dragomir

Surprise, surprise — after the coordinated shutdowns of beef plants by Tyson, Cargill, and JBS in January and February, beefpacker profit margins have staged “the most impressive post-pandemic rally.”

You're watching a $248 million film and not a single green or blue screen was used. The alien is a handmade puppet. The cockpit physically rotates to simulate gravity. I looked at the production tech behind this 95% score, and the engineering is wild. Phil Lord and Chris Miller, directing their first live-action movie in 12 years, built the entire Hail Mary spacecraft as a real set at Shepperton Studios in England. Not a miniature. Not a digital model. A full-size ship interior you can walk through. Production designer Charlie Wood studied the International Space Station, Russia's Mir station, and the Boeing 747 cockpit to get the look right. He deliberately made the panels mismatched, because real spacecraft are assembled from parts made by different companies. Nothing matches perfectly. That's what makes it feel real. The cockpit is only about 8 feet wide. It sits on a mechanical platform that can tilt, spin, and shake, so when the ship changes direction or enters different gravity conditions, the whole set moves. Chairs end up on walls. Ladders flip direction. Gosling was suspended inside a spinning ring so he could float and move through the ship for real, reacting to actual hardware around him. No guessing where a wall might be added later. Then there's Rocky. He's the alien co-lead, and he's not CGI. Neal Scanlan, the creature designer who built the Porgs for Star Wars, spent a full year on this character. Over 300 designs before they landed on the final look. Rocky is a thin, hollow shell, 3D-printed from a digital sculpture, then hand-painted in see-through layers so light passes through him like skin. His arms pop off and swap out depending on the scene: one set has a closed fist for walking, another has tiny motorized fingers strong enough to pick up objects. Five puppeteers (nicknamed the "Rockyteers") operated him in every scene. James Ortiz, an award-winning puppet designer from New York theater, voiced Rocky and controlled him on set. When Scanlan met him, he told Ortiz, "You're Frank Oz, and I'm making Yoda for you." Every reaction Gosling gives to the alien is to something physically in front of him. Greig Fraser, who won the Oscar for shooting Dune, filmed the space scenes in the larger IMAX format (that taller image you see in IMAX theaters) and the Earth flashbacks in regular widescreen. Then the team did something unusual: they took the digital footage and printed it onto real film strips, twice, using two different types of film stock. Then they scanned those strips back into digital. It sounds redundant, but it adds a texture and warmth that you can only get from physical film. Fraser used the same technique on Dune and The Batman. Drew Goddard spent six years writing this screenplay. His last adaptation of Andy Weir's novel, The Martian, earned him an Oscar nomination. He described the challenge this way: a screenplay gets about 5% of a novel's word count. The lead is alone for most of the runtime. When he finally gets a co-star, that co-star doesn't speak English, communicates through sounds closer to whale song, and has no face. Goddard called it a screenwriter's nightmare, then said that difficulty was the whole point. He and the directors fought studio pushback to keep Weir's original ending intact. 95% from 212 critics. 98% from over 2,500 audience ratings. And the lead isn't a superhero, a cop, or a soldier. He's just an ordinary middle school science teacher.

@hoodiepledge @OHitchborn @PancreasNo The Dragonborn could also wear Ulfric’s head as a hat. What’s your point? Nations have to be bigger than one person. There’s a reason the first Empire imploded so quickly

@ProgressDeath @OHitchborn @PancreasNo I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not, but the DB could leave the stormcloaks in Windhelm and handle all of that by himself lol there is no worthy opposition

The Nords aren’t racist enough for me and a united Empire will lead to more dead Elves

@hoodiepledge @OHitchborn @PancreasNo Skyrim is one of the poorest provinces! You absolutely have to bend the knee. What, do you think you can survive on your own against Cyrodiil, High Rock, and Morrowind? They’ll eat you alive. Not to mention the orcs!

@OHitchborn @ProgressDeath @PancreasNo Nobody who backs the Imperials has a legitimate reason. It’s always just “Ulfric bad” even though he’d be a fine leader bc he has the damn Dragonborn. We don’t need to bend the knee to anyone.

Tryna flirt with her and she's telling me fun fish facts okay let's just get married I guess

@JonathanCohn Most are frontliners. Still bad decision, of course, but I get the reasoning. Magaziner and Keating must go

These 20 Democrats joined the GOP yesterday in voting to gut due process convictions and say that people should be deported for crimes they have not even been convicted of.

@_fat_ugly_rat_ We really should move Inauguration Day to something like December 27th

It really sucks that our lame duck period is so long here. Imagine how much damage Trump could do in 3 months if a Dem wins the presidency in 2028, not to mention how bad it could get if dems don't win the House/Senate this year.

Eid Mubarak!

@CooperFrye @StatisticUrban Collins will walk away from this again. I don’t know how she does it, but she will.

@ProgressDeath @StatisticUrban One state is conspicuously missing from this lineup 👀

If Democrats manage to win 6/8 of these races, they win the Senate. If they don't, it's lights out and two more years of unlimited Trump judges and cabinet picks.

drew another tiny laura, this time with an accompanying tiny kate!!! they’re so cute #laurakinney #katebishop

@OHitchborn @PancreasNo According to me. The whole difference between the Aedra and Daedra is that the Aedra gave themselves up to create the Mundus and the Daedra didn’t

@ProgressDeath @PancreasNo According to who?

@OHitchborn @PancreasNo yeah except some of the gods are actually real and Talos ain’t one of them

@ProgressDeath @PancreasNo Are you joking? 🤨 Ok imagine if America bans Christianity tomorrow. If your a Christian how are you reacting. Better yet, look up Guy Fawkes or the IRA so you can see in how people react to that.

@SenatorLuma @theoluminati i thought you were cool

@theoluminati pasta is a Bad food and i have not cooked it once in my life

working hard to provide content for my oomfs in the twitter mines:

@Gooboberti @Nicole_Lee_Sch There’s a model equipped with a taser

@Nicole_Lee_Sch A camera on legs= police? It’s just a roming camera. It can’t apprehend anyone. No weapons. No handcuffs. Just a camera. Don’t be such a fucking idiot.

I remember when these were first developed and researchers said "theyll help find survivors when a building collapses" and then they put them in a stupid parade and people went "oh theyre soooooo cute they can dance and all." Now surprise the robot dogs are police. Good job yall

@Americiumist @ettingermentum He did, but only because Hegseth ate the batteries.

@ettingermentum I wonder if Hegseth give him the Xbox controller without the batteries in it

Chuddie wants to reinvent himself again lmfao

@EleanoraStats Please show me the 17% of Britons who still actively like Starmer or Badenoch

Gonna start posting this every time Polanski achieves some new polling record for the party

@SenatorLuma Olive Garden is great though

every day trans women on the internet are plotting human rights violations against me

the northeast is gonna condemn itself to irrelevancy for literally no reason at all, it’s like if the rust belt states banned heavy industry

@USA_Polling tbh, RMG, Quantus, and Rasmussen are GOP pollsters, but Marist should be labeled as a Democratic pollster.

Trump Net-Approval: RMG: -8%* Quantus: -9%* Rasmussen: -11%* Morning Consult: -11% YouGov/Economist: -15% Echelon: -16% Marist: -17% Ipsos: -18% YouGov/Yahoo: -18% Quinnipiac: -20% (* Republican Pollster)