Watch a High-Powered Cleaning Laser Annihilate Everything in Its Path
GIF
The next time you’re staring down a tough cleaning job—be it removing paint, rust, or lasagna off of a baking dish—don’t waste your time with harsh chemicals, sand paper, or scrubbers. Get yourself a 1,000-watt laser and blast away that filth and grime in just seconds.
Judging by this video, the first company to make a laser dishwasher that actually gets dishes clean, without pre-rinsing, is going to make a small fortune.
via Gizmodo
Watch a High-Powered Cleaning Laser Annihilate Everything in Its Path
When I solve a problem the developers have been struggling with,…
When I solve a problem the developers have been struggling with, with a simple referential integrity rule.
via DBA Reactions
When I solve a problem the developers have been struggling with,…
Outdoor Trends, Domestic Gear, Better Duct Tape: GearJunkie Week In Review
A recap of top stories for the week of August 21 – 27, 2016.
1) Review: Arc’teryx Trail-Running Shoe, A Real Scrambler
A new lacing system distinguishes the Arc’teryx Norvan VT trail running shoes. We put it to the test in high mountains for this review.
2) 100x Stronger Than Duct Tape? Wild Ad Is Convincing
Is this stuff for real? An ad shows this ‘super tape’ holding a car together as it rolls down a cliff.
3) Can A Paper ‘Blade’ Cut Through Wood?
Now THAT’S a paper cut! Watch what this paper ‘blade’ can do.
4) EnerPlex Wins GearJunkie Readers’ Choice Award
Voters chose the 5-ounce solar panel as the best product of Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2016
5) 10 Outdoor Gear Trends To Watch In 2017
From intelligent drones to ‘levitating’ tents, the future of the outdoors industry is nothing if not unique.
6) Greatest Climb On Earth? El Capitan Book Dives Deep
What is the greatest climb of them all? The new book, “On the Nose: A Lifelong Obsession with Yosemite’s Most Iconic Climb” explores the history of the route and Hans Florine, the climber who knows it best.
7) The Original Dirtbag: Unraveling Fred Beckey
The enigmatic, stubborn, wildly romantic pioneer of climbing let cameras in to tell his story. Check out the sneak peek of the ‘Original American Dirtbag’ extended trailer.
8) USA-Made Gear: 20 Domestic Stand-Outs
Some of the outdoor world’s best gear is made in America. Here we highlight 20 domestic stand-outs from around the country.
9) New Monument Protects 87,500 Acres Near A.T. Terminus
President Obama just designated America’s newest National Monument, protecting nearly 90,000 acres of Maine wilderness.
10) ‘Every Freshwater Fish In America’ Charted In Poster
Fit for an angler’s gear cave, the Freshwater Fish of America poster details more than 900 fishy friends.
11) How To Land A Ski Resort Job
Is working at a ski resort your dream job? We got some inside advice from Copper Mountain’s HR department to help you land it.
12) Cook With The Sun: Solavore Solar Oven Review
Go all the way off the grid with a solar oven? We cooked a hearty meal with the heat of the sun to put the Solavore to the test.
13) First Look: Expanding ‘Flex Capacitor’ Backpack From Sierra Designs
Designed with renowned adventurer Andrew Skurka, the Sierra Designs Flex Capacitor expands outward for a pack that ranges from 40 to 60 liters.
14) Winter Park Ski Train Returns For 2016-2017
Traffic keeping you off Colorado’s slopes? Amtrak has you covered.
15) Highpointing: Climb To The Top Of 50 States
Highpointing, as this state-by-state, summit-seeking pursuit is called, has garnered a following of more than 10,000 people.
16) Monumental: Skiing Our National Parks
National Parks offer some exceptional backcountry skiing. A new film by REI and Powder Magazine follows skiers as they explore some of America’s wilderness icons. Watch the trailer now!
17) Emerging Gear: Outdoor Products This Week
Rocking bikes to fashion-forward boots, this is our weekly look at emerging products from the world of outdoor gear design.
18) IFMGA Mountain Guide: Peak Of A Profession
If there’s a singular job that epitomizes working in the outdoors, it’s the mountain guide. We talked with IFMGA-certified guide Kris Erickson for some insight into an undeniably epic career.
19) Obama Designates Massive Pacific Ocean Preserve
A vast area of the Pacific Ocean will be added to the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument around Hawaii, making it the world’s largest protected marine environment.
The post Outdoor Trends, Domestic Gear, Better Duct Tape: GearJunkie Week In Review appeared first on GearJunkie.
via GearJunkie
Outdoor Trends, Domestic Gear, Better Duct Tape: GearJunkie Week In Review
WATCH: Young Amtrak Worker Honors a 99-Year-Old WWII Vet in an Amazing Way
An extraordinary video was captured when Benny Johnson found himself in the right spot at the right time.
Johnson was in New York’s Penn Station when he noticed an elderly man named Ed standing in line for a train. Ed, who is 99-years-young and deaf, was sporting a sign around his neck explaining his handicap, but it was the message on his cap that caught the attention of a young Amtrak train operator.
USN (United States Navy) Armed Services, WWII Veteran.
Watch this young man give respect where respect is due:
The post WATCH: Young Amtrak Worker Honors a 99-Year-Old WWII Vet in an Amazing Way appeared first on Bearing Arms.
via Bearing Arms
WATCH: Young Amtrak Worker Honors a 99-Year-Old WWII Vet in an Amazing Way
Watching Deadpool’s Creator Freak Out About Toys Is the Best
I’m not sure I love anything as much as Rob Liefeld loves pop culture. The famous comic artist is extremely passionate not just about comics, but also about movies, TV, toys, pretty much everything. It all comes exploding out in this wonderful video.
Liefeld, who is best known for his hand in creating the popular characters Deadpool and Cable, now co-hosts a YouTube show called Nerdy Pop. In the latest episode, he regales us with the story of trying to find the latest X-Men Marvel Legends, the first official X-Men figures released in years. Among them are his babies, Cable and Deadpool, and Liefeld’s tale is something many, many of us can relate to.
Also of note, the video confirms Liefeld has pretty much the coolest family ever.
Have you every traveled all over your town looking for a toy or something similar?
via Gizmodo
Watching Deadpool’s Creator Freak Out About Toys Is the Best
What Makes A Bolt Action Rifle Great?
There are many factors to consider before shelling out your hard earned cash on a bolt action rifle, and in this video we go through a few characteristics that we feel are desirable. As some of the least restricted firearms in the world, people in almost any country can obtain a bolt gun and while […]
The post What Makes A Bolt Action Rifle Great? appeared first on The Firearm Blog.
Cloak & Dagger May Be the Most Messed-Up Kids Movie of the ’80s
“Do you remember the movie Cloak & Dagger?” my editor asked. Immediately, I froze. Did he know I used to be obsessed with that little-known ’80s movie about a kid and his imaginary spy friend? He didn’t; it was just a random question, but it made me sit down and do one of the scariest things you can do as an adult film fan: re-watch a movie you loved as a kid.
Cloak & Dagger, directed by Richard Franklin in 1984, was one of those kid adventure films that dominated the decade, like The Goonies, E.T., Fright Night, Monster Squad, The Lost Boys, etc.—movies that featured kids as the protagonists, who not only had to defeat the bad guys, but often faced danger and even death. But even among these films, Cloak & Danger stands out as being particularly insane.
The movie is about Davey, a 12-year-old (or so) boy played by E.T.’s Henry Thomas. He loves adventures and spies, especially a fictional secret agent character named Jack Flack. Not only does Davey play as Jack in various role-playing/board games, the boy literally sees Flack as his imaginary friend, played by Dabney Coleman (who also plays Davey’s dad in the film), who constantly gives him advice. Although Davey doesn’t realize what he’s doing, the movie reveals he just lost his mom, and his father is mostly absent and ignores his son when he’s present. So Davey invented an imaginary friend in the image of his father that gives him advice and gets him into adventures.
A boy with an imaginary friend seems kind of normal, but Cloak & Dagger takes it to another level. On an errand, Davey is given an Atari game (titled Cloak & Dagger, and also about Jack Flack’s adventures, naturally) by a random man who immediately gets murdered by goons right in front of the kid. Eventually we learn the game has secret government plans on it which are unlocked when you get 1,329,000 points, which is why there are many, many bad guys who try to kill Davey to get it back.
As a young boy, I remember watching this movie and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. (If you asked me, “Germain, did you and your friends run around your neighborhood with a video game pretending you were a spy?”, I’d plead the fifth.) As an adult, though, I was horrified at the constant peril this character is put in. Davey spends almost the entirety of the movie in mortal danger. He’s threatened, shot at and captured by the bad guys what seems like dozens of times. At one point, Davey is forced to hide in a car trunk with the corpse of one of his adult friends, murdered by the goons in their search for Davey. Jack Flack is the one who gives him the advice to hide in the trunk—correctly assuming that the bad guys wouldn’t think to look for him in there—but the movie still treats this as a totally reasonable, non-horrifically traumatic thing for Davey to have to do.
Of course, none of the non-murderous, non-imaginary adults in Davey’s life believe him when he tells them about his predicament—except for a kindly old couple who help him out of one scrape. Again, when I was an eight-year-old, this was awesome. Watching now, it’s insanely sad, not exciting, to see countless scenes of Davey, a kid who just lost his mother, running around a city talking to his imaginary friend, all while people are constantly trying to kill him and no one does anything. But that’s not even the worst part.
The worst part is when Davey kills a guy.
Here’s how this goes down: Davey is being chased by three guys with guns. Jack gives him some spy maneuvers to get two of them to kill each other—again, the kid is forced to both dodge bullets and watch men die violently right in front of him—but the last then one corners Davey. Davey has picked up one of the dead goon’s guns, and the two are at a stand-off; but the goon doesn’t believe Davey will shoot him, mainly because Davey, almost sobbing, cries out that he doesn’t want to kill the bad guy.
Meanwhile, Jack Flack is egging Davey on to murder this man before he himself is murdered. But Davey is frozen. This is when the totally imaginary Jack somehow materializes in front of the goon, drawing his fire, and which inspires Davey to shoot his gun… killing the bad guy instantly. At which point Davey also has to watch Jack Flack, his best friend, die in front of him, because the bullets somehow killed him.
There is so much wrong with this. And I’m not even talking about the fact that at no point in this movie has the possibility of Jack Flack actually being real ever been suggested. No, I’m talking about the fact that Davey’s fucked-up mind somehow invents a scenario where his imaginary friend sacrifices himself to justify murder.
Now, if we’re being honest, Davey had no choice. He’s been getting shot at all day and, finally, he had a real gun in his hand, and one of the masterminds of the scheme in front of him with a machine gun. What was he going to do? Still, Cloak & Dagger takes the moment of a child being forced to murder an adult in self-defense and blows right by it.
This is insane—it’s the complete loss of a child’s loss of innocence, and it in the film it just doesn’t matter. Oh, the ’80s.
What matters is getting to film’s climax, where we learn that the bad guys have planted a bomb on Kim, Davey’s friend and an eight-year-old girl, who has traveled to the airport for reasons too labyrinthine to explain. We also discover that the old couple who initially helped Davey are the real bad guys, and Davey has 20 minutes to get there before the bomb goes off and the old couple escape with the secrets-laden video game cartridge. Of course, Davey is also forced to ask a variety of strangers, at night, to drive him across town in the middle of the night.
Once everyone gets to the airport, the old couple hijacks a plane, kidnaps Davey, and manages to unknowingly bring the bomb on board. Thankfully, Davey’s dad pretends to be the plane’s pilot, comes aboard, and pushes Davey out of the plane before it explodes—before walking out of the flames himself. It’s all incredibly rushed after the first 80 percent of the movie moves like molasses. (Cloak & Dagger also ends with what may be the worst execution of a ticking clock narrative in the history of film, but that’s an article for another day.)
“I don’t need [Jack Flack] anymore, I’ve got you, Dad!” says Davey at the end, in a moment that’s almost totally unearned. Obviously, Davey created Jack in the image of what he wants his dad to be. They share surface similarities but his dad is mostly a dick—he never trusts his kid, never engages with his son’s hobbies. He just goes to work and leaves a 12-year-old boy home alone when the boy thinks he’s going to be murdered. The only moment he finally realizes something may be up is when Davey calls him at work from a pay phone. Despite being imaginary and oblivious to danger, Jack Flack at least encouraged Davey, even if it was to do things that weren’t always right.
To put it mildly, Cloak & Dagger is definitely not as good as I remember. It’s slow, it’s severely messed up, and it makes the dangers the Goonies experienced look like they had a day at the playground. There’s nothing particularly cool about it being vaguely about a video game, and this certainly doesn’t make up for how incredibly cruel and brutal the film is to its kid characters.
Mostly, Cloak & Dagger serves as a prime example of why we should sometimes leave our beloved childhood obsessions in the past. Otherwise your positive memories end up as dead as the goon that 12-year-old was forced to murder.
via Gizmodo
Cloak & Dagger May Be the Most Messed-Up Kids Movie of the ’80s
New Civil War Deleted Scene Reveals a Playful Nod to the Comic Book Captains America
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steve Rogers is the only Captain America—but that’s not the case in the comics, where many people have come to wield the shield. This fun little deleted scene from Civil War reveals that the movie was going to make sly reference to a few of those non-Steve Captains.
Revealed by Entertainment Weekly today, the short clip sees both Bucky—who, when Steve “died” at the end of the Civil War comic, took on the Captain America mantle—and very briefly Sam Wilson—who is one of the two currently active Captain Americas in Marvel’s comics, and the only one who isn’t being all weird and evil for silly, comic-booky reasons—both getting to use Captain America’s trusty shield during the fight at the airport between Team Tony and Team Cap.
It’s a fun moment, and it’s nice to see Bucky get some shield-envy, considering there were rumors floating around for ages that contracts were setting up Sebastian Stan as the potential replacement of Chris Evans as the MCU Cap at some point. That airport fight was already so jam-packed, though, you can see why this little moment for comic fans was sadly cut.
via Gizmodo
New Civil War Deleted Scene Reveals a Playful Nod to the Comic Book Captains America
Russian Superhero Film Guardians Trailer
It looks like Russia has its own Avengers type film and it actually looks really awesome. This is the first full trailer for the film Защитники (which translates to Guardians in English.) I’m not completely sure what everyone’s powers are, but one guy seems to be able to control rocks and looks like The Thing from Fantastic Four at one point, another guy is a human/bear hybrid. There are spider robots shooting missiles, and lots of other great action. It looks like a fun popcorn movie.
Here’s the description:
Set during the Cold War, a secret organization named “Patriot” gathered a group of Soviet superheroes, altering and augmenting the DNA of four individuals, in order to defend the homeland from supernatural threats.
The group includes representatives of the different nationalities of the Soviet Union, which each one of them have long been hiding their true identity. In hard times, they settled down to business and gather to defend their homeland.