Funko's Baby Yoda looks amazingly cute.
I do not know where I am going to put all these damn things.
Funko Pop! Star Wars: The Mandalorian - The Child via Amazon Read the rest
Disney's The Mandalorian is the contemporary Star Wars production people actually like and has already wriggled deep into the folds of pop culture. Much of the meme-orializing centers on "Baby Yoda", of course, but the show pays tribute to westerns in depth and that's what's honored in this handsome edit by Kingkida.
Now that the amazing first season of The Mandalorian is complete, I decided to go back and update my Sergio Leone inspired trailer. Thanks for all the feedback on the last one. I incorporated a lot of your suggestions, but I'm sure I butchered more Italian in this pass as well!
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On Black Magic Craft, Jeremy usually builds scenery for tabletop fantasy and sci-fi gaming. But, inspired by his new 3D resin printer, he decided to create something just for fun.
Given the Nerdisphere's current obsession with The Mandalorian, he settled on a Mandalorian and baby Yoda diorama. The results are impressive, one of the coolest things I've ever seen Jeremy build.
The video contains lots of great build tips that can be applied to tabletop gaming terrain, dioramas, or any type of hobby modeling. Good stuff. Read the rest
I must have this Baby Yoda!
I want to see what happens when an incredibly powerful force user is raised by a person who disintegrates car thieves.
Star Wars The Black Series The Child Toy 1.1-Inch The Mandalorian Collectible Action Figure, Toys for Kids Ages 4 and Up via Amazon Read the rest
Although you won't find any official toys of "the Child" from Disney's The Mandalorian in stores yet, you can decorate your tree with this authorized papercraft version of Baby Yoda in his floating bassinet. All you need is scissors, glue, and a healthy amount of some patience to get all the fiddly bits stuck together. Read the rest
There's a scene in the fourth episode of The Mandalorian where the unnamed child (aka Baby Yoda) is literally pushing Mando's buttons, well, the buttons on his ship anyway. Since it aired, the internet has been doing its thing — imagining Baby Yoda is playing with the ship's radio.
The meme started a couple of weeks ago, so there a TON of them out there. I picked out a few of my favs:
And, OF COURSE...
(Geekologie) Read the rest
The 12 days of crustmas are upon us.
I am a big fan of seeing what happens when a super-powerful force user is raised by a mass murderer. Read the rest
My only complaint is that it doesn't end with "And introducing Baby Yoda as…THE CHILD!"
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It's frankly shocking that in more than 40 years since Yoda first debuted on the big screen, no one has asked the anarcho-linguist Noam Chomsky to explain the Jedi's syntactical idiosyncrasies. But now that Baby Yoda has stolen everyone's heart, someone has finally taken him to task.
Or, well, maybe.
Given the fact that this is the first tweet from the account, I sadly suspect that this isn't real. I even messaged the woman who wrote it for verification, but she didn't respond. A quick Google search reveals that there is a Jessica Yu in Australia who is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. If it is the same Jessica Yu from Australia, and this turns out to just be a fun creative writing experiment—well then hey, good on her. She captured Chomsky's voice here impressively well, along with his well-documented disdain for humans projecting linguistic meaning onto Koko the gorilla. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure that "'No thoughts on memes' — Noam Chomsky" is poised to become a meme now on its own.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, altered.
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Various official Baby Yoda toys will be available in a few months, but anyone with access to a 3D printer can print their own right now. Christopher Frieze has posted one version for free download. It looks great as a tree topper:
And Chris is currently working on a version of Baby Yoda and soup:
Download a design and support Chris here.
(Via TheRPF.) Read the rest
Artist Allison Hoffman, aka Crafty is Cool, is an absolute master of pop culture amigurimi ("a portmanteau of the Japanese words ami, meaning 'crocheted or knitted,' and nuigurumi, meaning 'stuffed doll'"). She can crochet like nobody's business and each of her pieces are a work of art (previously). Now, she's taken to creating the real star of The Mandalorian, the new Star Wars series on Disney+, big-eyed Baby Yoda!
But, she's only made one and you can't just buy it outright. If you want it, you'll have to bid on it on eBay. Allison writes, "I’ve gotten so many requests for the finished baby that this is really the only way I could fairly sell him! Thank you all! I have to make another for my husband so that he doesn’t buy this one..."
As of this writing, the bidding is already up to $305. If that's too rich for your blood, well, hope you can crochet, because she's made its pattern available ($7) in her Etsy shop.
We must protect the asset! Who even is he? Or she? Or what? Who cares? Its adorable. This pattern instructs you how to make a life-size stuffed baby inspired by Baby Yoda/Yiddle with easy to find supplies and simple techniques. Everything is photographed and explained in easy to follow step by step instructions. You should know basic crochet skills, but now is a good time to learn.
The Baby is 14" tall and weighs 2 lbs. He's got a little removable robe.
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100 photos from the Chicago mega-convention
Back in 2006, I had an epiphany. Stories are empathy engines, regardless of the medium. And for humans, they always have been. We’ve been primed to imagine other’s lives since we sat in a cave, telling the stories of our tribe and making sense of the world around us. I published an academic paper on this in 2008 and have given talks about storytelling and empathy ever since. I’m thrilled that there are now hundreds of researchers around the world searching for the neurological mechanisms that link “theory of mind networks” to empathy and narratives.
PJ Manney's (R)evolution is available from Amazon.
In addition, I’ve been a futureholic throughout my life. Whether through science fact or fiction, I’ve wanted to know what was coming and how it might change everything we know. The future is very heady, complex stuff, and difficult to communicate to those who aren’t on your metaphorical wavelength, since change is inherently hard to understand or accept. With my novel, (R)evolution, I felt it was important to share research on nanotechnology and cognitive technologies like brain-computer interfaces, nanomedicine and more with an audience that might not read SF or know what is coming.
My parents are my sample audience. My father is a huge SF fan and the reason I am, too. Future-shorthand is easy with him. But my mother is so ignorant of SF, when we visited Industrial Light and Magic in 1980, she hadn’t seen Star Wars (and still hasn’t) and didn’t recognize the Yoda puppet! Read the rest
