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In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down a 91-year-old precedent that has prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies meant to be a check on his power.
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I'm sure we're all familiar with Dark Crystal, so we know that Jim Henson can be weird and tackle slightly more mature subject matter. But there is little in his oeuvre that is quite as mind-bending as the Muppetless The Cube. This 1969 teleplay was produced for an NBC anthology series called Experiment in Television, which featured, appropriately enough, various experimental films, plays, and documentaries. One episode even featured Marshall McLuhan explaining his oft-cited theory that "the medium is the message."
Even among all these oddities, however, Jim Henson's The Cube stands out. It's a 53-minute bottle film - taking place almost e …
Chicago, IL
Communities around the U.S. are putting on epic fireworks shows for America's 250th birthday — but that spells trouble for dogs and cats. Here's a guide to help the animals in your life.
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Chicago, IL
Hot off the news that gamers buying a physical copy of Grand Theft Auto 6 will be receiving an $80 empty box, Sony has begun punishing its customers for purchasing digital copies of movies on its PlayStation Store, too. Per Kotaku, PlayStation has begun notifying customers that some of the movies that they purchased will no longer be available in their libraries due to the expiration of a licensing agreement with Studio Canal. A statement on the PlayStation Store website reads, “From September 1, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library. Thank you.” Thus far, the company has neither apologized for the inconvenience nor offered refunds to affected accounts. The A.V. Club has reached out to PlayStation for comment.
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Not surprised. I've been going back to DVDs etc for content that I actually own, and don't have to wade through pages of jibber-jabber to find out that I don't own what I just paid for. You'll have to pry my DVDs out of my cold dead hands.
Marvel is reportedly spending something like $400 million on the production of this December’s Avengers: Doomsday, which will—among what we’re expecting to be about a dozen other extremely important and bombastic tentpole film priorities—serve as the full introduction of its X-Men characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Which feels a bit excessive, doesn’t it? After all: If Aunty Donna can remind us of everything great about the X-Men in less than an hour, and for under $250,000, where’s the other $399.75 million going?
Chicago, IL
joshuark shares a report from Car and Driver: A new study conducted by the New York Times shows that the increase in vehicle hood height seen over the last two and a half decades, mainly due to the rise in popularity of large SUVs and trucks, has resulted in several thousand deaths that otherwise may not have happened. The study shows that while automakers and regulators have focused on occupant safety, they have turned a blind eye to pedestrian safety, which has fallen since around 2009. Researchers looked at four main datasets in their investigation: crash test data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) from 2016 to 2024; NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS); vehicle measurement data from Expert AutoStats; and vehicle registration data from S&P Global from 2002 to 2024. The researchers concluded that the increased danger to pedestrians is caused by two main culprits.
First, large SUVs and trucks have taller hoods, raising the point of impact above most people's center of gravity and pushing them to the ground, typically hard asphalt, rather than up and onto the hood, which is designed to absorb impacts. Second, with larger A-pillars designed to protect occupants in rollover crashes, modern cars tend to have larger blind spots than cars sold at the turn of the century (presuming the 21st century). The shift toward vehicles with taller hoods led to roughly 3000 deaths between 2016 and 2024. This number is conservative because it does not include crashes that take place in parking lots, driveways, or private roads, which aren't part of the federal database.
The data also showed an estimated 2.8 percent increase in the odds of a pedestrian fatality for every one-inch increase in vehicle hood height. Between two different scenarios, one decreasing the hood height of every vehicle in the dataset by 3 inches, and the second using a random sampling of hood heights from 2002 across 10,000 simulated crashes, between 2624 (for scenario two) and 3077 (for scenario one) lives could have been saved from 2016 to 2024.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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