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In yet another sign that Kansas’ Senate race is slipping away from Republicans, on Wednesday both of the Sunflower State’s GOP senators demanded accountability from President Donald Trump’s immigration goons. GOP Sens. Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall—who is unexpectedly struggling in his reelection bid this fall—warned the Trump administration that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents…

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Leaders from Waabi, Shield AI, and General Motors join the Real World AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 to talk building AI. Save up to $200 by September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Get a second pass at 50% off.

Quick Take

• Matt Hagen learns to control his power and unleashes his monstrous side in the final (and best) trailer for the DCU’s Clayface.
• Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries and comes from director James Watkins with a script written by Mike Flanagan.
• Clayface has always been one of Batman’s most tragic villains, but he now looks poised to be one of DC’s best movie stars.

Matt Hagen has always been among Batman’s most tragic villains. Now he looks poised to be among DC’s most captivating leading men. The final trailer for Clayface shows the actor not just embracing his new powers. It shows him embracing his monstrous side, in a movie that looks poised to bring true horror to the DCU.

Oh, this is going to be good good, isn’t it? We already thought that, but this final trailer for the film is the movie’s best. It leans more into the darkness and violence that will consume Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) as he realizes exactly what he’s capable of doing. And what he can do is hurt people while turning into a giant mass of moldable evil. Here’s the official synopsis from Warner Bros. Discovery:

Matt Hagen’s meteoric rise from Gotham street kid to Hollywood leading man is tragically cut short when a local crime boss’s actions leave him horribly disfigured. Abandoned by his team and with nothing left, Matt seeks out a cutting-edge treatment that miraculously returns him to his former self… but also unexpectedly affects his grip on reality, spiraling him down a destructive path of all-consuming revenge.

Warner Bros. Discovery/DC Studios

The film also stars Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll, and Joshua James. James Watkins (Speak No Evil) directs with a script from Mike Flanagan (which is reason enough to be excited about this movie even without all the great trailers).

Clayface arrives in North American theaters on October 23, 2026. The film will be the third big screen entry, following Superman and Supergirl, in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU. If It’s as good as we think it will be it will elevate Matt Hagen from one of the best, most interesting members of Batman’s rogues gallery to one of DC’s most interesting leading characters.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @‌burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post CLAYFACE Unleashes His Monstrous Side in the Final Trailer appeared first on Nerdist.

EVENT: HPE and NVIDIA are sending their AI infrastructure leads to a dinner table in Washington where nothing said is on the record. The Register is hosting, our editor-in-chief Matt Rosoff takes the chair, and there is one table, on Thursday 29 October. Most AI programs in regulated industries do not stall on the model. They stall on where the data lives, who can reach it, and what an auditor will accept as evidence a year from now. Sovereignty is not one requirement either: what can leave a jurisdiction and what can leave the building are different questions with different owners. The proprietary data that makes an AI system worth building is the same data that makes it a risk to build, and the boundary drawn around a pilot quietly becomes the boundary around production. Those calls get made on what people will tell you in private. What a bank had to rebuild. What a hospital group's legal team refused to sign. Which sovereign option somebody paid for and would not buy again. None of that gets said on a recorded webinar, or in a briefing with a deck. So this is neither. Chatham House Rule, three questions, dinner, no slides. Everyone at the table is there as a peer, the vendors included, and the chair's job includes redirecting anyone who starts to pitch. On the table: which infrastructure options actually hold a boundary, what each one costs in capital, in capability or in elasticity, and whether any of it survives the move from first planning to running operations. HPE sends Thierry Pienaar, HPE Fellow and Chief Technology Officer for HPC and AI Worldwide Sales. NVIDIA sends Bert Condensa, Vice President for Enterprise AI Factory Segment Sales. They are there to answer, not to present. The table is for technology, data and risk leaders in healthcare, financial services, research, pharmaceuticals, government and higher education who are making these decisions now rather than next year. Dinner runs from 6.00pm to 8.30pm at Fiola Mare. Places are limited and go by invitation. Request one here. Government and public sector guests: where your agency's ethics rules require it, you can pay your own share and we will provide a receipt. Please say so when you request an invitation.

Eight sailors tried to kill themselves on the USS Lincoln strike group—one of the longest-deployed aircraft carriers in military history.

According to a letter from acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, first reported by CNN, two sailors tried to jump overboard, one in March and another in August. Both were saved. It’s unclear how the other six attempts were carried out. Retired Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter told The New York Times that the attempts were a “disturbingly high number indicating a serious stress level.” Both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have ignored and dismissed reports of troops’ mental health issues, low food rations, and deteriorating conditions aboard the ship.

A few weeks ago, Trump called the reported issues with the USS Lincoln a “CNN fake report,” saying he spoke to a retired admiral with acquaintances on the Lincoln who told him it is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.” pic.twitter.com/j1pXku1f8B https://t.co/zz3ICRomOm

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 23, 2026

Many of the 5,000 sailors, who ended their over 300-day deployment earlier this month, reported it was one of the worst experiences of their lives—eight suicide attempts would certainly support that. This war is so pointless, so wasteful, and so unpopular that those who are supposed to be fighting it would rather leap into the waters of the Persian Gulf than stay on the Lincoln for another day.

“That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms and billionaires, but cannot take care of our service members, is completely unacceptable,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Lovable co-founder Fabian Hedin said that apps created on the platform are getting nearly a billion monthly views each month.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday directly linked the climate crisis to everyday issues facing New Yorkers, including commutes and affordability, while urging climate-concerned individuals to align with the fast-growing movement against data centers.

“The way that climate is treated in public discourse, it’s almost as if it’s a concern that some can afford to have, while others have to deal with more immediate ones,” Mamdani told a packed crowd at Climate Desk Live. But climate change, Mamdani continued, drives up the “price of life” for us all, with Black, Latino and working-class people disproportionately expected to bear those costs.

Meanwhile, the mayor added, corporations that are responsible for the most pollution face little to no real accountability.

As for dispelling the notion that the crisis is a “luxury concern,” Mamdani urged people to connect climate to more localized issues, like the nascent movement against data centers. “That, too, could be the coalition against the climate crisis.”

Mamdani’s sit-down with Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes came amid a packed week for New York and the mayor specifically. On Monday, Mamdani met with President Donald Trump, where he pitched the president on federal funding for a new affordable housing development. As many observed, Trump left looking decidedly happy with the mayor.

Garrison Hayes had to ask.Video by David Ritsher

When Hayes asked why the president seemed so enamored with him, Mamdani replied: “This is the city where the president comes from.”

“The conversations we have are not just those of a mayor and a president, but those of two New Yorkers—New Yorkers with many differences of opinion, but who love this city,” Mamdani said.

In his meeting with Trump, Mamdani said that he brought up the need for stability for Haitian New Yorkers, who recently had their TPS status ended. “As long as someone can help the city,” he said, “I’ll talk to them.”

On Thursday, Mamdani also discussed his recent victory against DoorDash. “Earlier this week, we announced that we were holding DoorDash to account for having not paid their workers 260,000 workers 131.5 million dollars,” Mamdani said. DoorDash released a “notes app apology,” and is forking over the money. That same take-no-prisoners corporate-accountability approach, Mamdani said, could be applied to the climate crisis.

“Corporations of this scale believe that they can get away with not paying or underpaying workers and never having to be called to account for it,” he said. When it comes to corporations causing climate harm, Mamdani said, “we’re still dealing with some of those decisions that were made decades ago.”

A proposal to make KDE an "AI-native" desktop has gone down like a house on fire: screams, flames, people running for safety. There may be no survivors.* Last weekend was KDE's annual Akademy conference and it included a presentation proposing an AI-native KDE. We noted that it seemed likely to polarize the audience. It looks like this was a considerable understatement. In the days since, a debate over proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions descended into bans and a deleted thread. An outside campaign called for KDE to prohibit AI altogether, a GNOME developer proposed a similar policy for that project, and KDE developer Nate Graham apologized for his role in the uproar. The Akademy talk was titled "A lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" and the slide deck [PDF] is now available. It ends by saying: "The question is not whether AI. It is how. You choose how much AI – and which." It seems almost calculated to provoke an argument rather than invite discussion. We do not know if the authors intended this – we attempted to contact both of them, but they have not yet responded. Graham opened a discussion on Invent, KDE's GitLab instance, about proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions. Although we are not a member, we watched this with some interest over the weekend. It rapidly became heated. Moderators issued warnings, restricted further comments, and eventually removed the thread. There is an archive of the discussion, but we warn you, it contains some highly offensive language, albeit censored by the member who quoted another member's tweets on X. As events unfolded, the participant who drew attention to the posts was banned first. The author of the offensive material was banned later after their identity was verified. The discussion is gone, but the argument continues. One response was an outside initiative called KDE for People, which called on the KDE project to adopt a No-AI policy. Around 250 people signed it before its organizers closed it to further signatures. GNOME developer Jordan Petridis has also published The GNOME LLM Policy That I Want, proposing that LLMs be barred from creating or modifying anything submitted to GNOME or hosted on its infrastructure. This mentions the recent ballot on AI usage in Debian. We reported on the developer referendum about a month ago, noting that the broad spread of anti-AI options in the ballot was likely to split the vote. (This likelihood was dismissed in the comments.) Well, as The Register's Asia-Pacific desk reported a few days later, Debian did not ban AI contributions. Graham subsequently explained his involvement in a post titled KDE and AI, and you, and me. He opens by saying: "So I accidentally triggered an online shitstorm in the process of trying to craft a set of more restrictive LLM usage guidelines for KDE. Sorry about that." He notes that the Akademy talk met "what I'm told was a fairly chilly reception" and that "the next day, a workshop was held about the topic, also receiving a chilly reception." Every couple of years, the KDE project sets three goals for the next two years. Earlier this week, after Akademy, it chose its latest three: you can see them in the last column of the goal-setting Kanban board. The ones chosen are: KDE for Enterprise and Deployments (Issue #5) Better documentation (Issue #2) Next Generation Styling for KDE (Issue #3) We see no mention of AI in there. In context, that may come as a relief to parts of the community. Bootnote *A tip of the black Borsalino to the late great Terry Pratchett, for two different "house on fire" references we combined. ®

Ando has raised $20 million in pre-seed and seed funding from investors including Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence.

Zach Yadegari joins the Builders Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 to share how he capitalized on viral growth. Save up to $200 before September 25. Save 50% on a second pass.

Donald Trump has claimed that it’s completely unbelievable that he would put his name on a theater commemorating an assassinated president. But he wasn’t talking about the Kennedy Center.

MS NOW reported Wednesday that top Trump officials were already mulling over the next American landmark to be consumed by Trump’s eponymous brand. One potential option, according to an administration official who spoke with the network, was Ford’s Theatre—where President Abraham Lincoln was killed in 1865. The suggestion reportedly sparked a tense discussion last week among people overseeing the storied playhouse.

The president wrote about the matter hours later on Truth Social, chalking the story up to “FAKE NEWS!”

“The story that the White House, or me, want to affix my name to Ford’s Theatre, in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, is a ridiculous lie,” Trump wrote on social media Wednesday evening.

But his aversion to the idea was apparently not due to any sort of historical reverence.

“Who would possibly want a name on such a tragic place?” Trump wrote.

“The Dumocrats suffer from serious Trump Derangement Syndrome,” he continued. “They are Degenerates and Losers who make up lie after lie, and this Ford’s Theatre Hoax is just another one of their never-ending, malicious falsehoods to try to discredit and demean.”

The president reiterated his comments Thursday morning, further claiming that the national media and the Democratic Party “conspire together to make up false stories” about him. “Shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Trump wrote.

But Trump’s projected outrage stands in stark contrast to his machinations at the Kennedy Center, where he has worked tirelessly to plaster his name on the living memorial. Part of that effort included replacing the center’s board with a spate of Trumpian loyalists (and appointing himself as its chairman), and leveraging that power to find avenues to affix his name and brand on the performing arts space or its grounds. He has been profoundly unsuccessful in doing so, however—Trump has faced numerous legal obstacles in his quest to rename the Kennedy Center, in no small part because the site itself is under the jurisdiction of Congress.

Ford’s Theatre, however, is not.

22 minutes agoWalter EinenkelAn update on press banFrom WaPo: Copy linkShare on FacebookShare on XShare via email 36 minutes agoWalter EinenkelTrump apparently relents on press ban—for now Copy linkShare on FacebookShare on XShare via emailToday 03:58 PMWalter EinenkelPresident Obama talks about his historic 2004 Democratic National Convention speech.CSPANCopy linkShare on FacebookShare on…

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The summer of 2021 was supposed to be a joyful season of life for Mattie Quinlan: She had just gotten married and was settling down with her husband, Ryan, in Provo, Utah. The young couple, who had met during their mission trips with the Mormon church, wanted a big family—just not right away, which is why Mattie was on birth control.

About a month into their marriage, though, she stopped taking the pill. “I was like, I can’t do this anymore,” she says. “I was just not feeling like myself, and I was pretty depressed.”

Her experience isn’t particularly unique: Roughly a fifth of women stop using birth control or change methods within the first six months, often because of mood-related side effects.

But then Ryan saw something on Instagram that caught his eye: an advertisement recruiting participants to a clinical trial for a new contraceptive for men. Ryan didn’t mind condoms, but wanted a better option—one that they didn’t have to think about in the moment and didn’t come with side effects for his wife. Mattie was on board, especially after learning that dozens of couples had already participated in the study. “I was like, I don’t have to do anything? Great,” she says. “Beautiful.”

Ryan and Mattie were among the 462 couples between 2018 and 2024 who took part in a clinical trial for NES/T, a hormonal gel that decreases sperm count while maintaining testosterone levels. Each morning, for a little over a year, Ryan applied the gel to his shoulders after he got out of the shower. Every month, he drove to Salt Lake City, where researchers checked his sperm count, vitals, and mood. A few weeks in, when Ryan’s sperm count was low enough, the couple stopped using condoms.

For Ryan and Mattie, the gel was ideal: He didn’t experience side effects, and she didn’t get pregnant.

Data from the study hasn’t been released yet, but Dr. Brian Nguyen, an investigator for the trial and an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California, says there were no serious adverse events, and the rate of unplanned pregnancies was in line with other hormonal contraceptives. Some participants, he added, experienced “very minor” side effects, including weight changes, mood changes, acne, and increased libido.

For Ryan and Mattie, the gel was ideal: He didn’t experience side effects, and she didn’t get pregnant. Ryan’s sperm count quickly returned to normal after he stopped using the gel, at which point the couple decided they were ready for kids. After trying for just a month, Mattie got pregnant.

Mattie and Ryan QuinlanHalley Vernon, courtesy of Mattie and Ryan Quinlan

For decades, women considering birth control have had myriad options: pills, shots, patches, rings, implants, intrauterine devices, and more. Those options have their flaws, to be sure, but they exist. Men, however, have two choices: condoms, which have a user failure rate of up to 16 percent, or vasectomies, a surgical procedure that, while often reversible, can feel too permanent, particularly for younger men.

“Contraception has been completely associated with not just women, but women’s empowerment as well as women’s burden,” says Heather Vahdat, director of the Male Contraceptive Initiative, which funds research and development of male birth control options. “Men haven’t been asked to come to the table.”

“Men haven’t been asked to come to the table.”

Thanks to a new wave of research and development, the tide may be turning. NES/T will enter late-stage clinical trials early next year, which will involve hundreds more couples. Contraline, the company developing NES/T, is also working on a nonhormonal implant called ADAM, which is inserted into the vas deferens in an outpatient procedure with a similar effect to a temporary vasectomy. It has been shown to be effective for up to 24 months, and finished a 25-person safety trial this spring. Meanwhile, YourChoice Therapeutics is developing a nonhormonal daily pill currently undergoing an 88-person safety trial.

For Ryan and Mattie, sharing the responsibility—and potential side effects—of birth control felt simultaneously revelatory and long overdue.

“Thank goodness that this is happening now,” Mattie says, “but why is it only now happening?”

jQuery(document).ready(function(){prx("https:\/\/play.prx.org\/e?ge=prx_149_cdfafffc-12f6-4ef1-b46f-305a3648980b&uf=https%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.revealradio.org%2Frevealpodcast", "prx-1", "embed")});Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

In the late 1950s, around the same time that the first oral contraceptive was being tested on women, another contraceptive pill was being developed—for men.

Like the pill for women, which was tested on low-income women in Puerto Rico, the pill for men was studied in circumstances that wouldn’t fly today. Male inmates in a prison near Salem, Oregon, took the pill for months. At first, it seemed like a miracle drug. The men didn’t have serious side effects, and their sperm counts dropped. When they stopped taking the pill, their sperm counts shot back up to normal levels.

There’s a joke in the world of male contraceptives: They’ve been five years away for the past 50 years.

But when a participant drank contraband Scotch, he became violently ill. As it turns out, in addition to blocking an enzyme that leads to sperm production, the pill also blocked an enzyme that metabolizes alcohol. After scientists discovered that men taking the pill wouldn’t be able to drink, research into the pill was abandoned.

There’s a joke in the world of male contraceptives: They’ve been five years away for the past 50 years. Again and again, promising new treatments have been halted by critical setbacks. The cycle played out again from 2008 to 2012, when hundreds of men participated in study of a new hormonal injection. The men seemed to like the product—more than 4 out of 5 participants said they’d use it if it were available. But the injection caused side effects, like acne, muscle pain, and mood changes. Three percent of participants reported depression. One man attempted suicide. After that, the scientific review panel cut the study short, determining that the risks outweighed the benefits.

Some experts say the failed male contraceptive trials underscore a double standard. For women, side effects from contraceptives are an expected burden, while for men, they are deemed intolerable. More than six percent of users of the Mirena, the nation’s leading intrauterine device, experience depression as a side effect—double that of what the men experienced in the trial.

RelatedMe, Myself, and IUDs

For decades, the pervading assumption was that men simply weren’t interested in male contraceptives, but recent research suggests otherwise. An international survey in 2021 and 2022 found that 61 percent of men were interested in trying new male contraceptives. In the United States, only 39 percent of men were interested—a number that jumped to 49 percent when the researchers administered the survey again in 2023, after the Dobbs decision overturned the federal right to abortions.

In the absence of a product on the market, there’s no shortage of men interested in participating in clinical trials. More than 23,000 men have signed up on Contraline’s online registry for future trial enrollment.

“We have men email us all the time,” Vahdat says. “Ninety-five percent of them are things like, ‘I have a partner that can’t use contraception,’” she adds. “It’s mostly men desperately trying to be a good partner, trying to offer something.”

Vahdat recalled men she’d talked to over the years: the husband in a Delhi slum who wished he could take a pill so his wife wouldn’t have to; the Bay Area high schooler who wanted something to shield himself from the fallout of an unintended pregnancy; the man in the Frankfurt airport who spotted her “Male Birth Control Now” shirt and hugged her.

Despite the widespread interest, big pharmaceutical companies have been notably absent from the race for the new male contraceptive. That’s partly because developing new forms of birth control, for men or women, comes with unique liability. Unlike most drugs, contraceptives don’t necessarily treat an illness. Rather, they suspend a critical function in healthy people—reproductive ability—and guarantee that it will return. Pharmaceutical representatives have told Vahdat that they’re interested, but at this stage, there’s still too much risk attached to the products.

Plus, from a business perspective, there’s no sign that there’s a problem to solve: Use of contraceptives among women remains high. “There’s this sense of, ‘We have good enough products,’” Vahdat says. “That’s where the misogyny starts to eke in a little bit.’”

Whether the first new male contraceptive is a gel, an implant, a pill, or something else entirely, it will have to contend with the challenges of being the first. The Food and Drug Administration’s review process will likely be lengthy, since male contraceptives are a new product category. It’s unclear what the guidelines for the products will be, and how much tolerance regulators will have for side effects. And the products will almost certainly face cultural backlash, too—particularly in a world of politicians and influencers laser-focused on testosterone levels and virility.

Just as the pill for women came before the IUD, Contraline plans to introduce NES/T before ADAM.

Kevin Eisenfrats, the Contraline CEO, says the company plans to roll out NES/T by 2030 as the “gateway to the male contraception world”—easy to use, delivered on a monthly subscription basis. He analogizes ADAM, the implant like a temporary vasectomy, to long-term contraceptives like IUDs. Just as the pill for women came before the IUD, Contraline plans to introduce NES/T before ADAM. “We have to get people excited about male birth control,” he says, “and then they can be like, ‘Well, I’m already doing this thing every day—maybe I’ll go get this 10-minute procedure, and then I don’t have to think about it every day.”

Mattie and Ryan Quinlan, for their part, hope their daughters will grow up in a world in which male contraceptives are so common that they’re unremarkable.

“I don’t think it should be any one person’s job to do it,” Ryan says. “I don’t think it should necessarily sway and be only the man’s responsibility. I just think there should be like equal options for men and women.”

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President Donald Trump posted an apparently AI-generated image of himself with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday where everyone else appears to have been removed—except, perhaps, for Natalie Harp.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump shared an image of him stoically saluting, standing beside a freshly arrived Xi on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. A military jet flies overhead.

But when compared to actual video footage of the event, there are some strange differences.

In one video, Trump and Xi appeared to be accompanied by first lady Melania Trump and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan. In the photo, however, the men appear to be standing alone, with the women either completely obscured or removed entirely.

Despite the omission of the two first ladies, the image Trump posted included another woman: Monica Crowley, the U.S. chief of protocol, who shard multiple images of herself at the event.

There was widespread speculation that Crowley was actually Trump’s ever-present assistant Natalie Harp lurking in the background with her hand over her heart. It’s not clear whether Harp was in attendance at Xi’s arrival.

There are other notable details about the heavily edited image. In reality, Trump did not remain steely throughout the military flyover, but winced in pain at the loud noise from the B-1 heavy bomber overhead.

Trump also wore a winter coat and black gloves to receive Xi, despite the rather temperate weather in Washington, D.C. In the image, however, Trump appears to be wearing only one glove. Behind him, the military display appears to have been morphed into a row of strange, alien-like figures.

This story has been updated.

Reason 4 of 5 to attend TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Practical answers. Two days left to save up to $200 on your pass. Savings disappear after September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Bring a second guest at 50% off.

Quick Take

• It’s finally spooky season at long last. So what better way to celebrate than with a sinister Michael Myers Chia Pet using his look from Halloween II?
• What makes this Michael Myers the one from 1981’s Halloween II and not the original? It’s all about the bleeding eyes.
• Nerdist’s take: A Michael Myers Chia Pet is the perfect Halloween-season household decoration.

If you grew up in a certain bygone era, then the little advertising jingle “Cha-Cha-Cha-Chia!” will instantly flood your brain with memories of the ’90s/early 2000s. That’s when they’d advertise the Chia Pet, the perennial product sold on late-night television. But they’re still around, and now, and you can get Chia Pets based on all kinds of pop culture favorites. And just in time for spooky season, we have a Chia Pet based on THE slasher, Halloween’s Michael Myers, a.k.a. “The Shape.” Or we should say, Halloween II’s Michael Myers. You can check out images of the Halloween II Chia-Pet down below:

Click To View Gallery NECA/Universal Pictures Universal Pictures/NECA NECA/Universal Pictures Universal Pictures/NECA

The Halloween II Michael Myers Chia Pet includes a unique pottery planter, a convenient plastic drip tray and chia seed packets for three plantings. Owners can expect fulll growth in one to two weeks. In almost no time at all, your Chia Pet will achieve maximum growth and enjoy a luscious green coat. Each Chia Pet contains a simple six step care instruction on how to grow your own miniature embodiment of evil. Or, since there are no Star Trek Chia Pets, you can also just pretend this is a Captain Kirk Chia. Remember, Michael Myers’ mask is based on William Shatner’s face.

NECA

So why is this a Halloween II Chia Pet, and not just a Halloween Chia Pet? Well, it’s all about the rights. The original John Carpenter Halloween from 1978 is a seperate license from Halloween II, which was released by Universal Pictures. That’s why Michael Myers is crying blood out of his mask eye sockets, as that’s a unique look from that particular movie. You’ll probably notice most Michael Myers merchandise says Halloween II on the box, and not Halloween.

Nerdist’s Take: A Michael Myers Chia Pet Is Perfect Halloween Season Decor

If you’re looking for a fun decoration for your house, you can’t do much better for Halloween than the cinematic symbol of the holiday. And if you order one now, you can have your Michael Myers Chia Pet with a full head of hair to place right next to your Jack-o’-lantern on October 31. You can purchase one now from Amazon for just $21.16.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

Eric Diaz is a staff writer at Nerdist and a Swiss Army knife of fandoms. Eric loves DC, Marvel, horror movies, and even Star Wars and Star Trek equally.

The post Welcome Halloween Season With a Michael Myers Chia Pet appeared first on Nerdist.

It is a good, good, good time to be a prediction market. While companies like Kalshi and Polymarket spent the beginning of the decade subject to pesky regulations under a Democratic president, these days they’re the recipients of incredible largesse from the Trump administration. It’s a pretty sweet deal to have a federal government hellbent on helping you push your insider trading/

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US defense and homeland security agencies bought digital forensics software developed by the same Russian operation that also sold its wares to the FSB, according to US prosecutors. The Department of Justice says Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber and Russian national Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud over an alleged scheme to hide the company's Russian ownership and where its software was actually being built. Oxygen Forensics, based in Virginia, sold digital forensics tools to the US Department of War and several Department of Homeland Security components, including Homeland Security Investigations, the DHS Office of Inspector General, and the Secret Service's National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI). Prosecutors allege Oxygen presented itself to Uncle Sam as an independent US company, when it was actually owned and controlled by five Russian nationals through a Cyprus-based holding company. Those same five people also owned a Russian outfit formerly known as Oxygen Software LLC and now called MKO Systems LLC. According to the DoJ, the developers who wrote the software worked in Russia, while MKO sold the software there under different product names to customers reportedly including the FSB, the Russian Investigative Committee, and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. In other words, the prosecutors are claiming that while US agencies bought Oxygen's forensic tools, software from the same Russian development operation was being supplied to some very different government customers back home. The alleged concealment kicked up a gear after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Washington expanded sanctions. Prosecutors claim Reiber was installed as Oxygen's CEO, president, and chairman, while its Russian owners disappeared from public corporate filings but continued making significant decisions, such as setting Reiber's compensation, overruling him on payments, and retaining signatory authority over company bank accounts. When a reporter came knocking about Oxygen's Russian links in 2023, Reiber allegedly told the owners the resulting coverage "could destroy this entire opportunity" – a reference to a contract the company was chasing with NCFI. Oxygen's "current existence ... hangs in the balance," he is said to have added. NCFI went on to award Oxygen a five-year software contract in September 2024. According to prosecutors, Oxygen had separately told the Department of Defense that no foreign person had the power to control the company or its decisions. As recently as March 2026, Reiber allegedly told DHS personnel that no Russian was involved in developing the software and nobody in Russia had access to its build environment. The DoJ claims the software was in fact written and managed by a Russian team under Davydov's direction. Reiber was arrested in Idaho, while Davydov was nabbed at London's Heathrow Airport before boarding a flight to Istanbul. The US plans to seek his extradition. Authorities have also seized corporate bank accounts, around 57 domains, and other infrastructure. The DOJ is not alleging that Oxygen's software contained malicious code or was used to gain unauthorized access to customers' systems or data. Both men, if convicted, could be swapping forensic software for prison bars for up to 20 years. ®

The Watsonville City Council on Sept. 22 adopted tighter restrictions on the use of automated license plate readers. (Erandi García — Noticias Watsonville)

WATSONVILLE >> Amid heated public debate over safety and surveillance, the Watsonville City Council on Tuesday adopted tighter restrictions on the use of automated license plate readers. Council leaders renewed the contract with Flock Safety for the ALPRs last September, but as scrutiny increased nationwide, Councilmember Ari Parker brought the issue back to the council for consideration. 

The vote at Tuesday’s meeting reduces the number of Flock cameras in Watsonville to 20 from 37, limits data retention to seven days from 30 and ends the sharing of information with other jurisdictions, including neighboring law enforcement agencies. The council also mandated quarterly independent audits and community engagement — including a town hall for residents with the CEO of Flock Safety and the Watsonville Police Chief.

ALPRs track people by capturing images of cars, including the license plate, make, model, color, bumper stickers and other identifying features. Police searching for a suspect can look up a car by its license plate or with a description of the car and track potential matches. 

Investigations by CalMatters and Santa Cruz Local revealed how ALPR data in California, including Capitola and Santa Cruz police’s data, had been accessed on behalf of federal immigration agents by other law enforcement agencies in California in 2025. Santa Cruz voted to end its contract with Flock in January 2026. 

Watsonville’s current contract with Atlanta, Georgia-based Flock Safety expires in September 2027.

The 5-2 vote followed more than four hours of discussion and public comments in a meeting that ended just before midnight. Councilmembers Maria Orozco, Ari Parker, Casey Clark, Jimmy Dutra and Vanessa Quiroz-Carter voted in favor of the restrictions. Councilmember Eduardo Montesino and Mayor Kristal Salcido voted against it.

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Watsonville Police Chief Brian Shab said in a presentation to the council that the cameras can help an investigation progress more quickly. He cited examples where the cameras aided in identifying vehicles or suspects in investigations of homicide, sexual assault, indecent exposure and vehicle theft. 

“The responsibility of the police department to use this technology lawfully, narrowly, transparently, and with meaningful oversight and it has serious consequences for misuse,” Shab said, adding that the department conducts audits twice a month to review unusual activities and verify that its personnel are complying with the rules of use.

He also said that not all employees have access to the system and there is no evidence that any employee has misused it.

The chief presented statistics that, he said, in the past year from September 2025 to September 2026, reflect the system’s usage. The department conducted 7,813 internal searches that resulted in 894 cases in which Flock assisted the department.

During the presentation, he also noted that Flock currently uses a default retention period of 30 days and prior to the council’s motion said he would be willing to evaluate whether seven days would be appropriate for Watsonville. 

“A shorter retention provides greater identity protection, but it also means [it] reduces the window in which that information is available to investigators,” he said, in particular for crimes that are not reported immediately. 

Questions about oversight

Council members had questions about how the system is monitored and who has access to the data.

Quiroz-Carter asked Shab to explain how investigations were conducted before Watsonville began using Flock. She also asked for details about the department’s policy governing the system’s use.

Shab said the policy was available online but was unable to specify at the moment where precisely on the website it could be found. Visibly displeased, Quiroz-Carter said she could not find it and questioned why more detailed information and the policy itself had not been brought to the meeting.

Orozco asked how many agencies in California have access to Watsonville’s data. Shab was unable to provide that number during the meeting.

Parker asked what happens when a user violates the system’s rules and what the consequences are.

Shab said the city could completely eliminate data sharing with other agencies or limit it to nearby jurisdictions. Reducing data sharing, he said, could affect the system’s usefulness for some investigations.

Parker also stated that her trust in the police chief was separate from her opinion of the technology. 

“I don’t believe in Flock. I believe in you, but I don’t believe in Flock,” Parker said.

Watsonville’s current contract with Atlanta, Georgia-based Flock Safety expires in September 2027. (Erandi García — Noticias Watsonville)

The public was divided on Flock

The council chamber was initially full during the discussion, but as the conversation continued, some people began to leave. At least 30 people spoke in person, with another 20 or so speaking via Zoom.

The comments reflected conflicting positions. The vast majority expressed their opposition to Flock. Those opposed raised concerns about privacy, data sharing and potential misuse of information.

“The question is not do we trust the Watsonville PD, the question is should Watsonville participate in a system where the data we collect could be vulnerable to misuse beyond our local control” a community member commented. 

Yesenia Jimenez, a District 7 resident, said the department’s defense of Flock was undermining trust and questioned whether officers should have spent time at the meeting rather than patrolling the streets.

“I get that you’re trying to save a tool that is helping you. You are eroding trust right now” Jimenez said. “I would rather you have spent less time here, or whoever, whatever officers are back here, to be out on the street patrolling than to be wasting their time listening to this.”

A mother of two girls said she would feel safer knowing the cameras were in place and that she did not see surveillance as a concern given how common cameras and smartphones already are in the community.

“If Flock is a safe thing for my kids, I agree with you guys,” she said.

Watsonville began using 20 Flock Safety cameras in June 2023. In September 2025, the city council voted 5-2 to renew the $251,000 contract for 24 months and increase the number of cameras to 37.

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One of the stories the White House cited to justify its ban on Politico, MS NOW, and CNN had Vice President JD Vance as its main source.

The Washington Post reports that during a press call in June, the Trump administration invited news outlets to a briefing where a White House aide told participants, “The contents of this call are on background, attributable to a senior administration official. By remaining on the line, you agree to those terms. There is no embargo for the contents of the call.”

That senior administration official was none other than Vance, who told the media outlets on the call that a peace agreement with Iran was “80, 85 percent” done. Politico published an article with the quote attributed to a senior administration official—only for the White House to later claim in court, “Publication of sensitive security information, and misinformation about national security information, diverts White House resources and those of the national security team in particular.”

“The spread of misinformation, especially relating to national security, is a threat that undermines the President’s ability to safeguard the national security,” the White House wrote in a letter submitted to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

Status News reports that multiple news agencies were on that call and they all granted Vance anonymity in exchange for the information. Vance said on Monday that he supported banning Politico and other outlets, calling President Trump’s decision “totally appropriate.”

“If you actually look at the objective analysis, Politico is as anti-Trump as Breitbart was anti-Obama or anti-Biden,” Vance said. “They can still report on the Trump White House. They can still get the public reports. They can still, of course, talk to people in the administration and outside the administration.”

But the administration’s complaint about anonymously sourced news reports compromising national security rings hollow with this revelation. It’s overwhelmingly likely that Vance isn’t the only “senior administration official” who has delivered information to the press in this way. A judge lifted the ban late Wednesday night, but the White House still barred CNN, MS NOW, and Politico reporters from White House grounds Thursday morning. That, plus the news about Vance, is likely to further undermine the administration’s legal defense for its attack on the free press.