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Combining ancient Persian mythology with the impossible-to-explain bond between pets and humans, Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee captures pain, guilt, and revenge in a single tidy novella. As man-eating manticores stalk the countryside, giant rocs, their only known natural predator, are trained up in royal mews by ruhkers…Read more...

You probably shouldn’t hold your breath for a second season of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Jughead seems to be writing Archie comics again on Riverdale. There’s some kind of Wacky Races-type cartoon coming that isn’t Wacky Races. Spoilers gonna spoil, baby.

After apologizing to the Bahamas ahead of a recent treasure hunting scheme, Fyre Fest mastermind Billy McFarland has some seemingly inevitable news for us all: Fyre Festival 2 is in the works.

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly round-up of the greatest toy news the internet has to share. This week: Hasbro’s got a new Grogu figure with cheeks you can’t wait to pinch, Lego embiggens the heads of Return of the Jedi’s most memorable heroes, and Hot Toys returns to Darth Vader once again with a glowing,…Read more...

Former crypto golden boy Sam Bankman-Fried’s calamitous time at his former exchange FTX was even more haphazard and ludicrous than previously stated. FTX’s latest bankruptcy report filed Sunday adds additional fuel to the still-smoldering questions regarding just how greedy and corrupt its former executives were…Read more...

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Star Wars: Visions, Disney+’s animated anthology series that debuted in 2021, finally has a trailer for season two. We learned earlier this year that the series would be premiering May 4, and would include international studios, where previously only Japanese anime studios had been tapped to participate. Now we have…Read more...

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that he was the one responsible for covering up the “w” in Twitter’s name with a white tarp a few days ago—and he’s done it again. This is how new “Titter” was born.Read more...

You know that I love puzzles. And I know that you know that I love puzzles. Does it follow that you know that I know that you know that I love puzzles? No? Philosophers examine questions like this in the study of common knowledge. To solve this week’s puzzle, you’ll need to peer inside others’ minds and deduce what…Read more...

Clone Force 99 ain’t done yet.Read more...

Leer en español.Read more...

Illumination’s Super Mario Bros. movie i now in theaters, and not unlike with the games themselves, is doing really well at the box office.

Before there was Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, before there was Galactic Starcruiser, heck, even before there were prequel movies, there was Star Tours. The first collaboration between Lucasfilm and Disney theme parks debuted in 1987 and in the decades since, has always attempted to stay current. On Sunday at Star Wars…Read more...

Just as the weekend started, TTRPG company Paizo has published the first draft of its Open RPG Creative License (ORC).

Star Wars Celebration brings plenty of news with it from the galaxy far, far away, but it also brings future opportunities to drain your wallet. Hasbro understood this more than anyone else at their panel at the London convention, and they brought out big announcements from Star Wars and Indiana Jones to whet fans…Read more...

Last year, Warner Bros. was acquired by the Discovery Channel, and the resulting merger has been more than a little chaotic. Things got off to a rough start with the sudden cancellation of Batgirl, and has since spiraled into multiple shows getting canceled (some of them not even getting to air) and series getting …Read more...

Though the look back at Obi-Wan Kenobi panel at Star Wars Celebration didn’t have any news about a second season of the show, it did give fans in attendance a new found appreciation for what the show meant to the cast and crew who worked on it.Read more...

Andor was lauded for its grounded approach to Star Wars, leaning on a physicality to its production that rooted the audience in its grittier take on the galaxy far, far away—which also meant a different approach to VFX that contrasted with the recent rise of Stagecraft and “The Volume,” the screen-based set that…Read more...

In May of 1997, Garry Kasparov sat down at a chess board in a Manhattan skyscraper. Kasparov, considered the best chess player of all time, wasn’t challenging another grandmaster. He was playing with an AI called Deep Blue. Deep Blue was one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, built by IBM with a specific…Read more...

Just a few months in, and 2023 is already shaping up to be a fairly impressive year for movies. After a little bit of a delay, Illumination and Nintendo released their CG Super Mario Bros. movie earlier in the week.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has decided that NPR is not the same as media outlets like China’s Xinhua News, which is a well-known state propaganda machine, after all, even though he classified them both as “state-affiliated media” on the social media network this past Wednesday. After receiving pushback from NPR, Musk…Read more...

The past few years have seen an explosion of progress in large language model artificial intelligence systems that can do things like write poetry, conduct humanlike conversations and pass medical school exams. This progress has yielded models like ChatGPT that could have major social and economic ramifications…Read more...

The dead speak! Three times, in fact. At Star Wars Celebration 2023, three deceased Star Wars villains came back from the dead (and on Easter no less) to chat about their experiences playing baddies in a galaxy far, far, away. There was Gwendoline Christie who played Captain Phasma, Andy Serkis who played Supreme…Read more...

This weekend is Star Wars Celebration 2023, and even Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is getting a little bit of love. Respawn’s sequel to its 2019 breakout releases at the end of the month, and while it doesn’t have a panel to itself, the game got a new trailer during the annual event.

When we asked GPT-3, an extremely powerful and popular artificial intelligence language system, whether you’d be more likely to use a paper map or a stone to fan life into coals for a barbecue, it preferred the stone.Read more...

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is out this week, and while it’s garnered a mixed response, there’s one generally agreed upon high point: Jack Black’s Bowser. Black has always been a reliably funny actor, and the movie reportedly takes advantage of that, along with his very good singing voice.

Colombian OnlyFans actress Katty Blake has become national news in the Latin American country after she posted a video of herself performing oral sex at the Rock of Guatapé, a 721-foot-high (220 meters) batholith that is considered a national landmark. Now, her and her partner may face legal trouble.Read more...

Nostalgia has long been an important part of the creative industry, particularly as it relates to film and TV. There’s so many reboots and revivals these days you could fill a modest paperback, but not all of them are created equal. And by that same token, they’re not announced and received equally, either.

The Jedi are coming back, and yes, we will hear more of their tales. During the 15th anniversary panel for Star Wars: The Clone Wars at Star Wars 2023 Celebration, Dave Filoni revealed that a second season of the animated Tales of the Jedi series was on the horizon. The debut season was officially announced at last…Read more...

Star Wars Celebration is upon us, over the pond this year but the fandom rises to the occasion.Read more...

When you think of a television show that’s emblematic of the ‘90s, none are more quintessential than Beverly Hills, 90210. From the cheesy, guitar-heavy intro music to the too-high-to-heaven hairstyles, the show became an international hit by depicting a group of attractive teens growing up privileged in Southern…Read more...

“Scary teddy bears,” Emperor Palpatine himself, Ian McDiarmid, said. “The end of Palpatine.” The iconic actor behind Star Wars’ greatest villain was one of four actors to appear on the 40th-anniversary panel for Return of the Jedi at Star Wars Celebration 2023. McDiarmid was joined by Lando Calrissian’s Billy Dee…Read more...

Comic book writer Rachel Pollack has passed away at the age of 77 years old. Her wife, Judith Zoe Mateen, shared the news on Friday via her own personal Facebook. Pollack’s passing comes after she was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in July 2022, and moved to hospice care this past March.

What little we’ve seen about The Acolyte so far has suggested an all-new world of characters to meet as Disney+ ventures back to the time of the High Republic era, centuries before the events of the Star Wars movies. But in a surprise reveal, we now know at least one familiar Jedi will be joining the series.

The High Republic is ready to make the leap to the Star Wars TV series world with The Acolyte, but before we see the final days of the Jedi’s apex, it’s time to see the explosive next step of their fight with Nihil in the third phase of the publishing initiative.

Damn, they made a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys over the years.

NASA is always looking for new ideas, and it’s just selected the latest projects to fund under its Innovative Advanced Concepts program. Six research teams earned Phase II grants to continue developing their futuristic designs, which include a strategy for destroying Earth-threatening asteroids and a plan to let…Read more...

With calls for a national ban against TikTok growing more and more common by the week, particularly in Congress, it’s never been a tougher time to be a lawmaker publicly supporting the app. Still, a vocal minority of House and Senate Democrats—no Republicans—are defying those calls and doing so on the platform despite…Read more...

When it became clear that the upcoming Star Wars Disney+ series, Ahsoka, was going to be a sequel to Star Wars Rebels, everyone had one question: Who is playing Grand Admiral Thrawn, one of the biggest, baddest Star Wars villains who has never been seen in live action? Well, at Star Wars Celebration 2023, series…Read more...

Amazon has banned the incredibly versatile Flipper Zero pen-testing tool on its platform, labeling it as a prohibited card-skimming device.Read more...

This week, the New York Times reported that a tranche of classified material had leaked to the web. The documents, which were purported to involve the Pentagon and NATO’s military stratagems to assist the Ukrainians in their war with the Russians, were found on Twitter and the chat app Telegram.Read more...

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It remains to be seen if Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will be popular (and profitable) enough to warrant Hasbro and Paramount making a sequel. It would be a shame if it didn’t, however, as the movie was a blast that stayed nerdy while remaining comprehensible to mass audiences. So if there will be a sequel,…Read more...

The Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer for McDonald’s reportedly told other advertising heavyweights that Elon Musk’s relentless shitposting in the name of free speech “is perpetuating racism.” The Mickey D’s exec is also concerned about the general chaos the Twitter CEO has caused and the threat he poses …Read more...

It’s been one of those weeks where I’ve been quietly toiling away in the lab, getting new gadgets set up for upcoming reviews. One of the latest pieces of kit to come across my desk is the Bird Buddy, a smart bird feeder that dynamically snaps the birds feasting at your outdoor buffet for you, and can even help you…Read more...

Star Trek: Picard’s third season has felt like such a departure from its first two at times that it has felt almost standalone, the rare character beats and plot points that have mattered to its nostalgic tale of changelings and family mattering little more than a footnote. But this week saw the series try to relate…Read more...

As a highly pathogenic variant of avian influenza continues to cause mass outbreaks and mortality in wild and domestic birds worldwide, another unfortunate animal casualty has emerged. A pet dog died of bird flu in Ontario, Canada this month, the country’s public health and food inspection authorities confirmed in a…Read more...

Magnus Carlsen lost his final match as world champion with a slip of the mouse during Thursday night’s game against his longtime rival, Hikaru Nakamura. Carlsen made it to the Armageddon round, to face off against Nakamura after their previous two games ended in draws. Carlsen has defended his title as world champion…Read more...

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Are the droids of Star Wars people? From the moment Wuher glowered at C-3PO and R2-D2 and snarled “we don’t serve their kind,” the galaxy far, far away has danced around the powder keg of its android heroes and villains as a fully fledged sentient species. But the more The Mandalorian has engaged with the idea, the…Read more...