#they feel this like weird sense of ownership to any piece of property the others rent/own from now until eternity | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

headlesssamurai · 6 years ago

Note

Has everyone asked you about Jupiter Ascending?

@godzillaapproved

Yo, I ought to apologize to you for taking hella long to properly respond to this. It’s holiday season over thisaway, sure, but I ain’t nearly vain enough to assume just anybody gets why that can suck up a dude’s time. Reckon I’m sure there’s tons of national celebrations all over the world I’d never know about otherwise. Bah, I say! Going out and socializing is one of the few things more overrated than all those shitty Apple products. But yeh, in my case it was less the celebratory spirit of holiday festivities and more a sudden spike in workload, so my mental energy was roughed up by that, plus I was doing a new workout at the same time. Thus, whatever free time I had left was spent obsessively hammering away at the Steam sale items I’d recently bought. It’s like a coping mechanism. Well, that and cheap wine anyhow.

Regardless, regardless—holy shit what an obnoxious fucking way for me to open this up—this Ask of yours came at an unusually coincidental time. A friend and I have been meeting up every weekend to watch like semi-recent crappy movies just as a way to enjoy a bad drink and a good laugh. She likes to laugh, and I like to drink, so it works out. After working our way through every Transformers film by Michael Bay, then Cameron’s Avatar, Terminator: Genisys, The Amazing Spider-mans, Spielberg’s Crystal Skull, Ready Player One, and some of the more abysmal DC films, our last escapade into nonsense was the estimably hilarious Gods of Egypt, which reminded me of one of those excremental quicktime-event video games. You know, like Detroit Becomes Human or some shit like that (Oh wait, is it Detroit Coming of the Humans? Meh).

As luck would have it, like, the day before you asked me about it, the next film at which I suggested we take a crack was the Wachowskis’ own Jupiter Ascending, which my friend had not seen at that time. Nor had I, since first viewing it in theaters.

>>SPOILER WARNING: IF YOU CARE ENOUGH TO, UH… YOU KNOW, CARE

I was intrigued to give this movie another go. It’s struck me that I’ve got an odd streak of pleasantly enjoying movies a lot of people can’t seem to stand, or which some people even hate with utter vileness on the verge of hunting down the producers with a roll of duct tape, power tools, jugs of petrol, and a matchbook. I’ve enjoyed, for instance, Hardcore Henry, Elysium, and Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, all of which not one person I know in real life could offer a single word of kindness. After my first viewing of Jupiter Ascending, I was left to consider whether or not it was the sort of movie I should enjoy and allow others to hate and disparage, or if it just wasn’t that good. I recalled leaving the theater with a sort of “Hm” sound, and not much else. But given my history with rooting for an underdog, was I wrong? Is this movie actually good, or cool in some way? I couldn’t defy the sensation that I’d missed something.

The answer, it seems, is more complex than a simple yes or no. Then again, as Mason and Goat Han Solo often remind us, “there’s no nuance on the internet”, so even my assertion there about complexity may be in gross error.

For the unfamiliar, Jupiter Ascending is a science fiction tale with vibes of less-cliché aesthetic choices for its visuals, some cool references to UFO conspiracy theories, and aims at a more expansive universe that would no doubt have been further explored in sequels had this film been better received by audiences and critics. I’ll say outright, it’s a disappointment to me that we weren’t given the chance to see more films in this mythology, because there’s some really cool stuff going on in this weird, imaginative universe. The story centers upon the character of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), an average working-class young woman in Chicago who is shocked to discover not only that aliens exist but that she happens to be the reincarnation of a galaxy owning empress, which entitles Jupiter to ownership of a large portion of the cosmos, the least part of which is Earth itself. But as the Aussies say, something’s a bit suss about the whole affair, and the wondrous glamour of this technologically advanced universe is concurrently party to a dark truth.

An immediately intriguing element of Jupiter Ascending is its attempt to set-up something which, while perhaps greatly inspired by a few other fictional works, is an original property, not a sequel, reboot, adaptation of an existing work, nor a spiritual successor to something else. Rather than merely being intrigued by this fact, I also respect it, because high-concept science fiction films aren’t something a studio likes to go for unless they have a preexisting audience, like adaptations of a book series or something. So it’s always bold when someone can cobble together the resources to really take a chance on something like this, even if it isn’t well received. After all that’s how films like The Matrix, The Terminator, Ridley Scott’s Alien, George Lucas’ Star Wars, and John McTiernan’s Predator come to be in the first place. Another example, I didn’t quite enjoy The Last Witch Hunter, but I recall respecting that film’s risk in its attempt at a new property for similar reasons.

Irrespective of your own personal tastes as a moviegoer and consumer of science fiction, it can’t be denied that the Wachowski’s are measurably talented filmmakers. Their doubtless skill at framing shots, blending effects with reality to present an integrated experience, and choreographing action sequences with such lethal precision it’s always incredible to watch; all of these things can’t be argued, and this attentiveness for the craft is all very present in Jupiter Ascending. Toward the beginning of the movie, there’s an aerial chase sequence that promptly accelerates into one of the most engaging, gripping action sequences in memory, heavily fantastical sci-fi elements intermixed with almost Fast and the Furious levels of insanity. The sense of gripping speed alone as two characters cling to the outer hull of a spacecraft was helplessly intense and left me quite keen to see what else the movie had to offer further down the line.

Additionally we have some awesome art design and stylistic choices regarding the look of this sci-fi universe, both the appearance of aliens and the design of their technology was familiar and unique at the same time. There are beings referred to as “Splices” which are intermixes of humans and various animals, giving some people bestial characteristics which are just weird enough to be cool to me without verging over the edge into absurd territory. There are cybernetic enhancements, gravity boots, phalanx style energy shields, neural synthetic wings, motherfucking jet-bikes of course and, though I never would have dreamed, motherfucking lizardmen! That blew me away, dude. Others may think it’s stupid, but lizardmen are one of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy creatures of all time, and they look so badass in this movie it was unbelievably awesome to realize I was actually seeing a proper lizardfolk on screen. With lizardmen and jet-bikes, Jupiter Ascending quickly marks two-out-of-five on my Generally Awesome Things I Like To See In Science Fiction list. It’s a real list, in my head, I swear.

The starship designs were inspired by art deco architecture in cities like Chicago, lending Jupiter’s cosmos a feeling more of Herbert’s Dune-iverse than something like Star Trek, which I appreciated since we don’t see that type of style quite as much. Top all that off with a fantastic score from Michael Giacchino and you’ve got some great tools to tell an awesome story.

So the thing is, it’s not just skin deep either, while the film does lean heavily on its visuals and action set-pieces, this is a genuinely interesting universe. Michael Bay’s Transformers, for instance, also has cool visuals, some passable action scenes, and dazzling special effects, but is it interesting? The answer is no. Because Bay’s movies, while briefly entertaining, are ultimately hollow. There aren’t any subdermal layers beneath the facade of spectacle. But in Jupiter Aescending there’s clearly something else going on, the touch of true filmmakers for one, yet also the potential for so much more. The groundwork, the craftsmanship and attentiveness is all here. It’s really what they choose to do, or not do, with that potential which ends up disappointing. Not, as in the case of Bay’s movies, the utter lack of potential for greatness from the start.

Though some fandom-card carrying ideologues may acerbically disagree, an acceptably comparable film whose potential for greatness was also mostly wasted for middle-of-the-road mediocrity is the recent Solo: A Star Wars Story, by Disney Interactive– I mean, by Disney behind the appropriated guise of Lucasfilm. Whatever else you think of that film, and while I agree from a mythological standpoint its very existence was in extremely poor taste, the talent, the production value, the mark of the craft was there. None of this was, however, capitalized upon to create anything truly profound. Jupiter Ascending’s unfortunate drawbacks are of a similar form.

I’d like to state emphatically however, I’m not trying to punish the film nor act as its apologist. Reckon I always end up saying this, but I am really just some dude. Sure, I read a lot of books and stuff, but that doesn’t appoint me some grand authority on the subject of fiction. These thoughts I try to convey in my write-ups are meant merely as opinions, framed in the form of investigating the quality of a film or game or whatever. To that end, I’m compelled to side with most folks in that, whatever else its got going for it, there’s some major deficiency holding back Jupiter Ascending from rising to a higher form of entertainment. So if the production values are high, where’s the casus belli all the angry critics are seeing here?

To puzzle that out, we ought first to determine by what criterion a truly good story is shaped. In that regard it’s likely the wisest to begin by reckoning what sort of story we’re dealing with here. Most people are wont to jump straight to the whole Hero’s Journey every dickhead YouTube reviewer read about in some sparknotes book while using the shitter at Barnes & Noble. But Joseph Campbell’s mimetic architecture isn’t the only sort of story that exists, not even in science fiction. Consider, for instance, anything written by H.P. Lovecraft, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin, Philip K. Dick’s various works, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Stanisław Lem’s Solaris, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, or Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. These stories, while very sci-fi in their scope and measure, are far more introspective, and very contemplative when contrasted against fiction of the more traditional heroic adventure genre. Hell, even Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers while appearing a mindless war movie on its surface is fundamentally a cautionary allegory. While conquering adversity is certainly a theme of its own within each of these stories, the breadth of that adversity’s effect on the narrative varies wildly, as well as the nature of adversity each character must face. Other heavier components, like displacement, post-humanism, philosophical allegory, are also usually present in such stories.

All of this likely seems a bit excessive to point out, but I promise it’ll get relevant later. But, uh… yeh. The next time some liberal arts asshat tries to tell you there’s only one real way a story can go, you can be safely justified in telling them to get bent. I mean read, yeh, tell them to read more shit, and watch more movies. That’d probably be more productive. But also tell them to get bent, the fuckers.

There can also, however, be stories that blend styles. The 2004 rebrand of Battlestar Galactica incorporates several philosophical elements, self-reflective, and meditative thematic ideas into its narrative of what would otherwise be a fairly standard science fiction conflict in outer space. The Wachowskis’ own The Matrix is a perfect example of a classic hero’s journey which also incorporates introspective themes into its lore, plot, and mythology, wherein the internal conflict of the protagonist is just as important as whatever external adversity he is meant to overcome. Where Battlestar Galactica 2004 uses its thematic material to craft a sci-fi adventure story, The Matrix uses a sci-fi adventure story to explore its thematic material. Seen in that light, I think the Wachowskis wanted Jupiter Ascending to have similar weight to its narrative, but they ended up recycling a sort of “human harvest” idea already seen in The Matrix (and arguably done in a more engaging way).

Jupiter Jones herself is a catalyst for an inter-familial conflict within a wealthy interstellar hierarchy. Though alien races do exist, the most dangerous aliens happen to be humans themselves, extraterrestrial humans of course. In Jupiter’s universe, it turns out that the wealthy and powerful have the ability to live forever (an idea also explored in the Neftlix adaptation Altered Carbon), but only by seeding countless worlds with humans, then harvesting these humans like crops and breaking these millions of people down into a sort of primordial youth serum by which the lives of the affluent may be extended.

Advanced genetics in Jupiter’s universe are the highest form of technology, and it is stated in all the cosmos the most sought-after resource is time. This is the reason these advanced humans out among the stars are able to splice human and animal genes, essentially creating entirely new races, and the reason why Jupiter herself is seen as a reincarnation of a woman who once owned countless stars and planets. Genes, to the wealthy and powerful, have a near spiritual significance. Jupiter is referred to as a Recurrence, a person who is long dead but whose gene-print inconceivably reappears in someone who is born centuries or even millennia later. This is seen as a near miracle, and thus is recognized by interstellar law as a legitimate reincarnation, giving this new person the same rights and privileges, and inheriting all the property previously held by the deceased person whose gene print they share.

And that’s where the conflict comes up. Jupiter is sought out by three siblings of the Abrasax family, one of the most elite and powerful families in the universe, of which she is the reincarnation of their mother and thus entitled to re-inherit all of their resources and capital which they currently control. The kids are Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), the well-to-do, but compassionate one, Titus (Douglas Booth), the more two-faced of the three who acts innocent but is clever as a viper, and Balem (Eddie Redmayne), the stereotypical villain of the piece who seems to have nervous ticks and an inability to raise his voice above a certain octave except in times of extreme stress. Of course, since Jupiter’s now meant to control everything they currently own, none of the three Abrasax kids can be fully trusted. Jupiter doesn’t have to face these three one-percenters alone however. She is accompanied by Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) an ex-soldier and wolf-splice, known as a Lycantant, who is hired by Titus to safely retrieve Jupiter from Earth before his siblings can get to her. Caine’s former commanding officer, a bee-splice known as Stinger (Sean Bean) also appears from time to time, as well as officers of the Aegis, an interstellar law enforcement agency.

If you are having a hard time following the characters here, it’s probably because there just isn’t much to any of the characters other than what I’ve already written about them. And therein lies the primary flaw with this film. The characters aren’t interesting, and the greater tragedy is that the characters are written to be uninteresting. Where a ton of care and attention went into crafting the look, feel and depth of the wider universe acting as the story’s setting, the characters within this story are criminally underwritten.

Earlier, I went to great lengths to illustrate the wealth of variety throughout genres of science fiction, just how many different types of stories we might get within this narrative framework. The purpose of explaining all of that to such a degree was meant to show you that not everything has to follow the same narrative flow. Sometimes stories can be more abstract, less character driven, less action heavy. In that regard, a story exemplar like Blade Runner doesn’t really need to have strongly written characters because the interpersonal aspects of its journey are less important than its atmospheric setting and stylistic momentum. The gravitas comes from a different place than in stories which are more character driven.

However, if a story does want to give us something more conventional, then it’s extremely important that the characters are strongly defined, well established and, even if not likable, at the very least interesting. Though a bit out of this wheelhouse, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is notorious for featuring a dramatis personae of terribly vain, horrible sociopaths, but many of these characters are still written in a way that makes them interesting. Jupiter Ascending fashions itself as an epic space opera, a stylized adventure journey which goes from scrubbing toilets in Irving Park to rocketing through a wider spectacular galaxy. Within that story structure, the characters need to be given their proper attention, especially the protagonist. Only, this is not the case with this movie. In fact in Jupiter Ascending, the characters almost appear as afterthoughts, which is most unfortunate.

Despite being the protagonist’s love interest, Caine seems to have been given the most depth, as a literal lone-wolf personality, an orphan of a sort, a former soldier disgraced for an act of savagery, who longs to regain his military status as a Skyjacker, and was sprung from a prison called Deadland to rescue Jupiter from the clutches of filthy rich egomaniacs, a class of people he seems to utterly despise. Yet even Caine’s various portions of characterization are never fully explored, and he mostly serves as a vehicle to come dashing in and pluck Jupiter out of trouble over and over again. Secondary characters, other than Stinger (more on him later), are hardly there other than to function as a taxi service or exposition dump where appropriate, which is a shame since some of them have a great look but nothing else going on in the writing department to make them memorable. The Abrasax siblings are basically three different flavors of the same smug Soylent privilege, though Kalique seems to exist only to explain things for the benefit of the audience, and Balem seems to be accidentally memorable thanks to Eddie Redmayne’s unusual performance. Titus has some cool psychotic vibes with his underhanded motivations, slippery silver tongued bastard that he is, but even his role as the trickster doesn’t get its due in the end.

Stinger, Caine’s former commanding officer who is now an Aegis Marshal, is also written slightly deeper than even the Abrasax siblings. He took the fall for Caine’s misstep in the military, so he also lost his wings and was disgraced for it. Despite this, he is willing to help Caine and Jupiter throughout the story, and though begrudged he seems genuinely good at heart. Stinger’s point of interest however comes from his traits as a Splice between human and bee DNA. Yes, this leads to a funny line of dialogue, but there are some great examples of show-don’t-tell with Stinger, in that having bee instincts he seems superhumanly able to anticipate motion and react to it ridiculously quickly compared to most people. This ability gives him an edge in everything from fistfights to navigating massive fields of hunter-killer mines. This is hardly important to the plot, but I thought it was cool since it’s never stated outright, just displayed through his actions. Another example of a great idea that’s mostly left adrift.

Jupiter herself starts out as a typical protagonist for a Hero’s Journey. She’s a Jewish Russian immigrant who leads an unglamorous life cleaning bathrooms and tidying fancy homes for her family’s housekeeping service, apparently has bad luck with romance, and hardly ever has time to really do anything she enjoys. Typically, once these elements are presented, there will also be a revelation of something more intimate about the protagonist, her dreams and ambitions, something she longs to one day achieve, her hobbies or personality, perhaps a personal drawback or fear she wishes to overcome. But the most we get about Jupiter is that she wants to buy back a telescope which was once stolen from her astronomer father by the same thieves who murdered him (which we see early in the movie in an awkwardly directed scene). It’s not made clear if Jupiter herself has a genuine interest in astronomy, nor even what any of her interests happen to be.

This becomes a recurring problem throughout the film. Since no real internal conflict or personality of any kind is established for Jupiter, she isn’t led through any personal journey or self-exploration, nor anything which allows her to grow or evolve as the narrative opens up and accelerates. She’s basically just along for the ride, one of those wrong place wrong time sort of things. Her journey is entirely surface level, external forces dragging her around the stars without her having any real say in the matter nor agency of her own. She as very little idea of what she wants or who she is, from what we can tell, because we have no idea of those things either. Mila Kunis does a fine job with the material she’s given, but the material just isn’t much to run with, and if there is a drawback to her performance as an actress I promise in this case the fault is not with her.

The terrible lack of characterization hurts everything in the movie from its ethical conceits, plot momentum, all the way up to the romance subplot which only feels forced and lacking chemistry because the two leads aren’t properly written. They could have had chemistry, but its difficult for archetypes to interact without endowing them with personality. It’s a fundamental flaw from which all other flaws of the film stem because the personality, the character of the protagonist in this type of story is a fundamental element from which many other elements of the story stem.

Even towards the end, when Jupiter is forced into dangerous heroics and aggressive bravery it doesn’t feel like much of anything because for all we know she was brave all along, or maybe she wasn’t. We’re never given the chance to find out. Her larger moment of heroism comes not in a violent action of conquering the badguy (though she does beat him with a pipe later... in self-defense of course), but in refusing to compromise to Balem’s ultimatum, either resign her ownership of Earth or allow Balem to murder her family. It’s interesting to note that instead of rocking up and blowing his head off with a blaster, she just tells him to get fucked, which is a cool idea, non-violent protagonists are few and far between. Though the climax would have been far more satisfying had we gotten to know Jupiter much better before she gets to this point. Ultimately, the lack of strong characters make the progression of the movie feel awkward, and the denouement seems to come out of nowhere. It’s really too bad, since many facets of this film’s setup seemed to bear promise, and it’s more tragic than infuriating, leaving an audience with a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

Like Jupiter herself, thematic elements are also only half-explored. The idea that genetics have advanced to such a point that life-regeneration has become a reality within this star-spanning civilization (albeit a reality exclusively available to the filthy, insanely wealthy) is an interesting idea, and there’s a lot of potential for the ethical quandaries related to that sort of technology, and what makes it possible. Yet little of this is given attention beyond the horror of Jupiter discovering the Abrasax family regularly kills billions of people for longevity and profit. Is their life-extending operation the only one out there? Or is it an industry? Are there black market dealers who develop and trade their own youth serum off the books? It’s all kind of muddy and little of it is given any explanation or nuance.

As we’ve established, Campbell’s hero’s journey isn’t the only way to go about a sci-fi story, but in Jupiter Ascending it’s like half-started without any of the follow-through, and the characters which should be the heart of the story are greatly lacking any depth. The film’s been compared to a Disney-style princess story, and even references Cinderella at one point, though it does seem to be aiming higher than this. Yet, the lackluster character writing and flat dialogue all make the story somewhat impotent, whatever its aim, leaving the movie looking like a majestically beautiful gild-feathered eagle, which just happens to be blind. Fun to look at, but has absolutely no idea where it’s going. I can’t articulate enough what a shame this all is, since there really are some cool ideas and sci-fi content here. I truly wish, as a sci-fi enthusiast, that Jupiter was truly able to ascend.

I’d recommend it as a fun romp through an intriguing galaxy, but it’s more useful as an example of how to get everything right with a movie, everything other than the thing that really holds it all together: a well-written protagonist. Still, I’m no intersectionalist, but it’s nice to see the girl get the guy at the end of the story, the way guy protagonists get to get the girl at the end of all their stories. That was a pleasant feeling, even if it wasn’t quite earned with everything come before it. Plus, you know; lizardmen, and jet-bikes. The Wachowskis are generally great at what they do though, just maybe have a tough time channeling it. Here’s hoping they can get back to us with something truly badass in future because the level of commitment to the craft seen in this movie is extraordinary, even if the reach exceeds the grasp in this particular case.

侍 headless

68 notes · View notes

xhxhxhx · 8 years ago

Text

its-okae-carly-rae replied to your post:I ask the tough questions

please make a post with the answers you discovered

Done!

Why do nerds like The Princess Bride so much?

Joshua Glen Tanenbaum at Quora:

So much of my experience of the film is wrapped up in a quilt of childhood nostalgia: I have vivid memories of being wrapped in blankets with a hot mug of soup and watching The Princess Bride on sick days, or snow days. I remember cajoling friends into reenacting the swordfights in exacting detail, memorizing every line. I credit the movie with introducing me to the pleasures of wordplay, and rhyming games, and banter...things which I've found unite the geek clans almost universally and which have remained social litmus tests for friends and partners throughout my life. Like Star Wars and Ghostbusters, The Princess Bride is deeply lodged in the geek cannon for reasons that transcend the film itself. Objectively...yeah it's a bit hokey; a bit dated; a product of a more innocent era of film making; and it may not stand up to the standards of more contemporary geek classics like Lord of the Rings. But what it shares with Lord of the Rings is an utterly genuine and unironic commitment to its source material (the book, which is also a joy to read), and an absence of the cynical, sarcastic, post-modern impulse to try and deflate itself, or wink at the audience about what it's doing. For this reason I cannot help but love it.

Why do anime openings always have people running?

TV Tropes:

In a lot of anime, a character (usually the protagonist) will show up in the opening or ending credits, running along while remaining on a fixed spot on-screen. The character could be running the whole time, or start out walking slowly and gradually pick up speed. The background is usually of the scrolling kind, but sometimes the character actually seems to run through a changing scenery. In any case, it's rare for characters to maintain a leisurely speed the whole time; usually, this has something to do with either the pace of the music, or the animators' need to keep opening and ending themes moving fast at all times.

Side-on running and walking cycles are often created by animators as a way to get a feel for the characters, and these cycles will no doubt be used at some point in the show, so this could count as a cross between Shown Their Work and Stock Footage.

Why do producers get the Oscar?

Ankit Sethi on Quora:

The producers are the group of people who help develop the initial idea, obtain rights, do the hiring and the casting, secure funding or finance it themselves, keep track of costs and schedules all through the shoot, managing post-production, VFX, scoring, publicity etc. A limited number of individual artists, directors or writers might have provided the exact je nais se quoi that swayed Academy voters, but the producers are more holistically responsible for getting the ball going (and keeping it in the air) on every major step in the creation of the film. And as Dan said succinctly, they put up the money and that counts towards ownership in both law and LA.

Why do my yolks always break?

Quora:

My best guess is it is the way you crack them.

Why do we put down dogs that kill? Why don’t we euthanize killer whales?

I didn’t find a good answer to this one. The killer whales live to kill again.

Why do furries exist?

Quora has some incomplete but still-useful answers. Adam Hartline:

Ever hear of the Tiger Crane form in kung fu? Humans drew on what they saw in nature to apply it to their own bodies.

Furriness is just the next iteration of these processes, applying ample imagination to create pictures and stories out of that taking on of animal properties, as well as imagining the taking on of those properties.

The internet is helping along that process as well. Before the internet, we would exist in isolation and our imagination would eventually move back in line with the society we live in. Now, we can just google search it and find other people willing to draw your ideas into stories, pictures, animations, dress up, etc. And it becomes a form of play; practicing possibilities in a social setting, which results in the behaviors being reinforced. Without that reinforcement, it would just be another thing imagined. With our play directed elsewhere, with other humans, we would be more likely to move on, or at least would be forced to rely solely on their own talents while still needing to live within cultural boundaries.

Mckennah Richardson:

I cannot answer for others, but I can answer for myself.

Furries allow for you to build yourself in the sense how you actually picture yourself. It just so happens that they do this through exploring the realms of anthropomorphic states. Personally, I am drawn to animals, and therefore the fandom provides an opportunity for me to express myself as I truly see myself. The anthropomorphism is truly just a realm of expression.

When a newcomer joins the fandom, they create a fursona, which is in essence a projection of themselves into an anthropomorphic state. It can represent who they are now, or it can represent what they wish to become.

Why do wires tangle?

James Vincent at The Independent :

It was probably the 21st century’s preeminent sage Bill Murray that summed up the problem most succinctly: “How to tie the strongest knot ever: 1) Put some headphones in your pocket 2) Wait one minute”.

But have you ever wondered exactly why this happens? Well, scientists have and to find out what mysterious pocket-sized-goings-on are going on they did what any sensible researcher would: they put different pieces of wire in a box and shook them up to see if they got knotted. They did this a lot, in fact, 3,415 times in all.

The results (detailed in a now quite venerable 2006 paper entitled "Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string" by Dorian M. Raymer and Douglas E. Smith) showed that two key factors cause complex knots to “form within seconds”: “critical string length” and “agitation time”.

The probability of knot forming versus string length.

Essentially the longer the lengths of cable and the more they’re shaken the more likely it is that a knot will spontaneously form. Qualities such as cable rigidity and diameter also play a part but it's length and time spent tumbling that matter most – and unfortunately, these are the factors you’re least likely to change.

Raymer and Smith came to their conclusion by experimenting with cables of varying length and different “agitation times," finding that cables shorter than 46 centimetres will rarely – if ever – get knotted, with the probability increasing with cable size before plateauing just after 2 metres in length.

For the average pair of earphones (defined as 139 centimetres in length) this means the probability of a knot spontaneously forming in an enclosed space about the size of your bag is just under 50 per cent. That’s right, every time you dump your earphones after arriving at school or work there’s a one in two chance you're dicing with death going to be slightly annoyed later in the day.

Knot formation in action. The box on the left is the rotating container used by Raymer and Smith, with one crossed wire quickly leading to chaos.

Raymer and Smith also noted that the Y shape of earphones increases the chance of knotting substantially, with only one end of the wire or cable having to cross another to start off the tumble-weed reaction of a spontaneous tangle.

All in all, the pair identified 120 different types of knot in their trials, including “all prime knots with up to seven crossings”. Next time you drag a sorry clump of cables from your pocket just be glad you weren’t assisting on that particular un-tangling.

Why do humans have irises?

Carrie Poppy at Tech Times:

In fact, among the 633 species of primates, only one has visible eye whites: humans. That white part is actually called sclera, and while other primates have it, theirs are colored, typically about the same color as the iris, so we don't see them unless we get up really close. Humans have no pigment in their sclera, giving us what we commonly refer to as "the whites of our eyes."

So, why should we have white sclera while everyone else's is colored?

The answer comes down to evolution. Again, as with all good things, you can understand it best if you consider my dog.

Have you ever tried to tell your dog where her favorite toy is by pointing to it? Unless she has known you a long time and picked up on humans' weird habits, she probably looked at your finger, not where your finger is going. However, if she knows you long enough, she may learn that, in your weird little human mind, there's an invisible line between your finger and something off in the distance, and if she follows your delusional pattern of thinking and traces the invisible line, she can figure out what you're looking at.

However, try not even pointing at the toy. Try just looking at it. If your dog is like my best friend, Ella, she will stare back at you, not knowing you're trying to tell her anything at all. Even if you and your dog have known each other a long time, she may never pick up on your subtle indicator that her toy is over there by the bookcase, darn it.

That's likely because your dog doesn't have eyes like yours. If she looks at another dog, she will just see a pupil inside a colored sclera. Unless she's up close, she won't see where that pupil is actually pointing. As a result, it's not intuitive to her to follow your line of sight, because she literally doesn't know that's what you're looking at. Turn your head, and she might have a better idea. It turns out, apes are the same way. In studies, they won't follow your gaze unless you literally turn your head to face the thing you're looking at.

However, humans know to follow each other's eye movements intuitively. Why? We don't know for sure, but our best theory is called the "Cooperative Eye Hypothesis."

The Cooperative Eye Hypothesis says that one of the things that has made humans so successful is cooperation: we can work in large communities, all benefiting others in our tribe. While a herd of elephants maxes out at about 70 individuals, wolf packs don't usually have more than 30 and chimps can form communities of up to 120, humans interact with a nearly limitless number of other humans, and need to cooperate with as many as possible, to survive, especially as we began to develop a transaction-based economy.

So, subtle eye movements help us detect emotion, read one another's intentions and interact in delicate ways that promote kinship with the people around us, all of which is evolutionarily advantageous. As our ancestors developed these traits, those who could cooperate the best passed them on to their descendants.

All this cooperation meant that we needed to be able to communicate as well as possible with other members of our species. We also needed to be able to sniff out deception in the traitors among us. When we know we're being watched, we're more likely to be good. That promotes altruism, which is ultimately good for a community. You scratch my back, I scratch yours — which is why lying is something we can pick up so easily in eye movements. How can you best tell if someone's eyes are moving suspiciously? If they have big sclera that tell you exactly where their eyes are moving, to a hair's width. That's how.

Why don’t they just give other people the Captain America serum?

Mark Hughes at Quora:

There are. Or, rather, were. In the comics, several other people became super-soldiers like Captain America. A couple in particular are worth noting...

In an attempt to recreate the super-soldier serum that made Captain America, the U.S. government uses several black soldiers as guinea pigs, with a single soldier -- Isaiah Bradley -- surviving the tests and becoming a super-soldier. These events are told in the excellent comic series Truth: Red, White, & Black.

[...]

William Burnside is another person who was not just a super-soldier but in fact was Captain America for a while. The government supposedly recreated a flawed/incomplete version of the serum that slowly drove the test subject insane, but Burnside didn't know this. Nor did he know he also needed vita-ray treatment after the serum injections. So he took the serum himself, in order to become a replacement Captain America after the real Cap disappeared at the end of WWII (frozen in ice and later found by the Avengers).

[...]

The government made all sorts of other, different attempts to resurrect the super-soldier serum, but the specific formula that made the real Captain America was lost when its creator was shot dead by a Nazi spy -- or, a Hydra spy, depending on which version of the story you read/watch. And Selim Jamil is absolutely correct that besides the serum itself, a key ingredient to the success of Captain America's serum-induced transformation is the fact of Steve Rogers as a person -- physically, morally, intellectually, and so on. It's been said in the comics from time to time that besides the formula itself, it was the combination of uniqueness in Rogers that was the final missing piece of the puzzle that made it all work for him.

Cliff Griffey at Quora:

In the comic books, Steve Rogers was the only person who successfully completed the "Vita-Ray" bombardment, and immediately after that, Prof. Erskine was assassinated. As Erskine was the only one who knew certain parts of the process, the exact process to create another "Captain America" was lost along with him. There have been many storylines whereby the Super Soldier Serum has been attempted to be recreated, to a variety of effects - but nobody else has survived the exact same process that created Captain America.

Why don’t browsers clean out their own cache?

I didn’t find a good answer to this question.

Why don’t you move to Somalia?

I didn’t find a good answer to this question.

#its-okae-carly-rae

15 notes · View notes