Month: October 2022

Enlarge / Eight terminally ill teens in hospice cope with their fate by telling scary stories in The Midnight Club (credit: Netflix)

If you're looking for a solid, binge-worthy scary series this Halloween, you could do a lot worse than The Midnight Club, the latest Netflix horror series from Mike Flanagan (Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass). Based on the young adult horror novel of the same name by Christopher Pike, it mines the haunting specter of human mortality for its chills and thrills and ends up being both an entertaining horror story and a moving reflection on how we all cope differently with the harsh truth of our finite lives.

(WARNING: Major spoilers for the 1994 book below. We'll give you another heads-up when we get to major spoilers for the TV series.)

The novel features seven terminally ill teenaged residents of the fictional Rotterdam Home hospice who are facing the prospect of their own imminent deaths. There are regular therapy sessions, but the teens find an even better way to cope with their fate. They meet at midnight every night in the library to tell scary stories. (If you're thinking it sounds like a ripoff of Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, think again. Flanagan and Pike are both too smart for that.) Eventually, the teens make a pact that whichever of them dies first will attempt to communicate with the others from the Beyond—just to let them know what it's like, so they're better prepared. Then the first member of the group does indeed die.

Enlarge / Eight terminally ill teens in hospice cope with their fate by telling scary stories in The Midnight Club (credit: Netflix)

If you're looking for a solid, binge-worthy scary series this Halloween, you could do a lot worse than The Midnight Club, the latest Netflix horror series from Mike Flanagan (Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass). Based on the young adult horror novel of the same name by Christopher Pike, it mines the haunting specter of human mortality for its chills and thrills and ends up being both an entertaining horror story and a moving reflection on how we all cope differently with the harsh truth of our finite lives.

(WARNING: Major spoilers for the 1994 book below. We'll give you another heads-up when we get to major spoilers for the TV series.)

The novel features seven terminally ill teenaged residents of the fictional Rotterdam Home hospice who are facing the prospect of their own imminent deaths. There are regular therapy sessions, but the teens find an even better way to cope with their fate. They meet at midnight every night in the library to tell scary stories. (If you're thinking it sounds like a ripoff of Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, think again. Flanagan and Pike are both too smart for that.) Eventually, the teens make a pact that whichever of them dies first will attempt to communicate with the others from the Beyond—just to let them know what it's like, so they're better prepared. Then the first member of the group does indeed die.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

The Elon Musk-led Twitter is reportedly planning big layoffs and a $20 monthly charge for any user who wants to be verified or keep their current account verification.

According to The Verge, Musk ordered employees to raise the price of the Twitter Blue subscription from $4.99 a month to $19.99 and require anyone with a verified account to subscribe in order to keep their blue verification checkmark. Citing "people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence," The Verge article said the plan is that "verified users would have 90 days to subscribe [to Twitter Blue] or lose their blue checkmark. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired."

Turning verification into a paid feature could make it easier for scammers to impersonate real people. As Twitter's website notes, "the blue Verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic. To receive the blue badge, your account must be authentic, notable, and active." Corporations might see the charge as part of the cost of doing business, but individuals are less likely to pay that much just to keep their blue checks.

Enlarge / PlayStation gamers will continue to be able to dress up like this in Call of Duty games indefinitely, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft Xbox chief Phil Spencer said he intends to continue to ship Call of Duty games on PlayStation "as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to." The new promise comes weeks after Sony lambasted an "inadequate" offer to extend Call of Duty's cross-platform access for three years past the current agreement and as Microsoft faces continuing scrutiny from international governments over its proposed $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard.

"We're not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation," Spencer said directly in an interview with the Same Brain podcast. "That's not our intent."

Instead, Spencer said Microsoft's plan for Call of Duty is "similar to what we've done with Minecraft," which has remained a cross-platform staple since Microsoft's $2.5 billion purchase of developer Mojang in 2014. Since then, Spencer said, "we've expanded the places where people can play Minecraft... and it's been good for the Minecraft community, in my opinion. I want to do the same as we think about where Call of Duty can go over the years."

Enlarge / Rendering of the Chinese Tianhe core module of the Tiangong space station. (credit: Getty Images)

On Monday, China's space program successfully launched another large piece of its space station. The 23-ton Mengtian module will provide pressurized volume for scientific experiments and is the final large living area to be added to the Tiangong space station.

China has constructed its modular space station—similar in form and function to the International Space Station, although smaller—on time and with few major issues. This can be considered a triumph for the Chinese space program, which now has capabilities second only to NASA and the commercial space industry in the United States.

However, the assembly of the space station has had one unfortunate side effect. To launch the main modules of Tiangong, including Monday's flight, China has used a modified version of its powerful Long March 5B rocket. And as part of the overall mission profile, the vehicle's massive core stage reenters Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrollable manner.