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

This is an incredibly majestic video of a black vulture landing on a selfie-stick during a paragliding excursion. It’s one of the most relaxing videos I’ve seen in awhile and makes me want to take up paragliding. Is there a way to guarantee an experience like this? Do I just strap dead carcasses to my body? Because I already do that every morning, it’d just be nice to know if I could get a cool paragliding video out of it.

Man. pic.twitter.com/XTzXMda5Wy

— Kris Tapley (@kristapley) October 14, 2020

Source: Geekologie – Black vulture lands on selfie-stick during paragliding outing

This is a short video of a kid sound effect-ing his mom. “Sound effect-ing”? Meh, you know what I mean. It’s pretty charming, and makes me wonder if you could actually hire somebody to follow you around doing this. Although for me it would be 90% sad trombones and 10% the guy being too embarrassed by my life to actually play anything. “Is this guy eating cereal for dinner again?” *womp woooomp*

Source: Geekologie – Kid makes sound effects for his mom doing stuff around the house

For the second time in two months, somebody in a jetpack has been spotted flying near Los Angeles airport.

A China Airlines crew said it saw what appeared to be someone in a jetpack on Wednesday at 6,000ft (1,829m), seven miles (11km) north-west of LAX, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

“The FBI is in contact with the FAA and is investigating multiple reports of what, according to witnesses, appeared to be an individual in a jetpack near LAX,” FBI Los Angeles Field Office spokeswoman Laura Eimiller was quoted as saying by US media.

Keep going for the air traffic controller audio during the incident, as well the audio from the previous incident. It’s impressive how calmly everybody handles the situation especially considering all the other chaos happening with normal air traffic control. I guess it’s just a testament to the times we’re living in that people can talk about seeing jetpacks randomly flying around with total calm and normalcy.

Source: Geekologie – ‘Person in jetpack’ spotted flying again near LA airport

To celebrate 5 years on YouTube, The Brick Wall assembled this Lego pizza-assembler using Legos. I wasn’t expecting much, but the end result actually looks impressively like a pizza that wasn’t put together by plastic toys. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the pizza I made using Legos. I didn’t use Legos to assemble the pizza, I just threw the pieces on like they were toppings. I used to think anchovies were the worst thing you could put on pizza. I was wrong.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – This guy built an automated pizza assembly line out of Legos

Researchers have figured out a way to use AI to fill in gaps in images, essentially automating the ability to seamlessly erase objects from photos or video. You have to watch the demonstration to truly appreciate how amazing it is. Their detailed mumbo-jumbo explanation:

We present a new flow-based video completion algorithm. Previous flow completion methods are often unable to retain the sharpness of motion boundaries. Our method first extracts and completes motion edges, and then uses them to guide piecewise-smooth flow completion with sharp edges. Existing methods propagate colors among local flow connections between adjacent frames. However, not all missing regions in a video can be reached in this way because the motion boundaries form impenetrable barriers. Our method alleviates this problem by introducing non-local flow connections to temporally distant frames, enabling propagating video content over motion boundaries. We validate our approach on the DAVIS dataset. Both visual and quantitative results show that our method compares favorably against the state-of-the-art algorithms.

I never have any idea what these guys are talking about, but the results speak for themselves. I’m just glad I finally have a way to remove my ex-girlfriend from all of my old pictures. Haha just kidding, I’ve never had a girlfriend. What…does love feel like?

Keep going for the full video demonstration. It’s so impressive it seems fake.

Source: Geekologie – Using AI to remove objects from photos and video

This illusion won second place in the 2019 Best Illusion of the Year contest and it has sufficiently made me question reality:

In this illusion, either downward or rightward motion perception for the dots is possible. Depending on the perceived motion direction, color changes: red and green dots with downward motion, and yellow dots with rightward motion. This suggests that our perception of color is not simply the result of limitations in temporal resolution of the visual system.

I’ve never been more deceived by my brain. It’s like the dress all over again, only the color is flipping in real-time. Is color even a thing?! If this illusion has taught me anything, it’s that traffic lights aren’t real and I’ll be driving as such.

Keep going for the full illusion. The actual video is frustrating because it keeps being interrupted by text, so I also included a repeating loop that actually has a visual aid to help facilitate the switch.

Source: Geekologie – Can you change the color of the dots with your mind?

This is the first take from a commercial shoot of an actor who was absolutely terrified of roller coasters trying to keep it together and perform. At one point it actually looks like he passes out from fear and reboots. Ah, the things we’ll do for money. For instance, I’ll eat an entire shoe if you’ve got $20 on you. $25 and I’ll eat a boot.

Keep going for the full video as well as the final commercial they actually used.

Source: Geekologie – Actor terrified of roller coasters trying to pretend like he likes them for a commercial

Duke librarian Jamie Keesecker (who goes by MicrOpaqu3) made this song about their Library Takeout system and it’s way better than it has any right to be. Apparently Keesecker has actually been making music for more than 17 years but decided to go into…librarianing intstead.

Keesecker started making music as a teenager, when a friend handed him a floppy disk with music editing software.

And he kept writing music, for more than 17 years. He got a master’s in music composition from Duke in 2011 and a doctorate in 2016, but worried constantly about his career. He realized he would make a better hobbyist composer than professional.

I wonder if Duke asked him to make an ordinary instructional video and he came back with this. That when they asked to see the script he dumped out a bunch of drawings of stick figures and started going, “Untz untz untz untz.”

Keep going for the full Library Takeout video which goes even harder than I’ve been saying. You can also listen to the song on Spotify, but your first experience really should be with the visuals because they make it at least twice as good.

Source: Geekologie – A university librarian made this song about their Library Takeout system and it’s way too good