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http://www.toplessrobot.com/2012/05/throne_of_games_round_2.php

In the second installment of the low-budget Canadian improv rendition of the critically acclaimed HBO fantasy series, Lord Varys and Petyr Baelish are introduced, Viserys gives Daenerys to Khal Drogo, Cersei describes her vagina, King Robert Baratheon meets an unfortunate accident, Ned Stark has an unpleasant discussion, and Sansa gives an important update on her current menstrual status.

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2012/05/now_youre_playing_with_community_power.php

Community has been reviewed for season 4 (thank you, dread ones!) but that doesn't mean that Dan Harmon and the rest of the Community gang didn't pull out all the stops for the end of season 3 (whose final three episode are, mysteriously, all airing tomorrow night). E.g., in the episode "Digital Estate Planning," it looks like the gang enters a world of 16-bit wonder (ignore the "8-bit" nonsense above, as no one seems to remember what that really means any more)! And yes, this does sound pretty hackneyed, but this is exactly the sort of shit Community does so brilliantly it gets away with it, so shut up. SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE! WOO!

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2012/05/super_terrific_japanese_thing_cocorobo.php

Do you have a Roomba? Have you ever said to yourself, "Boy, I love that it vacuums up my living area without any work on my part, but what would be nice is if it depended on me emotionally"? If so, you're in for a treat, because Sharp is releasing the Cocorobo, a highly advanced Roomba on crack with also crippling emotional needs. You'll have to speak to and/or use the Cocorobo every day to keep it happy, or... well, I don't know, because the video sinisterly doesn't answer this question. Does it stop cleaning? Does it hide your car keys? If you ignore it for too long, will it jump into your bathtub while you're showering to attempt a murder-suicide pact? Or does it simply use its advanced cleaning capabilities to make sure no trace of your body is ever found again? Thanks to Ken_Shiro for the tip.

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/meldrum-or-tr/

http://www.cryptomundo.com/?p=54488

#Museums #Sasquatch #Bigfoot
The anthropologist will be speaking at the National Oregon Trail
Museum.

This was a quick visit on the way home from somewhere else and I didn't have a torch with me so didn't look around the house - it actually operated as a restaurant prior to its abandonment. The mill building is very rotten inside, there are a lot of holes in the wooden floors. If I'm heading over that way again I'll stick a torch in the car and have a look inside the house too.



( Photos )

Ending tomorrow! Auctions including BPAL's Brood XIX, Dyan Moon, The Rose in the Deeps, Moai, Ides 2010 and To Helen, and also a bottle of Winter Maiden bath oil!
(note: because of a change in ebay policies, I can't ship anything sold on ebay to the US or Canada, and I'm terribly sorry about that! But the LJ sales are and will continue to be open to everyone all over the world-including Canada and the States!)

And of course I've also got regular sales going on here. I've added 1/2 decants of the Tanuki scents and some Labyrinth scents too!

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/Dq_0RNALQ9A/the-last-12-months-were-the-warmest-in-us-history

Did April seem feel unusually balmy to you this year? It probably had to do with the fact that it was the third warmest April ever recorded. Come to think of it, March was pretty warm, as well — the warmest ever documented, to be exact. In fact, NOAA is reporting that, as of April, Americans have officially lived through the hottest 12 month period on record: More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/9KqTmrNSb4M/this-sculptor-builds-incredible-dead-sea-monsters-trapped-on-land

The artwork of Argentinian sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas evokes such themes as fantastic adventure in the otherwise normal material realm, the passage of time, and the last days of humanity. Perhaps his most striking series of sculptures depict giant dead sea leviathans beached far from any bodies of water. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/SRjO8lwDXbI/why-octopuses-should-run-our-national-security-infrastructure

Next time the government wants new ideas about how to protect our nation's security, it should consult an octopus. That's the unusual proposition of marine biologist Rafe Sagarin, a pioneer in the infant field of "natural security," where experts use models from nature to help them come up with emergency responses to everything from terrorist attacks to pandemics. Sagarin has just published a book about his work called Learning from the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease. Any scientific theory that involves the superiority of cephalopods is automatically intriguing, so I called up Sagarin to talk about it. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/GGalEKBJcwY/what-samuel-r-delany-can-tell-publishing-about-its-latest-trend

Almost every article you read about books lately bemoans the fact that nobody reads any more — except that now, in the age of ebooks, you're starting to hear the opposite complaint. A recent New York Times article says people are reading too much, and too quickly. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/cG-GToeecrE/watch-this-paralyzed-woman-control-a-robotic-arm-using-only-her-mind

Watch this video, and witness a breakthrough in the field of brain-machine interfaces. Researchers have been improving upon BrainGate — a brain-machine interface that allows users to control an external device with their minds — for years, but what you see here is the most advanced incarnation of the implant system to date. It is nothing short of remarkable. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/8PyczDFHXQE/how-to-tell-from-a-trailer-that-a-movie-is-going-to-suck

Right now, in the middle of summer movie season, it's easy to get sensory overload. Big-budget movies are coming thick and fast, each of them trying to overwhelm us into opening our wallets. And the more movies you go to see, the more hyperactive trailers you're going to see on the big screen. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/__wA2xHki4c/a-map-reveals-how-much-of-london-actually-lurks-below-the-earth

Much of a city's history is written in its architecture, its infrastructure, and even its natural geographical features. Over time, however, much of that history is lost. Buildings are leveled, and rivers and subway lines are entombed in the ground, interred forever to make room for taller buildings, wider roads, and longer passages. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/1srnheA99vc/do-you-dare-to-open-the-secret-door-in-the-virtual-fairyland

Over at Tor.com, there's a fantastic story by There and Back Again author Pat Murphy, called "About Fairies." A woman is working on developing a virtual fairyland for a toy company that sells fairy dolls, but she and the other members of the team start developing their own secret fairylands. It turns into a beautiful meditation on fairies, while the main character is also grappling with the impending death of her father. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/uxLF7lHwaeA/10-science-concepts-that-could-spawn-awesome-supervillains

In the Doctor Who episode "Blink," we meet "quantum locked" villains based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It's a great idea, but why stop there? There are plenty of scientific concepts that would make for great science fiction villains. Here are ten evil creations that could only have been made possible by science! More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/RgY1Qtd9ZXY/prometheus-viral-introduces-the-evil-yutani-corporation

The latest viral ad for Prometheus has actress Noomi Rapace begging for help from Weyland Industries. But if you look closely, you can see that the entire video phone call is being monitored by none other than the Yutani Company. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/KQBMKEIdCOg/reminder-book-club-meeting-529-to-discuss-nick-harkaways-angelmaker

The io9 Book Club meets every month to discuss a book, and then the author usually joins us for a chat. This month, we're reading Nick Harkaway's novel Angelmaker (we reviewed the book here). We'll meet May 29th to discuss the book. Watch for a post that day announcing the book club, and jump into comments for discussion. There's still time to read the book, too, so get moving! More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/-qqLbSWFdvM/lets-write-the-sequel-to-battleship-based-on-some-crap-i-found-on-my-kitchen-table

A few years back, moviegoers had a big belly laugh when they heard that a movie studio was immolating $200 million on an alien invasion flick based on the 1967 board game Battleship. "Haw haw!" we innocently guffawed. "Obligatory bon mot about red and white pegs! You sunk my battleship! Insert mock glee about cultural fatuousness and strip-mined childhood memories here!" More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/jZX3DLPPLsg/watch-a-nanotube-being-eaten-and-then-barfed-back-up-by-a-flake-of-iron

There are a lot of grown-up ways I might have chosen to write that headline, but when you watch this video you'll see why I resorted to talking like my five-year-old neighbor. Though what you're watching are simple chemical reactions under a tunneling electron microscope (TEM), it's tempting to describe them in animalistic terms. The carbon nanotube really looks like a living, wiggling creature being consumed by a dark lumpy menace (the iron), which then appears to suddenly start vomiting the worm back up. What's really happening here? More »