Here are the most viewed, voted, and commented-on Things from the past year. There’s a pretty great mix here of corporate cheese, baffling games, retrofuturism, and Leonard Nimoy; it provides a good glimpse of the scope of the Timid Futures embrace. Here we go, in reverse order…
#5 – How Nuclear Radiation Can Change Our Race – Mechanix Illustrated gave us this chilling look at an impossible future back in 1953.
The article links our inevitable nuclear doom with a rapid and widespread mutation that splinters the human race. The new race loses a toe but gains much more: height and head-size. And because of their larger heads and the presumably larger brains within those heads, they may have intellect and powers far beyond our own. We will either be enslaved by them, hunt them down and exterminate them, be hunted down and exterminated by them, or learn to work together. Yes, the article lists every possible outcome of a society with two similar races.
Check out the rest of the “article” here: Five Things – 3.23.15
#4 – Windows 95 Training Video – When producing the world’s first Cyber-Sitcom, Microsoft dug a hand into the ‘what’s working’ bucket of the day and plucked out Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston. It was a reasonable move, I guess, but I can’t see how this worked out well for anybody involved.
Aniston and Perry are brought into Bill Gates’ office to audition for a Windows 95 training video. Meta enough for you? What follows are a lot of stereotypes, a ton of dad jokes, some distorted views of what “cool” kids those days were like, and a lot of delicious cheese.
Here’s the video. Also check out the original writeup here: Five Things – 8.17.15
https://youtu.be/kGYcNcFhctc
#3 – Pie Face – Basically the family version of Russian Roulette.
I noticed in the holiday blitz this year that they brought this awful game back! Now a whole new generation can make pointless messes!
#2 – Dune Activity Books – With activities like “Weigh the Big Baron” and “Color The Dead Guys”, the Dune activity books are right up any child’s alley. Pretty sure this is exactly what Frank Herbert intended for his series.
#1 – Magnavision – Finally, here’s a meeting between Leonard Nimoy and the space rock that has bestowed laserdisc technology upon our species.
This is a really beautiful example of Nimoy’s seemingly “up-for-anything-ness” when it comes to selling things in a sci-fi light. That’s not a dig; I genuinely love whenever he used a vague Spock association to sell anything.
Have you seen that episode of Futurama where Leela speaks with Nibbler for the first time and spends the whole scene paraphrasing what Nibbler’s saying for the audience? This whole video is basically that. It’s great.
That’s… that. It’s been a great year, and I want to thank you all for your likes, comments, and emails about all of this stuff. I’ve got some fun stuff in store for 2016, and I really look forward to sharing it with all of you. Happy New Year!
-ds