Gizmodo

Biologists in Hawaii have detected a previously unknown strain of cetacean morbillivirus, a pathogen that can cause deadly infections in marine mammals across the globe. The virus was detected in a lone Fraser’s dolphin—a highly social species—leading to concerns that the disease could spread and wreak havoc outside…Read more...

In director William Crain’s original Blacula from 1972, an 18th-century Nigerian prince named Mamuwalde (William Marshall) meets his untimely first death at the hands of the Dracula (Charles Macaulay), who scoffs at the mortal man’s earnest pleas for assistance dismantling the transatlantic slave trade.Read more...

A bipartisan group of senators led by Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) today announced a proposed tweak to a contentious cryptocurrency tax amendment to the sprawling infrastructure bill. The amendment dictates that brokers will be subject to report crypto transactions to the IRS. This relates to…Read more...

Seems like Big Oil’s chickens may be coming home to roost. On Friday, the Climate Leadership Council, a bipartisan, industry-supported group that advocates for centrist climate solutions, announced that former founding member ExxonMobil had been kicked out. The move follows a Greenpeace exposé that caught an Exxon…Read more...

Behind each and every one of Marvel Studios and DC Entertainment’s comic book adaptations are teams of comic book creators whose ideas laid the groundwork for what would eventually become the films and TV shows powering the megacorporations’ respective multi-billion dollar entertainment franchises. Unfortunately, that…Read more...

Stranger Things creators/showrunner duo Matt and Ross Duffer always envisioned their supernatural horror show would have at least five seasons. While the two haven’t confirmed if season five is the last, the show’s executive producer Shawn Levy is on the record saying they do have an endgame plan in place.

Comedian Luis Guzman is Gomez Addams in the Netflix Addams Family spin-off series, Wednesday.

Medical professionals have become some of the most important individuals in society during the pandemic, working countless hours to save the lives of covid-19 patients and encouraging the public to get vaccinated. However, it appears that even the medical community isn’t immune to the vaccine misinformation plaguing…Read more...

So much is revealed when court documents are officially unsealed, and in the case of Epic Games’ antitrust complaint against Google, we now know that Google considered buying the Fortnite maker outright “squelch this threat.” Google also apparently attempted to convince Epic Games not to limit Fortnite to sideloading…Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the latest and greatest things in toys. We’re still preparing for the holiday festivities even as we sweat our way through a scorching summer, but we’ve also got a perfect Power Rangers meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover, some tempting 12-inch figures…Read more...

Last week brought the sad news that time’s up for the TARDIS’s latest owner: Jodie Whittaker is exiting Doctor Who at the end of 2022, leaving alongside showrunner Chris Chibnall. But in true Doctor Who manner, now that we’ve already wondered about the future, it’s time to reflect on the past—with the moments we’ve…Read more...

Apple’s new tool to suss out potential child abuse in iPhone photos is already sparking controversy. On Friday, just one day after it was announced, Will Cathcart, the head of Facebook’s messaging app, WhatsApp, said that the company would decline to adopt the software on the grounds that it introduced a host of legal…Read more...

When the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion for deceiving its users on privacy, it celebrated the fine as “record-breaking and history-making.” Two years and $200 billion in revenue later, Facebook has found a way to turn lemons into lemonade, deceiving its users once again and using a seemingly…Read more...

Lake Oroville is the latest reservoir across the West to sink to a new low. The reservoir is getting so empty that a major hydropower plant has had to shut down months ahead of what officials expected in late June, reflecting the worsening situation across the state.Read more...

The story of a woman coming into her power after getting a supernatural boost is hardly a new one—but much like more traditional makeover narratives, it’s often rewarding enough to justify being so familiar. The most delicious version of this tale usually involves a frumpy lass becoming a glamorous villain, like Uma…Read more...

The late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s 414-foot superyacht has finally been sold to an unnamed mystery buyer for the low, low price of 235 million euros (about $276 million USD). The vessel, nicknamed “Octopus” before Allen’s death in 2018, is slightly longer than the average football field, and considered one of…Read more...

Because Disney+ and Marvel’s What If is an anthology series, each of its self-contained episodes can be appreciated as individual stories set within the MCU’s expanding multiverse. As a whole, though, What If is establishing just how important the multiverse itself is going to be for the MCU’s future, something that’s…Read more...

The Congressional Record chronicles nearly everything that happens in the House and Senate. It includes watershed moments such as Rep. Barbara Lee’s speech as the only vote against authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan and Sen. Edward Dirksen’s speech that ended up helping quash a filibuster against landmark…Read more...

Yes, people still play Pokémon Go. In fact, I’m currently in competition with a neighbor over claiming the gym down the street. But today, I’m holding off on logging on in solidarity with #PokémonNoDay.

With Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Natasha Romanoff now gone, who will rise up to lead the Marvel Cinematic Universe? There are certainly some candidates already around, but the newest contender is arriving September 3: Shang-Chi in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

While these days you’re more likely to buy a smartwatch that can withstand water, now there are smartwatches that can dissolve in water. Researchers from Tianjin University used a two-metal nanocomposite material to create a fully functioning prototype smartwatch that dissolves when submerged.Read more...

The Federal Aviation Administration is practically begging airports to stop selling to-go alcohol that passengers can take onto flights, ABC News reported on Thursday, citing a dramatic spike in unruly passengers and violence against flight crews since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.Read more...

It’s been over 13 years since Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man—which imagines a world in which almost all men perish in a sudden outbreak, with a few notable exceptions, including main character Yorick and his pet monkey—ended its run at DC Comics. Hollywood’s been nosing around an adaptation for what…Read more...

Everything old is new again. In 2021, fanny packs are high fashion, Clippy is a beloved icon, and KidPix—the beloved art toy that’s been untouched since the early 2000's—is back.Read more...

A Russian actor and director are currently in training as the pair prepare to film scenes aboard the International Space Station later this year. New details are emerging about the project, such as the movie’s plot—and how Russian cosmonauts will be expected to take part.

Amid water shortages during a historic megadrought, California regulators have moved to restrict thousands of farmers’ access to water.

Careening through the Milky Way at nearly 2 million miles per hour, the star LP 40–365 shows no signs of stopping. A team of astronomers recently figured out that the star was propelled into its current speedrun by a supernova explosion millions of years ago.

Anyone who has seen the trailer for Free Guy probably thinks they know exactly what the film is going to be—and that’s partially true. Directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Stranger Things), it’s a big-budget, video game-influenced movie about Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a NPC (non-playable character) in a massive…Read more...

A town in Northern California has been nearly completely destroyed after the Dixie Fire charged through late Wednesday. The state’s largest wildfire tore through the downtown, destroying historic buildings and prompting panicked evacuations in a dramatic scene of destruction.Read more...

We were huge fans of Star Trek: Lower Decks’ first season—a very funny, near-perfect blend of endearingly flawed characters, wild space adventures (but also wonderfully mundane “day in the life of Starfleet” stuff), and Star Trek in-jokes galore. With season two almost upon us, we jumped at the chance to chat with the…Read more...

A large iceberg wall at the Titanic Museum Attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, collapsed on Monday, which sure seems it might be an allegory for current circumstances that happen to be eluding our minds at the moment.Read more...

It hard enough to buy a home, but the climate crisis is making it even more challenging. Will a prospective house be underwater? Catch on fire? Real estate brokerage firm Redfin is offering a new tool to assess those and other climate risks.Read more...

Members of a New York University research team studying political advertising and covid-19 misinformation on Facebook found their accounts suspended Tuesday night, with Facebook pinning the action on the privacy settlement it reached with federal regulators in 2019.

The second uncrewed test of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is on hold, as mission teams with Boeing and NASA troubleshoot an issue having to do with the spacecraft’s propulsion system.Read more...

After months of preparations, Walt Disney World’s Hall of Presidents was finally set to reopen on Tuesday with a new star taking center stage: RoboBiden. Clips taken of the 46th president’s wrinkly animatronic doppleganger show him proudly reciting the Oath of Office while standing among the likes of Ulysses S. Grant,…Read more...

More than 80 wildfires have been reported around Greece between Monday and Tuesday evening, the Greek government said Tuesday, as the country grapples with a record-breaking heat wave that is forecast to continue through this week.Read more...

Prolific author and Lucasfilm editor Jonathan Rinzler, better known by his pen name J.W. Rinzler, died July 28 at his home in Northern California after an 11-month long bout with pancreatic cancer, according to a local news outlet. He was 58 years old.Read more...

New research from the UK provides the clearest indication yet of how protected fully vaccinated people are from the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Based on ongoing surveillance data, researchers estimate that the vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford University/AstraZeneca are 50% to 60% effective at…Read more...

The Walt Disney Company—worth an estimated $122.18 billion—would like you to pay $6,000 to take a family of four to its new, immersive Star Wars hotel for two nights.

A lawyer in Portland, Oregon, suspected that a city contractor was illegally trashing property belonging to people living at an encampment for people experiencing homelessness, so he covertly attached Apple AirTag tracking devices to some of the items. Sure enough, the items ended up in a landfill, and now there may…Read more...

As part of its ongoing efforts to build out its 4G and 5G coverage, T-Mobile has announced that it will be shutting down Sprint’s old LTE network next year in June.Read more...

In each episode of What If, different characters from the MCU and Marvel’s comics are spotlighted in self-contained stories that reimagine them as distinctly different versions of themselves than we’re used to seeing on either the big or small screens. What if, the show asks, T’Challa was abducted by the Ravagers?…Read more...

Smartphone photography has improved by leaps and bounds over the years, but if there’s one thing that’s annoyingly remained, it’s that damn green dot that randomly pops up in certain photos. However, there’s some good news for iPhone users. It appears that the latest iOS 15 beta has quietly added a feature that…Read more...

Scream (aka Scream 5) is apparently going to take some “risks.” Joe Manganiello gives some more details on Moonhaven. Plus, updates from all the Ws: Westworld, What We Do in the Shadows, What If, and more. Spoilers away!

There’s not a whole lot innovation happening in kitchen appliances these days (unless you count wifi connectivity, voice assistant integration, or the addition of an unnecessary screen). That’s why Heatworks’ Tetra countertop dishwasher that doesn’t require any plumbing connections was so exciting when it was first…Read more...

Like most kids at the turn of the century, my two sisters and I were obsessed with Pokémon. We had the GameBoy games, the VHS tapes, binders bursting at the seams with trading cards— you name it. And when we finally got our first video game console in 2000 (after years of begging our mom), it was Pokémon-themed too:…Read more...

An 84-year-old man in Germany has been hit with heavy fines after a Nazi-era tank and other weapons from World War II were discovered in his garage, according to a report from Germany’s DPA news agency. The tank and assorted weapons were uncovered after a tipster told authorities there might be art stolen during World…Read more...

Citizen, the self-proclaimed crime-fighting app, has launched a new premium service that, for $20 a month, lets you do something you can already do for free.Read more...

The dead speak! On the official Star Wars website in fact! In a new blog post on the site today, Lucasfilm Story Group member Emily Shkoukani explained “The Contingency”—the canon name for exactly how Emperor Palpatine died, came back to life, and returned to power in Star Wars. A plan that was, according to the site,…Read more...

Whether you’re running it for a nostalgic feel or you’ve held on to a device for too long, it’s time to say goodbye to the decade-old Android Gingerbread. Google is officially laying it to rest.