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Despite running a blog called “Not A Blog,” George R. R. Martin is just like us: when things happen, he must post about them online.

Martin’s latest blog post congratulates playwright Eboni Booth on winning a Pulitzer Prize for her play “Primary Truth.” But it’s not just because he’s a nice guy — it’s because the two are working together on a new Game of Thrones series for HBO.

“Never having won a Pulitzer Prize myself, I am at a loss to explain why the medal shows Ben Franklin rather than Joseph Pulitzer, but Eboni has promised to fill me in after the ceremony,” he wrote. The author then revealed that the two had been working on Ten Thousand Ships, a new pilot in the GoT universe.

She’s an amazingly talented young playwright, and a joy to work with; when not writing and producing her prize-winning plays on- and off-Broadway, she has been kept busy by me and HBO, working on a new pilot for TEN THOUSAND SHIPS, a GAME OF THRONES spinoff about Nymeria and the Rhoynar. We’re all very excited about this one… though we’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to pay for ten thousand ships, three hundred dragons, and those giant turtles.

This isn’t the first attempt to bring Ten Thousand Ships to the screen. Screenwriter Brian Helgeland first penned the series back in 2017. Earlier this year, Helgeland was still hopeful. “It came out great, but I think they felt the period of my show was too far removed from the pillars of the original,” he recently told Inverse about his spinoff. “That’s why it hasn’t been picked up yet, but nothing is ever dead. My script was based on Queen Nymeria and this little blurb about her that was in a Westeros encyclopedia.”

The upcoming series does not have an expected release date, but it will probably take some time to wrangle all of those ships together… and then pay for it.

(Via Deadline)

It’s been nearly two years since House of the Dragon graced our screens but showrunner Ryan Condal and company are wasting no time tossing audiences back into the thick of what’s been billed as the bloodiest war in George R.R. Martin’s canon.

“We’re moving from one tragedy to the next,” Condal tells UPROXX of the pace of season two, hoping to set expectations early on for just how deep the show is prepared to dive into Martin’s Fire & Blood novel. If HotD’s initial outing made dramatic work of setting the board, its follow-up is primed to move its main players with dizzying speed. In the first four episodes provided to critics, armies are raised, assassinations are attempted, power transfers are made, and bodies burned. Each episode is an exercise in cause and effect, chaos, catastrophe, and consequence as Emma D’Arcy’s chosen heir hunts the crown that was promised, foiled at turns by enemies familiar and foreign as the show makes good use of its supporting cast (Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Eve Best, and Rhys Ifans are unsurprisingly brilliant but Tom Glynn-Carney, Ewan Mitchell, Phia Saban, and Harry Collett easily embrace bigger responsibilities this time around.)

In Martin’s world, dragons have always been the draw, but more and more, HotD seems to understand the real thrill of a dynastical fall happens on the ground, not in the air.

UPROXX spoke with Condal about plotting the show’s highly anticipated season two, the criticisms of season one he took to heart, and why Daemon Targaryen apologists have their work cut out for them.

One of the criticisms of season one was the lighting of specific scenes. Did you make any changes to the look of the show for season two?

The only thing I want to be too dark on the show is the mood. Yeah, we did take that to heart. Making a season of television is a collaborative effort. There are a lot of voices in that mix and there are different voices in the aesthetic mix when you’re trying to create the visual look of a show in season one. There are things that I heard from the audience and I don’t disagree with certain things. That was definitely something that was on our minds, on HBO’s minds. We went into season two making sure that the beautiful things — the costumes that we’ve made and the sets that have been built and the performances, we want to be able to see them in all the glory that they deserve to be seen in.

Were you surprised by the fan reactions to certain characters in season one?

I mean, look, Matt Smith has charisma for days, but I was just surprised at how many people out there are willing to make excuses for Daemon’s awful behavior. I think that speaks to Matt’s amazing portrayal of the character and the character that George wrote, that we adapted for TV. He’s fascinating and you just want to see what he’s going to do next. I’m ready to hear all the support for Daemon and his war crimes.

This season feels a bit like The Cold War but with dragons. How did you find balance between the action fans expect and the character-focused work that made season one so interesting?

You’re trying to move the story forward and what is the thing that moves the narrative ahead? Oftentimes in a war, it is tragedy. Medieval war moves very slow. We have these armies who are spread all over this continent who now have to raise arms, get on the march and make their way to King’s Landing in order to either challenge or defend the throne, depending on which side you’re on. Dragons of course move much faster. But as you pointed out, this is kind of a nuclear cold war where, ‘Yes, I have a dragon, but if I launch it, I know that it could result in my kingdom getting burned down. I have to be very careful about how I deploy those things.’ So you’re seeing a lot of very tense character machinations as people are stressing and straining over those council tables, trying to figure out the strategic moves that they can make to pick things off and to gather banners and strength in a way that isn’t risking the crown. They’re trying to build to a critical mass where either their power is undeniable and the other side has to surrender, or where they can just, by brute force, have enough people and dragons to either defend or take the throne.

In terms of where the season is going as a whole, are there any chapters from the book that we’re going to be spending a lot of time in?

I mean, certainly we’re following the narrative as laid out in Fire and Blood. I would say I’m very interested, very excited for the audience to see Daemon’s story in the River Lands. That story is only covered in a couple of lines in the book. So we had to create a story for him there, and I’m very proud of the one that we did. And I think it’s really compelling because it’s a great external challenge for Daemon in trying to raise the largest army of an undeclared host in the Seven Kingdoms. And the internal story that he experiences there, which I won’t talk about, is a fascinating one and really lets Matt Smith shine as an actor.

‘House Of The Dragon’ season 2 premieres Sunday, June 16 on HBO.

FORM Festival is making its long-awaited return. In its special 10th anniversary iteration — and its first iteration since 2019 — the festival will come back to Arcosanti, Arizona this fall, and fans can look forward to performances from several game-changing artists.

On the FORM Festival line-up are Skrillex, Four Tet, Jamie xx, Floating Points, James Blake, Thundercat, Erika De Casier, Mustafa, PinkPantheress, Angel Olsen and many others.

FORM Festival 2024, which takes place over the course of three days (October 4-6), was first announced this past March. Upon the announcement, over 2,500 tickets were sold, maxing out the festival’s capacity.

But it’s not too late for fans to try and get tickets. FORM Festival is partnering with Headcount to give one pair of sold-out tickets to the festival to those who enter for a chance to win. Entrants can enter here, and must offer proof of voter registration.

FORM festival has also partnered with Hope Solutions in an effort to reduce the festival’s ecological impact and educate attendees about emission- reducing strategies within the touring industry.

Arizona For Abortion Access will also be on-site, educating attendees about an amendment to Arizona’s constitution restoring and protecting abortion access, in which, residents can vote in November.

You can see the full line-up below.

There comes a point in an actor’s life when they gain enough success to be able to do the projects they want to do, instead of just taking on work for money. After Russell Crowe’s iconic career, he is settling down to a nice life of superhero cameos and multiple exorcism films. It’s the right thing to do after Les Mis.

But one of Crowe’s most memorable films, Gladiator, is getting a sequel starring Paul Mescal, and it turns out that the Australian actor is a little “uncomfortable” about the ordeal, and being asked about it.

In a new interview with Kyle Meredith, the actor has some feelings about the upcoming sequel, which will be directed by Ridley Scott.

“I’m slightly uncomfortable, the fact that they’re making another one, you know? Because of course, I’m dead, and I have no say in what gets done,” he began. Crowe’s character Maximus had a pretty monumental ending, so the actor doesn’t get an opinion on the sequel. He is, however, intrigued by the rumored plot points, even if he can’t contribute.

He added, “A couple of things that I’ve heard, I’m like, ‘No, no, no. That’s not in the moral journey of that particular character.’ But you know, I can’t say anything. That’s not my place. I’m six feet under. So we’ll see what that is like,” he concluded. In the past, Crowe had expressed interest in returning to the franchise, though that doesn’t seem plausible, given Maximus’ fate in the original film.

While Crowe will not return for Gladiator II, the film is will still have an A-list cast featuring Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, Joseph Quinn and Derek Jacobi. Gladiator II is expected to hit theaters on November 22nd, 2024.

(Via Variety)

Douglas Scott grew up on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in the dying shadow of the timber industry that had supported the region for decades.

“Nearly every home had a bright orange or yellow sign reading ‘This home supported by timber dollars,'” Scott wrote on Outdoor Society.

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While the region has also been recognized for its succulent seafood, temperate climate, and stunning natural formations, nothing shaped the community — or the physical landscape — quite like logging did.

The tension in the air between the loggers and the environmentalists throughout the 1980s was thicker than the trees being cut down.

“I heard from old timers in the Harbor about how environmentalists were ruining the region, and I was told by environmentalists that loggers were killing everything in sight,” Scott recalled.

But to understand the full impact of deforestation on the region, it helps to take the bird’s eye view.

Here’s a satellite image of the Olympic Peninsula from 1984. The white region in the center are the mountaintops in Olympic National Park; you’ll also notice the grey and brown areas along the western and northern coasts of the peninsula.

“When I moved away from the area in 1997, there wasn’t much of a logging or mill economy in dozens of towns around the region,” Scott said.

By that time, tourism had begun to take the place of timber as the region’s major industry — which was probably helped along by the fact that the trees were slowly but surely starting to recover, enhancing the already stunning vistas that drew visitors.

Here’s how the Olympic Peninsula looked by the time that Scott and his family left the area; you’ll notice the western and northern coasts are just a little bit greener than they were 13 years prior…

Those great green arbors continued their gradual recovery into the 2000s…

And they’re still going today.

But those isolated moments don’t tell the whole story of the region’s recovery. It’s even more remarkable when you can see it in action…

We don’t always notice the world changing right before our eyes, but the decades-long view of the Olympic Peninsula shows the true power of nature.

It’s not just the trees, either; according to Scott, the replenished forests have also had a positive impact on the local salmon population and other treasured natural resources.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use the natural world, of course. We still need wood, for example, but now we know there are sustainable ways to use it without recklessly damaging to the planet.

The Earth was built to take care of itself. We just need to let Mother Nature do her thing.

This article originally appeared on 12.22.16

Elephants are unique among animals in so many ways. Their massive size, of course. Their funky trunks that function like a fifth limb as well as a literal hose. The fact that they weigh thousands of pounds but can walk almost completely silently. Their high intelligence and complex social behaviors.

And now, apparently, their individualized “names.”

New research from Kenya indicates that elephants may have something akin to human names, which they use to communicate directly to specific members of their herd. According to Reuters, elephant researchers had noticed over the years that sometimes an elephant would make a vocalization to a group and all the elephants would respond, but sometimes the same elephant would make a similar call to the group, but only one elephant would respond—almost as if it had been called by name.

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Researchers studied the vocalizations of 100 African savannah elephants in Amboseli National Park and Samburu National Reserve to see if they could determine whether or not that’s what was actually happening. Using a machine-learning model, they identified vocalizations that appeared to be tied to specific individuals, then tested them on 17 elephants whose “names” they may have discovered.

Sure enough, when a vocalization that the model had identified as being addressed to a specific elephant was played on audio, that elephant responded by moving toward the audio source and behaving more enthusiastically, making more vocalizations in return, than when a vocalization that was apparently directed toward someone else was played.

“They could tell if a call was addressed to them just by hearing that call,” said behavioral ecologist and lead study author Mickey Pardo of Cornell University (formerly of Colorado State University).

According to the study published in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal, this kind of name usage is rare in the animal world. Bottlenose dolphins and orange-fronted parrots will call individuals with specific sounds, but they do so by simply mimicking the calls of the animal they’re addressing. That’s not what the elephants appear to be doing.

“Instead, their names seem to be arbitrary, like human names,” Pardo said, according to Reuters. “Addressing individuals with arbitrary names likely requires a capacity for some degree of abstract thought.”

Part of what makes studying elephant vocalizations tricky is the range of sounds they make. We often associate elephants with a loud trumpet-like sound, but Pardo said the name vocalizations are found in the lower, rumbling noises they make.

“The rumbles themselves are highly structurally variable,” said Pardo, who conducted the research while working at Colorado State University, according to NPR. “There’s quite a lot of variation in their acoustic structure.”

One of the most common usages of elephant names discovered in the study were from mother elephants to their calves, seemingly to calm them down or check in with them. But Pardo told NPR that while they knew the vocalizations they played were directed at specific individuals, they weren’t able to isolate the actual “names” of individual elephants from the vocalizations in the study.

“If we could do that, we could answer a lot of other questions that we weren’t able to fully figure out in this study,” Pardo said.

Some of those questions include: Do elephants all use the same “name” when they’re addressing the same elephant? Are they names or nicknames? Do elephants talk about each other? Do they say other elephants’ names when they’re not around?

There are more specific linguistic questions as well. “We still don’t know the syntax or basic elements by which elephant vocalizations encode information,” Colorado State University conservation biologist and study co-author George Wittemyer told Reuters. “We need to figure that out before we can make deeper progress on understanding them.”

What the study found does indicate, however, is that elephants are even more mentally and socially sophisticated than we thought.

“Certainly, in order to address one another in this way, elephants must learn to associate particular sounds with particular individuals and then use those sounds to get the attention of the individual in question, which requires sophisticated learning ability and understanding of social relationships,” Pardo said, according to Reuters. “The fact that elephants address one another as individuals highlights the importance of social bonds—and specifically, maintaining many different social bonds—for these animals.”

At 1:30 am on a Monday morning in February, an AMBER Alert went out in southern Louisiana about a missing 10-year-old girl from New Iberia. It was believed she had been kidnapped and driven away in a 2012 silver Nissan Altima.

A few hours later at 7 am, Dion Merrick and Brandon Antoine, sanitation workers for Pelican Waste, were on their daily route when they noticed a vehicle that fit the description in the alert.

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The sanitation workers thought it was suspicious that a silver sedan was parked alone in a field in St. Martin Parish.

“Something told me, like just look, I said what is that car doing in that field like that? What the car doing? Guess what, that’s the dude with the little girl,” Merrick said in a Facebook Live video. “That’s God.”

The video has been seen over 1.5 million times since it was posted on Monday morning.

To prevent the possible kidnapper from escaping, they parked the large sanitation truck the wrong way on the highway to “Make sure they couldn’t get out,” Merrick said. Then, they called 911.

When police arrived they arrested Michael R. Sereal, the man whose car was mentioned in the AMBER Alert. The police were also able to safely recover the girl who appeared unharmed. She was later taken to the hospital to be evaluated by medical personnel.

The Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department’s online sex offender registry has a Michael Roy Sereal but authorities wouldn’t confirm it’s the same man.

The young girls’ family got in touch with the two men who saved her and have shown amazing gratitude. “I’m just so happy and blessed that I have actually seen the car and we actually responded like we were supposed to respond,” Merrick told KHOU.

Merrick hopes that his actions will inspire others to be proactive as well. “Don’t be scared if you see something. If you know something is wrong, report it,” Merrick said. “Call authorities because it could save someone’s life.”

The two men were applauded by the St. John Parish’s Sheriff, who offered to buy them lunch.

“I was just doing my job man. I was just doing my job and actually came across somebody who needed help,” Merrick said. “Got me tearing up.”

The AMBER Alert system was created in 1996 after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered while riding her bike in Texas. Since its inception, nearly seven in 10 AMBER alert cases have resulted in children being successfully reunited with their parents.

In 17% of the cases, the child’s recovery is a direct result of the alert.

As of December 2020, 1,029 children rescued specifically because of the system.

This article originally appeared on 02.09.21

Anyone who has dogs, children, or family members who refuse to use coasters will love this affordable and easy hack to fix scratches on a wooden table. Kait Schulhof, known as A Clean Bee, shows in a viral TikTok video that all you need are some walnuts and natural furniture polish to get your table looking scratch-free.

“Just scrub the walnut over any scratches, divots, or worn areas. As you scrub, oil is released from the walnut, which can eliminate the appearance of scratches in the wood,” Kait says in the video. To finish the job, she rubs the wood down with a simple homemade wood polish made from olive oil, distilled white vinegar and a citrus essential oil to give it a nice glossy shine.

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​The hack is not only clever but also a big win for the environment, using simple, natural ingredients instead of harsh chemicals. “Every time I do this, I am just amazed by the results. It’s just one of those cleaning hacks that seriously works,” Kait says.

Did you know a walnut can repair scratches on wood surfaces? It’s like magic! 

@acleanbee

TikTok · Kait

Katie McDonald at Food52 is also a big fan of the walnut-and-polish hack. But she cautions that there may be better ideas for some types of wood. “This trick only works on finished wood and is most successful with lighter scratches,” she writes. “Deep grooves and darker woods will likely need the help of floor polish. Oh, and you want to hold off on using nuts if you have a precious antique; that’s better for a professional to look at.”

Some icons have truly left this world too early. It’s a tragedy when anyone doesn’t make it to see old age, but when it happens to a well-known public figure, it’s like a bit of their art and legacy dies with them. What might Freddie Mercury have created if he were granted the gift of long life? Bruce Lee? Princess Diana?

Their futures might be mere musings of our imagination, but thanks to a lot of creativity (and a little tech) we can now get a glimpse into what these celebrities might have looked like when they were older.

Alper Yesiltas, an Istanbul-based lawyer and photographer, created a photography series titled “As If Nothing Happened,” which features eerily realistic portraits of long gone celebrities in their golden years. To make the images as real looking as possible, Yesiltas incorporated various photo editing programs such as Adobe Lightroom and VSCO, as well as the AI photo-enhancing software Remini.

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“The hardest part of the creative process for me is making the image feel ‘real’ to me,” Yesiltas wrote about his passion project. “The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks as if it was taken by a photographer.”

Yesiltas’ meticulousness paid off, because the results are uncanny.

Along with each photo, Yesiltas writes a bittersweet message “wishing” how things might have gone differently … as if nothing happened.

Freddie Mercury

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t got that disease.”

There are plenty of amazing Freddie Mercury tributes and impersonators out there, but there will only ever be ONE Freddie Mercury.

Heath Ledger

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t been affected by the exhaustion of his role.”

One of Ledger’s most notable roles is queer cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee’s iconic 2005 romantic western drama “Brokeback Mountain.” In a time when queer storytelling was still taboo, Ledger’s honest and compassionate portrayal broke down a lot of barriers for future stories.

Though Ledger officially died due to an overdose, many believe it was his role of The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” that pushed him over the edge.

Janis Joplin

“I wish she hadn’t sought the inspiration she needed elsewhere.”

The powerful singer with electric stage presence is still one of the greatest female rock stars of all time. Scratch that—one of the greatest rock stars of all time, period.

Jimi Hendrix

“I wish he hadn’t sought the inspiration he needed elsewhere.”

Like Joplin and Ledger, Hendrix died due to an overdose—though many have speculated that it was instead the result of foul play.

Michael Jackson

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t faced vitiligo.”

However questionable his personal life was, the King of Pop made some of the biggest contributions to music of all time. People continue to sing his songs, and likely will for a very, very long time.

Kurt Cobain

“I wish he had decided to stay.”

The insightful, poetic and troubled Cobain took his life at 27. His story is a cautionary tale that success does not necessarily help thwart struggles with mental health.

Bruce Lee

“I wish he hadn’t taken that painkiller that day.”

The actor and martial-arts expert died at 32, officially due to a harmful reaction to a painkiller. His philosophies around kung fu, however, are eternal.

John Lennon

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t been in New York that day.”

Legendary artist and activist John Lennon was fatally wounded by a gunshot in December 1980. The last thing he talked about, revealed ex-wife Yoko Ono in an interview, was the desire to see his son before he went to sleep.

Elvis Presley

“I wish he decided to live a life where he paid more attention to the health of his heart.”

Had Presley not died of cardiac arrest, he would be 87 this year.

Tupac Shakur

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t been involved in that event that would cause him to face the mafia.”

The cause of Tupac’s untimely death is also one of debate and speculation. According to some, he never died at all. What we can all agree on—he was one of hip-hop’s most iconic figures.

Princess Diana

See on Instagram

This one seems to be a new addition to the collection, so no wistful message. Although I’m sure the general sentiment is “I wish she were still here.”

AI-generated art is a controversial topic, to be sure. Some consider it a new, innovative medium. Others see it as devoid of any real creativity at all, as it’s produced by a machine, rather than a human. Many are concerned that, as is the case with many jobs that get machine automated, it will threaten the livelihood of actual illustrators.

Those concerns are certainly valid, but perhaps there’s a balance to be found here, as Yesiltas seems to have accomplished. Previously, another artist similarly created stunningly lifelike portraits of cartoon characters from “Encanto” and ”The Simpsons.” These works still required the human touch, and were carefully crafted over time rather than cracked out in mere seconds, as is the case with a lot of AI art.

At its best, AI art helps remind us, as Yesiltas puts it, that “anything imaginable can be shown in reality.” Which, at the end of the day, could be said for any art.

This article originally appeared on 9.23.22

Google and smart phones have been around so long that Gen Z doesn’t know a time before those things existed. They may have Googled what a card catalog was used for but plenty of them don’t know the pressure we all felt having to learn the dewy decimal system while walking around the library with a card with numbers scribbled on it.

They’ve never experienced the frustration of having an out of date Encyclopedia collection from the thrift store that was missing books “D” and “X-Z” when you had a research assignment due. Oh, sweet tech savvy – we not me generation, doesn’t understand that riding shot gun on a road trip meant you were suddenly a pirate with an Atlas map bigger than the dashboard.

Even as someone that was alive when having a rotary phone was the norm, I sometimes forget what life was like before all of the technological luxuries. It’s not surprising that Gen Z is confused on how we survived back then without knowledge at our fingertips, so when one of them asked, Gen X, Xennials and elder Millennials entered the chat.

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Sarah Adelman posted a video to TikTok with the caption, “pls help I was born in 1997.” In the video she says she has a genuine question for older people and that’s when she asks, “what did you do before you could look something up?”

Adelman gives the example of something that isn’t in the dictionary or Encyclopedia. She wants to know what someone would do if there was a celebrity whose name you couldn’t remember or other trivial things like that.

“Would you go to the library? Like gen..and like okay, without Google Maps, like I know that there was MapQuest but before that like genuinely what would you do? Would you just accept not knowing,” the Gen Zer asks before saying she doesn’t think she would be able to survive without knowing.

Unfortunately for Adelman, the older generations informed her that this is exactly what we did back in the 1900s. We simply wondered about things that popped into our heads. In fact, since we knew there was no way of knowing the name of the actor that played on “Matlock” for one episode, we didn’t bother attempting to look it up. You’d either see them again in a rerun or it would come to you randomly while trying to locate a payphone.

“The name of an actor would come up to you 3 weeks later while you were eating a bowl of cereal,” one person writes.

“You would just be forever annoyed by it, keep it bookmarked in the back of your mind, then realize one day that dude’s name is Ray Liotta or something,” another commenter says.

“Ummm. I love how you reference Mapquest. We used maps. Just maps. Good ole paper maps,” someone writes.

“We just lived in blissful ignorance and then in the middle of a conversation about pretzels a week later we would just yell out the answer,” one person reveals.

To no one’s surprise Adelman did not like these answers. She replied to someone explaining that we simply wondered with, “I could never.” The official Google account even chimed in saying, “however it worked, sounds bad.”

Ehh, it wasn’t so bad. We didn’t know any different, but in a way Adelman had that good old fashioned pre-Google experience when she posed this question. You can watch the perplexed girl’s video below:

@sarah_adelman

Pls help i was born in 1997 #90s #genz #90skids #iphone #rant #question #funny

This article originally appeared on 9.7.23