Graco baby gear, a pop-up sun shade, and a cable that turns your old hard drives into external storage lead off Thursday’s best deals from around the web.

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Top Tech Deals

Update: Sold out

If you have any old 2.5" hard drives or SSDs lying around and gathering dust, this $8 cable can turn them into USB external storage.

Sure, you could get an enclosure for about the same price, but come on, this looks way cooler. It’ll also work with your PS4 or Xbox One if you need more space to store games.

If you can’t abide slow internet or modem rental fees, this is the bundle for you. While supplies last, Amazon will sell you a powerful NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 router, plus a blazing-fast 32x8 cable modem (which is capable of download speeds over one gigabit per second) for $250.

For comparison’s sake, the router alone is currently listed for $257, and the modem goes for $100, so you’re basically getting the modem for free. That’s quite a deal when you consider that modems usually pay for themselves anyway.

Phone cameras will never have true interchangeable lenses, but you can still take fisheye, wide angle, and macro photos with this 3-in-1 clip-on lens kit from Anker. Be sure to check out the sample photos uploaded by customers to get an idea of what this kit is capable of.

TaoTronics just released a new batch of Bluetooth headphones (including over-ears!), and they’re all deeply discounted as part of a launch sale. They don’t have many, if any, reviews yet, but TaoTronics generally makes very good stuff, and these prices are unbelievable.

Bias lights can make just about any TV look better, and you can get a set for just a few bucks today on Amazon.

If you aren’t familiar, Vansky’s LED bias light strips plug directly into your TV’s USB port for power, and stick to the back of the set via built-in adhesive. Once you turn your TV on, the light strip will cast a soft glow on the wall behind it, which can reduce eyestrain when watching in the dark, and improve your TV’s perceived black levels.

We’ve posted deals on these several times now, but today’s $12 (RGB) and $12 (white) price points are some of the best we’ve ever seen. Just be sure to use code CCT8XE05 at checkout to get the deal.

What’s better than a Quick Charge 3.0 charging port? A Quick Charge 3.0 port with five extra USB charging ports right below it. And what’s better than a Quick Charge 3.0 port with five extra USB charging ports right below it? A Quick Charge 3.0 port with five extra USB charging ports right below it for just $24.

Nonda’s original Zus smart car charger was a one-of-a-kind device with two very poorly-placed USB ports, but the newly redesigned Quick Charge 2.0 model fixes that fatal flaw for just $13 with code KINJAD20.

That’s a pretty great price for any Quick Charge car charger, but Nonda’s has some features you won’t find anywhere else. Most notably, your phone connects to the charger over Bluetooth, and every time the connection drops (meaning your car has turned off), a free app will make a note of your location so you can find your parking spot later.

In addition, you can track your mileage for tax and expensing purposes (free for 60 drives per month, $3/month or $30/year for unlimited), and even monitor the health of your car battery if you sign up for a $1 per month premium subscription. Even if you don’t use those features though, this is well worth the $13 for the parking location feature alone.

The past year or so has seen a deluge of Wi-Fi router innovation, and Portal seems to be one of the best newcomers in the space, particularly for smaller dwellings in congested, urban environments.

Portal includes app-based configuration, nine internal antennas, 802.11ac...table stakes these days for a good router. But while almost all home Wi-Fi routers limit you to public channels over 5GHz, Portal also opens up four so-called DFS channels that are typically reserved for military use and commercial radar.

The law allows home routers to use these DFS channels, but they must shift off of them for a set amount of time whenever they detect active radar to avoid interference. Portal does just this, and moves all of your devices off of the busy channel in the background automatically, and shifts them back on when it’s safe. That means that most of the time, these channels are practically empty, so you won’t have to worry about interference from your neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks operating on public channels. This Digital Trends review has a much thorough explanation of the technology, if you’re curious.

This router retails for $200, and has sold for around $175 on Amazon since it launched late last year, but for a limited time, you can try it out for $149. Mine will be here Friday.

If you aren’t satisfied with the case situation for your iPhone 7, Anker’s selling a popular case and a 2-pack of glass screen protectors for $5 each today.

If your phone supports Qi wireless charging, it’s a great day to buy some new pads to scatter around your home and office, as Anker’s 5W and 10W PowerTouch pads are both on sale.

Other than the maximum charging speed and a few very minor design differences, these are functionally identical. The headlining feature is an LED light ring on the bottom (which you can turn off, thankfully) which pulses to indicate whether your device is charging. Just note that not all phones can accept 10W wireless charging, and that these don’t include power adapters, so you’ll need to plug them into a USB charging port somewhere.

Amazon’s Fire Tablet doesn’t exactly feature bleeding edge technology, but hey, it’s a perfectly good portable TV screen and web browser for like $50. Today, you can get the upgraded 16GB version (which retails for $70), a case, and a screen protector all for $60 with promo code FIREBUNDLE. Yes, that’s $10 less than you’d normally spend on the tablet by itself.

There’s not a whole lot to say here: This phone stand has nearly 4,000 reviews, looks great, and is only $6 today with code 6VGBXP2D. Why wouldn’t you put one on your desk?

Your favorite USB car charger just happens to be the smallest one you can buy, and you can grab it on Amazon for $7 today with code AUKEYCAR. We’ve seen it go as low as $6 on a few occasions, but this is the best deal we’ve seen in a long time, if it’s been on your wish list.

Anker’s SoundBuds are our readers’ favorite affordable Bluetooth headphones, and the newest version just dropped to an all-time low price.

The SoundBuds Slim are, as you might have gleaned from the name, far smaller than the originals. Heck, they look like a small set of wired earbuds; you might never guess there were batteries and Bluetooth radios in there. Despite the size, these buds are still rated for seven hours of battery life, and recharge fully in just 90 minutes.

There was a $6 launch day discount on these a few weeks ago that dropped them to $24, but if you missed out on that sale, they’re slashed to $22 today, no code required.

Top Home Deals

You can’t control these semi-smart power outlet switches with your phone, or automate them with IFTTT recipes like you can with Belkin’s WeMo line, but you can control them from across your house with a remote control, and they’re incredibly cheap today.

Not only is this bottle of Chevon Techron fuel system cleaner within $1 of an all-time low on Amazon, this mail-in rebate lets you get a second bottle for free. Just buy two bottles in the same transaction, and fill out the rebate form on this page.

Everyone should own a slow cooker, and more specifically, everyone should own a programmable slow cooker. If you’re going to be at work for nine hours, but your recipe only calls for six hours of cooking, these will automatically switch to warm mode at the time of your choosing, so you can walk in the door and enjoy a delicious dinner.

This 6-quart model from Crock-Pot is Amazon’s top seller, and $34 is a match for an all-time low.

These incredibly affordable solar-powered LED lights do the impossible: They actually look really nice. The glass is cracked in a Pinterest-pleasing kind of way, the bulbs are recessed inside artificial candles, and they even flicker like real flames. At $10 for two, and with basically zero maintenance to worry about, why not class up your front yard?

Anything that makes raising a kid just a little bit less expensive is a welcome relief, so Amazon’s tossing parents a lifeline with a one-day Gold Box deal onGraco car seats, strollers, cribs, and more. Graco’s known far and wide as one of the most trusted names in the baby space, so send this deal to your frazzled parent friends; they’ll be sure to appreciate it.

If you think all shower caddies are the same, you obviously haven’t seen simplehuman’s.

The shelves on this model can adjust up, down, and even sideways to make room for all of your grooming equipment, plus it includes two razor hooks on the side, and even dual suction cups to accommodate for uneven shower tiles. That’s a lot thought put into a household item that you’ve never thought about, and it’s $10 off today on Amazon.

The Char-Broil patio bistro squeezes an infrared gas burner into the footprint of an electric grill, meaning you can enjoy high temperatures and even heating on even the smallest patio or balcony. It typically sells in the $115-$130 range, but you can get it for just $100 today, just in time for barbecue weather.

Update: Now available for $28 from B&H.

Not only is the new WeMo Mini Smart Plug smaller than the top-selling original so as to only cover one outlet, it’s also cheaper. You’ll almost always see it available for $35, but today on Amazon, it’s knocked down to $30.

Despite its diminutive size, this includes all the same features as the full-sized WeMo Switch, including IFTTT support, Alexa compatibility, and an Away mode that will randomize your lights to deter ne’er-do-wells.

No matter how you prefer to prop up your phone in the car, Anker makes a mount for it, and four different models are on sale today. I’m most intrigued by this $9 dashboard model, which combines the ease and minimalism of a magnetic mount without blocking a vent.

Without any wiring to futz with, Mpow’s solar-powered, motion-sensing spotlights are the easiest way to illuminate your front porch or lawn, and a bunch of different configurations are on sale today, including two different sizes of lights. All of the promo codes are below, just note that the more lights you buy, the more you’ll save.

Contigo’s Autoseal West Loop travel mugs are a longtime reader favorite, but the similar SnapSeal Superior is marked down to an all-time low $10 today on Amazon.

Unlike the West Loop, the SnapSeal’s lid doesn’t open and close automatically, though many reviewers say it’s easier to clean. It also includes a handle, which is a nice touch at this price.

Anker, producer of a lot of your favorite charging gear, has its own line of flashlights now, and all three are on sale today for the best prices we’ve ever seen.

The cheapest model is IP65 dust and water resistant, but actually doesn’t include a rechargeable battery. However, you can run it on three AAAs or a single rechargeable 18650 battery, which are cheap and easy to find.

The next step up is far brighter (900 lumens vs. 400), and includes a rechargeable battery and a microUSB port, while the most expensive model is brighter still at 1300 lumens, and is IP67 rated, meaning you could even use it underwater. Whichever model you choose, just be sure to note the promo codes below.

Top Lifestyle Deals

Winter had one last hurrah this week, but warm weather is just around the corner, and you can enjoy it to the fullest with this pop-up sun shade.

This canopy is only 50" long when collapsed, but it pops up in seconds, and provides you with 8' x 8' of shaded space. Plus, its included sand bags and stakes make it perfect for the beach. Today’s price is the best Amazon’s offered since 2015, so even if you don’t have an outdoor excursion on the immediate horizon, this might be worth picking up.

Right now, Nordstrom Rack is having a pretty extensive Adidas sale, with discounts on shoes for men and women, bags, and tons of socks, plus men’s activewear, and kids’ sizes. With prices this low, these will go fast, even before the sale itself ends in three days.

It’s not quite Clear the Rack, but it is an extra 25% off select discounted items from Nordstrom Rack (prices reflect discount). This one is a sale full of winter staples, like outerwear, boots, and cold weather accessories, plus some other random pieces thrown in as well. End of the season means discounts, just in time for you pack them away for next winter.

The Bouqs is probably the best place to use when sending flowers right now. The bouquets are unique and the blooms are harvested from the side of a freakin’ volcano. And right now, you’ll be able to get double the flowers for free, plus 15% off the entire site. Just choose the Deluxe size of any non-seasonal bouquet, use the codes DOUBLEBLOOM and CHEERFUL at check out and get it for the price of the Original size, plus 15% off.

FYI: Looks like the DOUBLEBLOOM only works on non-seasonal bouquets, so go for the ones listed under Popular.

PUMA has made some very strategic moves to stay relevant, but they also have managed to stay pretty true to what they’re known for. An extra 20% off sale styles with the code SPRING20 from PUMA doesn’t mean unwanted styles or badly reviewed items. Their sale section is chock full of 5-star rated sneakers and apparel, with some classics mixed in as well.

A couple weeks ago, I would’ve laughed if you told me that winter wasn’t done yet, and now, here we are. The East Coast is recovering from a nor’easter and Uniqlo is giving you $10 off their Ultra Light Down coats, vests, and parkas for men and women. All the products included in the discount are marked, so maybe you’ll be ready for the next random act of weather.

The Mass Effect hype train is going faster than light right now, and ThinkGeek is hopping aboard with 20% off apparel and accessories sure to please every Shepard and FemShep in the galaxy. Inside, you’ll find gear to represent both N7 and the Andromeda Initiative (though not Cerberus, hmm).

Practice your “Namaste” and get in touch with your muscles with this $22 yoga gift set that includes a mat, towel, and block. That’s basically the price of one good mat by itself. Choose between periwinkle and aqua verde (which sounds more like a chip dip than a color, but I digress).

Another day, another J.Crew Factory markdown. This time, get an extra 30% off all clearance styles with the code EXTRA30. J.Crew Factory is basically always on sale, but it works even better when they have extra discounts, so if you haven’t stocked up on workwear staples and outwear galore, maybe this one will change your mind.

Our readers have purchased a ton of Sonicare toothbrushes over the years, so today, it’s time to stock up on replacement brush heads. Pretty much every style Sonicare makes is $5 off, just remember that you won’t see the final price until checkout.

I have painful, yet fond memories of my college’s Athletic Trainer using one of these on my thigh after I suffered a strained quad. They are hell while using it, but heaven afterwards. And for $10 when you use the code KINJA604, this muscle roller can help further your love-hate relationship with working out.

Top Media Deals

You don’t buy this Marvel Phase Two box set for the six films, even if they do come on Blu-ray, digital, and even Blu-ray 3D. No, you buy it for the extras:

This set overflows with stunning Marvel Studios memorabilia, including a gold-foiled page from the book of the Dark Elves, an ancient drawing from the Morag vault, Avengers and S.T.R.I.K.E. uniform patches, a replica of the Tony Stark tattoo from Iron Man 3 and much more!

Packed with over 2 1⁄2 hours of content on an exclusive bonus disc, including never-before-seen Deleted & Extended Scenes, the complete set of Marvel One-Shot films and Commentary, From Here to Infinity: Phases 2 and 3 of the M.C.U., Tag Scenes: A Making-Of, Screen Test with Chris Pratt and Dave Bautista and more, this ultimate collection is a Marvel fan’s dream!

Superbad was one of the great movies of the aughts, and hilariously helped launch the careers of an Academy Award winner in Emma Stone, and an Academy Award nominee in Jonah Hill. You won’t need a fake ID to get the unrated extended edition for just $7 on Amazon today.

Top Gaming Deals

The Xbox One Chatpad makes it easy to enter passwords and type out sick Rocket League owns on the fly, and it’s never been cheaper on Amazon than it is right now. It even includes a headset!

The shockingly dark Batman Arkham Knight is one of the few video games based on a superhero that’s worth playing, and you can download a copy to your PS4 for $10, or the premium edition with the DLC season pass for $18.

$8 is cheaper than a lot of standard sized mouse pasd, but today, that gets you a massive 2.5' x 1' model that can accommodate your keyboard as well. Just be sure to use promo code EFX3JXJL at checkout to save $7.

Before you go out and spend hundreds of dollars on a DJI Phantom, you can learn the basics of flying a quadcopter with these $23 toy drones from Aukey. Trust me, if you can fly one of these things, you can fly a GPS-equipped, gyro-stabilized camera rig. And if not, well, it’s not like crashing it will be that big a deal.

Both of the drones below are identical, but one comes with a remote, and the other relies on a Wi-Fi connection with your phone for control.

If you still haven’t picked up a copy of Final Fantasy XV (and you definitely should), Amazon’s marked it back down to $35 today, matching a one-day Gold Box deal from earlier this year.

Hey, listen. If you have a Wii U or Switch, and for some reason haven’t bought Breath of the Wild yet, you only have two more days to save 20% on the game by ordering with Amazon Prime. Hell, even if you’re waiting for the Switch to come back into stock, it might be worth buying the game early, since popular first party Nintendo games rarely get discounts until they get a Nintendo Selects release.

Just remember that this benefit is only valid on the physical copy of the game, and you won’t see the discount until checkout.

Tech

Storage

• Unitek USB 3.0 to SATA Adapter Cable for 2.5" SSD or HDD | $8 | Amazon | Use Code H2IPL3T9

Power

• BESTEK 6-Outlet Wall-Mount Surge Protector Power Strip with 5.2A 4 USB Charging Station and Phone Charging Dock | $16 | Amazon | Use Code VQVLQYVR
• WEMO WeMo Mini Smart Plug | $28 | B&H
• Jackery Thunder with QC 3.0 & Smart Fit 2.4A Output 10050mAh Power Bank | $19 | Amazon | Use code FRU5ZBNV
• Lumsing 60W 5V 6-Port USB Desktop Charger | $7 | Amazon | Use Code TOTODEAL
• RAVPower Quick Charge 3.0 60W 6-Port USB Power Strip Desktop Charger Fast Charger Charging Station + 1.5m Power Cord | $24 | Amazon | Use code SSQOUQTJ

Audio

• Aptoyu 10W Outdoor Dual-Driver BT Portable Wireless Speaker | $20 | Amazon | Use Code 52RS4FF6
• Samsung Level U Pro Bluetooth Wireless In-ear Headphones with Microphone and UHQ Audio | $40 | Amazon
• SoundPEATS Bluetooth Headphones Wireless 4.1 Magnetic Earbuds | $18 | Amazon | Use code H39WK9E5
• TaoTronics Bluetooth Magnetic Sports Headphones with Soft eartips | $11 | Amazon
• TaoTronics Bluetooth Nano Coating Waterproof Sports Headphones | $11 | Amazon
• TaoTronics Bluetooth 4.1 Over Ear Headsets with 20 Hours Playtime & Leather Ear Cup | $18 | Amazon

Home Theater

• Vansky Bias Lighting for HDTV | $10 | Amazon | Use code CCT8XE05
• Vansky RGB Bias Lighting for HDTV | $12 | Amazon | Use code CCT8XE05
• Sony UBP-X800 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player (2017 Model) | $298 | Amazon
• Sideclick Universal Remote Attachment for Roku Streaming Players | $25 | Best Buy

Computers & Accessories

• Lenovo Y700 15.6" Gaming Laptop, Black (Intel Core i7-6700HQ, 8GB, 1TB HDD + 128GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, Windows 10) | $849 | Amazon
• Canon Canon MAXIFY MB2720 Wireless All-In-One Printer | $95 | Best Buy
• VicTsing MM057 2.4G Wireless Portable Mobile Mouse Optical Mice with USB Receiver | $8 | Amazon | Use Code FNVMNUTR
• NETGEAR CM700 32x8 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem Bundle with NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band Gigabit WiFi Router (R8000) | $250 | Amazon
• Case Logic WMBP-115 15.6-Inch Laptop and Tablet Backpack (Anthracite) | $18 | Amazon

PC Parts

• AMD RYZEN 7 1700 8-Core 3.0 GHz (3.7 GHz Turbo) Processor | $310 | eBay
• AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6 GHz Eight-Core AM4 Processor | $450 | B&H

Mobile Devices

• Apple iPod touch 128 GB MP3 Player (6th Generation - Latest Model) | $360 | Best Buy
• Joby GorillaPod K9 Stand for Select Cell Phones | $8 | Best Buy

Home

• Etekcity Wireless Dimmable Color LED Desk Lamp: Touch-Sensitive Control Panel, 256 Color Changing Base, 3 Adjustable Brightness Levels, USB Rechargeable 1000mAh Li-on Battery | $16 | Amazon | Use Code MX9CGEIO
• LeFun Wireless Motion / Night / Pan / Tilt Camera | $49 | Amazon | Use Code 9KEU7YY3
• Kohree 3 Pack 10ft 60 LEDs Fairy String Lights | $11 | Amazon | Use code JZ3YCZWV
• Cymas Bedding Pillows | $16 | Amazon | Use code BP92AH3F
• Solar Light, 10 LED Waterproof Outdoor Wireless Motion Sensor Lights with 3 Modes, 2-Pack | $10 | Amazon | Use Code JJV4L2AH
• BWL 6 Inch Dimmable LED Downlight, Retrofit LED Recessed Lighting Fixture, 4-Pack | $12 | Amazon | Use Code A93TYSCW
• Modway Lily King Upholstered Vinyl Headboard in Black | $90 | Amazon
• DHP Allegra Pillow-Top Futon, Black | $177 | Amazon
• LIFAN Energy Storm 2,000-Watt 105cc Gasoline Powered Inverter Generator | $399 | Home Depot
• Deal of the Day on select Graco Baby Products | Amazon
• AUKEY Remote Switch with 5 Wireless Outlets & 2 Remote Controls | $22 | Amazon | Use code AUKEYPAR
• OxyLED OxySense BN03 Gravity Sensor LED ON/OFF Lamp | $8 | Amazon | Use code 1OXYBN03
• (2 Pack) OxyLED OxyFlor SL06 Crackle Glass Glickering Candle LED Solar Garden Light | $10 | Amazon | Use code 2OXYSL06

Kitchen

• Frigidaire Gallery 24" Tall Tub Built-In Dishwasher | $500 | Best Buy
  
• Elechomes CHS2001 High Speed Blender 1600W 30000R/Min Rotation Speed | $159 | Amazon | Use code P9V4N4FM
• Etekcity Digital Touch Kitchen Scale Multifunction Food Scale | $13 | Amazon | Use code 3QIMUZSL

Tools & Auto

• BESTEK 600A Peak 10000mAh Car Battery Charger Jump Starter, Li-ion Battery Booster with Dual USB Charging Port and Built-in LED Flashlight | $42 | Amazon | Use Code AN2Z4A3V
• BLACK + DECKER 20-Volt MAX Lithium-Ion 3/8 in. Cordless Drill Driver + Battery | $45 | Home Depot
• BLACK + DECKER 20-Volt MAX Lithium-Ion Cordless Combo Kit (4-Tool) with Bonus Wireless Speaker | $119 | Home Depot
• BLACK+DECKER 20-Volt MAX Lithium-Ion Cordless Reciprocating Saw (Tool Only) | $35 | Home Depot
• Black & Decker LBXR20B-2 20V MAX Lithium Battery, 2-Pack | $40 | Amazon
• BLACK+DECKER LSW321 20V MAX Lithium POWERCOMMAND Power Boost Sweeper | $56 | Amazon
• Stanley Mechanics Tool Set (201-Piece) | $50 | Home Depot
• PAPAGO! GoSafe 268 Dash Cam | $150 | Bestbuy
• LOFTEK 50W Daylight White LED Floodlight | $45 | Amazon | Use code NOVA4499

Lifestyle

Apparel

• Marmot Allie Shirt - Women’s | $32 | REI
• adidas Men’s Climaproof Shockwave Woven Pants | $20 | eBay

Beauty & Grooming

• Beard Oil, TASEYAR Fragrance Free Leave-in Conditioner Natural Beard Oil Moutstache Oil | $9 | Amazon | Use code 556E2U4W
• Olaxer 7X Magnifying Makeup Mirror | $16 | Amazon | Use code NGY63WJQ

Camping & Outdoors

• Char-Broil Patio Bistro 240 TRU Infared Compact Gas Grill | $100 | eBay

Fitness

• YOGABODY Naturals Yoga Trapeze-Yoga Swing/Sling/Inversion Tool | $75 | Amazon
• BowFlex TreadClimber TC10 Treadmill Low Impact Cardio Training Brand New | $900 | eBay
• Naipo Neck Pillow Massager Shiatsu Deep Kneading Massage with Heat | $32 | Amazon | Use code NAIPO29A

Media

Movies & TV

• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Two (Amazon Exclusive) | $158 | Amazon
• Dragon Tattoo Trilogy (Extended Edition) | $29 | Amazon
• The Hangover Part III | $6 | Amazon
• The Sandlot | $6 | Amazon
• Speed | $6 | Amazon
• Evangelion 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo | $20 | Amazon
• The Transformers: The Movie [30th Anniversary Edition] [SteelBook] | $20 | Best Buy

Books

• Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad [Kindle] | $2 | Amazon

Gaming

Peripherals

• Sony DUALSHOCK4 USB Wireless PC Adapter | $14 | Best Buy
• ROCCAT Nyth Optical MMO Gaming Mouse | $80 | Amazon
• DBPOWER Three Colors Backlit LED Gaming Keyboard | $9 | Amazon | Use Code AJGRWBEH
• PECHAM Extended Non-Slip Waterproof Rubber Base 3mm Thick Gaming Mouse Pad, XX-Large | $8 | Amazon | Use Code EFX3JXJL

PC

• SPINTIRES | $4 | Humble
• Furi | $14 | Steam
• Minecraft Story Mode | $10 | Steam
• BioShock Infinite Starter Pack | $8 | MacGameStore

PlayStation 4

• XCOM 2 | $30 | Amazon
• Mafia III | $30 | Amazon
• Batman: Arkham Knight [Download] | $10 | Amazon
• Batman: Arkham Knight Premium Edition [Download] | $18 | Amazon

Xbox One

• Xbox One S 1 TB Console - Battlefield 1 Special Edition Bundle | $240 | eBay
• Xbox One Chatpad + Chat Headset | $22 | Amazon
• FREE Evolve Ultimate Edition | Xbox Live Gold
• XCom 2 | $30 | Amazon
• Mafia III | $29 | Amazon
• Assassin’s Creed Syndicate Season Pass | $10 | Amazon

Board Games

• Catan | $30 | Amazon

Toys

• AUKEY Mini Drone with Remote Control | $23 | Amazon | Use code AUKEYUAV
• AUKEY Mini Drone with App Wi-Fi Control | $23 | Amazon | Use code AUKEYUAV
• Melissa & Doug Chef’s Kitchen | $135 | Woot
• LEGO City Police Mobile Command Center 60139 Building Kit | $40 | Amazon

Even those of us who despise the idea of celebrating birthdays probably wouldn’t mind having a party if it included this truly fantastic Lego Batman cake that’s completely edible—save for the glowing eyes that will surely cause bodily harm if swallowed.

Designed, engineered, baked, and assembled by Ashlee Marie of YouTube’s Ashlee Marie Cakes, the only crime this Batman will be fighting is the travesty that National Cake Day isn’t anywhere near as popular as Pi Day is.

[YouTube via That’s Nerdalicious]

When we think about Game of Thrones’ huge price tag, we mostly think about CGI dragons, White Walkers, and giant battles. But what’s the most expensive single death? It only happened a season ago.

Leaving out scenes of mass death—which I’m sure were overall more expensive, but less costly on a per-death basis—there are a lot of single kills that stick in the mind. Eddard Stark’s death was infamous when it happened, but probably not that hard to film. Viserys’ molten shower feels like it must have been hard to do. Renly’s death by ghost involved a lot of CGI. Hodor’s untimely end is more memorable for the mental scarring more than the actual scene.

According to D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, who were at SXSW, the most expensive single death was Arya Stark slitting the throat of Meryn Trant—and performing an eye-ectomy.

Benioff explained (via RadioTimes) that the expense was because “She couldn’t really poke out his eyes.” Sure. I assume that means that death by dragons is real?

[RadioTimes via NME]

Most comic book stories try to stick to one earth-ending event at a time. Not musician Will.i.am’s new collaboration with Marvel. It’s mushing up future alien invasions and zombie apocalypses into one unholy matrimony of comic book craziness.

Revealed through Billboard today, Black Eyed Peas Present Masters of the Sun: The Zombie Chronicles—no doubt the most glorious string of words I will get to write today and for the foreseeable future—will be penned by Will.i.am, with art from Benjamin Jackendoff and Damion Scott. The graphic novel is set in a futuristic L.A., where protagonist and hip-hop aficionado Zulu-X finds himself thrust into the middle of an alien invasion that comes at the worst possible time: while humankind is also facing a zombie outbreak.

From there, Zulu-X is “fighting a nefarious ancient order with the combination of wisdom and street smarts,” according to Billboard, as well as tackling elements like music and L.A. street culture. Scifi, alien invasions, zombie apocalypses, social issues, and evil ancient orders? Well, sign me the hell up.

Black Eyed Peas Present Masters of the Sun: The Zombie Chronicles—I will never not refer to this by its full title—is set to hit shelves in July.

[Billboard]

One of the many mysteries that sits at the heart of Legion’s first season is the real identity of the villain that’s been plaguing David Haller from the beginning. That identity has finally been revealed, and we’re here to help explain its big connections to the wider X-Men comic universe.

A new promo for the show’s next episode, “Chapter 7,” sees the brainy half of the Loudermilk duo, Cary, confirm that Amahl Farouk—better known as the Shadow King—is the villain that’s been plaguing David as the yellow-eyed demon throughout the show.

It’s not exactly a huge surprise that Yellow-Eyed Demon, or Y.E.D., is actually the Shadow King. This has been hinted at for weeks. Over the course of the first season, Y.E.D. has been lurking in David’s mind, changing David’s memories and making him forget about every encounter they’ve had to keep his identity secret. Lately, Y.E.D. has taken on the form of Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), David’s friend from the mental hospital who was killed in the first episode—but when David was a child he pretended to be his dog, not-so-subtly named King. The Shadow King has actually been inside David for decades. David’s father (Professor X?) sent him away when he was a baby to protect him, but Farouk couldn’t be stopped.

So, who is Farouk in the comics? First introduced in Uncanny X-Men #117 by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, Farouk is the latest human host of the pure psychic energy being known as the Shadow King. The Shadow King has existed for centuries, feeding on the enslaved bodies of telepathic hosts from the dawn of humanity. Farouk has spent his life working in the shadows, first as a Nazi ally and later a crime boss in Egypt, before encountering Charles Xavier in ‘70s Cairo.

Xavier’s brief telepathic meeting with Farouk—which became a fight after Xavier refused to join Farouk’s criminal empire, culminating in Xavier destroying Farouk’s body but leaving his mind in the astral plane—also became the first time Xavier had encountered a mutant with the intent to use his or her powers for evil rather than good, inspiring him to form the X-Men. And it wouldn’t be the last time the telepaths were at odds with each other. Notably, Farouk kidnapped and assumed control over one of the first New Mutant team members, Karma, for a period. But more importantly, he also has direct ties to David Haller in the comics.

During an attempt to finish off the X-Men and Xavier during an event series across the X-Men books in the early ‘90s called “The Muir Island Saga,” Farouk possessed David after his manipulation of the staff at the Muir Island facility failed to capture the X-Men and Xavier. After using Legion’s vast psychic powers to destroy most of Muir Island, the Shadow King, in David’s form, did battle with Xavier, nearly killing him, before Charles managed to regroup, routing the Shadow King from David and seemingly destroying him in the astral plane once and for all (at the cost of Xavier’s regained use of his legs, paralyzing the X-Men leader again). Being possessed by the Shadow King took an equally heavy toll on David, sending him into a deep coma from the stress on his fractured mind. He was believed to be sequentially braindead by his father for several years.

Now that we’ve discovered the Shadow King’s true identity, it’s more likely that he’s going to be foiled by the end of the season. At this point in the FX show, with three episodes left, the Shadow King has trapped David within a corner of his mind, leaving Syd and the others to rescue him. Farouk has knowingly (and gleefully) invaded David’s mind like a fungus, instead of destroying him from the inside out like his other victims, so he’s definitely not going down without a fight. Right now, Farouk might be the King of David’s Brain, but that reign is probably coming to an end.

Hello, my admirable addressees! Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will prevent me from fulfilling my duty, which is non-existent, because I am a fake mailman. This week: Should Captain America be considered a supervillain? How does Batman do anything if he never eats? And how do you teach someone all nerds aren’t like the weirdos from The Big Bang Theory?

The Eye of the World cover: Darrell K. Sweet.

Wheel of Fortune

Francisco M.:

Greetings dear postman.

How is the weather in the Waste? I hope is not as bad as in the Blasted Lands. Anyway, do you have any idea when will we have any news concerning the adaptation of Wheel of Time? Is it even a good idea?

I mean, I love the series, but considering that barely over 2 years have passed in between the 14 books, wouldn’t it present a greater difficulty when casting the actors? How would you present the looming madness in rand and the weaves of the One Power?

Please, postman, soothe our worries and may you always find water and shade.

There are myriad problems with a live-action adaptation of Robert Jordan’s very large The Wheel of Time series, the first and foremost of which is this: Hollywood does not trust true fantasy.

By this, I mean movies or TV shows where Earth isn’t a factor in some way—your Star Wars, your Lord of the Rings, your Game of Thrones, etc. It’s as if they feel that unless people know Earth still exists in the universe, unless kids are whisked away from there, or humanity had its origins there, or that it’s just somewhere around the corner in case people need to see it, audiences could not possibly be invested in the fantasy aspect, and their attentions will become untethered and wander off to watch something sensible like NCIS: New Orleans instead.

After the success of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, you may think this is insane on Hollywood’s part, and it may be. But I and the rest of the io9 staff were trying to think of live-action movies and TV shows that truly had no connection to our real Earth, and besides those three we came up with Warcraft, Willow, Krull, The Golden Compass (kind of fudging it), The Dark Crystal, that Shannara Chronicles show, and maybe Legend? That’s so, so few. And Lord of the Rings has been one of the perennially best-selling book series of all time for decades, and it still took Hollywood over 60 years before it made a real attempt at adapting it. Now that’s insane. It’s not impossible that once Game of Thrones goes off the air, another network or maybe even a movie studio will try to fill the very small niche with another major fantasy series, but think about how huge GoT is right now, and yet how virtually no one is scrambling to try to copycat its success.

But if somehow this changes, if I may be so bold, there may be better options than The Wheel of Time? I personally didn’t find it epic as much as sprawling, indulgent, and needlessly overcomplicated. I’ve said this many times, so I’ve almost certainly written it in “Postal Apocalypse” at least once, but I stopped reading The Wheel of Time after I realized I was reading multiple books hundreds of pages long yet virtually nothing was happening. Also, I found Jordan’s two awful types of female characters troubling even in the far less woke days of the early ‘90s. I will fully admit my beloved Belgariad has some regressive ideas about women—mainly that they all desperately want to be married and have babies—but I always felt it was written out of benign cluelessness. Jordan’s female characters felt like they were written out of animosity, that Jordan had been snubbed by the cheerleaders in high school or something, and he decided to make all his female characters completely terrible in retaliation.

On the plus side, if Hollywood nixes The Wheel of Time’s filler, that’s like five, six books worth of material it needs to adapt, tops.

Bats in the Pantry

Nick:

Dear Mr. Postman,

One thing I notice pretty much anytime I pick up a Batman comic is that the dude doesn’t eat. Alfred is always trying to get him to eat, and it’s always, “Later, Alfred,” or, “I don’t have time to eat there’s too much crime fighting to be done, quit wasting my time with nutrition.” Something to that effect. (In a recent Detective Comics, Alfred goes so far as to say Bruce really must have liked the salmon he made him because he actually ate three whole bites).

Meanwhile, Batman is buff as fuck. But in reality, if a dude went that hard all the time on so few calories, he’d look more like Christian Bale in The Machinist than in Batman Begins. There is definitely no way he’d be able to maintain that amount of muscle mass and fight crime at all hours of the night without packing away at least 2-4k calories a day. My question to you is: what’s going on here? Does Batman have a high-tech Bat-IV in his utility belt that keeps him constantly nourished? Is he on Soylent? A fan of carbo-loading? Or does he just take all of his meals when he’s out being Bruce Wayne during the day?

Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about this sort of thing (cuz, y’know, comic books), but recent writers have made Batman’s refusal to eat the delicious meals Alfred prepares for such him a consistent part of his character for a while now that I’m starting to get concerned.

Bruce Wayne has been known to eat food—in deeply socially unacceptable ways—but there’s no way the millionaire playboy is sitting down to three squares a day. But you’re right, Batman would need a lot of nutrition and calories to maintain his physique, let alone fight crime all night, every night.

While it’s not been proven in the comics, I suspect that, like most things, Batman has figured out the most efficient, least enjoyable manner of procuring said nutrition, likely in the form of large, bland vitamins and protein shakes that probably taste actively terrible, because Batman hates happiness, especially his own. I have no doubt that Alfred would still continually try to get Master Bruce to eat some real food, but Batman has no time for actual meals other than perhaps a bite or two every few months. And that’s likely purely for Alfred’s satisfaction.

Big Bang, You’re Dead

Annoyed Comics Geek:

Hi Mr. Postman,

Perhaps being from the post-Apocalyptic future, you might have some far-future wisdom to impart. How do you convince someone who watches “The Big Bang Theory” regularly that its presentation of nerd-dom is badly off-base? What can I point to that laughs with nerd-dom without trading in “get a life” stereotypes?

People don’t watch sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory to expand their mind. They want their preconceptions to be confirmed and played to, and they want their version of what reality looks like reinforced, so they feel comfortable and safe.

Thus The Big Bang Theory, a show which boldly says all nerds are 1) socially awkward, 2) highly intelligent about math and science but utterly unable to comprehend other humans, and 3) love childish things to the point of obsession. This used to also include 4) unable to attract women, but in the show’s infinite longevity, that actually had to be nixed to move things (very slightly) forward.

My point is trying to convince people who love The Big Bang Theory that the show is not an accurate representation of nerds is an uphill battle. Especially since the moment you rattle off a science fact, do a mildly difficult math problem, or mention a comic/toy/video game/superhero/etc., they’ll feel the stereotype and their convictions have been completely justified.

So it’s all about subverting those expectations. Having a committed relationship with someone who does not clearly fit into their supposition of nerd archetype is arguably your best bet. Pointing out whenever you don’t like a nerdy thing (“Actually, I don’t like superheroes at all. More of a scifi person myself!”) would likely throw a wrench in the works. Failing to do semi-difficult math might work, but that sort of situation doesn’t really come up that often.

Short version: You know their expectations. You’ve got to subvert them, as much as you can, as often as you can. They may not ever get it, but they sure as hell won’t if you don’t show them the reality they’re not interested in discovering.

Cap Your Hands Say Yeah

Zoom:

Hi Postman,

So alliterator and myself got in a bit of a ruffle in the comments about whether Steve Rogers is considered a supervillain currently. I contend that because of his long history or heroics he would have to commit an atrocity of his own free volition (not under his current mind control or whatever). Which of course would make the character completely irredeemable which is likely not Marvel’s intent. What do you think? When does a hero playing villain turn into them being an actual supervillain?

You don’t need to overthink it. Captain America is currently 100 percent a supervillain. But he’s has been turned into a supervillain by outside forces—namely Red Skull with part of a reality-altering Cosmic Cube that is currently also a little girl, because comics. He’s not really any more at fault than any other hero mind-controlled by a villain, e.g. Bucky/Winter Soldier.

Captain America is not truly evil. There’s some semantics here in that because Red Skull literally changed reality so yes, Cap is technically choosing of his own volition to be evil, but that’s just a technicality—Cap didn’t choose to choose evil. He was artificially turned into a supervillain, and his life as a secret Hydra agent is an aberration from true reality. Unless you think the original status quo is never going to be reinstated, and Marvel has really decided to make its most heroic superhero evil for the next 50 years, Captain America is still essentially a hero at his core.

Reality—real reality—would have to be returned, and Red Skull’s unnatural changes to reality removed, so that we know Cap truly has free agency and then he would have to do something evil for him to be actually evil. He has to choose supervillainy himself, not because Red Skull used a magic little cube girl to make him choose evil.

Short version: Captain America is a hero who is currently a supervillain because of a bad guy’s trick. He’ll get better.

Magneto School

Mat:

Greetings from slightly pre-apocalyptic 2017!

The recent outcry over the variant cover that had Magneto as a Hydra agent got me wondering about the character’s origin. Originally he was listed as having been born in the late 1920s which would make him at least 88. Even if he was born right before the last concentration camp was liberated in 1945, he would be 72.

Most comic book characters don’t have to be tied to a specific time frame for their origin and some that do have a reason why they’re still young in the present day (such as Captain America being frozen for decades). To the best of my knowledge, Magneto doesn’t have anything keeping him from aging normally. Will we reach a point where Marvel decides to change his origin story to account for the time gap? Or will they just hand wave it away and continue to depict him as late middle aged despite pushing 100?

You’re exactly right in that Magneto, unlike most comic book characters, has an origin so closely linked to a specific, historical event in the past, and it’s so recognized and so wholly integral to his character that it can’t be fudged like everyone else. Eric Lehnsherr was imprisoned by the Nazis at a concentration camp during World War II; his persecution as a Jew directly informs his feelings and decisions about the persecution of mutants, which is arguably his defining characteristic, even more than Magneto’s powers.

Eventually, though, someone’s going to want to write a Magneto story that addresses his youth again, and it’s going to strain even comic book credulity to imagine that a person who is at present 50 (approximately) was once imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. At that point there are only two options: 1) come up with a good alternative origin for Magneto that at least comes close to measuring up the original, or 2) not write the story, and leave Magneto’s timeline swept under the rug. I have no doubt someone can figure out a new origin—there are a ton of great comic book writers nowadays—but again, Magneto’s origin is so well-known and so integral to his character that Marvel will wait until the last possible minute to figure something new out.

But that’s still a bit in the future. Remember, even the movies—far more scrutinized than the comics—fudge timelines ruthlessly. Tony Stark cannot possibly be more than 45 in the MCU right now (although he’s more likely supposed to be 35), making him born in 1972, but his dad was hanging out with Captain America and Agent Carter during World War II. This means Howard was born by 1915 at the latest. It’s not impossible that Howard Stark would have a kid when he was 57, but during Tony’s “flashback” scene in Civil War—when he was approximately 18, making it 1990—we can all recognize Howard was not 75 years old there.

Why wouldn’t you ask a strange fake mailman on the internet for his advice? Send your questions, concerns, arguments that need settling, and whatever else to postman@io9.com.

Turns out, there is a future where 12 Monkeys is no longer on the air, and it’s coming sooner than we thought—Syfy has confirmed that after it dumps out the entirety of the third season over three days in May, the series will conclude with a fourth season. Wait, be kind and rewind: whaaaaa?

The plans were first revealed by Entertainment Weekly alongside the announcement of the show’s renewal for one more season. Starting May 19, Syfy will be doling out all of season three of the show—10 episodes in total—over a three day period. Episodes 1-4 will air on the 19th, 5-7 on the 20th, and then 8-10 on the 21st. The show will then return for final 10 episode season some time in 2018.

This is very sudden, and super strange way for 12 Monkeys’ end to come about. A final season renewal would be understandable. But paired with the news of bizarre way Syfy is rolling out the third season of the show, it seems like an uncharitable way to end one of the best shows on the channel—and a cornerstone in Syfy’s reinvention of its brand to refocus on traditional science fiction programming, alongside series like The Expanse, Dark Matter, and Killjoys. We’ll be very sad to see it go.

This Saturday on Star Wars Rebels, Darth Maul finally faces down with Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s the rematch he’s been waiting for since The Phantom Menace, when Kenobi cut him in two and derailed his rise to power. But it was a battle that was never supposed to happen.

Leading into Saturday’s must-see episode “Twin Suns” (we’ve seen it, it’s incredible), io9 spoke with Rebels executive producer Dave Filoni about the pressure and importance of finally bringing this Star Wars battle to life. We won’t mention any spoilers here, but Filoni did reveal this: “Originally Maul perished in the season two finale where he returned. It was a one-off appearance.”

In case you don’t remember, after his first battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi in 1999's The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul came back on Filoni’s first show, The Clone Wars, sporting some brand new robot legs and some family connections. He had a huge storyarc there, and later reemerged on Rebels as a mysterious figure who used Ezra Bridger’s emerging knowledge of the Force to his own benefit. Filoni’s original idea was to bring him back and give fans something they’d always wanted, to see the popular Sith Lords battle it out.

“So originally in that episode you were gonna get Vader fighting Maul, Vader would have killed Maul, and then fought Ahsoka,” Filoni said. However, in the already jam-packed episode, he decided it was just too much.

“It just became unwieldy,” Filoni continued. “There were too many storylines, and there isn’t enough emotional material between Vader and Maul. It’s more of a fan fiction fun thought that they fought. The emotional drama was really between Vader and Ahsoka. So we decided to let Maul live.”

But alive, Maul became a great tool for Filoni and company. He’s played a minor, but vital, role in the ongoing third season: First he and Ezra unlocked some crucial Star Wars information, he’s was the person who provided a link between Sabine and the Darksaber and, now, he’s going to finally have a showdown with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Filoni wasn’t sure if that was how he wanted the story to go but, ultimately, it benefited both characters. “You always felt Obi-Wan had this great track record of taking out a Sith Lord in the past,” Filoni said, referring to his first battle with Maul which is referenced throughout the prequels. “We wondered, [by bringing back Maul], did we rob him of what he was able to accomplish?”

Everyone in the world will find out Saturday at 8:30 pm ET on Disney XD. And check back here immediately after the episode airs for an exclusive interview with Filoni on the finale’s (many) revelations and surprises.

HBO has released the full trailer for the final season of The Leftovers, the post-apocalyptic saga that’s not “officially” about the Rapture... although come on, guys, it totally is. So, it should come as no surprise that the show’s got its own Jesus now. And it’s Kevin (Justin Theroux).

The Leftovers is coming back for its third and final season, and things are getting seriously Biblical. It takes place in the final days before the seven-year anniversary of the Sudden Departure, which is supposed to be the time when Revelations comes to pass. It’ll have fire, earthquake, floods, and the most dangerous thing of all... ABBA. But luckily, they’ve got Kevin on their side, who’s basically come back from the dead at least twice at this point. However, as the trailer points out, he so doesn’t want to be Jesus... even if he has the beard for it.

Check out the trailer below, which is definitely amping up the intensity in the final moments before the End of Days. The Leftovers returns April 16.

[ComingSoon]

Four and a half billion years ago, some dust from a cloud orbiting around a star coalesced into a rocky planet. But unlike most of the dusty balls in our solar system, this one was special—it was just the right distance away from the star that one day after the surface had cooled, water could exist as a liquid, rather than a solid or gas. The planet’s surface eventually fractured into plates that shifted around, becoming continents. All that shifting has rubbed away the details of that ancient Earth. Was the era as hellish as its name, “Hadean” implies, or was Earth always a water-rich orb with moving plates?

Scientists have found a new portal into this turbulent time that could lead to answers.

A pair of researchers looked at some rocks found in the very old Canadian Shield, a vast region of exposed rock in northwestern Quebec. The samples they looked at weren’t so interesting—they were 2.7 billion years old, and we’ve discovered rocks more than a billion years older. However, the metals within them contained a special signature, one that implies a specific kind of crust very shortly after the Earth formed, which was possibly more Martian than Earth-like. The researchers published their results in the journal Science today

“What the rocks have is a signature of something very old,” Jonathan O’Neil, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, told Gizmodo. “For the first time we can pinpoint their source rock, and how the core of the Canadian Shield was produced.” The Canadian Shield is just really old crust without any dirt on top that’s experienced billions of years worth of erosion and mountain building, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

The scientists specifically analyzed two natural clocks: The quantity of two isotopes (flavors of an atom which differ in the number of neutrons in their nuclei) each of two heavy elements, samarium and neodymium, in their rocks. The first samarium isotope decays into the first neodymium isotope very quickly, so the presence of this so-called neodymium-142 gives us detail about the rocks’ early history. The second samarium isotope decays into neodymium-143 much more slowly. The isotope ratios in this second pair give detail about the time that’s passed since the neodymium-142 clock stopped ticking.

O’Neil and his colleagues used these signatures to determine whether their Canadian shield rocks originated from a “felsic” source, a granite-type rock typical of crust found on land, or a “mafic” source, a more basalt-like rock found in the crust of the seafloor. It turns out, the rocks found by O’Neil’s team carried a signature indicating they had been formed from a mafic source around four billion years ago, and then were recycled before finishing up as part of the Canadian Shield. That means a piece of very ancient ocean floor-like crust sat around for over a billion years before being turned into land-like crust. That doesn’t imply that the ancient earth had oceans, since the other planets have mafic crusts but no oceans. Instead, if the Earth started out with mainly mafic oceanic crust, it begs the question of why we have so much felsic continental crust today, said Ming Tang, geochemist at Rice University.

“The origin of Earth’s unique continents has been one of the central problems in our business,” said Tang. “The more we study the continental crust, the more fascinated we became with it.”

If all this sounds esoteric, here’s a simpler explanation: We have virtually no idea what the Earth looked like billions of years ago, because there are a very few four billion year old rocks to help us out (though there have been a few found in Australia). Now, scientists have figured out a way to read younger rocks to glimpse the distant past. “This study gives us another window into that period of Earth’s history for which we don’t have a rock record,” Roberta Rudnick, professor in the department of earth science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Gizmodo.

So what does this new window tell us about the ancient Earth? Generally, folks think Hadean Earth might have been a hellish world that looked a lot like our rocky neighbor planets Mars or Venus, which have mafic crusts with no plate tectonics. O’Neil’s study adds evidence to that idea, and suggests that later on in Earth’s history the planet could have developed granites, the felsic crusts, most likely as a result of emerging plate tectonics, maybe around 3 or so billion years ago. But others disagree, and think that plate tectonics emerged much earlier on Earth, thanks to the presence of water.

Scientists can’t really say anything definitive with just a few traces of 4 billion year old rocks, though. All they know is that there are these new 2.7 billion year old rocks that must been produced after some ocean floor-like crust had sat around for a billion years, melted in the mantle, and re-solidified on the surface. They also know that planets without tectonic plates seem to have mostly ocean floor-like crusts. “We’re extremely sample-biased the further back in time we go” Jesse Reimink, Carnegie Institute postdoctoral associate who was not involved with the study (but is currently working on another project alongside the paper’s second author) told Gizmodo. “But we have to make the most out of what we have.”

And even if we can’t say whether the Hadean Earth was truly hell or a waterworld with tectonic plates similar to our own, there are some conclusions these measurements do lead to. Again, we know O’Neil’s rocks sat around in some ocean floor-like crust for a long time before being melted down and re-deposited on the Canadian Shield, which still tells us something about how rocks were being recycled on the ancient Earth. It’s a bit like finding a single dinosaur fossil. We can’t say something about every dinosaur, but can still say that crazy creatures like this must have existed on Earth.

What O’Neil has ultimately presented is a method to analyze ancient rocks that will help us better understand the early Earth, a method folks are excited to try elsewhere. “You take this one location and they’ve worked out a good process for how it might form,” said Reimink. “Now we have to go to other places. Is it’s the same process or something different? This paper is a nice sort of test case that we can use as a testable model for other places.”

[Science]

Rosedale High seniors Sadie and McKayla do everything together. Cheer squad, prom committee, blogging on Tumblr. Oh, and killing people. That’s, like, the number one thing they’re good at.

Making its debut at SXSW in Austin this week, Tragedy Girls is a teen horror-comedy for the like-and-subscribe era. Focused on two girls who want to go down in history as legendary serial killers—and earn huge social media followings while doing it—director Tyler MacIntyre’s film totally inverts the idea of the Final Girl. Tragedy Girls turns the young women who’d usually be screaming psycho-killer targets into the actual slaughterers and has loads of fun doing it. In fact, the film opens with McKayla (Alexandra Shipp) being chased by a masked murderer, screaming in fear as certain death looms. But the would-be killer gets conked on the head by BFF Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand) and the two friends proceed to hold him hostage in a remote location.

They talk shit as they smack him around—“why you being such a little bitch about this?”, “do you want to cry for help?”—but soon reveal the true reason for capturing him. McKayla and Sadie are big fans of Lowell’s work and want to get tips from him on becoming infamous. As the movie’s plot develops, we see that the girls are perfect daughters who just happen to also be peppy sadists. The pair have created a Tragedy Girls social media brand which obsessively details the killings in Rosedale, which no one knows are their own handiwork. But when things start slowing down, they concoct an ambitious plan that will leave a huge swath of destruction in their wake.

Tragedy Girls shows off its genre smarts in a few different ways. After capturing Lowell, the girls rattle off a quick taxonomy of killers, explaining the difference between spree and serial. The film likewise uses character types from slasher films and high school melodramas in subversive ways, as with the mean-girl archenemy who’s a performatively “woke” rival cheerleader who wants to cancel prom after an emo-biker hunk winds up dead. Like all good coming-of-age stories, the girls have to reckon with jealousy, romantic yearning, and external forces that threaten to pull them apart but they do so in a way that features hilariously inventive murders that spray blood all over the screen. The girls’ focus on styling, branding, and shameless self-promotion provides a hilarious through line for the movie. When Sadie goes to the town sheriff because she’s being stalked by another killer, he tells her to stop checking in her location on social media. Her response? “I’d rather die.”

MacIntyre’s made a wry, sharp movie that finds fresh subversive energy out of the fusion of two genres. Tragedy Girls is as much Friday the 13th as it is Heathers and, if we’re lucky, it’s the start of a franchise that will slashing up the screen well into the future.

Warner Bros. has just announced that the Aquaman movie has been pushed back from its original October 5, 2018 release date to December 21, 2018. But that news has us wondering about the other DC movie that’s meant to be out next year, too: What the hell is up with The Flash?

Originally announced for a release date exactly one year from today—March 16, 2018—we’ve heard progressively less and less about the Flash movie, which is bizarre considering we’ve heard much more about Aquaman, which was always scheduled to be released after The Flash.

What little we have heard doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence that The Flash will hit that 2018 date. The film is currently on the hunt for its third planned director, after both original director Seth Grahame-Smith and his replacement, Rick Famuyiwa, quit the film last year citing “creative differences.” Since then, the silence has been deafening, especially when the time between Ben Affleck announcing he won’t direct The Batman to Matt Reeves joining the movie was a mere two and a half weeks. It’s been three and a half months since Famuyiwa left The Flash and yet, nothing. The singular update we’ve had since Famuyiwa’s departure is a report that Joby Harold had been hired to completely re-write the script for its third time.

What also doesn’t help is that there’s been no official statement about the delay of The Flash movie—which is surely inevitable and expected at this point—from that March 16 release date, which has left rumors to fill the gap left by Warner Bros. Forbes’ Mark Hughes reported last month the movie had been moved to 2019. A recent rumor derived out of a highly untrustworthy 4chan post claims the film won’t be out till 2020. Even general sources your average online moviegoer would use are stumped—a cursory Google search of “Flash Movie” still throws up the March 2018 date. Unreliable but regular source IMDB says 2020. Box Office Mojo doesn’t have a date for the film among its 2018 releases at all.

No one knows anything that’s going on with this movie, and Warner Bros. itself is staying quiet. We’ve reached out to the studio to clarify when The Flash is currently expected to release, and we’ll update this post if we get a response.

This is straight-up crazy. Pretty much out of the blue, Sony has announced it will release a Venom movie on October 5, 2018, possibly directed by Alex Kurtzman.

The news, first reported by ERC Box Office, is very surprising, considering no one has heard a peep about a Venom movie for a long time.

What we do know is Sony has been trying to do a Venom film for years. The character was more or less forced into Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 and afterwards several people worked on different versions of his story, including Kurtzman, who then went on to make The Mummy. Last year, news broke that writer Dante Harper was working on a script that would reintroduce the character as the star of his own franchise, unrelated to the new Spider-Man films starring Tom Holland. But that was the last we heard of it.

With this announcement coming only from Sony and not Marvel, it seems likely a standalone take on the character is still the plan. However, with a character whose history is so closely tied to Spider-Man, and a new Spider-Man movie coming out, you have to wonder what exactly is the approach— and who, exactly, will be involved.

For some clues, we turn to the comics where Venom has been a standalone character for a while. In recent storylines the symbiote has been bonded to Flash Thompson, providing a more heroic take on the character on Earth and within the Marvel cosmos as Agent Venom. Then, in his latest ongoing series, he’s reverted back to villainy with a new criminal host. So the idea of introducing a Venom on his own isn’t completely crazy. However, most moviegoers are sure to wonder what this will be without Peter Parker and the iconic storyline about the black symbiote suit.

Anyway, it’s incredibly odd for this film to pop onto the release schedule so suddenly. We contacted Sony and it confirmed the date was legitimate. The Hollywood Reporter also added that writers Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner did the most recent draft of the script (working off of Harper’s work) but that Kurtzman is not attached to direct. We’ll have to wait and see if they’re right or if ERC is.

Update: After initial publication, we added Sony’s confirmation, as well as the information from The Hollywood Reporter about the new writer and potential lack of director.

[ERC Box Office]

Additional reporting by James Whitbrook

Izabella, the Transformers: The Last Knight newcomer, knows she fights like a girl and she’s cool with it. Because it makes her awesome.

The new trailer for Transformers: The Last Knight gives us a front-and-center look at Izabella, played by Nickelodeon star Isabela Moner. She might be a (15-year-old) kid, but she wants to fight and doesn’t give star Mark Wahlberg any choice in the matter. Izabella looks to be part of a gang of kids who’ve been orphaned after the Robocalypse, definitely leaning into the “Kids, They’re Just Like You!” part of the franchise. Gotta sell those Transformers toys.

The fierce survivor is a refreshing change of pace for the long-running Michael Bay series, which has often reduced its female characters to glorified blow-up dolls. Of course, there’s always the chance she’ll succumb to the “Badass in Distress” trope, where she’s strong and capable until that point where she eventually needs to be rescued by a man, but hopefully it doesn’t come to that. Fighting like a girl is a good thing, after all.

Transformers: The Last Knight comes out June 23.

[/Film]

Window washing is awful. Window washing is so bad that it’s not included in most home cleaning services. Window washing is so bad that Deadspin didn’t even bother to rank it.

ECOVACS WINBOTS (please stop with the all caps) are Roombas for your windows, glass shower doors, and most other glass surfaces you stick them to. The suction force the high speed fan is able to produce is pretty amazing, and it makes sense that dragging a squeegee over a surface using that much pressure does a great job of cleaning.

Power on, attach, press play, and the WINBOT will clean your panel of glass, using frames and drop-offs as guides, and even navigating around knobs and hinges. The 900 series’ ability to efficiently navigate a framed window is already impressive, but watching it hit the edge of a floating glass shower door is really something.

As you can imagine, using the WINBOT on exterior upper-story windows with no balcony below them is terrifying, even with the well-designed safety tether, but at no time in our testing did we see the WINBOT’s suction waver. If there’s a power outage or the WINBOT’s power cord comes unplugged, an internal battery can continue to power the suction for 15 minutes.

If you live in a window-saturated modern construction like I do, the WINBOT may be the only way to clean some of your exterior windows, short of bring in professional cleaners.

As with vacuuming and mopping robots, the WINBOT is not going to do a better job than you taking the time and energy to patiently clean by hand. However, the difference between using the WINBOT and not cleaning your windows is night and day, and if at first the robot doesn’t succeed, run it again.

The included cleaning pads are washable. Just don’t use anything other than WINBOT Professional Cleaning Solution. It leave film.

Deadline reports that Dan Trachtenberg, the director of last year’s 10 Cloverfield Lane and one of the most unsettling new episodes of Black Mirror (“Playtest”), has just signed to make a movie called Space Race.

The publication had no further information regarding what it’s about, but it’s a spec script by Daniel Kunka (12 Rounds) that’ll be produced and distributed by Universal Pictures. The film is described as “high concept with four-quadrant tentpole potential,” which means it’s almost certainly not a film about the U.S. and Russia racing to get a man on the moon.

So what if it’s way more simple than that? What if it’s literally just about racing in space?

Trachtenberg is attached to a few other projects at the moment, such as a heist movie called Crime of the Century and a Houdini biopic, so there’s no guarantee this happens next. But it sounds like a project to definitely keep an eye on—especially if that title is also a plot description.

[Deadline]

*Correction: Obviously, it’s Cloverfield “Lane” not “Land” like we mistakenly had when this article first posted.

For the past few weeks fans have been wondering what’s happening with the DC film universe. Now we have a better idea.

As of right now, only James Wan’s Aquaman will shoot in 2017, which means there would only be one DC film released in 2018. That’s not great for keeping the brand relevant. So, according to Variety reporter Justin Kroll, Warner Bros. is currently hoping one of five films will be ready to shoot by the end of the year. They are:

• Gotham City Sirens
• The Flash
• Green Lantern Corps
• Suicide Squad 2
• Dark Universe

Each of those films have writers attached and are in the process of getting their scripts right. Some also have directors, too. None are ready to move forward just yet, though, and Kroll says if it doesn’t work out and only Aquaman shoots this year, the company is okay with that. Matt Reeves’ Batman solo film will be shooting next year with an eye on a 2019 release.

As detailed in the below article, there are 17 DC movies in various stages of development and these five are certainly near the top of the list.

As we discussed earlier, The Flash has been in development the longest, with the lead role already cast and two directors having joined, then left, the project. At one point, it was actually supposed to be released one year from today. Despite all the setbacks, it still seems the most likely film to be ready next.

On the other hand, Suicide Squad 2 just got a writer this week. I’d put that in the last position. As for the other three, they’ve all had attachments for at least a few weeks. If one writer has a better idea than another and the script comes together faster, anything could happen.

This has been your DC Films update.

[Twitter]

The Rampage movie finds its villain. Henry Cavill boards the next Mission: Impossible. Expect some really big dragons on Game of Thrones next season. David Mazouz teases the threat of the Court of Owls on Gotham. Plus, a few tiny details about X-Men TV seroes Gifted, and a new poster for The Flash/Supergirl crossover. To me, my Spoilers!

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

We can finally rest easy: in an interview with Complex, James Gunn confirmed Ego is both a living planet and a shapeshifter, able to take on a multitude of avatars and forms—including Kurt Russell.

Ego is a living planet who is able to manifest himself in different ways he’s been alone for millions of years and he’s learned how to control the molecules around him in such a way as to create avatars of themselves, such as Kurt Russell. I think Ego was a very lonely character out there by himself and went off in search of love and perhaps found it in Quill’s mother.

The same was pretty much true of Ego in the comics, so it makes sense, really.

Rampage

Malin Akerman has been cast as the film’s villain, “a calculating head of a tech company that is behind the [film’s] monsters.” Jack Lacy will play the brother of Akerman’s character. [THR]

Mission: Impossible 6

Director Christopher McQuarrie seemed to confirm (somewhat ambiguously) on his Instagram that Henry Cavill has joined the film in an undisclosed role, with the actor joining in in the comments on the below Instagram post:

Variety eventually confirmed that Cavill wasn’t just joking around on social media; he’s joined the cast, and will reportedly play “some sort of a right hand to the head of [Tom] Cruise’s unit.”

Early Man

In a press release for yesterday’s trailer, Nick Park divulged a few more character names and the voice actors portraying them:

Today we get to meet Dug’s tribe, a loveable bunch of misfits voiced by some exceptional British talent. They’re essentially a group of inept cavemen and women including Treebor, played by Richard Ayoade, a gentle giant scared of his own shadow; Magma, Treebor’s no nonsense mother voiced by Selena Griffiths and Mark Williams as Barry, whose best friend is a rock. Chief Bobnar, voiced by the brilliant Timothy Spall, leads the pack as their long-suffering leader, and father figure to his tribe of idiotic brutes.

[Coming Soon]

Luck

Skydance has teamed with the Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studio, as well as writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger for a high-concept animated film which “pulls back the curtain on the millennia-old battle between the organizations of good luck and bad luck that secretly affects our daily lives.” The company is also producing an untitled animated film from Linda Woolveton (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Maleficent) which will “follow a teenager who comes of age using her magical powers to defend her family when the opposing forces of light and darkness threaten to divide her kingdom.” [THR]

Atomica

Fangoria interviewed stars Dominc Monaghan and Sarah Habel about their characters in Syfy’s upcoming scifi thriller set in a nuclear power plant.

SARAH HABEL: Abby Dixon is trying her very, very best to do her very, very best, but she’s in a little bit over her head. She cares about the truth and she cares about doing the right thing and she’s in trouble because that is not possible in her current circumstances. I was just so impressed with her resolve and I wanted a chance to try and play that. I think a lot of times female characters are given quirky, sort of charming or other tactics to make them successful. But she was bold and uncompromising in her drive which I found to be a huge challenge but also I feel like that it made me better to let that out.

DOMINIC MONAGHAN: I play someone who has deep, emotional problems. So that was something fun to explore. There’s no real basis, there’s no real template on how to play a guy like that because you don’t tend to know what it’s like to live underground for two years and not knowing any human beings. So, I played him like someone who’s been in solitary confinement for a while. And if you know anyone that’s been in solitary confinement for a while, they tend to lose their marbles a little bit.

Zero K

Noah Hawley, Charlie McDowell, and Justin Lader are adapting Don Delillo’s near-future novel about a businessman and his wife being put into cryo into a limited series for FX. McDowell broke the news to Coming Soon:

The next thing for Justin Lader, my writing partner and myself, is a Don DeLilo book, ‘Zero K’,” McDowell today told CS. “Noah Hawley came to us with it and it’s something we really love. We’re adapting that with Scott Rudin producing for FX. It will be a limited series. It’s an esoteric sci-fi that definitely explores things similar to what we’ve explored before, but in a bigger, more visual way.

To me, it’s sort a dream come true, because I’m obsessed with his stuff and the stories [Noah Hawley] is telling. He’s also such a brilliant mind. To be able to collaborate with someone like that? We haven’t done that before. We’ve only really collaborated between ourselves. Collaborating with someone we like and respect so much has led to such an incredible collaboration so far.

X-Men/Gifted

Screen Rant discovered a few casting calls for extras on the website My Casting File. According to the site, the series is looking to cast several “Native Americans at Outpost” with presumable ties to Blair Redford’s Thunderbird, and even “Sentinel Service Techs” to construct the giant, mutanticidal robots.

Gotham

David Mazouz promised CBR that The Court of Owls “will become extremely present” in the final eight episodes of the season:

The Court of Owls will become extremely present in the last eight episodes. At the center of their plans is Bruce Wayne — Bruce and 514A are instrumental to that plan. Something huge will happen with Bruce and the Court of Owls that will change him forever and ultimately help transform him into the man we know he has to become.

The Expanse

Excellent news: Syfy has officially renewed the series for a third season! [Spoiler TV]

Stranger Things

Kyle Dixon and Micheal Stein of the band S U R V I V E spoke to Ars Technica about their work and equipment scoring the second season of Stranger Things. Dixon closed the interview stating there’ll be a lot of the Upside Down in season two.

There are new characters, fun, and the Upside Down will be more of a place — you’ll spend more time [there]. So we’ll make a lot more weird music this time around.

Game of Thrones

Director Matt Shankman excitedly revealed to EW that Dany’s dragons have gotten rather large by the time we reach the next season:

The dragons this year are the size of 747s. Drogon is the biggest of the bunch—his flame is 30-feet in diameter!

Iron Fist

According to Finn Jones in an interview with TV Guide, it will take a “couple more seasons” for Danny Rand to become a full-fledged superhero. (Hopefully the show can get a lot more interesting before it reaches that point, though.)

The first couple of episodes you see Danny kind of awkwardly fitting into suits. He’s not used to this. He’s in a suit and it doesn’t feel right. Then he’s in regular clothes and it still doesn’t feel right. He’s trying to find his identity. Eventually throughout the series he kind of claims some kind of identity through his clothes — but we’ve got a couple more seasons to go before we get to that point.

Arrow

Episode 21 of the season is titled “Honor Thy Fathers.”

Doctor Who

Steven Moffat shared his advice to incoming showrunner Chris Chibnall on how to EP Doctor Who.

Advice, oh Lord! [Laughs] First of all, he’s a very, very experienced showrunner himself, so he doesn’t need advice. The advice I gave him, which I won’t share, was not about how to run Doctor Who but how to have a life while you’re running Doctor Who. The things you must make sure of. He’s a family man, like myself. You’ve got to make sure that you survive it! [Laughs]

And the support you’re going to need and what it’s going to be like at 4 in the morning when you’re rewriting some other bastard’s script and not even putting your name on it. What that’s going to feel like. That is what I talked to him about. He has his own ideas about how to do Doctor Who. The advice I’ve given him is all prosaic and all quite, make sure this happens, make sure you get that and don’t let them do this. I won’t tell you what those things were! [Laughs] But it’s really about, you’ve got to see your kids now and then. You’ve got to go home now and then. You’ve got to keep living. It is a monstrous workload, Doctor Who, monstrous.

[Worldscreen]

The Flash

Finally, Barry’s under the Music Meister’s control in a new poster for next week’s all-singing, all-dancing crossover with Supergirl.

_{Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson. Banner art by Jim Cooke.}

The results of January’s Monopoly Token Madness fan vote are in. Three new game pieces will be included in the next generation of the classic board game this fall, at the cost of a trio of tokens that have been with the game since the very beginning.

According to Hasbro, fans across 146 countries cast over 4.3 million votes during the event, which pitted the eight current Monopoly tokens against 56 newcomers. Potential additions included new and updated vehicles, modern-day luxury items, a series of emojis and a whole lot of animals.

The first classic casualty, the thimble, was announced during the 2017 New York Toy Fair. That 1937 original has been joined by its fellow founding tokens, the wheelbarrow and the shoe, casualties of a fan base with a thing for beasts and birds. Now the top hat, race car and battleship are all that remains of the original lineup, along with 1942's Scottie dog and 2013's unspecified cat.

While I’m sad to see the three originals retire, it’s hard to stay sad with the looming prospect of fighting my siblings for the tyrannosaurus piece at the beginning of every game (though these shots are taken on my desk at home, so I’ll always have a spare on hand.) Plus the chances of Hasbro playing off nostalgia in another year or so and releasing a classic edition featuring the lost tokens are pretty high.

The grand reveal is all part of what Hasbro is calling “World Monopoly Day,” which I imagine is observed by angrily storming away from flipped Monopoly boards in a shower of colorful paper money. The fake holiday actually falls on Sunday, March 19, but that’s not a good day for the announcement people, so here we are.

Sets including the new token lineup should be in stores this fall.

Okay, so you’re probably going, “Is this, like, another Clueless tie-in or what?” But seriously, it’s actually a way normal way to continue the iconic ‘90s film. That’s right, Clueless is getting a comic book sequel. No buggin’.

Boom Studios is bringing back the girls from Beverly Hills for an all-new adventure, written by total Betties Amber Benson (Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Sarah Kuhn (Heroine Complex), and illustrated by fellow Betty Siobhan Keenan (Adventure Time). According to the press release, the comic continues the journey of Cher, Dionne, and Tai as they surf the metaphorical crimson wave of senior year at Bronson Alcott High School. They struggle to figure out their plans after high school, and discover what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

Benson, who actually auditioned for the role of Tai back in the day, said she wasn’t surprised the movie became a pop-culture phenomenon, and is excited to continue the movie’s legacy with an all-new story. She told Vanity Fair they’re using research from the U.C.L.A Linguistics department to stay true to the time period, with a “slang book” of terms kids (like me!) used during the ‘90s. Even though the movie is old enough to legally drink now, Kuhn added that its modern interpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma has helped it achieve its status as a modern comedy classic after over 20 years, instead of becoming a full-on Monet.

In case you couldn’t already tell, Clueless basically defined my teen years. I saw it as a double-feature with The Babysitter’s Club in 1995, which I would consider one of the Top 10 coolest moments of my life so far. Clueless was, in the end, about girls becoming women... and how they could (and should) do so on their own terms. Knowing that Tara from Buffy, who happens to be an excellent writer, is helping bring Clueless back to life... with a brand-new story? It’s like I get to watch the Clueless TV show all over again! Yeah, you heard that right, I watched the TV show. And I loved it.