Blue-deck play, in most games:

"I tap two red and play..."
"Nope."
"... Okay, I draw..."
"Uh uh."
"What about...?"
"Mmmno."
"Fine, I'll just--"
"Not happening."
"... can I forfeit?"
"You can try."

Six? attractive, well-off, tech-savvy twenty (thirty?) somethings (plus Jeff Goldblum, for some reason!) are sealed in a highly-advanced underground "house", for a reality show. And then they run into/somehow uncover an alien monster/pathogen, which transforms those it infects into (more) ravenous eating machines (literally; there's a (nano)technological as well as biological component, blurring the lines between the two).

The bulk of the dream/last half hour of the movie comes down to an extended, slow-motion, VFX-heavy, hyper-kinetic battle/ballet between the brunette Final Girl, who turns out to be some sort of gynoid, and the Nordic blonde of the group, now representing the alien monster (ala Species), as each attempts to contain/consume the other. As they tear at each other, break apart, "splash" away from each other's attacks and reform, they are both depicted as nanoswarms of a sort - opponents who can split apart into sharp-edged tiles (like a human-shaped disco ball), become sand or semi-liquid, etc.

At first the two seem to be evenly matched, or the monster-woman actually has the upper hand in this CGI contest of technological shapeshifters. Then the faces and figures of the rest of the cast, somehow surviving/returning from their own consumption/conversion, start to appear on the walls and screens of the smart-house, joining the fight against the alien with their own dance moves. The tide turns... and just for a moment, with the alien blonde on the ropes/the verge of full containment, it seems the Transhuman Treachery will kick in, with all of these entities uniting against the humans on the surface. They won't have a chance.

But then it's revealed that their new collective plan is to offer humanity a choice, between transcendence or... something. (Peak health in still-human bodies, maybe? Dream memory starting to break down.) The full cast is reunited and reconciled now, though no longer embodied; the alien influence is itself overwritten or suborned to the new purpose. The wallscreens go blank again (or come apart in an upward shower of mosaic tiles) as the new entity(s) leave their subterranean chrysalis to begin the Upgrade.

(Seriously, the VFX budget for all that I imagined would be huuuuuuuge.)

And now that I've written all that down... back to bed.

When I made my one and only visit to the park (so far) with my family, back in 1983, it was less than half its current age; more years have passed since then (34) than the 28 separating that summer from 1955. Most of those who'd attended as kids on opening day were only just starting to have kids of their own. It's a bit dizzying to read the list of past attractions and see how much had already been changed, to say nothing of what's followed (and been replaced in turn).

(I know it was '83 because one of my very few "time-stamped" memories was of King Arthur Carrousel being closed for renovation.)

I'd like to go back someday, but it's not a priority. My brothers have been back, with their kids. EDIT: And one of them, who I spoke to, is sure that the trip was in '81, not '83. Go fig.

(inspired by the recent movie(s), of course)

For all that it's a big part of his powerset, Spider-Man's strength tends to get ignored or underestimated a lot. Mostly (IMO) that's cause he's usually either up against normals, and pulling his punches so he doesn't kill somebody, or real heavy-hitters who outdo him in that department.

But that's okay, because he still has (along with his speed, agility, spider-sense, etc) the proportional smack-talk of a teenaged male from Queens.

(Seriously, anyone who does not count Peter Parker's smart mouth among his powers has never met the guy, let alone fought him.)

At the end of last month, Photobucket quietly updated its ToS to disallow linking/embedding images on other sites - which is, I would guess, what 99% of its users used it for, myself included - unless you pay them $400 a year. This has broken eBay auctions, forum posts both current and past, etc etc all across the net and made them very popular.

So that's it, then. First LJ, and now...

I've not yet deleted my account there, which I've had since Oct 2005, on the slim chance that they change their mind... but I have gone and deleted all the images that they apparently no longer want to host.

And before you ask, Imgur's ToS specifically warns against hotlinking.

In TOS, the colonies seem to be in a constant state of famine. Or plague.

Don't forget the threat of attack by Indians.

So I was rewatching the scene at the end of The Matrix where Neo achieves apotheosis. Mostly, I admit, for the moment of near slapstick where the other two agents look at each other and, by unspoken agreement, NOPE right outta there.
And I found myself paying attention to the moment right before that, when Neo leaps into Smith - yet another thing that is never, ever supposed to happen - and he turns to them, already visibly straining and distorting, and they both take a step back.
There's a change of expression there. Subtle, as you might expect... but while I don't have Neo's codesight, I can imagine what's going through their main processing loops at that moment:

< error - anomaly - abomination >

This... thing that they thought was a person - exceptional, yes, awakened, but still "only human" - has just taken multiple kill shots and gotten back up, outright nullified part of the simulation's physics, casually bested one of their own at hand-to-hand combat, and now hijacked his avatar, something that only they're supposed to be able to do... and even there, the way it's done that is wrong.
They're suddenly facing, not another redpill, but an eldritch horror, an outside-context problem, something immune to their standard attacks, that can rewrite reality and potentially do anything.
As much as security programs who haven't been corrupted by too much time among the animals can "feel"? I think they're both scared enough to dump core. In their pants.

So it's long been known that panthers are just all-black leopards. But it turns out they're only all-black in our visible spectrum. In infra-red, the spots show up quite nicely:



Neat.

Today in the comments section for Strong Female Protagonist, someone made a joke about MORAL KOMBAT.

I, of course, immediately imagined the techno theme song, with deep-voiced listing of "PLATO - ARISTOTLE - HOBBES - KANT" etc.