Haven’t been here in a while

I started poking around Tumblr again this week. Not much has changed except that most of the accounts I follow are no longer active. There’s still some cool stuff here. I’ll give it another try.

life:

Harper Lee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird has died at age 89. She is pictured here visiting her hometown, Monroeville, Alabama, in 1961. (Donald Uhrbrock/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)

nprmusic:

For crying out glayvin! All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen is going to be on @thesimpsonsfox this Sunday night

(via nprmusic)

A (Re)Introduction To NPR Plays

nprplays:

image

OK, it is time for a little re-introduction to this Tumblr.

We started NPR plays back in 2014, during the launch of the PS4 and XBox One, to talk about gaming and the community and to gauge where the intersection of that audience and NPR’s mainstream audience met. It’s been great, and we grew at a pretty rapid pace for being a side project and labor of love.

Things got busy, other projects came up, but now we’re back and aiming to do more in this space. As we do that, I thought it would make sense, and in the spirit of transparency, to let you know a little about about your host (me).

Who Am I?

Up there, that’s me, Steve Mullis, a digital editor at NPR and one of its resident gaming junkies. It’s not my primary function here to cover games, but I am the biggest advocate for gaming coverage in the newsroom and I occasionally write about indie games and other related topics for NPR.org. Other times I’m doing a variety digital journalism-related things.

I have been playing games since I was about 5 years old (now 36). Our first system was an Atari 2600, and we had all of the usual suspects for that system: River Raid, Pitfall, Joust, Boxing (I think it was JUST called Boxing), and many others. We bought the original NES not long after it was released, minus  R.O.B. the Robot. We had the Mike Tyson’s Punch Out “action” set. From then, it was history.

Since then, I’ve owned a wide variety of systems and spent countless hours in all genres of games. I even had Seaman on the Sega Dreamcast, if that clues you in to how far down the rabbit hole I’ve gone. For those that don’t know, that was a game where you raised a weird fish-like creature and talked to it through a microphone plugged into the Dreamcast controller.

I’ve had my hardcore phases of many genres, from playing every fighting game under the sun for a period to digging my heels in on RPGs only. Never been a huge fan of FPS games, with the exception of the Battlefield series, but I can appreciate their allure and fun. And of course, there has been the on-again, off-again relationship with industry giant World of Warcraft. That will probably continue until the servers shut down (why can’t I quit you?)

Why I play games: For the same reasons I enjoy great books and movies – they’re entertaining, often contain wonderful stories and you get to be actively involved in the action most of the time. Like many of you out there I’m sure, games give me the same level of enjoyment, and often are more personally rewarding, as any other artistic medium. And I am firmly in the camp of it being an artistic medium. To me, that battle has been decided.

Favorite games: Early Final Fantasy series, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Diablo III, XCOM series, Metal Gear series, Thomas Was Alone, Stealth Bastard, Super Meat Boy

Currently playing: XCOM 2, Fallout 4, Firewatch, The Witness

What I like about the industry right now: Robust indie game development; amazing use of technology; games/systems for all types and income levels (there’s no ONE place everyone has to be); Rise of esports and streaming community

My beefs with the industry/community right now: Too much negativity and in-fighting; Too many giants; Too many endless franchises; Cash-grab DLC content; “Season pass” games that don’t deliver; Too many gaming/gamer zealots; toxic online communities; too many online-only games

What I want more of from the industry/community: More variety and diversity of protagonists; more genre-bending games; More advanced storytelling (not just story as filler between action set pieces)

There you have it, just a brief window into exactly who is writing the majority of these posts and your resident champion for gaming content at NPR. Thanks for reading, and feel free to reach me at the usual channels.

TWITTER: @stevemullis​ 

EMAIL: smullis [at] npr [dot] org

Thanks!

- Steve Mullis, digital editor, NPR

npr:
“ Last week’s announcement of the direct detection of gravitational waves proved, once again, the enduring power of Albert Einstein’s scientific vision. Once again, Einstein was right in that this theory accurately predicted the behavior of the... npr:
“ Last week’s announcement of the direct detection of gravitational waves proved, once again, the enduring power of Albert Einstein’s scientific vision. Once again, Einstein was right in that this theory accurately predicted the behavior of the...

npr:

Last week’s announcement of the direct detection of gravitational waves proved, once again, the enduring power of Albert Einstein’s scientific vision. Once again, Einstein was right in that this theory accurately predicted the behavior of the world.

But with last week’s triumph, a deep and fascinating question arises: Could Einstein be right about his science and still be wrong about the broader context into which we humans put that science?

Let me explain.

There are a lot of reasons thinking about physics is worth the effort. From GPS to 3-D printers, it’s a subject yielding a lot of cool technology. And from flushing toilets to rising clouds, physics also explains a lot about the world around us.

But there’s another reason people love physics — the world we can’t see. Physics offers radical new perspectives on what lies beneath, behind and below our everyday experience. In this way, physics seems like more than just knowledge; it seems like truth with a capital T.

But when science reaches the hairy edges of our experience, when it reaches outward to the boundaries of our abilities to describe the world, is there something else coming along for the ride? Together with the powerful, abstract mathematics and the ingenious instrumentation, is there something beyond “just the facts” requiring special attention when physicists make their grandest claims about the cosmos?

Was Einstein Wrong?

Photo: Keystone/Getty Images and STF/AFP/Getty Images
Graphic: Credit: Katherine Du, Adam Frank and Katie Park/NPR

(via npr)

neaq:

You know it’s cold when Boston Harbor is steaming. See this chilly phenomenon from the cozy confines of the New England Aquarium. And, you know, penguins, too. #boston #polarvortex #bostonharbor #cold

elisegoeseast:
“Off to the mountains of central Japan! We are starting here in Nagoya, where I picked up this tiny rental car and met up with fixer Akane, my friend Ben and his wife Elle. Ben is the muse for the piece we are reporting in rural Japan,...
  • Camera: iPhone 6
  • Aperture: f/2.2
  • Exposure: 1/30th
  • Focal Length: 4mm

elisegoeseast:

Off to the mountains of central Japan! We are starting here in Nagoya, where I picked up this tiny rental car and met up with fixer Akane, my friend Ben and his wife Elle. Ben is the muse for the piece we are reporting in rural Japan, since he used to teach in a tiny village in Aichi prefecture. Stay with us…

annafifield:

I haven’t been drinking, but I couldn’t resist this Psy-branded hangover drink. Chungcheong-nam-do style. #Korea #annainasia (at 입장 휴게소 (상행))

designismymuse:
“ Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel  Architects- Archterra Architects
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black
*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse
” designismymuse:
“ Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel  Architects- Archterra Architects
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black
*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse
” designismymuse:
“ Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel  Architects- Archterra Architects
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black
*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse
” designismymuse:
“ Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel  Architects- Archterra Architects
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black
*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse
” designismymuse:
“ Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel  Architects- Archterra Architects
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black
*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse
” designismymuse:
“ Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel  Architects- Archterra Architects
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black
*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse
” designismymuse:
“ Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel  Architects- Archterra Architects
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black
*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse
” designismymuse:
“ Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel  Architects- Archterra Architects
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black
*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse
”

designismymuse:

Light-Filled Home Clad in Corrugated Steel 

Architects- Archterra Architects 
Location- Australian Bushland, Margaret River, Australia
Source- contemporist
Images- Douglas Mark Black

*for design inspiration, follow @designismymuse

atlantahistorycenter:

image

Looking east along Edgewood Ave. in Five Points, ca. 1892. Here we can see the artesian well that provided drinking water to Atlantans and the construction of streetcar lines.

Browse and order prints from our collections. Find this image directly by searching VIS 170.296.001.   

(via )