outlandish

If you're an evil genius supervillain looking to freak out your enemy with a big messy space kablooie, here's a novel way to do it. Smack a couple of ancient star remnants together right in front of your nemesis.The result will give you a gratifyingly huge, bright explosion plus a bonus gamma-ray burst visible across the Universe. And, it'll scare everybody into doing your evil bidding.Of course, to do this, you need to have massively weird powers. Those don't exist outside the realm of comics. But, in the real universe,…

via Prime Video Not to pigeonhole an entire subgenre, but international action comedies can often be very strange, but often in the best kind of way. Without the restraints that blight many major Hollywood productions, the key creatives are free to tell whatever story they want however they see fit, with Medellin clearly the result of an unfiltered imagination. After all, how else do you explain the existence of writer, director, and star Franck Gastambide gathering together a multinational ensemble cast –…

This show has a lot of nuns, but not a lot of guns. | Image: Colleen Hayes / Peacock A lot of people right now are wringing their hands about the rapid emergence and popularization of AI. There’s the way it threatens jobs — as anyone working at CNET will tell you — but there’s also the existential threat AI can create, as Elon Musk is wont to expound upon. Science fiction has been clanging alarm bells about AI since basically the birth of the genre. But too often, the upset about artificial…

This novel is not for those without readerly stamina. At 912 pages, you are going to have to love John Irving dearly, or have a passion for reading novels come hell or high water. If the former, then it’s hard to see the publication of The Last Chairlift as anything other than good news, in so far as there’s now a great deal more Irving to read. But what about those of us in the latter camp who are only, say, Irving-curious?The first thing to note is that this is Irving’s 15th novel – and that he is now 80. By any…

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures Harry Potter fans can be very creative when it comes to their beloved franchise, often trying to find ways to explain why things happen in the story or add to the lore in their own way. Sometimes, however, they can go a little too far down the rabbit hole as it were, and create entire scenarios and wild theories for the Wizarding World that may leave you raising an eyebrow. Harry Potter has inspired a huge number of fanfics, with the franchise way up there as having the most…

There’s nothing like a last-minute rumor to get us excited for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). But one claim that surfaced over the weekend shows why things are not always as they seem. Yes, today I’m going to play the role of the grumpy grandfather pouring cold water on everyone’s fun. But as we’ll see, there’s a good reason for that. So, back to the rumor. On Saturday, MacRumors reporter Joe Rossignol tweeted that Apple retailer B&H had added two listings to its website: An M2-equipped Mac…

How long does the battery in your chosen device last? Whether it’s a smartphone, fitness band, smartwatch, laptop, or anything else, has it met or exceeded the claim made by the manufacturer? I’m willing to bet it hasn’t, or at least doesn’t do so on a regular basis, and that’s because many battery life figures published these days seem to be plucked out of thin air, and then a situation is constructed around it to make it work. It’s all getting rather silly, but is there anything that can be done about it? Battery…