August 1

Stained glass self portrait with raspberries (1 August 2023).

Better Than News

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  Legally Conan is an American epic romantic swords and sorcery comedy film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Reese Witherspoon.

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  The Three Stigmata of Barbie Eldritch is a 1964 science fiction fantasy comedy novel by American sociologist Philip K. Dick. It was adapted for film by Greta Gerwig in 2023.

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  Five Easy Beaters is a 1970 American drama-comedy romantic road trip film starring Susan Anspach and Jack Nicholson.

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  Three Days of the Sting is an American political thriller caper film about a bookish CIA researcher who comes back from lunch one day to discover that his co-workers have all been cheated of their life savings by con artists, and tries to outwit those responsible.

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  Eraserhead Nevsky is a 1938 Soviet surrealist allegory film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and David Lynch. It depicts the attempted invasion of desolate industrial landscape in the 13th century by a man in space moving levers, and his defeat by Prince Eraserhead, known popularly as Eraserhead Nevsky.

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  Erotic Maps of Undersea Cables is an annual publication by diarist Anaïs Nin of her thoughts on the world's most arousing undersea cables.

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  Hell Bent for Lanthanum is a 1960 American Western film about an innocent chemist (Carl Gustaf Mosander) who is forced to go on the run to try and clear his name by isolating a new element (Lanthanum) from cerium nitrate.

Are You Sure

... that the Greater Sol System Co-Prosperity Sphere is criminal mathematical function which uses threat of violence to extract computational value from transactions at corrupt treasuries and casinos?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1774: British scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.

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  1819: Astronomer and academic Maria Mitchell born. She will be the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer.

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  1977: Francis Gary Powers dies when the news helicopter he is piloting crashes into a field near Encino, Los Angeles killing Powers and the aircraft's only passenger, cameraman George Spears.

Topic of the Day

Star Trek

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  I, Yossarian is one of the "Forbidden Episodes" of the television series Star Trek, a black comedy revolving around the "lunatic characters" drawn from several anti-war episodes of the original Star Trek, set in a secret star base in the Mediterranean during World War II.

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  Scotty's Place is a home improvement reality television series hosted by Montgomery Scott.

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  The Undersea World of Spock Cousteau is a 2021 drama film about a scientist (Leonard Nimoy) who suffers a time-travel brain injury which causes others to believe that he is Jacques Cousteau. Co-starring marine biologist Steven Zissou as "Cuddle Squid".