Fourth Oddities Spotted in the News

[Dartz]

Japan to have backup capital

Tokyo-II?

[Bob Schroeck]

Italian con artist jailed for counterfeiting an entire "Roman" ampitheatre and charging people 40 euros each to see it for the last twenty years.

[robkelk]

A concert to remember: Metal band rocks out at Ottawa hospital, granting patient's wish

[robkelk]

City of Ottawa discovers it didn't own a park that it had been maintaining for 68 years

They tracked down the heir of the last known owner, and said heir agreed to sell the land to the city for $1.

[robkelk]

I didn't know she was dating...

Jan Arden got married over the weekend.

[robkelk]

Mike Myers danced like nobody was watching in a Toronto subway station. And apparently, nobody was.

(Page includes an Instagram video.)

[robkelk]

Not a brigadoon, alas.

An island mysteriously appeared — then disappeared — on B.C.'s largest reservoir

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, I saw that article linked off the other recent CBC article you linked to. Is it me or where they actually assuming it was a genuine floating island?

[robkelk]

Yeah, I saw that article linked off the other recent CBC article you linked to. Is it me or where they actually assuming it was a genuine floating island?

It showed up in satellite imagery, so it's likely there was something there.

[robkelk]

Security through obscurity is dead, and AI delivered the fatal blow

Believe it or not, some people are still using the "you can't see me so you can't hurt me" approach to security, ignoring the fact that it becomes easier to see them with every technological advance. Some people call this approach "like a kitten with its head in a box, sure it can't be seen despite it's tail sticking out". I call it "like an ostrich with its head in the sand" for the added accurate simile.

[robkelk]

AI 'actor' Tilly Norwood glitches during Piers Morgan interview, starts speaking Cantonese

[robkelk]

We always knew he was out of this world.

Astronomers just named an asteroid after 'Weird Al' Yankovic

14331 Alyankovic, to be precise.

[robkelk]

Digger is poised to be one of the biggest box-office flops of the year

Despite a major star's return to dramatic acting, a two-time best director winner at the Oscars and enough publicity to rival the moon landing, Digger looks set to become one of the biggest box-office disasters of the year.

But the failure comes as the last release before Warner Bros. is fully acquired by Paramount on Tuesday.

Expect to see some major shakeups at the Hollywood movie studio. (Is there still more than one Hollywood movie studio any more?)

[Labster]

Digger is poised to be one of the biggest box-office flops of the year

Despite a major star's return to dramatic acting, a two-time best director winner at the Oscars and enough publicity to rival the moon landing, Digger looks set to become one of the biggest box-office disasters of the year.

But the failure comes as the last release before Warner Bros. is fully acquired by Paramount on Tuesday.

Expect to see some major shakeups at the Hollywood movie studio. (Is there still more than one Hollywood movie studio any more?)

Digger comes at exactly the wrong time.  As I've said, satire is dead, deader than disco.  No one wants a satire because real life is crazier and more blatantly obvious than any writer can dream up, so every joke lands flat and every twist is guessable.  I think the movie may be better appreciated in the future (if they still have movies) (if climate change doesn't kill us all) (if AI doesn't kill us all).  There are some clever things here, like (spoiler, because you weren't going to watch it anyway) 30 minutes in when they break the fourth wall and it becomes clear that everything you've seen so far was a dress rehearsal of a play (in a teleplay).

I'm not even sure I could bear to watch the last satire film on the same topic I liked, Don't Look Up.  Because, again, reality has become worse than this. Not just purposefully ignoring the problem, but purposefully spending money to make it worse.  I'm living through an unbearable, unending summer right now.  Remember Eternal September?  Welcome to Eternal August, folks, where the weather is always August all the time, but hotter.

And meanwhile, the movie that Warners didn't release, Coyote vs. Acme, grossed $100M – not quite enough to make it immediately profitable for Warners, but definitely enough to make money at the discount that Ketchup bought it.

[Shepherd]

And meanwhile, the movie that Warners didn't release, Coyote vs. Acme, grossed $100M – not quite enough to make it immediately profitable for Warners, but definitely enough to make money at the discount that Ketchup bought it.

Not really. IIRC, Ketchup bought the movie for $50 million. Box Office Mojo claims it has currently made $96 million in theaters. The break even point for a theatrical release is generally presumed to be around 2.5x the production budget (to account for marketing costs and the theater's cut of the ticket price). That means they're still around $29 million dollars away from making back their investment. Unless there are factors I'm unaware of, it could take years of DVD sales and cable/streaming revenue before they're out of the red, which is too bad since I saw the movie and really enjoyed it.

[robkelk]

Scientists find planet made on new matter recipe, and it formed after a Red Giant ate a solar system

In this case, "new matter" means elements created during the red-giant phase of the star's existence, not some esoteric form of matter.

The really interesting bit here is that the planet appears to have a substantial amount of niobium, an element that isn't formed by stellar fusion -- it's only created during the red-giant phase of a stellar lifecycle. So the planet formed after the star it orbits became a white dwarf.