The Underground — Issue #47
Everything you need to know about in this weekly series: A new game that looks like it will take up a lot of your time, why everything we think we know about addiction is wrong, a book full of science comics, the science of why you get headaches, and Weird Al’s takedown of sports press conferences.
At Social Underground we go beyond the mainstream stuff and see what’s underneath the surface. What should we get into, listen to, read, eat or watch? If there is something in our culture that needs attention that’s our job: Show you the underground things that you need to know about: Books, music, television, movies, comedians, art, and whatever else we can find to get you into something you never knew about. That’s The Underground.
1. Detroit is a new beautiful looking new game from the makers of Heavy Rain. The moment I first saw the headline about a game titled Detroit, I immediately prepared myself for another form of media taking a crap all over my city. At the beginning of the trailer, you see rendered images of burned out buildings that surround the city. But then it got into the story of the game and I immediately forgave it because it then showed Detroit being the starting point of a major event that affects the entire world.
The game looks stunning. It causes you to question if what you’re seeing is real or rendered. I can only describe the game so much without sounding like a fanboy. What the game seems to be about is an android that comes off an assembly line in Detroit and wants to transcend her programming to be more human. Sounds like something that has been done a lot, but I think we should give it a chance based on the trailer alone.
2. Everything we know about addiction is wrong. Everyone is addicted to something, to some extent. Whether it be to smoking, drugs, gambling, checking your smartphone every two minutes, they all generally rank under the addiction category. The video below goes into great detail to explain what we think we know about addiction is probably wrong.
Usually, I will leave it to a doctor or an expert to tell me about addiction. Turning on a local television station to hear them talk about it with no credentials never really explains anything other than telling me that it’s bad. I know doing heroin is bad, but why do we give pure heroin to people in hospitals? Let this video explain.
3. Must-read book: Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543: A Collection of Science-Themed Comics
Science does basically ruin things for a lot of people. Someone will be drunk around a bonfire, looking up to the sky and asks a philosophical question. A moment later, someone will tell them that science explained that already and totally ruins that guys idea.
This book is like that, but with comics. We all turned to the comic section of the newspaper when we were younger instead of reading the important stories of the day. I’m sorry, I didn’t care about the election when a bunch of comics needed to be laughed at. What Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543: A Collection of Science-Themed Comics does is make you laugh, but has its humor directed toward the science minded.
Premise: “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is at heart a geek comic, but it nevertheless addresses a broad range of topics, such as love, relationships, economics, politics, religion, science, and philosophy. It is one of the fastest growing comics online, having sextupled in readership since 2008. This is a compendium of the finest science-related strips from SMBC, featuring science stories from Phil Plait, Elizabeth Iorns Henry Reich, Ed Yong, Emily Lakdawalla, Sean Carroll, Christina Agapakis, and Adam Savage.”
Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543: A Collection of Science-Themed Comics is available on Amazon for you to laugh at right now.
4. What actually causes those headaches you get? If you wake up after a night of drinking, the cause of your headache is dehydration and other things. But what about those headaches you randomly get with no explanation? You could be just about to have intimate relations with a significant other OR new partner and BOOM a headache hits (ED Note: Powering through that headache during sex makes the headache worse, but you do what you have to do).
The video below explains what causes headaches. It also sort of explains why you get a headache when you watch a 3D movie — which is a dying medium. But it doesn’t go into it enough, so let me explain: Each one of your eyes can only see in two dimensions. You notice this if you cover one eye and your depth perception is off when only looking through the one eye uncovered. Both of your eyes combine to form a 3D image of what you see in front of you. What those 3D glasses do at the movies is project 3D dimensional images into each eye. This will overwhelm what the eye is capable of and usually lead to a headache. Class dismissed.
Check out the video below to know why you are having a headache and what’s causing it.
5. Weird Al sums up every sports press conferences in this hilarious spoof. One of the worst things about sports is the reporting of the sports on the field, and the responses that the players and the coaches respond with. Every single time an interview happens, you’ll hear the same questions and responses almost every f*cking time.
The only time something interesting happens is when something interesting happens. Remember when Erin Andrews interviewed Richard Sherman? He flipped out and went off on Michael Crabtree, scared Erin Andrews, and then it went on to make news all over the place.
Weird Al takes the usual press conference of a post-sporting event and tears it apart bit by bit. The good thing about this video is that it will make sports reporting funnier every time I have to sit through some boring interview with no new information.
Feature Photo: (Robert Trachtenberg)
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post,UPROXX,BGR and by just looking up his name.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com