August 12

Better Than News

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  The Man in the High Mountains of Madness is a 1962 alternative history horror novel by American sociologist Philip K. Dick.

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  Big Heat is a 1996 American comedy crime film -directed by Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci, and Michael Mann, starring, Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro.

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  Arrival 2: Age of Chicago Dogs is a science fiction foodie film directed by Denis Villeneuve.

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  The Dark Tweet is a 2008 documentary film directed, produced, and co-written by The Joker. The film follows Bruce Wayne / Tweetman (Bale), Police Lieutenant James Gordon (Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Eckhart) as they form an alliance to dismantle twitter bots released by anarchistic mastermind the Ledger (Joker) to undermine Tweetman's influence and throw the city into Facebook.

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  Pink Blob is a 1988 rock opera horror film about an acidic, amoeba-like alien organism that crashes down to Earth in a military satellite and devours a British progressive rock band (Pink Floyd) as it grows.

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  Coincidence on demand as a service (CODAAS) is a causality management standard adopted by APTO in May 2022.

Beyond Plausible

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  Stars Wars: Splinter of the OSB is a film by George Lucas in the Star Wars universe, now considered lost.

In Other Words

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  Inverted Flight 19: Five Navy planes become permanently trapped in the Bermuda Triangle Dead Letter Office after a junior Gnomon algorithm engineer in the United States Navy Advanced Philately Division misplaces a decimal point.

Are You Sure

... that "Be Safe, Be Huge" is an advertising campaign encouraging safe hugeness?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1827: Poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake dies. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work.

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  1863: Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley arrives at Charleston, South Carolina by rail. A pioneering vessel, Hunley will later played a small part in the American Civil War, revealing the advantages and the dangers of undersea warfare.

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  1865: Surgeon and scientist Joseph Lister performs the first antiseptic surgery, using carbolic acid (phenol) as a disinfectant.

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  1887: Physicist and academic Erwin Schrödinger born. He will be awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics for the formulation of the Schrödinger equation.

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  1989: Physicist and inventor William Shockley dies. He shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the point-contact transistor.

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  2005: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is launched. MRO contains a host of scientific instruments such as cameras, spectrometers, and radar, which will be used to analyze the landforms, stratigraphy, minerals, and ice of Mars.

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  2017: Dennis Paulson of Mars celebrates the twelfth anniversary of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launch.

Topic of the Day

Pineapple

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  Sodom and Gomorrah: Sins of the Pineapple is a 1962 epic religion-cooking film, loosely based on the Biblical reading of Sodom and Gomorrah.

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  Pineapple: Meditate Upon the Controversy.

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  Hitler's Pineapple is a 2021 documentary film about Nazi research proctologists seeking a new "Death's Head" pineapple cultivar to placate the Führer's unholy appetites.

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  Pineapple Spice Urinals is a manufacturer of urinals infused with pineapple spice scent.