Author: Eppu

Mandip Gill and Jodie Whittaker Pushed for Doctor Who Romance

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This fall we’ve worked on catching up on Doctor Who, including some reading. Apparently, the romantic signals between Yaz and the Doctor essentially came from the actors, Mandip Gill and Jodie Whittaker, after they saw some fan speculation in social media.

Bleeding Cool Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz

Intriguing! I have often wondered how much say actors typically have over their characters, but I guess there isn’t a typical situation. At least on the basis of movie and series documentaries, it really seems to be up to each individual showrunner / writer / director how much creative control they’re willing to hand over to anyone else.

As I don’t read fan fic of any kind, this development was surprising to me. It was played nicely, though—subtle, not a hammer to the head (like some other stories I could point to).

Anyway; delighted to finally have a female Doctor! I’m looking forward to what writer Russel T. Davies and actor Ncuti Gatwa have in store for the fifteenth Doctor.

Image by BBC via Bleeding Cool

In Seen on Screen, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.

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First trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

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The first trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is out!

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny | Official Trailer by Lucasfilm on YouTube

It’s still hard or impossible to say what the story is about. De-aging Harrison Ford looks impressive, from what we can see. But yay, more archaeology fan fiction with our favorite grumpy professor!

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Living in the Science-Fictional Now: Flying Cars Are Closer than Ever

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Flying cars have been dreamed of as long as cars have been around. If certain projects or companies are to be believed, flying cars will actually become available soon. For certain values of soon, anyway, and for certain values of car.

Current designs are as varied as the propulsion technologies and terminologies: flying cars, hovercars, gyrocopters, passenger drones, quadcopters, VTOL aircraft, eVTOL, maglev cars, personal air vehicles… Whatever you call them, aircraft that look less like airplanes and more like other small personal vehicles do seem be closer than ever to everyday reality.

Klein Vision AirCar in Flight Sm

For example, Volocopter’s air taxis have been demonstrated in Singapore (2019). The Dutch PAL-V Liberty gyroplane has not only test flown (2012) but also been approved for road use in Europe (2022). The AirCar by Klein Vision (pictured above) has completed a test flight between two cities(!) in Slovakia (2021) and received a certificate of airworthiness from the Slovak Transport Authority (2022). Reportedly, recent projects are also ongoing in Turkey and China. And, related to flying cars, a smart city and tourist destination being built in northwestern Saudi Arabia—dubbed Neom—has been planned for rail traffic and air taxis according to some reports.

Now, I’d assume all of the above is predicated on plentiful energy. How P*tin’s attempted extortion of Europe’s energy market (which has wider ripple effects, I’m sure) affects the development of flying cars will remain uncertain for some time yet.

I have to say, if flying cars do become common enough to be relatively easily available, I am tempted to get a pilot’s license (whatever kind might be required)—if I’m not too old by that time. (Planes are too high a hurdle, but small personal vehicles might just do for me.)

As a linguist, though, I’m mostly engaged with the question of a handy everyday name. That, too, is likely to be wrangled over at least as much as the technology side of their development.

Image: AirCar by Klein Vision

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Sound Sample Played on a Paleolithic Instrument Replica

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A group of French researchers published their study of a conch shell from the Upper Paleolithic period based on an assumption that it was used as a musical instrument. The article includes a sound sample gained by blowing into it—the first such sample published.

The conch shell in question, a Charonia lampas—a handsome marine mollusk—was found already in 1931 at the cave of Marsoulas, which is a so-called decorated cave. The shell is dated to roughly 16,000 BCE. And, interestingly, the shell was not only modified—presumably to make it fit a human mouth more easily—but also decorated with traces of colors and engravings.

Science Advances Conch Shell Horn Sm

The color is mostly found in fingerprint-sized and -shaped red dots on the internal surface of the shell. They are similar to motifs present on the cave walls, including a bison covered with a layer of red dots (seen in the background of the image above).

Aren’t the dot decorations fascinating? Apparently, similar conch shells have been used around the world as musical instruments in later periods, with similar modifications. Also, the oldest known flutes discovered thus far come from earlier paleolithic periods, roughly 40,000-20,000 years BCE, so the the concept of horn or flute should have been known. It certainly would make sense, then, that this shell was a horn.

You can hear the sound by downloading an audio file attached to the article.

Fritz, C. et al. “First record of the sound produced by the oldest Upper Paleolithic seashell horn” in Science Advances, Vol 7, Issue 7 (10 February 2021). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe9510

Image by G. Tosello via Science Advances

An occasional feature on music and sound-related notions.

Night Elf Balance Druid Transmog Tweak

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My main WoW toon these days is my balance druid, so I was surprised to realize I’ve kept her transmog appearance broadly speaking the same for over three years (here she is in a January 2019 post). Time for a final tweak before the end of Shadowlands!

I still like her vest plus shoulder combo (Tribal Vest and Bonechewer Shoulderguards) combined with her purple hair, so when I found a matching weapon (Avowed Arcanist’s Staff) I decided to only fiddle with the rest of the outfit.

WoW Shadowlands Bastion Druid in Reds

For a change, the helmet, gloves and boots are off. Ghostclaw Leggings are one of my favorite designs from the earlier expansions, and the Mighty Girdle goes with them well. Oddly, the Shardhide Leather Bracers make the lower edge of the White Swashbuckler’s Shirt sleeves bulge, as if the shirt had puffy sleeves, so I decided to treat that as intentional.

Here’s the mog viewable in the Wowhead Dressing Room.

Image: World of Warcraft screencap

Of Dice and Dragons talks about games and gaming.

Namor Featurette for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

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The U.S. release day for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is tomorrow! To keep the hype up, Marvel has published a short featurette on Namor:

Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever | Namor by Marvel Entertainment on YouTube

Looks cool, even if it tells me less than I’d like. (If I ever read any comics with Namor as a kid, I’ve blissfully forgotten.) It does look like Angela Bassett’s Queen Ramonda has a larger part to play in BP:WF. That’s great; I’ve liked her a lot ever since I saw her in Strange Days. (OMG, that was in 1995!)

We two are really busy right now, but if lucky, we might be able to slip in to see BP:WF already today. (For some weird reason, in Finland the release of large international productions often happens a few days before the American one.) Definitely some time during the opening weekend, though!

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Living Vicariously Through Social Media: Sandy Pyrenees

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Now that it’s cold again in the northern hemisphere, it doesn’t feel wrong to post about this phenomemon.

I discovered that in March 2022, storms in Sahara threw a lot of dust into the atmosphere, and winds carried it hundreds of miles away. Here’s a photo from a ski resort in the French Pyrenees, where the slopes were covered with a layer of reddish sand:

Twitter BBC Weather Saharan Dust in Pyrenees

An amazing sight, isn’t it?

Although, as someone who’s grown up using sand and gravel on snow to stop motion, I do have to wonder at one thing: how on earth are you able to ski down these slopes?

(Being the wrong kind of Master of Science, I can only guess it has to do with the skier’s weight pushing the skis below the surface of the snow, therefore escaping the sand friction and still enabling skiing, but I don’t know.)

Image by BBC Weather on Twitter

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

One Month to Dragonflight!

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Apologies in advance to all of our non-WoW-playing readers! The World of Warcraft: Dragonflight release is exactly one month away today, so in the weeks ahead we’re likely to talk more about the game than not.

WoW Dragonflight screenshot_garden Sm

Here’s the announcement video:

Dragonflight Announce Cinematic Trailer | World of Warcraft by World of Warcraft on YouTube

One of the most astounding things to me is that this expansion will fully enable flying, considering how fervent Blizzard’s opposition to giving PCs the ability to fly has been thus far. (Perhaps some of the old guard are out and a new guard is in?)

This week, since the patch, we have started diddling with the UI changes. The larger minimap for sure is nice, but otherwise I’ll just have to see which elements on screen I might want to move. I mean, I’ve tried a few configurations and re-adjusted them multiple times already, but it’ll take a little longer to figure out what really works. The talent trees will take even more time to get used to, and that’s fine.

At the moment I’m more excited about the crafting orders, however. I haven’t found professions very satisfying at all for many years now; it’s about time we get something new.

Soon! 🙂

Image: Dragonflight gardern screencap via Blizzard

Of Dice and Dragons talks about games and gaming.

Minoan Mugs as Handsome as Modern Ones

Eppu

It’s a common misconception that the further you go in history, the poorer the materials and decorations used were. Materials were simpler, yes; complex metal alloys, synthetic textile fibres, or clean rooms, for example, were a long way in the future.

But the more we study extant material remains, the clearer it is that humans have always appreciated beauty in their surroundings and—if they possessed the means—decorated both themselves and their everyday environment. Case in point: Minoan mugs from ca. 1,500 BCE.

Flickr George Plakides Minoan Mugs

Mugs in similar shapes can easily be found in modern tea shops, even if we don’t use exactly the same decorative motifs in the same combinations or colors anymore.

What’s also fascinating is that the handles are exquisitely formed, with just about exactly the same range of variations you can find nowadays. These people clearly knew how to make a practical and pretty mug.

Image by George Plakides on Flickr

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

The Second Trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

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The second official and likely final trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now out:

Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever | Official Trailer by Marvel Entertainment on YouTube

(Phew! I’m growing quite disillusioned with the current fad of making splashy trailers that tell you very little about the story. The cutting is fast, action even faster, and if anything is revealed of the characters it’s piecemeal or prosaic, reducing the characters to a gimmic each. But I digress.)

We do get a little more tidbits in this second trailer. Looks like Wakanda is attacked, but at least I can’t tell if it’s random western soldiers or Namor’s troops. (Or both???) A new character to me is Riri Williams / Ironheart. She’s wearing some sort of a power suit based on the Iron Man suit—which means that the two people in the world wearing those kinds of suits are both black, doesn’t it? Cool!

The former Queen Ramonda seems to be at the U.N. (approx. at the 1:23 mark), but what is she arguing for? Attacking Atlantis??? Finally, we do see the new Black Panther jump from a great height and land (with the kinetic energy of the fall being stored in the suit, of course). Clearly it’s a female figure—Shuri, from the general shape, maybe? And was that Nakia I saw with gorgeous, long hair?

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever releases on November 11, 2022. So soon! 🙂

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.