Author: Jennifer Hahn

Exploring the female themes in Game of Thrones season 6. Edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

There was something gnawing at me after so many critics panned the first episode of Game of Thrones season 6. Many considered it "boring" or "tedious" since there was so much exposition, and some felt the season was headed nowhere. I realized a few episodes in what that pestering feeling was—EACH STORYLINE IS ABOUT A STRONG WOMAN. If that’s "tedious," I’m all for the bland.

This is a logical story progression, not a plot to pander to a sense of diversity. If you consider what Joseph Campbell has written about the structure of epic stories, you'll start to see what’s going on here. Emerging from the bloody battles and men on the many thrones of power, each storyline has seen a strong heroine prevail or at least scheme to dominate her opposition. What we're seeing here is the classic Campbellian emergence of the mother—the ethos of nature, life, and resurrection—rising to fight the darkness, the winter, and the ruin in this hero cycle. In this video, we explore each storyline and track the journey of this female ethos.

Ars was invited to the end-of-year sumo competition, where the victor was “Taetay.” Shot/Edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

NEW YORK—For the past ten years, professor Brian Cusack has been teaching robot design and construction to science and engineering students at Cooper Union. The mechatronics class is an intense, 14-week immersion in robot design, programming, building, testing process, and competition.

This week, the class kicked off Cooper Union's End of Year Show with a robot "sumo" competition. The goal of the competition involves two autonomous robots (no remote controls) which can sense the edge of a square “ring” using infrared sensors and use programmed motors to push the other robot out of the ring. The lighting is important for the sensors to pick up the white outline of a black ring.

NEW YORK—This year at the Tribeca Film Festival, we tried the many alternate uses for Virtual Reality storytelling (aside from gaming), but we also found four documentaries that appealed to our nerd tendencies.

Do Not Resist

Do Not Resist (84 minutes), winner of best documentary feature at TFF, opens with more than 9 minutes of footage from the Ferguson, Missouri, protests in 2015. Shots of angry crowds and police in riot gear lead to foreboding lightning flashes in the clouds as police use tear gas and enforce a curfew.

Video: Ars visits Blue Sonic PC assembly facility and talks to Afghan’s telecom chair. Filmed by Ivan Flores, edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

KABUL, Afghanistan—As a country that has been ravaged by war, terrorism, and mass corruption for the last 30 years, Afghanistan seems like the least likely site for technological development. However, following the American-led invasion of the country, Kabul's basic infrastructure was quickly upgraded as expats and foreign military powers moved in.

On the outskirts of Kabul, one company has set up a factory showing how the future might look. Blue Sonic, a technology company based in Canada, now manufactures phones, PCs, TVs, and other consumer goods assembled right here in Afghanistan. In addition, it seeks to capitalize on an emerging app market and has already begun to develop apps for language skills, children's education, and religious studies.