His cafè just opposite the museum is also quite something, chairs and tables from spine-infested shapes.

And when in Gruyères then one should taste meringues double crème, or fondue in colder months.

And last but not least - its a region of Swiss pre-alps, mountains up to cca 2000m high, lovely hikes all around in picture-perfect nature and fields (government pays farmers to keep it looking nice) and even nearby very nice via ferrata on Moléson peak which I did 2 weeks ago, this time with some snow. It overlooks the castle and whole area from avove. That was interesting and intense experience while being alone on whole mountain.

That website was really frustrating on iOS, had to close it before seeing much.

My dad took me there as a kid a long whole ago when Giger was still alive, it was really something. The bar is amazing and the museum is... oppressively dark in a very unique way, like anything Giger ever did I suppose.

There's several lifesize necronomicons/xenomorphs, some earlier and later variants, Sil and the skull train, a lot of art that was never used in Alien and sequels but some made it later into Prometheus.

The computer terminal with an annoying box jammed up against your right hand, but also enough space for an ashtray:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQwxhqR...

I kicked myself on the second read for missing why the title mentions trucking: it’s in the article, buried a little, but Ridley Scott called this the “truck driver” version of sci-fi.

“Bachelor pad” sci-fi is another great description, and this subreddit uses the equally fantastic term “cassette futurism”:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cassettefuturism/

I think it’s why I love the Technology Connections YouTube channel too. A lot of the devices are like 1980s science fiction! (The article in this discussion mentions the set designers using rotary mechanical switches to automate blinking light patterns so, in a way, they were living in their own futurism.)

In one of the myriad making of / behind the scenes docs I've watched over the years, they described how after the first set was built it was decided it should be more cramped, so they cut a horizontal swath out of big chunks of it and lowered the ceiling forcing the actors to crouch and duck as they moved around.

Fantastic decision, the claustrophobia really adds to the creep factor IMO.

I agree that the aesthetic made for an excellent film but I always thought that if they had sufficient power for FTL travel (e.g. massive fusion reactors or something) they could have powered a few extra light bulbs.

Although the ship in Dark Star wins the space-grunge contest hands-down.

I'd say it's not only the greedy corporations but maybe technical challenges. Compare with clutter on ISS or in earlier spacecrafts - also claustrophobic, narrow and packed with equipment.

I’ve read it described as “used future” aesthetic.

It actually is a pretty accurate reflection of the internals of blue ocean vessels.

Sometimes you can’t predict what will work until you see what doesn’t. I’d say that if you’re really developing something new you should have that experience at least once of having something you’ve worked very hard on scrapped because it just isn’t right.

This is just part of working in art and design. 90% of all my design work never made it to production. It’s the epitome of “the journey is the reward”. You need to find your satisfaction in doing the work not getting it released or you won’t last long.

I was taken by how freely they spent months of man hours on things to go 'meh' and casually throw them away. Different world. Quite holistic with their production costs

I think you have to assume that faster-than-light travel is both possible and economical. At that point, far-flung supply chains across the galaxy really aren't any more surprising than the far-flung supply chains across the globe of our current reality. When distance becomes less economically relevant, other factors (like labor availability and costs, regulations, ease of access, security, etc) become more important.

In Avatar they are literally mining a room-temperature superconductor. If you had to think of a way to make interstellar mining plausible that certainly would be a candidate.

If interstellar travel is possible then it probably means intrastellar travel had been possible for a long time. Which means most readily accessible minerals had already been mined in the solar system. Not to mention humans probably have settled throughout the solar system. Which means solar ecological movements have gained momentum throughout the solar system. After all, who would want mining near their vacation properties on the moon or mars.

The fact that interstellar mining is happening is evidence that it's cheaper than mining locally. Otherwise it wouldn't happen.

What a bizarre take. It's not a mcguffin. Both Alien and Avatar were based on economic/historical realities of their times and throughout history. Why do you think companies mine or drill for oil all over the world. Why not just stay within their national borders? You exhaust resources locally and you look for resources elsewhere. It's just common sense.

This has always been a sticky thing for me as well. These kinds of McGuffins lean towards physics are different in other parts of the galaxy/universe if there are minerals found only in certain parts of the galaxy. That would also imply there are other elements that we do not have on our periodic table. Unless someone has become able to stabilize some of the unstable elements to keep them around long enough to make some sort of material out of them, there's only so much unobtanium or dilithium nonsense I'm willing to accept.

But seeking out new civilizations etc is a noble cause, mining is dirty industrial space trucking types with an evil mega corp trying to make a buck out deadly aliens. Well that's my guess anyway!

Well if you put yourself in the perspective of a time period where something like _The Nostromo_ actually exists - our scientific understanding is literally lightyears ahead of where it is right now. Meaning, our periodic table as it stands today is 1/10th the size of the future table. So it's reasonable to conclude that there are large swaths of never before even imagined materials out in the universe.

Owners of Frank Lloyd Wright homes licked their lips with glee when Bladerunner fans made the bricks-and-mortar movie-famous.

How Deckerd can afford to live in one post economic meltdown is a bit unclear. And those whisky glasses are worth a mint now too.

"Enhance" indeed.

Yeah, weird how that seems to never come up. I sometimes have trouble keeping the movies apart in memory (Silent and Dark).

But Alien being barely more than a higher budget Dark Star remake that somehow got stuck in the elevator scene (and lost all of the original's lightheartedness in the process), that absolutely is my favorite piece of scifi movie trivia.

In space everyone can smell you scream

I thought the article was great, but I couldn't get that sentence out of my head!

The recommendation on how many times to brush daily varies by country. In most spanish-speaking countries, for example , it’s thrice. (My unscientific poll: I googled for “tres veces al dia” and found media from a handful of countries promoting this frequency).

Keep it up until you're 20 or so until the enamel is properly hardened.

How often do you do it?

Yeah three seems insane but less than two also seems insane.

I'm a fan of the franchise but the fan service in the last movie was lame, it took me out of the movie a couple of times. And that's the reason why I resist to watch the series, afraid of more of the same stupid winks to the fans.

> At this point I've seen those corridors so often I'm tired of them.

Heh, I can't get enough of them; it's a great visual design template to work from. And visual consistency of properties within a diegetic timeframe has to be taken into account, even if the newer entries' writers' rooms could profit from better talent...

That said, Alien: Isolation is still the best modern infusion into that universe, and one of the best games in my lifetime.

Cameron doubled down on the aesthetic in Aliens, he just changed the genre from horror to action. Both films were "peak 80s" (Alien was '79) and just ooze with what must be the absolute pinnacle of science fiction vibes.

If you haven't seen these two films, you need to fix that this week. It'll change your life.

Scott tried to expand the aesthetics with Prometheus and Covenant. I felt the films did a great job of refreshing the look and feel while remaining faithful to the 80's. Unfortunately, the writing was trite and Scott's directing is averaging .200 at bat these days.

Romulus was not bad, though certainly not a masterpiece. At least it was better written and had better character arcs than Scott's recent films.

I'd rather have the performance of this series than whatever Jurassic Park or Star Wars have become.

Predator, oddly enough, has strangely been improving if you don't count Shane Black's entry.

I'm happy they keep making these, and I hope the writers and directors at the reigns keep experimenting rather than conforming to "safe" or "understandable by a general audience".

Have you watched Alien: Earth?

Maybe because Anglos sometimes pronounce e like i and ei is more common in english spelling for a long vocal?

To be fair, German "ie" and "ei" is one of the few special rules which make no sense (or lost their sense in time). The 'e' in 'ie' is Dehnungs-e for elongation, just a notation that the i is longer pronounced (like Wiese, Biene). (Special rule: if ie is at the end of a word like familie (latin familia) often it is a diphtong and both vocals are pronounced).

"ei" is a bit stupid, because it is not pronounced "ei" but like "ai" or "ay" (eg Mayer).

I'm not sure the generalization is accurate. Most of us can remember the 'i before e' rule we were taught as kids, but the English language is a celebrated mess of borrowed words and guidelines masquerading as rules. It is admittedly confusing for native and non-native speakers alike, but if we throw a reliance on spell check into the mix, which does little to help with spelling a person's name, we just create more opportunity for degradation.

That said, it should be a pretty hard rule when writing about a person to, at the very least, check to make sure you spelled their name correctly.

> Does anyone know why Americans do this regularly, swapping i and e especially in words of German origin?

You should see what they do to place names like Edinburgh.

It’s a good thing - at least we know it was not written by AI

perhaps due to ignorance for the mnemonic rhyme "i before e, except after c"

An equally great movie! :ducks: