Twitter users have been labeling Penn Station as the worst place in New York City. Some called it their “hell on earth,” even. Penn Station is a transit hub that sits below Madison Square Garden, and it has major dungeon vibes, as Time Out details:
For the uninitiated (if you’ve somehow managed to dodge Penn Station in your time as a New Yorker), the transit hub, which sits just below Madison Square Garden, is home to three different railroads: Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and Long Island Rail Road. With the entirety of the structure's above ground portion demolished in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden, it's pretty much devoid of sunlight. Garishly lit with low-ceilings and pigeons hanging out overhead, some would say it has major dungeon vibes.
During the daily rush hour, confusing signs have tourists walking in circles, seasoned commuters shove and shoulder each other as their assigned train tracks appear on the big board. Hundreds race down cramped stairs to tunnels even further underground.
One of the reviews on The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is that its ending was a bit too anticlimactic and lacking. That point seems understandable, as players spent one hundred plus hours pouring their heart and soul into exploring the vast land of Hyrule, unlocking every story-related quest, and defeating all the required bosses to clear the game only to get a short cutscene for an ending. The trend of gamers being unsatisfied with endings seems to carry over to The Last Of Us 2. The game’s ending has left a lot of gamers disappointed:
I am perplexed. To me, this seems like the only way TLOU2 could have ended well. Yet, the census from the masses is that the game teases you with a climactic ending, only to fizzle out with a sad, pathetic fight. Which, yes, it does exactly that, yet it’s so fitting – a pathetic scrap between two people worn down to their cores, by years of vainly seeking to heal their trauma. This is a beautifully fitting ending to a cautionary tale of revenge, but many say they would have preferred it if Ellie got her revenge. As if the game hasn’t spent hours showing you that Abby gained nothing from enacting hers.
This is saddening because, like Firewatch, this ending is designed to make the player reflect. I know I, like Ellie, wanted Abby’s head on a pike for most of the story – Especially since the game, despite its best efforts, does a pretty poor job of making me care for Abby – but the ending gave me reason to pause and think. Was it ever really worth all this effort?
There’s a game titled Final Sword in Nintendo eShop that looks oddly familiar: it looks like the Legend of Zelda. But it doesn’t just look like the latter; it even sounds like it! Perhaps the only differences of Final Sword are the frustrating game bugs, as well as the bad choice of sound that its developers used when the player falls to his death, as well as the ugly music on the “game over” screen.
There’s plenty of Dark Souls in the main character’s animation, and a boss fight with a dragon shows the creature posing just like its counterparts in Skyrim as it breathes a blast of fire. Several Japanese gamers have noted similarities to Monster Hunter as well. But perhaps the game Final Sword is most blatantly, oh, let’s call it “taking inspiration” from for the look of its menus and outdoor environments, is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Heck, even the game’s covers look incredibly alike…
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But what’s really gotten Final Sword in trouble isn’t how much it looks like Zelda, but how it sounds like the beloved Nintendo franchise. Not long after its release earlier this month, players started noticing something very familiar about a certain piece of background music in Final Sword…
Unexpected free time does wonders for people! It’s amazing to see people get their creative juices flowing given the current situation (but absolutely no pressure). One animator decided to share a small clip of their animated characters reacting to them, as if the characters really see what’s happening.
The Sims Spark’d is a reality competition show where players take on challenges as they play the Sims 4. The show is made in partnership with Eleague and Buzzfeed Multiplayer, and will be aired on TBS. The winner of the reality show will receive a whopping $100,000. Would you tune in?
It’s no surprise that a lot of trends and challenges are rising in TikTok, now that a lot of us are in our homes during the pandemic. But besides the fun, there seems to be some challenges that yield more income than entertainment. A pump-and-dump scheme involving Dogecoin, a joke currency made of memes, has been paying off quite well. Gizmodo has more details:
The plan is kinda paying off: As of this morning, Dogecoin had risen 27.7% since July 5.
The leader is jamezg97, who started posting about the bid on June 28, and subsequently began the #DogecoinTiktokChallange. The mystery TikToker, whose bio reads “STONKS,” tells users:
Alright here’s a crazy thought. What if everyone watching this video bought some Dogecoin? Could they really stop us? Could they stop us all?
The splitscreen shows that you could increase $1,000 to $426,985 if you held it from a price of $.00234 and tapped out at $1. A second video, posted five days ago and now with nearly half a million views, issues a bolder missive:
Let’s all get rich! Dogecoin is practically worthless. There are 800 million TikTok users. That’s just $25. Once it hits one dollar, you’ll have ten grand. Tell everyone you know.
If you've always wanted to build the LEGO Millennium Falcon, but you didn't have the time or the patience to put 7,541 pieces together, nor the $800 to buy the set, this is the next best thing. Watch as the ship assembles itself in stop-motion! Also notice there's some interesting toys doing stuff in the background occasionally, and the music is darn near perfect. -via Geeks Are Sexy
"My husband is not a cat person. We adopted a cat yesterday. Here is him figuring out how cats work."
It's a common but adorable story. A man or woman will tell you they are not a cat person, and they might even express a preference for dogs. But sooner or later they meet a cat or two and their story falls apart. Yes, they are a cat person after all! They just had to meet the right cat. Yeah, right, every cat is the right cat, once you get the know it. Read 15 posts about people who swore they weren't into cats at Buzzfeed.
Today’s generation has been blessed with sanitation technology developed years before them. In addition to the technology that aids us in our hygienic practices, we are also quite meticulous in our personal hygiene. But have you ever wondered how people from past eras maintained their hygiene? Check out this video from Weird History as they discuss the hygienic practices of the Victorians. Spoiler alert: despite their lavish clothing and jewelry, they were apparently gross.
The Italian Alps are now covered in pink snow! The beautiful but unnatural phenomenon isn't a surprise snow mutation, it’s actually a bad sign. The pink color comes from blooming algae, which speeds up the rate at which snow melts away, as Futurism details:
It’s not so much that the algae is melting the snow itself, Earther reports. But rather, turning the snow into pink “strawberry snow,” as it’s sometimes called, makes it absorb more heat from sunlight, which causes it to melt sooner.
Blooms like this aren’t unheard of — they’re a relatively common occurrence in glaciers in the spring and summer. It’s not yet clear if rising temperatures linked to climate change will mean more blooms in the future, Earther reports, but there is the distinct possibility that more heat will mean more algae and less snow.
The magic box is an apartment designed by Raúl Sánchez architects. The company refurbished the ground floor of an old three-storey family house in Spain. The company redesigned the 110 square meter apartment for a young couple and their two daughters in a unique way, as Designboom details:
upon entering one can observe the spacious hall made up of a series of planes/partitions. this area showcases the new design language, while also generating openings in the upper part, allowing natural light to brighten the interior. a common kitchen and dining space connects to the outside garden, with lush vegetation, through a longitudinal bench that slides into the window opening. the window itself was placed on the exterior face of the facade plan, turning it invisible from the interior, creating the feeling of being in close contact with the exterior.
You have to wonder what's in this package- maybe candy! A time-lapse video shows a colony of ants carrying an envelope to, I don't know, somewhere. They are apparently great at teamwork, but a little fuzzy on the directions. This was posted by okcoolmachine at reddit.
With the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) now having over 20 films, with more films coming in the future, superhero comic book adaptations have indeed taken Hollywood by storm.
Using loosely serialised storytelling and logistically impressive crossover elements, the MCU has bent the very medium of cinema to its whim, liberally borrowing from the conventions of TV. With at least 14 more MCU films planned, as well as countless TV series to stream on Disney+, this is a road with no end in sight.
But is the big screen the best medium that we can use to give life to the superheroes that we once saw on comic books? For some, there is a better medium that could be used, and that medium is video games.
The suitability of video games as the ultimate platform for superhero adaptation has been obvious for decades; as far back as the late 1970s and 1980s, savvy developers were churning out crude 2D games featuring Superman, Batman and Spider-Man.
Unlike superhero movies which offer you the opportunity to view the narrative through the lens of a spectator, superhero video games offer you the opportunity to don the superhero’s suit. In other words, you get to be the hero, and you watch the story unfold through the eyes of the superhero himself. Such is the case of the recently released Iron Man VR and other games like it.
Superheroes have always been rooted in wish fulfilment and fantasies of power. Video games are perhaps the fullest realisation of this, giving players the agency to use unnatural abilities as they see fit...
Perhaps the watershed moment for superhero games came in 2009, with the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Set within the boundaries of the fictional Gotham prison, Asylum was engrossing, unfiltered Batman. Whether you were beating swarms of enemies to a pulp, gliding around environments with batlike stealth, or deploying one of several mechanical gadgets, it all felt right – more authentically nailing the tone of (some of) the comics than any film has ever managed. The Independent called it and the first of its sequels, 2011’s Batman: Arkham City, “two of the best action games ever made”. Superhero films may often struggle for validation in the world of cinema, but in games, they have shown they can spar with the best of ’em.
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Compare this, for instance, to The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s Michael Mann-inspired DC Comics adaptation, released in 2008. The Dark Knight’s reputation has stood the test of time, more or less – Heath Ledger’s tic-heavy posthumous-Oscar-winning performance is still held up as the gold standard of onscreen supervillainy, and the film proved monumental in legitimising superhero fare in the eyes of the cinema-going public. But it was also overstuffed, and criticisms often focus on the difficulty of balancing two distinct supervillains – Ledger’s Joker and Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face – both competing for screen-time and attention.
How far would you go in order to get attention? For this cat, named Lolly, he would die, or at least pretend to be.
A cat owner has been forced to post notes to her neighbours reassuring them they haven't killed her cat due to the moggy's continuous attention-seeking pranks.
According to Lesley Southam, the cat’s owner, Lolly would lie down so still that people would stop by to check if he’s okay.
It's not the only prank 14-year-old Lolly is known for, as he often enjoys jumping into stranger's cars and making himself at home after wandering into offices.
The note posted around the neighbourhood includes a picture of the prankster cat and reads: "Hi, my name is Lolly.
"My favourite thing is people and pretending I am dead at the side of the road.
When she was an undergrad, MacKenzie Wade, along with her roommate, would bake cookies made out of mealworms. She would then take some of the cookies to a party, and, surprisingly, people loved the cookies. The cookies also turned up to be good conversation starters. Wade is not the only one promoting insect eating.
Their arguments are legion: Edible bugs are better for the environment and can help slow climate change, they can alleviate malnutrition and ease food insecurity. Also, they’re delicious.
“June beetles are fantastic,” said [Wade], a doctoral candidate in anthropology at UC Santa Barbara. “They truly taste like bacon.”
...Her research specializes in insects as food, and the cultural aversions to eating them.
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What’s clear, Wade said, is that edible insects have tremendous potential to feed a growing population in an increasingly damaged world. Some 2 billion people, mostly in the global South, already eat insects, many species of which contain as much protein as beef, more iron than spinach, as much vitamin B12 as salmon and all nine amino acids.
Now that is nutritious, but I’ll take meat, fish, and vegetables, thank you very much.
More details about Wade’s research over at The Current.
