I received a lot of annoying and/or weird PR pitches in my inbox. But the one that showed up last Thursday morning might take the cake: an invitation to interact… Read the rest of the article: I interviewed the AI ghost of a famous dead porn star

It's a truth universally acknowledged that McDonald's McFlurry ice cream machines are broken more often than not. As of this very writing, there's about a 15 percent failure rate across… Read the rest of the article: Fixing McDonald's ice cream machines is no longer a felony

I'm a big fan of The Pudding, which has produced some pretty incredible interactive data journalism over the last few years. But the publisher's most recent project might be the… Read the rest of the article: These interactive maps show how hard it is find abortion access in different states

Alex Segura's Secret Identity was one of the best books I read in 2022—a gripping thriller that followed a queer Latina woman struggling to make a name for herself in… Read the rest of the article: "Alter Ego" is a great new crime novel about IP, AI, and comic book industry con artists

On a recent episode of the Verge podcast Decoder, editor-in-chief Nilay Patel spoke with Sasan Goodarzi, the CEO of the financial software juggernaut, Intuit. It's a good episode overall, though… Read the rest of the article: Intuit tried to bully the Verge into editing a podcast about tax lobbying

It's a cheap and easy joke to say that the scariest sonic genre of all is earnestly performed ska music (lookin' at you, Axios). And so to help prove all… Read the rest of the article: Get into the SKAlloween spirit

Dame Helen Mirren recently sat down for a sprawling life retrospective interview with The Evening Standard. Over the course of 38 minutes, the conversation with host Evgeny Lebedev touches on… Read the rest of the article: Helen Mirren: "It's so sad that Kurt Cobain never got to see GPS"

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a pair of new homeowners in Concord, Massachusetts installed a new locked gate across a dirt road on what they perceived to… Read the rest of the article: Homeowners lose bid to privatize road near Walden Pond, public since before U.S. founding

I was a huge fan of Charles Yu's brilliantly metafictional novel Interior Chinatown, about a stereotypically Chinese background character who's perpetually trapped in the screenplay of a police procedural TV… Read the rest of the article: Watch the first trailer for the new TV adaptation of "Interior Chinatown"

Six weeks after professional beanie wearer Tim Pool was revealed to have been a very useful idiot for a Russian influence campaign, the unfortunately-popular right-winger announced plans to step down… Read the rest of the article: Tim Pool backs off podcasting to focus on non-existent family

That first year of the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on a lot of peoples' stability. It also led to an increase in video game play, as long as people were… Read the rest of the article: Japan study shows positive mental health effects from owning video games

One of the most frustrating things about living with ADHD is that it can be surprisingly difficult to explain. It's for common for people to flippantly self-diagnose themselves with ADHD… Read the rest of the article: "Bear" is a delightful short film that turns ADHD into a literal bear

Houses of the Unholy is the latest offering from writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips—a longtime creative pair who've been cranking out captivating crime graphic novels for the last… Read the rest of the article: "Houses of the Unholy" is a cleverly unsettling Satanic Panic graphic novel

JH Williams III is a comic book artist renowned for his elaborate layouts and luscious paints on works such as Batwoman, Promothea, and The Sandman: Overture. But his latest work… Read the rest of the article: This new graphic adaptation of DRACULA is absolutely gorgeous

Injured comb jellies can merge their bodies with other comb jellies, forming a giant hybrid sea creature with multiple buttholes and shared digestive and nervous systems. That's the latest discovery… Read the rest of the article: Scientists discover that comb jellyfish can fuse their bodies together

Ethos ATX is the #1 restaurant in Austin, according to its Instagram bio–and with some 73,000 followers and thousands of commenters, that seems like a plausible enough claim. It's the… Read the rest of the article: This supposedly-popular Austin restaurant is entirely AI generated

Twenty five years ago, filmmaker Kevin Smith released Dogma. The fourth film in the loosely-connected Jersey saga that began with his indie hit Clerks, Dogma took a huge swing, trading… Read the rest of the article: Apocalyptic comedy DOGMA is finally coming out of the vault

The ninth annual International Space-Out Competition was held last week in Hong Kong—a grueling contest of grit and wit in which contestants go head-to-head to see who can chill the… Read the rest of the article: Hong Kong hosts 9th annual International Daydreaming Competition

In 1971, Lake Superior State University, a public college in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, began issuing the first of its Unicorn Questing Licenses to students. As the school's Department of… Read the rest of the article: How to get a unicorn hunting license in Michigan

On Monday, October 14, 2024, Adobe launched a public beta for Firefly, the company's new generative AI service, which can be used to generate text-to-video prompts, enhance and expand backgrounds… Read the rest of the article: Adobe's new generative AI service has "ethical standards"