Nuclear Monster

  • Sarah Jeong (now of The Verge) contributed this article to Vice’s Motherboard. It’s about the continuing legal struggle for PETA to represent the monkey that took a selfie in PETA’s suit against a photographer who has my surname and gain copyright protection for works created by animals. It may also help animals, and people, in other fields:

    Well, it’s not really about monkey copyrights, actually. It’s about Cetacean and about making precedent that will let PETA sue on behalf of animals in more serious matters. And in PETA’s defense, the relevant case law is kind of not great. One of the cases that the judges mentioned during oral argument is a case about a “coalition of clergy, lawyers, and professors” trying to bring a lawsuit on behalf of Guantanamo detainees. It’s not all monkeys and selfies here, there really are larger ramifications to the principles that are being hammered out

  • PRI’s The World continues to have some pretty fascinating stories I wouldn’t otherwise come across. Recently The World told us about colorful taxi cab ceilings in India. Now, their Matthew Bell is covering this crossover between two of my favorite subjects, South Korea and doomsday cults, in Shinchonji:

    Lee, the director of the Bible study center I visited, says she has been a member of Shinchonji since 1999.

    “We offer a very deep course of study into the Bible,” she says. “This is different than other churches.”

    “The students would like to come to class seven days a week, but we limit it to five,” Lee says.

    “Shinchonji members are very successful in life,” Lee adds. And then, without being asked about it specifically, she says that some members of Shinchonji have had problems maintaining relationships with their families and keeping up with their careers. But she says such cases are the exception.

    Throughout my visit to the study center, a young Korean man in a jacket and glasses points a digital camera at me as I do interviews and observe the scene. When I say his filming is making me uncomfortable, he puts the camera down for a few minutes. Then, he goes back to filming me.

  • This is frankly insane, there’s a new video out from Nine Inch Nails and it’s got footage from Llamasoft’s Polybius.  Jeff Minter is Llamasoft and he has made many other trippy and intense action arcade games, most people would know him for Tempest 2000. Although Polybius is only available on the PlayStation 4, a Windows version is in development. The track in the collaboration video above, Less Than, will be on a new EP called Add Violence on the 21st of July. Less Than is available right now on Apple Music.

    This is after Nine Inch Nails also appeared on the renewed Twin Peaks:

  • Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy (I played and loved) and The Binding of Isaac fame has a new jam out, The End Is Nigh, in collaboration with his long-time collaborator Tyler Glaiel. It looks like another tough side-scroller, and it’s only available for Windows on Steam.

     

  • When I was thinking about moving this site from Time Doctor Dot org to Nuclear Monster, I wanted to make some better decisions about how to keep the new site operating.

    To that end, I’m going to try out selling t-shirts and hoodies with the site’s logo on them. It would be tremendously helpful if you bought one. If this works out, there could be better designs created by actual artists later on.