Category Archives: Blog

That’s one small step from Whiplash, and one giant leap away from La La Land. 

Academy Award-winning director Damien Chazelle is moving away from musicals at light speed with the premiere of his historical drama, First Man, at the opening night of Venice Film Festival. 

And critics are loving it. 

The Neil Armstrong biopic stars Ryan Gosling as Armstrong, House of Cards‘ Corey Stoll as Buzz Aldrin, and The Crown‘s Claire Foy as Armstrong’s first wife, Janet Shearon. Based on early reviews, the star-studded cast is just one of the film’s many assets. Read more…

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Stephen King has written an absolute eff-ton of books, novellas, and short stories in his time, but his most famous is likely The Shining. It’s a dark, sad tale of alcoholism, telepathy, and the danger of topiary sculptures best immortalized in the Stanley Kubrick film that cast Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, the anger-challenged author who attempted to murder his wife and child while under the influence of the haunted Overlook Hotel. 

Since Castle Rock takes place in the same universe as many (and perhaps all) of King’s stories, it was a given that the show would connect somehow to The Shining, but until Episode 8 the only reference was the name and character of Diane “Jackie” Torrance — canonically Jack Torrance’s niece who renamed herself after her uncle to piss off her parent — the town’s resident crime enthusiast who longs for the weird old days when interesting (read: deadly) things happened in her hometown. Read more…

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Prince Harry is officially off of the market these days, but an old crush has somehow resurfaced. 

Dorm room photos from his stint at Eton College in 2003 popped back up recently — only this time, some eagle eyes have noticed Halle Berry on the poster behind the grinning young prince. 

“Ok #PrinceHarry, I see you!” Berry wrote on Twitter after finding the image on W magazine. She tagged Missy Elliot because it’s practically blasphemous to discuss Halle Berry posters without referencing the iconic line “Don’t I look like a Halle Berry poster?” from “Work It.”  Read more…

More about Halle Berry, Prince Harry, Culture, and Web Culture

A meteor seared over Australia on Tuesday night, lighting up the sky over Perth. 

According to the ABC, the local Department of Fire and Emergency Services received calls from “more than one concerned caller” who thought the meteor could be a UFO.

The meteor’s fiery descent was captured on several dash cams. 

CCTV footage shows how bright the meteor was — in the clips in this broadcast, it illuminates the entire frame.  Read more…

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League of Legends developer Riot Games wants to share what it’s learned over the past month.

The studio came under fire after Kotaku’s Cecilia D’Anastasio delivered an investigative report on Aug. 7 that exposed what the story referred to as a “culture of sexism” at the company. Riot responded the next day with a statement that pledged to step back and take some time to listen and learn.

“We recognize we still have work to do to achieve our goals, which starts with listening to feedback from Rioters and others, and providing Rioters with the guidance and resources they need to uphold our values,” the statement read (in part). Read more…

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Seemingly from the very first moments of #MeToo, survivors and women were made to answer the same questions, over and over and over again, always asked with an air of accusation.

How long must an accused abuser suffer? What does redemption look like for them? What is the correct punishment? How much time is enough? What does an accused abuser need to do to redeem themselves?

The answers to those questions, which many women gave in abundance, appear to have been irrelevant.

Though it is not our jobs to do the emotional labor of fixing the problems abusers created — though we would rather have focused on what redemption looks like for those who suffered the abuse — we did it anyway. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Comedy, Stand Up, Michael Che, and Louis C.K.

DNA test kits like AncestryDNA and 23andMe have become increasingly popular over the past few years and were a surprisingly popular gift item during the holiday season. 

Though DNA tests are being added to more and more people’s bucket lists, the sheer number of kits you can choose from is overwhelming. The result? A lot of interested folks opt out simply because they’re not sure which kit to buy. (Even DNA tests for your dog exist. Yeah.)

And that sucks, because finding out the whos, whats, and wheres that made you into the person you are is way too awesome to pass up. Read more…

More about Adoption, Genetics, Family Tree, 23andme, and Mashable Shopping

At Facebook, some employees have joined an online group to complain about what they say are the company’s left-leaning politics, reports the New York Times. 

It’s named FB’ers for Political Diversity, and was created by Brian Amerige, a senior engineer at the social media giant.

Amerige wrote a post called “We Have a Problem With Political Diversity” on Facebook’s internal message board, which was shared with the Times.

“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views,” reads the post. “We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.” Read more…

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Ah, the old flux capacitor prank.

Kathryn Burcham with Boston 25 news was reporting live from the scene of a plane crash at Cranland Airport in Hanson, Massachusetts, when it appears she accidentally made a Back to the Future reference. In the clip, Burcham claims that Jacob Haselden, the 20-year-old pilot who crash-landed the plane, told her a “defective flux capacitator” was the possible cause of the crash. 

Great Scott! We may have a troll on our hands.

As many of you know, a “flux capacitor” is a component in Doc Brown’s time machine from the Back to the Future franchise. It’s unclear if the plane was a time machine.  Read more…

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Jaguar Land Rover wants pedestrians to feel safer about its self-driving vehicles, and it’s hoping a pair of “virtual eyes” will do the trick. 

The thing is, it’s kinda creepy.

Think about it: A shuttle pulls up to a stoplight at an intersection that you’re waiting to cross and suddenly its cartoonish, drooping eyes are looking directly at you. Would you feel comforted? 

The idea is that you would, and it’s the latest attempt to replicate the human interaction that can occur between a driver and a person crossing the road. Ford, for instance, is working on a self-driving “language” that uses various patterns on a windshield-mounted light bar to communicate what the car is doing. Drive.AI is developing a less subtle method with digital images and captions on the side of its shuttles that explain what the car is doing, such as, “Waiting for you to cross.” Read more…

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