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 S30Did Marvel Just Casually Put an End to Its Messy Multiverse Saga?   The Marvel Cinematic Universe just spent three long years deeply entrenched in the multiverse, and not every attempt has been successful. Now, in 2023, the lasting legacy of the Multiverse Saga basically amounts to a few movies, Loki, and the ongoing animated anthology What If...? Technically, the entire arc could still come to a crescendo in the next Avengers movie, but the apparently untitled crossover movie is currently such an unknown that we wouldn’t bet on it. Avengers 5 could still be Kang Dynasty or even Secret Wars, but it could just as easily wind up being Avengers: Return of Thanos.
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S69This Quest 3 App Turns Your Local Tennis Court Into a Mixed Reality Arcade  Mixed reality does a great job of transforming banal spaces into something spectacular. Take, for example, this app that turns your living room into a spaceship, or this one that makes it look like your house is flying, Up-style.But it’s not all spaceships and shooting games — XR can also transform practical spaces into something a lot more. Exhibit A: this mixed reality tennis app that turns a regular court into a portal for playing anyone in the world.
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S48The Best Fitbits for Every Type of Activity  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDThere was a time not too long ago when Fitbit was essentially the only wearable in town, the most popular way to brag about step counts and the rest. While its status has waned in the face of ever-growing competition, Fitbit is still making easy-to-use fitness trackers and watches.
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S37S53What a Collapse Could Look Like  In this year-end episode, some of the contributors to the The Atlantic’s January/February issue forecast what a second Trump term might look like. For the magazine, 24 Atlantic writers––experts in foreign and domestic policy, economics, and national security––examined Trump’s record and his recent statements, and wrote about what they believe his agenda would be in a theoretical second term.Joining editor in chief of The Atlantic and moderator, Jeffrey Goldberg, this week to discuss this and more are McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Romney: A Reckoning; Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future; Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic; and Clint Smith, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America.
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S58S51S34'Dune's Timeliest Sci-Fi Concept Is Missing From the Movies for a Crucial Reason  The future of 10,191 in Dune is lacking in one thing you see in a lot of far-future science fiction: computers. Frank Herbert’s sci-fi saga takes place in the distant aftermath of a massive conflict between “thinking machines” and humans called the Butlerian Jihad, which ended with humanity outlawing all forms of artificial intelligence. In the absence of computers and AI, humans stepped in, leading to a profession of super-intelligent people known as the Mentats.But here’s the thing: Most screen adaptations of Dune downplay the Mentats a bit, including Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming movie, Dune: Part Two. During CCXP 2023 earlier this month, Villeneuve explained why, beyond Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson), you don’t see a ton of Mentats in either of his Dune films. Here’s what that is, and how a third Dune movie might fix it.
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S35How to Find All Underdark Entrances In 'Baldur's Gate 3'  Beneath the world in Act I of Baldur’s Gate 3 lies an intricate cave system known as the Underdark. While you might otherwise avoid underground locales because of their spooky nature, it would behoove you to know how to navigate the Underdark to complete both side and main quests in Baldur’s Gate 3. Here’s a guide on where each of the Underdark’s four entrances are and Underdark has four discoverable entrances in Act I. Here are their locations and how to access them.
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S42S26The Best Home-Invasion Thriller of 2023 Brought Back an Underrated Genre  We’re living in an interesting era for horror movies. Over the past decade, filmmakers like Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and Jennifer Kent have brought interesting new perspectives to the genre, while the creation of streaming services like Netflix and Shudder has made it easier for filmmakers to get their low-budget thrillers in front of more viewers. Never before has the horror field felt quite as diverse, experimental, or exciting.But no matter how — dare we say it — elevated the genre becomes, its fans will always be hungry for new versions of the cold-blooded, straightforward thrillers that have been the cornerstones of horror for decades. That’s where films like Sick come in. The underrated slasher doesn’t reinvent the wheel or do anything particularly out of the box. It’s a bare-bones, by-the-numbers home invasion movie that’ll remind you why certain formulas don’t always need to be broken.
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S61Why Russia and China have been added to Republicans' new 'axis of evil'  Former US president George W Bush’s concept of an “axis of evil”, introduced in his 2002 State of the Union address, came to define the flawed foreign policy decisions of his years in power.He used it to legitimise both the invasion of Iraq and the ensuing “war on terror”. Bush’s axis of evil included Iraq, Iran and North Korea. They were bound together as long-standing US adversaries, rendered as actively seeking weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and who, he argued, collectively posed a “grave and growing danger” as antagonist regimes capable of attacking the US and its allies.
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S56Pack Your Memories Into Your Disaster Bag  This April, when a 1,000-year storm drenched South Florida, my father and older sister were among the thousands of people abruptly hit with severe flash flooding. They made it out physically unscathed, but many of their possessions were reduced to waterlogged piles of debris. Among those ruined mementos were sets of baby clothes, which my sister had painstakingly preserved for the future but forgotten during the rush of the flood. More than half a year later, she’s still grieving them. “Stuff is stuff,” she told me. But those pieces of clothing had been in the family for decades; she had worn them, and so had her 2-year-old. She just wished, she told me, that she could have held on to those outfits, “and my daughter could have had them for her kids.”The “rain bomb” that displaced my family from their damaged rental homes was amplified by a warmer climate. Climate change is likely making storms wetter and more frequent, and in coastal hot spots across South Florida, where drastically rising sea levels are driving tidal flooding, a sudden storm can easily become a disaster. Extreme hazards such as these are a by-product of the planet’s unprecedented pace of warming, which could change where and when wildfires, floods, and other catastrophes strike and how they overlap. These events affect millions of Americans—roughly one in 70 adults has been displaced by a hurricane, flood, or other disaster event in the past year, per the latest U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey data.
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S46Your Eco-Friendly Lifestyle Is a Big Lie  Outside my flat there used to be a path that ran alongside the local reservoir. The narrow footway was a good place to spot herons and it was surrounded with brambles so thick that two people could barely walk side-by-side. After heavy rain the path would fill with mud and I’d have to delicately pick my way between vast puddles on my way to the shops. It was a little slice of nature right in Inner London.A couple of months ago, workers in high-vis jackets arrived, tore down the brambles, leveled the muddy path, and replaced it with a tarmac dual-use path for pedestrians and cyclists. On my local Facebook group people lamented the loss of another pocket of urban nature. “Let’s pave over the whole entire world then shall we? Where next do you reckon? Mount Fuji?” bewailed one resident. Others pointed out that the new path made the reservoir much more accessible to people on foot or bike—sure the new path might feel less natural, they said, but if it gave people more options for walking and cycling then the whole area would benefit.
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S2910 Years Ago, an Incredible Sci-Fi Movie Predicted a Life-Changing Technology  Imagine a perfect partner: One who always texts back, listens, and remembers even the most insignificant details about your life.The cherry on top? If you’re tired or need space, you can switch them off. That’s the appeal of AI programs created for connection, and it’s hardly surprising people are falling in love with them.In the Oscar-winning movie Her (released a decade ago in December 2013) director Spike Jonze explores this complex relationship between humans and AI in poignant detail. In the film, lonely and introverted writer Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is going through a painful divorce when he upgrades his operating system to an advanced AI (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), which names itself Samantha. Aside from not having a body, Samantha is completely lifelike. She learns, grows, expresses emotion, and creates art. By all accounts, she’s as sentient as Theodore, and the two of them quickly form an emotional connection that evolves into a deep love affair.
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S63The Crisis at the Border  A record number of migrants crossed the southern border of the U.S. this year, and accounts have emerged throughout the year of cities struggling to provide services to an influx of immigrants. Republicans have tied foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel to call for stricter policies regarding asylum seekers, while Democrats have been stymied in search of a more humane approach to a crisis with no easy solutions in sight. There’s a reason the last major overhaul of the immigration system in the United States was in 1986. Changing conditions and a political impasse have created a state of chaos that the Biden Administration can no longer deny. In June, the New Yorker staff writer Dexter Filkins spoke with David Remnick about what he learned from reporting at the southern border. Plus, a visit with the poet John Lee Clark, whose writing on the DeafBlind experience is full of humor and life.The last major overhaul of the immigration system was in 1986. Changing conditions and a political impasse have created a state of chaos that the Biden Administration can no longer deny.
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S20Reasons to Live  Because if you can survive the violet night, you can survive the next, and the fig tree will ache with sweetness for you in sunlight that arrives first at your window, quietly pawing even when you can’t stand it, and you’ll heavy the whining floorboards of the house you filled with animals as hurt and lost as you, and the bearded irises will form fully in their roots, their golden manes swaying with the want of spring—live, live, live, live!— one day you’ll put your hands in the earth and understand an afterlife isn’t promised, but the spray of scorpion grass keeps growing, and the dogs will sing their whole bodies in praise of you, and the redbuds will lay down their pink crowns, and the rivers will set their stones and ribbons at your door if only you’ll let the world soften you with its touching.
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S3265 Cheap Things on Amazon That Are Amazeballs  Contrary to what you might see on social media, you don’t have to spend a fortune or dedicate hours to improve your daily life. Whether you’re gearing up for a camping trip or redecorating your home, bringing a spark of joy into your life doesn’t have to cost a lot. Take a look at these amazing wallet-friendly gadgets, and you’ll instantly understand why. No matter where life takes you, this collapsible water bottle keeps you hydrated. Its watertight seal prevents spills, and when you're finished sipping and ready to go, simply collapse it down and stash it in the side pocket of your bag. That way, you'll use less plastic and drink more water throughout the day.
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S41S19Midwinter  After, with their underwear still tangled in the top sheet, or just waking in winter, the stunned trees thrusting up their arms, he was always the first to leave the bed. Rising, he’d put on coffee. Or coming back, she’d pull him toward her with her legs wrapped around his waist, and when they fought he’d say, “Hey,” trying to reach her, and she’d say, “Hey,” and turn away, and a whole day could pass in silence, the vista of the cold city through the windows, voices and the smell of coffee rising from the flat below, their toothbrushes neck to neck inside their cup, resting against each other like someone whispering in someone’s ear. “Still friends?” he’d ask, in the middle of the night, when he would wake, and she’d move closer, and he’d move closer, and she would wake, the light in the room from the crescent of the moon moving somewhere in the sky high above them, carrying its dark half in its arms.
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S57A Better Way to Make New Year's Resolutions  This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.Early in 2023, my colleague Caroline Mimbs Nyce chatted with the writer Oliver Burkeman about New Year’s resolutions. Burkeman is an expert on productivity, but he’s arguably also an expert on getting real about the time human beings have on Earth. Burkeman is the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals (4,000 weeks is approximately the length of an average American’s life span). In it, he writes: “The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.”
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S332023's Gutsiest Movies Revealed an Eye-Opening Trend  What happens when directors beloved for their films of male camaraderie turn a critical eye back on themselves?2023 was the year that dudes didn’t rock. In fact, it was the year that dudes found themselves being mercilessly held accountable in a slew of movies that took an astonishingly clear-eyed view of the actions of men in power. Whether it was the atomic angst of Oppenheimer, the banal evil of Killers of the Flower Moon, the impotent fury of Napoleon, or the capitalistic pressures of Ferrari, the dudes, in other words, were not all right. But the most interesting thing about these movies being made about how dudes didn’t rock, were that they were mostly being made by “dudes rock” directors. Let me explain.
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S43S52Aaarr matey! Life on a 17th century pirate ship was less chaotic than you think  One of the many amusing scenes in the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl depicts Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) invoking the concept of "parley" in the pirate code to negotiate a cease of hostilities with pirate captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). "The code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules," he informs her. Rebecca Simon, a historian at Santa Monica College, delves into the real, historical set of rules and bylaws that shaped every aspect of a pirate's life with her latest book. The Pirates' Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship.
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S13Google Fixes Nearly 100 Android Security Issues  December was a hectic month for updates as firms including Apple and Google rushed to get patches out to fix serious flaws in their products before the holiday break.Enterprise software giants also issued their fair share of patches, with Atlassian and SAP squashing several critical bugs during December.
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S18S59Fondue Chinoise: Switzerland's Asian-inspired hot pot  While Italian-Americans may celebrate the holiday season with the feast of the seven fishes and the Swedes spread the festive table with seafood to make their julebord (Christmas Smorgasbord), the Swiss gather around a fondue pot in an activity of unity and friendship. However, it's not the cheese fondue you might expect – instead, they celebrate the end of the year by preparing fondue Chinoise (Chinese fondue), an Asian-inspired hot pot made with a fragrant, salty broth in lieu of cheese, and tender, melt-in-your-mouth ribeye steak for dipping, instead of bread. Dating to the 17th Century, the history of cheese fondue, unlike fondue Chinoise, has been well-documented. It originated in western Switzerland, where farmers made hard cheese from a surplus of milk during the winter and it was ultimately eaten in the most delicious way possible: melted in a pot.
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S25Justin Torres's Art of Exposure and Concealment  According to the author Justin Torres, "backstory and exposition are tricks of the adult mind." That explains why his first novel, "We the Animals," which is told from the shared perspective of three young brothers in upstate New York, unfolds not as a narrative but as a string of vignettes. The semi-autobiographical novel describes a family with not enough money or status to satisfy its hungers for food, dignity, safety, or belonging. The boys, born to a white mother and a Puerto Rican father, are halfway feral: their father, who has an explosive temper, disappears for days at a time; their mother works the overnight shift at a brewery. Parental love is abundant but expressed complexly, through touch, hard and soft, through delirious predawn meat loaves."We the Animals" came out in 2011, rocketing Torres, then in his early thirties, to literary stardom. He'd graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop the year before and would go on to Stanford, as a Stegner Fellow, and the University of California, Los Angeles, as a professor of writing. After the novel was published, the National Book Foundation put Torres on its "5 Under 35" list of fiction writers; Salon named him one of the sexiest men of the year. A film adaptation was released, in 2018, to quiet fanfare.
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S39S36Preparing for Your Next Career Move  Thinking about your next career move can feel daunting, but there are ways to cope. Our first chart, “Mapping Your Past to Plan Your Future,” helps you ask important questions about your life. For example, does the job or career you want meet your needs? Why? And how? Knowing your negotiables (and nonnegotiables) can help you evaluate opportunities that offer different directions.
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S50Can near-death experiences prove the afterlife?  There’s nothing so beloved by filmmakers as the near-death experience scene. You know the one: It happens when the hero is bleeding out, drowning, or staggering through a heat-warped desert. Suddenly, the screen turns a pure, calming white, and there’s a saccharine scene between the hero and their dead loved ones, or perhaps a wise old person with a kind face. After some heart-warming back and forth, it ends with something like, “It’s not your time,” or, “You don’t belong here.” Then, the hero jerks awake and goes on to defeat anything and everything.As it turns out, these near-death experiences (NDEs) are not just a box office trope. They’re unusually common in the general public. Roughly 9 million Americans claim to have had an NDE. It’s thought that roughly five percent of the general population, and 15-20 percent of critical patients (that is, those in critical care) have had an out-of-body experience. It’s likely that someone in your life has had one. Perhaps you have?
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S45Science News Briefs from around the World: January 2024  Deciphering a scorched scroll from ancient Herculaneum, unlikely flavors in climate-change-affected wine, an undiscovered ore found in China, and more in this month’s Quick HitsIce-penetrating radar has revealed a landscape of valleys and ridges hidden under nearly two miles of ice in East Antarctica. Before the continent froze over about 34 million years ago, the region might have hosted tropical-like forests and wildlife.
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S60Sandra Newman to Justin Torres: 33 of the best books of 2023  When the UK copyright for Orwell's 1984 expired in 2021, US writer and academic Newman took on the ambitious task of reimagining the dystopian classic from the perspective of Julia. Her novel delves into the complex lives and relationships of women under the regime, answering long-held feminist criticisms that Orwell had failed to address in 1984. Rather than mere fan fiction, Julia achieves something more akin to Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys's acclaimed 1966 prequel to Jane Eyre. Calling it "a masterpiece", The Telegraph writes that Newman "remoulds Orwell’s characters into something truly original", while The Guardian calls Julia "a complex and empathic vision that stands up well beside Orwell's original". (RL)As This Plague of Souls opens, the protagonist Nealon is returning to his family home, a farm in rural Ireland, after a long time away. The house is empty, and there is no sign of his wife or child, but there is a persistent caller on the phone. McCormack is the author of the Booker longlisted Solar Bones, and his most recent offering has been equally acclaimed. "The Irish master of tension returns," writes John Self in The Times. "This Plague of Souls, a late entry for the most interesting novel of the year, is more straightforwardly expressed, but remains a fully-fledged tale of the unexpected." The Scotsman says: "McCormack is a singular talent, lucid sentences locking into an eerie and unforgettable edifice. It has brutal physicality and arch metaphysics " (LB)
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S6735 Years Ago, an Underestimated Platformer Changed the Course of Video Game History  To celebrate 35 years of Mega Man 2, Inverse caught up with the duo behind the game’s entrancing 8-bit score.Takashi Tateishi is a genre bender, a melodist who poetizes anomalous grooves. The Japanese composer is best known for writing and recording the music for 1988’s Mega Man 2 – an original 8-bit soundtrack that turned the Nintendo Entertainment System’s limitations into a synth-heavy odyssey that drifts through pockets of Mezzoforte, lo-fi dream pop, and 70s-tinted jazz fusion. It’s noteworthy for the way it flowed an era of piano-orientated compositions into guitar motifs, but as the Blue Bomber sequel celebrates its 35th anniversary this December, it is also a reminder of a transition in experimentation for Tateishi and Capcom at large.
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S65The Most Replayable Music Game Just Got a Huge Discount on Nintendo Switch  Heartbreak is about as universal as human experiences get, but while it’s inspired countless works in other media, comparatively few games have tackled the topic. If you want to ring in the new year with a little lovesickness, though, you can grab the best breakup game ever on sale for under $10 on PC, PS4, and Switch.Simogo’s Sayonara Wild Hearts follows its unnamed heroine through a surreal post-breakup journey in the form of a spectacular music game. It’s not a rhythm game per se, since acting on the beat is rarely required, but music is still central to Sayonara Wild Hearts — so much so that its developer has described it as a “pop album video game.”
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S54An Incurable Disease Is Coming for Deer  It was already dark when my family and I climbed into the big white pickup truck with Marcelo Jorge. A drizzly May night in the Ozarks; everything seemed soggy and muted. Jorge was upbeat, though. It was the peak of fawning season, and so far this year, his team had captured and collared a dozen fawns. The more deer they could collar, the more data they could collect about a disease threatening deer and their relatives.Jorge is leading a multiyear study at the University of Georgia on chronic wasting disease, an always-fatal neurological illness. Ubiquitous deer may be, but in CWD, they face a serious threat. From its first appearance in Colorado in the late 1960s, CWD has crawled steadily across the country. It is now found in more than 30 states and multiple Canadian provinces.
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S4S47WIRED's Biggest Interviews of 2023  Most Q&As bore usâstiff, formal things full of pleasantries and PR. Pablum! So this year, we launched the Big Interview: conversations done our way. They're drinks with the one person you wish you could get drinks with. (Metaphorically speaking, of courseâthough, well, alcohol may have been involved in one or two.) Some are tech CEOs; others are scientists, actors, athletes, writers. Ultimately, though, we're not just interested in who these people are. We care, more importantly, about how they think. How their minds work, and how their mind have changed. How, even, our readers' minds might be rewired too. And while these conversations aren't always about predicting the future, they do seek to illuminate paths forwardâmodes of thinking or being you maybe haven't fully considered. Below are the Big Interviews we published in 2023, with teases of some of our favorite moments.WIRED: I see a lot of katanas and axes on the wall. There's also, like, a bearskin over there.
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S62Why the Noise of L.A. Helicopters Never Stops  The Jay Stephen Hooper Memorial Heliport sits on top of a brutalist brick-and-concrete building, the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center, across from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. It’s an area where trains, buses, and highways all converge, and where the sounds of helicopters coming and going are barely noticeable above the din of engines and the smell of exhaust. From the ground, the heliport is barely visible. The best view of it is nearby, from the Cesar Chavez Bridge, over the Los Angeles River, which, in this part of the city, is just a low stream of water in a giant concrete aqueduct. From there, looking over a rail yard, one can see the helicopters parked at an angle on the roof, and the blinking of video monitors inside of an observation tower. On a recent evening, just before sunset, a police helicopter alighted, paused for a few minutes with its propeller spinning, then took off again.The C. Erwin Piper Technical Center is the headquarters of the Air Support Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, which, according to the L.A.P.D., is the largest local airborne law-enforcement unit in the world. The division has seventeen helicopters in its fleet and more than ninety employees, and keeps at least two helicopters airborne for twenty hours a day or more, if deemed necessary. The aircraft are a constant part of the L.A. backdrop, like palm trees and traffic. A cluster of them hovering might indicate a crime or an accident, but one would have to be motivated to find out for sure. In addition to the L.A.P.D. patrols, there are also many news helicopters in L.A., plus the choppers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Aero Bureau and of the Fire Department, and private helos ferrying the very wealthy. These other helicopters are identifiable on radar apps you can download onto your phone, but L.A.P.D. helicopters aren’t always labelled on these apps, which can make them difficult to track. They are often black with a white stripe down the middle, somewhat orca-like in appearance. At night, they blink with green and red lights, or beam blinding Nightsun spotlights toward the ground. The division’s mascot is a cartoon buzzard, in apparent honor of their tendency to circle. Rare is the day in central L.A. when you go without seeing one. They have made their way into movies—“Blue Thunder,” “Boyz n the Hood”—and into the city’s psyche.
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