Gizmodo

West Virginia won’t use BlackRock’s investment funds any longer as part of its banking transactions, positioning itself as defending poor, defenseless American fossil fuel companies. The boycott is based on BlackRock’s recent public statements on climate—but ignores the realities of where the financial giant is…Read more...

Microsoft is acquiring Activision Blizzard in a landmark deal worth $68.7 billion. The purchase, should it go through, will reshape the gaming industry and potentially catapult Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division and Game Pass subscription service.Read more...

Between the never-ending pandemic, systemic wage inequality, and constant management nightmares, real-life work has never felt so dystopian. But Ben Stiller’s new Apple TV+ series, Severance, takes things to another level by having Adam Scott undergo a very strange procedure: to have two wholly separate sets of…Read more...

Despite the show’s finale airing almost 20 years ag,o the technology in Star Trek: Voyager (and even TNG) still looks convincingly futuristic, and we’d happily trade our folding smartphones like the Galaxy Z Fold 3 or the Surface Duo 2 for this incredible recreation of one of Voyager’s tricorders.Read more...

A man and his partner’s attempt at a treatment for erectile dysfunction went disastrously wrong, according to his doctors. In a recent case report, they detail how his partner accidentally shot insulation foam into the man’s penis and bladder while a straw connected to the spray had been inserted into his urethra.…Read more...

We’re willing to bet that whether or not you think baseball, or baseball cards, are cool, you probably think monsters are cool. Who doesn’t think monsters are cool? And if an artist took a bunch of famous baseball players and illustrated them as really awesome, creepy, scary monsters to put on baseball cards, well,…Read more...

The world stood aghast in slack-jawed horror over the weekend after watching satellite images of a volcano violently erupting in the small island nation of Tonga. Officials are only now getting a handle on the damage and humanitarian risks of what authorities are calling an “unprecedented disaster.”Read more...

An asteroid measuring nine football fields long is zipping past our planet today. Here’s what you need to know about this near Earth object and why there’s nothing to worry about.

Making an animated TV show about characters from a video game that was inspired wholly from classic animation seems feels like a bit of an ouroboros, or a snake eating its own tail. But is that really a problem when Netflix’s upcoming The Cuphead Show looks so good and fun? I think not.

NASA engineers have executed a plan to clear the Perseverance rover of some debris that has prevented it from properly caching rock samples. The team expects to find out how the clean-up mission went later today.Read more...

Exxon announced on Tuesday it would set a goal to be net zero by 2050, thus proving oil companies are just like you and me: prone to peer pressure and willing to fudge a few numbers to look good. Unfortunately, Exxon’s fudged numbers hold a lot more sway over the fate of the planet than my bench press personal record.Read more...

When the first true Lego sets arrived decades ago they were targeted at kids, but as those kids grew into adults, they never stopped loving the building bricks. As a result, adult fans of Lego (or AFOLs) have always been a driving force behind the toy’s popularity, but it’s only in recent years the company has started…Read more...

A third Happy Death Day could be in the works. Ethan Hawke’s Moon Knight villain has been revealed. Plus, what’s coming on 4400 and Resident Alien, and more on when to expect Yellowjackets’ return. Spoilers now!

Microsoft is acquiring gaming giant Activision Blizzard in a deal worth just shy of $69 billion—which the Xbox owner says will allow it to gain access to hundreds of millions of gamers and position it as “the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.”Read more...

Dungeons & Dragons is bigger right now than than it’s ever been before, and its designers have spent nearly eight years building on its latest incarnation. A new introductory collection wants to tie all of those post Player’s Handbook design decisions together, and cut a path towards whatever’s next.Read more...

Microsoft set the stage for a battle against Chromebooks when it released Windows 11 SE late last year, and now the troops have arrived in the form of low-cost laptops designed for students.

Most of us have been using YouTube for years, and so you probably don’t think much about all of its various settings. But the Google-owned video platform has added so many features and tools in recent years that you’re probably missing some of its most useful capabilities—both on the website and the apps.Read more...

Chamath Palihapitiya, the chairman of Virgin Galactic and CEO of Social Capital, doesn’t care about the plight of Uyghurs—a Muslim-majority ethnic group that’s faced persecution by the Chinese government. Numerous reports out of China have documented how the Uyghurs have been subject to forced abortions, systematic…Read more...

Crypto.com suspended all withdrawals from the platform on Monday and is forcing users to reset two-factor authentication methods, according to tweets from the company. And while Crypto.com is claiming everyone’s money is “safe,” there were reports from users on social media that millions may have been lost to hackers.

Although Disney and Marvel Studios briefly gave us a glimpse of Oscar Isaac in action as one of Marvel Comics’ most iconic street-level vigilantes around a few months ago, now we have a full, proper glimpse at what happens when Marc Spector becomes the Moon Knight—the answer is a snazzy white suit and a whole lot of…Read more...

When it comes to Amazon and money, never say never. Two days before the e-commerce giant was set to ban Visa credit cards in its UK store, it has changed its tune. Visa credit cards are still welcome on the platform, for now.Read more...

Showtime has released the first look at Star Trek’s Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet’s take on the iconic Walter Tevis novel is here, giving us a glimpse at Chiwetel Ejiofor’s arrival on Earth—and his alien struggle to find a way to fit into a changing human society.

John David Wolverton, the author behind the Runelords fantasy saga, Ravenspell, and more—as well as the author of one of the most famous Star Wars expanded universe stories around—has passed away at the age of 64.

It’s been just over a year since WandaVision first hit Disney+, so while we wait for the Scarlet Witch to return in Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness to grapple with the whole “so I was understandably quite sad and magically took it out on a small town/a witch passing by/the synthetic corpse of my android…Read more...

The Expanse is over. Long live The Expanse! With season six now in the books and the show wrapped for good, we’re looking back at the final season. Obviously, it’s still one of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time (it made io9's list of best TV of 2021!), but we had a few nitpicks this final go-round... keeping in…Read more...

Late last year, a rare copy of one of the pitch books legendary director Alejandro Jodorowsky made to pitch his vision for an adaptation of Dune went to auction. Expected to sell for around $30-40,000, it went for around a baffling three million dollars, thanks to an ether-backed collective known as TheSpiceDAO. Now,…Read more...

Humans are no strangers to changing the world around them, often to the detriment of plants and animals around them.

John Cena goes behind the scenes in a new Peacemaker featurette. Get a glimpse of what’s to come on the Nancy Drew finale. Plus, what’s next on Batwoman, Superman & Lois, Naomi, and more. Spoilers get!

When it comes to product upgrades, it might sound like lukewarm praise to say, “It’s pretty much the same as the last version—but the last version was good!” But that’s exactly what’s true of the new Roku Streaming Stick 4K and its pricier sibling, the Roku Streaming Stick 4K+. While neither has quite enough in the…Read more...

The best thing about being an Android user is that you can swap out the look of your interface by merely downloading an app. But the worst thing about Android is that when you’re looking for one thing in the Play Store, you’ll encounter way too many other things are not quite what you’re looking for.

Modular gadgets sound useful on paper but rarely break through to mainstream audiences. We’ve seen countless attempts come and go, leaving behind only fleeting blips of excitement from enthusiasts who are time and again burned when the promise of a customizable device never materializes. Every few years a new example…Read more...

Apple now considers covid-19 booster shots to be an important element in protecting its workers and will be purportedly requiring employees to show proof that they’ve gotten the additional dose to access its premises, according to an internal email seen by the Verge.Read more...

Earlier this week, HBO Max’s Peacemaker finally hit the streaming service. And while we’d certainly like to hear what you thought about both John Cena’s DC spinoff (or the new Scream, if you’ve seen it!), we have to zero in on a specific part of the show: its ridiculously good opening titles.

Of the many highlights of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, its art styles were the among them. While Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) were in traditional 3D, the other Spiders had their own distinct visual styles. Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) was done in…Read more...

If you’re a nerd, then no doubt you’ve tried to get a friend to like something as much as you do. It’s a crap shoot as to whether or not it will work, especially if it’s something as popular (and disjointed) as Star Wars. Recent years have been all over the place for George Lucas’ sci-fi franchise, and even when…Read more...

Apple will grudgingly allow dating app developers in the Netherlands to use alternative payment methods in the App Store, but it doesn’t like it, and the score hasn’t been settled yet.

Former president Donald Trump, known for his gluttonous diet of TV news, is going to have trouble finding one of his favorite far-right channels, One America News Network, in a few months.Read more...

Since House of X hit in 2019, Marvel’s mutants have had a real good run of comics, both long running and short-lived. Jonathan Hickman may now be out after the recent Inferno miniseries, but his Krakoa status quo is still very much in, and a new pair of comics are going to spin out of it in some pretty cool ways.Read more...

Netflix has had a pretty good stack of South Korean shows lately. Squid Game took off as a big success, but if Kingdom and Hellbound are any indication, it’s Korean horror that the streaming service likes. Fortunately, they’ve got a new terrifying tale on the way in the form of the upcoming All of Us Are Dead.

A major volcanic eruption has rocked the small island nation of Tonga, causing tsunami warnings to go up across the Pacific from Australia to the U.S.Read more...

Back in October, FX on Hulu canceled Y: The Last Man just a few weeks before the end of its first season. Based on Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra’s 2005 Vertigo comic, the post-apocalyptic series starred Ben Schnetzer as Yorick, the last surviving cis male on the planet and his pet monkey as they travel the new world…Read more...

Just last summer, Warner Bros. grabbed In the Heights star Leslie Grace to play Barbara Gordon for the Batgirl movie they’ve been trying to make for about five years. So far, the big news has been all about the cast, such as internet fave Brendan Fraser potentially as arsonist baddie Firefly and the second (well, thirdRead more...

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, recently posted an animated video to his website depicting former President Donald Trump getting nailed by a drone strike.Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the latest toy news around the internet. This week The Book of Boba Fett meets Nerf, McFarlane dives deep into the Batman rogues’ gallery, and EXO-6's latest Star Trek figure takes a trip to the Q Continuum. Check it out!

The Black Panther sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, will resume filming next week after a two-plus month shutdown. The shutdown was primarily because actress Letitia Wright, who plays Shuri, was badly injured during a stunt and could no longer perform. She’s now said to be healthy and ready to resume filming…Read more...

When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton first spearheaded a blockbuster multistate antitrust case against Google towards the end of 2020, it included some (heavily redacted) allegations of a secret agreement with Facebook that let the duo squash fellow competitors in the advertising space and lord over the lion’s share…Read more...

We’ve had movies to look forward to, streaming faves to plan binges around, but what’s good and on broadcast in 2022? io9's got your look ahead out of what to expect from the first few months of 2022 in sci-fi and fantasy TV—and taste of a few things we know are coming later this year.

If you live in Windcrest, a city northeast of San Antonio, the days of getting pulled over by the cops for breaking certain traffic laws—shame on you, but no judgement here—are over. Police will just text you a warning or ticket. And hey, if you’re a good driver, they may even send you a thumbs up.Read more...

American Olympic athletes heading to Beijing for this year’s 2022 Winter Olympics are being advised to pack a disposable burner phone and get familiar with virtual private networks to avoid potential Chinese government surveillance.Read more...

A decades-old pipeline spilled 315,000 gallons (1.2 million liters) of diesel into an environmentally sensitive area in Louisiana last month, killing thousands of animals, the AP reported Thursday. The spill happened a little over a year after a safety inspection found that the pipeline was severely corroded—but the…Read more...