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Pixel Scroll 10/10/25 You Are, Without Doubt, The Worst Pixel I’ve Ever Scrolled Of

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(1) STOKERCON 2026 ADDS GOH. The Horror Writers Association has announced James Tynion IV is joining their slate of Guests of Honor for StokerCon 2026, taking place from June 4-7, 2026 in Pittsburgh, PA.

James Tyrion IV

Tynion, an Eisner Award-winning and New York Times bestselling writer and publisher, is best known for redefining the landscape of horror comics with genre-defining series such as “Something Is Killing the Children,” “The Nice House on the Lake,” “The Department of Truth,” and “Exquisite Corpses.”

In addition to his celebrated horror work, Tynion is known for his decade-long tenure writing Batman titles at DC Comics, where he co-created fan-favorite characters such as Punchline and Ghost-Maker. He has authored several Young Adult series, including the multiple GLAAD Media Award-nominated “Wynd,” and “The Woods,” which won the GLAAD Media Award in 2017. He resides in Brooklyn, New York, and is represented by United Talent Agency.

With the announcement of James Tynion IV, the StokerCon 2026 Guest of Honor roster now includes:

  • Linda Addison
  • Ann VanderMeer
  • John Shirley
  • Billy Martin
  • James Tynion IV

StokerCon is the premier annual gathering of horror writers, publishers, editors, and fans from around the world.

(2) F&SF NEWS. There’s a notice at Weightless Books’ page for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that says —

New subscriptions to F&SF at Weightless have been placed on a temporary hold at the request of the publisher.

No further explanation is given.

(3) CRAIG MILLER RETURNING TO HOTH. In a manner of speaking. Craig Miller told Facebook followers  yesterday he’s been invited to return as a guest at a Norwegian Star Wars con.

Eight years ago, I was a guest at a small convention called Visit Hoth, held in Finse, Norway, the tiny community where, in early 1979, we shot the exterior scenes for the snow planet Hoth for “The Empire Strikes Back”.

I had a terrific time, meeting lots of Star Wars fans and telling stories about my years working on the first two Star Wars movies. For my talk at that convention, I put together a slide show to illustrate the stories I’d be telling. That talk and slide show actually stimulated me to finally write about those years and I used the slide show as the starting point for “Star Wars Memories”.

Between covid and other issues, Visit Hoth stopped being held. But a year or two ago, a new convention started, called “Hoth Strikes Back”, put on by other people. Still held in Finse. Still held in February.

And they’ve invited me to come back as a Guest. The convention will be this February 13-15 at the Hotel Finse 1222. That’s the hotel where the cast and crew stayed while filming “The Empire Strikes Back”. …

…I’m told there’s good skiing in Finse. I don’t ski. Any activity where the stereotype is a broken leg I’m best advised to avoid. Plus, being an L.A. boy, I’m not much of one for being out in the snow. Though, last time I was there, there were dogsleds and they’d take you for rides up the glacier. That was terrific. Unfortunately, at least so far, it doesn’t look like the dogsleds will be back. But I’m hopeful.

Though even without dogsleds, I’m looking forward to this.

(4) HOW THEY DID IT. The New York Times’ “Anatomy of a Scene” series invites readers to “Watch a Light Cycle Chase in ‘Tron: Ares’”. Video at the link. Link bypasses the paywall.

…In this sequence, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who runs the tech company Dillinger Systems, has created artificial intelligence programs that can be laser printed and operate outside of the grid. But they are only able to function for 29 minutes in the real world before disintegrating. That can all change with access to the permanence code, which allows A.I. creations to exist in real-world space indefinitely.

But Julian has learned that Eve Kim (Greta Lee), the chief executive of a competitive tech company, has found the code. He dispatches his programs Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) to chase down Eve to retrieve it.

Narrating the scene, the director Joachim Ronning said, “I put so much pressure on myself and everybody to get this right, because it’s such an iconic part of the ‘Tron’ universe.”

That involved spending a year coming up with the sequence, working with the production designer Darren Gilford on many of the elements. The filmmakers shot on the streets of Vancouver, building light cycles that they could mount cameras on for immersive effect….

(5) BUCKET LIST. Fantasy Land News covers the array of TRON: Ares popcorn buckets and snack paraphernalia being offered by different theater chains: “$74.99 Lightcycle Popcorn Bucket Leads Massive TRON: Ares Theater Collectibles Lineup”.

…Ahead of Disney’s TRON: Ares theatrical release on October 10, 2025, a massive and intricately designed line of Popcorn Buckets and collectibles has been officially revealed by major theater chains, including AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Marcus Theaters, and Alamo Drafthouse….

(6) BIG ILLUSTRATION AUCTION. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Live proxy bidding is already under way for Heritage Auction’s “2025 November 4 Illustration Art Signature® Auction #8224” which includes works by:

  • Chesley Bonestell
  • Frank R. Paul
  • Edmund “Emsh” Emshwiller
  • Frank Frazetta
  • Kelly Freas
  • Richard M. Powers
  • Alex Schomburg
  • Don Maitz
  • Hannes Bok
  • Rowena Morrill
  • Michael Whelan
  • Tom Kidd
  • Greg and Tim Hildebrandt
  • LeRoy Neiman
  • Charles Addams

Many more; but eventually I got tired of doing copy and paste.

The catalog cover is by Richard M. Powers. Here’s a link to the highlighted items.

(7) LEST DARKNESS FALL. “A digital dark age? The people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks” — BBC tells how they’re doing it.

Some of the world’s most treasured documents can be found deep in the archives of Cambridge University Library. There are letters from Sir Isaac Newton, notebooks belonging to Charles Darwin, rare Islamic texts and the Nash Papyrus – fragments of a sheet from 200BC containing the Ten Commandments written in Hebrew.

These rare, and often unique, manuscripts are safely stored in climate-controlled environments while staff tenderly care for them to prevent the delicate pages from crumbling and ink from flaking away.

But when the library received 113 boxes of papers and mementoes from the office of physicist Stephen Hawking, it found itself with an unusual challenge. Tucked alongside the letters, photographs and thousands of pages relating to Hawking’s work on theoretical physics, were items now not commonly seen in modern offices – floppy disks.

They were the result of Hawking’s early adoption of the personal computer, which he was able to use despite having a form of motor neurone disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, thanks to modifications and software. Locked inside these disks could be all kinds of forgotten information or previously unknown insights into the scientists’ life. The archivists’ minds boggled.

These disks are now part of a project at Cambridge University Library to rescue hidden knowledge trapped on floppy disks. The Future Nostalgia project reflects a larger trend in the information flooding into archives and libraries around the world….

… To address this challenge, the Future Nostalgia project is trying to piece together bits of ancient computer hardware to read rare and unusual floppy disks. Even when they have the hardware, the team must laboriously determine how disks were formatted so they can read them correctly. Talboom has also found herself delicately teasing mould off the flimsy surface of the magnetic disks to avoid scratching them.

“If people have kept them in garages or lofts, they can get mouldy,” she says….

(8) TRIVIAL TRIVIA. Here’s a bite of history.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

October 10, 1968 — Barbarella

By Paul Weimer: Oh, Barbarella. 

I didn’t quite get why it was so controversial when I first saw it, it was a bowdlerized version of the already bowdlerized version Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy. This was on a local channel in New York City in the 1980’s. I thought it was a funny but rather goofy looking SF movie, although of course Jane Fonda was something to look at.

(My father was upset at her being in the movie, something I did not understand for years until I understood her politics…and my own family’s politics, better)

I finally got to see the uncut and real version in the early 2000’s on DVD.  And then I could finally see what I was missing. Did it add a lot to the actual movie besides the visuals? No, but what visuals!  I slotted it in the same space as Woody Allen’s Sleeper, as a science fiction movie that talked about sex, and around sex, a lot. But going on the other visuals, the sets, costume design and props (including the infamous Excess Pleasure Machine) were just mind boggling in both of the versions I’ve seen.  

Too, the actual cinematography is mesmerizing, the camera knows where to linger, where to bring our attention in sometimes rather chaotic and baroque set pieces. I have not yet seen a 4k version of the film, but that is something I do very much need to see sometime, to see it at the maximum fidelity and clarity.  

Is it great cinema? No. But it is great art. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) NO, NEVER? The Verge hears Jim Lee declare “DC Comics won’t support generative AI: ‘not now, not ever’”.

DC Comics president and publisher Jim Lee said that the company “will not support AI-generated storytelling or artwork,” assuring fans that its future will remain rooted in human creativity. “Not now, not ever, as long as [SVP, general manager] Anne DePies and I are in charge,” Lee said during his panel at New York Comic Con on Wednesday, likening concerns around AI dominating future creative industries to the Millennium bug scare and NFT hype.

“People have an instinctive reaction to what feels authentic. We recoil from what feels fake. That’s why human creativity matters,” said Lee. “AI doesn’t dream. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t make art. It aggregates it.”…

(12) THE NEAR TERM. [Item by Steven French.] A timely warning after a close shave (by a small space rock): “An asteroid recently flew closer to Earth than the ISS” reports Phys.org.

While these relatively small asteroids don’t pose any danger to the planet themselves, they do pose a threat to the increasing constellation of orbital infrastructure present, especially in low Earth orbit. An impact of one of these rocks, which likely occurs relatively frequently, could be the start of a chain reaction that leads to Kessler Syndrome or a similar dismal fate for our orbital infrastructure.


Unfortunately, we still don’t have the means to protect against these kinds of incursions into our planet’s personal space. To do so would require a massive effort with a combination of more ground-based telescopes linked up with space-based observatories specifically designed to track these small, dark, fast-moving objects. Given the current state of international cooperation and funding in space, that seems unlikely for now.

Until we get to that point, we just have to hope that, when we see a fireball in the sky, it’s not one of these asteroids taking out a piece of valuable orbital infrastructure. Or, if it is, then maybe that would provide enough impetus to the powers that be to do something about what could be an impending disaster that locks us on our world for decades.

(13) FUTURES PAST. Space.com remembers “How one scientist’s wide-eyed dream of giant space cities was crushed by reality”.

There once was a dream of cities in space — vast cylindrical habitats, self-sufficient and populated by millions who would look down on the Earth from their lofty perch.

Back in the 1970s, one serious scientist believed that by now this dream would have been a reality. That scientist was Princeton University professor of physics, Gerard K. O’Neill, and, for a few years, his dream of living in space made him a household name. He appeared on television, wrote a best-selling book and was invited to testify before the U.S. Congress about his vision for the future.

It’s all a far cry from the reality of 2025, where not many people get the chance to live in space, save for the 290 astronauts who have spent time on the International Space Station so far as well as the handful of astronauts stationed on various simple space stations such as the Russian Mir or China’s Tiangong.

O’Neill’s vision was best described in his book, “The High Frontier,” first published in 1976. In it, O’Neill explained how, as early as 1990 and as late as 2005, we would be able to build vast cities in space at the gravitationally stable L5 Lagrange point between Earth and the moon, each habitat home to several million people. The concept became so popular that a fan club even sprung up called the L5 Society, which declared as its motto: “L5 by ’95!”

One of the keys to the idea’s success was rotation to produce a centrifugal force mimicking gravity on the inside surface of a cylinder….

…So where did O’Neill’s plans all go wrong? After all, there’s nothing physically impossible about building such habitats. What made the concept so appealing to O’Neill is that it didn’t require any magic technology, just a lot of challenging engineering problems to be solved.

Nevertheless, a criticism that could be applied is O’Neill was too confident in the technology and engineering that would be required. The best that we’ve built in space so far has been the International Space Station. The kind of technologies required for something like Island Three, or even the smaller, simpler, spherical models of Island One and Island Two, are completely untested even now. With dedication and sufficient funding and resources, we could hone our skills, but it would take time. It wouldn’t be something we could rush.

A second problem was the failure of the space shuttle. When the space shuttle was first conceived, the plan was to have hundreds of launches per year, which would have created the capacity to build the infrastructure in space that would have allowed mining on the moon, or ferried millions of people into orbit. Instead, between the shuttle’s inaugural flight in 1981 and its final flight in 2011, the six shuttles managed only 135 space flights between them.

The cost of building a 20-mile-long (32-km-long) space habitat was also somewhat vague, with O’Neill estimating up to $200 billion in 1970s money, which, accounting for inflation, would be $1.1 trillion in 2025….

(14) ORPHAN OF THE SKY. The government shutdown doesn’t seem to have actually stopped this particular item of NASA’s work. “’It’s kind of surreal that it happened to us’: Rural West Texas woman witnesses NASA space junk as it lands in her neighbor’s yard” in Fortune.

When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn’t know what to make of the bulky object slowly drifting across the sky.

She was even more surprised to see what actually landed in her neighbor’s wheat field: a boxy piece of scientific equipment about the size of a sport-utility vehicle, attached to a massive parachute, adorned with NASA stickers. She called the local sheriff’s office and learned that NASA, indeed, was looking for a piece of equipment that had gone lost.

“It’s crazy, because when you’re standing on the ground and see something in the air, you don’t realize how big it is,” she said. “It was probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge.”

Walter said she soon got a call from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, which launches large unmanned, high altitude research balloons more than 20 miles into the atmosphere to conduct scientific experiments.

Officials at NASA, which is impacted by the ongoing government shutdown, did not return messages Thursday. A message left with the balloon facility also was not immediately returned.

A launch schedule on the balloon facility’s website shows a series of launches from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) west of where the equipment landed.

Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed that NASA officials called his office last week in search of the equipment.

Walter said she ultimately spoke with someone at the balloon facility who told her it had been launched a day earlier from Fort Sumner, and uses telescopes to gather information about stars, galaxies and black holes….

(15) PRODUCT LAUNCH. We didn’t get the memo about this special day! Fortunately, the rocket is something you can make anytime you want. Space.com invited readers to “Blast off with the ‘Space Gal’ Emily Calandrelli for World Space Week on Arm and Hammer’s Baking Soda Rocket Day”. (Here’s a link to the event’s dedicated website.)

…From aerospace engineer to television host to Blue Origin astronaut (and the 100th woman to reach space), Calandrelli has built her career around simplifying STEAM concepts through engaging, kid-friendly activities. The bottle rocket is one of her favorites.

“I think the fact that it is just so explosive and easy to make — those two in combination make for the perfect science experiment,” Calandrelli said….

…The hands-on experiment/rocket building activity mixes baking soda and vinegar — a classroom-classic acid-base reaction that releases carbon dioxide gas — to propel a two-liter bottle (outfitted with your design of nose cone and fins) high into the air.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 9/25/25 You’re Pixeliacci? I Hear You Have Some New Baby Shoes For Sale

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(1) BUSINESS RISK. What’s one drag on a country’s translated book market you may not have predicted? “Young Finns snub their mother tongue by reading in English” reports the Guardian.

Growing numbers of young people in Finland are buying books in English rather than in their mother tongue, raising fears among publishers over the future of translated literature.

One in four titles sold in Finnish bookshops last year were written in a foreign language, according to figures from the country’s association of booksellers. In the vast majority of cases, that language was English.

A major cause of the increased demand for English language works, say publishers, is BookTok – a reading community on TikTok that has a growing influence on the industry. Young readers do not want to wait for a Finnish translation to come out to take part in the BookTok conversation. Instead, they are simply buying the English-language version.

As is the case in neighbouring Sweden, the dominance of English across the internet, social media, film and TV also means it is seen as aspirational for young people to be seen to speak and read in English.

With a population of only 5.6 million, translated fiction has been a vital part of the Finnish publishing industry. Finnish language titles brought in just €26m (£23m) of the €57m generated by all fiction book sales across digital and print last year.

Among the most popular English language titles were works by the US authors Rebecca Yarros and Colleen Hoover.

Leena Balme of WSOY, a Finnish publishing house, said changed buying habits meant they had to think “very carefully whether it is worth the risk to translate a book into Finnish”. It was rare, she added, that a publisher had the rights and the manuscript for a book in time to publish it in Finnish at the same time as the English language version….

(2) LEVAR BURTON NEWS. Publishers Weekly announces, “LeVar Burton Named ABA’s Indie Bookstore Ambassador”.

The American Booksellers Association announced this morning that LeVar Burton is the organization’s Indie Bookstore Ambassador for 2025-2026. As ambassador, Burton will champion indie bookstores, especially on Small Business Saturday (Nov. 29, 2025) and Independent Bookstore Day (Apr. 25, 2026).

The ABA stated in a release that Burton “has dedicated decades to encouraging children to read,” including with his debut documentary The Right to Read, which premiered in 2023 and “positions the literacy crisis in America as a civil rights issue.” He is the author of a speculative fiction novel, Aftermath (Aspect, 1997), as well as the children’s books The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm (illustrated by Courtenay Fletcher, Reading Rainbow, 2014) and A Kid’s Book About Imagination (DK, 2023).

In 2021, Burton was named the inaugural PEN/Faulkner literary champion by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation for his “literary advocacy and a commitment to inspiring new generations of readers and writers.”…

(3) SPACEBALLS 2 CAST. “’Spaceballs 2′ Starts Production, Cast Photo Unveiled”. Deadline makes the introductions.

Amazon MGM Studios has made official what Deadline previously told you: There is a Spaceballs 2 with Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman and Daphne Zuniga reprising their respective roles as Dark Helmet, Lone Star and Princess Vespa. There’s also the series additions, which we told you about, including Josh Gad, Keke Palmer and Lewis Pullman.

New cast members who were unannounced are Barry and Superman actor Anthony Carrigan and A Serious Man‘s George Wyner, who played Colonel Sandurz in the original 1987 movie which grossed over $38M domestic.

And of course, the sci-fi comedy pic’s architect, Mel Brooks, is back, returning to his roles as Zen Yiddish wise guy Yogurt and President Skroob.

The photo, of course, mirrors the famous table read image featuring the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which itself marked a return to a beloved franchise from a galaxy far, far away. Appropriate, given Spaceballs is a parody of that mythos.

(4) PARTY OF FIVE. “Adventures in Tourism: Five SFF Stories About Travel” – selected by James Davis Nicoll for Reactor.

The world exhibiting as it does a marvellous diversity of cultures, the question arises of how best to appreciate them. Unimpeachable experts1 assure us that the answer is “in person.” Pictures in magazines and dense text in hefty tomes are fine, but neither can replace reality.

Perhaps examples of the wonders awaiting travellers are in order. Here are the first five that came to mind….

(5) ‘TIS THE SEASON. Science’s roundup of “Fall Books 2025” includes a review of Ken Liu’s All That We See or Seem (on page 3).

…Loss and reconnection are prominent themes in this work, which are compellingly explored as Julia attempts to make sense of the digital traces Elli left behind. It is in seemingly mundane scenarios—when Piers prepares food and coffee for Julia while she works, for example—that Liu demonstrates how we can show up for each other through simple acts of care. The absurd and treacherous situations the pair find themselves in do not drive them apart but rather allow Julia, in particular, to find safety in community. Although Julia’s identity as a Chinese American is not central to the plot of this book—the first in a planned series—Liu takes the time to contextualize how xenophobia and anti-Asian bias and discrimination have affected herand her “restless and fearless” mother, a Chinese immigrant. This is the sort of book a reader can get lost in—not to escape the world but rather to meditate on questions of deep moral significance….

(6) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 144 of the Octothorpe podcast, “I Have Opinions on Women”, says —

OCTOTHORPE 144 IS THE LAW. As well as a pleasing rhyme, alert listeners will know this heralds the episode on 2012’s Dredd! We hope you enjoy the episode, and remember: until your assessment is formally over, you’re still entitled to dispense justice.

An uncorrected transcript is at the link.

Six cartoons of John as a Judge from MegaCity One with the Clarke Award logo on his helmet, all of which are identical. Beneath them follows text. 0: NO HURT. 1: HURTS A LITTLE. 2: JUST A FLESH WOUND. 3: MINOR GUNSHOT. 4: BULLET THROUGH GUT. 5: FALL OFF SKYSCRAPER. The JUDGE COXON Pain Scale™. The words "Octothorpe 144" appear at the top of the cover.

(7) CONGRATULATIONS. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki proudly announced on Facebook that he has agents.

I’m now represented for film/TV/media by Vince Gerardis of Starling Inc, the producer of Game of Thrones, House of The Dragon, the forthcoming Elden Ring movie, and others. Also reps GRR Martin, Larry Niven, Joe Haldeman, , Robert Silverberg, Robert J Sawyer, the Heinlein, Asimov, Sturgeon, Pratchet estates, etc.

And my literary agent is @lTrident Media Group’s Vice president, Mark Gottlieb SVP and Literary Agent at Trident Media Group.

TMG has also repped Kevin J. Anderson, Brian Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Marlon James, Tom Clancy, etc.

(8) THE GODS THEMSELVES. A Polygon reviewer says “Waiting a year to play Hades 2 was absolutely the right call”.

…Hades 2 in its fully realized form is a splendid sight to behold, with developer Supergiant Games flexing its collective artistic talent. In early access? The gods were hot, yes, but everyone’s favorite merchant Charon didn’t have a complete design yet and someone like poor Narcissus was only just fully revealed in June. Other final artwork, like Melinoë’s now-gorgeous Arcana Cards, were also added over time.

Those are just the superficial aspects, though; Melinoë’s arsenal of Nocturnal Arms was consistently tinkered with throughout the early access period, and they weren’t all available until the game’s first major update five months later. That Olympic Update, like the Warsong and Unseen Updates after it, brought major changes to the game. It introduced a whole new area and more story content and dialogue.

That right there is the real crux of why waiting for 1.0 feels like the right decision. So much of the joy in Hades and Hades 2 comes from interacting and bonding with their casts of gods, incarnates, and other characters. To play through the game without the full cast available — someone like Ares, for example, wasn’t added until nine months in — and without their dialogues complete would be to miss out on so much of what makes these games rewarding….

They’ve also dropped a gameplay video: “Hades II – v1.0 Gameplay Showcase”.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

September 25, 1987 — The Princess Bride

Thirty-eight years ago today, what might indeed be the sweetest film ever released premiered: The Princess Bride. Yes, I’m biased. Really biased. And the novel is even better. 

Based off the exemplary novel of fourteen years earlier by William Goldman, who adapted it for the screen, I need not detail the story here as I know there’s not a single individual here who’s not familiar with it. If there is anyone here with that hole in their film education, why are you reading this instead of going to watch it? You can watch it on Disney +. 

It’s a very sweet love story, it’s a send-up of classic adventure tales, it’s a screwball comedy, it’s a, well, it’s a lot of things done absolutely perfectly. Did I mention sword fights? Well, I should. Great sword fights they are. 

I fell in love with The Princess Bride when Grandfather played by Peter Falk repeated these lines from the novel: “That’s right. When I was your age, television was called books. And this is a special book. It was the book my father used to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your father. And today, I’m gonna read it to you.” A film about a book. Cool!

Yes, they shortened the title of book which was The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The “Good Parts” Version. Bit unwieldy for a film, I’d say. Though a stellar book title indeed. Though not to put on the cover I suppose. 

There are very few films that successfully adapt a book exactly as it written. (Not looking at you the first version of Dune or Starship Troopers.) The only one I’ve seen that did was Like Water for Chocolate off the novel by Laura Esquivel. That Goldman wrote the script obviously was essential and the cast which you know by heart, so I’ll not detail here were stellar in their roles certainly made a pitch perfect difference.

Rob Reiner was without doubt the director for it and the interviews with him have indicated his deeply affectionate love for the novel.

That it won a Hugo at Nolacon II was I think was predestined. I won’t say it is just magical as it was intrinsically magical in the way the best uplifting films always are. And I think that it was by far the best film that year. My opinion, yours of course might well be different. 

Only six percent of the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes don’t like it. Were they at the wrong film?

Deluxe one-sixth scale figures of the characters including Westley (Dread Pirate Roberts) are being released. You can stage your own version of the film. 

There were film posters, oh there certainly were. I selected the one that was used the most.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) THE PRINCE GROOM. [Item by Steven French.] Chris Sarandon has been through the mill when it comes to his career but he has good memories of The Princess Bride (in which he played bad Prince Humperdinck) as he says here in an interview in the Guardian (sorry Sheffield – I know you have great food. Now.): “’I lost everything!’ Chris Sarandon on Dog Day Afternoon, ex-wife Susan and the fraud that took his life savings”.

He has particularly fond memories of Bride: improvising puns with Christopher Guest; introducing his young daughters to the legendary André the Giant (they ran away in terror. André said to him: “Either they run towards me or they run away from me”); director Rob Reiner and the cast singing doo-wop tunes on the set. Shooting in Sheffield, “the food was not great, so we did a lot of barbecuing. We would go into Rob’s room and sit around and play games, eat burgers and have a great time.”

(12) BOOK VS. FILM. ScreenRant calls these the “6 Biggest Issues With Hermione’s Portrayal In The Harry Potter Movies”.

…Just four years later, Harry Potter and company made the jump to the big screen. The Harry Potter movie series was also a pop culture phenomenon, launching the careers of its young cast and being well-received by fans of the book series. However, the movies had to make some adjustments to the characters and stories that weren’t always beneficial.

Many characters, like Peeves, were completely left out, many others were changed, and some key moments were omitted. Unfortunately, and despite being a main character, Hermione went through this and more, and she was very different from her portrayal in the books…

One of these differences is —

The Harry Potter Movies Made Hermione Too Compatible With Harry

Everyone who read the Harry Potter books knows that Hermione and Harry are always friends, and her romantic bond with Ron is a slow-burn – however, the movies did this differently. The Harry Potter saga changed some of Hermione’s traits and moments from the books to make her more compatible with Harry.

This was also thanks to changes made to Harry and Ron, with the first being portrayed as the brave one of the group, Ron being the comic relief, and Hermione being the brains. This gave Harry and Hermione more interactions and time together, and the movies even showed them comforting each other and working together to essentially save the world.

(13) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. [Item by Steven French.] Not now, invisible asteroids! “’Invisible’ asteroids near Venus may threaten Earth in the future” according to Phys.org.

An international study led by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil has identified a little-known but potentially significant threat: Asteroids that share Venus’s orbit and may completely escape current observational campaigns because of their position in the sky. These objects have not yet been observed, but they could strike Earth within a few thousand years. Their impacts could devastate large cities.

“Our study shows that there’s a population of potentially dangerous asteroids that we can’t detect with current telescopes. These objects orbit the sun, but aren’t part of the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. Instead, they’re much closer, in resonance with Venus. But they’re so difficult to observe that they remain invisible, even though they may pose a real risk of collision with our planet in the distant future,” astronomer Valerio Carruba, a professor at the UNESP School of Engineering at the Guaratinguetá campus (FEG-UNESP) and first author of the study, told Agência FAPESP.

The study is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The work combined analytical modeling and long-term numerical simulations to track the dynamics of these objects and assess their potential to come dangerously close to Earth.

The so-called “Venusian co-orbital asteroids” circle the sun rather than the planet, but they share the same orbital region and similar periods.

“These objects enter into 1:1 resonance with Venus, which means that they complete one revolution around the sun in the same time as the planet,” the researcher explains.

Unlike Jupiter Trojans, which tend to be more stable, the Venusian co-orbitals known to date are highly eccentric and unstable. They alternate between different orbital configurations in cycles that last, on average, about 12,000 years. These transitions mean that the same object can be in a safe configuration close to Venus one moment and pass close to Earth at another.

“During these transition phases, the asteroids can reach extremely small distances from Earth’s orbit, potentially crossing it,” Carruba warns.

(14) CHOW CALL. How It Should Have Ended has composed “’Breakfast For My Food’, the Superman HISHE Song”. Is it actually amusing enough to include in the Scroll? You decide.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George has Reasons for asking “What The Hell Is Going On With Disney?”

Disney parks! The happiest places on Earth… with the highest concentration of mobility scooters per square mile. But look, beneath the Mickey-shaped pretzels and overpriced corn dogs, there’s a lot of weird stuff going on. So yeah, it turns out the most magical place on earth is also kinda the weirdest…. Anyway, watch the video, learn some cursed facts, and then try not to think about them next time you’re standing in line for Space Mountain. Leave a comment with your favorite weird Disney fact (or your favorite ash-scattering technique — no actually don’t do that).

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

And the Winner Is…

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If you bet that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant asteroid strike in the Gulf of Mexico and the ensuing global winter — you won!

The theory was advanced years ago but competing theories have gained traction since then that blame the extinctions on volcanic activity or multiple comet impacts. So, explains the LA Times:   

To settle the question, European researchers decided to assemble what Kirk R. Johnson of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science called “a K-T boundary dream team,” a collection of 45 internationally renowned scientists in a broad spectrum of disciplines to analyze the possible causes of the extinctions. Funding came from the National Science Foundation in the United States and from similar groups in other countries.Their conclusions will be published Friday in the journal Science.

“The answer is quite simple,” Johnson, a co-author and spokesman for the group, said in a telephone news conference. “The crater really is the culprit.”

The aftereffects from the impact “shrouded the planet in darkness and caused a global winter, killing off many species that couldn’t adapt to the hellish environment,” co-author and Earth scientist Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London said in a statement.