NOIRVEMBER: Looking Into the Void in ‘True Detective’

'True Detective' (Photo Credit: James Bridges / HBO) There is a void at the center of all things, an unknowable hole into which we are all slowly spiraling, sometimes at such a glacial pace we hardly realize it’s happening. A great noir film depicts a character (or characters) attempting to know the void or stop their descent into its grasp. They always fail. The void always wins. It’s the tenet of the genre that rings the most chilling. Noir often...

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‘The Mandalorian’ Season 1 Episode 4 Recap: The Magnificent Two

Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano in 'The Mandalorian' (Photo Credit: Lucasfilm / Disney) The most exciting thing to me about a Star Wars TV show is the chance to explore societies that don’t get depicted in the movies. The movies deal with the big political figures and the battles that determine the fate of the galaxy. We don’t often get to see how people on the ground live. The people who are just trying to go about their day. The movies occasionally...

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Black Friday 2019: Amazon’s Best Gaming, Tech, and Smart Home Deals

Save big on console sets, robot vacuums, and more gadgets during Amazon's Black Friday extravaganza. (Photo Credit: Amazon) Black Friday is here and if you’re all about scoring sweet deals without going to a store, Amazon is offering major discounts on gaming laptops, streaming media players, headphones, and other must-have electronics for the shopping holiday. Before we dive into Amazon’s Black Friday promotions, it’s important to note that the...

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Black Friday 2019: Top Deals for Gaming, Tech, and Smart Home Gadgets

Retailers are slashing prices on consoles, Alexa-enabled devices, and more electronics for Black Friday 2019. (Photo Credit: Amazon / GameStop) Black Friday is in full swing and it’s time to take advantage of all those sweet deals on your favorite tech, gaming, and smart home products. Today, many retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Target, and Walmart, are slashing prices on many devices. If you’ve been eyeing a new Alexa-enabled...

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After ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi,’ Catch Up on Rian Johnson

After writing and directing Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a film without controversy since it’s inarguably the best Star Wars movie of the past 40 years, Rian Johnson is back with his new film. Knives Out is a star-studded murder mystery that marries the twisty old-fashioned whodunnit genre with very contemporary concerns and characters, perfect for the writer/director’s own classic yet subversive genre film interests. Plus Daniel Craig sounds like...

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Comcast Reunites E.T., Elliott For the Holidays

Reunited and it feels so good (via Comcast) In the spirit of the holidays, Comcast has reunited two old friends to hawk its Xfinity cable, internet, and home phone services. Nearly 40 years after leaving Earth, E.T. is back—and still scaring the poop out of small children. In a longform commercial that debuted during Thursday’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (on Comcast’s NBC), everyone’s favorite extra-terrestrial returns to visit Elliott. But...

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Don’t Try This At Home: Instagrammers Are Sunning Their Naked Butts

(via Charles Deluvio/Unsplash) It’s the most wonderful time of the year: There’ll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting, and butthole tanning out in the sun. “Perineum sunning,” the latest craze sweeping Instagram influencers’ feeds, encourages folks to strip, lay down, and throw their legs in the air, exposing their bits and bobs to the brightest star. In all fairness, your perineum—the super-thin area of skin and tissue between...

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The Best Food-Themed Horror Movies

These food-themed horror films will keep you entertained on Turkey Day. (Photo Credit: United Artists) We all know the Thanksgiving tradition is to digest in front of a football game, but why not do something a little different this year? Halloween might be over, but horror season is 365 days a year, especially if you tap into a theme with your programming. Load up your Blu-ray player with these essential scary flicks that have the common thread...

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European parliament’s NationBuilder contract under investigation by data regulator

Europe’s lead data regulator has issued its first ever sanction of an EU institution — taking enforcement action against the European parliament over its use of US-based digital campaign company, NationBuilder, to process citizens’ voter data ahead of the spring elections. NationBuilder is a veteran of the digital campaign space — indeed, we first covered the company back in 2011— which has become nearly ubiquitous for digital campaigns in some markets. But...

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Amazon Injects Emotion Into Alexa’s Cold, Cold Heart

Speechcons (via Amazon) “Alexa, try that once more, with feeling.” Developers can now enable Amazon’s digital assistant to respond with a happy/excited or disappointed/empathetic tone. Gone are the days when Alexa impassively played The Greatest Showman soundtrack for the 88th time or expressed no judgement as you skipped another news story in the daily roundup. “Emotional responses are particularly relevant to skills in the gaming and sports categories,”...

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Astronomers Capture Best Look Yet at Comet 21/Borisov

A new image of the interstellar comet 2l/Borisov (left), next to a composite image of the comet with a photo of the Earth to show scale (via Pieter van Dokkum, Cheng-Han Hsieh, Shany Danieli, Gregory Laughlin/Yale University) Interstellar comet 21/Borisov is ready for its closeup. Four Yale astronomers captured a new, detailed image of the mysterious celestial body, first spotted this summer. Pieter van Dokkum, Cheng-Han Hsieh, Shany Danieli, and...

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Former Go Champ Retires From Game: AI ‘Cannot Be Defeated’

AlphaGo Zero surpassed all previous versions of the AI in 40 days (via Google DeepMind) Former Go champion Lee Se-dol has retired from professional competition—because artificial intelligence. The South Korean Go master gained global fame in 2016 as the only human to defeat DeepMind’s AlphaGo computer program. Now he’s bowing out of the sport due to the “invincibility” of AI Go programs. “With the debut of AI in Go games, I’ve realized that I’m...

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Twitter Won’t Shutter Inactive Accounts Until It Can Memorialize the Dead

(Photo Credit: geralt / Pixabay) A day after confirming plans to repossess inactive accounts, Twitter announced it will delay the process out of respect for the dead. The microblogging service has already begun emailing dormant accounts that have not been signed into for more than six months. “As part of our commitment to serve the public conversation, we’re working to clean up inactive accounts to present more accurate, credible information people...

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