News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Mountain Goats in Print, Teen Wolves on Netflix Plus: 100 Nights of Hero and crossword puzzles. By Molly Templeton | Published on December 5, 2025 Photo: MTV Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: MTV Welcome to December! I’m not at all sure how we got here, to the land of year-end lists and best-ofs and people stressing about gift-buying and ticking things off their to-do lists. In my contrary way I have mostly been trucking around Hyrule doing side quests, which is kind of a good metaphor for taking it easy for a little while. (The big projects—and the stressful dungeons—can wait a minute.) But my own personal list of things to watch and read never stops growing. This week, we have new TV shows, old TV shows, a book of lyrics, a book of crosswords, and a movie based on a book. Pick one, or try all five—whatever you do, don’t forget to call your reps! All of Teen Wolf Lands on Netflix. Who’s the Alpha Now? The one thing I know about Teen Wolf is that people who love Teen Wolf really, really, love Teen Wolf. No, just kidding, I know two other things: One star of Teen Wolf went on to be small-screen Superman, and the series also featured Arrow’s Roy Harper, Colton Haynes. (If I first see an actor on Arrow, they are forever “from Arrow.” Yes, this absolutely includes Austin Butler.) I have the distinct sense that experiencing Teen Wolf is a cousin to experiencing Vampire Diaries, a bananas supernatural show (which I love) which is full of teens who never act like teens. I could be wrong, having not yet watched Teen Wolf. But perhaps my time has come: All of Teen Wolf is now on Netflix.  We Are Gonna Make It Through This Year If It Kills Us: New Books for Mountain Goats & Sci-Fi Fans This was a surprisingly good week for books—at least if you like finishing up epic SF trilogies and also The Mountain Goats. I am perhaps unreasonably excited about both Bethany Jacobs’ This Brutal Moon and John Darnielle’s This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days, which I am positive more than earns the double semicolons in its title. At this point I have been listening to the Mountain Goats for something like 30 years, and yet I know, when I pick up This Year, there will be songs I don’t know, don’t remember, had no idea existed. Darnielle’s prodigious songwriting output is like that: full of surprises (and wise and beautiful). It’s going to be very hard to read this book one song at a time, but I’m going to try. It seems like a really perfect way to start each day in 2026. 100 Nights of Hero: Stories About Stories About Stories Is it just me, or has Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero been flying a bit under the radar? It comes out this weekend—yay!—and yet I have hardly heard a peep about it (boo!). Based on the graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg, the film tells the story of a woman whose husband makes a very weird bet: that a houseguest can’t seduce her in 100 days. Coming between the would-be seducer and the chaste wife is Hero, who plays something of a Scheherazade role, distracting the wife with her tales. The movie stars Emma Corrin as Hero, Maika Monroe as Cherry, the wife, and Nicholas Galitzine the seducer; Richard E. Grant and Charli xcx are also here, because why not? All this takes place in a strange place that is definitely not our world, though certainly bears some resemblance. IndieWire called it “a layered, playful, and poignant reminder that stories themselves can be acts of resistance.” Excellent. Go West With Middle-Aged Women In The Abadons Until Pluribus started, it felt like it had been a million years since I had a TV show to be obsessed with (it had, in fact, only been a number of months since the second season of Severance wound up). But now there’s a new one: Netflix’s The Abandons. Reviews seem to be, uh, not great, but I don’t care. There are two simple reasons why I don’t care: Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson. These two queens play matriarchs in the American west in the 1850s. In my head, that means this show is like Deadwood but not. I am probably very wrong about this. But like I said: I don’t care! I will watch these two slice bread or sweep porches or brush horses or whatever people did for fun in 1854. Though probably they’ll be doing a lot more than that; The Abandons is described as being about two families, led by Headey and Anderson, who “find their fates linked by two crimes, an awful secret, star-crossed love, and a piece of land over a silver lode. Their collision in a place just beyond the reach of justice echoes the perpetual American struggle between the haves and have-nots.” Sure, yes, I’m in. Now if I could just find the time to binge this. If I Were Cleverer I Could Come Up With a Crossword For This Section: A New Book for Puzzle Lovers I am absolutely not going to admit here how long my current crossword puzzle streak is. It’s my little daily habit (well, right after I do the daily Clues by Sam). My interest in the puzzles started way back in the days when people would buy papers from the ubiquitous machines and discard them around any and every cafe. If you were lucky, you’d find one with an untouched crossword. (I would do the Cryptogram, too, in a pinch.) My mom used to make fun of me for not knowing the regular crossword vocabulary (neap tides! Asta the dog!) that is by now engraved in my brain. But only once have I given in to the temptation to buy one of those books of crosswords (it was for a very long flight. I think I did like three). Over at LitHub, an excerpt from a new book, Natan Last’s Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle, focuses on a piece of the history of publishers and crossword puzzles—which turned out to be quite the moneymaker back in the day. A single fun fact from the piece: “Simon & Schuster has never, in the century since its founding, not had a crossword puzzle book in print.” If you are interested in publishing and/or puzzles, this is fascinating.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Mountain Goats in Print, Teen Wolves on Netflix appeared first on Reactor.

The European Union has moved this week to punish the social media company X and Elon Musk for allegedly “deceiving users” through certain company practices. On Thursday, X, which was formerly known as Twitter, was fined €120 million ($140 million) by the European Union for violating one of the international organization’s laws regulating technology companies. The move makes the social media platform the first company to be fined under the jurisdiction of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). “Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA protects users,” Henna Virkkunen, the Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy at the European Commission said in a statement.  “The DSA gives researchers the way to uncover potential threats. The DSA restores trust in the online environment. With the DSA’s first non-compliance decision, we are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability,” Virkkunen continued. The case dates back to December 18, 2023, when the European Commission began a formal investigation into X. Twitter was bought by Musk, a top Republican donor in the 2024 election and former head of DOGE, in October 2022, and has since been rebranded X. Later, in July 2024, Musk endorsed President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Trump administration officials are speaking out against the EU’s effort. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that “The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on [X], it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments. The days of censoring Americans online are over.” The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.The days of censoring Americans online are over.— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) December 5, 2025 FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted on X that “Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company. Europe is taxing Americans to subsidize a continent held back by Europe’s own suffocating regulations.” Once again, Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company.Europe is taxing Americans to subsidize a continent held back by Europe’s own suffocating regulations. pic.twitter.com/EzeOWZRC2t— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) December 5, 2025 According to a press release from the commission, X’s blue checkmark feature was deceptive because the social media company allowed anyone who paid money to receive the marking rather than just those the company had “meaningfully verifying who is behind the account.”  The commission claims this feature violated the DSA requirement that online platforms not permit deceptive design practices. The commission also said that X had not met the transparency and accessibility requirements laid out by the DSA. “X incorporates design features and access barriers, such as excessive delays in processing, which undermine the purpose of ad repositories. X’s ads repository also lacks critical information, such as the content and topic of the advertisement, as well as the legal entity paying for it,” the commission concluded. The executive body also held that X failed “to provide researchers access to public data.” The social media company now has 60 working days to let the commission know how it will rectify the violation associated with the blue checkmarks, and 90 working days to provide an action plan to the commission addressing the violations associated with X’s advertising repository and researcher access to public data.  The Daily Signal has reached out to X for comment. The post European Union Fines Elon Musk’s X appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The European Union pulled the trigger on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. On Friday, Brussels fined X a massive $140 million for what it described as “transparency failures” under its censorship law, the Digital Services Act. In plain terms, the EU is angry that X is not policing speech the way it wants. Of course, officials insist the penalty is not about censorship. It is about “accountability.” Yet every part of the fine print points to the same thing: a government demanding more control over what people say and see online. The European Commission called X’s blue check system “deceptive” because Musk turned what used to be a verification badge into a paid feature anyone can buy. In the eyes of Brussels, that is chaos, a marketplace where speech is treated like a right, not a licensed activity. Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, summed up the mood. “Deceiving users with blue check marks, obscuring information on ads, and shutting out researchers have no place online in the E.U.,” she said. “We are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability.” European regulators also accuse X of not sharing advertising data and refusing to give researchers access to its user information. The law says platforms must open up to “independent research.” In reality, that means academics and NGOs, often with pro-censorship political affiliations, getting privileged access to social data, exactly the kind of surveillance the DSA claims to prevent. Officials call this “transparency.” It is a transparency that flows one way, upward, toward the state. Musk’s decision not to hand over user data now counts as a punishable offense. When asked to explain how they calculated the €120 million penalty, the Commission offered a masterpiece of vagueness about “proportionality” and “the nature of the infringements.” The only clear metric seems to be how defiant a company is about following orders. From Washington, the outrage came fast. “The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage,” said Vice President JD Vance. Musk responded with his usual brevity: “Much appreciated.” In the same breath that Brussels punished X, it closed an investigation into TikTok without a fine. TikTok, after all, promised to “cooperate” and adjust its design. “If you comply with our rules, you don’t get a fine,” Virkkunen told reporters. That sentence could serve as the EU’s motto. Compliance equals peace. Free speech costs money. The European Union has moved beyond suggesting rules for online speech and is now issuing orders. American social media platforms are facing a steady increase in censorship demands from Brussels, framed as “transparency” and “safety” obligations. Each new regulation adds another layer of political oversight, turning what used to be private platforms into instruments of European policy. The DSA sits at the center of this system. The law forces companies like Meta, Google, and X to remove “harmful” content, grant access to internal data, and submit regular reports on how they handle information deemed risky by regulators. None of these terms have clear definitions, which gives officials the freedom to decide what speech is acceptable after the fact. In effect, the EU has built a structure that allows censorship by procedure rather than decree. US companies are learning that “transparency” now means constant surveillance from European regulators and activist groups. The enforcement process rewards compliance, not innovation. Platforms that fail to align with the EU’s preferred moderation standards face public scolding and multi-million-dollar fines. Those who comply end up filtering speech to avoid further punishment. This has turned into a quiet export of European political culture. The EU’s rhetoric about “accountability” and “responsibility” conceals a growing ambition to shape global online discourse. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post EU Fines Elon Musk’s X $140 Million Amid Free Speech Clash appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. US consular officers have been directed to screen foreign tech workers for any record of silencing lawful expression before granting them H-1B visas, according to a newly circulated State Department cable obtained this week. The order, part of a broader tightening of immigration oversight, tells officials to reject applicants linked to online content control or the policing of political speech. The guidance, distributed to all US embassies on December 2, according to Reuters, marks the first time Washington has explicitly tied visa eligibility to involvement in censorship or the restriction of constitutionally protected expression. It instructs consular staff to examine résumés and professional profiles, particularly LinkedIn accounts, for signs that an applicant or accompanying family member has worked in fields like misinformation response, fact-checking, compliance, or online safety. “If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” the cable said, citing the Immigration and Nationality Act. The H-1B program, used by US companies to hire what are meant to be skilled professionals from abroad, is a big part of the technology industry. Many firms dependent on it have extensive workforces from India in particular, making the new instructions particularly relevant to Silicon Valley. The document singles out applicants in social media and financial services, sectors it says have played roles “in the suppression of protected expression.” “You must thoroughly explore their employment histories to ensure no participation in such activities,” consular officers were told. The rules apply equally to first-time and returning visa seekers. A State Department spokesperson confirmed that the US opposes admitting foreign nationals who engage in restricting American speech. “We do not support aliens coming to the United States to work as censors muzzling Americans,” the spokesperson said. They added that the President’s own experience of being locked out of social media accounts shaped his insistence that “allowing foreigners to lead this type of censorship would both insult and injure the American people.” In May, Secretary Marco Rubio warned that individuals involved in “censoring speech by Americans” could face visa bans, a threat he suggested might even apply to foreign regulators overseeing US tech platforms. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post US Orders Visa Screening of Foreign Tech Workers Involved in Online Censorship appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

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