Mad

The OUTATIME license plate was all of $3.98 and having long loved Back to the Future, I thought it would be perfect above my laser printer in the Fab Lab. I also decided to buy the ECTO-1 plate from Ghostbusters.Also: I bought 4 brand-name tech gadgets on Temu for work. Here's how it wentEven though these items were coming to the US all the way from China, shipping was free if I was willing to wait a little while. But then I ran into a snag. My order was $7.96 and Temu has a minimum order of $20. That was not obvious…

This story was originally published June 25, 2016. The front door was as white and blank as a new refrigerator's, its only sign a small, typewritten label taped above the vertical mail slot by the the doorknob: PLASTICMAN ENTRANCE "This must be MAD," said my father. Inside the lobby of MAD magazine was an orange naugahyde couch, an old standing ashtray next to it, like the kind in train stations when people dressed up to travel, and a larger-than-life statue of Alfred E. Neuman, patron saint of adolescent parody, in a…

As temperatures climb, so does violence. At least that's the conclusion reached by researchers looking at how ancient cultures in the south central Andes responded to climate change about 1,000 years ago. It may be an important cautionary tale.Rising sea levels. An expanding troposphere. An increase in the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes. Even harsher allergy seasons and disrupted sleep patterns. As if we didn't already have enough to worry about from climate change, a new study out of UC Davis says that when the…

Yesterday, Magic: The Gathering revealed the remaining cards of its special Universes Beyond collaboration with Middle-earth Enterprises. The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth is the first crossover collection of its size with Magic: The Gathering, and it is, frankly, the most obvious property to invest in.Spoilers of the Week May 16-20 The endeavor spanned three years and Ovidio Cartagena, the lead art director, commissioned hundreds of new art pieces. From the start, Magic: The Gathering was committed to creating…

DEI, short for diversity, equity, and inclusion, is the latest three-letter term to become a target of the right. That focus burst into view this week as conservatives went after Chick-fil-A, a fast food restaurant they’ve often supported in the past given its Christian roots and its prior donations to anti-LGBTQ groups. Despite Republicans’ longtime backing, the chain’s decision to employ a vice president of DEI has prompted backlash from some who now slam the company for being too “woke” for considering policies…

From mocking kings and priests to encouraging audiences to get drunk, newly discovered texts at the National Library of Scotland have shed light on the role played by minstrels in medieval society.Containing the earliest recorded use of the term “red herring” in English, the texts are part of a booklet known as the Heege Manuscript. Dr James Wade of the University of Cambridge, who discovered them, said echoes of minstrel humour can be found “in shows such as Mock the Week, situational comedies and slapstick”.“The…

Here is a brisk documentary about Noël Coward, who sailed to New York aged 20 with £17 in his pocket, and by his 30th birthday was the highest-paid author in the western world; in his lifetime he wrote 500 songs and 60 plays – acting in more than 70. At its best, this is an efficient film that does a solid, succinct job of fitting a lot of life into a little over 90 minutes; Coward died aged 73 in 1973. But in some ways this feels like a Wikipedia entry read out loud, never quite getting under the skin of a complicated…

Four years ago, the man associated with speed more than any track and field coach in the world felt himself slowing down, and he did not know why.Since he was born in Panama in 1954 to a Panamanian mother and U.S. Navy father, Bobby Kersee has always been restless, a self-described wanderer with energy that matched his athletes. But in 2019, feeling unusually sapped, he called his doctor in St. Louis. Blood tests produced results dangerously far beyond the norm. Pancreatitis kept him stuck in a hospital for four…

When someone was such a life force, you don’t expect them to go. Of course it happens to everybody, but Tina was quite something.When we made Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, I knew her music like everyone else, but it was her persona that drew me to her – particularly for the role . I knew where the music came from, where her power came from. In this Mad Max wasteland, anyone who survives, let alone becomes a dominant force, has had to survive a lot of things that would normally diminish a person. Every time we talked about…

US health officials have detected an atypical case of "mad cow disease" in a beef cow at a slaughter plant in the state of South Carolina, they announced Friday.The US Department of Agriculture said in a statement that the animal "never entered slaughter channels and at no time presented a risk to the food supply or to human health in the United States."The agency said that the United States has a "negligible risk status" for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), as the neurologic disease is officially called, and "we…