Robert Pattinson’s character didn’t read his contract’s fine print in Mickey 17, director Bong Joon-ho’s latest film.
It has been five long years since director Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasitetopped Ars’ list for best films of the year, whose prior work on Snowpiercer and Okja are also staff favorites. We’re finally getting a new film from this gifted director: the sci-fi comedy Mickey 17, based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Judging by the trailer that recently dropped, it feels a bit like a darkly comic version of Duncan Jones’ 2009 film Moon, with a bit of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. And the visuals are terrific.
Ashton’s inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox—a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called “a crappy immortality” and expanded from there into a full-length novel.
Ashton told Nerdist last year that Bong’s adaptation would “change a lot of the book,” but he considered the director a “genius” and wasn’t concerned about those changes. The basic premise remains the same. Robert Pattinson plays the space colonist named Mickey Barnes, who is so eager to escape Earth that he signs up to be an “expendable” without reading the fine print.
Expendables are basically disposable employees (aka “second-hand baloney boys”). If they happen to die on the job, their consciousness is uploaded to a new body, and the cycle starts all over again. When a multiple unexpectedly survives while on an expedition to colonize the ice world Niflheim, Mickeys 17 and 18 discover that the policy in such cases is to exterminate all the multiples, and they must fight for their right to keep existing.
In addition to Pattinson, the cast includes Steven Yeun as Berto, Toni Collette as Gwen Johansen, Mark Ruffalo as Hieronymous Marshall, Naomi Ackie as Nasha Adjaya, Holliday Grainger as Red Hair, Angus Imrie as Shrimp Eyes, and Steve Park as Agent Zeke. Anamaria Vartolomei, Thomas Turgoose, Patsy Ferran, and Daniel Henshall have also been cast in as-yet-undisclosed roles. Perhaps one of them plays the person in the giant pigeon costume who briefly appears in the trailer.
Mickey 17 hits theaters in the US on January 31, 2025. It will premiere in other countries on January 28, 2025. Ashton penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues, which was published last year, so maybe Bong Joon-ho will adapt that one, too.
Tom Hardy returns for one more round as host of an alien symbiote, in Venom: The Last Dance.
Tom Hardy is back for one last hurrah as investigative journalist Eddie Brock, host of an alien symbiote that imparts superhuman powers to its host, in the final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance. The trailer has all the wise-cracking “buddy cop” vibes and fast-paced action we’ve come to expect from the franchise, including a trip to Vegas where Venom discovers the addictive allure of slot machines. But there are also hints of an inevitable bittersweet farewell—because this time they’ll face off against Knull, god-creator of the symbiotes.
(Spoilers for Venom and Venom: There Will Be Carnage below.)
As previously reported, the first film in the franchise served as an origin story for our antihero. A bioengineering firm called the Life Foundation discovered a comet covered with symbiotic lifeforms and brought four samples back to Earth. Brock’s then-fiancée, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), showed him classified documents revealing that the foundation was conducting human/symbiote experiments. The symbiotes needed oxygen-breathing hosts to survive, but they invariably ended up killing those hosts.
Brock ended up infected with one of the symbiotes, named Venom. Venom revealed that the symbiotes are intent on taking over Earth by possessing/devouring all humans, but Brock ultimately struck up a bargain with Venom, and they decided to protect Earth instead. Together, they took on Life Foundation CEO Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), infected with a symbiote called Riot. Naturally, they won.
Venom was released in October 2018 and was roundly panned by critics, several of whom specifically bemoaned the lack of a Spider-Man connection. Audiences, however, begged to differ. Venom racked up $856 million globally. Hardy had already committed to two sequels, and a mid-credits sequence featured Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady taunting Brock (who was interviewing Kasady for a story) from his cell. Kasady vowed to escape and bring “carnage,” leaving little doubt as to the villain’s identity in a sequel.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage, directed by Andy Serkis, was released in 2021, also to mixed reviews and a strong box office, grossing $506.9 million worldwide. That film ended with Brock and Venom victorious over Kasady and heading off for a well-deserved vacation while the duo pondered their next steps. In a post-credits scene, Venom told Brock that he and his fellow symbiotes knew about other universes, at which point there was blinding light, and they were transported into the Marvel Cinematic Universe—a direct result of the spell cast by Doctor Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home.(At the time, there were plans for a future crossover film with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.)
“With you to the end”
Serkis was unable to return as director for The Last Dance, but Kelly Marcel, who wrote the screenplay for Carnage, stepped in to make her directorial debut. Per the official premise:
In Venom: The Last Dance, Tom Hardy returns as Venom, one of Marvel’s greatest and most complex characters, for the final film in the trilogy. Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.
In addition to Hardy, Peggy Lu is back as convenience store owner Mrs. Chen, who befriended Eddie and Venom early on. Also returning is Stephen Graham as Detective Patrick Mulligan, who figured prominently in There Will Be Carnage and is now infected with his own symbiote named Toxin.
Cristo Fernández will reprise his role as the bartender in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. Rhys Ifans played Curt Connors/Lizard in that film but will play a man named Martin in The Last Dance. Is there a secret connection? We’ll have to wait and see. (It seems after two outings, Williams won’t be reprising her role as Anne in the third and final film.) The cast also includes Chiwetel Ejiofor as a soldier intent on capturing Venom; and Alanna Ubach and Clark Backo in as-yet-undisclosed roles.
Venom: The Last Dance hits theaters on October 25, 2024.
Enlarge/ The state of New York says that this guy is the “assman,” not me. Show him the butt ads!
Seinfeld
According to my research, everyone has a butt.
But that doesn’t mean, when I’m imbibing my morning cuppa and reading up on the recent presidential debate, that I want to see an ad showing an illustrated derrière with a bar of soap clenched firmly between its two ripe cheeks.
Yet there it was, a riotous rump residing right in the middle of a New York Times article this week, causing me to reflect on just how far the Gray Lady has stooped to pick up those ad dollars lying in the gutter.
It’s not the first time this sort of thing has sullied the “paper of record.” In 2022, I was forward-thinking enough to grab a screenshot of the Times helping to sell me some sort of wipe with the tagline: “When your butt doesn’t smell like butt.” It was also marketed as deodorant for “your pits and lady bits.”
Enlarge/ Would Don Draper have written “smell like butt” on one of his ads?
Not having any “lady bits” to deodorize, this was not particularly compelling, but the true high point of ass-related irrelevancy at the Times came when I was served an ad featuring a mournful-looking dog who pointed the business end of his hindquarters directly at the camera. “It’s time to leave your dog’s anal gland problems behind,” I was told.
I have never owned a dog, nor—to my children’s continuing dissatisfaction—ever will. It was therefore left to Ars Technica’s Managing Editor Eric Bangeman, who is a noted canine lover and a true “friend to all creatures, even rats,” to explain to me just what this baffling advertisement meant.
Enlarge/ Now I really don’t want a pet in the house.
Once you start looking for these oddly direct ads in self-consciously “classy” media outlets, you see them everywhere, including in The Atlantic, where a bidet ad once promised that it would make my “butt crack smile.”
(Perhaps this last ad can be blamed on my boss, who has spoken in such glowing terms about high-end Japanese toilet technology that I Googled it—probably marking myself as some kind of “ass man” for life.)
Whatever the reason for seeing one of these ads, all of them looked cheap, and none of them felt relevant. I have nothing against the noble bidet, but having “holy sthis thing’s a gamechanger!!!” appear in the middle of my screen while pondering some chinstroker of an article was not exactly why I had visited The Atlantic.
Enlarge/ The game, it has been changed. By this stream of water. Shooting at your butt.
The great irony of online advertising these days is that it’s often claimed to be “targeted,” mining our personal and demographic information to serve us the ads that we allegedly want to see. Wouldn’t I prefer to view ads “relevant to my interests”? Maybe. But I can say with confidence that after two decades of being “extremely online” for work, the number of ads I have voluntarily and enthusiastically clicked upon must number in the low double digits.
Instead, the engines powering these ad networks continue to bombard me with two kinds of ads: 1) those that are wholly irrelevant to my interests and 2) those that are relevant to my interests because they display the exact product I once looked at in some online store. Ad targeting companies may “know a lot about me,” but they don’t know me in any truly useful way.
They don’t know, for instance, why I looked at some product online, or if I already made a decision not to buy it (or to buy it elsewhere), or if I just wanted to better understand my boss’s love of Japanese bidets. They don’t know whether I have (or want) a dog. And they (clearly) don’t know that I would be repulsed by an edible product shaped like a human ear and featuring both bite marks and Mike Tyson’s name.
(Fortunately, you can completely opt out of ads at some sites, including Ars Technica, by subscribing for a few bucks a month—and contributing directly to our bottom line.)
The US government recently announced multiple charges against the alleged leaders of the “Terrorgram Collective,” which does just what it sounds like—it promotes terrorism on the Telegram messaging platform. In this case, the terrorism was white racial terror, complete with a “hit list” of US officials and activists, a homemade “White Terror” video glorifying “saints” who had killed others, and instructions for taking down US infrastructure such as electrical substation transformers. (Read the indictment.)
Chaos was the point. Terrorgram promoted “white supremacist accelerationism,” which believes that society must be incited into a civil war or apocalyptic confrontation in order to bring down the existing system of government and establish a white nationalist state.
The group’s manifestos and chat rooms sometimes felt suffused with the habits of the extremely online: hand-clap emojis between every important word, instructional videos on how to make bombs, the language of trolling, catchphrases so over the top they sound ironic (“HAIL HOLY TERROR” in all caps).
Despite using technology to organize and publicize its ideology, though, the group was skeptical of technology—or at least of certain kinds. “Do not let those technophiles have a day of rest!” said one post encouraging its readers to go after the local power grid.
“LEAVE. YOUR. PHONE. AT. HOME,” said another. “Death to the grid. Death to the System,” concluded a third. The group’s accelerationist manifesto was called “Hard Reset.”
Enlarge/ An “encyclopedia” of killers, produced by Terrorgram.
But they were apparently happy to use other tech to spread the word. One Terrorgram publication was called “Do it for the Gram,” and Terrorgram admins created audiobooks of shooter manifestos, such as “A White Boy Summer to Remember.”
But Telegram, which combines the wider reach of channels and chat rooms (unencrypted) with the possibility of direct messaging (which can be encrypted), was a favorite spot for recruiting and sharing information. According to the government, Dallas Humber (34) of Elk Grove, California, and Matthew Allison (37) of Boise, Idaho, were the leaders of Terrorgram, which they appear to have run out in the open.
The group constantly encouraged violence, and it stressed the need for attackers to mentally prepare themselves to kill so as not to chicken out. But neither Humber nor Allison are accused of violence themselves; they seem to have been content to cheer on new martyrs to their cause.
The government traces several real-world killers to the Terrorgram community, including a 19-year-old from Slovakia who, in 2022, killed two people at an LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava before sending his manifesto to Allison and then killing himself in a park. The manifesto specifically listed “Hard Reset” in its “Recommended Reading” section.
You can’t just ask the Internet to vote on something and assume you’ll get a “normal” result.
The town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, learned this the hard way in 2011, when an online vote to name a new government center in town went with “Harry Baals.” Though Mr. Baals was in fact a respected former mayor of the town back in the 1930s, contemporary officials weren’t convinced that his name was chosen out of merely historical interest.
Or there was the time in 2015 when the British Columbia Ferry Service asked Internet users to name its newest ships and perhaps win a $500 prize. Contest entries included:
Spirit of The WalletSucker
The Floating Crapsickle
Royal Docksitter
The Coastal Corruption
HMS Cantafford
Queen of the Damned
Or again—and perhaps most famously—there was the UK government’s gloriously naive decision in 2016 to let the Internet pick a new name for a £200 million polar research vessel. And 124,109 members of the general public chose… Boaty McBoatface. (This was later overridden by the government, which named the ship the RRS Sir David Attenborough instead, but one of the boat’s remotely operated underwater vehicles was named Boaty McBoatface as a consolation prize.)
Even the not-quite-bleeding-edge-of-tech New York Times recognized in its headline on the story that this is “What You Get When You Let the Internet Decide.”
So, despite many years of cautionary tales, the state of Michigan this year launched a contest to design some new “I Voted” sticker designs. (NB: For our non-American readers, these stickers are often given out when you vote in elections so that you can shame any nonvoting friends, family, and colleagues with your civic virtue.)
The state commissioned designs from local school kids, no doubt anticipating that said designs would feature things like heartwarming drawings of the Michigan mitten. And they let the Internet weigh in on the results.
More than 57,000 people did so—and that’s why voters across the state, once they cast a ballot in this year’s presidential election, might be handed a round sticker featuring a werewolf ripping its own shirt to shreds as it throws its head back and howls like a maniac in front of an American flag. And it is glorious.
Why not?
This piece of inspired artwork came from the mind and pen of 12-year-old Jane Hynous of Grosse Pointe Farms. Though the contest selected nine winners, Hynous’ design beat every other entry by a wide margin. (See all winners here.)
The New York Times called Hynous to talk about the sticker and received this terrific quote:
“I didn’t want to do something that usually you think of when you think of Michigan,” she said. “I was like, ‘Why not make a wolf pulling his shirt off?'”
Why not, indeed? Clearly, the Internet has delivered on this one.
Enlarge/ Election clerks can also order the traditional design. But why?
Michigan plans to print a million stickers, which will feature all nine winning designs, and local election clerks will need to order specific designs from the state. (They can also order the original, boring American flag “I Voted” stickers. But why would they?)
So if you live in Michigan, and if this November you want your shirt adorned with an insane werewolf celebrating the vote you just cast, now is the time to let your local clerk know.
Still, despite these great designs, I can’t help but feel that an opportunity was lost. No “Votey McVoteface”? Perhaps in 2028.
Enlarge/ The USS Manchester. Just the spot for a Starlink dish.
Department of Defense
It’s no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. The records retention! The security! So government workers occasionally take IT into their own hands with creative but, err, unauthorized solutions.
For instance, a former US Ambassador to Kenya in 2015 got in trouble after working out of an embassy compound bathroom—the only place where he could use his personal computer (!) to access an unsecured network (!!) that let him log in to Gmail (!!!), where he did much of his official business—rules and security policies be damned.
Still, the ambassador had nothing on senior enlisted crew members of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, who didn’t like the Navy’s restriction of onboard Internet access. In 2023, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a Starlink terminal to the “O-5 level weatherdeck” of a US warship.
They called the resulting Wi-Fi network “STINKY”—and when officers on the ship heard rumors and began asking questions, the leader of the scheme brazenly lied about it. Then, when exposed, she went so far as to make up fake Starlink usage reports suggesting that the system had only been accessed while in port, where cybersecurity and espionage concerns were lower.
Rather unsurprisingly, the story ends badly, with a full-on Navy investigation and court-martial. Still, for half a year, life aboard the Manchester must have been one hell of a ride.
Enlarge/ A photo included in the official Navy investigation report, showing the location of the hidden Starlink terminal on the USS Manchester.
DOD (through Navy Times)
One stinky solution
The Navy Times has all the new and gory details, and you should read their account, because they went to the trouble of using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to uncover the background of this strange story. But the basics are simple enough: People are used to Internet access. They want it, even (perhaps especially!) when at sea on sensitive naval missions to Asia, where concern over Chinese surveillance and hacking runs hot.
So, in early 2023, while in the US preparing for a deployment, Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero—the enlisted shipboard leader—led a scheme to buy a Starlink for $2,800 and to install it inconspicuously on the ship’s deck. The system was only for use by chiefs—not by officers or by most enlisted personnel—and a Navy investigation later revealed that at least 15 chiefs were in on the plan.
The Navy Times describes how Starlink was installed:
The Starlink dish was installed on the Manchester’s O-5 level weatherdeck during a “blanket” aloft period, which requires a sailor to hang high above or over the side of the ship.
During a “blanket” aloft, duties are not documented in the deck logs or the officer of the deck logs, according to the investigation.
It’s unclear who harnessed up and actually installed the system for Marrero due to redactions in the publicly released copy of the probe, but records show Marrero powered up the system the night before the ship got underway to the West Pacific waters of U.S. 7th Fleet.
This was all extremely risky, and the chiefs don’t appear to have taken amazing security precautions once everything was installed. For one thing, they called the network “STINKY.” For another, they were soon adding more gear around the ship, which was bound to raise further questions. The chiefs found that the Wi-Fi signal coming off the Starlink satellite transceiver couldn’t cover the entire ship, so during a stop in Pearl Harbor, they bought “signal repeaters and cable” to extend coverage.
Sailors on the ship then began finding the STINKY network and asking questions about it. Some of these questions came to Marrero directly, but she denied knowing anything about the network… and then privately changed its Wi-Fi name to “another moniker that looked like a wireless printer—even though no such general-use wireless printers were present on the ship, the investigation found.”
Marrero even went so far as to remove questions about the network from the commanding officer’s “suggestion box” aboard ship to avoid detection.
Finding the stench
Ship officers heard the scuttlebutt about STINKY, of course, and they began asking questions and doing inspections, but they never found the concealed device. On August 18, though, a civilian worker from the Naval Information Warfare Center was installing an authorized SpaceX “Starshield” device and came across the unauthorized SpaceX device hidden on the weatherdeck.
Marrero’s attempt to create fake data showing that the system had only been used in port then failed spectacularly due to the “poorly doctored” statements she submitted. At that point, the game was up, and Navy investigators looked into the whole situation.
All of the chiefs who used, paid for, or even knew about the system without disclosing it were given “administrative nonjudicial punishment at commodore’s mast,” said Navy Times.
So there you go, kids: two object lessons in poor decision-making. Whether working from an embassy bathroom or the deck of a littoral combat ship, if you’re a government employee, think twice before giving in to the sweet temptation of unsecured, unauthorized wireless Internet access.
Update, Sept. 5, 3: 30pm: A reader has claimed that the default Starlink SSID is actually… “STINKY.” This seemed almost impossible to believe, but Elon Musk in fact tweeted about it in 2022, Redditors have reported it in the wild, and back in 2022 (thanks, Wayback Machine), the official Starlink FAQ said that the device’s “network name will appear as ‘STARLINK’ or ‘STINKY’ in device WiFi settings.” (A check of the current Starlink FAQ, however, shows that the default network name now is merely “STARLINK.”)
In other words, not only was this asinine conspiracy a terrible OPSEC idea, but the ringleaders didn’t even change the default Wi-Fi name until they started getting questions about it. Yikes.
2022 Twitter thread announcing that “STINKY” would be the default SSID for Starlink.
Jason Momoa and Jack Black star in A Minecraft Movie.
Minecraft is among the most successful and influential games of the early 21st century, winning many awards and selling over 300 million copies (so far) since its 2011 release. So it was only a matter of time before Hollywood gave us a feature film based on the 3D sandbox game, simply titled A Minecraft Movie. Sure, one might have reservations about yet another video game-based movie, but on the plus side, we’ve got Jason Momoa and Jack Black co-starring. And the first teaser is full of eye-popping candy-colored cubic visuals and sly references to the game that should please fans.
Within a year of Minecraft‘s initial release, Mojang Studios was fielding offers from Hollywood producers about making a TV series based on the game, but the company wanted to wait for “the right idea.” There was a 2014 attempt to crowd-source a fan film, but game creator Markus “Notch” Persson didn’t agree to license that effort since he was already negotiating with Warner Bros. about developing a film based on the game. Thus began a long, convoluted process of directors and writers being hired and leaving the project for various reasons.
When the dust finally settled, Jared Hess (who worked with Black on Nacho Libre) ended up directing. The COVID pandemic and 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike delayed things further, but filming finally wrapped earlier this year in Auckland, New Zealand—just in time for a spring 2025 theatrical release. Per the official synopsis:
Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn’t just help you craft, it’s essential to one’s survival! Four misfits—Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen), Natalie (Emma Myers) and Dawn (Danielle Brooks)—find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Jack Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative… the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world.
Game players will recognize Steve as one of the default characters in Minecraft. The teaser is set to The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” and opens with our misfits encountering a fantastical Tolkien-esque landscape—only with a lot more cube-like shapes, like a pink sheep with a cubed head. We get the aforementioned Piglins and other creatures before Black appears and dramatically announces with great fanfare, “I…. am Steve.” Honestly, we’ll probably watch it just for Black’s performance alone.
Wars of necessity spawn weapons innovation as each side tries to counter the other’s tactics and punch through defenses. For instance—as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made drone warfare real, both sides have developed ways to bring down drones more easily. One recent Ukrainian innovation has been building counter-drone ramming drones that literally knock Russian drones from the sky.
In the case of the trench warfare that currently dominates the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainians have another new tactic: dragon’s fire. Delivered by drone.
Videos have begun to circulate on Telegram and X this week from Ukrainian units showing their new weapon. (You can see three of them below.) The videos each show a drone moving deliberately along a trench line as it releases a continuous stream of incendiary material, which often starts fires on the ground below (and ignites nearby ammunition).
The most terrifying development in drone warfare I’ve seen thus far. Makes FPVs with unitary warheads look like a walk in the park.
The POV videos of incendiary rockets cascading burning magnesium and thermite were horrifying, but this is next level. pic.twitter.com/muF2kbHPqJ
This drone type is allegedly called “Dragon” and is said to feature thermite, a mixture of metal powder (usually aluminum) and metal oxide (in this case, said to be iron). When a thermite mixture is ignited, it undergoes a redox reaction that releases an enormous amount of heat energy and can burn anywhere. It can get really, really hot.
The products emerge as liquids due to the high temperatures reached (up to 2,500° C [4,532° F] with iron(III) oxide)—although the actual temperature reached depends on how quickly heat can escape to the surrounding environment. Thermite contains its own supply of oxygen and does not require any external source of air. Consequently, it cannot be smothered, and may ignite in any environment given sufficient initial heat. It burns well while wet, and cannot be easily extinguished with water—though enough water to remove sufficient heat may stop the reaction.
Whether such weapons make any difference on the battlefield remains unclear, but the devices are a reminder of how much industrial and chemical engineering talent in Ukraine is currently being directed into new methods of destruction.
Kathryn Hahn reprises her WandaVision role as Agatha Harkness in the spinoff series Agatha All Along.
Disney introduced the poster and first full trailer for Agatha All Along during its annual D23 Expo earlier this month. And now Marvel Studios has dropped a one-minute teaser that has fans wildly speculating about the possible true identity of one character in particular, who might just be a future Young Avenger.
As previously reported, the nine-episode series, starring Kathryn Hahn, is one of the TV series in the MCU’s Phase Five, coming on the heels of Secret Invasion, Loki S2, What If…? S2, and Echo. Agatha All Along has been in the works since 2021, officially announced in November of that year, inspired by Hahn’s breakout performance in WandaVision as nosy neighbor Agnes—but secretly a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness who was conspiring to steal Wanda’s power. The plot twist even inspired a meta-jingle that went viral. WandaVision ended with Wanda victorious (of course) and Agatha robbed of all her powers, trapped in her nosy neighbor persona. This new series picks up where WandaVision left Agatha, and apparently we can expect a few more catchy tunes. Per the official premise:
The infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…
In addition to Hahn, the cast includes Aubrey Plaza as warrior witch Rio Vidal; Joe Locke as Billy, a teenaged familiar; Patti LuPone as a 450-year-old Sicilian witch named Lilia Calderu; Sasheer Zamata as sorceress Jennifer Kale; Ali Ahn as a witch named Alice; and Miles Gutierrez-Riley as Billy’s boyfriend. Debra Jo Rupp reprises her WandaVision role as Sharon Davis (“Mrs. Hart” in the meta-sitcom), here becoming a member of Agatha’s coven. Also reprising their WandaVision roles: Emma Caulfield Ford as Sarah Proctor (aka “Dottie Jones”); David Payton as John Collins (“Herb”); David Lengel as Harold Proctor (“Phil Jones”); Asif Ali as Abilash Tandon (“Norm”); Amos Glick (pizza delivery man “Dennis”); Kate Forbes as Agatha’s mother, Evanora; and Brian Brightman as the Eastview, New Jersey, sheriff.
This latest teaser opens with Billy fanboying over Agatha, newly released from her spell, admitting that he knows “an egregious amount about you”—ever since he discovered her history during “the Salem days.” WandaVision fans will recall that’s when Agatha absorbed all the power in her then-coven, killing them in the process—including her own mother. Billy admires the fact that Agatha is the only witch to have ever survived the Witches’ Road. But when she asks him who he is, a magical script covers his mouth and garbles his answer. Naturally Agatha finds this intriguing.
Given that the squiggly script resembles an ornate “M,” (or possibly a “W” and “V”) fans are speculating that Billy is connected to Wanda Maximoff—possibly a young Billy Kaplan, who goes on to become Wiccan of the Young Avengers, one of Wanda and Vision’s twin sons. Those sons technically ceased to exist when Wanda ended her reality-warping spell in WandaVision‘s finale. But does anybody ever really cease to exist in the MCU? (The twins were eventually reborn in the comics, with Tommy becoming Speed.)
The first two episodes of Agatha All Along drop on September 18, 2024, on Disney+, with episodes airing weekly after that through November 6. It looks like dark, spooky fun, just in time for the Halloween season.
Enlarge/ Ukrainian FPV drone hunting Russian army assets along a road.
Imagine receiving a traffic ticket in the mail because you were speeding down a Russian road in Kursk with a Ukrainian attack drone on your tail. That’s the reality facing some Russians living near the front lines after Ukraine’s surprise seizure of Russian territory in Kursk Oblast. And they’re complaining about it on Telegram.
Rob Lee, a well-known analyst of the Ukraine/Russia war, comments on X that “traffic cameras are still operating in Kursk, and people are receiving speeding fines when trying to outrun FPVs [first-person-view attack drones]. Some have resorted to covering their license plates but the traffic police force them to remove them.”
Volunteers and military volunteers who arrived in the Kursk region are asking the traffic police not to fine them for speeding when they are escaping from the drones of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Several people who are near the combat zone told Mash about this. Cameras are still recording violations in the border area, and when people try to escape from the drones, they receive letters of happiness [tickets]. One of the well-known military activists was charged 9k [rubles, apparently—about US$100] in just one day. He accelerated on a highway that is attacked almost every hour by enemy FPV drones. Some cover their license plates, but the traffic police stop them and demand that they remove the stickers.
Mash claims that the traffic police are sympathetic and that given the drone situation, “speeding can be considered as committed in a state of extreme necessity.” But those who receive a speeding ticket will have to challenge it in court on these grounds.
The attack drones at issue here are widely used even some distance beyond the current front lines. Russian milbloggers, for instance, have claimed for more than a week that Ukrainian drones are attacking supply vehicles on the important E38 highway through Kursk, and they have published photos of burning vehicles along the route. (The E38 is significantly to the north of known Ukrainian positions.)
So Russians are understandably in something of a hurry when on roads like this. But the traffic cameras don’t care—and neither, apparently, do the traffic police, who keep the cameras running.
Estonian X account “WarTranslated” provides English translations of Russian Telegram posts related to the Ukraine war, and the traffic cam issue has come up multiple times. According to one local Russian commentator, “In frontline areas, they continue to collect fines for violating traffic rules… For example, drivers exceed the speed limit in order to get away from the drone, or drive quickly through a dangerous place; the state regularly collects fines for this.”
Another Russian complains, “The fact is that in the Kursk region, surveillance cameras that monitor speeding continue to operate. There are frequent cases when fighters are fined when they run away from enemy FPV drones. Papering over license plates on cars does not help, either. For example, a guy from the People’s Militia of the city of Kurchatov was sent to 15 days of arrest because of a taped-over license plate.”
Enlarge/ Martin Shkreli—he’s back, and he’s still got copies of that Wu-Tang Clan album.
The members of PleasrDAO are, well, pretty displeased with Martin Shkreli.
The “digital autonomous organization” spent $4.75 million to buy the fabled Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which had only been produced as a single copy. The album had once belonged to Shkreli, who purchased it directly from Wu-Tang Clan for $2 million in 2015. But after Shkreli became the “pharma bro” poster boy for price gouging in the drug sector, he ended up in severe legal trouble and served a seven-year prison sentence for securities fraud.
He also had to pay a $7.4 million penalty in that case, and the government seized and then sold Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to help pay the bill.
The album was truly “one of a kind,” a protest against the devaluation of music in the digital age and the kind of fascinating curio that instantly made its owners into “interesting people.” The album came as a two-CD set inside a nickel and silver box inscribed with the Wu-Tang logo, and the full package included a pair of customized audio speakers and a 174-page leather book featuring lyrics and “anecdotes on the production.”
In a complicated transaction, PleasrDAO purchased the album from an unnamed intermediary, who had first purchased it from the government. As part of that deal, PleasrDAO created a non-fungible token (NFT—remember those?) to show ownership of the album. The New York Times has a good description of what this entailed:
To tie “Once Upon a Time” to the digital realm, an NFT was created to stand as the ownership deed for the physical album, said Peter Scoolidge, a lawyer who specializes in cryptocurrency and NFT deals and was involved in the transaction. The 74 members of PleasrDAO… share collective ownership of the NFT deed, and thus own the album.
Makin’ copies…
But after purchasing the album and sharing the collective ownership of its NFT, PleasrDAO discovered that its “one of a kind” object wasn’t quite as exclusive as it had thought.
Shkreli had, in fact, made copies of the music. Lots of copies. On June 30, 2022, PleasrDAO said that Shkreli played music from the album on his YouTube channel and stated, “Of course I made MP3 copies, they’re like hidden in safes all around the world… I’m not stupid. I don’t buy something for two million dollars just so I can keep one copy.”
Shkreli began taunting PleasrDAO members about the album, telling one of them, “I literally play it on my discord all the time, you’re an idiot” and claiming that PleasrDAO was concerned about an album that “>5000 people have.” Shkreli claimed on a 2024 podcast that he had “burned the album and sent it to like, 50 different chicks”—and that this had been extremely good for his sex life.
Shkreli even offered to send copies of the album to random Internet commenters if they would just send him their “email addy.” He also told people to “look out for a torrent” and hosted listening parties for the album on his X account, which reached “potentially over 4,900 listeners.”
We know all of these details because PleasrDAO has sued Shkreli, claiming that he is acting in violation of the asset forfeiture order and that he is misappropriating “trade secrets” under New York law.
Shkreli “knew that by distributing copies of the Album’s data and files or by playing it publicly, his actions would decrease the Album’s marketability and value,” said PleasrDAO. They have asked a federal judge to stop Shkreli—and also to get them a list of everyone he has distributed the album to.
Enlarge/ The Wu-Tang Clan album sits inside this box.
Not a secret
Shkreli’s response to all this is, in essence, “so what’s the problem?”
When he purchased the album for $2 million in 2015, he also acquired 50 percent of the copyrights to the package. Before the album was seized by the government, Shkreli says he took advantage of his copyright ownership to make copies as he was “permitted to do under his original purchase agreement.” The government, he says, seized only the individual, physical copy of the album, and Shkreli was within his rights to retain the copies he had already made.
As for trade secrets, well—a trade secret actually has to be “secret.” Thanks to his own actions, Shkreli has made sure that the album is not a secret. “Because Defendant legally purchased and shared the work before the Forfeiture Order and the Asset Purchase Agreement, the work is no longer a trade secret,” his lawyers wrote in his defense.
The Empire State strikes back
On August 26, 2024, a federal judge in Brooklyn issued a preliminary injunction (PDF) in the case as the two parties prepare to battle things out in court. The injunction prevents Shkreli from “possessing, using, disseminating, or selling any interest in the Wu-Tang Clan album ‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’ (the ‘Album’), including its data and files or the contents of the Album.”
Furthermore, Shkreli has to turn over “all of his copies, in any form, of the Album or its contents to defense counsel.” He also must file an affidavit swearing that he “no longer possesses any copies, in any form, of the Album or its contents.”
By the end of September 2024, Shkreli further must submit a list of “the names and contact information of the individuals to whom he distributed the data and files” and say if he made any money for doing so.
Enlarge/Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal documents the spectacular rise and fall of treasure hunter Tommy Thompson.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Many people dream of finding lost or hidden treasure, but sometimes realizing that dream turns out to be a nightmare. Such was the case for Tommy Thompson, an American treasure hunter who famously beat the odds to discover the location of the SS Central America shipwreck in 1988. It had been dubbed the “Ship of Gold” since it sank in 1857 laden with 30,000 pounds of gold bars and coins—collectively worth enough money to have some impact on the Panic of 1857 financial crisis.
Thompson and his team recovered significant amounts of gold and artifacts to great fanfare, with experts at the time suggesting the trove could be worth as much as $400 million. The euphoria proved short-lived. Thirty-nine insurance companies filed lawsuits, claiming the gold was rightfully theirs since the companies had paid damages for the lost gold back in the mid-19th century. Thompson eventually prevailed in 1996, when courts awarded him and his discovery team 92 percent of the gold they’d recovered.
But actually realizing profits from the gold proved challenging; In the end, Thompson sold the gold for just $52 million, almost all of which went to pay off the massive debt the project had accumulated over the ensuing years. So naturally, there were more lawsuits, this time from the investors who had financed Thompson’s expedition, accusing him of fraud. Thompson didn’t help his case when he went on the run in 2012 with his assistant, living off some $4 million in assets stashed in an offshore account.
Thompson was finally captured by US marshals in 2015 to face his investors in court. A jury awarded the investors substantial compensatory damages, and the court ordered Thompson to hand over 500 commemorative gold coins that had been minted out of some of the Central America gold to meet that judgment. Thompson claimed he had forgotten where he’d stashed them and was jailed for contempt of court until the coins had been recovered and handed over. He’s still in prison as of this writing, and the gold coins have yet to be found.
It’s quite a tale, so small wonder that National Geographic has made a riveting three-part documentary about Thompson’s spectacular rise and fall: Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal, based on the 1998 book by Gary Kinder entitled Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. Cursed Gold director Sam Benstead read Kinder’s book and was instantly hooked on the story. “Not only was it a hugely exciting story with many twists and turns, but it was also an emotional story, which left you pulling for Tommy and his crew,” he told Ars. “Tommy came through as an extraordinary character: eccentric, brilliant, someone willing to try things no one else had. When I discovered all the things that had happened after the book, I knew it was a story I had to tell.”
Ship of Gold
Engraving by J. Childs of the 1857 sinking of the SS Central America.
Public domain/National Maritime Museum, London
Sonar expert Mike Williamson hard at work during production of Cursed Gold.
National Geographic
John Moore is a lead designer of deep-sea robot Nemo.
National Geographic
Dramatic reconstruction of crew members looking at monitors in the ship’s control room.
National Geographic
Dramatic reconstruction of a crew member looking at computer screens in the ship’s control room.
National Geographic
Dramatic reconstruction of sonar operator John Lettow navigating Nemo from the ship’s control room.
National Geographic
Dramatic reconstruction showing Nemo descending to the seabed off the coast of North Carolina.
National Geographic
Gold bars and coins on the bottom of the sea bed off the coast of North Carolina.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Robotic machine recovers gold bars on the bottom of the seabed.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Crew members ogle gold bars on deck after being brought up from the sea floor.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Crew members looking at gold bars retrieved from the ocean floor.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
Journalist Dylan Taylor-Lehman looks through case files.
National Geographic
Veteran US Marshal Mark Stroh lifting box of files in a dramatic reconstruction.
National Geographic
Lawyer Quintin Lindsmith works on case files.
Gold bars and coins on the bottom of the sea bed off the cost of North Carolina.
US Marshal Christopher Crotty waits in his car in a dramatic reconstruction.
National Geographic
A case displaying the missing 500 commemorative gold coins.
Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust
A lot has happened to Thompson since Kinder’s book was published in 1998. Benstead and his production team combed through more than 600 hours of archival footage from the original expedition, as well as over 700 pages of court transcripts. “We also consulted multiple figures who we didn’t film with but who helped inform the story,” said Benstead. “In the editing process, National Geographic’s research department, together with our team, worked diligently to do their best to bottom out every fact, every claim. In a story that is so contested, this really helped us feel confident in standing behind the resulting films.”
“One of the main challenges was in condensing an incredibly complex 30-year saga into three films,” Benstead continued. “There were many legal cases and side stories that we had to exclude or could only touch on. And there were areas of the story that were strongly disputed by different sides. Sometimes we had to make choices that didn’t fully satisfy either camp, but we did our best to remain fair to the plurality of viewpoints, while also telling a powerful story.”
The director remains in awe of the original discovery, however badly the adventure turned out. “For the guys on the boat, almost without exception, this period was one of the best times of their lives,” he said. “It was a privilege to relive their struggles and final triumph in finding the gold. I still find it remarkable that they found the SS Central America in almost two miles of water with the resources they had in the 1980s.”
The experience also instilled “a real respect for the people who shared their story with us, especially Tommy’s family members, who have had so much written about them over the years,” said Benstead. “They didn’t trust us easily, and I feel very fortunate that they took part. Whenever people share the deepest, most affecting parts of their lives with you, you walk away carrying a big responsibility. I hope that they feel we have done their side of the story justice.”
Did Benstead come to his own conclusions about whether or not Thompson committed fraud? “Different people have different viewpoints on Tommy, even amongst those on the boat, investors, lawyers, and law enforcement,” he said. “We felt it was very important to allow the series to reflect this diversity and to allow the audience to make up their own mind. My own view is that Tommy isn’t a con man, and to be in prison for approaching nine years for contempt of court feels like a sad reflection on the US justice system. But it is also the case that, albeit under immense pressure, he made certain choices (like going on the run), which contributed to his own downfall. I hope that in the coming years his achievements, which have been obscured by the legal circus, are given the recognition that they deserve.”
Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
