[health] What do doctors say to ‘alternative therapists’ when a patient dies? Nothing. We never talk. … Fascinating article from a Doctor regarding alternative cancer treatments … ‘I have little expectation that someone who would sell false hope to a vulnerable patient would talk me through their reasons why. I once ran into a licensed doctor who oversaw $500 vitamin infusions for cancer patients. The moment when we discovered what the other did was awkward to say the least. My expression asked, “Why?” I saw him struggle with the answer before he said, “Because patients want it.” There was no common ground for a conversation and we slid away into the crowd.’

[weird] Doll That Will Kill Again … [via Matt Fraction’s Tumblr]

[2001] 2001: The aliens that almost were … A look at the work Kubrick and his team put into creating alien special effects for 2001 that were eventually never used. ‘From the very outset of work on the film we all discussed means of photographically depicting extraterrestrial creatures in a manner that would be as mind-boggling as the being itself. And it soon became apparent that you can not imagine the unimaginable. All you can do is try to represent it in an artistic manner that will convey something of its quality. That’s why we settled on the black monolith – which is, of course, in itself something of a Jungian archetype, and also a pretty fair example of “minimal art.”‘

[space] Exploring the Secrets of Soothing Spaceship Sound … a look at the soothing white noise of fictional spaceships … ‘In the intervening years, Snell has taken it upon himself to sample and loop the ambient hums of dozens of science fiction ships, building an unlikely but sizeable YouTube presence of over nine million views and over a hundred videos. Whether it’s the calming tone created by the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation, or the throbbing pulse of Dr. Who’s Tardis, Snell aims to shine a light on an important element of science fiction that most people don’t often think about—what the spaceships sound like.’ [via MetaFilter]

[watchmen] Ten Things A Diehard Alan Moore Fan Learned From the New Annotated Watchmen … ‘Kevin O’Neill Art Inspired the Alien Design: This one was pointed out to me my fellow Moore fan, Flavio Pessanha. In the annotations for 8.11.3, Klinger quotes Moore’s script stating that the alien should resemble the progeny of a squid and “a Kevin O’Neill” drawing. Presumably, this might be from O’Neill’s demonic aliens in Nemesis the Warlock, which first appeared in 1980.’

[sos] “The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades … William Langewiesche on the sinking of the cargo ship SS El Faro. ‘As is usually the case, the catastrophe was unfolding because of a combination of factors that had aligned, which included: Davidson’s caution with the home office; his decision to take a straight-line course; the subtle pressures to stick to the schedule; the systematic failure of the forecasts; the persuasiveness of the B.V.S. graphics; the lack of a functioning anemometer; the failure by some to challenge Davidson’s thinking more vigorously; the initial attribution of the ship’s list entirely to the winds; and finally a certain mental inertia that had overcome all of them. This is the stuff of tragedy that can never be completely explained.’

[shining] What if The Shining was an 8-bit Video Game? …

[funny] Go watch: Facebook Employees Explain Daily Struggle Of Trying To Care About Company’s Unethical Practices When Gig So Cushy

[timemachinego] The Rise in Self-Proclaimed Time Travelers … fascinating overview of the epidemic of Time Travellers online. ‘With time travel, you can step outside the eternal stream of time. You can conquer physics. You can deal with loss and overcome death. In this way, these clickbait time-travel stories are a very American form of existentialism: We like to believe we can shape the future, and we need to know that everything will be okay.’

[conspiracy] How a Liberal Scholar of Conspiracy Theories Became the Subject of a Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory … The odd tale of how an academic studying conspiracy theories became one. ‘More prevalent, and more bewildering, are the ambiguous cases—a subtly altered photograph, an accurate but misleading statistic, a tendentious connection among disparate dots. Between the publication of “Republic.com 2.0” and “#Republic,” Sunstein became a target of the same online rumor mill he’d been studying from a distance, and many of the conspiracy theories about “Conspiracy Theories” fell into this gray area—overheated, but not wholly made up. “If you had told me that this obscure paper would ever become such a publicly visible and objectionable thing, I would have thought it more likely that Martians had just landed in Times Square,” Sunstein said. “In hindsight, though, I suppose it’s sort of appropriate that I got caught up in the mechanisms I was writing about.”’

[crime] A Guy Walks Into a Bar — and Is Never Seen Again … An overview of the disappearance of Brian Shaffer. ‘Law enforcement seized a videotape from the surveillance camera that scanned the bar’s entrance area. It tracked Brian, Clint and Meredith riding the escalator to the upstairs bar at 1:15 a.m. An hour later, Clint and Meredith left in the opposite sequence: bar, escalator, street level. Brian should have come back down, too. He didn’t. Detectives gazed at the recording, rewinding and fast-forwarding it over and over again. A second camera was positioned outside an emergency exit, and they examined that footage too. Everyone who entered the bar that night was accounted for. Everyone except Brian. When the police reported his disappearance to the FBI, it sounded like an April Fools prank, a guy-walks-into-a-bar joke without a punchline. “Med student seems to disappear into thin air,” reported the media. The footage stymied detectives for the next decade.’

[comics] Jack Kirby’s unpublished adaptation of ‘The Prisoner’ … some good scans of Kirby’s attempt to adapt The Prisoner to comics. [via Neilalien]

[comics] Once Upon A Time: Kirby’s Prisoner … Charles Hatfield examines Kirby’s adaptation of The Prisoner. ‘The Prisoner must have appealed to Kirby the storyteller on a gut level, as it raised philosophical questions in a disarmingly accessible form. McGoohan and Co. used the then-popular spy genre for all it was worth – despite its intellectual ambitions, and portentous tone, The Prisoner was filled with chases, fisticuffs, and intrigue; its thematic conceits were grounded in a credible, almost palpable world. In short, the series used a familiar genre, and a hard-hitting style, to allegorize weighty issues. Sound familiar? This might be a capsule description of Kirby’s Fourth World. Just as The Prisoner had treated the spy genre as an intellectual vehicle, Kirby had tried to make the superhero comic a platform for ideas. Kirby’s Prisoner, in the wake of the Fourth World, represents another attempt to wring significance and depth out of his style – a style forged in juvenile adventure comics yet responsive to Kirby’s own preoccupations and concerns.’

[jsw] Reader, it me… Man still knows where all the rooms are in Jet Set Willy … ‘It’s all still there, rotating around in my head, every room, every item, every inch of that marvellous multi-coloured blocky mansion. Even when I’ve forgotten my own name I reckon I’ll still know how to get that tricky item in The Orangery.’

[comics] #Comicsgate: How an Anti-Diversity Harassment Campaign in Comics Got Ugly—and Profitable … Understanding comics offshoot of Gamergate. ‘Meyer’s whole business model, like Milo and Vox Day before him, is predicated on outrage, Farago said. Like many independent comics people, Meyer uses crowdfunding to get his creative projects off the ground. Courting controversy and picking fights with convenient targets—say, with a shadowy cabal of assistant editors, comics critics, and early-career creators—raises his profile, which leads to more followers, which leads to more money for his projects. “The comics industry is small enough to where it’s not that difficult to get yourself known,” Farago said. “I think Meyer saw a niche and realized he could fill it.”’

[tech] People Who Tried to Take Panorama Shots and Ended Up Opening the Gates of Hell …

[movies] The Five Types Of Nicolas Cage Movies … Nicely done taxonomy of Nic Cage movies. ‘That get at the heart of what Cage is: a worker. He enjoys being an actor. If given the opportunity to work, he’s gonna do it. Cage is on record as rejecting the idea that selectivity is the hallmark of a successful actor. “Film acting is one of the only industries where you’re criticized for working hard,” he said in 2013. “In any other industry it’s considered a quality and something to behold.” I don’t really see the lie there.’

[books] 30 years of Culture: what are the top five Iain M Banks novels? … ‘Three: Consider Phlebas – After almost drowning the hero in sewage in it’s opening scene, the first published Culture novel goes on a rip roaring killing spree across the major sights of the Banksian universe. Space pirates, ringworlds, cannibal cultists, a lethal card game, and a Planet of the Dead… the Culture is shown through the eyes of those who hate and fear this machine lead society, creating by far the darkest of all Banks’s science fiction writing.’ (Previously, Previously, Previously)

[comics] Frank Miller: ‘I wasn’t thinking clearly when I said those things’ … Revealing interview with Frank Miller. ‘It’s worth noting that whatever his detractors may think of his politics, Miller still happily inveighs against “white, heterosexual family values” and has no interest in defending his views on Occupy Wall Street. “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he confesses. Does he support Donald Trump? “Real men stay bald,” he says with a grin, lifting his hat to run a hand over his bare scalp.’