You've Already Seen A Few Of Them In The Fellowship Of The Ring!
The Hobbit
Whether you’re in the group that loves or in the group that hates the Hobbitmovies, there’s no denying that these were pretty big films that made A LOT of money! Even though the movie was called The Hobbit, most of the attention was focused on the dwarves and their epic quest to retake the Lonely Mountain from the dragon, Smaug. We spent three movies watching these dwarves fight for what was rightfully theirs, so it’s hard not to get attached to some of them.
But have you ever wondered what happened to the dwarves after all was said and done? Dwarves live for a while, so where were these characters during The Lord of the Rings trilogy? The answers for some of them might not be exactly what you wanted to hear!
Let’s dig in!
The Fate Of The Dwarves
Oin
Forty-eight years after being settled in the Lonely Mountain, Oin made his way back to Moria to reclaim the realm for the Dwarves. It was five years later that the orcs attacked, and when he could not escape over the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, Oin tried to exit through the Hollin Gate. It was there he was killed by the Watcher in the Water, a creature that Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship would later encounter.
UNLEASH THE KRAKEN!
Gloin
Ah yes! Gimli’s father. His life was much longer and more peaceful than his brother’s. He remained at the kingdom under the mountain and was also sent at the Council of Elrond when the Fellowship was formed. He would later die naturally at the age of 253.
Dwalin
Dwalin was a smart one. He decided to stay at the Lonely Mountain where he lived out the rest of his life, dying at the ripe, old age of 340. He lived through the war of the ring, but it was never revealed if he or Gloin ever took part in it.
Balin
Good ol' Balin. In the Hobbitmovies he was always one of the most liked Dwarves. In fact, he ended up leading an expedition to Moria where he later became The Lord of Moria for some time – until the orcs attacked and he was killed by one of their archers. Remember that Tomb in Fellowship of the Ring? Yup. That was Balin’s tomb.
Poor, old Balin 🙁
Bifur & Bofur
Bifur has an axe in his skull, I think he’s had to deal with enough stuff in his life to be bothered with anymore violence. He also stayed back in the Lonely Mountain and lived out his life. His age at death is unknown. Ditto for Bofur. He also lived out his life in the mountain.
You know, for a place called the Lonely Mountain, it doesn’t seem quite so lonely there, does it?
Bombur
Bombur, like many of the others stay behind in the Lonely Mountain and enjoyed the rest of his life…a little too much. Bombur had grown SO FAT that it eventually took the strength of six dwarves to lift him to the dinner table.
Dori & Nori
Dori and Nori also stayed in the mountain where they grew their wealth and lived rich, and happy, for the rest of their lives.
Ori
Like Dori and Nori, Ori – the lovable idiot – also stayed in the mountain where he lived out his life peacefully with a wife and children.
EXCEPT THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN!
Ori actually joined the expedition to Moria and after burying Balin he was killed by the onslaught of orcs that attacked. Remember that morbid diary entry Gandalf read in the Fellowship of the ring? That was Ori’s diary.
And that’s Ori...
BONUS ROUND
Bard Bowman
NOT Will TurnerBard rebuilt his ancestral town of Dale at the foot of the Lonely Mountain. He eventually became its king, establishing and maintaining good relations with the dwarves, where he lived peacefully and his son Bain succeeded him after his death.
Tauriel
I should save this for when I do my Hobbit 'Based On' video eventually, but I need to vent it here. Kili never fell in love with an Elf, much less meet Tauriel because she wasn’t even a character in the book. Peter Jackson created her just for the movie so he could force in an awful dwarf/elf forbidden relationship to emotionally manipulate the audience (it didn't work). Evangeline Lily was great in her role, but her character felt unnecessary and only weakened the story in my opinion.
--
So there you have it, the fate of the dwarves! The adventures that happened inThe Hobbit definitely impacted what would eventually take place in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, mainly due to it being how Bilbo found the ring of power. While, at times, there were unnecessary moments in the films, there were also moments that captured the magic of Middle-Earth and made you want to be part of it!
KUNG FURY - FULL MOVIE
Autodesk Helps Fido Unleash Action-Packed VFX for "Kung Fury". Warning: Bad Language
| kung-fury | production
Following a successful Cannes Film Festival premiere, David Sandberg's 80s-inspired film Kung Fury makes its highly anticipated online debut this week. Kickstarter-funded by 17,000 backers, the 30-minute film follows a Miami-based kung fu cop as he time travels from the 80s to the 40s on a mission to take out Adolf Hitler - a plotline augmented by 399 over-the-top VFX shots delivered by a 46-person crew at Scandinavian VFX house Fido. Using Autodesk 3D modeling, animation and digital sculpting solutions, Fido created and refined dynamic 3D assets and scenes to bring Sandberg's 80's cop drama homage to life.
Throughout ?Kung Fury,? the story unfolds in three major environments: a street intersection, a police station interior and a huge steampunk-inspired Nazi hall. Fido created each environment digitally and then integrated the work with live action green screen footage of actors. Given trailer assets originally designed by Sandberg in 3ds Max, Fido transferred the files to in-house Maya workstations and used the assets as an aesthetic guideline to model, texture and refine the film?s environments, elements and main CG characters, including two robots, a Tyrannosaurus rex and an eagle. After finalizing VFX work and compositing, Fido?s crew then applied a specially designed filter to footage to achieve the VHS-reminiscent look that Sandberg envisioned.
?The movie is essentially a 30-minute VFX rollercoaster ride, so we had our work cut out for us, but having Maya as a pillar of our pipeline put us at ease. David also directs with a strong creative vision and deep understanding of VFX, so even though we faced some pretty crazy challenges, it really helped that he speaks the same language we do,? shared VFX Supervisor Cameron Scott. ? All our Autodesk tools were stable workhorses throughout production. Using Maya?s Alembic support, we were able to quickly transfer 3D assets between programs to work efficiently and meet David?s deadlines.?
?There are so many fun, crazy characters, environments and scenarios in ?Kung Fury? that VFX played a crucial role in the story. Because of my background in commercial production, I?m familiar with all the VFX tools and techniques, so I worked closely with Fido on the VFX,? said Sandberg. ?I?ve worked with Autodesk tools for a while now, and they?re some of the most best 3D modeling and animation tools out there. With outstanding creative talent like Fido behind the wheel of software like Maya, almost anything is possible, and that?s evident in the VFX they delivered for ?Kung Fury.??
About ?Kung Fury?
?Kung Fury? is an over-the-top Kickstarter-funded action comedy written and directed by David Sandberg with VFX by Fido. An 80s style action packed adventure, the film takes place in a variety of exotic locations, including Miami circa 1980s and Asgard and Germany circa 1940s, and features over-the-top characters like arcade-robots, dinosaurs, nazis, vikings, norse gods, mutants and a super kung fu-cop called Kung Fury. Sandberg completed the film in a little over a year with a strong vision and help from Kickstarter supporters, friends and family. The director is currently in talks with Hollywood producers to recreate the film as a full-length feature.
Credits:
Director and Writer: David Sandberg
Fido VFX crew:
VFX Supervisor: Cameron Scott
VFX Producer: Matilda Olsson
VFX Executive Producer: Claes Dietmann
VFX Production Manager: Anders Singstedt
Lead Lighting TDs: Johan Gabrielsson & Filip Orrby
Composting Leads: Daniel Norlund & Tomas Näslund
VFX Pre-Production Breakdown: Nils Lagergren, Kaj Steveman, Eva Åkergren
Pipeline Engineer: Erik Johansson
Systems Administrator: Thomas Eriksson
Asset Management: ftrack
VFX Artists: Alexander Eriksson, Anders Nyman, Cameron Scott, Carlos Correia, Chris Judkins, Daniel Norlund, David Enbom, David Nelin, Egil Eskilsson, Erika Johansson, Filip Orrby, Fredrik Höglin, Fredrik Olsson, Gustav Alexandersson, Janak Thakker, Joakim Eriksson, Joakim Olsson, Johan Gabrielsson, Jonas Lindfors, Jonas Manell, Jonathan Skifs, Karl Rydhe, Klas Trulsson, Kristian Livén, Kristian Rydberg, Kristian Zarins, Laura Andersen, Magnus Eriksson, Martin Borell, Mattias Sandelius, Mattias Snygg, Niklas Lundgren, Rickard Engqvist, Rodrigo Vivedes, Sandra Scholz, Staffan Linder, Stefan Lagerstam, Sven Ahlström, Teo Mathlein, Tomas Näslund, Viktor Andersson, Zebastian Lilja
South Korean police arrested a 54-year-old man on suspicion of catching up to 600 stray cats around his neighborhood, boiling them alive, skinning and gutting the carcasses and then selling the meat to locals for use in a special medicinal soup.
The Korea JoongAng Daily reported on the incident on May 21, writing that the Pusan Police Department arrested the man on May 21 on charges of violating Korea’s animal protection laws, although the case appears to still be under investigation.
The man is accused of luring neighborhood stray cats with food, then capturing them and throwing them – alive – into a vat of boiling water in his home. He would then, police allege, skin and butcher the cats and store the meat in his freezer until buyers came around.
The accused apparently engaged in this activity for a period of a little over a year starting in February, 2014 – killing up to 600 felines in that time.
Police, the JoongAng Daily reports, were quoted as saying that a rumor has been doing the rounds in South Korea – presumably among the elderly community – which purports that cat meat, if boiled in a soup, helps to relieve arthritis. They advised Koreans to avoid illegally obtained cat meat, the JoongAng Daily notes, as it is unregulated in South Korea, unlike other more common meats such as beef and pork.
Now, since I can picture the comments section for this story quickly becoming a roiling cauldron of outrage, let’s note that, this individual’s heinous crimes aside, each country has its own cultural taboos when it comes to the consumption of certain animals and one country’s adorable pet may be another country’s delicious stew ingredient. Hell, I would gladly eat (frankly quite delicious) horse meat every single day if I could, but that’s illegal in some countries. The JoongAng itself also reported as early as 2010 that cats, which were apparently once shunned by the Korean public, are becoming increasingly popular pets in Korea, so these Eastern medicine beliefs about cat meat are sure to fall by the wayside sooner or later if they haven’t already.
That said, animal cruelty should never be condoned and we hope the 18 live cats – apparently destined for the pot – police found in the man’s dwelling find a good and caring home.
Source: JoongAng Daily via Hamster Sokuhou
After an early Broadway debut, the late great Vincent Price (1911-1993) toiled in Hollywood films for over 50 years and appeared on countless TV shows (including everything from The Carol Burnett Show to The Brady Bunch). But, of course, the actor will always be remembered for his horror and villainous roles by generations of monster kids (whose ranks include director Tim Burton, who cast Price in one of his last—and best—screen assignments, 1990’s Edward Scissorhands). Chiller’s latest edition of The Friday 13 salutes the career of this scream legend on the occasion of his upcoming birthday (May 27). Helping us celebrate: Price’s own daughter and official biographer, Victoria. (Titles arranged according to year of release.)
1. The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
The Invisible Man Returns Trailer
At age 28, stage-trained thespian Vincent Price joined Universal Studios’ classic monsters bullpen in this sequel to the James Whale/Claude Raines hit. Price stars as a man scheduled to hang for a murder he didn’t commit who takes an invisibility serum to apprehend the real killer. “The first ‘glimpse’ (!) of what Vincent Price could do with just his voice,” recalls daughter Victoria Price. The mellifluous actor disappeared into the role again with an amusing voiceover cameo for 1948’s hilarious Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.
2. Dragonwyck (1946)
Dragonwyck scene
In one of the parts dearest to his heart, Price portrays Nicholas Van Ryn, drug-addicted/wife murdering aristocrat, who lords over a gloomy mansion. “This movie meant a great deal to my father,” Victoria recalls. “He was playing a portly priest in Keys to the Kingdom, and he approached [director] Joe Mankiewicz with his desire to play the lead in Dragonwyck. The director basically said that he was totally the wrong type for the role. So my dad lost a lot of weight and really prepared for the audition—and got the role. It was his first leading film role in a genre that would become so important to him.”
3. House of Wax (1953)
House of Wax (1953) -- Unmasked
As the hideously scarred sculptor Henry Jarrod, who uses real human bodies as his museum wax figures, the art-loving actor cemented his reputation as a monstrous screen villain in this 3-D smash. “House of Wax came at a very important juncture in my father’s life,” reveals Victoria. “He had just been cleared from one of [Red Scare instigator] Joe McCarthy’s lists and allowed to work again in Hollywood. He was offered two roles—one on Broadway and one for a film about an artist incorporating an interesting new technology [3-D]. The rest, as they say, is history!”
4. House on Haunted Hill (1958)
Vincent Price - House On Haunted Hill - Trailer
In this wickedly scary gimmick film from producer/director William Castle, Price stars as a sarcastic millionaire who offers five strangers $10,000 a piece if they survive the night in the titular ghost hangout. This hit film garnered Price even more fans in the genre he would call home. Says Victoria, “Who doesn’t love Vincent Price as the elegantly evil Frederick Loren in House on Haunted Hill?”
5. House of Usher (1960)
The House of Usher (1960). The family, explained
Price’s career continued to ascend in horror circles when he top-lined this classy Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, scripted by Richard (Twilight Zone) Matheson and directed with stylish efficiency by B-movie king Roger Corman. “Roderick Usher was one of my dad’s great roles, in my opinion,” says Victoria of the tragic, hypersensitive Usher, a man with, let’s say, family issues. “As the tortured aesthete, he was so handsome in that film!”
6. The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) - The Pendulum Swings
The popularity of House of Usher for independent studio American International Pictures spawned a whole series of Poe flicks, most starring Price as equally troubled characters and bad guys. In Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum, Price limns Nicholas Medina, beleaguered son of a notorious Spanish Inquisition torturer who dusts off Pop’s ancient playthings thanks to his scheming wife (Barbara Steele). Shudders Victoria, “Pit and the Pendulum scared me to death when we had to watch it in school!”
7. The Comedy of Terrors (1963)
The Comedy of Terrors - Vincent Price (1/1) Not Quite Dead Enough (1963) HD
The horror celebrity always enjoyed sending up his image in both film and television, and in this hoot, directed by Cat People’s Jacques Tourneau, he’s a boozy undertaker who’ll literally murder for customers. “My dad loved getting to work with his dear friend Boris Karloff and the legendary Peter Lorre, whose eulogy he gave just a few years later,” remembers Victoria. “And boy did they have fun!” And we can tell!
8. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Theatrical Trailer - The Masque of the Red Death (Vincent Price)
In this masterpiece of Corman/AIP’s Poe cycle, Price essays the diabolical Prince Prospero, who throws a decadent bash while plague decimates those outside his castle walls. “A few years ago,Masque of the Red Death was shown at three straight events I attended,” Victoria notes of Masque’s enduring appeal amongst cinema scholars. “The movie is so surreal and ’60s. And Nic Roeg’s saturated cinematography is iconic.”
9. The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The Last Man on Earth - Vincent Price (1/1) The Living Dead Attack (1964) HD
Tinseltown raided Richard Matheson’s excellent novel I Am Legend (about a vampire-plagued world) three times, beginning with this low-budget effort. Price’s version stands as the most faithful to Matheson, and the Rome-lensed movie also proved even more significant to Victoria. Sshe explains, “I owe my existence to Last Man on Earth! My parents moved to Italy for an extended period of time. Let’s just say that ‘La Dolce Vita’ worked its magic on 44-year-old Mary Grant Price and 50-year-old Vincent Price. When my mother started craving Chinese food in Europe, they had no idea I was the cause. But I ended up being a very happy surprise for them both…all because ofLast Man on Earth!”
10. The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)
The Tomb of Ligeia - Vincent Price (1/1) A Prophecy of Ligeia’s Return (1964) HD
With a literate script by future Chinatown scribe Robert Towne, Corman and Price ended their Poe run with a fiery finish. As the downcast Verden Fell, Price suffers at the hands—and possessed feline claws—of his jealous deceased wife, who stalks her man when he remarries. As the haunted husband, Price contributes a subdued and nuanced performance, never upstaged by the movie’s killer cat or impressive English locations. “Tomb of Ligeia was Vincent’s personal favorite Poe film,” his offspring reveals.
11. Witchfinder General (1968)
The Mark of Satan Is Upon Them - Witchfinder General (Vincent Price)
In this intense film (released in the U.S. as Conqueror Worm), St. Louis-born Price tackles real-life 17th century British witch hunter Matthew Hopkins, who traveled the English countryside persecuting innocent people for practicing witchcraft. As the despicable Hopkins, Price abandoned the flamboyance of some of his previous dastardly turns. “Working with [director] Michael Reeves was very, very difficult for my father,” admits Victoria. “He understood what Reeves wanted, but his methods and his youthful arrogance were difficult for my dad—who was about the nicest man on the planet. Ultimately, however, the malevolence which my father achieved made the part one of his most memorable.”
12. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
The flying unicorn Abominable Dr Phibes
In this art-deco tour de force, Price has a campy field day as the revenge-minded disfigured doctor who unleashes his own translation of the biblical plagues on the men who failed to save his wife’s life. Price returned as the noble madman in the equally entertaining Dr. Phibes Rises Again a year later. “Classic, stylistic and quirky, Dr. Phibes reteamed Vincent with his dear old friend of 40 years, Joseph Cotton,” says Victoria of the two actors who met while performing with Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. “And I am still struck by how expressive he was in that film of few words.”
13. Theater of Blood (1973)
Theatre of Blood (1973): A pound of flesh
An even blacker comedic twist on the Phibes pictures, Theater of Blood rates as Price’s cinematic triumph, and one that encapsulates his entire oeuvre. This occasion he’s failed Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart who, believed dead, elaborately murders the stuffy British reviewers responsible for his worst notices. Victoria catalogues how much Theater of Blood meant to dear Dad: “When you get to: a) fall in love with your future wife [Coral Browne] in a graveyard; b) electrocute her while playing a gay hairdresser; c) kill off all the critics; d) work with Diana Rigg and so many other great British actors; and e) recite Shakespearean verse while doing all of the above—how could it not be one of my father’s favorite films?”
We could easily list another 13 petrifying Price pictures on this list, so if you have the desire to learn more about the man and his movies, go to www.vincentprice.com, check out Shout Factory’s definitive two volume Vincent Price Collection on disc and pick up Victoria’s wonderful book Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography, as well as Lucy Chase Williams’ The Complete Films of Vincent Price.
iOS bug lets people crash others' iPhones by sending them one line of text
Though the effects of the prank can be fixed, there doesn't seem to be a way of stopping it happening
iPhones can be crashed if they receive a text containing one specific line of Arabic characters and symbols.
Sending the letters in a text message causes the phone to crash and then power off, leaving the Messages app unusable once the iPhone turns back on. Users have found a way of fixing the problem once it has happened, but there appears to be no way to keep phones from being vulnerable to it happening again.
If users open the Messages app and the problem text is still open, users can just send a reply to fix the problem. If it's not, users must either receive a message or send a message to themselves, using Siri or by texting from the "share" option that can be found in many apps.
The problem appears to come from the way that the phone tries to show the message in notifications. The characters cause that system to break, so that it briefly tries to show it before crashing and then re-setting the phone in an attempt to fix it.
It doesn't turn it off, it just crashes it. If ur jailbroken, it sends you to safe mode and if ur non-jailbroken, it just resprings your device.
effective.
Power
لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗
Send that to someone with an iPhone it turns their phone off
Copy all above the line and text it to another iPhone and it will shut it off.
I wonder what other things we can control with this, rather than just "power off the device."
Any ideas?
Edit 1: you don't need that first line, plus i fixed it
edit 2: a list of things we discovered so far
it only seems to work if your phone is not onsafe mode
on a jailbroken phone it shoots you into safe mode...could means that it might be related to a Springboard vulnerability
it doesn't work if the person you are sending is looking at your texts, they can be anywhere else on their iPhone
edit 3: something i've noticed, apple changes the api with every new ios, right? maybe it has something to do with that?
edit 4: what's weird is I'm on iOS 8.1.2 and it crashes my phone as well...
edit 5: we found out what it is. it is due to how the banner notifications process the Unicode text. The banner briefly attempts to present the incoming text and then "gives up" thus the crash creds to /u/sickestdancer98
The text was found by Reddit users, who also discovered how the problem was affecting phones. The issue seems to have been around since iOS 6, users said, which was released in 2012.
Apple's engineers are aware of the problem and are looking to fix it, according to Twitter users. Members of the site also found what was going on to make it work.
has picked up the Best TV Show award at the ELLE Style Awards.
Alice Eve presented the second award of the evening to fellow British actors Alfie Allen, Kit Harrington, Sophie Turner and Gwendoline Christie, who were all in attendance to represent the sprawling cast of the HBO show.
UK artist Mat Collishaw teams with fellow Londoner Sebastian Burdon (who handled the 3D modeling and animation) to create a mesmerizing and impossibly detailed 3D-printed zoetrope composed of over 350 character figures plus props and environmental elements.
Based on Peter Paul Rubens’ early 17th century painting “Massacre of the innocent,” the project took six months to complete.
This “Kettle” Rod Is a Brilliant Energy-Saving Way to Make Tea
Do you use an electric kettle to make tea? Then you’re using way too much water and too much power heating an overfilled vessel. But! We found this cool new Kickstarter project that saves energy and looks sleek in a kitchen.
It kinda looks like a thick, chic Frisbee, and it’s a pretty ingenious idea. Instead of heating a big kettle, you plop your mug on the device, and heat only the amount of liquid you’ll drink right then and there. This saves water and energy, since smaller amounts of water (or whatever) is heated at a time.
It’s called Miito, and it describes itself as “the sustainable alternative to the electric kettle.” It’s already raised over $340,000—more than double its goal.
The Kickstarter page quotes sustainability strategist Leyla Acaroglu’s TED Talk: “One day of extra energy use [from overfilling electric kettles] is enough to light all the streetlights in England for a night.”
You can also use it to warm up bowls of soup, glasses of milk, mugs of hot chocolate, whatever. Here’s how it works: Put your filled tea cup on the small induction patch on the “kettle,” which is entirely cool to the touch. Slip in an induction rod. The induction patch heats the rod, boiling the liquid from within.
It sounds like the device won’t be wireless, at least at first, which is kind of a bummer. But if it means nuking stale coffee won’t involve a loud microwave caked with sauce stains, we’re all for it. Take my money and start heating my single serving of English breakfast, please.
Sound zany? “[T]his is not so crazy … What’s crazy is what we do today”, Forgacs says. “[W]e raise and slaughter billions of animals to make our hamburgers and our handbags.”
It’s clear why we need to move away from the current system of abusing and killing animals for food and clothing: by 2030, he predicts, it will take 100 billion land animals to provide the world’s population with meat, dairy products, eggs and leather goods if we continue in the same destructive fashion. That’s no good for the planet and even worse for the animals involved.
Meat Without Murder
As the researchers work to perfect the techniques for synthetic meat production, environmentalists and animal rights groups are debating whether lab-grown meat can be a kind of killer app that will eliminate the need to kill animals – or a waste of time and a distraction from the ongoing campaigns to reduce our meat consumption.
“Why go to this much trouble and expense to replace a foodstuff that we simply do not need?” asks Lynne Elliot, chief executive at the Vegetarian Society. “Wouldn’t it be simpler, cheaper, and more sustainable to just stop eating meat altogether?”
“It’s all a bit daft really, isn’t it?” read one typical comment. “They should spend all those billions it’s going to take to get these things into supermarkets on a massive advertising campaign telling people ‘just eat broccoli.’ It’s sustainable, cheap, and doesn’t taste half bad tossed in a bit of garlic butter.”
” …immediately after spacecraft separation, a series of telemetry problems were detected… “
In recent weeks some at the Russian Federal Space Agency – Roscosmos(re-branded in 1992) have seriously started to doubt their ability to conduct even the simplest of tasks in the ever commercializing space
industry. The agency’s loss of Progress 44 in 2011, and now the same for Progress 59 in April of 2015 to a similar incident, have been costly.
This is added to the fact that Roscosmos has also lost six Proton
rockets in the last three and a half years at $55.5 million a piece (not counting contents/cargo). These setbacks have pushed some Russian physicists, engineers, and even program managers to question the very existence of their jobs.
“Almost immediately after spacecraft separation, a series of telemetry problems were detected with Progress 59,”
“After the rocket exploded all I could think was, not again.”
– Russian scientists told a NASA spokesman
The Russian Federation’s Proton-M rocket is the primary competitor of SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket. Both of these delivery systems can transport approx. four and a half tons into geostationary orbits and have the ability to dock with the ISS. These
are huge loads for today’s standards. The problem the Proton-M has repeatedly faced is its ability to successfully escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. This is key for space operations and a problem Russian scientists have battled for decades.
“Everything appears to be working correctly and then, bam, – it is a fireball!” – Systems control specialist Dimitri Matviyenko told one reporter.
In 2001 Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX traveled to the Russian capital of Moscow to discuss purchasing a couple of ICMB’s –
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (minus the ballistics hopefully). This is how SpaceX was really born. Before him there were others as well.
The general consensus of the InternationalSpaceCommunity has been overwhelmingly similar. When will Russia sell it’s space program? It wouldn’t be the first time the former communist
The totalitarian state sold its rockets to the highest bidders. It’s all simple economics. In the world of technology and transportation, it’s sink or swim. Russia had a good run and helped pave the
way as a pioneer in the industry of space exploration. Bankrupting yourself twice in half a century doesn’t seem like the best economical decision though.
Police, the JoongAng Daily reports, were quoted as saying that a rumor has been doing the rounds in South Korea – presumably among the elderly community – which purports that cat meat, if boiled in a soup, helps to relieve arthritis. They advised Koreans to avoid illegally obtained cat meat, the JoongAng Daily notes, as it is unregulated in South Korea, unlike other more common meats such as beef and pork.
Now, since I can picture the comments section for this story quickly becoming a roiling cauldron of outrage, let’s note that, this individual’s heinous crimes aside, each country has its own cultural taboos when it comes to the consumption of certain animals and one country’s adorable pet may be another country’s delicious stew ingredient. Hell, I would gladly eat (frankly quite delicious) horse meat every single day if I could, but that’s illegal in some countries. The 
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