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Nathan Fillon, the fan-favourite to play Nathan Drake in Uncharted, has appeared in a short fanmade film for the game along with Stephen Lang as Sully. Via the Verge:

Uncharted fans have been clamoring to see Drake in a Hollywood-caliber production for nearly a decade. (They’ve also been clamoring to see Fillion play the character for about the same amount of time.) In 2010, Columbia Pictures confirmed that a movie was in development, but it’s been stalled for the last eight years over multiple rewrites, directors and producers attaching then flitting in and out, and conflicts with Neil Druckmann, creative director of Naughty Dog and the writer of three of the Uncharted games. The latest developments in the Uncharted movie saga so far say that Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) will be directing, with Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces) writing the script, and starring Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming) as a young Nathan Drake.

It seems to be going well. “The Uncharted movie, yeah, we’ve had some conversations with Shawn Levy. And he’s really passionate, gets it, and I think he understands where we’re at,” Druckmann said last year. “[Shawn Levy] wanting to tell a different story than the main four adventures—with potentially a young Nathan Drake, that fills in the gaps—I think is a lot more interesting than trying to retell Uncharted 1, 2, 3, and 4.”

Vox Explainers considers how we could design safer streets… by getting rid of street signs? Hmm, we’ll have to be convinced about this. The Guardian ran a longer op ed about the “shared space” concept earlier:

Research has shown that removing white lines induces uncertainty and thus cuts vehicle speeds by 13%. This has been the case on London’s A22, A23 and A100. Pilot schemes are also in place in Wiltshire, Derby, and round the Queen’s house at Sandringham (don’t ask).

Behind this demarking lies the concept of “shared space” and “naked streets”, developed in the 1990s by the late Dutch engineer, Hans Monderman. He held that traffic was safest when road users were “self-policing” and streets were cleared of controlling clutter. His innovations, now adopted in some 400 towns across Europe, have led to dramatic falls in accidents. Yet for some reason Monderman’s ideas remain starkly uninfluential in the world of “big” health and safety, especially in Britain.

Monderman’s principle is that freedom to assess risk for ourselves is what makes us safer. Rules, controls, signs, traffic lights all reduce our awareness of our surroundings and thus our sense of danger. On roads, he said: “When you don’t exactly know who has right of way, you tend to seek eye contact with other road users. You automatically reduce your speed … and take greater care.”

Monderman’s British apostle, John Adams of University College London, once suggested I drove on to a motorway, got up to the speed limit and removed my seatbelt. What did I do next? He was right. I slammed on the brake. I swiftly adjusted my threshold of acceptable risk. Adams has figures to prove that countries – indeed US states – that do not require motorbike helmets have fewer biking accidents than those that do.

The most dangerous place on a road is at traffic lights. Almost half the accidents in most cities occur at lights. This is due not just to war between “amber gamblers” and reckless cyclists. A crossing is where everyone should be watching everyone else, but everyone is watching the lights. They are awaiting orders. When given them, they assume all is safe and crash on.

Mashable got their hands on the 2018 Macbook Pro for this review. TLDR? A powerful machine, but there are ongoing design problems. Via Mashable:

Using the 2018 MacBook Pro has been a roller-coaster experience. Ultimately you can’t help but respect such a powerful machine, but Apple didn’t do itself any favors by sticking with the existing design. As such, the new Pro has an uphill climb in convincing buyers it’s a worthy upgrade.

And I really wanted to be convinced. For the past year and a half, I, like many Apple customers, have been waiting for a major refresh of its most recent MacBook Pro design, which first debuted about 20 months ago.

That refresh ended up having several issues. For starters, the Touch Bar — the horizontal touchscreen that replaces the function row of keys — is of questionable utility, and feels like an inadequate compromise that Apple created because of its refusal to make a touchscreen Mac.

Then there are the four USB-C ports, which are the machine’s only connectors (apart from the headphone jack). USB-C promised to take us to the promised land of simplification, but instead we’ve ended up in dongle hell since connecting to any legacy gear (like, I don’t know, the cables that come with every single iPhone?) requires an adapter of some kind.

And then there’s that keyboard. The butterfly-switch keyboard design, first seen in the 2015 MacBook, lets Apple make its already-thin laptops even thinner. But, reliability issues aside, to those who got used to the chiclet keys on previous designs, it doesn’t feel like an upgrade. And if you do end up having a maintenance problem, it’s a rage-emoji-inducing hassle to fix.

If there were just one of these issues, it would be pretty easy to dismiss. But all three? That was enough to give me pause, and I’ve been holding out, hoping Apple will do something to address them, and possibly even reverse course in some way.

"I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

💯 days to go @InvictusSydney #GameOnDownUnder pic.twitter.com/sna5irq9wA

— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) July 12, 2018

Prince Harry and Invictus Games athletes recite lines from the poem Invictus in this moving spot for the upcoming 2018 Invictus Games. Via Adnews:

Advertising agency Edge has helped bring to life the poem Invictus to promote the 2018 Invictus Games in Sydney.

The moving spot features generations of the Invictus Games community reciting a single line of the poem each.

The final two lines of the poem, ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul’, represent the unconquerable spirit of the current and former service men and women who compete in the Invictus Games.

Invictus Games founder Prince Harry makes a cameo in the spot but it is Invictus Games athletes whole steal the show, stirring passion and an unconquerable spirit.

The film includes Invictus Games Sydney 2018 competitor Jamie Tanner in action at wheelchair rugby training and widow Gwen Cherne and her daughter in an emotional moment of reflection.

Produced in collaboration with 2 Feet Films, the film was introduced by Invictus Games Sydney 2018 ambassador and former politician, Brendan Nelson at the Australian War Memorial, where he has been the director since 2012.

The film will be supported by behind-the-scenes content on digital.

The Invictus Games were founded in 2014 by Price Harry to positively change the lives of wounded, injured and ill former and current defence personnel.

After 30 years, Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote will finally be out in theatres. It’s showing at MIFF 2018. There were so many production issues that the issues themselves produced their own film, Lost in La Mancha. Via Study Break:

Terry Gilliam’s film “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” was finally finished after almost 30 years of mishaps, including chaotic weather and the declining health of Jean Rochefort, the Don Quixote for Gilliam’s original movie attempt.

There was even a whole making-of documentary called “Lost in La Mancha” in 2002 about that disastrous first attempt if you would like to watch the misfortunes up close. More recently, former producer Paulo Branco filed a lawsuit against Gilliam because Gilliam sold him the rights to the script back in 2016 and proceeded without Branco’s permission.

Despite the pending lawsuit, the 2018 Cannes Film Festival went ahead with their original plan to air the film at the end of their festival, and the film received a 10-minute standing ovation. But Amazon, who was going to distribute the movie to American audiences, backed out after Branco’s lawsuit, and a French court ruled that Gilliam will have to pay $11,600 in reparations to Branco.

Is Gilliam’s film, which is loosely based off Miguel de Cervantes’s “El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha,” worth 30 years of hassle, including now the pain of finding an American company to distribute the movie?

French supermarket Intermarche has a new ad campaign called the Taste of Colours, highlighting how artificial colouring messes with our minds. Via Adweek:

French law forbids marketers to explicitly say that additives might be harmful, so Paris-based agency Romance devised the taste test to make its point in a subtle, compelling way that would meet the nation’s broadcast standards.

Romance designed the test with food science expert Muriel Jacquot, but the team still wasn’t sure how it would all play out.

“For the experience to go well, it was important our subjects not know its purpose, so we just told them it was a simple consumer test for Intermarché,” says agency senior copywriter Philippe Pinel. “To be honest, the very first subject got it right when he tasted the first yogurt, so we held our breath. But after that, everything went bad—just as intended.”

Toward the end of the ad, Intermarché notes that if food coloring can so completely fool our brains, it’s probably best avoided, along with other additives.

“What we didn’t expect was that some of our subjects would be smarter than us,” Pinel recalls. “After realizing we were tricking them with colors, a group of subjects decided to continue the experience with their eyes shut. Well done, girls!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpXx1C-0X0w

Dawn celebrates 40 years of collaboration with the International Bird Rescue with this heartwarming video involving cute ducklings. A 2010 article by NPR described why Dawn is the bird cleaner of choice for oil spills:

At a warehouse turned bird bathhouse in Venice, La., dozens of bottles of Dawn stand like soldiers behind a row of deep sinks. It takes three people as much as an hour to get the gooey oil off each pelican. They start by rubbing the bird with cooking oil; veterinarian Heather Nevill says that loosens the sticky petroleum. Then one of the crew sprays it with dish liquid.

“She’s scrubbing very vigorously, getting her fingertips under the feathers to really agitate the feathers in the water,” Nevill says. “It’s that action of getting the detergent into the feathers that really removes the oil.”

The bird is covered with a lot of suds.

“We’re using very heavy concentrations of Dawn because this crude oil has become very weathered, and it’s very difficult to remove,” Nevill adds.

When asked whether they have to use Dawn, Nevill replies, “Dawn definitely works the best. It very effectively removes grease but does not cause harm to the skin of the birds.”

Nevill and the rest of the workers at the International Bird Rescue Research Center sound like walking commercials for Dawn. And that’s not new.

NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling discovered this when he interviewed the group’s founder, Alice Berkner, during the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

Zwerdling joked, “You’re going to get letters from Ivory and the other companies.”

“I hate to sound like an advertisement,” Berkner said, “but I won’t allow any substitutes for Dawn.”

England’s in the semifinals for the World Cup, a source of mass celebration in the UK for its fans. ICYMI: their excellent squad announcement video highlighting diversity and shot on location at Wembley, with kids from various walks of life calling out the names of the squad. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this unusual way of announcing the squad sparked off a lot of rage online. Wonder why. In any case, if you’re staying up to watch the semis, good luck, and may the best team win!

One of our fav articles so far on the English team, or in particular, their coach Gareth Southgate, now the focus of many memes including #GarethSouthgateWould, is by The Ringer:

The past 150 years of soccer history has been the tale of the game slipping away from the country that invented it. Soccer is one of England’s most successful exports, but the farther away it traveled, the less its inventors were able to control and dominate it. Until the 1940s, England largely stayed home, playing and usually beating competition from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. It wasn’t until 1949 that England lost at home to foreign competition. A year later, they appeared in their first World Cup, a group-stage defeat that included a 1-0 loss to the United States—to this day one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history. In 1953, England took its first home loss to continental competition: a 6-3 thrashing at Wembley at the hands of Hungary’s Mighty Magyars.