December 27

Better Than News

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  Strange Case of Dr Lemon and Mr Ade is an 1886 Gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London-based fruit vendor who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his old friend Dr. Henry Lemon and a murderous criminal named Edward Ade.

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  Schindler's Species is an epic historical science fiction horror film directed by Steven Spielberg and Roger Donaldson, starring Ben Kingsley, Liam Neeson, and Natasha Henstridge.

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  Invasion of the Birkenstockers is a dramatic re-enactment of the "Birkenstock Scare" of the early 2020's.

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  "People Get Roddy" is a 1968 single by the Evolutions, and the opening track on the Planet of the Naked Apes album. The gospel-influenced track was a Curtis Mayfield composition that displayed the growing sense of cinematic and science fictional awareness in his writing.

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  Maleficent Robot is an American drama thriller television series a cybersecurity engineer and hacker with social anxiety disorder and clinical depression (Rami Malek) who must stop an evil fairy and the self-proclaimed "Mistress of All Evil" (Angelina Jolie) from releasing a deadly computer virus.

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  Raw Meal is a 1986 American dietary film about an elderly and malnourished FBI chef (Darrin McGavin), who wants to get revenge against a Mafia cooking school and sends a former FBI short-order cook (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to destroy the school from the inside.

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  Boogie Jedi Knights is a 1997 American science fiction drama film starring Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Alec Guinness.

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  HAL 9000 Coding Camp is a summertime educational camp where students learn principles of artificial intelligence in an immersive ChatGPT environment.

Beyond Plausible

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  Invasion of the Birkenstockers is a 1978 horror-fashion film about the "Birkenstock Scare" of the early 1970's starring Leonard Nimoy and Veronica Cartwright.

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  Freedom from Worms is one of the "Four Freedoms" paintings by C. Enroll Workman.

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  Computational Muttonchops (full title: Computational Muttonchops: Isaac Asimov and Your Pocket Calculator) is a cautionary documentary LP record album about writer, scientist, and alleged time-traveler Isaac Asimov.

In Other Words

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  Chemtrail is a pheromone-inflected perfume which causes (at increasing doses) unease, fear, and terror.

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  The Incredible Shrinking Spider is an American science fiction film about a scientist developing a miracle diet chemical. In its unperfected state, the chemical causes spiders to shrink, threatening the earth's ecological balance.

Are You Sure

Lightning striking the Eiffel Tower. Steganographic analysis of the photograph will later reveal "at least five hundred and twelve kilobytes, possibly a thousand twenty four" previously unknown Gnomon algorithm functions.

• ... that mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason?
• ... that mathematician and academic Anne Penfold Street was the author of several textbooks, and her work on sum-free sets became a standard reference for its subject matter?
• ... that a spokesperson for the color pink once called Taffy Bomb "undeniably pink"?

Topic of the Day

Smoking

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  Tar Trek is one of the "Forbidden Episodes" of the television series Star Trek.

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  The Dark Lights is a 2008 product placement superhero film about a crusading District Attorney (Aaron Eckhart) who must stop the Smoker (Heath Ledger) from flooding Gotham City with cheap off-brand light cigarettes.

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  Markov chain smoker is a stochastic smoking model describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state of a cigarette smoked in the previous event.