely burning it to the ground, Andrea Gaylord’s male Anatolian shepherd mix Madison reportedly refused to leave her property, ABC-affiliate KXTV reported. Gaylord hadn’t been able to reach her home before evacuating to bring him with her. Madison, an outdoor guard dog who’d been missing, was discovered at the property after a woman with the animal rescue organisation K9 Paw Print Rescue checked in on the dog at Gaylord’s request.

Shayla Sullivan, the woman who helped locate Madison and his brother Miguel—who was found some 85 miles away in Citrus Heights—spotted him several times but “knew he took his job seriously and wasn’t going to be an easy catch,” Sullivan wrote on Facebook last week. Instead, in addition to leaving him food and water, she said she put out an article of clothing that smelled like his mum and left it at the site “to keep Madison’s hope alive until his people could return.”

When Gaylord returned to her property after the evacuation order was lifted, Madison was there, waiting, seemingly guarding the remnants of what was his home.

“Imagine the loyalty of hanging in through the worst of circumstances and being here waiting,” Gaylord told KXTV. “It was so emotional.”

The Camp Fire that started in early November destroyed Paradise, the community of 27,000 of which little is left. Nearly 14,000 residences and more than 4,000 other structures were lost in the fire, which burned roughly 153,000 acres. At least 85 people were killed, making it the deadliest in the state’s history. Yet seemingly through it all, Madison remained.

“He had stayed to protect what was left of his home, and NEVER gave up on his people!” Sullivan wrote on Facebook. “He didn’t give up through the storms or the fire!”

Madison has since been reunited with his brother Miguel as well.

“You are the best dog,” Gaylord said of Madison through tears. “The best.”

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How Did Mary Queen Of Scots Send Secret Messages?

Mary Queen of Scots, the controversial 16th century royalty, met a rather (spoiler alert) grisly end. And it all had to do with a cracked code. But how did Mary actually send her secret messages — the ones that she ultimately lost her head over?

Mary communicated using a cipher that she changed repeatedly, substituting letters for different symbols and essentially creating a new alphabet that could be deciphered by anyone who had the code. She wrote letters communicating with Catholic allies (England wasn't too happy with the fact that she was a Protestant) and would hide them in a hollowed out bung inside beer barrels that could be smuggled to the receiver.

But in 1586, Mary was found out and entrapped by people who believed she wanted to have Queen Elizabeth I killed (Mary would have taken the thrown if that had happened) after her code was broken. The cipher she used is below, courtesy of the Black Chamber.

National Geographic covered the scandal for TV and you can watch a clip here if you want to learn more. It's pretty interesting.

The video helps explain how it all came unravelled for Mary, Queen of Scots:

Quote

 

She's unaware at the time that the English state, particularly Francis Walsingham, the secretary of state, has employed a man named Thomas Phelippes, who's a brilliant cryptographer who has what to the English is a new method of cracking these codes.

It's known as frequency analysis and works by studying how commonly used letters appear when enciphered.

 

Mary, Queen of Scots has gotten extra attention lately thanks to a new Hollywood blockbuster that comes out today. Admittedly, I haven't seen the movie yet, so I don't even know how the story of Mary's cipher is covered.

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Listen To The Sound Of Real Martian Winds, Recorded By NASA's InSight Lander

NASA's InSight Lander, which touched down on the red planet late last month, has not captured little green men letting rip. What it does have, however, is audio taken from its air pressure sensor and seismometer. So, if you want to hear what wind sounds like on Mars, this is as good as it gets.

The sounds in the video, captured on December 1, are actually incredibly hard to hear as they "are nearly all bass", according to NASA. Those with good headphones or a kicking subwoofer should be fine, but for everyone else, NASA has upped the audio by a couple of octaves.

What you're hearing are technically vibrations, as the organisation explains:

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The spacecraft's seismometer and air pressure sensor picked up vibrations from 10-15 mph (16-24 kph) winds as they blew across Mars' Elysium Planitia on Dec. 1, 2018.

If you'd like the WAV files themselves, they can be downloaded from NASA's website. Alternatively, it has uploaded the audio to its SoundCloud account, so you can listen to each recording individually.

 

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Ancient Black Plague Found In Swedish Gravesite

Long before the two deadliest pandemics in history — the Plague of Justinian and the Black Plague — an ancient strain of the bacterium responsible for these scourges, Yersinia pestis, may have already wreaked havoc among Neolithic European communities over 5000 years ago, according to a controversial new study.

New research published today in Cell (Link no longer works) describes a newly identified strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. The DNA of the new strain was extracted from a woman who lived in a Neolithic farming community about 4900 years ago in what is now Sweden.

The bacterium is unique in that it's the oldest genome of Y. pestis ever discovered and, at a genetic level, it's the earliest plague strain ever discovered.

More controversially, the authors of the new study, led by metagenomics researcher Simon Rasmussen from the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen, say this bacterium may have spread around Late Neolithic European communities, creating plague-like conditions that contributed to the decline of these settlements and setting the stage for the ensuing Bronze Age.

What's more, the plague was not introduced by settlers from the Eurasian steppe, the researchers argue, but instead had an eastern European origin. Other experts are unconvinced, however, saying more archaeological and genetic evidence is needed to support the claim.

Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the plague.

At the heart of this study is Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for an unspeakable amount of human suffering. This pathogen, which spreads to humans through the bites of infected fleas, caused the Plague of Justinian during the sixth century AD, killing between 30 million and 50 million people — virtually half the human population at the time.

The plague would return 800 years later, manifesting as the Black Death — a menace that killed 50 million Europeans from 1347 to 1351.

Long before these episodes, however, the bacterium had already made its mark on human communities. In 2015, a research team led by Rasmussen traced the plague back to the Bronze Age, between 3000 and 1000BC. Rasmussen's latest work now pushes the origin of plague back even further, to the Late Neolithic.

Rasmussen and his colleagues detected the ancient strain in a publicly available database of ancient DNA taken from the teeth of individuals found buried in Sweden's Fralsegarden gravesite. While screening for specific sequences of the bacterium, the researchers stumbled upon the previously unidentified strain in the genetic material of a 20-year-old woman who died in Sweden between 5040 and 4867 years ago.

The Gok2 strain, as it's now called, was compared to bacteria that came before and after, revealing slight differences and some distinct similarities. Gok2 is too different from Y. pseudotuberculosis, the ancestral species from which plague diverged, to warrant the declaration of a new bacterial species.

At the same time, the newly discovered strain is very much like the version of Y. pestis we're already familiar with, containing the genes responsible for the deadliness of the modern pneumonic plague, for example (the plague manifests in two different forms, bubonic and pneumonic, the former being an infection of the lymphatic system and the latter being an infection of the respiratory system).

Interestingly, the researchers found traces of the Gok2 strain in another individual buried at the same grave site — a 20-year-old male who lived during the same time as the woman. This could mean that both individuals died of the plague, and that an epidemic had taken hold of this farming community, the researchers speculate.

The grave in which the remains of a 20-year-old Neolithic woman were found.

As noted, the Gok2 strain is the oldest that's ever been discovered, but it's also the most basal. By basal, the researchers mean it's the closest known strain to the genetic origin of Y. pestis — so it's the earliest plague from a genetic perspective, appearing on a different evolutionary branch than other strains.

The Gok2 strain, the authors say, emerged around 5700 years ago, the strain that would go on to plague the Bronze Age emerged 5300 years ago, and the strain still in existence today emerged 5100 years ago. So at least three different versions of the plague were making the rounds in eastern and northern Europe during Late Neolithic, according to the new research, not to mention the ones we still don't know about.

This observation, the researchers say, could solve an enduring mystery about the decline of Late Neolithic communities. For reasons that still aren't completely clear, Neolithic settlements — some containing between 10,000 to 20,000 people — began to disappear around 5500 years ago. The decline could have been caused by Neolithic farmers who over-exploited the environment, or by incoming settlers (or invaders, depending on your historical persuasion) who brought the plague along with them from the Eurasian Steppe.

But the authors of the new study say they have a better explanation: a Late Neolithic plague fuelled by the Gok2 strain, which originated in eastern Europe, and not the Eurasian steppe.

"These mega-settlements were the largest settlements in Europe at that time, 10 times bigger than anything else. They had people, animals, and stored food close together, and, likely, very poor sanitation. That's the textbook example of what you need to evolve new pathogens," said Rasmussen in a statement. "We think our data fit. If plague evolved in the mega-settlements, then when people started dying from it, the settlements would have been abandoned and destroyed. This is exactly what was observed in these settlements after 5500 years ago."

The Y. pestis bacterium would have also started migrating along all the trade routes made possible by wheeled transport, which had rapidly expanded throughout Europe by this time, he explained. Eventually, the Neolithic plague arrived to Sweden via these trade routes, infecting the farmers of Fralsegarden.

Importantly, an analysis of the 20-year-old woman's DNA showed she wasn't genetically related to the migrants from the Eurasian steppe — an observation which suggests the Gok2 strain was making the rounds in Europe prior to their arrival, and that Steppe Eurasians weren't responsible for introducing the plague to Europe.

It certainly makes sense, but more work will be required to confirm this theory. As the authors themselves admit, they haven't actually identified the specific version of plague that could have terrorised the mega-settlements.

"We haven't really found the smoking gun, but it's partly because we haven't looked yet," said Rasmussen. "And we'd really like to do that, because if we could find plague in those settlements, that would be strong support for this theory."

Boris Valentijn Schmid, a computational biologist at the University of Oslo, described the new study as being technically "solid."

"This group has published [a paper] on these very early plague strains before and they have a good methodology to verify whether the bacterium they are looking at is indeed an early form of plague, rather than still the ancestral bacterial species from which plague speciated, Y. pseudotuberculosis," Schmid told Gizmodo.

Johannes Krause, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute, didn't love the new paper, saying the authors didn't actually identify the oldest genome.

"They made a mistake in their study," he told Gizmodo. Krause is referring to a strain that dates back to the same time period — around 4900 years ago — and found among the Yamanya population (now Ukraine and parts of Russia), as described in a 2017 study, of which Krause is a co-author. It's a nitpicky complaint, and a likely function of competing research teams.

That said, Krause found it interesting that the new strain was found in a person "that does not have Steppe genes," and that the strain belongs to a different branch in the evolutionary history of Y. pestis.

"Not only a new branch, but a more basal branch, so closer to the initial split of Y. pestis from Y. pseudotuberculosis," clarified Schmid. "To me that is a nice find."

The claim that the plague originated in eastern Europe "is highly speculative and not backed up by any data," said Krause. Schmid agreed, saying "it is indeed so highly speculative that I wouldn't put any weight on that."

Still, Schmid said the scientists presented an interesting new option — and it's now time for other archaeologists, geneticists, microbiologists, and pathologists to do their part.

"Much depends on numbers — how often did people die of this early form of plague? And was that enough to make an impact on the total numbers? In their earlier work, Rasmussen and his colleagues found traces of the bacterium in seven out of 101 samples, which is an impressive amount, and only slightly less than the percentage of deaths caused by all infectious diseases today," Schmid said. "But it is not clear to me if that percentage is sufficient to counter population growth and cause a decline."

Indeed, the discovery of an ancient form of plague in two Neolithic Swedish individuals, while interesting, is certainly not enough to warrant the declaration a full-on European epidemic during the Late Neolithic. It's certainly a compelling possibility, and a consideration now worthy of future investigation.

Regardless, it seems the plague has been a pain in the human arse for a very long time.

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Peloton Is the Best Exercise Bike for People Who Hate the Gym

As everyone knows, the worst part of making any kind of New Year's fitness resolution is other people and their fitness resolutions. The one annual chance you get to start a regular gym routine falls apart when the place is so packed that you barely have room to stretch your legs. Here's an easier way to guarantee a workout, 365 days a year: Bring the gym home with a Peloton bike. If you order today, it'll be there in time for the eggnog.

You've probably heard of Peloton by now—maybe you said "bike" too closely to your phone one time and made its ads a permanent fixture on your Facebook feed—but if not, let us break it down for you. Peloton is a company that recreates the fitness studio experience in your home, minus the studio. The exercise bike is its bread-and-butter. More than just a nice pair of wheels, the bike comes equipped with a built-in screen that connects you to on-demand fitness classes that you can start and stop at any time. (Cycling geek trivia: "peloton" is a French word for the main group of riders in a race.)

This solves more than a few problems. Getting to the gym is hard enough as it is, and especially so in January, when there's ice to be scraped, sidewalks to be shoveled, and tundras to be navigated along the way. Or maybe your plans to hit the gym after work, ignoring the calls of happy hour, delivery food, and warm blankets to bury yourself under until June, keep falling through. Look, we get it. Peloton gets it too, which is why it designed the thing in the first place. You want to get healthy to feel good; adding more reminders on your calendar is no way to achieve that.

The workouts themselves are legit. Those who do want the community aspect can join live classes broadcast from Peloton's HQ in NYC. Those who want to set their own pace can select from over 10,000 on-demand workouts with a variety of trainers and options for length, style, and difficulty. And for those obsessed with keeping score, the bike records metrics like heart rate, output, and resistance over time, so you can keep aiming for better results.

Sure, the exercise bike is nothing new. Spin classes are nothing new. Even Peloton, launched in 2012, has been on the block for a minute now. But it's damn fun to use, and might be your best shot at getting into a real fitness routine that sticks. While the price point is a little steep, if you're already blowing hundreds a month on a gym pass that you don't even use, it'll pay for itself before you know it. Plus, that feeling of actually, finally getting yourself in shape? That's priceless. $2,245.00

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Brightburn Imagines Superman's Origin Story as a Terrifying Horror

A strange alien child crash-lands on Earth on a lonely rural American couple's land. But, when the child starts exhibiting superhuman powers, everything starts to change.

Now, this scenario could go one of two ways. The child could use these powers for good—to learn how to control them and use them to save humans from evil. Or, the child could be frightened, scared, lonely, and use these powers for evil.

Brightburn, the new film from director David Yarovesky and producer James Gunn (his first project since the Guardians of the Galaxy controversy), imagines this second scenario.

The film follows a boy named Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn), who crash-lands on the land of a couple (played by Elizabeth Banks and David Denman). They raise the Brandon as their own, but in this genre mash-up, the boy begins to discover his powers and use them to terrorize the small town.

Brightburn arrives on Memorial Day 2019.

 

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A 220 YEAR OLD BEER FOUND IN THE TASMAN SEA IS NOW DRINKABLE

Walk down any Sydney or Melbourne high street and you’ll see that craft beers are all the rage. From fruity pale ale’s to dark hops, the Hipster renewal of the middle ages has spread to Australia’s over 35 crew, to the point where even the soccer mums are questioning their choice of Sauvignon Blanc.

But in Tasmania they’ve taken things a step further, with one museum taking the original samples of a 220 year old beer found inside a shipwreck in the 1990’s, and turning it into a drinkable brew.

As reported by the BBC, “In 1796, the colonial trading firm Campbell and Clark commissioned the ship Sydney Cove to sail from Calcutta in India to Port Jackson, with a cargo of provisions including ales, wines and spirits as well as essential supplies such as grain and timber.”

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“The ship never reached its destination.”

“Foundering off Tasmania’s treacherous north coast,” the BBC report continued, “Near the aptly named Preservation Island, the Sydney Cove ground to a halt on a sandbank and sank.”

Fortunately for the beer aficionados of the world, almost 200 years later (in the 1990’s) the remaining beer (and the wreck) was recovered, preserved by the icy seabed, collected by Marine archaeologists from the Australian Historic Shipwrecks Team, and sent to the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery in Tasmania for conservation.

And the even better news is, this year, the beer is back, renewed and re-brewed thanks to a partnership between the museum and Australian brewing company James Squire.

Cultured in test batches, Museum conservator David Thurrowgood, who holds a double degree in journalism and chemistry, took it upon himself to see if the original samples’ yeast was still viable.

A partnership with the Australian Wine Research Institute ensued from the positive findings, and their national laboratory in Adelaide helped to isolate the yeast for brewing in commercial quantity (via the BBC).

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“The project (then) scaled up further when James Squire came on board to brew beer from the yeast in commercial quantities, with the ultimate aim of releasing it for sale.”

The surprise came when head brewer Haydon Morgan found the yeast to have significantly different properties to its modern-day counterparts, rapidly consuming all the available sugar in the ferment, and producing a dry beer.

This meant that even after 200 years on the seabed (and months in laboratory bottles), “It revived quickly and could still be brewed, whereas a contemporary commercial yeast would be dead within weeks,” (BBC).

Following this revelation, the team experimented with recipes based on the types of beer brewed in 1797, the year the ship went down. These included darker ales such as Porter, IPAs and ‘small ales’, which were lower in alcohol by volume.

Of the three, they decided that the Porter style would be most palatable to modern consumers, and created a beer with a “rich, smooth taste” and “hints of blackcurrant and spices” (BBC).

Now named ‘The Wreck Preservation Ale’, the beer is bottled under James Squire, and boasts ‘spicy clove aromas and a touch of chocolate’.

In terms of whetting your gullet, limited editions of the stuff have just been released in James Squires brew houses, while another small supply is available at the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania.

[MIKA27]

BOWMORE 1965 50-YEAR-OLD SCOTCH WHISKY

Hailing from the Scottish Island of Islay, Bowmore is one of the best-known scotch whisky brands in the world and famed for being the oldest licensed distillery in the region. Their No.1 Vaults have been steadily producing some of the most notable whiskies in existence, and recently, Bowmore’s parent company Beam-Suntory announced that they would be releasing one of their best spirits yet — a 1965 single-malt scotch.

The 50-plus-year-old expression is a true gem — with apricot, dried fruit, and floral notes that subtly appear beneath a dark, chocolatey taste. It was one of the first spirits to be prepared with Bowmore’s state-of-the-art heated stills all the way back in 1965, which allowed for greater, more precise control during the whisky-making process. Only 232 bottles are being released, each with their own hand-blown glass container and Scottish wood cabinet. Better yet, the first shipments are taking place this December. $30K

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GAEMS SENTINEL PORTABLE GAMING STATION

While most gamers in the world play on some sort of mobile device, home consoles are far from being considered unpopular and actually offer a much more complete gaming experience. Their biggest downside: they’re not exactly travel-friendly. That’s all about to change with the GAEMS Sentinel portable gaming station.

Most of the time, gaming on a console requires not just the console itself, but also a sound system and some kind of monitor on which to display the game. The GAEMS Sentinel, however, packs both of those latter items into a portable briefcase that’s far more travel-friendly than typical setups. And it doesn’t slack on tech either, as the built-in 17.3″ monitor boasts a full-HD 1080p display, built-in chambered and tuned stereo 3W speakers, and a 3.5mm headphone jack if you want to plug in your own gaming headset. The case also boasts a 105-degree hinge angle, HDMI cable, and a hard external shell to keep your precious console safe and sound in transit. The GAEMS Sentinel is on pre-sale now for $350.

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F-4 Phantom II Ejection Seat

You can keep your Eames Lounge, Arne Jacobsen’s Egg, and every other iconic chair ever created, I’ll take this F-4 Phantom II Ejection Seat as our seat of choice every day.

This genuine ejection seat from a McDonnell F-4 Phantom II fighter jet is for sale through the Boeing Store, so you can sit in style. A little background. The fighter jet is hailed as one of the most versatile ever built, with the ability to travel at twice the speed of sound. It was the U.S. Navy’s fastest, highest flying, and longest range fighter, and it was used by the Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds. In other words, it has a storied history. How that history lead to you using the seat as a place to rest while playing Red Dead Redemption 2 is beyond us. But that’s exactly what’s happening if you have the coin to buy it.

 

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‘Triple Frontier’ Official Trailer

It seems it’s all bigger names and bigger movies for Netflix going forward. Well, the biggest may be coming early next year. This is Triple Frontier, a Netflix Original film that stars Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal as a group of former special forces who decide to rob a cartel leader in South America. The movie itself has been in and out of the works since late 2010, with names like Tom Hanks, Tom Hardy, and Will Smith rumored to be involved. We don’t know if that’s a bad sign, but the trailer itself has us hyped. J. C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year, All Is Lost, Margin Call) directs the film, which is slated for release in March 2019, both on Netflix and in theaters. Here’s your first look.

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HENDRICK’S ORBIUM GIN

Originally launched in 1999, Hendrick’s Gin has taken the world by storm, quickly setting the standard and becoming a favorite amongst discerning imbibers everywhere. It’s been so successful, in fact, that the brand hasn’t needed to branch out and try anything different. Not satisfied with resting on their laurels, however, Hendrick’s has just introduced a new gin called Orbium.

A limited edition small batch spirit, Orbium is actually a reinterpretation of the brand’s well-balanced original recipe created by Hendrick’s Master Distiller Lesley Gracie. As you might expect, the basis for the spirit remains the same, with some noteworthy flavor-altering additions, such as wormwood, lotus blossom, and quinine (the ingredient that gives tonic water its unique flavor profile). A love letter to those who helped the brand become what it is today, only 5,000 cases of this unique elixir are slated for production. Look for it at your local watering hole in the near future.

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NISSAN GT-R50 BY ITALDESIGN

The Nissan GT-R may be old, but it still has a few tricks left up its sleeve. When Nissan and Italdesign unveiled their one-off GT-R50, fans were clamoring for one they could take home — and Nissan answered. 50 examples of the GT-R50 will be produced for sale, with the production version nearly unchanged from the eye-catching concept. Based on the GT-R NISMO, the GT-R50 will have similar specs, with the exception of raiding Nissan's GT3 racing program's parts bin to bring the twin-turbo V6's power up to 710 horsepower and 575 lb-ft of torque. This is an increase of 145 horsepower and 108 lb-ft of torque over the base model and puts the GT-R well into the supercar category. Along with the engine mods, 50 lucky owners will get the gorgeous exterior treatment dreamt up by Italdesign, making this one of the best GT-R's in the model's 50-year history.