December 3

Better Than News

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  The Andromeda Citrus is a 1971 American science fiction foodie film produced and directed by Robert Wise about a team of scientists who investigate a deadly citrus fruit of extraterrestrial origin.

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  The Toroid is a 2023 science fiction adventure film about a baker aboard a deep space station who encounters a mysterious alien force.

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  Soylent Gazoo is a 1973 science fiction buddy comedy dystopia film starring Charlton Heston and Harvey Korman.

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  Close Encounters of the Spud Kind is a 1977 supernatural geology film which tells the story of [REDACTED], an everyday blue-collar UFO researcher in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with the Devil's potato masher.

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  Sleeping Beauty: Resurrection is a 1997 science fiction horror romance film about a space-traveling princess (Sigourney Weaver) who is awakened from hyber-sleep by a deadly alien prince.

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  Cool Hand Skywalker is a 1967 science fiction prison drama film about a prisoner in an Imperial prison camp who refuses to submit to the system.

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  HAL 9000 Design Group is an interdisciplinary firm of architects, UX designers, and artificial intelligences based in the spaceship Discovery 1.

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  "Help Me Make It Through the Tweet" is a song by Sammi Smith.

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  Baby Blue Airwolf is a 1976 American action-adventure film about a failed Marine helicopter pilot who deceives the staff of a small Colorado airport into treating him as a hero.

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  Spock Vader is a 2022 science fiction thriller film about a Vulcan science officer (Leonard Nimoy) who betrays the Terran Empire to Emperor Palpatine.

Beyond Plausible

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  Donnie Pinko is a 2001 American Christmas science fiction psychological thriller film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Billingsley.

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  LARP Fiction is a 1994 live action role playing game directed by Quentin Tarantino.

In Other Words

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  Star Trek: Faculty is a 1998 science fiction horror film about a group of gifted students at Starfleet Academy High School who design a mind control parasite intended to improve their grades.

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician and computer scientist John Backus (3 December 1924 – 17 March 2007) invented the Backus–Naur form (BNF) notation to define formal language syntax?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1616: Mathematician and cryptographer John Wallis born. He will serve as chief cryptographer for Parliament and, later, the royal court.

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  1910: First public demonstration of modern neon lighting, by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.

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  1924: Mathematician and computer scientist John Backus born. He will invent the Backus–Naur form (BNF) notation to define formal language syntax.

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  2001: The Genesis spacecraft exposes its collector arrays, beginning collection of solar wind particles. The collection process will end after 850 days, on April 1, 2004, with the spacecraft completing five halo loops around L1.

Topic of the Day

Non-Fungible Tokens

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  Portrait of the Artist as a Young NFT is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. A nichtfungibletokenroman written in a modernist style, it traces the intellectual and financial awakening of young Stephen Dataloss, Joyce's fictional alter ego, whose surname alludes to the loss of data, which undermines the non-fungible token economy.

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  Planet of the NFTs is a 1968 science fiction NFT film about an astronaut (Charlton Heston) who crash-lands on a strange planet in the distant future where non-fungible tokens have been deleted.

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  Dial N for NFTs is a 1954 American crime thriller film about decides to murder his wife for her NFTs and because she hacked his Tindr account the year before.

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  The Adventures of Rocky and NFTwinkle and Friends is an American animated television series about an anthropomorphic flying squirrel, Rocket J. ("Rocky") Squirrel, and an NFT-minting moose, Bullwinkle N.F.T. Moose.