Category Archives: Blog

Some Facebook users who recently watched a Daily Mail video depicting Black men reported seeing a label from Facebook asking if they were interested in watching more videos about “primates.”

The label appeared in bold text under the video, stating “Keep seeing videos about Primates?” next to “Yes” and “Dismiss” buttons that users could click to answer the prompt. It’s part of an AI-powered Facebook process that attempts to gather information on users’ personal interests in order to deliver relevant content into their News Feed.

The video in question showed several instances of white men calling the police on Black men and the resulting events, and had nothing to do with primates. Facebook issued an apology, telling the New York Times that it was an “unacceptable error” and that it was looking into ways to prevent this happening in the future.

The label came to Facebook’s attention when Darci Groves, a former Facebook content design manager, posted it to a product feedback forum for current and former Facebook employees and shared it on Twitter. Groves said that a friend came across the label and screenshotted and shared it with her.

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The offensive label feels particularly unacceptable considering the extremely expansive database of user-uploaded photos that Facebook has access to, and could presumably use to ensure proper facial recognition by its tools. While AI can always make mistakes, it is the company’s responsibility to properly train its algorithms, and this misstep cannot be blamed on a lack of resources.

In addition to mishandling past racial justice issues within the company, Facebook’s lack of transparent plan to address its AI problem continues to sow distrust. While the apology was needed, the company’s lack of apparent actionable steps beyond disabling the feature and a vague promise to “prevent this from happening again” doesn’t cut it.

The approach is especially lackluster following Facebook’s recent move to cut off researchers’ access to tools and accounts used to explore user data and ad activity on the platform, citing possible violation of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has directly disputed that defense.

Combining a vague response with decreased access to facts makes it rather hard to simply trust that Facebook will handle this inappropriate AI gaffe with any kind of immediacy or results. If Facebook is committed to creating and using AI tools in an inclusive manner, it needs to specify exactly how it plans to fix this issue, and it needs to do so soon.

All that emptiness in outer space leaves lots of room for gorgeous galactic fireworks shows.

What you’re seeing here, according to NASA, is a “relatively rare celestial phenomenon” called a Herbig-Haro object. It’s created when ionized gas expelled by a young star collides with the clouds of dust and gas that surround these new (relatively speaking) stellar formations.

This Herbig-Haro object, named HH111, comes to us compliments of the Hubble Space Telescope and its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

The expelled gas is ionized by a young star when the intense heat in these regions of space causes the atoms and molecules making up the gas to lose their electrons. That charged gas speeds away from its source, and it collides with the physical matter surrounding the young star as it goes. These collisions create the streaking bursts of light you see in HH111, and they’re the building blocks of Herbig-Haro objects in general.

This view of HH111 was made possible by Hubble’s WFC3 because of how it captures light. As NASA explains, while Herbig-Haro objects are visible inside the optical range that human eyes can detect, all that dust and gas around the star makes that light difficult to see. But the WFC3 picks up light along the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums as well, and the latter in particular is useful for cutting through the stellar debris.

The result is this beautiful, blue-tinged streak of light cutting across space. A Hubble report from more than two decades ago describes how a cosmic tug-of-war between three stars led to the creation of this Herbig-Haro object.

This is a story about the power of redemption. Everyone makes mistakes in life and sometimes those mistakes warrant blocking someone on Facebook.

You’d better mean business, because when you block someone, your Facebook friendship is automatically ended. But if you are suddenly possessed by the spirit of generosity, there is a way to forgive and forget. It’s called unblocking someone on Facebook.

To be clear, unblocking someone means that they can see what you post publicly, but it does not mean that you are now Facebook friends with them. To do that, you must go the extra step of sending them a friend request. Facebook’s help center has more info on adding friends and blocking.

How to unblock someone on Facebook

To unblock someone on Facebook, click the little downward-facing arrow in the top right corner of the screen.

In the drop-down, click “Settings & Privacy” then “Settings.”

That will take you to a new page with all of your account settings. In the lefthand column, click on “Blocking.” That will take you to the section where you can manage users, messages, pages, etc. that you’ve blocked.

In the “Block users” subsection, you can see a list of everyone that you’ve blocked. Next to the name of each blocked user is a button saying “Unblock.”

Click that to unblock someone, and then click “Confirm” in the window that pops up to complete the action.

At this rate, actually seeing a Cybertruck on the streets may be the stuff of legend.

On a company call with Tesla employees, Elon Musk confirmed that the Cybertruck isn’t expected to go into production until late 2022, and volume production may not ramp up until late 2023, according to Electrek.

This latest timeline update comes after the Tesla website quietly changed its fine print to indicate that the Cybertruck would be coming in 2022, rather than late 2021 as previously promised. The delay wasn’t entirely surprising, as Musk had tweeted about the manufacturing and supply chain issues that had plagued the company, most likely pandemic-related.

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While not unexpected, the “late” part of “late 2022” is disappointing to the more than 1.25 million customers who pre-ordered the Cybertruck by Aug. 2021.

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While the extra year should be enough to finally deliver on the Cybertruck promise, perhaps Tesla buyers shouldn’t hold their breath. The Cybertruck is expected to be built at the Gigafactory Texas, Tesla’s new factory in Austin. The only problem? The Gigafactory is still under construction itself.

It might be a tad difficult to get the Cybertruck into consumers’ hands if the very industrial unit that makes it needs to finish being made first.

Want to get your pulse racing and your spine tingling? Maybe you need something spooky as an excuse to cuddle up closer to your crush? Or perhaps you want to test your mettle with some supremely creepy cinema? Whatever your reasons, Paramount+ has a thrilling library of movies perfect for a scary night in.

Below, we’ve collected the highlights across a wide field of horror films. Whether you’re on the hunt for vicious zombies, sinister slashers, creepy critters, merciless monsters, modern hits, or chilling classics with stars like Vincent Price and Béla Lugosi, we’ve got what you want.

Here are the 10 best scary movies now available on Paramount+.

1. A Quiet Place

John Krasinski went from actor to celebrated horror director with this spine-tingling 2018 hit. Starring opposite his real-life wife Emily Blunt, The Office star plays a farmer, dedicated to protecting his family from killer creatures that hunt by sound. This clever premise means the movie’s characters can’t scream, because such a sound would definitely be their last. That means your own sounds of terror are weaponized while watching, crashing into the silent soundscape that’s suffocating in tension.

Ruthlessly paced and keenly realized, A Quiet Place is a superbly scary thrill ride. But what makes it top-tier are the poignant performances by Krasinski, Blunt, and their onscreen children, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe. Together, they make a family-frightening feature that’s perfect for a quiet night at home. And if you dare to double-feature, the spooky sequel, A Quiet Place: Part II, is also available.

How to watch: A Quiet Place is streaming on Paramount+

2. Night of the Living Dead

There’s a horde of zombie movies to be found on Paramount+, from Bela Lugosi’s classic White Zombie, to the gleefully schlocky Overlord, to the studio-made epic World War Z. But the best of the bunch is George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

This 1968 independent film defined the zombie horror genre for generations. Its slow, shuffling undead with a ravenous hunger for human flesh were chillingly brought to “life” through eerie performances and grisly practical effects make-up that would become a revolting requirement. The frightening film follows a band of strangers, who huddle together in a remote farm house in a clumsy attempt to escape the clutches of cannibalistic reanimated corpses.

Shot in stark black-and-white and featuring heightened performances, it feels of its time. Yet the scares within are timeless.

How to watch: Night of the Living Dead is streaming on Paramount+

3. Saint Maud

In 2020, writer/helmer Rose Glass made a jaw-dropping directorial debut with this riveting psychological horror film. In a squalid seaside town, Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a pious young nurse who is fanatically dedicated to God. Hired as a private hospice caretaker for dying artist Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), Maud develops a dark fascination for her patient’s lust for life, booze, and Sapphic sex.

Their volatile bond is electric with temptation and conflict, which ignites as Maud steps up her quest to save Amanda’s soul. A battle of wills bends into the surreal as visual effects and a sound design reflect the world from Maud’s perspective. Punctuated with goosebump-pumping violence, swaddled in a sophisticated color palette of warmth and rot, and threaded by inky sexual tension, Saint Maud is uniquely intoxicating and unnerving experience that’ll leave you in horrified awe.

How to watch: Saint Maud is streaming on Paramount+

4. Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

As the glamor starlets of Hollywood’s Golden Age began to grow old, horror saw the rise of the psycho biddy subgenre. Stars like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Shelley Winters leaned into their age and their boldness to play tragically flawed anti-heroines, whose lives were streaked with terror.

In this freaky yet festive example from director Curtis Harrington, Winters stars as a wealthy and eccentric widow, who invites the local orphans to spend Christmas in her home. Things take a grisly Hansel & Gretel turn, when two troublesome siblings suspect beloved Auntie Roo isn’t what she seems. Whether you’re craving creepy kids, fractured fairy tales, holiday horror, or a psycho biddy, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? presents it all with a technicolor flare.

How to watch: Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? is streaming on Paramount+

5. A Bucket of Blood

Two prolific horror icons collide in this quirky classic. Roger Corman was a pioneer of American independent cinema, churning out scads of low-budget but wildly entertaining horror movies. Dick Miller was a character actor, who’d pop up in such popular pics as Gremlins, Piranha, The Howling, Chopping Mall, and The ‘Burbs. In this 1959 collaboration; however, Miller was the star, playing a simple-minded busboy who dreamed of being part of the hip beatnik scene.

Alas, none of the artists, poets, or free-loving dames at the coffee shop where he works will give him the time of day. That is until an accidental murder of a cat (think Polonius in Hamlet) leads to a macabre sculpture that blows the snooty lot away. Though stippled with grisly elements, A Bucket of Blood is at its core a satire of the ‘50s art scene. As such, it’s glossed in a smirking sense of humor that’s devilish fun.

How to watch: A Bucket of Blood is streaming on Paramount+

6. Arachnophobia

Want a creature feature that’ll make your skin crawl? Then check out Frank Marshall’s 1990 hit, which centers on an exotic spider making a sprawling web across a cozy American community. Jeff Daniels stars as the new doctor in town, who suspects an eight-legged assassin might be to blame for a spade of grisly deaths. He gets push back from an array of quirky characters, including an arrogant exterminator (memorably played by John Goodman). But when spiders start scurrying into showers, bowls of popcorn, and out of a dead man’s nose, there’s no denying infestation!

Along with squicky scares, Arachnophobia boasts a sly sense of humor that had critics celebrating it as a cheeky ode to the B-movies of the atomic age. But who needs giant radioactive insects, when swarms of fanged spiders are plenty scary?

How to watch: Arachnophobia is streaming on Paramount+

7. The Town That Dreaded Sundown

Since Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal Psycho, the slasher subgenre has had deep, dark ties to true-crime. This 1976 cult classic, which features a hooded serial killer, was inspired by the infamous and unsolved Texarkana Moonlight Murders. In 1946, the Phantom Killer stalked the teens of this Arkansas town, torturing, maiming, and murdering. Director Charles B. Pierce and writer Earl E. Smith played fast and loose with the facts of the crimes, delivering re-enactments rife with horrific hyperbole.

However, some chilling choices bring an air of eerie authenticity to the film. It was shot on location in Texarkana, featured real-life locals in small roles, and offered an ominous narrator (Vern Stierman) to usher audiences through the carnage as if this were a documentary. Imagine Unsolved Mysteries with a vicious bloodlust and a weaponized trombone, and you’ll have some idea what’s to come when the sun goes down.

How to watch: The Town That Dreaded Sundown is streaming on Paramount+

8. Pet Sematary

Stephen King has long been heralded the king of horror novels. His Pet Sematary was a book so scary that it’s been adapted to the big screen twice. The first came in 1989, yet this 2019 version is less a remake and more a reimagining. Instead of retreading the gruesome path of the original, directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer make surprising turns to keep the thrills fresh and frightening — but still deliciously ghoulish!

Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz star as parents happy to move their young children away from the bustling of a big city to a quaint Maine town. The locals are odd but friendly. (Shout out to a perfectly morose John Lithgow.) Their house is lovely, but its location proves full of dangers and deadly temptations. Then, this dreamy family’s waking nightmare begins when a dead cat is resurrected. From there, things grow more monstrous and moldering.

How to watch: Pet Sematary is streaming on Paramount+

9. Cry of the Banshee

If you treasure the deranged delights of movies like Midsommar, The Wicker Man, and The Witch, then you appreciate the perturbing pleasures found in folk horror. Thrillingly, Paramount+ boasts two of the foundational films in this subgenre, 1971’s The Blood On Satan’s Claw and 1970’s Cry of the Banshee. Both are British productions that deliver spooky tales of superstition and the supernatural, but only the latter also boasts horror icon Vincent Price.

Here, the mesmerizing star with a penetrating stare and a sinisterly syrupy voice plays a ruthless witch hunter whose brutality sparks a devilish comeuppance upon his entire family. Dark magic, violence, nudity, madness, and theatrical declarations (and damnations) come into play in this Elizabethan-era set tale, splashed with bright red blood.

How to watch: Cry of the Banshee is streaming on Paramount+

10. Invisible Ghost

Béla Lugosi was one of the first legends of horror films, starring in such classics as Dracula, The Black Cat, and The Raven. Lesser-known but nonetheless exciting is this twisted tale of marital strife and murder.

Joseph H. Lewis’s 1941 classic begins with a bizarre dinner, during which the eccentric Dr. Charles Kessler (Lugosi) toasts an invisible guest, his wife who went missing years before. Sometimes she still appears to the haunted doctor, driving him to act out in heinous violence. While his worried daughter, her mysterious fiancé, and a spooked house staff play detective (or die trying), Kessler horrifies the audience not only with his slaughter, but also through Lugosi’s disturbing gaze and bone-rattling intensity.

With a gothic flare and a fiendish finale, Invisible Ghost is an old-fashioned but spooky bit of fun.

How to watch: Invisible Ghost is streaming on Paramount+

Ride share companies are taking a stand against the draconian Texas anti-abortion law SB8.

Lyft announced Friday that it will cover 100 percent of legal fees for Lyft drivers sued under the terms of the law. Uber followed suit soon after, although it had initially taken the stance that it did not believe the law would apply to its drivers.

Lyft and CEO Logan Green made the announcement on Twitter. Uber CEO quote tweeted Green’s call for other companies to take action by saying it too would provide assistance for sued drivers.

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SB8 prohibits women in Texas from receiving abortions after six weeks, which is before most women usually know they’re pregnant. It also says private citizens can receive a minimum of $10,000 in damages if they sue any person who “aids and abets” a woman seeking an abortion after that window.

The law is vague about what “aids and abets” covers, but it could mean that a person taking a woman to or from an abortion — potentially, a rideshare driver — could be sued. This could deter some drivers from accepting rides going to or coming from clinics, which would make it even more difficult for a woman to attain an abortion.

Lyft and Uber stepping up to pay the fees could counteract that pressure, even though it still wouldn’t save a driver from going through a probably hellacious legal saga. Additionally, neither company provided details about how drivers could access this assistance, beyond the creation of a “Driver Legal Defense Fund.” In other words, the move by the rideshare companies is undoubtedly a good one, but the process of getting fees covered needs to be easy to access and provide funds upfront (rather than reimbursing after the fact) for it to be truly helpful.

Lyft is also donating $1 million to Planned Parenthood. CEO Logan Green said the donation and legal defense coverage is “to ensure that transportation is never a barrier to healthcare access.”

Want something to tickle your funny bone but don’t want to spend hours perusing your options? Picking a comedy to watch can be tricky, because humor is largely a matter of tase. But worry not.

Whether you’re hankering for a comedy classic or a modern hit, a feel-good crowd-pleaser or a cringe-inducing critical darling, a mainstream romp or an offbeat delicacy, a wry mockumenty or a jaunty musical, we’ve got you covered.

Here are the 10 best comedy movies now streaming on HBO Max.

1. Clueless

Is there a better adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma? As if! Writer/director Amy Heckerling took the framework of that classic Regency-era romance and brilliantly translated it into 1995 Beverly Hills. There, the affluent, educated-yet-naïve Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) is the benevolent queen bee of her high school. Her acts of kindness include giving a glam makeover to the scruffy new girl (Brittany Murphy), donating skis to the poor, and matchmaking teachers and teens alike. However, when it comes to her own love life, she is comically clueless. Slapstick, high-school hijinks, and shady one-liners make up much of the hilarious humor at play in this teen comedy. On top of all that, there’s scads of style, from a parade of enviable outfits to a sensational soundtrack full of ‘90s bangers. But what makes Clueless a classic is how marvelously Silverstone grounds this heightened world with her winsome charm.

How to watch: Clueless is streaming on HBO Max.

2. Singin’ in the Rain

Craving something that’ll not only make you laugh but also make you want to get up and dance? Then splash into the stupendous pleasures of this 1952 classic, co-directed by Stanley Donen and Hollywood legend Gene Kelly. The latter stars as a Vaudevillian who has worked his way up from stuntman to silent movie star. As the sound era shakes up the film industry, he hopes to make sweet music with an enchanting ingenue (a beaming Debbie Reynolds). However, his cantankerous leading lady (a ruthlessly silly Jean Hagen) won’t be sidelined without a fight! Full of meta jokes, charming banter, hysterical hijinks, and astonishing song numbers, Singin’ in the Rain is one of the best musical comedies that’s ever been made. Come for the jokes. Stay for the signature dance number that’s as astonishing now as it was decades ago. Then, let the romance of this feel-good film sweep you away.

How to watch: Singin’ in the Rain is streaming on HBO Max.

3. Shiva Baby

Worlds collide in this 2020 cringe comedy that’s been widely hailed by critics. When a Jewish college student (Rachel Sennott) dutifully attends a shiva alongside her parents, she’s prepared to field questions about her unimpressive job prospects and lack of a boyfriend. However, she’s not ready for her secret sugar daddy (Danny Deferrari) to show up, much less with his beautiful blonde wife (Dianna Agron) and their rosy-cheeked baby. Making matters even more fraught, her former best friend is slinging her serious side-eye. Something has got to give. In her remarkable debut feature, writer/director Emma Seligman creates laughs and suspense with an electrifying tapestry of observational humor, social awkwardness, jolting humiliation, and sexual tension. You’ve heard of feel-good comedies? Well, this is a feel-anxious-as-hell comedy, dragging us through each embarrassment with our harried heroine. And yet, we can’t recommend the experience highly enough.

How to watch: Shiva Baby is streaming on HBO Max.

4. The Birdcage

Family can be complicated. But rarely have those complications been as fall-down funny as in this fabulous 1996 farce. Adapted from the Franco-Italian comedy La Cage aux Folles, The Birdcage stars Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as a gay couple who must leap back into the closet when their adult son brings home his new fiancé and her deeply conservative parents. Frustrated and flamboyant, these husbands’ attempts to play it straight are plagued with problems, all of them divinely outrageous. Director Mike Nichols offers a crackerjack cast that includes Dan Futterman, Calista Flockhart, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, Christine Baranski, and a scene-stealing Hank Azaria. Together, they translate Elaine May’s sizzling screenplay about a culture clash of drag queens and political pawns into a rapturous showstopper, as hilarious as it is heartwarming.

How to watch: The Birdcage is streaming on HBO Max.

5. The 40-Year-Old Virgin

This R-rated 2005 release took the hijinks often associated with teen comedies (misunderstandings about sex, ferociously fumbled flirtations, awkward first times) to uproarious heights by throwing a middle-aged virgin into such humbling mishaps. Steve Carrell stars as the eponymous misfit, whose raucous friends dole out plenty of advice on women and seduction. Yet it’s an unexpected romance with a single mom (Catherine Keener) that might make him a man. Having thrived on television, Judd Apatow teamed with Carell on the screenplay, making his feature directorial debut with this late-bloomer laffer. It features a barrage of comedy stars, including Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Elizabeth Banks, Leslie Mann, Jane Lynch, Mindy Kaling, and David Koechner. The 40-Year-Old Virgin was such a smashing success that it launched Apatow’s movie helming career and spun Carell from scene-stealing sidekick to comedy A-lister.

How to watch: The 40-Year-Old Virgin is streaming on HBO Max.

6. The Philadelphia Story

A dazzling gem in the crown of screwball comedies is this 1940 classic from heralded director George Cukor. Adapted from a Broadway hit that had audiences roaring, The Philadelphia Story thrusts a trio of screen legends into a tantalizing love triangle. Katharine Hepburn stars as a Philadelphia socialite who is poised to remarry after divorcing her debonair ex (Cary Grant). However, when he and a charming tabloid reporter (James Stewart) crash her family’s pre-nuptial preparations, sparks fly and love is in the air. It’s not a question of if there will be a wedding, but who might be the groom. True to the subgenre, this funny film crackles with fast-paced banter, larger-than-life characters, feisty flirtations, and daffy humor. Critics cheered and the Academy bestowed Best Screenplay to Donald Ogden Stewart and Best Actor to Stewart (his first win!)

How to watch: The Philadelphia Story is streaming on HBO Max.

7. Little Shop of Horrors

Thirsty for comedy that sinks its teeth into the dark side? Open wide for the wild delights of this 1986 stunner from Frank Oz. Based on an off-Broadway musical (that was inspired by a dirt-cheap B-movie), Little Shop of Horrors centers on a fumbling flower shop in 1960s Skid Row. There, the meek Seymour Krelborn (Rick Moranis) pines for the beautiful Audrey (Broadway star Ellen Greene). When a chattering Venus Flytrap promises him fortune and fame, Seymour is willing to bleed — and do much worse — to impress his dream girl. Tapping into his storied career as a Muppeteer, Oz created a movie monster that’s mirthful, menacing, exciting, and sings with the voice of Motown legend Levi Stubbs. Grounding this perturbing plant in a world of wonders is plenty of doo-wop, witty one-liners, wacky lyrics, and comedy luminaries, including Steve Martin, Jim Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Guest, and Bill Murray.

How to watch: Little Shop of Horrors is streaming on HBO Max.

8. Best in Show

Christopher Guest is a master of the mockumentary, spoofing everything from folk music (A Mighty Wind) to community theater (Waiting for Guffman) to the mayhem of award season (For Your Consideration). Yet the grand champion of his filmography is definitely 2000’s Best in Show, which invited audiences behind the scenes of a prestigious national dog show. Master improvisers Michael McKean, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, and Schitt’s Creek’s Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara collaborate to create a wacky world of diverse dog owners, who channel all their hopes, neuroses, and love into their furry friends. Whether or not you’ve ever witnessed a real dog show of pedigree, you’ll enjoy the offbeat humor of this pack of oddball owners as they bicker, ponder, and parade to see who is top dog.

How to watch: Best in Show is streaming on HBO Max.

9. Modern Times

Charlie Chaplin was a king of comedy in the silent film era, rolling his iconic Little Tramp into such side-splitters as City Lights, Gold Rush, and The Kid. These and many more Chaplin offerings are available on HBO Max, through their TCM and Criterion Collection hubs. Subscribers can easily look back at how American physical comedy was forged through set pieces silly and sensational. You really can’t go wrong when it comes to Chaplin, but we’re highlighting Modern Times because even though it’s set in 1936, its humor is truly timeless. Taking on a string of industrial jobs while romancing a charming gamin, Chaplin zips from one zany bit to another with a captivating waddle and a chipper twitch of his mustache, fearlessly throwing himself face-first into the wildest shenanigans. Plus, as this film includes some scenes with sound and dialogue, it’s maybe the most accessible introduction to Chaplin’s works.

How to watch: Modern Times is streaming on HBO Max.

10. Tampopo

A spirited spoof tipping its hat to the Spaghetti Western, this 1985 Japanese comedy was promoted as a “ramen Western.” Its central story is about a cowboy hat-wearing truck driver (Tsutomu Yamazaki), who comes across a humble ramen shop where the food is truly “terrible.” Damsel in distress Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) begs this hardened hero to save her family’s business by teaching her to do right by ramen. So of course, he rounds up a posse to perfect her recipe. Full of physical comedy, giddy silliness, quirky characters, and charming performances, this film is a delectable delight. But writer/director Jûzô Itami brings even more to the table, spicing up this culinary tale with fantastical vignettes about the love of food. Though often ridiculous — and sometimes salacious — none of the laughs are lost in translation. But be warned: This funny film will make you hungry. The loving shots of ramen and the various speeches about its richness and wonders are ruthlessly mouth-watering. Maybe order dinner before digging in.

How to watch: Tampopo is streaming on HBO Max.

Soon, you might be able to watch Amazon Prime shows on an Amazon TV. Hooray?

According to a new report from Insider, Amazon has been working on Amazon-branded TVs for the last two years.

There are two versions in the works: One made by a third party, TCL, that will carry Amazon branding and be integrated with Alexa. And a second TV that Amazon engineers are reportedly developing in-house.

The former could come out as soon as October. There isn’t pricing information available yet, but they’ll reportedly be 55-75 inches.

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It’s easy to see why the prospect of watching Amazon TV shows via an Amazon Prime subscription on an Amazon device itself is attractive to the company. As its (possibly anti-trust law violating) Amazon Basics line shows, there’s nothing Amazon loves more than that sweet, sweet vertical integration.

Plus, just as the Amazon website showcases AmazonBasics products, an Amazon TV could place Prime movies and shows front and center. Apple doesn’t have an actual TV, but the AppleTV interface certainly places Apple TV+, as well as Apple Music and other Apple media options, right at the top of its menu.

Why Amazon wants a TV is clear. But, even if it’s an affordable, attractive product, should you? This is the company that has turned home security Ring devices into a surveillance network for the police. It collects mountains of data on users in order to sell us as many products as possible. Alexa has been known to eavesdrop. Forgive us if giving the corporation yet another physical anchor in the home doesn’t sound like an exciting opportunity to us.

Amazon already makes a Fire TV stick, a TV attachment, and remote that serves as an Amazon-powered streaming app platform. It’s not clear whether an actual Amazon TV would use the same interface. It has actually already dipped its toes into branded TVs, too. It released an AmazonBasics TV in December 2020, but it was only available in India. That device cost about $410.

But, apparently, the TV project hasn’t been smooth sailing. The Insider co-reporter of the piece, Ben Bergman, tweeted that ” the rollout has been beset with logistical bottlenecks.”

Will Amazon get its TV out in time for holiday shopping? Considering how much Amazon and Jeff Bezos absolutely love money, it’s probably a safe bet to take.

After a long wait for fans, it appears a live-action version of the beloved manga series One Piece is actually in the works at Netflix.

On Friday, Netflix’s “Geeked” Twitter account posted a photo of the script of episode one. It’s called “Romance Dawn,” written by Matt Owens and showrunner Steven Maeda.

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One Piece is a manga (Japanese comic) that follows the adventures of a boy with the superpower of a rubberband body, named Monkey D. Luffy, and his band of pirates in their quest for the world’s most powerful object known as One Piece. It’s written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, and has spawned an animated TV show and many other media properties.

Netflix first announced that it would adapt the series in January 2020. However, there’s been little released confirming that it was truly, actually happening.

We still don’t know much, but Netflix also posted the show’s official logo, which they hint is filled with easter eggs.

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Maeda also posted about the show after “a long wait.” The show’s slogan is apparently “No matter how hard or how impossible it is, never lose sight of your goal.” How appropriate!

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Welcome to Porn Week, Mashable’s annual close up on the business and pleasure of porn.

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If you live in America and have spent any meaningful amount of time on Pornhub this year, you may have noticed that its video search results for popular terms — like anal, blowjob, teen, or variations thereof — look significantly different than they did in prior years. Most notably, and universally across these categories, there are far fewer clips pulled from scenes shot by major, and predominantly American studios, either presented as is or collected into fan-made compilations like the infamous Cock Hero masturbation control challenge videos. Instead, many of these results pages feature far more content produced and uploaded by independent creator-performers, most of whom are what Porbhub refers to as “verified amateurs.”

And if you’ve watched a meaningful number of these uploads, you may have noticed that you hear a bit less English dialogue and background chatter than in the past — and more foreign accents and languages, especially from Central or Eastern Europe. Or you may catch other telltale signs of such a setting, either in the background of a shot, the title or description of a video, or the bio information of a creator.

“That international content is fun to watch,” says the Australian creator-performer Charlie Forde. “I’m a sucker for accents, even if I can’t understand what’s being said.”

These apparent trends don’t reflect big, sudden shake-ups in the demographics of porn creators, what they make, or their approaches to putting content on Pornhub. And they aren’t ubiquitous across every category or tag on the site. Some users may not even notice them, given how aggressively the interplay between platform algorithms and search histories can affect what each individual sees on Pornhub.

Rather, these shifts are just a few notable apparent after-effects of Pornhub’s decision to delete millions of videos back in December. This was not a Thanos-style, across-the-board cull; it targeted specific types of uploaders, and its effects on content volume and diversity varied wildly from one pornographic category to the next. But as Maggie MacDonald, a University of Toronto Ph.D. student who studies digital pornography platforms, points out, the net effect was a serious flattening and narrowing of Pornhub’s offerings, which has drawn underlying trends in porn production into sharp focus.

That includes potentially providing greater visibility for many creator-performers from beyond the Western world, long active but obscured within what MacDonald calls Pornhub’s “relentless, bottomless pit of anything you wanted to see.”

The Clipocalypse

Pornhub built its bottomless, diverse pit of content in part by allowing any and all users to make accounts and upload whatever they wanted to the site from the moment it launched in 2007. This free-for-all system generated over 6.8 million uploads in 2019 alone. Much of this content was always ephemeral, as accounts were regularly abandoned, and countless videos were pruned after a few days or weeks in response to copyright infringement complaints, or any number of other content moderation flags. But by December 2020, Pornhub hosted about 13.8 million videos.

However, early that month a New York Times opinion piece put a spotlight on the presence of child sexual abuse, and other forms of non-consensually filmed or shared, materials on the site. The article drew heavy criticism from many sex workers and industry observers. While it spoke to legitimate and longstanding concerns about Pornhub’s upload and moderation policies, it drew primarily on the dubious and distortionary findings and arguments of one anti-sex work conservative group, failed to meaningfully contextualize its findings, and generally seemed designed primarily to stoke a cultural panic about the site, and porn in general. But regardless of its validity, the article kicked up such a shit storm, notably prompting MasterCard and Visa to stop servicing the site and thus fundamentally threatening its viability, that Pornhub took drastic action.

It removed every video uploaded by an unverified account. It withdrew verification from every blue checkmark account that wasn’t owned by one of its studio content partners, or by someone in its Model Program, which gives individuals a share of the ad revenue generated by their uploads and access to tools for further content monetization. And it put a pause on new account verifications until it was able, towards the start of this year, to develop and implement a more rigorous protocol.

Several performers also claim that, although their verified accounts were left intact, Pornhub removed some of their potentially controversial clips. “Like consensual non-consent or daddy dom-little girl roleplay, and more hardcore or rough content,” explains Suzanne Ferrari, the creator and director behind the studio, and Pornhub content partner, SlutInspection.com.

Although it’s hard to get exact numbers, at one point there were just under 3 million videos left on the site. That number bounced back up significantly over the next few days. Pornhub did not reply to a request for comment.

However, MacDonald stressed that “the scale and speed of the purge was unprecedented. It was certainly not done with a great deal of care towards its users.” Even Tumblr gave people two weeks to prepare for its ban. Meanwhile, Pornhub gave no public notice.

This swiftly eliminated most of the pirated and dubious content — clips that uploaders pulled or compilations that they created from professionally produced content without permission; grainy amateur footage with no clear attribution or provenance — that had long defined the platform for many users. Pornhub has spent years ostensibly fighting piracy, but its limited approaches to the problem allowed the issue to persist.

“I used to have to spend a whole work day every month searching… pegging and other keywords for content I’ve created, looking for pirated content to get taken down,” says Lucy Hart, a prominent studio operator and performer. “I’d always find shit. It was endless.”

“I did that for the first two months following these changes, and never found anything again.”

This has led numerous professional content producers and performers to applaud Pornhub’s purge. “As a content creator, I see it as more of a cleanse than a purge,” says Ferrari.

Many have noted that they’d actually been calling for more stringent verification standards for uploaders for years, both to fight revenue-sapping piracy and limit abusive materials from slipping onto the site — and that, if anything, they’re upset Pornhub only made these changes in response to a moral panic, as opposed to ample informed insider advocacy.

However, Brandon Arroyo, a porn researcher and host of the podcast Porno Cultures, argues that Pornhub’s promise of anonymity fostered not just rampant piracy, but also vibrant communities of real amateurs, as well as semi-professional content creators serving highly niche and often marginalized sexual groups.

“Users that were just posting their sex acts out of passion, and not for monetary value, have perhaps been hurt most by the purge,” he says. In recent months, he added, he also believes that the site has lost a vital “sense of wonder and excitement that came with exploring mystery, watching people take risks because they knew they could maintain their anonymity.”

In the weeks following the purge, Vice’s Samantha Cole thoroughly documented how animated, audio erotica, and furry content on Pornhub largely collapsed, as much of it had been produced by people who didn’t want to reveal their identities to the site. Forde adds that some of the biggest accounts creating content for “fetish niches that mainstream companies don’t cater to as much,” like giantess and shoe porn, also vanished, decimating their genres.

Although some new verified accounts have emerged to fill these content gaps, Arroyo and others stress that the end of anonymity has taken a serious toll on the number and extent of Pornhub’s fetish rabbit holes. While they were niche, these warrens had notable followings — and MacDonald notes that it was entirely possible for users to stumble upon them, disappearing into worlds of diverse discovery.

“That’s a big loss,” Arroyo lamented.

The European Connection

But how could the decline of amateur, niche, or pirated content lead to the increased visibility of independent creator-performers — and audibility of some languages — in key porn categories?

After America, Hungary and the Czech Republic had the most porn stars of any nation — far more than the U.S. per capita.

Well, the answer is surprisingly simple: There’s been an incredibly vibrant adult content creation scene in Central and Eastern Europe for decades now. Even before the democratization of content creation hit full steam, an analysis of the bios of 10,000 professional porn stars active across the globe between 1981 and 2013, pulled from the authoritative Internet Adult Film Database, found that, after America, Hungary and the Czech Republic had the most porn stars of any nation — far more than the U.S. per capita. The Czech Republic became an especially notable porn hub, rivaling California and drawing in performers from neighboring countries, in large part because of its cheap labor and operating costs, the high returns offered by selling porn to international audiences, and the nation’s liberal sexual attitudes and permissive legal framework. Prague is currently home to WGCZ Holdings, the owner of major Pornhub competitor xVideos, as well as numerous porn studios and ancillary service providers.

Over the last decade especially, the number of adult performers and content creators not just in these nations, but also in Romania and Russia seemingly exploded. These nations have long histories of relatively high youth unemployment and underemployment. And in recent years, they have rapidly gained access to cheap and robust telecoms infrastructure — at the same time as Pornhub and other platforms have made it easier than ever to produce adult content, put it in eyeshot of consumers in higher-income markets, and profit, all from behind closed doors. This has drawn in some members of these nations’ already sizable populations of sex workers, many of whom may appreciate the added safety of not having to meet with strangers IRL, as well as tons of young folks just eager to make a buck, and often not as hung up about sex work as previous generations. A 2019 analysis found that Russia has actually surpassed the Czech Republic in absolute number of porn performers, although it still trails behind the U.S. — and the Czechs still dominate in per capita terms. Recent estimates also suggest that there are about 100,000 sexual cammers in Romania.

As one of the most visible platforms in the West, uploading content to Pornhub was always a good avenue for independent creator-performers from these nations to build up fanbases in high potential markets, make some decent ad revenue and initial sales, then drive followers to other sites for more engagement and monetization. Although the rankings constantly change, any time you dig into the 100 most popular “verified amateur” content creator-performers on Pornhub, you’ll usually find that a sizable chunk of them either started out, or are still based, in Central or Eastern Europe.

Notably, a major adult industry trade publication recently profiled Eva Elfie, a Moscow-based indie creator-performer whose homemade content performed so well on Pornhub that the site unilaterally bumped her from its verified amateur to its professional porn star rankings. (She currently sits in third place sitewide.) The feature explains in detail how Elfie and a number of other Russian indie darlings consciously deconstruct content that performs well with Western audiences, then build clips that they believe will earn them a solid spot in the results for popular search terms (although seemingly not any of those that might run them afoul of Russia’s notoriously homophobic authorities) — often minimizing dialogue or adopting accents to hide their ethnicities.

As Susanna Paasonen, a professor at Finland’s University of Turku who studies porn sites, points out, the abundance of pirated content, usually from scenes made by U.S. studios, historically amplified the visibility of a few American faces — or gave them functional dominance over key content categories. Arroyo and MacDonald add that Pornhub’s algorithms seem to perpetuate aggressive feedback loops, giving the most ubiquitous and popular creators and performers ever more visibility, while making it exceptionally difficult for new or long sidelined faces to break through.

So, Paasonen says, now that Pornhub is no longer overrun with pirated content that artificially boosts a few faces into extra-heavy rotation it makes sense that “U.S. commercial studio content may currently have less relative visibility.” It also makes sense, she adds, that indie creators would benefit the most from this shift. Put those two developments together, and you have an environment that finally gives a little more visibility to a preexisting and vibrant pool of content creators from across the globe — and especially from the best-developed non-American markets.

“Because I’ve done a large number of mainstream studio scenes, when the stolen versions I’d been tagged in got removed in December, my ranking on Pornhub went down, despite my having a large collection of my own independent content available on the site,” says British performer Adreena Winters, who has worked with American and European studios.

However, this is hardly the only trend to arise from the numerous and multifaceted shifts created by Pornhub’s content purge. Alan X, a producer-director, points out that the sudden drop in real amateur content on the site has given greater visibility to studios that shoot “amateur or reality style content.” Lilly Sparks, the founder of xoafterglow, a studio that bills itself as a source of “high quality porn by women,” suggests that Pornhub’s increased demands of documentation proving the age and consent of everyone in a scene will nudge small, indie creator-performers towards “more solo content in the short-term, because it’s easier to meet the new guidelines” when you’re just shooting yourself. MacDonald suggests that the decline of niche and amateur videos has given more space to the “lowest common denominator” content that pros tend to veer towards, because it performs well with a wide, traditional paying audience: “Hot, thin, white couples having very boring, kind of mechanical sex, in a very performative and posed way.”

There are likely many more trends as well which only affect niche corners of Pornhub, narrow user bases, or have yet to become clear. The December purge’s reconfiguration of Pornhub’s library was so fundamental it may take years for content creators to fully figure out how they fit into this rapidly shattered and reconfigured ecosystem — and for a new normal to stabilize.

Indie Performers Still Get Screwed

Even if the dust of Pornhub’s content shakeup is still settling, you might expect the space created on a flattened and narrowed Pornhub for independent creator-performers from across the globe to shine would translate into clear and notable gains. However, while a few independent creator-performers, like Serene Siren, say they have enjoyed “much more attention,” many like the Russophone model MollyRedWolf says that she and other performers she knows have actually seen declines of at least 50 percent in their typical video view counts since December. Most creator-performers say that, even if and when their visibility has gone up, their profits have plummeted. “My income post cull is approximately one fifth of what it was prior,” says Forde.

It’s entirely possible for indie creator-performers to gain relative visibility within a porn category yet see their absolute view counts plummet in this peculiar post-purge Pornhub ecosystem.

This apparent paradox — more visibility, less success — likely reflects several more knock-on effects of Pornhub’s disastrous December. Notably, initial analyses suggest that Pornhub took a major hit to its overall traffic right after its purge, although it’s not clear how much of that has to do with concerns about its reputation, displeasure with its altered content pool, declining SEO due to a massive loss of content, or something else. If these traffic declines are not uniform across user demographics, they would explain wildly varied traffic drops from one category, performer, or video to the next. Or, if arcane algorithmic calculations led a performer’s niche or content tags to lose out against others in Pornhub’s overall content-and-consumer reshuffle, that would likely compound their traffic losses relative to overall site dips as well. So, it’s entirely possible for indie creator-performers to gain relative visibility within a porn category yet see their absolute view counts plummet in this peculiar post-purge Pornhub ecosystem.

Performers also say that Pornhub’s ad revenues have seemingly dropped significantly in the wake of its December crises. It still doesn’t have the ability to process credit card payments. And while elements of the site are set up to take cryptocurrency, few consumers seem willing to learn to use what is still for many a new and complex payment system, and performers can’t use crypto to receive fan tips or sell paid clips — key former revenue sources. So, blows to the site’s reputation and payment processing systems have largely decoupled improved visibility from increased profitability.

MollyRedWolf and a few other performers seem to believe that, on top of all of this, Pornhub is trying to sabotage them as well. She and Sweetie Fox, another Russophone performer, point out that the site’s main page seems to mainly promote its studio partners’ content, rather than that of independent creators. They also accuse the site of depressing some amateur models’ visibility; MollyRedWolf believes Pornhub is specifically suppressing Russian performers’ content because, she asserts, they want to focus on performers and keywords that earn them the most ad revenue for the site, a trend that she argues favors American creator-performers above all others.

Pornhub, MollyRedWolf acknowledged in a recent YouTube video on this topic, has denied these claims. And Hart points out that the mechanisms on the site that dictate visibility, payouts, and the relationship between the two are so opaque and complicated that it’s all but impossible for performers to draw such conclusions firmly. But the very existence of these doubts speak to the erosion of performer trust in, and willingness to deal with the ups and downs of, a seemingly battered and volatile Pornhub. MollyRedWolf openly stresses that she, like several other models, has started to wind down her commitment to putting content up on Pornhub, refocusing on other platforms.

“I don’t think performers will leave Pornhub that quickly,” says MacDonald. But it is possible that Pornhub will experience a slow bleed that continues to shake and shift its content equations.

Given continued anti-porn crusades against the site, even after it moved heaven and earth to allay fears about abuse on and off its platform, it’s possible that some other external shock could upset the site’s new, emerging balance as well. “I honestly believe Pornhub is doing everything in its power to avoid disruptive shake-ups like this again,” says creator-performer Bea York. “But I do worry about the anti-porn movement moving the goalpost and creating new problems.”

It’s unclear what such future shocks, slow burn or rapid, could do to the visibility of independent creator-performers, American or otherwise — or what other unexpected trends they could create or reveal on the site. Save to say that they’ll likely be equally surprising and complex to outside observers, and even more painful for every creator and performer who has to live with them.

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