Tag Archives: author_name|Cheyenne MacDonald

What to read this weekend: Rural horror infused with Chinese mythology, and the lush alien world of Convert

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New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.

The cover for the novel Sacrificial Animals, featuring a bright red fox illustration against a black background

There’s something about the idea of coming home and reawakening dormant familial trauma that just makes for great horror stories, and Sacrificial Animals is no exception. In the novel, brothers Nick and Joshua Morrow return to their family’s farm in Nebraska after many years estranged from their abusive father, reopening old wounds and allowing supernatural forces to take root. Sacrificial Animals bounces between “Then” and “Now” perspectives, painting a picture of the boys’ childhoods under the violent and racist man, and the gravity of returning once they learn he is dying.

The slow burn horror story weaves in Chinese mythology, using flowery language and a Cormac McCarthy-like lack of quotation marks (and McCarthy-like brutality) to really give it a folkloric feel. But do yourself a favor and skip the blurb if you plan on reading this one, as it betrays a bit too much about the direction the story will go.

The cover for the book Trash Talk, showing illustrations of different forms of garbage piled on top of Earth

Humanity’s trash problem is one so massive and complex it can be difficult to even comprehend, especially for those of us who are more or less removed from the reality of it. I mean, it feels like every other week I learn that an item I’ve long been told is recyclable is, in fact, not recyclable, and garbage is even piling up in space. Iris Gottlieb’s Trash Talk: An Eye-Opening Exploration of Our Planet's Dirtiest Problem breaks the whole issue down, diving into the many facets of global trash production and management, and exploring how we got to where we are.

It’s filled with illustrations and insight to help contextualize a problem that, unfortunately, isn’t going away any time soon, and is a great read for anyone who wants to know more about what really happens to your garbage when you throw it “away.”

The cover for issue #1 of the comic Convert, showing a man wearing a space suit on the lower half of his body and holding a helmet and a large gun, standing in a field with colorful flora

The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the cover for issue #1 of Convert was Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy. A man in a space suit — with the helmet removed — stands in a field holding a huge gun, surrounded by strange flora that almost seems like it’s trying to consume him. The mental comparisons to the Area X of VanderMeer’s series only continued as I read through it, but a development its final few panels affirms that Convert has its own unique story to tell.

The first issue of the new science fiction/fantasy series from Image Comics was released this week, and visually, it’s stunning. In the opening pages, “Science Officer Orrin Kutela finds himself stranded on a distant planet, starving and haunted by the ghosts of his dead crew,” per the description. “On the verge of death, he makes an astonishing discovery.” Convert was written by John Arcudi, with art by Savannah Finley, colors by Miguel Co and lettering by Michael Heisler. The second issue drops September 25.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-recommendations-new-horror-sacrificial-animals-trash-talk-science-fiction-comics-convert-173001712.html?src=rss

The best Playdate games for 2024

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Owning a Playdate comes with the perk of already having access to 24 games at no additional cost from the bundled-in Season One — and some pretty good ones to boot. But there are a ton of great games outside the Season One offerings too, for when you’ve finished the whole batch or, for newer players, while you’re waiting for new games between the weekly drops. Here, I’ll highlight some of the best games I’ve played so far from the Playdate Catalog. It’ll mainly be split two ways: games that use the crank and games that don’t. There are also a couple of titles that aren’t quite games, but are worth checking out all the same.

Check out our entire Best Games series including the best Nintendo Switch games, the best PS5 games, the best Xbox games, the best PC games and the best free games you can play today.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/best-playdate-games-190049201.html?src=rss

Blue Origin targets mid-October for New Glenn’s inaugural flight and launch of NASA’s Escapade Mars mission

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Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket and its Mars-bound NASA payload now have a tentative launch date. The company said on Friday that the inaugural flight will take place no earlier than October 13, carrying two probes built by Rocket Lab to help NASA study the effects of solar wind on Mars’ atmosphere. This will be the first time New Glenn flies after years of delays in its development, and the date cuts well into the window of opportunity for travel to Mars, which occurs roughly every two years based on the planetary alignments. That launch period opens on September 29 and extends to mid-October, per Ars Technica.

The mission will lift off from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The twin spacecraft of NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission (Escapade) arrived in Florida on August 19 to begin preparations and integration with the launch vehicle. 

Now, the pressure is really on for Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin to get New Glenn ready in time. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the company recently suffered two failures at its factory that resulted in damage to hardware for its second and third New Glenn flights. But, a spokesperson told the publication that it’s still on track for this year’s inaugural launch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origin-targets-mid-october-for-new-glenns-inaugural-flight-and-launch-of-nasas-escapade-mars-mission-224611923.html?src=rss

Netflix drops a gory new trailer for Terminator Zero, an anime from the studio behind Ghost in the Shell

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The new Terminator anime heading to Netflix looks absolutely brutal in a trailer that dropped this weekend. Terminator Zero is set in 2022 and 1997 (the year of Judgment Day, as described in Terminator 2) and focuses on new characters: Eiko and the scientist Malcom Lee, who are being hunted by a Terminator. The series is produced by Skydance and Production I.G., the Japanese animation studio behind Ghost in the Shell and Psycho-Pass. 

Fittingly, it drops on August 29, in a nod to the date of the fictional nuclear annihilation event. You can check out the new trailer below — but just a heads up for anyone who isn’t into anime gore, this clip is packed with it.

Netflix also released a six-minute look at the show’s tense opening on its companion site, Tudum, earlier this week. It begins in a nightmare version of 2022 before traveling back in time. Per the site:

Eiko later arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee (André Holland) who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he’s hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future, which forever alters the fate of his three children.

The show was first revealed to be in production late last year, when Netflix dropped a teaser under the working title of Terminator: The Anime Series. The first season will have eight episodes. And, dare I say it, it looks pretty good.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/netflix-drops-a-gory-new-trailer-for-terminator-zero-an-anime-from-the-studio-behind-ghost-in-the-shell-195026137.html?src=rss

SpaceX will soon send the Polaris Dawn crew off to attempt the first commercial spacewalk

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Polaris Dawn, a private space mission that aims to complete the first-ever civilian spacewalk, is expected to launch this week. On X, SpaceX said it’s targeting Tuesday August 27 at 3:38AM ET for liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Polaris Dawn crew to orbit. Led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, Polaris Dawn plans to send its crew of four private citizens as far as 870 miles from Earth — farther than any human has traveled since the Apollo program. The spacewalk, in which two of the crew members will step outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule, will take place at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth.

The Polaris Dawn crew includes Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, as commander, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott “Kidd” Poteet as its pilot, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon as mission specialists. Menon will also serve as the medical officer. The mission is expected to last about five days. 

While only two crew members will actually leave the spacecraft during the flight, all will be exposed to the vacuum of space when the hatch opens — the Dragon capsule doesn’t have an airlock. It’ll be a critical test for SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity space suits, which the entire Polaris Dawn crew will have to wear to keep them safe. In an interview with Florida Today ahead of the mission, Menon said the suits have gone through extensive testing on the ground and expressed confidence in their performance. “We absolutely know the suits can pressurize there,” Menon said, adding that the team has “spent a lot of time pressurizing the suits at this point.”

Polaris Dawn will also put Starlink laser-based communications to the test in space for the first time, and gather data to support research into the effects of spaceflight on human health. The mission comes several years in the making and is the first of three planned Polaris spaceflights.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacex-will-soon-send-the-polaris-dawn-crew-off-to-attempt-the-first-commercial-spacewalk-171538506.html?src=rss

After CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in France, Telegram says it’s ‘absurd’ to blame a platform if users abuse it

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Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, was reportedly arrested at an airport near Paris on Saturday as part of a preliminary investigation into the app’s lax approach to moderation and failure to curb criminal activities, according to Reuters, which cited the French news outlets BFM TV and TF1. Telegram is also reportedly being accused of not cooperating with police. On Sunday afternoon, Telegram posted a statement to its official news channel and on X, saying that CEO Durov “has nothing to hide” and that it “is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

“Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act — its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving,” it said. Durov was taken into custody after arriving at Le Bourget airport on a private jet, Reuters reported. According to the BBC, the concerns of the current investigation include the app’s failure to crack down on drug trafficking, child sexual abuse materials, and fraudulent activities.

Telegram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, and is widely used in parts of Europe and Asia especially. Durov said earlier this year that it was nearing one billion active monthly users. The app uses end-to-end encryption and supports groups containing tens of thousands of members, allowing mass sharing of information and uncensored content. 

NPR reports that a statement from the Paris prosecutor's office will be released on Monday. “We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation,” Telegram said in its own statement. 

Update, August 25 2024, 4:48PM ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from Telegram.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-was-reportedly-arrested-in-france-142730565.html?src=rss

Threads is testing disappearing posts that expire after 24 hours

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Threads is testing the option for users to put a 24-hour expiration timer on their posts, after which the post and all replies would disappear, Stories-style. A spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature is being tested among a group of users after it was first spotted earlier this summer by developer Alessandro Paluzzi. It sounds a lot like pre-X Twitter’s Fleets, which didn’t exactly catch on. But, the ephemeral format could save habitual post-deleters some trouble.

It comes a few months after Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared that Threads was experimenting with auto-archiving. That optional feature would let users designate a date for their posts to be hidden from the feed. But Threads users in the past have indicated that they largely aren’t into the idea of automatic archiving, and such a feature hasn’t yet shown up on a wider scale. Threads hit the 200 million user mark at the beginning of August, and recently introduced an analytics tool called Insights for users — particularly those with large followings — to keep track of their account’s performance. Meta also said the option to schedule posts is on the way.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-is-testing-disappearing-posts-that-expire-after-24-hours-211329320.html?src=rss

Starliner astronauts will come home in February on a SpaceX Crew Dragon

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After more than two months of tests and discussions, NASA has decided that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come home in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner they flew to the International Space Station on in June will return uncrewed. In a press conference on Saturday, Steve Stich, manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said “there was too much uncertainty” around the predictions for Starliner’s thrusters to move forward with a crewed return flight. 

The plan now is that Starliner’s first crew will return with SpaceX’s Crew-9, which is scheduled to launch to the ISS at the end of September. Crew-9 was initially supposed to carry four crew members, but will instead have to go ahead with two, so as to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the way back. That spacecraft is being reconfigured with seats for the two astronauts, and Dragon spacesuits will be added to its cargo for them to wear home. By the time Wilmore and Williams depart, the duo will have been on the space station for about eight months. The Starliner flight test was only supposed to last a little over a week. 

The next step is to get Starliner ready for undocking and wrap up as an uncrewed flight test. The agency plans to conduct the second part of its readiness review for the process this coming week, and expects undocking to take place around early next month. “We are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we will review those aspects at the readiness review,” Stich said. “We’re going to go with a simplified separation technique to get away from the station a little more quickly.”

The issue with Starliner’s thrusters has been “very complex,” Stich said, and their performance has been “challenging to predict.” Without being able to accurately predict how the thrusters would perform from undocking through the deorbit burn, the potential risks for the astronauts were just too high, he explained.

“We have had mistakes in the past,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We have lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information can come forward.” With that context looming over the discussions, he said, “We have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection, you come forward. Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and and its most routine, and a test flight by its nature is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/starliner-astronauts-will-come-home-in-february-on-a-spacex-crew-dragon-173008021.html?src=rss

Valve finally confirms its next game, Deadlock, with a bare-bones Steam page

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It’s seemed like everyone this summer has been talking about Valve’s in-development MOBA shooter, Deadlock, except Valve itself. Thousands of people have reportedly played it, some of whom have leaked screenshots and gameplay footage. But Valve has remained silent on the subject. Now, the company has finally confirmed the game’s existence with an official Steam page, which notes that Deadlock “is in early development” and in the hands of playtesters. Unfortunately, that’s about it for the details.

Deadlock is still only available to play via invitation. There’s no release date or even release window on the page, and the 22-second teaser it includes isn’t particularly enlightening. But now that Valve is finally acknowledging this thing publicly, we could see more about it soon. Back in May, YouTuber Tyler McVicker, who has long reported on Valve, described Deadlock as what’s “meant to be Valve's next major competitive game. The next Counter-Strike. The next Dota.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valve-finally-confirms-its-next-game-deadlock-with-a-bare-bones-steam-page-162836953.html?src=rss

Summit is an incredible precision platformer for Playdate that’ll hit you right in the feels

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I was not expecting to cry while playing Summit, a $6 mountain climbing platformer for Playdate that’s impossible not to compare to Celeste. Scream in frustration? Yes. Storm away from the game only to come crawling back minutes later? Definitely. Get all up in my feels, though? Not so much. Yet an hour and 34 minutes — and 432 deaths — later, here we are. This is now the second Playdate game that's made me cry.

In Summit, you’re a cloaked climber trying to reach the top of a mountain under the guidance of an unseen narrator who refers to you as “little brother.” You have ice axes to help you scale the vertical surfaces, and other equipment will show up later to assist you in trickier situations. Completing the 70-ish levels requires absolute precision, and it is at times very, very frustrating. There are rows of sharp spikes sticking out everywhere, and some falling from higher perches. The icy ground in spots is slick enough to send you flying. Strong winds will make it seem as though it’s impossible to push forward.

But it’s not impossible, of course, and in some cases you can even use the environmental conditions to your advantage. When you do finally make it through a particularly tough level, it’s all the more gratifying. There’s more to Summit than well-timed jumps — it uses the d-pad, buttons and the crank, and will have you coordinating different actions to cross huge gaps and avoid obstacles. At one point, you even get to ride a crow.

A snippet from the Playdate game summit showing a mountain climber descending a rope between platforms that are covered in spikes
Pixelated Opus

The music throughout is beautiful and has a reflective mood to it, which sets you up perfectly for when the game takes an unexpected emotional turn at the end. As you approach the summit, the backstory that’s been hinted at in bits and pieces finally reveals itself, and it’s a tear-jerker. I got misty-eyed, and not because I was so relieved to have finally made it to the top. (I’m not the only one, either, as I found while searching Reddit to see how other people fared.)

Summit will test your determination as you die over and over again trying to progress, but it’s never a slog. If you liked the extreme platforming and sentimental tone of Celeste, this is definitely one to check out.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/summit-is-an-incredible-precision-platformer-for-playdate-thatll-hit-you-right-in-the-feels-230018502.html?src=rss