Last week involved a shooting at YouTube, numerous scandals involving EPA director Scott Pruitt, and surprising new sanctions placed on Russian oligarchs, and yet, none of that makes it into what’s being discussed below. Does that mean, perhaps, that the week was too busy? Read on and make the decision for yourself. When the News […]
Demogorgons, inverted worlds, really bad psychokinesis-induced nosebleeds—a lot of really unbelievable things exist in the world of Stranger Things. Hence the name. But that doesn’t mean everything in Hawkins, Indiana is fiction. At least not entirely. In fact, Hawkins itself has real-world roots. “It’s based on a place in Montauk, New York called Camp Hero,” […]
See this fancy pink water bottle I’m holding? Now watch as I bash my head in with it. This is not, I assume, what the makers of the $38 “beauty essential” intended. What they promised was “glamour sipping like a boss.” They wanted me to “be brave.” Maybe they even meant it—insofar as any millennial-focused, […]
Friends, humans, rapidly-evolving robots, the time has finally come: Westworld Season 2 is here. After nearly 17 months, HBO’s futuristic thriller about a theme park where the rich can live out their Wild West fantasies with android “hosts” finally returns on Sunday. At the end of the first season, it seemed as though some of […]
It's common to describe videogames in terms of verbs: what will its sticks and buttons and other inputs let you do? In Minit, a new game published by Devolver Digital, only two options exist. You can use the object you're currently holding, and you can die. And if you don't press the die button, it'll […]
First off: Bad news, Expanded Universe fans—that Mara Jade cameo in Episode IX looks less likely now that her creator, Timothy Zahn, has seemingly dashed hopes that she'll show up in the movie, saying that he's had no heads-up that Lucasfilm plans to use the character. Of course, there's always the possibility that he's playing […]
Al Alcorn knew he was being wooed. Nolan Bushnell, the tall, brash, young engineer from Alcorn’s work-study days at Ampex, had shown up at Alcorn’s Sunnyvale office. Bushnell was driving a new blue station wagon. “It’s a company car,” he said with feigned nonchalance. He offered to drive Alcorn, recently hired as an associate engineer […]
In the canon of Westworld, the Ghost Nation does not play by the rules. They sometimes vanish into thin air. Their minds are impervious to Maeve's (Thandie Newton) takeover attempts and Ashley Stubbs' (Luke Hemsworth) voice commands. They collect human captives for unknown reasons. They are totally mysterious, living on Westworld's margins and never emerging […]
Two days before the opening ceremony got underway in Pyeongchang, Sasha Hostyn made Olympics competitive history. She didn’t come from behind in a last-minute qualifying event, though, or pull off a new trick in a practice run—she used a zergling horde to upset the heavy favorite. In Gangneum, a seaside city 15 miles away from […]
When the Overwatch League playoffs kick off tonight, fans will be tuning in to see which team will proceed to take on the league's top seeds, the New York Excelsior and Los Angeles Valiant. But while the diehards have been keeping up with the league's regular season via streaming site Twitch, they'll have some new […]