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@lupyuen

I think this an issue throughout applied technology. Making things more complicated can make more money (in the short term).

Ask any NASA engineer.

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@crackurbones

>"Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death | MIT Technology Review..."

Would've been easier just to pick a religion that promises an afterlife. :ablobthinking:

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disturbing sarcasm about the pro-racist orange guy... 

@Deglassco

And he'll build a wall from sea to shining sea to keep the brown people out, right? Just like he did the first time he was in office. That's why immigration is no longer a problem, right?

That was the promise he made, and he always keeps his promise. I mean, anyone can build a stupid little wall, right? I mean he's a developer, that's what he does.

The wall he built is keeping them out, right?

(Logic? What's that?)

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@ematts@mastodon.online

The art direction on this music video is amazing!

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-

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)

Shortly after Sputnik but before astronauts walked on the Moon, the Soviets made a science fiction film called Paneta Bur (1962). Roger Corman bought the rights to the film, sliced and diced it, dubbed it, added a few scenes and the result was Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, released in ‘65.

The plot, the pace, just about everything is incomprehensible in this mess, but the cool part is all the 1960’s scifi props from the original Soviet film (which is probably what Corman was after when he bought it). It’s got a 60’s concept car with big fins, a Robbie Robot knockoff, reel-to-reel tape recorders, astronauts with fishbowl helmets using gunpowder pistols… it’s got just about everything you’d expect from a 60’s scifi film (see the parody trailer for some examples). ...and of course all of the factual science errors like gravity in a spaceship, campfires and animals on a planet with little oxygen, Venus is 200 million miles away, sounds in space and much more.

Corman made a sequel to this film, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), which used much of the scenes from this film, but also added some women on the planet.

You don’t want to miss this one (unless you have anything else to do).
- - - -
Accessible video description:

Parody trailer opens with title graphic, color is extremely under-saturated, almost black and white; a space station with astronauts walking on the outside like there’s gravity; a meteor whistles in space and crashes into one of the spaceships; guys walk around inside a space ship like there’s gravity, their lips are out of sync because the voices are dubbed; a 1960’s style concept car drives up with huge fins and a bubble top; a brunette woman with a beehive hairdo tries to reach guys on the radio; a robot opens the helmet visor of an astronaut who is in distress and puts a tablet in his mouth and pours water on his face and clumsily closes his helmet; an aquarium with a little turtle and goldfish, the concept car is behind the aquarium (pretending to be underwater), the astronauts are carrying the concept car; an old astronaut with a fishbowl helmet talks to a robot; the robot carries two astronauts on his shoulders through lava; a brontosaurus; an astronaut gets attacked by an fake alien monster puppet that looks like the one from The Little Shop of Horrors; the astronauts build a campfire on the planet with little oxygen; another brontosaurus with an astronaut playing with his tail; the astronauts fly the concept car and get attacked by a goofy-looking pterodactyl; an astronaut hurries into the rocket ship, they kick away the ladder, close the door and blast off from the planet.

#65

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"Karen is my pet groomer."

They keep messing with the language and twisting and mangling words so much that now I'm not sure what that sentence actually means.

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@jameswynn

I just updated the index to include all films to date...

qoto.org/@Pat/1099584380547834

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@farbel

>"Did you watch it in the theater or on your computer? I don't remember it being hard to see..."

I haven't seen a film in a theater in a long time. This is just a pet peeve of mine. A lot of films have been doing this, either because they don't want to spend money on decent sets (and the lighting hides the flaws) or they think it cool or trendy or who knows why.

I remember many years ago when they used to shoot night scenes during the day with the camera's aperture stopped down to make it look like a moonlit night. I always thought that looked kind of fake, but at least you could see what was going on. 🙂

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Index of Retro SciFi Films of the Week (long) 

Index for Retro Scifi’s of the Week

Dec 2021

Beyond the Time Barrier (1960)
qoto.org/@Pat/1075273931619741

Jan 2022

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
qoto.org/@Pat/1076242260652910

Forbidden Planet (1956)
qoto.org/@Pat/1076561505464321

Silent Running (1972)
qoto.org/@Pat/1076958946235230

Feb 2022

Andromeda Strain (1971)
qoto.org/@Pat/1077378629921935

Soylent Green (1973)
qoto.org/@Pat/1077779583942588

A Trip to the Moon (1902)
qoto.org/@Pat/1078181258197280

A Taste of Armageddon (1967)
qoto.org/@Pat/1078557503736798

Mar 2022

The Absent Minded Professor (1961)
qoto.org/@Pat/1078948353353098

The Bicentennial Man (1999)
qoto.org/@Pat/1079397907845509

War of the Satellites (1958)
qoto.org/@Pat/1079740021449656

I, Robot (2004)
qoto.org/@Pat/1080137836364019

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Doom of the Dictator (1940)
qoto.org/@Pat/1080507294987768

Apr 2022

Tron (1982)
qoto.org/@Pat/1080902592485591

Starship Troopers (1997)
qoto.org/@Pat/1081323696798403

Godzilla (1954)
qoto.org/@Pat/1081680581571365

12 to the Moon (1960)
qoto.org/@Pat/1082123885158828

May 2022

The Time Machine (1960)
qoto.org/@Pat/1082536793837480

Contact (1997)
qoto.org/@Pat/1082908923812273

The Atomic Submarine (1954)
qoto.org/@Pat/1083298600702670

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
qoto.org/@Pat/1083710815444792

June 2022

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
qoto.org/@Pat/1084091612304515

Metropolis (1927)
qoto.org/@Pat/1084494550472156

Supercar (1965)
qoto.org/@Pat/1084870840959889

Cloud Atlas (2012)
qoto.org/@Pat/1085234470913944

AI: Artificial Intelligence (2000)
qoto.org/@Pat/1085685651320926

July 2022

Virtuosity (1995)
qoto.org/@Pat/1086078964539658

Battlefield Earth (2000)
qoto.org/@Pat/1086573600491480

Brainstorm (1983)
qoto.org/@Pat/1086799861138926

Timebomb (1991)
qoto.org/@Pat/1087387448408608

August 2022

Radar Men from the Moon (1952)
qoto.org/@Pat/1088072885017000

Electric Dreams (1984)
qoto.org/@Pat/1088406278302125

September 2022

American Warships (2012)
qoto.org/@Pat/1089365161868916

Epoch (2001)
qoto.org/@Pat/1089770563796808

Splash (1984)
qoto.org/@Pat/1090199350798861

Loss of Sensation (1935)
qoto.org/@Pat/1090555110560373

Waterworld (1995)
qoto.org/@Pat/1090832014155361

October 2022

The Island (2005)
qoto.org/@Pat/1091405372020411

In Time (2011)
qoto.org/@Pat/1091803393076948

Justin Time (2010)
qoto.org/@Pat/1092445002243936

November 2022

WarGames (1983)
qoto.org/@Pat/1092820087237854

Mission to Mars (2000)
qoto.org/@Pat/1093288762602122

Stepford Wives (1975)
qoto.org/@Pat/1093722655753780

Avatar (2009)
qoto.org/@Pat/1093949858963876

December 2022

The China Syndrome (1979)
qoto.org/@Pat/1094402214385328

Inception (2010)
qoto.org/@Pat/1094809966555583

Altered States (1980)
qoto.org/@Pat/1095208973248035

Things To Come (1936)
qoto.org/@Pat/1095602737686037

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
qoto.org/@Pat/1095998952555394

January 2023

Dancing on the Moon (1935)
qoto.org/@Pat/1096435140252956

Woman in the Moon (1929)
qoto.org/@Pat/1096839626204061

Abre Los Ojos (1997)
qoto.org/@Pat/1097182731215120

Short Circuit (1986)
qoto.org/@Pat/1097635328099917

February 2023

Snowpiercer (2013)
qoto.org/@Pat/1098039294211348

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)
qoto.org/@Pat/1098543857365565

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
qoto.org/@Pat/1098875849099710

The Village (2004)
qoto.org/@Pat/1099280209227479

March 2023

After Earth (2013)
qoto.org/@Pat/1099562868513063

- - - - -

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@jameswynn

>"What exactly is your metric for "retro"? That movie's not even 10 years old."

I include anything that is at least ten years old. After Earth was shot in early 2012 and released in early 2013. (Of course there is no fixed definition for that term.)

I also include very old silent films in the series that some would consider too old to be retro.

I've included a disclaimer before about this, as I did in Cloud Atlas (2012) (qoto.org/@Pat/1085234470913944), but most folks who follow the series understand what it's about, and I didn't mention it on this one.

Here's an (out of date) Index of films in the series:
qoto.org/@Pat/1092907173982131

More recent films in the series can be found at or .

Thank you for your comment.

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Pat

-

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

After Earth (2013)

Here’s another film by M. Night Shyamalan that was produced in collaboration with Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and others. It stars Smith and his son, Jaden on a far future Earth that has been overrun by a variety of dangerous genetically modified and evolved organisms.

The plot is rather simple, basically about a father and son relationship and facing adversity, but the characters are deep and multi-dimensional. And there are plenty of symbols and metaphors throughout. There’s a lot of action, of course, but this is not some formula, Mac-Hollywood scifi movie with a bunch of CG and non-stop chase scenes. It’s a real character study with a deliberate pace.

It’s rare to find a young actor who can pull off a role like this – young actors usually don’t have enough experience to give great performances -- but Jaden gives a convincing performance. In part, I think it’s because throughout most of the film his character is experiencing fear and facing challenges, which I believe is basically what Jaden, as a young actor, was likely experiencing during the filming of this major, high-stakes project.

Technically, the film has all the world-class production value of a Shyamalan film, so I don’t think you will be disappointed with this one.


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@fisunov

>"Vast is building an artificial gravity station..."

Are they building it, or are they talking about building it?

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@freemo

Can I make a suggestion?

I think part of the problem is the way hashtag search results are returned. If you search for a hashtag, it gives the federated feed for that hashtag, which may contain a lot bad stuff and can be abused.

It would be handy to have a slider control widget to control the presentation for all feeds and searches. And it would be nice to have an extra category of feed, "Moderated Fedi".

So, a vertical slider control like this:

| - My Toots
| - Home
| - Local
| - Moderated Fedi
| - Wild West

By adjusting the slider, users control how wide of a net they cast while they are using the instance; browsing, searching, DMs, everything. The category "Moderated Fedi" could be UFol or any other list of "approved" instances the admin wants to make it. This would also make the search feature more useful and users would never accidentally be fed raw stuff from the Wild West (unmoderated fedi) if they don't want that.

Of course users and admins could maintain their own block/mute lists to layer on top of that.

Does this make sense?

@peterdrake @gamehawk

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@PhDMarie

Another one is kidney beans. If you don't cook them at high enough temperature, they'll cause serious gastro issues. So, no slow cookers for those. (I use a pressure cooker for all my beans to make sure the temp gets well above 100C -- plus they cook faster.)

Note: Canned beans are fine because those are already thoroughly cooked by the manufacturer.

@freemo @mc @LouisIngenthron

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@mc

Since Mastodon doesn't have an algorithm, hashtags are a way for folks to find others with similar interests. But if someone is just putting out spam, then that's another issue.

Sometimes I use weird hashtags as a joke or to make a point without really expecting anyone to search for those hashtags. It's not how they are supposed to be used, but I don't think it hurts anyone. (However, I'm open to changing my mind about that if someone has a good argument not to do that.)

And yes, putting the hashtags at the end rather the beginning is better for unsighted people so they don't have to sit through their screen reader saying "hashtag science hashtag earth hashtag bla bla bla" just to get to the actual toot.

Note: Having a lot of hashtags IS one of the signs of a spammer, but not necessarily a conclusive indicator.

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@freemo

Thank you for that frank assessment. I really appreciate it and I appreciate that qoto is an actual inclusive instance.

Yeah, my commentary often has a lot bite to it, and I talk about things that people don't always want to hear. But you're right, presenting messages in a way that doesn't bug those people so much will help make the community more comfortable for everyone.

I'll work on that.

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Pat

People who don't recover from COVID-19 are less likely to share their experiences about being sick with the disease.

(image: Free Art Licence, 13-11-12-rechtsmedizin-berlin-charite-by-RalfR-20)

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@freemo

I think I get ghosted more than others because of my developmental disorder. That's fine, I'll just mute them so I don't have to deal those folks.

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@karlo

I think something can be self-aware, without being aware of self-awareness.

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@lasermom

>"And with "low confidence". That's not being repeated much."

They are saying "most likely" escaped from a lab, but with "low confidence". WTF!

The DoE are the same folks who said that Iraq had WMD, which got us into a horrible, long war. Now they want us to believe China released COVID-19 on the world. The warmongers want to try to fool everyone into going to war against China.

Fool me once...

WMD = weapons of mass destruction

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