Last month’s bunch of random stuff:
- Predator as an unacknowledged masterpiece
Though Predatorenjoys a warm reception from science fiction and horror fans, many don’t give it due credit for its tact and intelligence. What begins as an action film slowly morphs into one of the most effective and unsettling horror movies ever made. Predator meticulously picks apart genre expectations, destroying the ’80s action hero archetype and creating a villain that to this day outshines the film’s leading man.
- The oldest stone tools outside Africa have been found in … China!
- I agree with the rhetorical question in the title of this article: Joaquin Phoenix really is the greatest actor today.
- When reading about the Wolf Wall in Iran, came across “the lost realms of the Oxus” (cover pic this month)
- A neutrino burst linked to an actual cosmic source
- John Gray writes about the difference between earlier liberals and modern progressives
- (warning, really weird) some crows are necrophilic
- Looking back at the Great Recession:
Some of the more pessimistic commentators at the time of the credit crunch, myself included, said that the aftermath of the crash would dominate our economic and political lives for at least ten years. What I wasn’t expecting – what I don’t think anyone was expecting – was that ten years would go by quite so fast. At the start of 2008, Gordon Brown was prime minister of the United Kingdom, George W. Bush was president of the United States, and only politics wonks had ever heard of the junior senator from Illinois; Nicolas Sarkozy was president of France, Hu Jintao was general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Ken Livingstone was mayor of London, MySpace was the biggest social network, and the central bank interest rate in the UK was 5.5 per cent.
- I find it absurdly sad, but … getting to the moon is going to be much, much harder than it was the first time round
- This one is for hardcore history wonks: The influence of railways on military operations in the Russo-German War 1941-1945
- The Milky Way might have a trillion planets …
- Gripping read: How Britain beat the odds to independently achieve space flight, and then abandoned it on the very same day.
- “The Shocking truth about Jordan Peterson” is that (spoiler alert) there’s nothing shocking at all
- Fun fact: a hundred years ago, Los Angeles was blanketed by oil derricks.
- Stranger than fiction: How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions
Abacus Noir 