There’s a post in r/startrek collecting some of the more memorable stories we have told, and fans have remembered, over the decades.

I added one of my own, which I know I’ve written about before, but not here, I don’t think.

It’s about Patrick Stewart tugging on his tunic top, which always wanted to ride up when he (or anyone wearing the uniform) sat down. Because Patrick can’t do anything halfway, he made it very dramatic. Over time, he began to use it as a little bit of business in appropriate moments.

This is a story about that.

We were filming on the bridge. The scene started with Wesley standing, and after half a page or so, he sits down at the conn and I think plots a course or something.

Whenever Wesley sat down, he pulled his jacket tight, just like Picard always did. If you look, you’ll see that we all do that. That’s an important bit of context: we all did that.

So it was like take four of the scene. After we cut on take three, this producer came into the set and stood off camera, just to the right of the viewscreen, as we were looking at it. We do take four, and while we are resetting for take five, this producer comes over to me, leans down so nobody can hear him, and says, “You can’t pull your tunic down like that. That’s the Picard Maneuver, and only Picard can do that.”

So, first of all: this guy is so far out of his lane, he isn’t on the map. If anyone is ever going to talk to an actor, especially in between takes, it always goes through the First Assistant Director, and the Director. It’s a matter of professional respect, and it’s important for our work. If anyone can come up and give us notes or whatever, we will end up with all these conflicting notes, unsure which one to actually listen to.

I’m just 17 or so, and even I know all of this, but I don’t want to get in trouble, so I just say, “…okay. How am I supposed to stop it from riding up to my tits when I sit down? Because that’s what happens.”

He looks so annoyed at me, and sort of bark-whispers, “Just don’t touch it.” And he scurries away into the darkness of the stage.

I am so tired of being treated differently than these same people treat the adults, and I still haven’t learned how to speak up for myself, directly. But I am about to engage in a bit of malicious compliance, the only form of resistance I know how to employ.

We reset, they roll, and when Wesley sits down, his tunic comes all the way up, just like I said it would. It exposes my fake muscle suit, my bracers holding up my trousers, and absolutely ruins the take.

“Cut!” The director calls from offstage.

“Wil, you have to pull your tunic down,” he says, with this tone of utter confusion. Like, obviously.

“Yeah, I know,” I say, looking straight at the guy who is about to wish he’d stayed in his lane, “but [his name] told me that I wasn’t allowed to do the Picard Maneuver, so…” and I shrug, the tunic still bunched up.

That guy turned so bright red, he lit up in the darkness. Everyone on the entire crew looked at him. He sputtered something, and quickly fled the stage.

I made eye contact with Brent and with Frakes. They both looked back at me, communicating their approval. It felt great.

I can’t say for sure that we printed the next take and moved on, but it’s a great way to end the story so let’s go with that.

That guy never gave me a note again. If I recall correctly, my little tunic tug (similar to, yet legally distinctly different from the Picard Maneuver) is in the final cut of the episode

Nicknamed “The Land of Fire and Ice,” Iceland is home to an exceptionally diverse array of landscapes teeming with topographical gems and majestic skies. For these reasons, it’s no surprise the destination is considered a haven for photographers all over the world. After dreaming of visiting the scenic country for years, 2024 finally presented an opportunity for Swiss photographer Jennifer Esseiva (previously).

Esseiva devoted a 10-day trip across southern Iceland entirely to the region’s vast surroundings, from the black sand beaches, towering glaciers, and impressive waterfalls to the moss-covered formations and striking displays of the Northern Lights. 

“Where many prefer to travel in sunshine, I’m more interested in clouds and rain,” she says. “I’ve always found that photographing landscapes in different weather conditions gives them another dimension, a unique grandeur.”

The photographer is planning a forthcoming trip in March, this time to Finnish Lapland. Keep an eye on her Instagram for more, and check out her website for past projects and prints for purchase.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article From Dazzling Lights to Bursting Geysers, Jennifer Esseiva Captures Iceland’s Diverse Scenery appeared first on Colossal.

Whether enclosed in clear acrylic or seemingly sliced from a single tree, Joyce Lin’s sculptures examine themes of interconnectedness and the Anthropocene, which describes our planet’s most recent epoch and the way humans significantly impact its ecosystems and climate.

“I am both disturbed and captivated by the paradoxes of industrialized society,” Lin says in a statement, “where modes of production and disposal are often obscured to the public, yet people have more technology than ever to make their imagined worlds a reality.”

Lin’s uncanny pieces meld form and function, taking the recognizable shapes of furniture and food and transforming them into playful meditations on mass production and consumption. She often uses organic materials like wood, augmenting the surfaces with synthetic mediums like epoxy, resin, and oil paint to preserve their appearance in perpetuity. Some works, like the Wooden Chair series, are entirely composed of engineered materials.

“I love to dissect and understand things, and my works often feature objects—usually a chair—sliced open to expose an inner structure; to express an inner truth, so to speak,” Lin tells Colossal. She manipulates the structures extensively, blurring the reality of what she describes as the “insides” and the “outsides,” so the composition takes on a fantastical quality.

“I don’t think they’re so convincing when you really zoom in, so it’s interesting to see people assume they’re somehow grown or AI-generated, even though they take an incredible amount of manual labor and time to create,” Lin adds. “I often think about distortions in our perception of reality, (which is) probably why people keep sending me those is-it-cake videos.”

The artist is currently working toward a solo exhibition later this year at R & Company, and you can explore more on her website and Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Uncanny Objects by Joyce Lin Blur Distinctions Between Reality and the Fantastical appeared first on Colossal.

The Hubble Space Telescope got off to a rough start. When it launched in 1990, expectations were high, but a tiny mirror flaw caused the images it captured blurry. Dave Barry called it the "Hubble Giant Orbiting Space Paperweight."

Despite capturing images better than ground-based telescopes, Hubble remained a $2 billion punchline until 1993, when the Space Shuttle Endeavour performed a historic repair. — Read the rest

The post 35 years of the Hubble Space Telescope appeared first on Boing Boing.

James Bruton is a YouTuber and Maker extraordinaire. He has made an open-source robot dog, a rideable AT-AT, and a life-sized GNK (Gonk) droid. For his latest project, Bruton has created a self-balancing, omnidirectional bicycle using 3D-printed and machined parts, bungee cords, and circus act supplies. — Read the rest

The post E-bike balances on circus balls appeared first on Boing Boing.

I almost missed it. Amid a bout of prime-time doomscrolling, a social media post reminded me there was something worth seeing in the sky. Mars disappeared behind the full Moon for a little more than an hour Monday night, an event visible across most of North America and parts of Africa.

So I grabbed my camera, ran outside, and looked up just as Mars was supposed to emerge from the Moon's curved horizon. Seen with the naked eye, the Moon's brightness far outshined Mars, casting soft shadows on a cold winter evening in East Texas.

Viewing the Moon through binoculars, the red planet appeared just above several large partially shadowed craters at the edge of the Moon's curved limb. I quickly snapped dozens of photos with my handheld Canon 80D fitted with a 600 mm lens. Within a few minutes, Mars rose farther above the Moon's horizon. Thanks to the parallax effect, the Moon's relative motion in its orbit around Earth appears significantly faster than the movement of Mars in its orbit around the Sun.

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