Popular Culture – Page 2 – Southern Fried Science

“The Shark is Broken” is a Broadway-loving shark scientist’s dream come true

October 2, 2023January 4, 2024 David Shiffman 1 Comment

A new Broadway show based on the making of Jaws, co-written by and starring Robert Shaw’s son, is some of the most fun I’ve had at the theater in years. Wearing my finest elasmo-swag to the theater “Jaws” changed the world, with scientific, cultural, and political impacts that continue to this day. Jaws made the … Read More ““The Shark is Broken” is a Broadway-loving shark scientist’s dream come true” »

Oh Hell No: Ten Years of SharkNado

August 16, 2023January 4, 2024 David Shiffman

Featured, Popular Culture, Reviews and Interviews, Science

Summer 2023 marks an important cultural milestone. That’s right, it has now been ten years since the release of SharkNado, which became a full-blown franchise with six movies, tens of millions in ad revenue and merchandise sales, real-world references in the floor of Congress, and near-universal awareness- all things that are otherwise unheard of for … Read More “Oh Hell No: Ten Years of SharkNado” »

The day they arrived: a story of Bitcoin, terraforming, and invasion.

May 25, 2021May 25, 2021 Andrew Thaler

Popular Culture

The day they arrived, atmospheric CO₂ held steady at 1600 parts per million and the coin traded at #75,236,808.

The coin had surged in the years after the Majority War, when a single miner locked down enough processing power to strip the supply cap from the Core. The Battle for Hard Fork was the bloodiest day in the long history of cryptocurrency. But we won, and the minority nodes now burn endlessly, hashing memes in obscurity while we determined the financial future of the human race.

At least, that’s what I thought.

I awoke in a haze. Still a little drunk from the night before. Sweating in the heat of from the midnight sun. Greenland-3 was the largest mining campus in the Northern Hemisphere and we knew how to keep the evenings lively. Once again, my past self had betrayed my present by signing me up for first shift.

I crawled down the shaft into the main hub and checked my servers. Everything looked fine. A few GPUs were burned but we had plenty to spare. They were older and power hungry, anyway. The new batch would get us twice the hashes per joule.

I grabbed a few GPUs off the rack and climbed down into the bowels of the machine.

It was hot. Hotter than it should be for 15:15 Beijing time. Someone, somewhere, is having a very good day. I crawled through the server racks, scanning for the dead cards. They were clustered, in the back corner, on the same control board. Must’ve been a local surge.

As I swapped out the old cards, I felt someone behind me. I turned, expecting one of the techs from last shift on their way out.

It wasn’t.

Shark Week 2019 reviews and thoughts

December 24, 2019December 24, 2019 David Shiffman

Popular Culture, Reviews and Interviews, Science

I wasn’t able to watch live this year, but I DVR-ed all 18 specials and watched them eventually! Here are my reviews, ratings, and thoughts. I did not watch the feature-length movie, which they claim is the first fictional entertainment content they’ve ever produced… causing me to stare in megalodon. Overall, this was not a strong year for science, facts, or diversity (of either sharks or shark researchers).

As a reminder, I grade on the following aspects of a show: is there actual science or natural history educational content / is there made up nonsense, are actual credentialed experts with relevant expertise featured or are they self-proclaimed “shark experts” who say wrong nonsense all the time, what species are featured (with bonus points for species we rarely or never see), and do they feature diverse experts or just the same white men (reminder: my field is more than 50% women)? It’s not a perfect rubric, but it’s better than this actual system for ranking shark news introduced this year in “sharks gone wild 2:”

Rankings appear in no particular order, if you care about the order the shows actually aired in please see this Discovery press release.

10 sharks that mattered in the 2010’s

December 19, 2019December 19, 2019 David Shiffman

Blogging, Popular Culture, Science, Uncategorized

Just when you thought it was safe to read another decade-in-review listicle…

As the 2010’s come to an end, it’s a time to reflect on the often-problematic decade that was as we plan for a hopeful future. I am a sucker for year-in-review and decade-in-review listicles, and was devastated to learn that no one had yet written a decade-in-review listicle for sharks! Please enjoy my official, scientific list of the most important science, conservation, and pop culture sharks from the past decade.

Alexa, open the pod bay doors; or how I learned to stop worrying and hack the wiretap in my home.

June 26, 2019June 26, 2019 Andrew Thaler

Popular Culture

Confession: I have an Amazon Echo. I really like Amazon Echo. I use Amazon Echo almost every day.

Everything about the Amazon Echo is great, except for the primary feature of the Amazon Echo: it is always listening. When I received the Echo nearly five years ago, as a gift, Amazon was not quite the Surveillance Capitalism behemoth that it is now. They packaged their new smart speaker with lots of information about privacy and what Echo can and can’t and won’t do.

Of course, none of that turned out to be true. In just the last year, Echos have been turned into permanent recording devices, listened to a couple’s conversations and then inexplicably sent those conversations to the husband’s employer, and sent 1,700 voice recordings to a totally random stranger. Amazon hasn’t exactly done much to help the image of Echos as Bradburian household horrors, unveiling an Echo Dot for Kids, filling patents for true always-on recording, releasing recordings to outside contractors, and, perhaps most egregious of all, embedding Alexa into a Big Mouth Billy Bass.

It’s reached the point where no one should feel comfortable having an always-on speaker in their home, but damn if these little things aren’t just so convenient. On top of being useful for quick searches, playing Baby Shark on repeat 40 times, checking the weather, and dozens of other little things, the original Echo was a really good speaker. It seems a waste to throw the whole thing away just because one feature is unacceptable.

The Science of Aquaman: The Complete Anthology

December 21, 2018December 21, 2018 Andrew Thaler

Popular Culture

We have written a lot about Aquaman over the last 10 years. With our favorite ocean master is finally getting his big screen debut, we’ve collected everything Aquaman and Southern Fried Science in one place. Enjoy!

It’s the Aquaman Trailer!

First, the brutal takedown that started it all and its follow-ups:

Shark Week 2018 overall thoughts and episode reviews

August 15, 2018 David Shiffman

Popular Culture, Science

The 30th anniversary of Shark Week was the biggest ever, with 22 episodes. It was, as usual, a bit of a mixed bag, though nothing was anywhere near as bad as the bad old days of Megalodon, and there was some pretty good stuff. As has become tradition here at Southern Fried Science, here are some overall thoughts on this year’s Shark Week, as well as reviews for each episode (not counting the clip shows, which I didn’t watch- even I have limits).

Overall thoughts:

I heard more references to shark conservation this year, though almost exclusively offhand references to how the Bahamas is a Shark Sanctuary (there was one mention of shark fin trade bans in the Shark Tank show).
There were more women scientists and non-white scientists than I can remember, but still some major issues with diversity of scientists. (The white male scientists were still treated differently, including being given their full titles, and in one case a white male with a Masters was called Dr. while a woman with a Ph.D. was not called Dr.).
22 shows is too many shows. I may be the only one in the world who actually tried to watch them all and I had to skip the clip shows because even I have limits.

Rather than organizing episode reviews in chronological order or air date, this year I’m going to organize them by theme.

Everything you need to know about conservation you can learn from Alien(s)

August 8, 2018August 10, 2018 Chris Parsons

Conservation, Popular Culture

As a provider of advice on how to do effective conservation, Southern Fried Science has previously looked to such as The Game of Thrones for inspiration. Today we look at another famous source of conservation tips: Alien (and Aliens)…

A single charismatic animal can be a great motivator for action.

Scientists sometimes have self interests that can derail a project.

Just when you think everything is going ok a crisis hits…

A scene-by-scene breakdown of the first trailer of “The Meg”

April 10, 2018April 10, 2018 David Shiffman 1 Comment

Blogging, Popular Culture

Yesterday, the trailer for “the Meg” was released online. This movie is based on a popular book series that claims that megalodon is actually not extinct, just hiding. (I’m in the 4th book).

I have a love-hate relationship with movies like this, by which I mean that I love them and I hate myself for loving them. While movies like “Jaws” had a measurable negative effect on public perception of sharks, I don’t believe that more obviously ridiculous movies like SharkNado have a similar effect. Jason Statham playing a marine biologist in a movie that includes Rainn Wilson? Sign me up.

If not for the people who believe that these movies are real and therefore decide to yell at marine biologists on twitter about it, I’d be all for this. Let’s be totally clear here- Carcharocles megalodon is extinct, and here’s how we know. Shark Week lied to you about it. Actresses from this movie asking about it are not experts. This movie is completely fictional. You can certainly watch it and enjoy it, but please don’t cite it as evidence that a 50 foot long whale-eating shark that used to live in shallow coastal waters near what are now populated areas is not extinct.

Anyway, here is a scene-by scene breakdown of what’s in the first trailer. From it, we can tell that this is an action-packed movie with a great cast that does not stick too closely to the books, and is also not particularly interested in scientific accuracy even with respect to issues unrelated to the “giant extinct animals are actually not extinct”central conceit.