Daveigh Chase has passed away at 35.
The actress was known for her performance in ‘The Ring,’ as well as voicing Lilo in ‘Lilo & Stitch’ and Chihiro in the English dub of ‘Spirited Away.’
A good day to remember the profound care Disney poured into Atlantis.
Let's talk about The Creation of Atlantean. 🌊
To build the world, Disney hired Mark Okrand, the linguist who also created the famous Klingon and Vulcan for the Star Trek series.
Okrand created a fully functional, learnable language. He designed it under the narrative premise that Atlantean was a "root dialect" or a "Tower of Babel" language, the ultimate mother tongue from which all human languages evolved. To achieve this ancient, foundational sound, Okrand primarily utilized Proto-Indo-European roots.
The actual visual characters (the glyphs) were created by comic book artist Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy. Mignola designed the unique script shown on the chart.
In the lore of the film, the language is written in a system called 'boustrophedon', meaning it is read from left to right on the first line, right to left on the second line, and continues alternating back and forth, mimicking the movement of an ox plowing a field.
Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it.
The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state.
What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it.
Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure.
In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.
@atmosfyric This is literally one of my biggest frustrations like what are you doing?! I’m sorry but if anything has a chance of killing my pets from contact, that’s not in my house.
Stand with us to protect the future of Nashville Zoo.
A proposed 69,000-square-foot data center is planned next to the Zoo, but no environmental impact studies have been conducted. Sign our petition to help protect the animals in our care ➡️ https://t.co/q2ISQnxLBK
The animated adaptation of ‘Warrior Cats’ has officially entered production.
Emmy-winning writer A.C. Bradley (What If…?, Ms. Marvel) will serve as showrunner, while Pixar veteran Rodrigo Blaas (Star Wars: Visions) is attached as director.
The series will adapt Warrior Cats: The Prophecies Begin, with animation by Original Force (Ne Zha 2, Tales of Arcadia).
Premiering in 2028.