DC All Access showed a new clip from the DC animated movie Justice League Dark featuring a demonic poker game. It features cheating, commentary on David Copperfield, and a pretty solid pun on “betting the house.”
It’s always nice to hear Matt Ryan as Constantine, and this is no exception. Justice League Dark will be released digitally on January 24, 2017, and on DVD on February 7, 2017.
Sterling Archer is not known for his commitment to self-care. The fictional spy is regularly beaten and shot, and subsists almost exclusively on a diet of booze. That is, with one glaring exception: Eggs Woodhouse.
YouTube chef Andrew Rea brings food from movies and TV to life like the prison red sauce from Goodfellas or Louie’s fried chicken. Eggs Woodhouse is orders of magnitude more decadent than any of his previous recipes, or any food a human being would willingly eat for that matter.
A twist on eggs Benedict—the popular brunch food usually scarfed down by 20-somethings wasted on overpriced mimosas—eggs Woodhouse has the following, needlessly additions, most of which are prohibitively expensive: Kashmiri saffron, Iberico ham, creamed spinach, shaved black truffles, and caviar.
Not only would such a dish likely give a lesser, non-animated man congestive heart failure, but it doesn’t even look all that good. Know how mixing every color of paint together just makes brownish dreck? Eggs Woodhouse is that, but afterwards you eat it. It’s less a meal and more a shortcut to the gastrointestinal danger zone.
Tuesday, news broke that Suicide Squad director David Ayer will stay in the DC film universe with an all-female film called Gotham City Sirens, which will star Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. But buried beneath that news is the potential of two other films based on this summer’s DC team up.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, in addition to Gotham City Sirens, DC and Warner Bros. are working on a Suicide Squad sequel and a spinoff featuring Will Smith’s Deadshot. That’s three films that will directly follow up on Suicide Squad.
However, you also have to remember that we still don’t know where Jared Leto’s Joker is going to appear again. That could be another movie or potentially the Suicide Squad sequel. Plus, there’s Ben Affleck’s The Batman, which we all assumed would feature Joker or Deadshot (remember Deadshot has a huge beef with Batman in Suicide Squad). But, at the moment, we only know that Deathstroke is in that movie. All three of those guys could appear in that movie. Or just the one, we do not yet know.
Honestly, this all kind of makes sense, though. Suicide Squad may have been savaged by critics, but it did very well financially. And even critics of the film admitted that Smith and Robbie were highlights. Plus, they’re massive movie stars. You don’t cast them for one film, as popular comic book characters, and then put them on the shelf.
When audiences might see Suicide Squad 2 or Deadshot is anyone’s guess. What we do know is the DC Extended Universe is in full swing. Wonder Woman is the next film we’ll see, followed by Justice League. James Wan is currently casting Aquaman (which will be out in October 2018) while The Flash looks for a new director. Affleck continues to work on The Batman and now there’s Gotham City Sirens which, with the addition of Ayer as director, sort of moves into a pole position among those films. It could very well get the other Untitled 2018 DC slot, or one of the 2019 spots as well.
That’s the premise of a brand new film that may become the biggest science fiction disaster movie ever financed by, and shot in, China.
The working title of the film is Imago, and it’ll be written by Adam Robitel (Insidious: Chapter 4) and Gavin Heffernan. The duo just sold their pitch “for a substantial but undisclosed sum” to a Los Angeles and Beijing-based production company called Cristal Pictures. The aim is to cast both Western and Chinese actors for “the first big budget sci-fi disaster movie to be made in China as an official Chinese co-production,” according to the press release. It was specifically conceived to be shot in Hong Kong.
The premise of Imago is our worst environmental nightmare. Technology has figured out a way to stop global warming and save the planet. Yes! We’re saved! But when it’s actually used, thing go horribly wrong resulting in “unimaginable consequences.”
“We loved this pitch,” said Cristal president Scott Einbinder. “It’s a great character-driven disaster movie, a genre favorite in China and around the world, with appeal for U.S. audiences as well. We’re fast-tracking this one and hope to be in production by late 2017.”
Whether or not Imago ends up happening or becoming a hit, the idea to use our current environmental situation (which at last check was absolutely abysmal) as the premise of a big budget disaster movie is smart. Scary, but smart. We’ll be keeping an eye out for info on this one.
Although we call erections “boners,” anyone who has basic familiarity with human anatomy knows our slang deceives us—for unlike most mammals, men have no penis bones. For decades scientists have wondered, “Why? No? Penis Bone?” A new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society might finally answer the mystery of what killed the penis bone: monogamy.
To explain how, I gotta lay out some key baculum facts—that’s the scientific name for the penis bone—for all the PB n00bs out there. Penis bones are diverse in shape and size across many different mammals. The baculum of a walrus is two-feet long. In the bonobo, it is eight millimeters. In this new study, scientists set out to trace the evolutionary history of the baculum to account for the vast differences in penis bone length amongst animals.
The study ultimately discovered “a clear [relationship] between the bone’s length and a species’ promiscuity: more promiscuous species had longer bacula,” writes The Economist.
Kit Opie, a postdoctoral research fellow at University College London who led the study, tells The Guardian that penis bone length was longer in males that engaged in “prolonged intromission”—meaning when species take more than three minutes to mate. Males use “prolonged intromission” to keep the female away from his competition while he impregnates her. Matilda Brindle, the study’s co-author, explains it like this on The Conversation:
Far from simply being a nice way to spend an afternoon, prolonging intromission like this is a way for a male to prevent a female from sneaking off and mating with anyone else before his sperm have had a chance to work their magic.
What scientists now theorize is that human lost their penis bones when monogamy became prevalent, about 1.9 million years ago. They no longer had the pressing need to keep away the competition by fucking for a long time. After all, “the average duration from penetration to ejaculation for human males is less than two minutes,” Brindle reminds us. (Dudes... get it together...) Nevertheless, despite the grumblings of lonely hearts, human males simply don’t have intense sexual competition because human females tend to mate with one male at a time.
And that’s why you don’t have a dick bone. Good night, boys.
Hot damn. A snorkeler in Hawaii stumbled on this underwater scrap between an octopus and a terrifying moray eel and it looks like it’s going to be a tangled fight to death. The moray eel looks like it has the clear advantage because, well, it’s a big ass bully with the octopus in its jaws but after a few whips around, the octopus grapples the eels with its tentacles and then unleashes an ink bomb in time to confuse the eel and escape. Phew.
It’s not exactly a victory for the octopus though because it loses a tentacle (which it can admittedly grow back later) but it’s not exactly an L for the eel either because it got itself a tasty snack. But the murderous eel isn’t happy with just a tie so it looks for something else to fight: the snorkeling cameraman.
The moray eel starts charging at the cameraman and rams its open mouth and jams its frightening teeth at the guy until the dude just makes a break for it. I think if the snorkeler was any slower, things would be a lot worse for everyone involved.
So who wins? The octopus without a tentacle, the super aggro eel who picks a fight with everything, or the snorkeler who will have nightmares for the rest of his life?
Jeremy Irons talks Justice League. Adam Driver doesn’t want you to see a single second of Episode VIII before it hits theaters. Matt Reeves discusses Caesar’s journey in War for the Planet of the Apes. Plus, Robin Hood: Origins gets its villain, new footage from Monster Trucks, and a new teaser for Legion. Spoilers get!
Jeremy Irons discusses how Alfred will handle being flung into a world of superheroic gods in the movie.
No, Alfred is a stickler for staying the same. He tries to modulate everybody else. In a very gentle, English way he tries to deal with these people who can do all these extraordinary things in a very calm way, a very grounded way. He does not modulate at all. He sometimes lets Bruce Wayne out a bit on the lead, but he’s still attached.
Director Matt Reeves tells /Film about Caesar’s almost spiritual journey in the film:
In War, we wanted to push him to this place where he would be pushed to extremes. And we would go deeper into his nature. And as a result, he’d be tested in a way that he would either fail or not fail, and it’s what he does in this movie that in our minds, makes him the seminal figure in ape history. If somebody was tested in this way, if somebody was this central to the creation of the ape world in the human story, that person would be like a god. So that’s how the whole idea of trying to create him as sort of a Biblical epic story.
Reeves also shed some light on the humanity-destroying virus from the last movie:
Well, in the last movie, the idea in Dawn was that the virus had spread and wiped out basically 98% of humanity, right? Such a small number of humans who are left. Everyone got it, though. So the ones who are left, the humans who are left, they were immune because they’re carrying the virus. They’re all carriers. But none of the suffered the same effects that destroyed the rest of the world. So they actually do have the virus, but they’re immune to its effects. So it’s no longer an ongoing thing where they’re worried about getting the virus, they all are just carriers but immune.
James Gunn teases an eclectic mix for the next volume of the Awesome Mix:
The second soundtrack is great. I think it’s a more diverse soundtrack. I think the first soundtrack [had] a bunch of songs that maybe you heard but didn’t know the name of the song – you didn’t know the name of the singer. In this one, we have some really incredibly famous songs and then some songs that people have never heard. So, it’s a much more diverse soundtrack.
Ben Mendelsohn has been cast as the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham. [Variety]
In a move that probably has a Disney marketing executive somewhere internally screaming, Adam Driver thinks there shouldn’t be a single trailer for the film:
I think that’d be bold. I’d love it, yeah! Then no one would know anything. The less people know, I feel like, the more exciting… the more of an event it is.
Meanwhile, Daisy Ridley’s review of the film so far is in: [excited noise].
I watched a sizzle reel. I went to go see Rian in the edit, and that was very...[makes excited noise] Rian sounds very happy. It’s very, very exciting. Rian doesn’t love showing stuff. I’ve seen bits and bobs, but he likes it to be done. So I think probably the first time I see it will be when it’s fully done. I don’t think anyone will see an early cut outside of the main editing team....
[Empire]
Michael Bay invites you to unlearn what you have learned about Optimus Prime in a new poster.
Here’s a new TV spot for the film about monsters in trucks.
Gotham has long teased the return of Cameron Monaghan’s character Jerome, and his evolution into the show’s take on a proto-Joker—and it seems like the show is going to start setting something up pretty soon.
A hastily deleted tweet from Monaghan revealed a shot of him in the Joker make-up and a purple-hued vest/dress shirt get up very much inspired by the classic comic book design. It could simply be Monaghan playing a joke that got a little too far out of hand, or it could have been deleted to keep his appearance on the show secret. Either outcome seems like it could be likely in the crazy world of Gotham. [Comicbook.com]
Ignacio Serrichio has joined the cast as smuggler and longtime associate of the Robinsons, Don West. [Deadline]
Sad news, witchcraft fans: the show will end after its third season. [THR]
Neil Patrick Harris talks about how close the show is to the original books:
I think it’s super faithful to the books. I think at times it’s shockingly dark. From what I gathered, Netflix was concerned that adults weren’t going to be able to value it because it was skewing towards a younger demographic. And I think now that it’s done, they want to make sure the kids still value it and it’s not gone too Stranger Things. I really wanted Olaf to be bad. To be a bad person.
[Collider]
Finally, here’s a new teaser image featuring Aubrey Plaza’s character, Lenny Busker. [Comicbook.com]
Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson. Banner art by Jim Cooke.
Sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise must certainly give you a feeling of power and authority. But comfort? Captain Kirk’s Starfleet throne never actually looked that comfortable, which is why we’d prefer boldly going where no one has gone before in this bean bag captain’s chair instead.
It looks as faithful a replica of where James T. Kirk commanded the Enterprise from as a bean bag chair can be, complete with plenty of faux buttons for ordering up the occasional photon torpedo, or putting the ship on red alert.
For $90 it isn’t cheap as far as bean bag chairs go, and the price doesn’t actually include the beans. You’ll need to fill it yourself with styrofoam packing peanuts, tribbles, or whatever will be the most comfortable way for you to endure your next Star Trek marathon.
We were excited when the mythological miniseries Odyssey of the Amazons was announced because of its potential to explore the history of the Amazons separated from their direct relationship with their most famous daughter, Wonder Woman. Well, it seems like the book is going to do exactly that, and in some very intriguing ways.
The Hollywood Reporter has a new interview with Odyssey writer Kevin Grevioux about the series, where he briefly touched upon the series—which will follow a crew of Amazons as they sail off from Themiscyra around the world, years before Diana’s birth—and how it takes its inspiration from mythology. He also added an intriguing tease that Odyssey will tie the origins of the Amazons in with powerful warrior women across different cultures:
We were looking at the great epic poems, like the Iliad, Jason and the Argonauts — what if we did something with the Amazons that had that same epic power. That’s how it really started. In this one, we have, essentially, the origins of the Amazons. Where they came from, why there are so many across the planet? One of the legends of the Amazons is that they began in the Middle East, others have them near Greece, there was even a kind of Amazon in Africa amongst the Senegalese peoples. There were even the Valkyries in Norse mythology. What I wanted to do was find a way to explain that all these powerful women exist for a reason. The series is about these women traveling around the world and finding more of their kind, while trying to answer the question why they exist, and how they are who they are. It’s very interesting.
This is exactly the sort of thing we wanted to hear about this book. Getting a chance to explore a hugely important part of Wonder Woman’s backstory, but in a manner that’s entirely removed from her personal relationship to it, is fascinating. It’s a very cool way to shine a light on part of the DC universe that rarely gets that much attention beyond Diana herself.
Odyssey of the Amazons is due to begin January 18.
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A huge expanse of cold, Arctic air is sweeping through parts of Canada and the United States. Known as a “polar vortex,” the weather system is expected to deliver record-setting low temperatures and a particularly nasty wind chill.
This visualization was made from data collected by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite, and it shows temperature data in the infrared spectrum.
From December 1 to 11, AIRS tracked the cold snap as it swept across North America. On December 7, the polar vortex had descended into the Plains states and reached Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri. The cold air continued to make its way from west to east, reaching into the Ohio Valley and New England on December 9. These regions are now feeling the brunt of this cold air mass, which is expected to deliver frigid record-setting temperatures this week.
Subzero temperatures are expected across the Upper Midwest today and tomorrow. By Thursday morning, Minnesota, Wisconsin, parts of the Dakotas, and Chicago are set to feel wind chills colder than -20 degrees F (-29 degrees C). Records for cold temperatures are also expected in northern Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Parts of Canada are also bracing for the big chill, including Manitoba and Ontario. New England and parts of the US East Coast can expect the cold temperatures to hit hard on Thursday and Friday, with wind chills ending up in the -10 to -25 degrees F range.
It sounds dramatic, but the polar vortex is nothing new. It’s a fundamental feature of our atmosphere, and an indelible component of our planet’s “global circulation.” This circulation serves as the Earth’s heat pump, moving extra energy from the tropics towards the poles, which keeps the planet’s temperatures in relative balance. The last time a major polar vortex event occurred was in January 2014, when the system delivered record low temperatures across much of North America.
The galaxy far far away is filled with untold stories that yearn to be uncovered—how characters we know and love came to be where we found them in the movies and the shows, what happened after those movies and shows, all of it. For two characters in particular from Rebels and Clone Wars, this neat fan comic anthology has some interesting answers.
Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away is an 80-page collection of fan-told Star Wars stories from talents across the comics industry—from writers Tim Daniel to Michael Moreci, to artists like K. R. Whalen and Drew Zucker. The anthology features a blend of comics and written short stories, covering all sorts of different eras from after Return of the Jedi during the rise of the First Order, to the days of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s padawan training under Qui-Gon Jin.
Two of the most interesting stories, however, focus on what became of some crucial characters from Star Wars animation: “Ronin,” by Morgan Luthi, Michael Moreci, and Jim Campbell imagines the origins of Rebels’ Grand Inquisitor and his life as a Jedi after Order 66 before his fall to the dark side. Meanwhile, “Touching Darkness,” by Moreci, Phillip Sevy, Juancho Velez and Dave Baron, catches up with Ahsoka and Quinlan Vos after the events of Clone Wars, following up on a major plotline from the show’s fifth season.
They might not be official answers to some of our questions about the Star Wars galaxy, but they’re still pretty cool, and an intriguing read. You can read the whole thing here.
Parents out there are no doubt excited to hear that Despicable Me is back this summer. Gru and his minions have returned for the series’ third installment, and the first trailer really seems to be playing to the 30-plus crowd.
First up, there’s the new villain voiced by Trey Parker. His name is Balthazar Bratt, and he dresses like he’s in a bad spinoff of Miami Vice: purple suit, shoulder pads, bad flat top/mullet combo, and mustache. He uses bubble gum as a weapon and considers Michael Jackson’s “Bad” to be “heist music.” Bratt is the entirety of the ‘80s rolled into one character, which is sure to make parents happy while the minions DJ on the beach. Yes, you read that right.
Here’s the trailer for Despicable Me 3.
I’m decidedly not a fan of this franchise, which puts me in the minority, but the casting of Trey Parker really has me curious. He’s not a person who just goes after paychecks, so maybe it’s good?
We’ll find out when Despicable Me 3 opens June 30, 2017.
[YouTube]
Instant Pot’s new sous-vide circulator, the smartest pet toy you’ve ever seen, and a ton of luggage for the holidays lead off Wednesday’s best deals.
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If you’re looking to round out your gift list, Amazon’s Fossil Gold Box is for you. Everything from bags, to wallets, to jewelry, even a smart watch (even for people who hate them). It’s basically as if Amazon picked out the perfect last-minute gifts and put them on sale.
Here are a few gift ideas, but head over to Amazon to see the rest.
You’ve probably solidified your holiday travel plans by now, but maybe haven’t thought about the status of your luggage that you shoved into the back of your closet. Why not get a new set that you won’t need to worry about falling apart before it hits the baggage claim? Amazon’s one-day luggage sale has a plethora of options so you can relax a little bit about your upcoming trip. Maybe.
Here are a few of the best-rated options, but there are plenty more over on Amazon.
A big-ass duffle bag is something everyone should keep handy, and you can get one for $18 today in the color of your choice. Just be sure to use promo code EJGAWKAI at checkout.
DJI’s Phantom 4 camera drone changed the game with automatic obstacle avoidance and subject tracking, and you can get the quadcopter $899 today, the best price we’ve ever seen outside of a short-lived eBay Black Friday deal.
A whole bunch of you have bought Anova’s excellent sous-vide circulators over the past few years, but today, you can get Instant Pot’s new take on the product category for $100 with the exclusive promo code KINJASV.
Lifehacker has a great explainer on sous-vide cooking for you to check out, but the basic idea is that you seal the food in plastic bags, and then cook it in precisely heated water over a longish period of time, resulting in meat that is heated all the way through to a very precise temperature. It sounds weird, but trust me when I say that it works like magic.
The Instant Pot circulator doesn’t actually require an Instant Pot to function, and won’t integrate with one in any special way either; it simply clamps to the side of any pot just like the Anova. It also lacks the Anova’s wireless connectivity, which is mostly useless on the Bluetooth model, but is somewhat helpful on the more expensive Wi-Fi version.
That said, if you’ve been meaning to buy one of these things, $100 is a great price for anyone that missed Anova’s $99 Black Friday deal. If they were the same price today, I’d probably buy the Anova, but for $50 less, the Instant Pot should still turn out some amazing steaks (and a whole lot more).
Tivo’s commercial-obliterating Bolt DVR now has a version that supports 4K, and the 3TB model is marked down to an all-time low $362 on Amazon today, down from its original $500. You’ll still have to swallow that monthly service fee, but this is absolutely the best DVR available on the market today.
Whether you have kids yourself, or just want to knock out holiday shopping early for your nieces and nephews, Amazon’s discounting dozens of fun and educational STEM toys, today only. With these toys, they can design their own robot, learn about electronics, dip their toes into programming, and a whole lot more.
Today on Amazon, $19 gets you nine popular Mel Brooks films on Blu-ray, including Blazing Saddles, Robin Hood: Men In Tights, and Spaceballs, plus a ton of special features. That’s about $5-$10 less than usual, and the best price Amazon’s ever seen.
Finally, someone made the Glow Bowl, but for everywhere else in your home. This motion-sensing light strip is billed as an under-bed night light, but you could just as easily attach it under your bathroom counter, along a railing, beneath your baby’s crib, or anywhere else you might need to venture in the middle of the night. For a limited time, you can get one for just $18 with code SJMFQK08.
If you’ve come home after work to one too many destroyed pillows or overturned trashcans, this ingenious little gadget can help you keep an eye on your pets from anywhere.
Petcube is a Wi-Fi camera, intercom system, and laser toy all wrapped into one sleek package, and Amazon is selling it today for $79, an all-time low, and roughly half its usual price. The video above does a better job of explaining this thing than I ever could, and if you own a pet and spend a lot of time away from home, it certainly seems like it could be a great investment.
My dog burped in my face the other day, and in turn, I nearly threw up on his, so I’ll probably be buying some of these Greenies dental treats in today’s Amazon Gold Box. And while at-home oral care won’t totally replace professional veterinary dental work, it can at least mean fewer expensive appointments. Just remember that these prices are only available today, or until sold out.
Who doesn’t want to roll their grill up to a BBQ like a great piece of luggage? This portable grill by Coleman is literally called the Road Trip and it’s only $119, the best price in months. Even with its cast iron cooktop, it collapses into a super portable, rolling party machine.
USB battery packs are the perfect lazy gift for nearly everyone—who doesn’t suffer from battery anxiety?—and a pair of Quick Charge 3.0 models from Aukey are both on sale today. The larger model even includes a Lightning input, meaning iPhone owners won’t have to carry around an extra microUSB cable just to recharge it.
Mpow basically invented the sub-$20 Bluetooth earbud market, but it turns out they also make wireless on-ears, and you can get (or gift) a pair for just $19 today.
Your phone can add fitness tracking, media playback, and GPS capabilities to any bicycle, as long as you have the right tools. Today on Amazon, $11 gets you a handlebar mount to keep your smartphone visible, and a combo headlight/Bluetooth speaker/battery pack will only set you back $17. Just be sure to note the promo codes, and keep your eyes on the road ahead.
Stock up on some undies (or give some awkward gifts) with $3 Uniqlo skivvies. Basic bikini or boyshort for the women and briefs, boxer breifs, and boxers for the dudes. Seriously, $3 underwear is not something to pass up.
There’s a pretty large snow storm moving its way across the country, so it’s spot-on timing for this Merrell shoe sale. Waterproof winter boots will be a lifesaver in the coming days, so why not grab a new pair of some heavy-duty boots or a good pair of waterproof slip ons for the car, just in case?
Everything you need to upgrade to true 5.1 surround sound is on sale for just $300 today. That gets you five speakers, a subwoofer, and a receiver from Onkyo to power them all.
It’s true that Vizio 5.1 sound bars are cheaper and simpler to set up, but if you’re willing to make room for a receiver and run some wires, you’ll be able to get much more separation on the front channels by using separate speakers. Today’s price is within a dollar of an all-time low, so it’s a great chance to give your home theater a huge boost.
Umbra’s Twilight Rod takes your curtains from the windows to the wall, and you can save $5 on yours today. If it helps you sleep in just once, I’d say it paid for itself.
If you ever buy tickets to sporting events or concerts from StubHub, this gift card can save you $10 on your next night out, which might be just enough for a stadium Bud Light.
The new GoPro is about two months old now, which means it’s high time for the deals to roll out.
The full-sized GoPro HERO5 Black will still set you back its usual $400, but you’ll get a $60 in Amazon gift card to use on anything you want thrown in for free. You can read Gizmodo’s full review here, but you’ll be getting the Cadillac of action cameras, including optical stabilization, 4K recording, and even voice control.
We’ve seen a handful of $89 deals on the reader-favorite Blue Yeti USB microphone over the last several weeks, but for just $10 more today, you’ll get the microphone and a PC download of Watch Dogs 2.
Sure, it’s a little bit out of season, but at $5, this smartphone dry bag (with nearly 3,000 reviews!) would make a great stocking stuffer.
By now, most of you probably have a USB battery pack or two to keep your phones charged, and that’s great! But I’m willing to bet most of them won’t start your car if its battery dies.
The $59 Anker compact car jump starter has your standard pair of USB ports and a 10,000mAh built-in battery, but it also ships with a set of removable jumper cables to jolt your car’s engine to life in a pinch. Once you’re up and running, it’ll even recharge itself via an included 15V car charger, so it never even has to leave your glove box. Plus, it makes a really easy gift for the car people in your life.
Hopefully you don’t need to use this often, but it’s one of those things you’ll be really glad you bought when the time comes. This particular model has been a little cheaper during a couple of Amazon Gold Boxes, but today’s price is still well below its usual $70-$80.
The Expanse was io9's favorite TV show of 2016, and the book on which the first season is based is just $3 on Kindle right now.
To celebrate the holidays, Amazon’s offering a pretty spectacular deal on a few dozen grocery and household essentials: Buy $75, save $25 at checkout. So if you need Red Bull, trash bags, San Pellegrino, or over-the-counter medications that are included in this promotion, $25 is a pretty spectacular discount, and you won’t even have to drive to the store.
Yi makes our readers’ favorite budget action cam, and now, they’ve brought that expertise to an eminently affordable dash cam.
$50 gets you the Yi Dash Cam in gold today, down from its usual $70. The key feature here is 1080p/60 recording, compared to the 1080/30 you normally see in this price range. That means you have twice as many frames to get a clear shot of a license plate. Its f/1.8 aperture, 165 degree FOV, and 2.7" screen are nothing to sneeze at either.
A good label maker is something everyone should own, and the highly rated Brother P-Touch is down to just $10 today, its best price in months.
If you remember the old label makers that literally pressed the letters into a piece of tape, this is a bit more advanced than what you’re picturing. The P-Touch can print in nine fonts across two lines, along with clipart and special characters, and can even print on multiple label widths, including special iron-on labels.
Star Wars: Battlefront isn’t a perfect game, but it’s pretty tempting at $10 on PS4 and Xbox One, the lowest price we’ve seen. If nothing else, it’ll give you something to do while you wait for Rogue One to come out.
Not content to let the holiday season pass by without selling you two dozen products, Anker’s back with another batch of awesome promo codes. Stock up for yourself, or turn them all into gifts; you can’t go wrong with anything here.
There are too many new deals to list them all here, but you can find all of the links and promo codes on this post.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was available for $25 around Black Friday. But if that wasn’t enough to convince you, how’s $20 sound? If you’re still on the fence, be sure to check out Kotaku’s review.
iPhone and iPad owners can never own enough Lightning cables, especially when you can get two for $10. As an aside, Apple still charges $19 for a single cable.
In case you missed out during Deals Week, several of Amazon’s most popular gadgets are back on sale for one last push during the holiday shopping season.
The Echoes and Paperwhite are back down to the same prices at Black Friday, while the $40 Fire Tablet deal is $7 higher than it was before. Interestingly, the Fire HD 10 actually didn’t get a Black Friday discount, so today’s $200 deal is your first chance to save on that model in quite some time.
You’ve got two choices when it comes to checking on the progress of your dinner in the oven. You could poke at it with a kitchen thermometer until you think it’s done, or you could sit on the couch and wait for your phone to tell you when it’s ready.
The highly-rated iDevices iGrill Mini Thermometer uses a leave-in probe to monitor the progress of your meal on the grill, on the stovetop, or even in the oven, and connects to your iPhone or Android device over Bluetooth to alert you as soon as it reaches the proper temperature. I actually gave a slightly different iDevices thermometer to my dad for his birthday a few years ago, and it worked as advertised. Today’s $24 price tag is an all-time low, so be sure to grab yours before this deal overcooks.
Anker’s home goods brand, Eufy, put its new set of copper string lights back on sale today for their lowest price ever, complete with adjustable brightness and multiple effects. A version of these lights without the remote was on sale for $7 last week, but the remote’s convenience and added lighting options make it well worth the price premium.
Hot off the heels of its $10-off-$25 physical book sale last weekend, Amazon’s now taking $5 off any $15 book purchase (including multiple, cheaper books) with promo code GIFTBOOK.
Just like last time, this deal excludes Kindle titles and audiobooks, but if there are any commemorative coffee table-type books or collector’s editions that you’ve been eyeing, this is a great opportunity. Just choose carefully; you can only use the code once per account.
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Seventy percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water, meaning if we were unfortunate enough to be struck by an enormous asteroid, it’d probably make a big splash. A team of data scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently decided to model what would happen if an asteroid struck the sea. Despite the apocalyptic subject matter, the results are quite beautiful.
Galen Gisler and his colleagues at LANL are using supercomputers to visualize how the kinetic energy of a fast-moving space rock would be transferred to the ocean on impact. The results, which Gisler presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting this week, may come as a surprise to those who grew up on disaster movies like Deep Impact. Asteroids are point sources, and it turns out waves generated by point sources diminish rapidly, rather than growing more ferocious as they cover hundreds of miles to swallow New York.
The bigger concern, in most asteroid-on-ocean situations, is water vapor.
“The most significant effect of an impact into the ocean is the injection of water vapor into the stratosphere, with possible climate effects” Gisler said. Indeed, Gisler’s simulations show that large (250 meter-across) rock coming in very hot could vaporize up to 250 metric megatons of water. Lofted into the troposphere, that water vapor would rain out fairly quickly. But water vapor that makes it all the way up to the stratosphere can stay there for a while. And because it’s a potent greenhouse gas, this could have a major effect on our climate.
Of course, not all asteroids make it to the surface at all. Smaller sized ones, which are much more common in our solar neighborhood, tend to explode while they’re still in the sky, creating a pressure wave that propagates outwards in all directions. Gisler’s models show that when these “airburst” asteroids strike over the ocean, they produce less stratospheric water vapor, and smaller waves. “The airburst considerably mitigates the effect on the water,” he said.
Overall, Gisler says, asteroids over the ocean pose less of a danger to humans than asteroids over the land. There’s one big exception, however, and that’s asteroids that strike near a coastline.
“An impact or an airburst [near] a populated shore will be very dangerous,” Gisler said. In that case, the gigantic, city-devouring tsunami every B-list disaster movie has primed you for might actually arrive.
Correction: An earlier version of this post misspelled Dr. Gisler’s last name. The text has been updated.
Look at this plush Tauntaun. Look at the fact that, in order to gain access to the equally adorable plushes inside it, you have to mimic the act of slicing the tauntaun open. I don’t think I could do it. This is the most horrifically delightful stuffed toy collection ever.
Disney has revealed that its latest line of collectable Tsum-Tsum plushies—designs that originated in a Japanese Disney mobile game, have since gone on to become wildly popular collectable plushies, and hell, have even gotten their own Marvel comic—will be based on the Hoth sequences from Empire Strikes Back. There’s two series: a more traditional set that features Princess Leia, 2-1B, a Snowtrooper, and some other Hoth-based characters for you to stack up and admire:
And then... the Tauntaun collection.
Featuring Han, Luke, a Tauntaun, and a Wampa, the cute quartet has its own Tauntaun-styled carrying case which lets you house them inside its guts to protect them from hostile planetary environments. Yes, there’s basically a baby Tauntaun stuffed inside the carcass of an adult Tauntaun. In plush form. I can’t handle the emotional whiplash of veering between “d’aaaw so cute” and “oh god, why” so rapidly like this!
If there’s any children in your life you’d like to traumatize this Christmas, the Hoth Tsum Tsums will be available at Disney Stores (and online) starting December 20th. There’s no price for the Tauntaun bundle yet, but an individual Tsum Tusm will set you back about $6 for the smallest versions.
Ash vs Evil Dead wrapped up its second season last Sunday. It’ll return to Starz for a third season that will no doubt involve more one-liners and repulsive fight scenes. It will not, however, follow the plot dreamed up by former showrunner Craig DiGregorio, who shared his never-realized vision in a recent interview.
Speaking to the AV Club about his decision to leave the show last month, DiGregorio admits that he often butted heads with show producer/Evil Dead O.G. Rob Tapert, noting that, “He’s a great person and producer, but creatively, we just didn’t have the same taste at all.” One example of something he had to fight for: Ash’s epic battle with a colon, which was one of the highlights of the season but almost didn’t make the cut for “not being Evil Dead enough.” But the biggest behind-the-scenes clash, and the one that’ll be of the most interest to Ash vs Evil Dead fans, was over DiGregorio’s original plan for the show’s finale.
On Sunday, we saw a back-from-the-past Ash (and Pablo and Kelly, but mostly Ash) being touted as the hero of Elk Grove while Evil Ruby watched from the back of the crowd—setting up next season to be Ash vs. Ruby round two. This was not the original finale, but rather one that resulted after Tapert’s last-minute changes, according to the former showrunner, who went on to sketch out his original plan for the ending:
Basically, Ash kills Henrietta, gets the book, and runs outside with it. I wanted to get the episode outside of the cabin as quickly as possible because I thought I only wanted to see the cabin for episode nine. I didn’t want it to be there in 10 because I thought it was a repeat of last year with the last two episodes in the cabin. So, we got out of the cabin quickly, and that’s when Ruby and Kelly return. Inside, young Ash has entered but the book is gone, so he never reads it in this timeline. At that moment, the trunk rattles, Pablo’s in there, and he’s okay.
So, now they have the book and they have Pablo. Ash decides Ruby and Kelly are going to destroy the book. Meanwhile, Ash and Pablo head into town because Ash secretly wants to see his present-day deceased father Brock one last time before they go back to the present—remember that in 203 Brock starts to reveal a big “secret,” we wanted Ash to want to get to the bottom of this. So, Ash and Pablo go to the bar, Kelly and Ruby go to the woods to destroy the book. In the woods, Ruby runs into 1982 Ruby and makes that same sort of plea to her, the “your life is going to be different, you don’t have to do this.” But 1982 Ruby thinks that her future self has gone completely soft, kills Ruby, but then Kelly holds her own against 1982 Ruby, grabs the book, and runs with it. 1982 Ruby chases her because she wants to bring her husband and kids back and she didn’t listen to her future self.
Meanwhile, at the bar, Ash doesn’t see his dad, but does see a nice young lady, who seems very sad because she just got passed over for a teacher position. She’s distraught, and Ash, having learned a lot about how you can fail and come back from it, starts talking to her very genuinely in the charming Bruce way. They end up drinking together and go in a bathroom stall to have some early-’80s unprotected sex. What you don’t realize is that the woman Ash is having sex with is Kelly’s future mother [a young Suzy Maxwell]. So, what happens is that Kelly, while running in the woods, all of a sudden feels her entire being change and drops the book. That’s when 1982 Ruby catches up and realizes what just happened. She looks through the Necronomicon and sees Ash’s picture, and then next to it, a picture of Kelly starts to appear. Because of the unprotected bathroom stall incident, Kelly has become Ash’s daughter.
At that point, Pablo rushes into the bar, says there’s something wrong because the skies are going dark now that 1982 Ruby has the book, and they’re starting to summon things back. They go get Kelly, who’s somehow pissed at Ash, even though she doesn’t really know what happened, and while they don’t have the book, they have Pablo and use him to jump back to present day. When they get back, Ruby is standing there with Baal and her kids and they take Kelly away. Apologies, I really ran through a bunch there in about two sentences. But basically, we were setting up a season three where Ash had to go rescue his daughter… Kelly.
It was a reveal he was working toward the entire season which didn’t end up paying off. And while DiGregorio admits that the idea of Ash becoming Kelly’s dad through the magic of time travel—especially since we met her parents (and saw her bury them, after they became Deadites) in season one—is sorta silly, he also notes that “time travel is inherently nonsense and we wanted to have some fun with the medium.” When Ash vs Evil Dead begins its third season, it’ll have a new showrunner, Mark Verheiden (Battlestar Galactica, Daredevil), at the helm. And Kelly won’t be Ash’s daughter. But she almost was.
[Slashfilm via The AV Club]
I’m with Tony on this. Seriously, Pete? C’mon, dude.
The above panel comes from today’s delightful Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #15, by Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Rico Renzi, and Travis Lanham (with guest art from Zac Gorman and Michael Cho. The story sees Squirrel Girl, Iron Man, Spidey, and a whole host of other superheroes ganging up to take on Taskmaster, who whips their butts handily thanks to his ability to replicate their fighting styles and abilities. We don’t actually get to see much of the scrap, however—because, being Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, we actually spend the issue seeing all this unfold from the perspective of Mew the cat up there, the beloved feline pet of Doreen’s best friend, Nancy.
So while we don’t get to see too much of the big superhero fight, we do get delightful moments of banter overheard from our heroes while it happens. It’s just ludicrous and fun in the way that Unbeatable Squirrel Girl always is.
As for Spidey... his movie counterpart in Civil War at least had youth on his side to get away with describing Empire Strikes Back’s Hoth Battle as that “bit with the walking thingies.” The Peter Parker of the comics has no excuse in not remembering the name of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Hand in your nerd cred card, Mr. Parker. Or like, maybe fire up Netflix once in a while in between heroics and managing your fancy global corporation.
Over the last few months, development studio Telltale Games have been radically re-configuring key parts of the Batman mythos to give players a shockingly different take on the Dark Knight. It all comes to a head in the final chapter of Batman: The Telltale Series, which puts a capstone on a very good portrayal of Bruce Wayne.
In Batman’s video game history, the focus understandably tends to primarily be on superhero action. At best, Bruce Wayne has been an alternate person to temporarily slip into for story-specific reasons or a fun skin unlocked as a reward. Tension between the two sides of the man’s life has been minimal, because even in the excellent Batman Arkham games, we’re meant to understand the Dark Knight and billionaire CEO as the same person. The question of whether Batman or Bruce Wayne is the device for achieving the other persona’s goals has been a core concern for comic books in the modern, post-1970s Bat-mythos. But as a medium, video games center Batman as the “real person” and treat adult Bruce Wayne as more like a fiction.
Telltale’s Bruce Wayne resonates more deeply than his forebears. The formative experience that leads to the creation of his double identity gets morally muddied in this series, and from that moment on, the drama is about the kind of man/superhero Bruce and Batman can be. After the revelation that his father was part of a corrupt triangle that stole and killed to cement their power, this Bruce Wayne’s emotional foundation feels wobbly and his public reputation is in tatters. If your player choices make for a more ruthless, violent Batman, he winds up feeling like the cruel opportunistic Thomas Wayne who locked away the people who stood in his way. This is a Bruce Wayne who feels much more interesting because he’s not psychologically static.
For similar reasons, the goodbye sequence with Selina Kyle stands as the highlight of episode five of Batman: The Telltale Series. The typical, will-they/won’t-they dynamic between the two characters gets blown away by a sequence where Catwoman comes across as satisfyingly cold-blooded and ruthlessly self-directed. I thrilled at the chance to get to make Bruce Wayne say he loved someone, but enjoyed it even more when Selina laughs if the player chooses to have Bruce tell her he loves her. This isn’t a Catwoman who’s meant to be redeemed or romanced. She’s going her own way. It’s a take on the character that’s well-established in the comics but, again, not one that’s prevalent in video games.
Reckonings are had with major characters and the plot wraps up in a largely satisfying fashion in the last installment of Batman: The Telltale Series. The surprises delivered along the way offered fun shocks, but the best part of this episodic game has been the way it has prioritized Bruce Wayne and the relationships that make him who is. Nothing’s been announced yet, but there will almost surely be more in this series. Here’s hoping that Telltale can build on this Bruce-centric approach even more in future Bat-games.
When we last left The 100, an AI had informed Clarke that a number of power plants are leaking radiation and will destroy most of the planet. In the trailer for season four, we’re seeing hints that the AI might not have been lying.
We’re also seeing everyone commit to more and more extreme actions in the name of survival, or vengeance, or “my people.” Things seem, somehow, to be getting even darker.
