Gracie Dicks

Successful test today of Orion’s Launch Abort System. 🚀🌓

Top view of Saturn.

📷 CassiniSaturn / NASA-NASAJPL / G. Ugarkovic

This story is based on an episode of NPR’s Life Kit.

Geoff and Ellie live in a suburban Chicago neighborhood that looks familiar from movies like Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — both filmed in the area.

They have three kids — Nathan, 5, Benji, 11, and Abby, 14 — and they’re worried that all three are too into their screens.

An all-too-common experience

Ninety-eight percent of families with children now have smartphones. Young children Nathan’s age consume over two hours of media per day on average, tweens take in about six hours, and teens use their devices for nine hours a day, according to the nonprofit Common Sense Media.

Technology overuse ranked as the No. 1 fear of parents of teenagers in a national survey last year.

“Are you saying that your planet did not possess robots before a positronic brain and neural net were finally perfected?”

Brett put down his book and rubbed his eyes groggily. “Menny, it’s like twenty-three hundred hours, are you going to ask me hard questions now?”

Menah-Tal poked an eye out from underneath the top bunk to look at Brett. “I have seen you stay up even till three hundred hours in the morning participating in that recreational activity ‘Risk.’ Would you prefer to leave my question unanswered until you have completed your circadian cycle?”

Brett put both hands over his face and muttered something about how he shouldn’t have taken this mission to purchase mechanical supplies on the next star base four stardates away with a alien who asked questions of five-year-old level impossibility. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Ok, no. We had robots, they just weren’t like operative androids like our ship has.”

Menah-Tal poked another eye out. “Were they more like the Discovery’s computer?”

“Nah, the ship’s computer is like Siri.” Brett stuck his bookmark in his novel. “We’d probably call her a bot.”

“A bot? Also, why would you refer to a computer as a ‘her’ if it had no visible visage to equate to a face?”

Brett rubbed his face one more time and groaned before rolling over to face Menah-Tal’s eyes blinking out from the bottom bunk. “We had lots of robots, we didn’t even really notice that we had robots. We a lot of factory robots to work assembly lines, ones to push in carts at stores - not to collect them or anything - just to push them, buildable ones for little kids, ones to clean the floor -”

“Stabby.” said Menah-Tal wisely.

“Yeah whatever. Anyway, we just had them slowly collect and we were kind of immune to them. They were just part of life. There were ones you didn’t see that weren’t even technically robots since they were computers or just programs that ran things autonomously which was close enough for us. We gave them names I guess cause we didn’t see them like Siri, Alexa, or Cortana, girl names normally. Made them feel more real to us.”

Menah-Tal retreated back onto his bunk for a moment. He poked all three eyes out again and asked the spectacular question; “Why?”

Brett was expecting this question and rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. “I guess because we felt sort of responsible for the things we made that talked back and needed to give them names to call them. Sometimes we even bonded with them like a real living creature - especially now that the androids are better and less buggy.”

happy : my cell’s password is “password”

peter and us :

Sorry, Jack…. Chucky’s back!

After years of eluding the knife, Chucky has finally gotten a Ho-llywood facelift. Rumors of a Child’s Play remake had been circulating for at least a decade. After many erroneous reports, a “straightforward horror” version was in the works around 2008. However, after the negative reception of then-recent slasher remakes, the film was left on the assembly line. And with the remake shelved, the original series continued with Curse of Chucky. On July 3 of 2018, a reboot was announced, eXXXisting without connection to the Mancini canon.

And lo, there rose a new Chucky! Unlike the one we’ve grown to know and fear, 2019’s Chucky is not a product of voodoo; he is instead a faulty automaton. Now, when we review a film, we tend to give a brief synopsis of the film. Ho-wever, the basic plot (boy receives sinister plaything from mother) is more-or-less intact; it’s the central monster that is fundamentally different. The ho-rror of the situation is not that the doll is alive; the ho-rror is of technology run amok.

Many fright-seekers may find this change disconcerting, and it does indeed change the nature of the threat. With that said, it does make sense on a thematic level. Killer Dolls were old hat by 1988, so the original Child’s Play injected new blood into the concept by drawing inspiration from the cutesy baby dolls that dominated toy stores. Chucky was, by design, a Cabbage Patch Killer; a grotesque caricature of My Buddy and other mass-produced dollies. Because of that, Child’s Play has been read as a mordant commentary on Reagan-era consumerism.

With My Buddy-style dolls having gone the way of the Pet Rock, 2019’s Child’s Play targets this era’s most ubiquitous source of amusement: “smart” technology. The original elicits scares from the idea that a supposedly inanimate object moves on its own and acts with supernatural malignance; the reboot endeavors to chill the audience with a scenario in which the devices we rely on go to ghastly extremes to fulfill their purpose. Though voodoo and tech are hardly the same, the idea of using a popular entertainment item to attack consumerism has been brought into the Apple Age.

If you can overlook the lack of black magic or the changes to the concept, Child’s Play is actually one of the best remakes of the last decade. Despite being very much a 2019 picture, the film often plays out like a macabre parody of 1980s family films, specifically ET. In fact, I would call this film “adorable”… until the blood spills, that is. Bear McCreary’s old-fashioned score is just aces; it somehow evokes both carnival sounds and The Omen’s ominous orchestration. At times, this film even has the look of a giallo film, which is a huge plus in our book!

Mark Hamill as Chucky; The Joker himself lending his mellifluous menace to another iconic creep. Ho-w could one resist? We don’t think it will shock anyone when we state that Hamill is simply sensational in the part; what is more surprising is just how affable his Chucky is. With the Clown Prince of Crime voicing another infamous, quip-spouting, laughing looney, we were sure he would be another theatrical sadist. Instead, the Chucky of this film is a pitiable creature, not unlike the tragic monsters of the past. For a good chunk of the film, you actually get to see Chucky be… genuinely cute. And as an ostensibly cuddly Chucky, Hamill is perfectly likable; despite what we know about Chucky, we are strangely endeared to him. While we still prefer Dourif’s take, both versions are brilliant in their own way. If Lee and Lugosi can coexist, why not Dourif and Hamill?

For you lovably bloodthirsty freaks out there, you may be disappointed by the general lack of gore on display here. Ho-wever, the few splatter set-pieces are marvellously overboard and terrifically tasteless. We wouldn’t want to spoil the surprises, but the first major Chucky murder results in some totally awesome aftermath. Even with the relative lack of blood, there’s still plenty of delectable ghoulishness.

Child’s Play (2019) is totally boss. I mean, ho-w can you hate a film in which Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 inspires Chucky to go psycho? It’s not the Child’s Play you grew up with, but it’s a worthy addition to Chucky’s legacy. And, if you ask us, any film with Aubrey Plaza is worth your time.

Chucky isn’t the Good Guy you knew… but he’s still your Buddi.

Unique creations custom built.

Various mice created from various materials. All bespoke based on gaming mice with 5500 dpi or Bluetooth units.

Creative Home Design, Metro Books, 1999 📚