<![CDATA[Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum - Film, Photography & Literature ]]>

<![CDATA[Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum - Film, Photography & Literature ]]> https://www.scivillage.com/ Sun, 27 Sep 2026 23:15:34 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[NYT top TV series of 2000's]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21434.html Sat, 26 Sep 2026 18:36:25 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21434.html

[Image: 825340190-1116722664138068-8929860164573804937-n.jpg]

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]]> <![CDATA[Kono Express]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21388.html Sun, 20 Sep 2026 08:26:36 +0000 Yazata]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21388.html
The guy who is making it, Motakuki, used to work at Disney on Star Wars. Cool robots.

Part 1 - 21 minutes long - Kind of sets the scene and establishes the (dark) mood. It kind of introduces a robot "immortality" theme that's dropped in parts 2 and 3, but that I think will return in later episodes. This one was released a month ago.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ikm5lP0zsi0

Part 2 - 26 minutes long - Features an entirely different protagonist in the same off-world setting. Introduces an extraterrestrial crime plot.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/mdfJiKACxx4

Part 3 - 25 minutes long - Introduces a third protagonist, but meshes closely with Part 2 and its characters and situations, advancing the crime plot. . It's hot off the presses, only released eight days ago.

I don't know how many more installments are planned, more than one I'm guessing since there are lots of plot threads that need tying together.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/F3qT1uPuqiU]]>
The guy who is making it, Motakuki, used to work at Disney on Star Wars. Cool robots.

Part 1 - 21 minutes long - Kind of sets the scene and establishes the (dark) mood. It kind of introduces a robot "immortality" theme that's dropped in parts 2 and 3, but that I think will return in later episodes. This one was released a month ago.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ikm5lP0zsi0

Part 2 - 26 minutes long - Features an entirely different protagonist in the same off-world setting. Introduces an extraterrestrial crime plot.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/F3qT1uPuqiU]]> <![CDATA["Naza"]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21355.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 20:27:33 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21355.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY79iZahszU]]>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY79iZahszU]]> <![CDATA[Trailer for Elon Musk's new Odyssey remake]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21255.html Thu, 03 Sep 2026 20:45:39 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21255.html
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1719167905785747]]>
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1719167905785747]]> <![CDATA[Nobunaga's Little Essays on X]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21248.html Thu, 03 Sep 2026 06:54:48 +0000 Yazata]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21248.html
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In Nebraska I was told a number. I did not believe it. I have since checked it, and I still do not believe it.

The football stadium in Lincoln has sold every seat, for every home game, since November 3, 1962.

Every game. Not the good years. Every game. Through seasons the state would rather not discuss. Through blizzards. Through years when leaving early would have been reasonable, and nobody left.

I asked a man named Gary how two million people keep a promise for that long.

He said, "You buy the ticket."

I asked what if the team is bad.

"You buy the ticket."

I asked what if it is snowing.

He looked at me with real patience. "You buy the ticket."

Here is the part that undid me. The first game of the streak, in 1962, they lost. Thirty-six thousand people came out the week after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, watched their team lose to Missouri, and came back for the next one anyway. And the next. It has not stopped.

The streak began with a loss. Nobody in Nebraska finds this ironic. They find it obvious.

This summer there was worry. Ticket sales were slow. People wrote articles asking whether it would finally end. I read them in a diner over a slice of pie I did not finish, and I confess I was afraid for a state I do not live in.

Then this week they announced the opener is sold out. Four hundred and eleven in a row.

In my land, a lord who kept his word for sixty years was written into the temple records.

Nebraska has kept its word since the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no temple. There are eighty-five thousand people who bought the ticket.

Gary is going Saturday. It is not snowing. He would go if it were.

A promise is easy in a winning season.
Nebraska has kept one through every other kind.

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I drove forty miles across Texas and counted flags.

Sixty-one. I counted again on the way back and got sixty-three, because two had gone up while I was gone.

A car dealership had one the size of a house. A plumber's truck had one on each door. A porch. A bikini, at the lake. A mailbox. A coffin, being carried into a church, and then, at the gas station across the street, a hat.

In my country the flag belongs to the state. It flies on government buildings on holidays and is put away by a man with a key.

Here I could not find the man with the key.

The salesman at the dealership said the flag was theirs. The plumber said his was his. A woman on her porch said, "Honey, it's mine," in a tone that closed the subject.

Nobody had been issued one. Everybody had bought their own.

I bought one. A neighbor showed me the rules, which nobody had ever written down for him either. Up at dawn. Down at dusk, or lit. Never the ground. Folded thirteen times into a triangle. He did the folds with me four times until my hands knew them. He said, "There you go," and did not say why he knew.

I have folded it four hundred times since. There is a light I could buy. I have not bought the light.

In my country the flag belongs to the state.

In Texas it belongs to a plumber named Ray, and to the dealership, and to the woman on the porch, and to a bikini at the lake, and on holidays the state has to ask to borrow it.

They lend it gladly. They have sixty-three.]]>
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In Nebraska I was told a number. I did not believe it. I have since checked it, and I still do not believe it.

The football stadium in Lincoln has sold every seat, for every home game, since November 3, 1962.

Every game. Not the good years. Every game. Through seasons the state would rather not discuss. Through blizzards. Through years when leaving early would have been reasonable, and nobody left.

I asked a man named Gary how two million people keep a promise for that long.

He said, "You buy the ticket."

I asked what if the team is bad.

"You buy the ticket."

I asked what if it is snowing.

He looked at me with real patience. "You buy the ticket."

Here is the part that undid me. The first game of the streak, in 1962, they lost. Thirty-six thousand people came out the week after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, watched their team lose to Missouri, and came back for the next one anyway. And the next. It has not stopped.

The streak began with a loss. Nobody in Nebraska finds this ironic. They find it obvious.

This summer there was worry. Ticket sales were slow. People wrote articles asking whether it would finally end. I read them in a diner over a slice of pie I did not finish, and I confess I was afraid for a state I do not live in.

Then this week they announced the opener is sold out. Four hundred and eleven in a row.

In my land, a lord who kept his word for sixty years was written into the temple records.

Nebraska has kept its word since the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no temple. There are eighty-five thousand people who bought the ticket.

Gary is going Saturday. It is not snowing. He would go if it were.

A promise is easy in a winning season.
Nebraska has kept one through every other kind.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I drove forty miles across Texas and counted flags.

Sixty-one. I counted again on the way back and got sixty-three, because two had gone up while I was gone.

A car dealership had one the size of a house. A plumber's truck had one on each door. A porch. A bikini, at the lake. A mailbox. A coffin, being carried into a church, and then, at the gas station across the street, a hat.

In my country the flag belongs to the state. It flies on government buildings on holidays and is put away by a man with a key.

Here I could not find the man with the key.

The salesman at the dealership said the flag was theirs. The plumber said his was his. A woman on her porch said, "Honey, it's mine," in a tone that closed the subject.

Nobody had been issued one. Everybody had bought their own.

I bought one. A neighbor showed me the rules, which nobody had ever written down for him either. Up at dawn. Down at dusk, or lit. Never the ground. Folded thirteen times into a triangle. He did the folds with me four times until my hands knew them. He said, "There you go," and did not say why he knew.

I have folded it four hundred times since. There is a light I could buy. I have not bought the light.

In my country the flag belongs to the state.

In Texas it belongs to a plumber named Ray, and to the dealership, and to the woman on the porch, and to a bikini at the lake, and on holidays the state has to ask to borrow it.

They lend it gladly. They have sixty-three.]]> <![CDATA["Until The End Of The World" (1991)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21246.html Wed, 02 Sep 2026 20:06:05 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21246.html
For nearly three decades, the only version most people could see was the one he called the "Reader's Digest version." Then the hidden negatives resurfaced, and the full 287-minute cut he had always intended was restored in 4K.

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991) is Wim Wenders' science-fiction road movie set in the far-off year of 1999.

Before shooting, Wenders approached some of the world's top musicians with a strange instruction: Do not just write me a song, he said. Write me the song you think you will be making in 1999.

Talking Heads sent back their final single. U2 was so pleased with their contribution they reclaimed it for Achtung Baby. R.E.M., Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode all answered the same impossible brief. For years, more people owned the album than had seen the movie.

Near the end of the film its characters stand alone in the Australian desert, unable to look away from small handheld screens playing their own recorded dreams, addicted to images of themselves. Wenders shot that in 1990."]]>
For nearly three decades, the only version most people could see was the one he called the "Reader's Digest version." Then the hidden negatives resurfaced, and the full 287-minute cut he had always intended was restored in 4K.

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991) is Wim Wenders' science-fiction road movie set in the far-off year of 1999.

Before shooting, Wenders approached some of the world's top musicians with a strange instruction: Do not just write me a song, he said. Write me the song you think you will be making in 1999.

Talking Heads sent back their final single. U2 was so pleased with their contribution they reclaimed it for Achtung Baby. R.E.M., Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode all answered the same impossible brief. For years, more people owned the album than had seen the movie.

Near the end of the film its characters stand alone in the Australian desert, unable to look away from small handheld screens playing their own recorded dreams, addicted to images of themselves. Wenders shot that in 1990."]]> <![CDATA[What R U watch'n?]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21129.html Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:16:57 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21129.html
Somewhat dated. If they had cellphones none of this would've happened.

[Image: CLVbmxe.jpg?fbclid=IwY2xjawTyDZ9wZG9mAWV...S35zgcNYVg]

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Somewhat dated. If they had cellphones none of this would've happened.

]]> <![CDATA["The Nightingale" review]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21118.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 20:41:50 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21118.html
Uncompromising in its depiction of sexual violence, racial bigotry and institutionalized cruelty, the film takes place fifty years after British explorer James Cook claimed the eastern shore of Australia for King and Country. British authorities wasted no time in establishing penal colonies to alleviate the overflowing prison population back home...."

https://writersblocpresents.com/main/the-nightingale/]]>
Uncompromising in its depiction of sexual violence, racial bigotry and institutionalized cruelty, the film takes place fifty years after British explorer James Cook claimed the eastern shore of Australia for King and Country. British authorities wasted no time in establishing penal colonies to alleviate the overflowing prison population back home...."

https://writersblocpresents.com/main/the-nightingale/]]> <![CDATA["Possum"]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21110.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 02:43:57 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21110.html
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1743981033515161]]>
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1743981033515161]]> <![CDATA["It Ends"]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21070.html Tue, 11 Aug 2026 22:25:21 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21070.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFszhQLMNXU]]>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFszhQLMNXU]]> <![CDATA[Tarkovsky's "The Stalker"]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21027.html Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:40:42 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21027.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlPmi9NLNm4&t=66s]]>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlPmi9NLNm4&t=66s]]> <![CDATA[Prophecies of great science fiction authors]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20986.html Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:48:21 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20986.html https://john-pucadyil.medium.com/the-dys...a8ed124684

I hereby devote this thread to some of the prescient pronouncements of sci-fi writers. We owe much to our own cultural creativity and ethical discourse to these great seers of future dystopias.

H. G. Wells, from The Time Machine, 1895:

"I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes — to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.

It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers."

“We and our environments form such interconnected cluster systems that mutually process information and alter it while exchanging it; we are all (humans) like a vast compound eye which shows a repetition of the motion of a single object but each cell reflecting slightly differently. (p.155)”― Philip K. Dick , The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

John Brunner's forgotten yet highly prophetic novels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzMEQoErtA8&t=82s]]> https://john-pucadyil.medium.com/the-dys...a8ed124684

I hereby devote this thread to some of the prescient pronouncements of sci-fi writers. We owe much to our own cultural creativity and ethical discourse to these great seers of future dystopias.

H. G. Wells, from The Time Machine, 1895:

"I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes — to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.

It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers."

John Brunner's forgotten yet highly prophetic novels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzMEQoErtA8&t=82s]]> <![CDATA[Analysis of movie "Arrival" and the concept of non-linearTime]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20961.html Tue, 28 Jul 2026 01:51:12 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20961.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCpUl7pFOBE&t=697s]]>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCpUl7pFOBE&t=697s]]> <![CDATA[Saddest movie death of all time]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20942.html Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:28:34 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20942.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESVPNq5Ox7I]]>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESVPNq5Ox7I]]> <![CDATA[Blade Runner (2099)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20940.html Sat, 25 Jul 2026 02:57:42 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20940.html
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1375724867515029]]>
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1375724867515029]]>