Movies & TV Murderbot Murderbot Shows That It Cares in “Command Feed” There’s more bonding with Mensah, but one fatal decision might change all that. By Alex Brown | Published on June 13, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Mensah and Murderbot are stranded, PresAux are held hostage, and there is more blood than you can shake a stick at. Welcome to everything falling apart. Spoilers ahoy. We open with a scene from episode 356 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon where the Navigation Bot and Captain Hossein are trapped on a exotic pink and purple planet. Only John Cho could pull off dialogue this cheesy and make it sound swoon-worthy. Even I, someone who never gets hot and bothered, got a little flustered by his charm. After barely escaping the exploding emergency beacon, Murderbot and Mensah are also trapped on an alien world, albeit a far less environmentally and romantically titillating one. After helplessly flicking a switch a few times, Murderbot admits they’re stuck…and immediately goes back to watching its serials. Then it says something to Mensah that the show doesn’t linger on but is actually pretty important. Mensah frets about the people who just tried to kill them, and worries the mysterious third party will go after the rest of the PresAux team. Murderbot responds, “Yes, someone is probably on their way to try to kill them.” Mensah is aghast at its flat, emotionless tone. That’s the kind of tone we expect from a SecUnit that has no attachment to its crew, but Murderbot immediately undermines that assumption in its voiceover: “Because I didn’t wanna sound as freaked out as I actually was.” A SecUnit with its governor module wouldn’t be “freaked out” (nor would it use all those colloquialisms either), and if it was it would likely be more concerned by getting fried by its governor module and being turned into slag for failing to do its job. Our little Murderbot actually cares!  This leads to another one of my favorite moments from the book. Mensah asks Murderbot to pull up a copy of the repair manual it’s supposed to have stored in its memory, and Murderbot confesses that it deleted them so it could have more room to download TV. The mom scolding she gives it is god tier. There’s this initial suspicion that it really is trying to sabotage them, but the reality is so ridiculous and childish that you can see her trying very hard not to yell at it and put it in a time out. To Murderbot’s credit, it looks thoroughly embarrassed for its mistake. Later, when the consequences of no repair manual get worse, Murderbot and Mensah sit together and share an emotional connection—like NavBot and the captain did! However, instead of flirting, Murderbot talks her out of another panic attack.  This is the first time we’ve really seen Murderbot come into its own. It’s not mimicking human interactions (like it did with Arada in the first episode by repeating lines from Sanctuary Moon) or repeating stock phrases from its memory banks (like it did when Mensah rescued it from DeltFall). Here, it lowers its guard and shows a bit of its true self to Mensah for a brief moment of genuine connection. How does it do that? By showing her an episode of Sanctuary Moon of course. After all that, the lubricant that has been steadily leaking out of Murderbot after being stabbed by a piece of the hopper’s printer knocks it unconscious.  Next to episode 4, this is some of Alexander Skarsgård’s best acting thus far. I think for a lot of actors, the temptation would be to get bigger with the acting as Murderbot no longer has to hide behind a fake governor module. Skarsgård is letting the line between Murderbot’s public persona and its private one blur a little more as time goes on. There’s still a division there, which makes sense as the trust isn’t fully there either, but especially with Mensah the division is weakening. Skarsgård’s little expressions when she’s dressing Murderbot down over the repair manual is great stuff. Image: Apple TV+ I’ve been meaning to talk about the music by composer Amanda Jones, and now is the perfect time. I know Jones from her work on one of the best comedy shows in recent years, A Black Lady Sketch Show, but it was likely her work with Paul Weitz on his movie Moving On that gave her the in for Murderbot. However she got here, I’m so glad she did. The theme song for Murderbot is such a hook-y little jingle that I keep finding myself humming it randomly. However, it’s the music in the background that really sells her talent. The cold open for this episode is a great example of what I mean. The delicate tinkling and otherworldly strings of the Sanctuary Moon scenes crashing into the tense staccato base of the Murderbot and Mensah scenes somehow flows and is discordant at the same time. Then, when Mensah gets suspicious of SecUnit when it admits it erased its copy of the repair manual, Jones’ music pops up just enough to heighten the tension and sell her fear before cutting out completely to nail the joke.  At PresAux, Leebeebee is underfoot as the rest of the crew pack to leave. Gurathin can’t get the hopper on the horn and is rightfully worried. We also get more backstory about how Preservation Alliance and the Corporate Rim work, as well as Gurathin’s place in both. Importantly, we FINALLY get someone from PresAux shutting down Leebeebee’s weird sexual obsession with Murderbot. They should’ve done an initial “no, don’t” last episode and then doubled down on it in this episode. That would’ve given some extra character development to both PresAux and Leebeebee by showing them come to its defense and her continued disregard of its personal autonomy. But better late than never, I guess. If I wasn’t already suspicious of Leebeebee, the scene where she talks to Gurathin and Bharadwaj would’ve convinced me she was up to no good. The little side looks she gives, the questions she asks, the way she keeps redirecting questions off her and back onto their scientific endeavors, nah, this girl is up to something. Sure enough, she turns on them.  At the hopper, Murderbot is revived by some quick thinking on Mensah’s part, which leads to it realizing they can use its body parts to repair the ship. Cue the body horror. Mensah has to cut and crack Murderbot’s spine open to obtain a piece of nerve fiber, which will then be grafted onto the hopper’s wiring. It’s very gross. With the hopper now functional, the two head back to PresAux. After shooting Gurathin, Leebeebee admits she’s working for the unknown third party who attacked DeltFall. Murderbot arrives just in time to blow her head off. It’s disappointed they don’t “cheer and clap hands and hug” like they do in the serials. What actually happens is Bharadwaj, Mensah, and Arada go into shock, Pin-Lee has a fit of nervous laughter, Ratthi vomits, and Gurathin shouts at SecUnit.  Welp, the enemy is dead, Gugu is injured, and Murderbot just can’t understand why everyone is annoyed that it exploded Leebeebee’s head. Join us next week to see how these crazy kids get out of this pickle. Image: Apple TV+ Final Thoughts Episode 6 has no equivalent in All Systems Red. None of this happens in the book, at least not in the way it’s laid out here. Some of the dialogue is taken from the book, but most is fresh. Murderbot’s little head tilt when it sings along to the Sanctuary Moon theme song is so adorable. When Murderbot passed out and fell face down, I cackled. Kudos to editors Paul Winestock and Kindra Marra for being on point every episode. The comedic timing in the cuts is stellar. This episode Leebeebee says her indenture was purchased by DeltFall from SysCommSols, but in the previous episode she said she was indentured to InterTrav Mining Systems. Murderbot mentions using cloned human tissues in transports… I desperately hope this is a hint that ART is coming next season. Please oh please oh please! Don’t think I didn’t notice that Murderbot holds true to its promise to Mensah to protect Gurathin, even if it doesn’t want to. Hollywood not casting John Cho in every romcom of the 21st century is a failure of epic proportions. Ratthi is such a cute little dork. He has no idea he’s worn out his stay in this throuple. Cannot take a hint to save his life. That final stare down Murderbot has with the viewer is such Eric Northman energy, I love it. I’m really digging the soundtrack! Image: Apple TV+ Quotes “I don’t watch serials to remind me of the way things actually are. I watch them to distract me. When things in the real world are stressful as shit.” Same, Seccy. Same. “I couldn’t have both of us incapacitated by anxiety.” Awww! Mensah: “I’m a vegetarian.”Murderbot: “You don’t have to eat me. Just cut me.” “I think that the PreservationAux team had been feeling that they were starting to know me. They thought that they were making connections with me. That I was becoming like them. But then I exploded Leebeebee’s head. And that felt good.” Return next week for another adventure.[end-mark] The post <i>Murderbot</i> Shows That It Cares in “Command Feed” appeared first on Reactor.

As Los Angeles burst into riots this week over a federal immigration raid, one protester took to his social media channels to explain just what was going on—why arsonists armed with Palestinian flags stood alongside vandals armed with Palestinian flags, why some masked protesters hurled rocks at police cars while others summoned automated Waymo taxis only to set them on fire. His explanation for the riots was lucid and fascinating. The riots, he said, were not about illegal immigration. Of course they weren’t—there are tens of millions of people living illegally in the United States right now, and President Donald Trump ran three times on removing them. No, said the protester; the riots were about something more. “Wherever you’re at,” the masked and gloved protester explained, “we all have a common enemy. It is the same one everywhere you go. When you go down the street, there’s the enemy—there’s the enemy that works for the enemy, who they all work under. So we all share the same common enemy … From LA to Africa to Palestine to Vietnam, we all have the same enemy … We all have to work in unison to fight that one enemy.” One of his friends chimes in, “Capitalism, imperialism, Zionism!” The protester continues, “The more we can grow as a people, then the quicker we can get to this revolution, and overturn this motherf—-er!” This, in a nutshell, is what I have labeled, in my upcoming book “Lions and Scavengers,” the scavenger mentality. It seeks to build nothing. It seeks to tear down everything. From rioters setting cars aflame to fight the legal authorities on immigration in Los Angeles to students taking over universities in solidarity with the terrorist group Hamas, from criminals smashing storefronts in Paris to selfie-obsessed celebrities floating their way toward Gaza, the scavenger movement is about destruction. Society, it turns out, is constructed on success. It is founded on achievement. It is reliant on those who actually believe that they are called to act in accordance with moral duty, that they are responsible for creating and innovating and building up the societies in which they live. These are the Lions. And then there are the Scavengers, those who seek to tear down, who believe that their own failures are the fault of the society in which they live and that the only cure for inequality of outcome is evisceration of that society. Scavengers have taken hold of large swathes of the West—from London, where you have a better shot of being arrested for a social media post criticizing Islam than for an assault on a Jew, to Los Angeles, where the Democratic Party will wink and nod at your criminality so long as you proclaim fealty to the Omnicause. And they show no signs of stopping or even slowing. Unless they are stopped. The fact that so many in power, in so many countries, feel the need to cater to the Scavengers is a sign of a deep societal sickness and malaise. And that malaise must end. Trump is right to call out the National Guard to put down the rioting in Los Angeles. The law must be enforced, and those who violate it must be punished. Scavengers ought not be treated with any level of respect. They are not merely misguided do-gooders who have gone too far; they are malign actors who chew away at the foundations of the systems that nourish them. The Scavengers must be defeated. And only Lions can do that. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Scavenger Mentality appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Following Israel’s targeted strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and top military leaders Thursday, President Donald Trump says “there is still time” for Iran to make a nuclear deal with the U.S.  “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday morning, about 10 hours after Israel first launched the strikes on Iran.   “I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done,” Trump said, adding that he told Iran’s leaders that failure to reach a deal with the U.S. “would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told.”   Trump wrote that he warned Iran that the U.S. “makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world, by far, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come—and they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hard-liners spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all dead now, and it will only get worse!”   Israeli strikes are reported to have killed Gen. Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Gen. Gholamali Rashid, the deputy commander of Iran’s armed forces; Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff for Iran’s armed forces; and Ali Shamkhani, a top Iranian naval officer. Fereydoun Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, two nuclear scientists, have reportedly also been killed.    “There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,” Trump said.   Israel targeted multiple Iran nuclear facilities, including the Natanz Nuclear Facility, Iran’s largest uranium enrichment complex, and multiple military bases.   “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire,” the president said. “No more death, no more destruction, just do it, before it is too late. God bless you all!  U.S. and Iranian leaders were scheduled to hold a sixth round of nuclear negotiations in Oman on Sunday, but Iran withdrew from the talk following the Israeli strikes, according to the Times of Oman.   Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. was not involved in the strikes on Iran.   Thursday marked the end of the 60-day deadline Trump set for negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.   “Today is day 61,” Trump said Friday morning. “I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!”   The post ‘Just Do It.’ Trump Says Iran Can Still Make a Nuclear Deal With US Following Deadly Strikes appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is one of those agencies that, depending on who’s in charge, can do a lot of good or a lot of bad for the country. It enforces the federal laws against employment discrimination, and sometimes, like when it was headed by then-future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, it has done that job well. During those times, it zealously protected all Americans equally. At other times, however, it has not done its job well. During those times, it has bowed to trendy ideologies that endorse discrimination. For example, it pioneered a perverse approach to civil rights enforcement that encourages employers to discriminate against Asian and white employees in favor of black and Hispanic employees. It has often turned a blind eye to religious discrimination. And when women asked for its protection from men who, claiming to be women, intruded into their bathrooms and private spaces, the EEOC sided with the men. But the EEOC is changing for the better. Under acting Chair Andrea Lucas, the EEOC is once again beginning to do good. Since President Donald Trump appointed Lucas as acting chair, she has begun to restore the agency to the role it played under Thomas. In Lucas’ words, she intends to “restore evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws for all Americans.” This is a much-needed change for an agency that lately has been picking and choosing winners and losers based on their skin color, gender identity, and religion. Lucas’ power to continue making good changes, however, is limited unless two things happen: First, the Senate reconfirms Lucas to her seat on the EEOC so that Trump can elevate her from acting chair to confirmed chair, and second, Trump appoints at least one more member to the EEOC, which currently lacks a quorum. As acting chair without a quorum, Lucas’ authority to undo some of the worst EEOC practices, rules, and precedents is limited. She can direct the agency’s enforcement priorities, but she can’t rescind or issue major rules and policies, so a lot of old ones that endorsed unequal interpretations of civil rights laws will stay on the books. If, however, Lucas is confirmed as chair and the EEOC gets a quorum, there is no end to the good she can do through that agency. Already, Lucas has forced major law firms to stop using DEI to discriminate based on race. She has ordered the EEOC to be evenhanded in its enforcement priorities, rather than picking and choosing winners based on their characteristics. She has made it easier for employees to report DEI discrimination. She has made it a priority to protect Americans from religious discrimination. And she has used what limited powers she currently has to protect women from the dangerous effects of gender ideology. This is only a summary of the incredible work that Lucas has been able to do in just a few months and with incomplete authority. Lucas has been so successful despite these limitations for two reasons. First, she is, above all else, deeply principled. She believes in the “aggressive pursuit of justice, individual rights, and colorblind equality under the law.” While she is administering the nation’s civil rights laws, they will be fair and equal for all Americans. Lucas is also extremely sophisticated. She knows the EEOC inside and out and knows better than anyone how to put it to its best use. She isn’t going to make mistakes that get her priorities thrown out of court, and she isn’t going to be outmaneuvered by ideological career staff who want the EEOC to keep picking racial favorites. If Lucas is confirmed, and if the president appoints at least one more member to the commission, Lucas can affect dramatic change in an agency that badly needs it. If both these things happen, expect Lucas to be in the vanguard of a renewed movement for true equality under the law. The post 2 Ways to Make the EEOC Great Again appeared first on The Daily Signal.

It's "the universe's best coin flip".

Volcanoes on Mars might be more widespread than previously thought, and this has an impact on the planet's past habitability.

Your chances of survival were closely tied to the price of your ticket and the “class” you could afford.

POLL: What was the worst media take of the week? (Vote below)     NOMINEES:    1. Marcia Biggs: L.A. is “Pretty Quiet, Festival-Like,” Except for Those Flashbangs! “So the scene here has been pretty quiet, almost festival-like, for the last hour or so. We just heard a flashbang. We just heard another one. This is kind of how it's been going. This is what we saw last night. Of course, we mentioned some looting, but, in general, last night was pretty non-violent standoff.”— Special correspondent Marcia Biggs on PBS’s News Hour, June 10.   2. KABC Reporter On L.A. Riots: “Just a Bunch of People Having Fun, Watching Cars Burn”  “There’s a large group of people. It could turn very volatile if you move law enforcement in there in the wrong way and turn what is just a bunch of people having fun, watching cars burn into a massive confrontation and altercation between officers and demonstrators.”— KABC anchor Jory Rand during live coverage of Los Angeles riots, June 8.    3. Lawrence O’Donnell: There is No “Violent Mob” In L.A. “There is no vicious and violent mob in Los Angeles. The National Guard troops are doing absolutely nothing. The Marines are invisible and obviously doing absolutely nothing. And peaceful protesters have been peacefully submitting to arrests in small numbers to make their point of protest against what Donald Trump is trying to do in their city.”— Host Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s The Last Word, June 10.    Loading…   Funded by James P. Jimirro

On Thursday, the liberal media rushed to enflame the removal of far-left Senator Alex Padilla from a DHS press conference after he namelessly rushed at Secretary Noem and fought with security. Doing his part on CNN’s The Lead, Jake Tapper refused to fact-check powerful Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth (IL) after she (twice) falsely claimed Padilla immediately identified himself; something that directly contradicted the account of Tapper’s CNN colleague he spoke to just minutes prior. Early in the show, Tapper spoke with CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam, who was in the room, to get the chronology of what transpired. According to Elam, Noem had already began her press conference when Padilla entered the room and started shouting at her, and it was only after her security detail intercepted him and began to remove him, did he identify himself (without the appropriate credentials, it should be noted): Now, her press conference had started. She was in the middle of talking when he did just start talking. And that's the other key point. He started talking first. And when he started talking, he took a couple of steps. It was not a lunge as it's been characterized. And then there were immediately hands on him from her detailed people pushing him away and back and moving him away from – then during that time, is when he identified himself. So, he did not identify himself first when he was asking the question and interrupting her. Fast forward through the show about 13 minutes, Tapper was speaking with Duckworth, who was not in the room, to get the overwrought Democratic Party reaction to the childish and manipulative theatrics of their colleague. During their conversation, Duckworth twice gave a fictitious chorology of events that didn’t match up with what Tapper was just told.     “Well, just watch the video. I mean, within the first two seconds of him standing up, he identified himself as ‘I'm Senator Alex Padilla.’ He identifies exactly who he is,” she lied. Later adding: “Look, he stood up and the first thing he said was, ‘I am Alex, I am U.S. Senator, I'm U.S. Senator Alex Padilla.’ That is clear who he is. They should have let him speak. And frankly, he was doing his job as a U.S. Senator. At no point did Tapper try to correct the Senator or share with her what Elam witnessed for herself, who again, was in the room, unlike Duckworth. Tapper’s refusal to stand up for the reporting of one of his colleagues said a lot about him as purported objective journalist and a CNN colleague. Perhaps Tapper feels like he can’t trust the reporting of his co-workers since his reputation was forever stained as a malicious defamer because of Alex Marquardt’s false reporting on his show regarding Navy Veteran Zachary Young. Marquardt was fired just last week because his shoddy reporting cost CNN’s parent company millions. Of course, Tapper allowed Duckworth to make up all sorts of other lies about how Padilla was a victim of the authoritarianism America was supposedly slipping into under President Trump. “And what we see the response is, is really, you know, a pure, un-American authoritarianism. And it should scare us all, because if they can do this to a U.S. senator, they can do this to the average American,” she declared. Hypocritically, Duckworth later lamented that, “now, they're trying to gaslight the American people and blatantly lying about what happened when there's video of it.” To which Tapper responded with an affirmative, “Yeah.” The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: CNN’s The Lead June 12, 2025 5:04:10 p.m. Eastern (…) JAKE TAPPER: Stephanie, walk us through what you saw. STEPHANIE ELAM: Yeah, I think, Jake, it's really important to make two key notes here on this. First of all, when the Senator came in the room, he did not burst into the room. He walked into the room. And the other thing is, he was still about 12 to 15ft away from the Secretary. Now, her press conference had started. She was in the middle of talking when he did just start talking. And that's the other key point. He started talking first. And when he started talking, he took a couple of steps. It was not a lunge as it's been characterized. And then there were immediately hands on him from her detailed people pushing him away and back and moving him away from – then during that time, is when he identified himself. So, he did not identify himself first when he was asking the question and interrupting her. And those are the two things I think are very important to note how this went down. (…) 5:17:53 p.m. Eastern TAPPER: How do you view it? SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-IL): Well, just watch the video. I mean, within the first two seconds of him standing up, he identified himself as “I'm Senator Alex Padilla.” He identifies exactly who he is. He tries to ask a question. He tries to do what every American has the right to do, which is your First Amendment rights. And what we see the response is, is really, you know, a pure, un-American authoritarianism. And it should scare us all, because if they can do this to a U.S. senator, they can do this to the average American. TAPPER: In your view, is there anything about Senator Padilla's actions that security could have in good faith, interpreted as a security risk? DUCKWORTH: No. He was a long way from the stage. He – Look, he stood up and the first thing he said was, “I am Alex, I am U.S. Senator, I'm U.S. Senator Alex Padilla.” That is clear who he is. They should have let him speak. And frankly, he was doing his job as a U.S. Senator. Look, Donald Trump is forcing the American military on American citizens. He's trying to intimidate American citizens. And he's doing and what they're doing now with DHS at this press conference is, number one, forcing a U.S. senator to the ground after he identified himself, after he was just trying to ask a question. And now they're trying to gaslight the American people and blatantly lying about what happened when there's video of it. TAPPER: Yeah. (…)