1406 – Redeemer (2017/2019 video game)

timespace coordinates: 2060’s (?) Mongolian part of the Altai Mountains

Redeemer is a top-down shooter video game developed by Russian company Sobaka Studio and published by Good Shepherd Entertainment. The game was released for Microsoft Windows on August 1, 2017. An Enhanced Edition was released for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One on July 19, 2019. (wiki)

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Win7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 / Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6300 CPU / Memory: 4 GB RAM / Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series or equivalent / DirectX: Version 11 / Storage: 7 GB available space / Additional Notes: 64-Bit OS Required

steam

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1385 – Ad Astra (2019)

timespace coordinates: “near future” (2050’s ?) commercial flight to the Moon > the ship Cepheus, bound for Mars > Norwegian biomedical research space station >  underground SpaceCom base on Mars > the Lima Project (Neptune’s rings)

Ad Astra is a 2019 American science fiction adventure film produced, co-written, and directed by James Gray. Starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, and Donald Sutherland, it follows an astronaut who goes into space in search of his lost father, whose experiment threatens the Solar System. + scored by Max Richter. +

Reviews out of the Venice Film Festival compared it to well-worn sci-fi touchstones “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Solaris,” and “Apocalypse Now,” in part due to its probing adventure narrative. Gray says he went straight to the urtext that inspired them, Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey.” (cnn)

The title means “to the stars” in Latin. It is often used as a shorthand for “Per Aspera Ad Astra” (Through the hardships to the Stars).

wiki   /   imdb   /   rt

1364 – TempleOS | Down the Rabbit Hole (2018 documentary)

1363 – Behind the Curve (2018 documentary)

Behind the Curve is a 2018 documentary film about flat Earth believers in the United States. Directed by Daniel J. Clark, the film was released in the United States on November 15, 2018, and for wide release on Netflix in February 2019.

The documentary offers an examination of the flat Earth idea from various perspectives, including prominent flat-Earthers Mark Sargent, Nathan Thompson, and Patricia Steere, as well as astrophysicists from Universities including UCLA and Caltech. It features clips from the 2017 International Flat Earth Conference, held in North Carolina, which attracted hundreds of attendees (wiki)

imdb / Flat Earth Wiki / 1256

1360 -Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made (2017 Book by Jason Schreier)

Developing video games—hero’s journey or fool’s errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today’s hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it’s nothing short of miraculous.

Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it’s RPG studio Bioware‘s challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone‘s single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man’s vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—even as it nearly ripped their studio apart.

Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell—and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable. (goodreads)

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