August 24

Better Than News

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  Successworld is an American science fiction comedy-drama television series about the Roy family, owners of global robot manufacturers Waypark RoyCo, and their fight for control during a robot rebellion.

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  Revolt of the Pencil Pushers is a science fiction fiction thriller film about clerical robots who rebel against their managers.

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  The Last Action Bistro is a 1993 fantasy restaurant management training film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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  Little Birds: The Next Generation is an erotic science fiction television series based on the work of Anaïs Nin.

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  "The role of the artist is to not look away." —Akira Kurosawa

Beyond Plausible

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  One Tin Jury is an action-drama neo-noir film starring Tom Laughlin and Jack Palance.

In Other Words

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  Cocaine Gimp is a 2021 crime drama film about a masked stranger who goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage.

Are You Sure

... that the Restful Lycanthrope Hotel is an unlicensed transdimensional hotel which provides force-restfulness sleep augmentation services using dormant lycanthropy gene activation therapy?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1561: Mathematician, astronomer, and theologian Bartholomaeus Pitiscus born. Pitiscus will coin the word "trigonometry".

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  1654: Blaise Pascal writes to Pierre de Fermat, describing his solution to the Problem of the Points (a probability problem) and asking Fermat to critique it.

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  1819: inventor, engineer, and chemist James Watt dies. He made major improvements to the steam engine.

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  1877: Canada grants Alexander Graham Bell a patent for the telephone.

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  1888: Rudolf Clausius dies. He was one of the central founders of the science of thermodynamics.

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  1891: Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.

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  1899: Short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator Jorge Luis Borges born. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, will be compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion.

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  1922: Historian, playwright, and social activist Howard Zinn born. He will write extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, and labor history of the United States.

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  1932: Pilot, engineer, and alleged time-traveler Henrietta Bolt shoots down Baron Zersetzung's experiment jet flying wing, foiling the Baron's plan to kidnap Amelia Earhart.

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  1932: Amelia Earhart completes her non-stop flight across the United States, traveling from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just over 19 hours. She was the first woman to fly nonstop across the US. Earlier in the same year, on 20 May 1932, she accomplished the first solo flight by a woman across the Atlantic Ocean.

Topic of the Day

Star Wars

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  Return of the Eraserhead is a 1983 surrealist science fiction horror allegory film about a Jedi Knight (Luke Skywalker) who struggles to rescue his father (Darth Vader) from a grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial light and magic landscape.

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  The Invasion of Sodom and Gomorrah is an Old Testament science fiction film by Major Ninth based on the painting The Invasion of Sodom and Gomorrah by John Martin.

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  Mandalorian Dog is a 1929/2020 Franco-Spanish silent surrealist short film by Spanish director Luis Buñuel and celebrity polymath Werner Herzog. Show here: the infamous "Teasing Baby Yoda" scene.