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Star Wars News: Darth Vader’s House Will Get Spooky This Halloween

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First off: Bad news, Expanded Universe fans—that Mara Jade cameo in Episode IX looks less likely now that her creator, Timothy Zahn, has seemingly dashed hopes that she’ll show up in the movie, saying that he’s had no heads-up that Lucasfilm plans to use the character. Of course, there’s always the possibility that he’s playing dumb—or that Lucasfilm hasn’t told him anything because he goes public with statements like this more than a year before the movie hits theaters. Everyone will find out in 2019. Now that that’s out of the way, what else is happening in a galaxy far, far away? Read on.

The Clone Wars Flare Back Up Without Warning

The Source: An official announcement made at Comic-Con International

Probability of Accuracy: It doesn’t get much more accurate than an official announcement.

The Real Deal: For Star Wars fans, there was no bigger news at Comic-Con than the reveal that Star Wars: The Clone Warshas been revived, with 12 new animated episodes set to debut on Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming service in 2019. “Any opportunity to put the final pieces of the story in place is meaningful as a storyteller,” supervising director Dave Filoni told StarWars.com about the revival. “I’m happy for the opportunity to define these things and the end of this part of the Clone War.” Does … does this mean a revival for Rebels might be in the cards afterwards? Because that show definitely ended with a kind of notable cliffhanger, all things considered.

Darth Vader’s House Will Get Spooky This Halloween

The Source: Another official announcement made at Comic-Con

Probability of Accuracy: Please see our previous statement about the accuracy of official announcements.

The Real Deal: Another piece of news out of Comic-Con: IDW Publishing will be releasing another Star Wars horror comic this October with a weekly five-part series called Star Wars: Tales from Vader’s Castle. (The first foray, in case you’re wondering, was last year’s “Screaming Citadel” crossover between Doctor Aphra and the core Star Wars title.) Each issue of the all-ages series will be written by Cavan Scott, with art by Derek Charm, although the series as a whole will be a horror anthology featuring characters from all across the mythology, including Hera, Kanan and Chopper from Star Wars Rebels, Han and Chewie, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and, apparently, Ewoks. (We all knew they were a little bit creepy, let’s be honest.)

Marvel Follows the War From Beginning to End

The Source: A third official announcement made at Comic-Con

Probability of Accuracy: Once again: If an official announcement isn’t accurate, someone has made a mistake somewhere.

The Real Deal: IDW wasn’t the only comic publisher announcing a major new Star Wars comic series at Comic-Con, though; Marvel did too, announcing the 24-issue “maxi-series”Star Wars: Age of project, which will run across three different eight-issue series: Star Wars: Age of Republic, Star Wars: Age of Rebellion, and Star Wars: Age of Resistance. As the titles suggest, the project will span the three eras shown in the movie trilogies, with one writer heading up each series: Jody Houser will helm Republic, Greg Pak Rebellion and Tom Taylor Resistance, with each issue featuring two stories, spotlighting a hero and villain. A launch date wasn’t announced, but Houser shared on Twitter that the first issue of Age of Republic will feature stories about Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn.

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An Old Face (and Beard) Might Return for Episode IX

The Source: J.J. Abrams’ good luck charm, actor Greg Grunberg

Probability of Accuracy: It’s certainly entirely accurate that the actor is teasing fans, if nothing else.

The Real Deal: With Star Wars: Episode IX more than a year away, it’s far too early to wonder about which characters will make a return for the movie—well, aside from Lando, obviously. That said, Greg Grunberg dropped a few hints in a recent interview that he’s preparing to return as Snap Wexley in J.J. Abrams’ second Star Wars outing. “I can’t officially say anything, but this [beard] is getting itchy, and I’m getting itchy to go over there and do it,” he told Yahoo Entertainment in what might be the least subtle tease of what’s to come known to media professionals. On the plus side, if Snap’s back, does that mean that the rest of Poe’s Black Squadron will be showing up as well?

The Finished Version of Rogue One Was Missing Some Iconic Words

The Source: The original screenwriter of Rogue One

Probability of Accuracy: Only Gary Whitta knows for sure—well, Greg and whoever else saw the original draft of the screenplay, presumably.

The Real Deal: Let’s cast our minds back to 2016, and the surprise that met many a fan when Rogue One: A Star Wars Story started without the traditional Star Wars opening crawl. Heresy? Some believed so, and that it was a step too far away from tradition for the standalone Story series. Turns out, that wasn’t always going to be the case, as screenwriter Gary Whitta revealed on Twitter:

The same number of words as the crawl form A New Hope is either a wonderful attempt to prove nerd cred, or the kind of boast that will drive some people mad wondering a) how many words the original crawl has and b) where they’ll be able to find the lost Rogue One crawl. (Note to those people: You’ll most likely never find it. Consider it a writing exercise to come up with your own.)

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‘Octopath Traveler’ Collapses Under the Weight of Its Influences

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I begin Octopath Traveler in snow. Soft-blurred whites cover the screen, surrounding the cobbled stone and churches of a sleepy winter village with a massive cathedral at its center. I am occupying the role of Ophilia, a priestess, the adoptive daughter of the church elder. It’s time to go on a dangerous pilgrimage, but the elder is on his deathbed, so I usurp the role of my sister, who was originally to go on the pilgrimage, and begin the rites so that my sister can stay here, with her father, until his end.

I begin anew in a citystate to the north, as a scholar with a penchant for detective work. Things are peaceful here, the restful sort of springtime. Except I’ve been framed, now, and a source of great knowledge is missing. So I embark on a quest to track down the missing tome and set right what has once been wronged.

I begin again in—Wait, haven’t we done this before? How many times is this game going to start?*

Octopath Traveler, a new Japanese role-playing game published by Square Enix for the Nintendo Switch, is an unusually structured game. To put it simply, it’s stuck on beginnings, like a record that skips and plays the first song over and over again. The game features eight protagonists, as the name implies, and a large portion of the game is spent finding these eight characters and experiencing the opening acts of each of their stories, one after the other, before finally moving on. It’s an innovative structure but ultimately crumbles, leaving the rest of the game fractured.

Like Bravely Default before it, Octopath Traveler exists as homage to Japanese role-playing games of the Super Nintendo era. The imagery, the combat, the character classes, and the broad narrative gestures all pull from Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and their ilk. These are cover songs as games, loving imitations that don’t push forward so much as they look back. Still, Octopath tries to distinguish itself. The combat, turn-based like its forebears, is quick and clever, with a sharp mechanic: a gradually replenishing resource that lets you significantly power-up your characters for single attacks, speeding up what can otherwise be lengthy encounters. The combat system is, indeed, the game’s single best element. One could imagine another game with this system being engrossing, even brilliant.

The visuals, too, work to differentiate themselves from the predecessors they also deeply want to imitate. While character and monster art is handled with classic 2D pixels, the environments are rendered in a hand-drawn 3D, with voxelized buildings and natural formations eclipsing the tiny characters. It’s a strange choice; the effect is almost like a diorama, with characters living in worlds not built for them. It lends the whole affair an unintended artificiality, as if you’re playing JRPG community theater. Worse yet, it renders the environment illegible at times, the broad 3D environments failing to convey how to effectively navigate a space. Paths are often hidden behind voxel monoliths; you’re going to spend a lot of time walking into walls.

Octopath Traveler has no central conflict to speak of, no driving force pushing its protagonists together. A band of merry adventurers with no adventure, a Rashomon tribute told in slow motion.

All of this, in service of a story that only knows how to do beginnings. The narrative starts with one character of your choosing, then tasks you with tracking down the other seven, experiencing their stories one by one while adding them to your number. Why do they band together? No reason, really, other than gameplay contrivance. Octopath Traveler has no central conflict to speak of, no driving force pushing its protagonists together. They just meet each other and decide to tag along during one another’s journeys, barely interacting. A band of merry adventurers with no adventure, a Rashomon tribute told in slow motion.

But instead of these collisions being expressive, they’re just dull. I used a form of “sleepy” to describe both character openings above, and that wasn’t a mistake: the primary emotional attachment each narrative arc draws from the player is drowsiness. They’re broad and cliched stories, casting men as fantasy heroes and warriors and women as victims and holy daughters, women obsessed with loving or avenging or killing their fathers, with no real development for themselves. For the fans who adored older Japanese role-playing games for their narrative complexity, there is nothing here.

And yet there are so many moments when it’s easy to see how Octopath Traveler could have been good. If the environments had been clearer; if the characters had been better written; if a central conflict had drawn them together in a way that truly made their eight-fold path feel intertwined. Instead, Octopath Traveler is a tribute act with only its love for its forebears to carry its weight.

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Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not

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Sometime in the late Eighties, I participated in a meeting organized by the Honda Foundation in which a Japanese professor—I can’t remember his name—made the case that the Japanese had more success integrating robots into society because of their country’s indigenous Shinto religion, which remains the official national religion of Japan.

Shinto, unlike Judeo-Christian monotheists and the Greeks before them, do not believe that humans are particularly “special.” Instead, there are spirits in everything, rather like “The Force” in Star Wars. Nature doesn’t belong to us, we belong to Nature, and spirits live in everything, including rocks, tools, homes, and even empty spaces.

The West, the professor contended, has a problem with the idea of things having spirits and feels that anthropomorphism, the attribution of human-like attributes to things or animals, is childish, primitive, or even bad. He argued that the Luddites who smashed the automated looms that were eliminating their jobs in the 19th century were an example of that, and for contrast he showed an image of a Japanese robot in a factory wearing a cap, having a name and being treated like a colleague rather than a creepy enemy.

The general idea that Japanese accept robots far more easily than Westerners is fairly common these days. Osamu Tezuka, the Japanese cartoonist and the creator of Atom Boy noted the relationship between Buddhism and robots, saying, ”Japanese don’t make a distinction between man, the superior creature, and the world about him. Everything is fused together, and we accept robots easily along with the wide world about us, the insects, the rocks—it’s all one. We have none of the doubting attitude toward robots, as pseudohumans, that you find in the West. So here you find no resistance, simply quiet acceptance.” And while the Japanese did of course become agrarian and then industrial, Shinto and Buddhist influences have caused Japan to retain many of the rituals and sensibilities of a more pre-humanist period.

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian, describes the notion of “humanity” as something that evolved in our belief system as we morphed from hunter-gatherers to shepherds to farmers to capitalists. As early hunter-gatherers, nature did not belong to us—we were simply part of nature—and many indigenous people today still live with belief systems that reflect this point of view. Native Americans listen to and talk to the wind. Indigenous hunters often use elaborate rituals to communicate with their prey and the predators in the forest. Many hunter-gatherer cultures, for example, are deeply connected to the land but have no tradition of land ownership, which has been a source of misunderstandings and clashes with Western colonists that continues even today.

It wasn’t until humans began engaging in animal husbandry and farming that we began to have the notion that we own and have dominion over other things, over nature. The notion that anything—a rock, a sheep, a dog, a car, or a person—can belong to a human being or a corporation is a relatively new idea. In many ways, it’s at the core of an idea of “humanity” that makes humans a special, protected class and, in the process, dehumanizes and oppresses anything that’s not human, living or non-living. Dehumanization and the notion of ownership and economics gave birth to slavery at scale.

In Stamped from the Beginning, the historian Ibram X. Kendi describes the colonial era debate in America about whether slaves should be exposed to Christianity. British common law stated that a Christian could not be enslaved, and many plantation owners feared that they would lose their slaves if they were Christianized. They therefore argued that Blacks were too barbaric to become Christian. Others argued that Christianity would make slaves more docile and easier to control. Fundamentally, this debate was about whether Christianity—giving slaves a spiritual existence—increased or decreased the ability to control them. (The idea of permitting spirituality is fundamentally foreign to the Japanese because everything has a spirit and therefore it can’t be denied or permitted.)

This fear of being overthrown by the oppressed, or somehow becoming the oppressed, has weighed heavily on the minds of those in power since the beginning of mass slavery and the slave trade. I wonder if this fear is almost uniquely Judeo-Christian and might be feeding the Western fear of robots. (While Japan had what could be called slavery, it was never at an industrial scale.)

Lots of powerful people (in other words, mostly white men) in the West are publicly expressing their fears about the potential power of robots to rule humans, driving the public narrative. Yet many of the same people wringing their hands are also racing to build robots powerful enough to do that—and, of course, underwriting research to try to keep control of the machines they’re inventing, although this time it doesn’t involved Christianizing robots … yet.

Douglas Rushkoff, whose book, Team Human, is due out early next year, recently wrote about a meeting in which one of the attendees’ primary concerns was how rich people could control the security personnel protecting them in their armored bunkers after the money/climate/society armageddon. The financial titans at the meeting apparently brainstormed ideas like using neck control collars, securing food lockers, and replacing human security personnel with robots. Douglas suggested perhaps simply starting to be nicer to their security people now, before the revolution, but they thought it was already too late for that.

Friends express concern when I make a connection between slaves and robots that I may have the effect of dehumanizing slaves or the descendants of slaves, thus exacerbating an already tense and advanced war of words and symbols. While fighting the dehumanization of minorities and underprivileged people is important and something I spend a great deal of effort on, focusing strictly on the rights of humans and not the rights of the environment, the animals, and even of things like robots, is one of the things that has gotten us in this awful mess with the environment in the first place. In the long run, maybe it’s not so much about humanizing or dehumanizing, but rather a problem of creating a privileged class—humans—that we use to arbitrarily justify ignoring, oppressing and exploiting.

Technology is now at a point where we need to start thinking about what, if any, rights robots deserve and how to codify and enforce those rights. Simply imagining that our relationships with robots will be like those of the human characters in Star Wars with C-3PO, R2-D2 and BB-8 is naive.

As Kate Darling, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, notes in a paper on extending legal rights to robots, there is a great deal of evidence that human beings are sympathetic to and respond emotionally to social robots—even non-sentient ones. I don’t think this is some gimmick; rather, it’s something we must take seriously. We have a strong negative emotional response when someone kicks or abuses a robot—in one of the many gripping examples Kate cites in her paper, a U.S. military officer called off a test using a leggy robot to detonate and clear minefields because he thought it was inhumane. This is a kind of anthropomorphization, and, conversely, we should think about what effect abusing a robot has on the abusing human.

My view is that merely replacing oppressed humans with oppressed machines will not fix the fundamentally dysfunctional order that has evolved over centuries. As a Shinto, I’m obviously biased, but I think that taking a look at “primitive” belief systems might be a good place to start. Thinking about the development and evolution of machine-based intelligence as an integrated “Extended Intelligence” rather than artificial intelligence that threatens humanity will also help.

As we make rules for robots and their rights, we will likely need to make policy before we know what their societal impact will be. Just as the Golden Rule teaches us to treat others the way we would like to be treated, abusing and “dehumanizing” robots prepares children and structures society to continue reinforcing the hierarchical class system that has been in place since the beginning of civilization.

It’s easy to see how the shepherds and farmers of yore could easily come up with the idea that humans were special, but I think AI and robots may help us begin to imagine that perhaps humans are just one instance of consciousness and that “humanity” is a bit overrated. Rather than just being human-centric, we must develop a respect for, and emotional and spiritual dialogue with, all things.

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If Germany Can’t Quit Coal, Can Anyone Else?

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Sometime next month, underground miners will dig Germany’s last ton of black coal, load it onto a conveyor belt, and whisk it a mile to the surface of the Ibbenbüren mining facility. From there, the high-energy anthracite will be tossed into a high-combustion chamber in an adjacent power plant, where it will be converted into electricity to light up this northwest corner of Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state.

It’s been a good run at the Ibbenbüren mine. Some of the original elevators are a century old, and some machinery dates from its heyday in the 1960s, when more than 10,000 workers punched the clock here. But now, after 500 years of mining in this coal-producing region, the last shift is almost over.

Carel Mohn

“It’s like organizing your own funeral,” says Hubert Hüls, the 58-year-old manager of surface operations at the mine owned by the German firm RAG. Hüls’ father and grandfather mined coal here; he started as a mechanic in 1986 and will remain to supervise clean-up operations, albeit with a small maintenance crew of 200 workers. German taxpayers have been subsidizing generations of coal miners like the Hüls family with a one-penny “kohlpfennig” fee on electricity use, but the European Union pressured them to stop back in 2007 because it was unfair to other coal-producing nations. As a result, RAG’s mining operation here can’t afford to stay open.

It would seem like a major step toward Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent of 1990 totals by 2020. But German utilities just can’t seem to quit burning coal. Some power plants are switching to cheaper imported black coal from the United States, Russia, or Colombia. And at the same time, Germany is also digging more lignite, or brown coal. Lignite is 50 percent water and yields much less energy than the shiny black anthracite. But lignite is easy to bulldoze from massive strip mines that dot Germany’s northwest and eastern border with Poland. Among Europe’s power plants, Germany’s brown coal stations constitute six out of 10 of the worst polluters.

Merkel is trying to manage this “energiewende” or energy-transition, without using nuclear power, which she decided to abandon after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. But the numbers aren’t adding up, and critics say Germany could lose all the progress it has already made. So if super-green Germany—with its massive wind and solar farms, advanced technology and industrious mindset—can’t quit its love affair with coal, can anyone else on the planet? Right now, the answer is a bit muddled.

That’s why a “coal commission” of politicians, experts, energy industry representatives and green groups is meeting this summer in Berlin to chart Germany’s rocky path to a carbon-free economy. Former US vice president Al Gore told the commission on June 26 that Germany risks being left behind in the drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating both coal and the internal combustion engine. “The leadership provided in years past created a reality that now no longer exists,” Gore told Reuters. “Other countries are moving much faster than Germany,” he said. The commission won’t have an energy blueprint for the German legislature for several months.

Germany’s appetite for cheap brown lignite coal is nowhere more apparent that the village of Keyenberg, about an hour north of Cologne. It’s one of seven villages being gobbled up by the massive Rheinisch mine that is Europe’s largest. More than 20,000 people have been relocated to new settlements as the huge pit approaches, but some residents remain—like 73-year old Kathi Winzen, who is holding out along with 27 family members in a brick farmhouse and compound that dates back to the 18th century.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Winzen through a translator. “We will have to decide to relocate, but I’ve always lived in the village. It’s sad that all this will disappear, but what can you do?”

Her 53 year-old son Norbert has been organizing resistance to the village’s relocation. But local courts have sided with the mining company, which owns mineral rights to the coal beneath. It’s an odd juxtaposition of a dirty brown mining pit lined with big wind turbines among the fields and farms nearby. “The entire village is deserted,” says Norbhert. “But the coal is not eternal and it will run out.”

Keyenberg has been in the crosshairs of the mining operation for the past 30 years, enduring a of slow-motion squeeze. It’s the same with Germany, squeezed by its desire to operate its muscular economy on green energy, but unable to quit its cheap supply of fossil fuels.

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Michael Cohen’s Secret Tapes Top This Week’s Internet News

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If it’s summer, California must be on fire. And if that’s not enough dystopia for you, there’s always the fact that DNA-testing service 23AndMe is selling clients’ information to drug manufacturers, or the emergence of mutated HIV strains that cause illness quicker than others, not to mention the president apparently threatening war with Iran for no immediately discernible reason. Yes, the world keeps on turning towards the very worst incarnation of itself, it seems, but it’s not all bad; at least there’s a new Mission: Impossible out this weekend. And until you can get yourself to a fine purveyor of popcorn-fueled escapism, please do enjoy this primer on what the internet has been discussing over the past seven days or so.

Michael Cohen’s Basement Tapes

What Happened: Cohen, a man who had previously announced that he would take a bullet for Donald Trump, has apparently reconsidered his position.

What Really Happened: Remember when people were wondering if Trump’s personal attorney being undercriminalinvestigation meant he mightturnonTrump? As it turns out, the answer is definitely yes.

How willing, exactly? This week provided a clue, when Cohen releasedoneofthetapestoCNN.

The recording—one of many, apparently—wasabigdeal on a couple of fronts. First off, it apparently confirms that Trump knew about Cohen’s secret payments, which raises questions about whether he’s complicit in campaign finance violations. And then there’s the mention in the tape that Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg knew more than people had suspected, which could open up an entirely different front on investigations into Trump’s business. (Since the tape’s release, it has since emerged that Weisselberg has been subpoenaed to testify by federal investigators, deepening the idea that this tape could potentially be a game changer.) Not that any of that was enough to convince everyone of the tape’s importance:

Still, it’s not as if Cohen had any other beans to spill, right? …Right?

Surely this’ll go well.

The Takeaway: Tantalizingly enough, this seems to be only the beginning of the revelations.

We Have Always Been at War With the Fake News Media

What Happened: All those “Big Brother” jokes began to seem even less funny when President Trump appeared to adopt the language and posturing of George Orwell’s 1984 during a speech this week.

What Really Happened: Traditionally, presidents don’t engage in politics while speaking at events for veterans. Then again, the sitting president is a walking “don’t.”

Well, the National Convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars sounds entirely reasonable. Surely, the president couldn’t do anything utterly outrageous while there!

That last line in particular drew some comparisons to some famous literature on Twitter:

Actually, it wasn’tjustTwitterthatnoticed. Remember when, around the time of Trump’s inauguration, sales of 1984 jumped? Let’s consider those people market leaders.

As Trump’s comments gainedalotofattention, it should be noted that the VFW was a little stunned itself.

Reports from those on the ground suggested a more complicated response than might have come across, however:

Well, at least the president got to impart some important information that wasn’t just about the media being the enemy of the people to all the veterans.

The Takeaway: You know what? Maybe we’re being too unkind, and the President was thinking on a scale the rest of us rarely consider.

You Come For One, You Come For All

What Happened: It’s unsurprising that the White House is at war with the press. Slightly more surprising, however, was the response of the press.

What Really Happened: While we’re talking about President Trump’s dislike of the media…

That’s CNN’s White House reporter Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday, making passing comment about questions she’d asked during a presidential appearance that morning that Trump had ignored entirely. It was a snarky comment, sure, but also one that accepted the reality: Reporters ask questions, and presidents get to ignore them. That’s how things work. Later that day, however, it was revealed that the White House really wasn’t a fan of those questions:

It’s perhaps worth noting that the White House’s dislike of Collins might have as much to do with the fact that, a day earlier, she had broken the story that the White House would no longer be releasing public summaries of calls between the president and other world leaders. Nonetheless, as themediastartedreportingthestory, journalists from other outlets closed ranks around Collins.

How bad did this look? Bad enough that one of the president’s closest advisors turned against him on this particular topic.

Well, if Fox was against it, surely the president would change his mind!

The Takeaway: Does the White House understand how journalism works? Actually, no; don’t answer that. Anyone who’s been paying attention already knows the answer.

Sometimes, You Can Try to Punch Too Far Up

What Happened: Turns out, not everyone wants to get into a fight with the deputy attorney general of the United States.

What Really Happened: You know what Republicans really can’t stand, it seems? Someone trying to do their job in law enforcement. We’ve had the president fire an FBI boss, and this week, Republican members of Congress decided it was time to take down the deputy attorney general.

Yes, GOP lawmakers introducedarticlesofimpeachmentagainstthemaninchargeoftheRussiainvestigation. This definitely seemed like a big deal:

That said, some Democratic lawmakers weren’t impressed by the effort.

Neither was a former deputy attorney general, as it turned out…

…nor the current attorney general.

Still, at least House Speaker Paul Ryan was in favor of the move. No, wait a minute…

With this kind of response, it’s no surprise that the effort stalledoutwithin 24 hours:

The Takeaway: With this move off the table, Jim Jordan—who not only co-sponsored the bill, but is also ignoring the sexual abuse scandal he’s involved in from his days at Ohio State—announced that he was running for Speaker of the House. Because of course he is. This just in: Shameless terrible people are shameless, terrible.

There Has To Be a Shadowfax Pun Here Somewhere

What Happened: President Trump really wants to get to the bottom of the latest abuse of power by the smug elite. Unfortunately, it’s not real.

What Really Happened: Hey, kids! Have you heard the news about the hot new trend?

Yes, shadow banning is back—and this time, it’s not for sex workers forced off Twitter because the platform is afraid of SESTA. Actually, I shouldn’t be that sarcastic; sex workers actually arebeingimpacted by changes in search and notifications on Twitter, and conservatives… aren’t. But it’s easy for them to believe otherwise, especially when combining their natural paranoia and a story from Vice that told them they were being shadow banned on Twitter. Sure, Vice isn’t normally one of the right wing’s preferred information sources, but things are different when they’re saying you definitely are being oppressed.

As the story began to gaintractionelsewhereinthemedia—including this very organ—something started to become clear: Twitter wasn’t shadow banning conservatives. Instead, as the original piece Vice’s story drew from made clear, the platform was apparently demoting controversial material in search, with even that being inconsistent to the point of it seeming more like a bug than a feature—something that the company admitted when pressed on the issue. Some on Twitter wondered if “shadow banning” could be a new explanation for something else.

The Takeaway: Oddly enough, while this was going on—or not going on, as the case may be—there was far less outcry about the fact that Alex Jones, the performative paranoiac behind Info Wars who threatened to shoot Robert Mueller this week, was temporarily suspended on both YouTubeandFacebook Thursday. Perhaps even conservatives are glad to see him shut up, even if it’s only for 30 days.

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The Rise of the Computer-Generated Celebrity

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A new generation of celebrities is selling out concerts, starring in commercials, and amassing huge Instagram followings. But none of them exist—corporeally, anyway. In recent years, and starting in Japan, technology and social media have spawned a digital demimonde of computer-generated stars, ranging from fake musicians and models to company mascots who appear as holograms (like Betty Crocker, with AI). When they’re not entertaining you, they’re trying to convince you of their humanity, and even the more cartoonish among them have fleshed-out personalities. In a way, it’s the purest expression of celebrity, which has always been an elaborate illusion. CGI starlets, though, “are much easier to control,” says Ryan Detert, CEO of the branding firm Influential. Except when they misbehave.

The (Im)material Girl

She’s not really fooling anyone—Hatsune Miku is a schoolgirlish, turquoise-­haired anime mascot designed by a Japanese software company to sell a voice synthesizer. As consumers began using the product to compose original music, Miku became a sensation. For years now, she’s been performing at massive IRL concerts, where her hologram “sings” those fan-written songs.

The Virtual Unknown

In 2011, the Japanese girl group AKB48 announced its newest member, 16-year-old Aimi Eguchi. Nobody had ever heard of her. When Aimi started showing up in ads and commercials for a popular Japanese snack company, fans got suspicious. Finally, AKB48 had to admit that Eguchi didn’t exist: She was a publicity ploy, created through a digital mashup of other band members’ faces.

The Brandfluencer

In her two-plus years on Instagram, the selfie-­snapping 19-year-old Lil Miquela has racked up more than a million followers, partnered with Prada, and promoted causes like Black Lives Matter. Brud, a tech startup that has taken some credit for Miquela, calls her an artificially intelligent robot, though earlier this year Miquela went rogue and cut ties “with my managers.” Now she calls herself a free agent.

The Evil Twin

Meet Miquela’s nemesis: Earlier this year, a Trump supporter named Bermuda held Lil Miquela’s Instagram hostage until the latter posted a series of statements admitting that she wasn’t human. The two then “met” “IRL,” and Bermuda posted a picture of them “together.” The feud was lame, but it demonstrated that fake influencers can attract just as much attention as the real ones (whatever “real” means).

The Model Model

Billed as the “world’s first digital supermodel,” Shudu is the creation of fashion photographer Cameron-­James Wilson, who built her using 3-D modeling software. Some critics have side-eyed Wilson, who’s white, for making a virtual black model—couldn’t he pay a real black woman to pose for him? Wilson, meanwhile, says he wants Shudu to inspire more diversity in the fashion industry.

This article appears in the July issue. Subscribe now.

Hatsune Miku by iXima, Aimi Eguchi courtesy of Glico, Lil Miquela courtesy of @lilmiquela, Bermuda courtesy of @bermudaisbae, Shudu by Cameron-James Wilson

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How to Pick the Perfect Phone Case

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Few people have greater insight into the follies and foibles of humans than smartphone repair technicians. Sure, Shakespeare is the master when it comes to cutting observations on human nature, but the people who repair our phones see us at our most vulnerable—mangled hardware in palms, usually with some embarrassing and revelatory mistake to confess.

The world is filled with potential tech treachery, so it’s best to act preemptively and wrap your phone in a protective case.

Laxmi Agrawal of Cupertino iPhone Repair and Sam Shoman of SF Smart Wireless have seen it all. A client who dropped his phone in the snow and found it two months later in a puddle of snowmelt. A client whose phone was run over by a truck and brought it in with tire chain marks crushed onto the screen.

Their experience shows that even if you’ve vowed to be careful, the world is filled with potential tech treachery, so it’s best to act preemptively and wrap your phone in a protective case. We talked to these two experts who have witnessed the most harrowing smartphone horror stories, and they offered some advice you can use to avoid witnessing your own.

Protect Your Phone From Impact

The most common problem that Agrawal says brings customers to repair shops is shattered glass screens. Screens are particularly vulnerable to shattering if the point of impact is at a corner of the phone, where force exerted on the glass is more concentrated.

For a baseline level of protection, choose a case made of a shock-absorbent material (like silicone or rubber) that covers your phone’s vulnerable corners. Shoman advises smartphone owners against plastic cases, which do not effectively absorb shock and are likelier to translate the impact onto the device itself.

Beyond that, what you buy depends on how and where you use your phone. A slim case may be all you need if you’re confident you’ll only subject your phone to everyday bumps and minor drops. Try a translucent slim case like Peel’s cases for iPhones, Google Pixel handsets, and Samsung Galaxy devices to show off your phone’s design.

Cases with thick, bulky shells add more weight and absorb greater shock. Agrawal recommends these cases for younger phone users.

“Teenagers are very much prone to break their phones,” she says, noting stories of younger customers dropping or stepping on their phones. For teens (or let’s face it, grown adults) who prefer heavy-duty protection, Agrawal recommends OtterBox brand cases. OtterBox offers cases for iPhone and a wide variety of Android phones. The hallmark of the OtterBox brand is the “Defender” series cases, which undergo a rigorous series of tests for durability. The Defender Series Case for the iPhone 8/7, for example, is a full-coverage case that offers a durable polycarbonate shell, flaps that shield charging ports, touchscreen protection, and a holster. (Yes, a holster.) The case weighs in at 4.6 ounces, and it gives your phone the hardy air of a miniature Transformer.

Consider Your Needs

In Agrawal’s experience, water damage is less common than screen damage, though she notes that aquatic accidents tend to co-occur with long weekends and summers, when swimmers mistakenly take their phones along for a dip. If you can’t resist the call of the sea, Pelican’s Marine cases for iPhone and Android offer waterproof, drop-tested cases that withstand surprise dunks.

If you’re constantly stretching the limits of your phone’s battery, Mophie offers cases that double as chargers. Folio or wallet cases, like this one by Kate Spade for iPhone, can tote your phone along with other necessities, like your ID and that frozen yogurt stamp card you always seem to forget to bring to the frozen yogurt place. As a plus, Shoman notes that these can provide a surprisingly good level of protection too, as many offer full coverage around the edges and a metal clasp that keeps the phone in place.

For non-iPhone users, specialized phone cases can be more difficult to find. Shoman, an Android user himself, observes that many phone case companies design products solely for iPhones. For people who don’t use iPhones and have specialized needs, Shoman recommends consulting with a local phone repair shop to have a customized case built.

Should You Use a Screen Protector?

Phone accessory retailers often carry screen protectors, which adhere directly to the phone’s touchscreen surface. Our experts recommend investing in tempered glass screen protectors, which deflect scratches more effectively than plastic screen protectors.

Shoman recommends his clients look for screen protectors with a 9H hardness rating. “It’s the perfect thickness, and you still get that high-definition clarity in the screen,” he says.

But Agrawal and Shoman warn that screen protectors’ level of defense again damaging impacts is limited. While adhesive screen protectors effectively shield phones from direct force on the touch-screen, they don’t hold up as well when the phone is impacted from the sides or corners. A tempered glass screen protector should be used in conjunction with a case.

Sage Advice

The experiences that our smartphones allow us to have (receiving the latest information, taking pictures we cherish, staying in touch with loved ones) are well worth protecting. But as phones become increasingly portable, we expose them to greater risks, from the elements to good ol’ human error. Agrawal and Shoman emphasize that while cases are the best way to preemptively protect your phone, no case is 100 percent foolproof.

Shoman’s no-nonsense advice for smartphone owners: “Honestly just be on it less. Keep it in your pocket. Use it when needed.”

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More Great WIRED Stories

How Cloudflare Uses Lava Lamps to Guard Against Hackers

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Edward Craven Walker lived to see his greatest invention, the lava lamp, make its late-’90s cultural comeback. But the British tinkerer (and famed nudist, incidentally) died before he could witness the 21st-­century digital potential of his analog creation. Inside the San Francisco office of the web security company Cloudflare, 100 units of Craven Walker’s groovy hardware help protect wide swaths of the internet from infiltration.

Here’s how it works. Every time you log in to any website, you’re assigned a unique identification number. It should be random, because if hackers can predict the number, they’ll impersonate you. Computers, relying as they do on human-coded patterns, can’t generate true randomness—but nobody can predict the goopy mesmeric swirlings of oil, water, and wax. Cloudflare films the lamps 24/7 and uses the ever-changing arrangement of pixels to help create a superpowered cryptographic key. “Anything that the camera captures gets incorporated into the randomness,” says Nick Sullivan, the company’s head of cryptography, and that includes visitors milling about and light streaming through the windows. (Any change in heat subtly affects the undulations of those glistening globules.)

Sure, theoretically, bad guys could sneak their own camera into Cloudflare’s lobby to capture the same scene, but the company’s prepared for such trickery. It films the movements of a pendulum in its London office and records the measurements of a Geiger counter in Singapore to add more chaos to the equation. Crack that, Russians.

This article appears in the July issue. Subscribe now.

Flying Cars, the Real E-Scooter Riders, and More in the Future of Cars

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Even the wonderful stuff has its unforeseen consequences, its dark consequences. Today’s workout leads to tomorrow’s soreness. Someone’s wedded bliss is someone else’s broken heart. Even a delectable In-n-Out double-double generates gastrointestinal discomfort.

The same is true, of course, for transportation systems. Wait—the comparison holds, I promise! A flying car sounds like a cool way to get to work, right? But someone needs to hire the flying traffic cops. That baby Airstream trailer is so adorable and compact and groovy. And comes with a hefty $40,000 price tag.

This week, we brought you stories of transpo downsides. And upsides! Plus, tales of rainbow-inspired self-driving car sensors, and a new approach to safely testing AVs in the wild. It’s been a week. Let’s get you caught up.

Headlines

Stories you might have missed from WIRED this week

  • You’ve heard the complaints: E-scooters are just toys for phone-plinking, Patagonia-toting overpaid tech bros, not a viable transportation option. Or, perhaps not, according to a survey studying public perception toward scooters. The research suggests that women and those making between $25,000 and $50,000 a year are among the new options’ biggest fans.

  • Uber’s self-driving cars returned to Arizona’s public streets this week, their first outing since March, when a vehicle struck and killed a woman. Right now, the cars are only in “manual” mode, meaning there are people actually driving the cars as they collect sensor data. But the company says it has rethought its public autonomous vehicle testing—and the role of the humans hired to keep it safe.

  • An unusually buoyant collection of legislators gathered in a Washington, DC, hearing room this week to hear testimony from Uber, Bell, and Terrafugia about the state of the “flying car” business. But as WIRED contributor Eric Niiler points out, all the excitement in the world won’t help the budding industry contend with the important safety questions around the tech—and the Federal Aviation Administration.

  • For almost a decade, the telltale sign of an autonomous car has been the weird, spinning sensors mounted on the vehicle’s roof. These mechanical protuberance house the lidar technology that helps the car “see” with lasers that gather information to create a “picture” of the world that the cars can understand. But spinning is so passé. Transportation editor Alex Davies writes about a new kind of lidar from the Australian startup Baraja, which uses a prism technology to collect data on street signs, and guide vehicles on their way.

  • Increasing the energy efficiency of products and homes? Excellent idea! Increasing the expensive power plant operating costs? Less so. WIRED contributor Nick Stockton shows how these trends are on a collision course, and how the folks in charge of this country’s utility systems are thinking about how to fix a complicated energy grid.

  • All adventures cannot be big. For the mini-quests, consider Airstream’s new 16-foot Basecamp, a $40,000 trailer large enough to play host to your night’s sleep, but small enough to slide into a New York City parking spot.

Panda Skytrain of the Week

The city of Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province, debuted its $320 million, 7-mile, autonomous, panda-themed skytrain this week. Pandas are known for lazy chomping, but this speedy guy can hit 50 miles per hour. The Verge is right: The only way to make American great again is to build more animal-themed public transit.

Required Reading

News from elsewhere on the internet

In the Rearview

Essential stories from WIRED’s pastEarlier this summer, WIRED took a close look at the dark and perhaps unforseen consequences of President Donald Trump’s proposed “Space Force”.

When in Nature, Google Lens Does What the Human Brain Can’t

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AI-powered visual search tools, like Google Lens and Bing Visual Search, promise a new way to search the world—but most people still type into a search box rather than point their camera at something. We’ve gotten used to manually searching for things over the past 25 years or so that search engines have been at our fingertips. Also, not all objects are directly in front of us at the time we’re searching for information about them.

One area where I’ve found visual search useful is outside, in the natural world. I go for hikes frequently, a form of retreat from the constant digital interactions that fool me into thinking I’m living my “best life” online. Lately, I’ve gotten into the habit of using Google Lens to identify the things I’m seeing along the way. I point my phone’s camera—in this case, an Android phone with Lens built into the Google Assistant app—at a tree or flower I don’t recognize. The app suggests what the object might be, like a modern-day version of the educational placards you see at landmarks and in museums.

I realize the irony of pointing my phone at nature in the exact moment I’m using nature as a respite from my phone. But the smartphone really is the ultimate tool in this instance. I’m not checking Twitter or sending emails. I’m trying to go deeper into the experience I’m already having.

The thing about being outside is that even if you think you know what stuff is, you really don’t. There are more than 60,000 species of trees in the world, according to a study from the Journal of Sustainable Forestry. There are 369,000 kinds of flowering plants, with around 2,000 new species of vascular plants discovered each year.

I might be able to recognize a flowering dogwood tree on the east coast of the US (where I grew up) or a giant redwood tree in Northern California (where I live now). But otherwise, “our brains have limitations as databases,” says Marlene Behrmann, a neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in the cognitive bias of visual perception. “The ‘database’—the human brain—has information about trees as a category, but unless we have experience or expertise, some of those things will be coarsely defined.”

Typing a bunch of words into Google’s search box doesn’t necessarily bring you specific results, even though the database is vast. “Shiny green plant three leaves” brings up more than 51 million results. But Google Lens can identify the plant as Pacific poison oak in seconds. Just before a friend and I started a hike last month, we passed a cluster of flowers and she wondered aloud about the floppy white flower with crepey petals. Using Google Lens, we learned it was a California poppy. (Later, a deeper dive revealed that it was more likely a Matilija poppy.)

I even used Google Lens to save the life of a houseplant that a couple friends left behind when they moved out of town. “Its name is Edwin,” they said. “It barely needs any water or sunlight. It’s super easy to keep alive,” they said.

It was nearly dead by the time I attempted to Google what it was. Most of its leaves had fallen off, and the slightest breeze could trigger the demise of the few remaining. Searching for “waxy green house plant low maintenance” turned up over a million results. Google Lens, thankfully, identified it as some type of philodendron. Further research told me that Edwin’s rescue would be a dramatic one: I’d have to cut the plant down to stumps, and hope for the best. Edwin is now showing signs of life again—although its new leaves are so tiny that Google Lens recognizes it only as a flowerpot.

Google’s Lens isn’t a perfect solution. The app, which first launched last year and was updated this spring, works fairly well on the fly as part of Google Assistant or in the native camera on an Android phone, provided you have cell service. Using Google Lens in Google Photos in iOS—the only option for an iPhone—becomes a matter of exactly how well camouflaged that lizard was when you saw it, or the sharpness of your photo. A five-lined skink has a distinctive blue tail, but the Lens feature in Google Photos on iOS still couldn’t tell me what it was. The app did immediately identify a desert tortoise I snapped in Joshua Tree National Park a few months ago. (I didn’t need Google Lens to tell me that the noisy vertebrate coiled up at the base of a tree, warning me to stay the hell away, was a rattlesnake.)

I asked Berhmann how our brains process information in a way that’s different from (or similar to) what Google Lens does. What’s happening when we clearly recognize what something is, but then struggle with its genus; for example, I know that’s a tree, but I can’t possibly name it as a blue gum eucalyptus. Berhmann says there’s no simple answer, because there are “a number of processes going on simultaneously.”

Some of these processes are “bottom up,” and some are “top down,” Berhmann says. Bottom up describes an information pathway from the retina to the visual cortex; you look at something, like a tree, and the embedded information causes a pattern of activation on the retina. This information then travels to the visual areas of your brain, where your brain starts crunching the data and trying to make sense of the visual cues.

Top-down processing relies more on contextual information, or information that an observer has from a previous experience in that environment. It’s less of a burden on the visual system. “As soon as they get a sense of what they’re looking at, that top-down session constrains the possibilities” of what it could be, says Berhmann. She uses the example of being in a kitchen, rather than outside surrounded by lots of unknown stimuli. You see a refrigerator, so you know it’s a kitchen, and then your brain can quickly recognize the pot on the stove, one with a spout and a handle, as a kettle.

Google Lens relies very much on bottom up processing. But instead of using your retina, it’s using your smartphone camera. That information is then matched against a massive database to make sense of what’s coming through the camera lens. Compared to our brains, Google holds a much more vast database.

Of course, Google Lens is still a Google product, which means it’s ultimately supported by ads. As much of a small thrill as it is to have the world’s database in my pocket when my own brain fails me, I’m aware that I’m helping to feed Google’s services with every search I run, every photo I snap. And artificial intelligences are also prone to biases, just as we are. Misidentifying a flower is one thing; misidentifying a human is another.

But visual search has also made me feel like I’m somehow more deeply involved in the real world in the moments that I’m experiencing it, rather than being pulled away from it by endless online chatter. It’s the best reason to bring your phone with you on your next hike.

Weekend Tech Deals: Google Pixelbook, Vizio, Apple Watch

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We’re deep into the dog days of summer, and this weekend, a lot of us are planning on hiding inside to escape the heat. If that sounds like a great weekend plan to you too, then you’re in luck. Together with our pals at TechBargains, we’ve compiled some of this weekend’s most intriguing deals, from a Nintendo Switch online subscription, to what we called “the Mack Daddy of all Chromebooks.”

Buy the Google Pixelbook for $156 Off

We didn’t have words strong enough to express our (positive!) feelings about the Google Pixelbook. Some of the adjectives that we used were “handsome”, “powerful”, “light”, “versatile”—you get the idea. Now you can snag it for a way nice price.

Buy the Google Pixelbook for $843 (was $999).

Electronics and Television Deals

Handpicked Fitness and Lifestyle Deals

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This Stray Dog Made The Most Gorgeous Transformation

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“The shelter is the highest kill shelter in the country,” Stacey Silverstein, cofounder of Rescue Dogs Rock NYC, told The Dodo. “The protocol at the shelter is that medical dogs get euthanized right away because they don’t have the means or the space or anything to treat them.”

Even so, the shelter staff still wanted to do everything they could to give Skye a chance at life — so they contacted Rescue Dogs Rock NYC and asked if they would take her.

Zoo Paints Donkey To Look Like A Zebra — Then Denies It

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This isn’t the first time animals have been painted to look like something they’re not. In 2009, a zoo in Gaza also painted two donkeys to look like zebras in order to avoid restrictions around transporting the animals. People have also been known to paint or dye domestic animals like dogs and cats, as well as wild animals like hedgehogs and turtles. Sadly, these acts can have deadly consequences if the paint or dye is toxic.

“It seems strange to subject animals to being painted for the sake of putting them on display — and in this particular case, to ostensibly dupe the public into believing they’re something else,” Joanna Grossman, equine program manager at the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), told The Dodo. “Animals in captivity — who already contend with the added stress of living in a confined and unnatural setting — deserve better treatment; they aren’t canvasses who need to be smeared with pigment, resin, or other substances.”

Whatever is going on at this Cairo Zoo, it’s bizarre. And hopefully short-lived.

People Are Farming Tigers For This Bizarre Wine

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The enclave, simply put, is a lawless playground of illicit gambling and duty-free shopping — but it’s also a nightmare for animals.

“We saw all sorts of different wildlife parts and products being sold there out in the open,” Banks told The Dodo. “There were booths selling tiger skins, stuffed tigers, rhino horn shavings, ivory and pangolin scales. Restaurants openly advertised tiger and pangolin dishes.”

And down the path from the restaurants are rows of tiny holding pens, filled with tigers.

These tigers, in Laos as in other Asian countries, are born and killed in captivity. But it’s putting wild populations at risk, too.

Girl Sees A Shark Who Needs Help — Then Does What No One Else Would

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“It took four attempts and my son eventually helped as well,” Twachtman wrote. “They carried it 200 yards down the shore to a spot they could get it to deeper water. It worked and they saved it!”

Dogfish sharks are among the most common sharks in the world, so some might see little urgency in preserving the life of that single individual. But, as Ali Twachtman’s actions prove, the shark’s life was still worth saving because, in the end, it meant everything to him.

Random Kitten Walks Into Office And Immediately Chooses Her New Dad

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Kirill Georgiev was at work one day last year, sitting on one of the office couches, when a little kitten randomly wandered into the office — and jumped right into his lap. He wasn’t sure how to react at first, but the kitten was so sweet and clearly needed a friend, and he suddenly knew what he needed to do.

“She put her paw on my chest and looked into my eyes,” Georgiev told The Dodo. “That moment I decided, ‘This is the perfect opportunity to finally take care of someone.’”

Gadget Lab Podcast: The New MacBook Pro

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Apple’s newest pro-grade laptop is out, and over the last week or so, our own Brendan Nystedt has had a chance to test it thoroughly. Brendan’s review of the 2018 MacBook Pro was published on WIRED on Friday morning, and he joins this week’s show as our special guest to run down the particulars. From the processor to the screen to the reparability to that divisive keyboard, he has opinions. Mac nerds, this one’s for you.

Podcast

Some notes: Brendan’s review awards the MacBook Pro a cautious “buy” recommendation. Last week’s software update seems to have solved the early issues with the processor. iFixit tore down the new keyboard. Apple’s own MacBook Pro page lets you see the price of your desired configuration.

Recommendations this week: Get a Nintendo Switch, go see the film Eighth Grade, and read Emily Dreyfuss’s argument in favor of deleting all your precious little tweets.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Arielle Pardes is @pardesoteric, Brendan Nystedt is @bnystedt, and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. Our theme song is by Solar Keys.

How to Listen

You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how:

If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Play Music app just by tapping here. You can also download an app like Pocket Casts or Radio Public, and search for Gadget Lab. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

We’re also on Soundcloud, and every episode gets posted to wired.com as soon as it’s released. If you still can’t figure it out, or there’s another platform you use that we’re not on, let us know.

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Police Patrolling Bus Station Find Box Full Of Strange Eggs

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The unmarked box was packed to the brim with sea turtle eggs, and the owner of the package was nowhere in sight. In total, there were 684 eggs — which could have been baby turtles if they hadn’t have been dug up from their nests in the wild.

“The possession and transport for trade purposes is a serious offense,” officers said in an update on Facebook. “It is punishable [by] up to six years in prison.”

That’s because the eggs likely belonged to a protected species of turtle, such as the olive ridley or hawksbill, given the area where the eggs were seized.

This Might Be The Largest Great White Shark Ever Caught On Camera

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In the video, Deep Blue approaches a cage with a diver inside, poking it with her nose and lingering around. The diver reaches out and gently touches her front fin before she eventually swims away.

Hoyos Padilla captured the incredible footage off the coast of Mexico’s Guadalupe Island. At the time, conservationists confirmed, Deep Blue was pregnant.

Today, it’s estimated that Deep Blue is around 50 years old. Great whites can live to around 70 years old in the wild. But today, sharks aren’t living nearly as long as they used to — and in turn, not growing as large as they once did.