Spoilers ahead: If you haven’t watched Handmaid’s Tale, you’ve been warned. 

The Trump administration’s forcible separation of children from their families at the U.S. border has everyone comparing it to The Handmaid’s Tale — including Margaret Atwood herself.

The author of the dystopian classic has pulled many of the narrative’s horrific happenings from history, and on Tuesday, Atwood acknowledged how believable Trump’s cruel border policy would be within the Republic of Gilead.

More about Stephen King, Immigration, Trump, Margaret Atwood, and The Handmaid S Tale

Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has no heart.

Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas and Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski went head-to-head on Fox News on Tuesday evening after Lewandowski mocked a 10-year-old-girl with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother at the border. Her father is a U.S. citizen.

“I read about a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who is taken from her mother and put in a cage,”  Petkanas said.

“Womp womp,” Lewandowski interrupted, as if he just learned someone’s ice cream fell off their cone, splattering on the ground.

More about Immigration, Trump, Corey Lewandowski, Culture, and Politics

On Monday, American Girl revealed a brand new mini Xbox One S gaming accessory set for its dolls, and honestly, none of us were ready.

Seeing the tiny gaming bundle in action immediately inspired a conflicted mixture of “WOW I NEED THIS” and also “Wait, do I Iook that dead inside while #gaming?” 

But while the American Girl dolls modeling alongside the pretend console may be caught in the uncanny valley, we’ve got enough feels to make up for their thousand-yard stare. Namely, it’s the feel of: HELL. YES. 

The tiny Microsoft console not only projects 10 different gaming screens, but also comes with two physical discs you can actually insert into the console, with boxed versions of such gaming classics as Dance! (in no way affiliated with Just Dance) and BLOKS (in no way affiliated with Minecraft).  Read more…

More about Entertainment, American Girl Doll, Xbox One S, Entertainment, and Gaming

George Takei wrote that the plight of detained immigrants at the U.S. border is worse than the Japanese internment camps he was forced into as a child “in one core, horrifying way.” He wasn’t separated from his family like the more than 2,000 children suffering due to Trump’s zero tolerance policy.

“At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents,” Takei wrote in an essay for Foreign Policy published on Tuesday. “We were not pulled screaming from our mothers’ arms. We were not left to change the diapers of younger children by ourselves.” Read more…

More about George Takei, Trump Immigration, Culture, and Web Culture

Without warning, President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he’s directing the Pentagon to form a new arm of the military called the “Space Force.”

Sounds pretty cool right? Well, as cool as it may sound, even if it is eventually created, the Space Force may not change very much for U.S. military operations in space.

The U.S. military already has a huge presence in orbit, armed with a fleet of both known and classified satellites that spy down on potential threats to the nation day and night.

“The U.S. military has been very active in space for 60 years,” John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said in an interview.   Read more…

More about Space, Science, Outer Space, Department Of Defense, and Air Force

Executives at Apple, Microsoft, YouTube, Uber, and more tech companies are joining other Americans with a conscience in speaking out against the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from their families at the border. 

“It’s heartbreaking to see the images and hear the sounds of the kids,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Irish Times. “Kids are the most vulnerable people in any society. I think that what’s happening is inhumane, it needs to stop.”

Over a six-week period ending in May, the United States government separated over 2,000 children from their families as they attempted to cross the border and placed the children and parents in separate facilities. Increased media coverage of the practice, featuring new images of immigrants being kept in cages and ProPublica’s gobsmacking audio of children wailing, has led to national outrage in recent days. The public has responded to the revelations with an outpouring of donations to immigrant advocacy organizations and calls for change. Read more…

More about Tech, Apple, Youtube, Microsoft, and Uber

Somehow, Facebook is still finding ways to make Facebook Messenger more annoying.

Now, the company plans to bring autoplaying video ads to users Messenger inboxes as soon as Monday, according to a report from Recode.

Ads aren’t new to Messenger, but until now they’ve been limited to static, News Feed-style ads, not the more intrusive autoplaying videos. 

But after more than a year of testing those ads, which have appeared about halfway down in users’ inboxes, the Messenger team reportedly thinks the automatically playing videos won’t be a nuisance. Read more…

More about Tech, Facebook, Advertising, Facebook Messenger, and Apps And Software

Not all heroes wear capes, or Wakandan catsuits.

Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman handed over his “Best Hero” award at the 2018 MTV Movie & TV Awards to a real-life hero.

In his acceptance speech on Saturday, Boseman thanked the incredibly brave James Shaw Jr., the 29-year-old who disarmed the Waffle House shooter without being armed himself, likely saving many lives in the process. 

“Receiving an award for playing a superhero is amazing, but it’s even greater to acknowledge the heroes that we have in real life,” Boseman said on stage. Read more…

More about Mtv Movie Awards, Chadwick Boseman, James Shaw Jr, Entertainment, and Celebrities

It took a long time for Australians to get Amazon, and even longer to get Prime.

The membership program is finally available in the country, offering free delivery on products as well as access to Prime Video and other services like Twitch Prime and Prime Reading.

Interestingly, A$6.99 (US$5.27) or A$59 (US$44.51) for the year, it’s half the price of what U.S. customers are paying for the service.

However, Prime in Australia only offers free two-day business delivery, whereas you can get free same-day or next day delivery in the U.S. for some items on Amazon. Australian Prime does offer free delivery for international orders over $49, however. Read more…

More about Tech, Australia, Amazon, Amazon Prime, and Tech

I held my tears back upon reading about Marco Antonio Muñoz, a Honduran father who killed himself after being separated from his 3-year-old son. I choked on them again when I learned of Elsa Johana Ortiz Enriquez’s plight: She brought her 8-year-old son across the American border in May only to be deported back home to Guatemala without him. She has no idea when or how she’ll be reunited with her child.

I put off weeping by clicking out of each article when I felt a surge of panic and anguish. As the parent of an almost 4-year-old, I found the details of these stories made me want to vomit. My compulsion to hold those emotions at bay has a lot to do with my job as a reporter covering subjects like suicide and sexual assault. There are only so many times I can cry in a week.  Read more…

More about Social Good, Donald Trump, Immigration, Families, and Social Good