Pixel Scroll 8/18/18 With Pixelled Hide And Scrolly Horn

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Much as I’d like to do more, I’ve got a long day tomorrow…

(1) DAILY NEWZINE. Read the Worldcon 76 daily zine here.

(2) WORLDCON 76. Got to meet Cat Rambo for the first time on Friday. Pics or it didn’t happen!

(3) DEMENTIA DISPUTED. TMZ learned in court papers: “‘Star Trek’ Star Nichelle Nichols, Her Son’s The Problem, Not Dementia, Claims Alleged Friend”:

Nichelle Nichols is spry and lucid, and doesn’t need to be controlled by a bunch of people who don’t have her best interests at heart — including her son– so says a woman claiming to be her close friend.

According to new legal docs filed by Angelique Fawcette … the ‘Star Trek’ icon’s son, Kyle Johnson, doesn’t really care about Nichols’ well-being … she says he’s trying to use her health issues as an excuse to gain possession of her riches.

Fawcette claims Nichelle even wrote a note to her son in March 2017, letting him know she wants to amend her will because he allegedly told her … “I can’t wait to get rid of this sh*t and sell [your] house and property.”

(4) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

  • Born August 18 – Christian Slater, 49. Genre work includes Tales from the Darkside, Beyond the Stars (an Apollo 11 film), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles and the voice of Deadshot in various animated Justice League productions.
  • Born August 18 – Sarita Choudhury, 52. The alternate history series The Kings noted here before, the Hunger Games film franchise and the Blindspot series.

(5) ARMORED LIVING. Engadget takes a look at a FoMoCo program to equip some of its factory workers with passive exoskeleton vests (“Ford thinks exoskeletons are ready for prime time in its factories”). Though the upper-body machines do not do anything to make the workers stronger, they are said to enhance endurance. Though not entirely clear, part of the intent seems to be to reduce injuries.

The EksoVests (built by Ekso Bionics) are available for employees that have to reach overhead multiple times a day. The exoskeleton vest doesn’t have a motor or battery pack to make its wearer stronger. Instead, it’s a mechanical device that offers passive arm support from five to 15 pounds.

As the person reaches up, the vest offers their arms additional assistance. The higher they reach, the more support the system adds. “It’s not a strength enhancer, it’s an endurance enhancer,” Marty Smets, Ford’s technical expert of human systems and virtual manufacturing, told Engadget.

…Smets was quick to note that those using the vest are only a small portion of the assembly line. The company will issue a total of 75 exoskeletons, which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t that many. “Today, it’s only the passive upper-arm support skeleton that helps with overhead work,” Smets said. However, it’s just the beginning

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

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41 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/18/18 With Pixelled Hide And Scrolly Horn”

  1. 1/5th, or as a bartender would say, one fifth.

    (2) WORLDCON 76. “Pics or it didn’t happen!” – LOL and congrats to you both. 😉

  2. The Expanse room party (themed as the imagined Black Moon Bar) has some rather interesting themed drinks. Order in Belter Creole for a badge ribbon!

    (No relation to Detective Miller.)

  4. 2) That’s a very nice pic of the two of you.

    4) Christian Slater is only 49? Then he must have been 17, when he made Name of the Rose. Which has a sex scene between Christian Slater and Valeria Molina.

  6. Cora says Christian Slater is only 49? Then he must have been 17, when he made Name of the Rose. Which has a sex scene between Christian Slater and Valeria Molina.

    Yea he is. Given the time and setting of the that film, it made perfect sense. Are you objecting to it because he was seventeen?

  7. @Cat Eldridge:

    Are you objecting to it because he was seventeen?

    I’ll admit to being surprised. For legal reasons, films usually use actors in their early 20s when an underage character needs to be involved in a sex scene, and definitions of “underage” vary from place to place.

  8. Rail notes I’ll admit to being surprised. For legal reasons, films usually use actors in their early 20s when an underage character needs to be involved in a sex scene, and definitions of “underage” vary from place to place.

    Seventeen generally isn’t considered underage in most paces that filming takes place though the scene itself is removed in some regions where that is considered below the minimum age for the actors to be engaged in sex, real or simulated.

  10. @Cat Eldridge: Wasn’t sure where the actual cut off was or how it might have changed over the intervening years. I just remember the emphasis on “adults playing teenagers” in the year or so after the Traci Lords business hit the mainstream news and thinking that could explain anyone’s surprise at Slater’s age.

  13. @Cat Eldridge

    Yea he is. Given the time and setting of the that film, it made perfect sense. Are you objecting to it because he was seventeen?

    No objections, just surprised that Christian Slater wasn’t much older than me, when I saw the film in the theatre (first adult film I saw and my first screen sex scene). And since the movie was shot in Europe (Austria or Italy, I think, though I’m not sure), Christian Slater would have been above the age of consent anyway.

    It’s just that as Rail said, nowadays filming sexual situations involving underage actors is no longer allowed in many countries. When David Kroß was supposed to film a nude scene with Kate Winslet in a bathtub (no sex, just sharing a bathtub) in “The Reader”, they had to wait until he turned eighteen for legal reasons, even though neither Kroß nor his parents had any problems with the scene. “Game of Thrones” supposedly had similar problems, because several of the actors were underage. I also suspect that Daenerys, Jon Snow and Robb Stark were aged up compared to the books simply to avoid such issues.

  16. Just down from climbing Kilimanjaro, finding out that I have an even higher tsundoku of File posts to get through. This will take time.

  17. Hampus, for real? How was it? I read Mark Horrell’s Kili report and found it very interesting.

  19. Lenore Jones:

    t was the absolutely hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I had to stop 150 yards from the top because of being totally groggy of oxygen deprivation after a 6 hour climb in the middle of the night, up a forty degree cliff side covered with gravel, for a total of 7 miles of height. So that only left a ten mile track down to lower, safer altitudes to finish the same day as to avoid danger.

  23. Hampus Eckerman on August 19, 2018 at 12:15 pm said:

    t was the absolutely hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I had to stop 150 yards from the top because of being totally groggy of oxygen deprivation after a 6 hour climb in the middle of the night, up a forty degree cliff side covered with gravel, for a total of 7 miles of height. So that only left a ten mile track down to lower, safer altitudes to finish the same day as to avoid danger.

    My brother did it a few years ago and said the altitude sickness was terrible.

  29. Hm, I guess that means that In the Name of the Rose is technically child pornography in Sweden.

  30. Hampus, may I ask, what made you decide to climb it? And congratulations on the achievement!

  31. Mostly bad impulse control. A friend asked and I thought it sounded cool and bought the trip the same week.

  33. @John Winkelman —

    That video is surprisingly excellent. And those guys are having way too much fun!

  35. Hi, filers. I need help tracking down a book I read.
    The plot was, in a world where almost everyone is a werewolf, a non-shifter police officer stumbles on a plot to increase the number of non-shifters. I can not recall title or author’s name, but it would have been published in the early 00ies.

  36. I know I may have to re-post when the Scroll gets back to normal posting, but Graydon Saunders has a new book – Under One Banner. It’s available here.
    For this I’m going to put a pause on Raven Stratagem.

  39. @Bravo Lima Poppa, thanks for the heads-up! Bought! (Also available from Kobo. Don’t know about other sources.)

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