In season one of The Mandalorian the showrunners broke the fourth wall by making jokes about stormtroopers having bad aim. Now The Auralnauts take the conceit even further, exploring what it would look like if these simple bike scout troopers noticed the joke itself and began questioning everything. I mean, how long could you live life as a trained soldier who can’t even hit a stationary can before you begin questioning your very existence? I saw two dogs that looked pretty similar and I’m already convinced nothing is real. I mean, two dogs? That look the same?! What are the odds?!?!

Keep going for the full video as well as the original scene from The Mandalorian making fun of their aim.

Source: Geekologie – Stormtroopers contemplate their existence

YouTuber Joseph’s Machines spent four months building a Rube Goldberg machine to assemble a sandwich as well as vote in the process. Okay, it’s actually five separate machines.

One puts down bread, the next puts on peanut butter, then a machine for jelly and so on. The last machine feeds it to me bite by bite! Spent almost four months on this machine. Oh, and remember to vote!!!

They’re all pretty intricate, especially the final one that feeds him the completed sandwich. That one has the precision of a watchmaker. Watchmakers have hands like baseball gloves and only use hammers in their work, right? And they just smash watches? With hammers? Because his last machine is like that and it’s great.

Keep going for the full video. The voting mechanism occurs during the “More Bread” segment at 2:30 and the feeding machine starts at 3:08.

Source: Geekologie – Guy makes Rube Goldberg machine to make a sandwich and vote at the same time

This is a video of Italian F1 driver Riccardo Patrese taking his wife out for a lap in a Honda Civic Type-R. It goes about as expected when somebody who is not prepared to be in a car with an F1 driver is suddenly in a car with an F1 driver. It’s one of the most charming videos I’ve ever seen, and a testament to how good F1 drivers are seeing how steady and smooth he is while his wife is being thrown around her seat. Also, I had no idea Italians actually yelled out “Mamma mia!” The only way the wife could be any more Italian is if she was eating a plate of spaghetti during the drive and maybe sipping an espresso.

Keep going for the full subtitled video. It works on mute but it’s much better with audio.

Source: Geekologie – F1 driver Riccardo Patrese takes his wife out for a lap

In a brilliant move, Kazakh tourism has embraced Borat’s caricature of their country and flipped it for their marketing, adopting “Very nice!” as their new official slogan. From Kazakhstan Travel:

Kazakhstan? Very nice!

It’s a place you may have heard of, that’s nicer than you ever imagined. Where you can find endless steppe, sand, and epic mountain peaks just a short drive from a modern metropolis. Where garlicky Kazakh horse sausage meets spicy Uighur noodles. Where shopping malls have sandy beaches and glass spheres dot the horizon. Where people are so friendly, you might just end up at a Kazakh toi (a traditional wedding) after a few salams (hello!). How can you describe a place this surprising in just two words? As a wise man one said, “Very nice!”

It takes a very brave marketing team to hitch their ride to Borat but I applaud their decision. When the first Borat film came out, Kazakhstan lost their minds and tried to run a massive publicity campaign against the movie and Sacha Baron Cohen. They went so far as to take out a four page ad in the New York Times and announced a press conference at their Washington DC embassy, to which Sascha Baron Cohen showed up outside their gates and gave a press conference of his own pretending to be their spokesperson. You can’t win against something like that, so obviously embracing it is the way to go. It’s just too bad their tourism video didn’t highlight how they have the second-cleanest prostitutes in the region.

Keep going for the full Kazakh promotional video, as well as the video of Borat giving a press conference outside the Kazakhstan embassy.

Source: Geekologie – Kazakh Tourism adopts ‘Very Nice!’ as official new slogan

This is a video of a lead compositor from Industrial Light and Magic breaking down the technology they used on The Mandalorian to replace green screens. It’s basically a giant wraparound LED screen displaying CGI backgrounds that respond to the camera’s movement. It’s one of the coolest innovations in the film industry, though not exactly something the average person has access to. I bought 50 TV’s and stacked them all around my living room to try to make one of my own but the results were terrible and now I owe $100k across fifteen different credit cards and it’s stressing me out. I can, however, watch every episode of Breaking Bad at once now so…worth it?

Keep going for the full video, as well another one going into further detail about the technology.

Source: Geekologie – The virtual set technology that’s replacing the green screen

This is a timelapse of artist Steven Richter sculpting Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street out of crayons and then melting it. It reminds me of the face melting scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I just wish he had more frames in his timelapse so we could get a smoother more detailed face melt. In my experience, when melting a face you really want to make sure you can savor all the little details. I mean, uh, there’s nothing buried in my backyard.

Keep going for the full video and check out his Instagram here.

Source: Geekologie – Freddy Krueger made out of crayons and then melted

This is the world’s largest air cannon which was made in cooperation with Czech TV show Wonders of Nature. There’s definitely a missed opportunity to use it directly on a person. What’s the worst that could happen? They fall over? Also they’re clearly going by size and not force, because I would beat this thing any day of the week after having some Taco Bell.

Keep going for the full video of them basically just knocking over a bunch of cardboard boxes with this thing. 5:30 is the closest they get to actually hitting anybody with it, but nobody gets seriously injured so it’s not entirely satisfying.

Source: Geekologie – The world’s largest air cannon

Here’s the full official trailer for the Animaniacs reboot on Hulu. They seem to have found the perfect tone and approach for the 21st century. I was already sold on their Jurassic Park announcement, but now I’m legitimately excited. Is it normal for an adult to be this hyped for a cartoon aimed at children? Is it even aimed at children? I feel like adults are the only ones who can actually appreciate how insane the world has gotten and need the Animaniacs to help make sense of things. I mean, I generally leave my mental health and well being to cartoon characters.

Keep going for the full trailer.

Source: Geekologie – The full official trailer for the Animaniacs reboot

RIP The Amazing Randi. He was one of the most iconic and important people in the world of magic and skepticism. He spent a lifetime debunking charlatans and scammers and even offered a $1 million prize to anybody who could display paranormal abilities under controlled scientific conditions. He died today at the age of 92.

Keep going for his TED talk on homeopathy, quackery and fraud; as well as a bunch of other videos of him doing his thing.

Source: Geekologie – RIP The Amazing Randi (1928-2020)

Motion graphic artist Nathan Shipley has been using a StyleGAN encoder to turn works of art into realistic-looking portraits. Above are the Mona Lisa and Miles Morales from Into The Spider-Verse, but his latest focus has been on Pixar characters. So far he’s done The Incredibles, Russell from Up, and Miguel from Coco.

Today’s reverse toonification experiments with art from @Pixar for Incredibles 2, Up, & Coco.

This framework from @EladRichardson and @yuvalalaluf quickly finds a “real” human face in the #StyleGAN FFHQ latent space. Adding some style randomness too.

More Pixar in thread! ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/uI2v4Tn96m

— Nathan Shipley (@CitizenPlain) October 15, 2020

Keep going for more of Shipley’s work. It turns out computers are way better at turning cartoons into realistic portraits than humans are. The results actually look like people as opposed to horrific nightmare monsters. Case in point: these Simpsons monstrosities.

Source: Geekologie – Using AI to turn animated characters into realistic portraits

Does the stereotype of Hummer owners compensating for something still apply when the Hummer is an EV? Is it the cross section of Tesla douches and Hummer douches to create the ultimate small-penised douche? Because I’ll take two.

Keep going for the full announcement video. It honesty looks pretty great assuming they can deliver on what they’re promising.

Source: Geekologie – GMC made a Hummer EV and the announcement video is really something

YouTuber BurtBot took the Uruk-hai from Lord of the Rings and replaced their voices with normal ones because, hey, why not? Like every one of these weird edits, I would pay to see an entire movie done this way. It’s weird that an entire component of menace is just poor enunciation.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – The Uruk-hai from The Lord of the Rings but with normal voices

This is a ridiculous video of car after car sliding off a turn at the Rally Pushkinskie Gory 2020 event in Russia and crashing into a car that just did the same thing. Unless they decided to get all the drivers drunk before the event, there must have been rain or something that changed the course after their reconnaissance run. Or maybe they didn’t have to get the drivers drunk because, ya know, Russia. And stereotypes. Last I checked Vodka wasn’t invented by the Swedes.

Keep going for the full video. Audio warning, as there is a woman who screams every time a car veers off which is a lot.

Source: Geekologie – Everybody crashes at ridiculous rally turn

The Shelby SuperCars (SSC) Tuatara has set a new production car top speed record, hitting 331 mph. It actually looks like it could’ve gone a lot faster but there were strong crosswinds and the driver decided he didn’t feel like dying that day. The previous record was held by the Koenigsegg Agera RS with a top speed of 277.87 mph. According to Top Gear:

Top Gear can exclusively reveal that Shelby SuperCars (SSC) North America has set a new top speed record for a production car, hitting a v-max of 331mph and setting a two-way average of 316.11mph on a seven-mile stretch of closed road just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.

It’s remarkable that a car has hit 331 mph especially considering the previous record was 278 mph. That’s such a ridiculous leap forward it almost doesn’t make sense. Joey Chestnut holds the world record for eating the most hot dogs at 73, so this would be like somebody entering and eating like 40 whole pigs.

Keep going for the full video. It’s an amazing accomplishment, but also one of the worst edited videos I’ve ever seen for something so simple.

Source: Geekologie – Shelby SuperCars (SSC) Tuatara hits 331 mph to become world’s fastest production car

This is a Russian video of a UFO that can only be seen when looked at through a piece of broken glass. It’s obviously fake, because, I mean, obviously. Right? Because of pixels? It’s fake? I mean it’s definitely fake. But also how can I buy that glass shard? I’ve got some money. I mean I know it’s fake, I’m just curious about how to buy shards of broken glass. Who do I talk to about that? And how do I use it to see the UF– I mean hahaha this is so fake whoever believes it is dumb. So, like, do I have to fly to Russia?

Keep going for the definitely but not obviously fake video.

Source: Geekologie – UFO that can only be seen through a piece of broken glass

This is a military parade in Egypt and it, um, well, I have no words. I don’t exactly know who this parade is for, but I suspect it may have been sponsored by some baby oil companies. I’ll also add that the Egyptian government systematically targets and tortures gay people. Not that that has anything to do with anything. *cough* Just something totally unrelated that I was thinking about.

Keep going for the full, confusing video.

Source: Geekologie – This is what a military parade in Egypt looks like

A woman installed a privacy fence but neighbors complained to the county it was too high so she was forced to shorten it. She chose to do so by cutting it in the ugliest way possible and then painting it a jarring neon color on the outward facing side. I mean, that’s what you get for caring about what other people do on their property. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Fred. Can’t a guy play the bongos naked on his front lawn without uppity neighbors calling the police? What’s your problem, Fred? It’s not like I’m pooping on the front lawn. Oh, wait, yeah maybe I did that a couple times too.

Keep going for the news segment covering the fence incident.

Source: Geekologie – Woman paints fence ugly neon in beautiful display of malicious compliance

Brian Monarch deepfaked Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger into Step Brothers and it works so well obviously somebody needs to do it for the entire movie. If they could deepfake the audio to match their actual voice and accents I’m pretty sure they could re-release it and win the Academy Award for Best Thing That Exists.

Keep going for the full video. The expressions are so perfect it kind of makes you wonder if this is a viable way to create a new kind of hybrid comedy actor, having a comedy actor essentially perform for less comedically-talented superstars.

Source: Geekologie – Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger deepfaked into Step Brothers

In 2012, developer Tim Dawson and a small team were tasked by Sega with building a prototype for a Golden Axe remake. Despite only being given two weeks and unreasonable conditions set by management, they managed to get a working prototype up and running that was ultimately unused. Well eight years later, Sega is releasing the prototype on Steam without credit or notice to any of the people that worked on it. Dawson posted a rant on Twitter about his experience working on the project:

this project was my personal nexus of nightmare hours, inept management, industry realisations and heroics achieved with a small team under unreasonable conditions, so it’s an odd feeling to see it surface eight years later without context, credits and with a joke title sequence pic.twitter.com/lBDVWegn3p

— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020

The entire rant is worth reading and illustrates the disconnect between developers and management in the gaming industry. This would be like somebody asking you to build a replica of the Eiffel Tower in two days, telling you it sucks, and then eight years later using it to promote their theme park by featuring the World’s Worst Replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Source: Geekologie – Sega is releasing the prototype of a Golden Axe remake to the surprise of the developers