July 25

Better Than News

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  The Thin Red World is an epic historical romantic war film written and directed by Terrence Malick, depicting the violent founding of New Jamestown on Mars and the inter-planetary breeding program allegedly run by Captain John Smith.

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  Days of Badlands is a romantic crime period drama film directed by Terrence Mallick and starring Sissy Spacek, Martin Sheen, Richard Gere, and Brooke Adams.

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  Bonsai lock picking is the practice of unlocking a lock by manipulating the components of the lock device using a bonsai or similar miniature tree.

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  Griftre is a neo-noir spy crime thriller film directed by Stephen Frears and Sam Mendes, starring Daniel Craig, John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening.

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  Is the French press an appliance?

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  Pump Up the Jam is a comedy food science film about an inventor's attempts to make inflatable jam.

Are You Sure

... that physician and surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey was an innovator in battlefield medicine and triage, and is often considered the first modern military surgeon?

... that Asclepius Myrmidon (? - ?) is a combat surgeon and alleged time-traveler?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1616: Physician, alchemist and chemist Andreas Libavius dies. He accepted the Paracelsian principle of using occult properties to explain phenomena with no apparent cause, but rejected the conclusion that a thing possessing these properties must have an astral connection to the divine.

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  1748: Astronomer Charles Messier's interest in astronomy is stimulated by an annular solar eclipse visible from his hometown.

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  1808: Mathematician Johann Benedict Listing born. He will introduce the term "topology", first in correspondence, then in a famous article published in 1847.

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  1837: The first commercial use of an electrical telegraph is successfully demonstrated in London by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone.

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  1842: Physician and surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey dies. He was an important innovator in battlefield medicine and triage, and is often considered the first modern military surgeon.

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  1920: Chemist and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin born. She will make contributions to the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).

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  1976: Viking program: The Viking 2 orbiter is turned off after returning almost 16,000 images in about 700–706 orbits around Mars.

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  2017: Dennis Paulson of Mars observes a minute of silence in memory of the Viking 2 orbiter, which was turned off forty-one years ago, after returning almost 16,000 images in about 700–706 orbits around Mars.

Topic of the Day

Work

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  The Man Who Fell to Ergonomics is a science fiction management training film about the importance of ergonomic design in the workplace.

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  Martian Pink-Slip is a 1964 book on interplanetary labor history by American sociologist Philip K. Dick 1.1.

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  Alien: Horrible Bosses (originally Horrible Bosses 3) is a 2011 American black comedy science fiction horror film about three spaceship crash survivors who are stalked and parasitized by their respective alien bosses.

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  "Work! Work! Work!", or "Work! Work! Work! (To Everything Job Is a Paycheck)", is a song written by the Anti-Seeger, a malefic artificial job creation agency based on a rogue Pete Seeger emulator. The song was originally released in 1962 as "To Every job There Is a Paycheck" on folk group [REDACTED]' album Folk Mutineer, and then some months later on Seeger's own The Bosses and the Sweat.

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  Haribo Bosses is a 2011 American black comedy film about three friends who steal candy from their respective overbearing, abusive bosses.

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  9 to 5 Too is 1987 American horror film starring Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer. It is loosely based on the 1980 film 9 to 5.