'They stormed through a gate'

'The man is an unfiltered decoder ring for baloney'

'Self-deportation is the best'

'How much they didn't report'

News Jurassic World Rebirth Scarlett Johansson Faces Two Dozen Species of Mean Dinos in Jurassic World Rebirth My, what big claws you have… By Molly Templeton | Published on May 20, 2025 Screenshot: Universal Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Universal It always goes so terribly, terribly wrong. The latest trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth starts by showing us a little bit of how: scientists at a dinosaur research facility pushing alarms, blaring red lights, that one guy who doesn’t make it through the security door on time. That one guy. There’s always one. Of course, people go back to the island anyway. This time, it’s Scarlett Johansson as Zora, a “skilled covert operations expert” who leads a team to this other island full of the most dangerous dinosaurs. They’re going to do some very important science involving dino DNA, “the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind,” as the synopsis explains. With her is Jonathan Bailey (doing science) and Mahershala Ali (doing the same stuff as Zora). The presence of a family of civilians—who, of course, befriend a cute lil dino pal—further complicates their mission. Also, there are whale dinos now. And also “a sinister, shocking discovery that has been hidden from the world for decades.” Jurassic World Rebirth has a screenplay by David Koepp, who wrote the original Jurassic Park adaptation, and is directed by Rogue One’s Gareth Edwards. Naturally, it also stars a lot of CGI dinosaurs. And it includes a scene from Michael Crichton’s original novel—the rafting sequence, which you can see part of in this trailer. Neat! We root for the dinosaurs staring July 2nd.[end-mark] The post Scarlett Johansson Faces Two Dozen Species of Mean Dinos in <i>Jurassic World Rebirth</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News It: Welcome to Derry Welcome to Derry, Don’t Trust Any Creepily Smiling Adults Pennywise is back in the trailer for this prequel to It. By Molly Templeton | Published on May 20, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share To be honest, I did not trust the child in the opening sequence of this trailer for It: Welcome to Derry. What kind of kid is hitchhiking in a creepy night in Maine, where Stephen King has taught us that terrible things happen? Well, one that wants to get the hell out of Derry. Fair enough, kid. It: Welcome to Derry is HBO Max’s prequel series to the It movies, and was developed by the folks behind said movies, including director Andy Muschietti, producer Barbara Muschietti, and actor/co-producer Jason Fuchs. HBO Max does not want to tell us a thing about it, other than that it is based on King’s novel and set in the same world as the movies. But last fall, Andy Muschietti told Entertainment Weekly: It’s so rich with characters and events, we thought we would do justice to the book and the fans by going back into this world. Specifically, we are telling the stories of the interludes, writings by Mike Hanlon based on his investigation that includes interviews he conducts with the older people in the town. In Welcome to Derry, we touch on the usual themes that were talked about in the movie — friendship, loss, the power of unified belief — but this story focuses also on the use of fear as a weapon, which is one of the things that is also relevant to our times. In the small down of Derry, everything looks quaint and tidy, but it seems like living there actually sucks. In the trailer, a Black family moves to town and immediately gets the cold shoulder from their white neighbors. The adults smile like, well, like they’re in that movie Smile. (Who’s worse, the cop or the girl in the shop window? Just kidding: It’s definitely the cop.) Something in the pipes is talking. A disproportionately large number of children seem to have gone missing (not sure if that counts the young hitchhiker). And, yes, there’s a terrifying clown in the sewers. Bill Skarsgård returns to the role of Pennywise for this series; the trailer offers only a brief glimpse of him, but it’s enough. It: Welcome to Derry also stars Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe, and Rudy Mancuso. Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane (Warrior, Black Sails) are co-showrunners. You can visit Derry sometime this fall; no specific date has been announced.[end-mark] The post Welcome to Derry, Don’t Trust Any Creepily Smiling Adults appeared first on Reactor.

Books Martha Wells Book Club Martha Wells Book Club: Wheel of the Infinite A traitor and a swordsman join forces to save the world… By Alex Brown | Published on May 20, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Well. Wheel of the Infinite was, if nothing else, a book. Huh. Okay, it wasn’t a bad book. It just wasn’t what I wanted from a Martha Wells joint. Before we get too far into it, I should note that judging by the reviews, both contemporary to its original release and the ones from the 2024 revised and updated edition (the version I read), I’m clearly in the minority in disliking this book. Grain of salt, and all that. Like City of Bones, Wheel of the Infinite is a faux Medieval fantasy set in a non-Western region, this time with a vaguely Southeast Asian feel. Lots of jungle, heat, rain, stone buildings, and monk-like figures doing meditation-like magic. However, I wouldn’t explicitly call it Asian Fantasy; the vibes are too loose for that. And like City of Bones, our main characters are a man on the run from his home in a distant land (Rian) and a woman learning to see her hometown and the people who run it in a new light (Maskelle). Unfortunately, also like City of Bones, Wells goes in on cisalloheteronormativity and late 90s/early 00s fantasy tropes, even harder this time, and in ways I found even more tiresome.  Maskelle and Rian meet on the road to Duvalpore. Maskelle is travelling with a troupe of performers, and her curse has made their journey extra difficult. We don’t learn this for a while, but after she basically attempted to overthrow the Celestial Empire and kill her only living family, she fled Duvalpore in shame. She is supposed to be the Voice of the Adversary, a god-like being and an Ancestor of the denizens of the Celestial Empire, but the Adversary hasn’t spoken to her since her betrayal. After all this time, the Celestial One, the head cleric of the Koshan religion, has summoned her home, for what she doesn’t yet know, but she’s sure it’s connected to the upcoming Hundred Year Rite. Over the course of several days, as the citizenry party, the high-ranking Koshan clerics redraw the Wheel—a map of the Celestial Empire made of colored sand—thus ensuring the world’s continued existence. Any interruption, deviation, or alteration to the map will have life-altering consequences. She’s also dealing with a spirit-possessed puppet, Gisar, who keeps threatening to kill everyone. When a river spirit harasses the troupe at a waystation, Rian appears. Again, we learn all this much later, but he’s a disgraced kjardin, or personal guard to a Holder Lord in the land of Sintane, on the run from people who intend to kill him. Rian’s handsome face is as much of a boon to Maskelle as his fighting skills, and she takes him to bed. As dull as I found their relationship, Martha Wells was, as usual, refreshingly mature and pragmatic about sex and romance. We don’t know their exact ages, but she was in her 40s and he was at least a few years younger. Both had children in their past lives, one of whom is now an adult himself. These aren’t hot-headed teenagers or twentysomethings acting on impulse and hormones but adults pushing middle age with a lifetime’s worth of guilt and regrets to work through. Neither were pining after one another or moping in their time apart. They trusted each other to have enough sense to get themselves out of whatever mess they were entangled in and respected each other enough to do what they needed to do even if it wasn’t what they wanted them to do. All that said, it also felt like the only reason the two of them were together is because they were each other’s only option. Everyone else was beneath them, too old, too young, partnered up, or an antagonist. In the entire city of Duvalpore and surrounding countryside, there were apparently no other available people. This is a common issue I have with fantasy. Wells largely avoids this issue in the other books of hers I’ve read, so it was disappointing to get it here and with City of Bones. It felt like a relationship of convenience rather than one of potential long-term stability or interest. They’re fairly interesting individual characters that became, in my mind, vastly less interesting as a couple.  Once in Duvalpore, the main plot gets going, albeit very slowly. Someone or something is messing with the Wheel. Dark spots keep reappearing no matter how many times they’re cut out. One priest is dead, another incapacitated, and both Maskelle and Rian suspect foul play. Gisar turns out to be more than just a possessed puppet. A stranger, Marada, has arrived in town and insinuated herself amongst the imperial elite. Other imperials are scheming and making political deals behind everyone’s backs. Magic in this world spawns from the Infinite, and at the Wheel, the Infinite and the real world intersect in messy ways. When Rian, Maskelle, and several others are pulled into a new world that has written itself over theirs, Maskelle taps into the Infinite and calls on the Adversary to try and stop it. If she fails, the old world will be no more. I hate to keep going back to City of Bones, but another commonality between that and this is the pacing. Although the opening salvo was action-packed, the pacing dragged once they got to Duvalpore. For me, it was a real slog to get through. As with the other book, it wasn’t until the last 100 or so pages that I started to care about what was happening to these people. It took the characters a ludicrously long time to figure out some pretty basic plot devices, and once they did they were already behind the curve. I don’t think the pacing is wrong for the story or structurally unsound, it just didn’t work for me. The middle section involved an awful lot of place setting and conversations where plot points and discussion topics were repeated in slightly different ways. By the time we got to the grand finale, Wells raced through it, wrapping everything up a little too quickly for my taste.  At least the slower pace of the rest of the novel gave Wells room to delve into the world of the Celestial Empire. Unlike City of Bones, I had a much better sense of this world and the various cultures that inhabit it. Each group felt distinct and original, and each seemed to be a natural outgrowth of the world, as if Wells built the world first and then thought deeply about the kinds of people who would live there and how they might behave. Wells always does a fantastic job describing her worlds, and this one felt just as detailed and ancient as her other books.  The way Wells dribbled out backstory for Maskelle in particular didn’t work for me, either. Usually I love the way she tells us bits and pieces so we don’t know everything about a character until the end of the book. I’m not sure why Maskelle’s reveals didn’t jive with me. Maybe it’s because I figured out the reveals very early on (they’re pretty trope-y), or maybe it’s because I just couldn’t understand why Rian would be attracted to her when he didn’t know anything about her and she intentionally kept very important parts of her life from him (but that may be my ace/aroness talking). By the time we got her last reveal near the end, there was no momentum for me because I was mostly just impatient for them to finally get on with it.  The biggest misses for me were the relative absence of larger social commentary. This I can’t blame Wells for, given what the trends were for popular fantasy fiction in the early 2000s. However, with Rian in particular, not exploring that misses a big part of his character development. He comes from a land that operates on a strict class system (possibly even caste system) and he must confront the toxic warrior mentality he spent his entire life in in order to be worthy of Maskelle. Except we don’t see any of that personal work. Maskelle makes a few comments about the Sintanese being backwards thinking people, but there’s no deeper analysis or emotional excavation. On the other hand, Wells also pushes back against early Aughts fantasy tropes by making the majority of the population brown-skinned—not that you’d know it by either the original or new book covers. Rian is white, but Maskelle and most of the people we meet in the Celestial Empire are brown. Wells often does this in her books, and I’m glad to see it here as well.  After writing all this, I think I appreciate the book a little more, even though I still mostly didn’t enjoy the experience of reading it. Really glad I decided not to start with this and City of Bones for my first two book club picks like I initially planned. I might not have continued with the project if these were my entry points. They definitely aren’t poorly written books, they just weren’t to my preferences. Thrilled that so many people enjoyed them, and equally as thrilled I don’t have to reread them.  I need a palate cleanser after Wheel of the Infinite, and young adult fiction always does the trick for me. So next month I’m going to read the Emilie duology, Emilie and the Hollow World and Emilie and the Sky World. They are being republished in May as a set by Tordotcom; perfect timing, if you ask me.[end-mark] Buy the Book The Emilie Adventures Martha Wells Two novel-length steampunk adventures, together in one volume for the first time. Buy Book The Emilie Adventures Martha Wells Two novel-length steampunk adventures, together in one volume for the first time. Two novel-length steampunk adventures, together in one volume for the first time. Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Martha Wells Book Club: <i>Wheel of the Infinite</i> appeared first on Reactor.

School districts across the country require parental notice or consent before minors may go on a field trip or even receive a cough drop. But for years, the Supreme Court said that those same minors have a constitutional right to get an abortion with minimal, if any, parental involvement. Now, the legal tables may have finally turned. The U.S. and Florida supreme courts have said that neither the federal nor the Florida state constitution protects a right to abortion—and a Florida appeals court has now put parents’ right to direct their children’s upbringing back in its proper place. Since 2004, the Florida Constitution has prohibited the legislature from “limit[ing] or deny[ing] the privacy right guaranteed to a minor under the United States Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court.” Under state law, a minor can obtain an abortion without parental knowledge if a court deems her “sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy” or decides that notification and consent would not be in her “best interest.” In this case, a pregnant minor living with her parents asked for such a judicial finding, hoping to get an abortion before Florida’s six-week limit without their knowledge. The court denied her request and she appealed. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier entered the case to assert and defend the parents’ rights—a task he accomplished when the appeals court unanimously affirmed the lower court’s decision to deny the minor’s request to keep her parents in the dark. “Whatever asserted constitutional abortion rights may have justified Florida’s judicial-waiver regime in the past,” the appeals court held, “[those] unequivocally have been repudiated by both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court.” In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, holding that its decision to invent a right to abortion was “egregiously wrong” from “the day it was decided.” Two years later, the Florida Supreme Court held that the Florida Constitution’s protections for the right to privacy do not include abortion.  Having pushed aside the interference of a fictional abortion right, the appeals court focused on the long-standing right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. Specifically, it pointed to a “rich common-law tradition of empowering parents to order their children’s affairs, even over their children’s objections” that informs the Florida Constitution’s protection of parental rights. The court also cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s designation of parents’ right to the “care, custody, and control of their children” as “perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. “At a minimum,” the appeals court concluded, “the Fourteenth Amendment demands notice and an opportunity to be heard before a presumptively fit parent can be deprived of his or her right to be informed of and make medical decisions, including abortion decisions, for his or her child.” Laws empowering judges to make subjective exceptions “afford neither.” This decision may be appealed to the Florida Supreme Court; but regardless of that outcome, this ruling suggests a roadmap for challenging similar laws in other states that also undermine parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing. The claim that minors can independently make a decision as profound as abortion has always been in jarring, especially in contrast to the presumption throughout the law that children cannot properly make far less significant decisions. As the Supreme Court put it in 2021, “A child’s ‘lack of maturity’ and ‘underdeveloped sense of responsibility’ lead to recklessness, impulsivity, and heedless risk-taking.” That’s simply the nature of childhood. The Supreme Court pretended otherwise when it was pushing a fake right to abortion—but even the justices cannot change human nature. Parents’ right to be involved in and direct their children’s upbringing faces attack on multiple fronts. During Roe v. Wade’s 50 years of life, countless babies were killed; families were pulled apart; and girls were left vulnerable. Thankfully, this decision points to a turn in a better direction. The post Florida Appeals Court Puts Parental Rights Where They Belong appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. President Donald Trump has now signed into law the Take It Down Act, a measure designed to address the spread of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), including increasingly prevalent AI-generated deepfakes. While the legislation is being celebrated by both major parties as a victory for online safety, particularly for children and victims of abuse, it has also raised concerns about the potential for overreach, selective enforcement, and the erosion of free speech under the guise of digital protection, particularly because of the broad wording of the bill. The law’s most prominent advocate within the administration has been First Lady Melania Trump, who campaigned heavily for its passage and made rare public appearances to promote it. During the Rose Garden signing ceremony, President Trump invited her to add her signature beneath his, an unusual but symbolic gesture that underscored her role in pushing the legislation forward. “This legislation is a powerful step forward in our efforts to ensure that every American, especially young people, can feel better protected from their image or identity being abused,” Mrs Trump said. In her remarks, she repeated her criticism of AI and social media, calling them “the digital candy for the next generation,” and warned that these technologies “can be weaponized, shaped beliefs, and sadly affect emotions and even be deadly.” President Trump, for his part, appeared to dismiss constitutional concerns. “People talked about all sorts of First Amendment, Second Amendment. They talked about any amendment they could make up, and we got it through because of some very brave people,” he said. Earlier in the year, during his March 4 address to Congress, Trump had signaled his intent to sign the bill. “The Senate passed the Take It Down Act…Once it passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law. And I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.” While made in jest, the remark pointed to an unresolved issue: how this law will be enforced, and who will benefit most from it. There is no denying the harm caused by NCII. Victims often struggle to remove intimate images, whether real or AI-generated, while the content continues to spread. The Take It Down Act requires websites to remove flagged content within 48 hours of a complaint. But, just like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), platforms have little way of determining if a complaint is legitimate or being used as a censorship mechanism. That timeline is designed to offer swift recourse to victims. However, the law’s broad wording leaves its applications open to interpretation. The bill defines a violation as involving an “identifiable individual” engaged in “sexually explicit conduct,” without offering a clear or narrow definition of what that conduct entails. This vagueness creates a gray area that could easily be used to suppress satire, parody, or even critical political speech. As we previously reported, a deepfake video that circulated recently depicted Trump kissing Elon Musk’s feet. It went viral across platforms and contained no nudity or explicit content. Under the language of the new law, that kind of content could potentially be classified as NCII. Similarly, a meme showing former Vice President Kamala Harris and her then-running mate Tim Walz reimagined as characters from Dumb and Dumber, engaged in exaggerated physical gestures, was removed from Meta for allegedly being sexual in nature. These examples raise alarms over how the law might be used to erase content not because it is harmful or exploitative, but because it is politically inconvenient or controversial. The law does not require proof before content is taken down. That means a platform can receive a complaint and must act quickly, even if the complaint is baseless. Content that is clearly satire or investigative reporting could be swept up in takedown requests, and the law makes no mention of any way to protect these forms of speech. The complainant is not obligated to demonstrate actual harm, and there is no defined appeals process. This framework creates an internet environment where accusations alone can silence speech. The parallels to the DMCA are troubling. That law, meant to protect copyright holders, has been exploited by individuals and corporations to suppress criticism. The Take It Down Act adopts a similar structure, obligating platforms to remove content without delay or independent verification. The law places enforcement authority with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Giving the FTC the power to decide which takedowns are valid raises new concerns. Content moderation will not be shaped by courts or public standards, but by shifting political winds. The law’s implications for encrypted messaging have received little attention. If platforms are responsible for preventing the spread of NCII, they may be compelled to scan private messages or weaken encryption protocols to comply. This would threaten the security of private communications, including those of journalists, activists, and everyday users. The Take It Down Act fits into a pattern seen in recent internet legislation. Bills are introduced under the banner of safety, written in expansive language, and enforced by regulatory agencies with little accountability. Proposals like the Kids Online Safety Act followed the same model, claiming to protect children while raising new threats to privacy and speech because the wording of the legislation offers no protections. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Trump Signs Take It Down Act appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Calls to Lay Off Biden by the Democrats Fall on Deaf Ears, With Good Reason