Month: April 2022

Marvel fans have been loudly clamoring for something, anything, in the way of a trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder, given that the release is just a few months away. Their wish has now been granted. Marvel just dropped a long teaser for the Taika Waititi-directed film.

Waititi signed on for the fourth installment of the Thor films in 2019, adapting elements from the Mighty Thor comic books by Jason Aaron. (He'd read them while making Ragnarok.) That storyline has Jane Foster being diagnosed with breast cancer and eventually becoming the Mighty Thor. Natalie Portman, who plays Foster in the franchise, has said both those elements will be in the film.

We haven't really seen Portman's Foster since 2013's The Dark World. The character was always among the least interesting, to be honest. But Portman agreed to reprise her role after meeting with Waititi, who promised a fresh take for the character, and having her wield Mjolnir would definitely qualify. (The Internet was abuzz when set photos of Portman leaked in March 2021, showing just how much muscle the diminutive actress had gained for the role.)

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  Cranking in downtown Seattle. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

The cute, portable, and banana yellow $179 Playdate console is now shipping to its first batch of preorder customers, so we're now free to review the quirkiest gaming system in years.

Thanks to chip shortages and general manufacturing chaos, buying Playdate is much less fun than using it. If you preordered the system in July 2021 after reading my hands-on preview, great. If you waited for a proper review like this one, however, expect a backorder queue of no fewer than eight months. (At least Panic say it will make as many Playdates as people want to buy, instead of pulling an NES Classic and limiting production.)

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  The lock screen can be customized with an analog clock, a digital clock, or this "word clock." [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

To those who ran with my previous optimism about Playdate's squat form factor, quirky games, and unique crank control system, I am happy to report that I didn't lead you astray—so long as you heeded my specific bias. As I wrote in July:

Enlarge / This is your last chance to turn back before finding out what all these Playdate game icons mean. (credit: Panic / Sam Machkovech)

If you're reading this article before perusing my full Playdate hardware review, stop right now. Click that link, read today's hardware-specific review, and get the context for why this portion has been broken out to its own space.

Okay, cool. You know what you're in for: a full spoiler-rama overview of all 24 Playdate-exclusive games that come as part of the quirky system's $179 price tag. As an additional spoiler, these titles are listed in their unlock order, since Panic mandates that the games appear on owners' devices as part of a two-per-week download process. (The main system review explains why you might not want to know this stuff just yet, and it includes a spoiler-free breakdown of the system's included games.)

The number next to each game name designates its unlock week, not its rating. (Thus, if you want to spoil only the first four weeks of games, stop once you reach the "5"s.) Ars doesn't score game reviews, but since there are so many titles to pick through, I'm opting for a simple set of distinctions: "thumbs-up," "shoulder shrug," and "thumbs-down." These labels apply to both a game's fun factor and its Playdate uniqueness.

(credit: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.021007)

Science is often viewed as utilitarian. We explore the natural world so that we can plunder its secrets for our own benefit. Indeed, this is often precisely the sort of science that funding agencies seek. But, for most scientists, the utilitarian comes second to other motivating factors: The observation of beauty and the challenge of a unique puzzle are the two that spring to mind. Today, in the spirit of observing beauty, I’d like you to sit back and enjoy the view of light flowing like water.

Light exiting an optical fiber and flowing through a thin film of soapy water. (credit: Anatoly Patsyk)

The picture above looks like a river delta, with many tributaries and rivulets coming together in one Amazonian outflow. All that is missing is the fish. But that is light flowing out of an optical fiber and into a layer of soap. The soap layer traps the light, so it only spreads out in the plane of the soap. Yet the layer is also uneven, so the light cannot spread out evenly, and you get this branching pattern. This is one of the pictures from a group of scientists exploring how light flows in thin films.

The making of an optical river

To create an optical river, you need to do the following: start with a nice flat surface and place a layer of detergent (soapy water) with a tiny bit of dye in it. After some time (and given the right mixture of soap), the soap film will settle down so that it is not moving around. Then, shine some light on the edge of the soap layer. If you get the focusing conditions just right, the light will be trapped within the soap layer. The light will then start to spread out across and through the soap, exiting from other edges.

In recent years, the press and LGBTQ+ groups have been putting pressure on Rockstar Games to remove or change content they see as "transphobic" in Grand Theft Auto V. Now, players have noted a few such changes to transgender representation in the "expanded and enhanced" upgrades to the game recently released for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Reddit user JayProspero was among the first to notice a change to the action figures lining the wall of the office in the in-game arcade. A hot-pink-clad "Captain Spacetoy" figure, in a box highlighting "interchangeable genitalia," has been removed in the new console versions of the game; an alternative figure with a more reserved outfit and "posable vomit direction" remains on the wall.

In new-gen GTAV/GTAO, Rockstar appear to have disabled the trans caricatures or “drag queens” from spawning outside Cockatoos. This could be following a plea from OutMakingGames last year. I hope this provides comfort to anyone who felt these NPCs depicted harmful stereotypes ‍⚧

— Kirsty Cloud (@kirstycloud) April 8, 2022

Kirsty Cloud, who helps run fan community GTAnet, has also highlighted that over-the-top trans woman character models, apparently referred to as "drag queen" in the game's files, no longer spawn outside Cockatoos, an in-game nightclub. While those character models can still be accessed in the game's sandbox-style Director Mode, dialogue options that make explicit reference to their gender and sexuality have been removed.

Enlarge / The sun sets beyond an oil pumping unit, also known as a pumping jack, at a drilling site operated by Tatneft OAO near Almetyevsk, Russia. (credit: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

Daimler Trucks, eBay, and a US energy company were among the recent buyers of carbon offsets created by projects that involved injecting carbon dioxide underground in order to extract more oil.

Three US-based extraction projects were eligible to generate credits because their processes involved the capture of CO2. But this was used as a way to extract fresh oil that would otherwise have been inaccessible, a procedure known as “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR).

The offsetting rules that the credits were created under ignored the emissions associated with the extracted oil.