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Quick Take

• Elijah Lee turns your favorite video games into reality-bending documentaries with his YouTube video platform called The Icon.
• We spoke with Lee about how he built this brand, his research process, and much more.
• Support Content Creators: Subscribe to The Icon on YouTube and check out Elijah’s videos!

Obsession over a particular topic is typically one of the requirements to give yourself the moniker of nerd or geek. And if you proudly let your geek flag fly, chances are you’ve gone down Reddit rabbit holes exploring the inner workings of your favorite video games, manga, films, and TV shows. Sure, researching cheat codes for your favorite games is one way to do it. Or you can be like Elijah Lee who’s making it easier for “otaku” to uncover why these cheat codes exist in the first place, one documentary at a time with his platform, The Icon. 

Before you ask, no, Lee is not referring to himself when he decided to launch The Icon. Instead, the Chicago-based creative pays homage to the iconic video games, characters, and people that shaped the video game industry. The journey to The Icon was as winding as the roads in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a favorite of Lee’s. 

Courtesy of Elijah Lee

His background in computer science and blogging during the advent of personality-driven publications, like Buzzfeed, merged with his passion for gaming. What started off as “listicles,” turned into coverage of lesser known video game trailblazers, like the first Black woman video game designer, Muriel Tramis. 

Frustrated with the demands of the almighty, social media algorithm, but inspired by video games being taken seriously as an art form, Lee decided to focus on the content he wanted to create on his own terms. 

“I remembered being fascinated with Dreamcast commercials when they first came out, where it was following these video game characters at the club and at restaurants and I’m like, ‘I kind of want to do something like that,’” Lee told Nerdist. “And that’s really where I started with tongue-in-cheek interviewing characters that are actually in the game to tell this story about how the games were created to be engaging and fun, while still being educational at the same time.”

His magical trifecta of computer science, journalism, and video games evolved into Lee creating mini-documentaries with video game characters sitting by his side as if they were all playing couch co-op. While the finished product makes it look like child’s play, the development of Lee’s videos is anything but. 

He starts with identifying the video game he’s most interested in, at the time, and follows that interest with immense deep dives into untold lore. With archival research from sources, like Archive.org and the Video Game History Foundation, Lee pulls lesser known facts about video games and inserts that lore into educational videos. In a way, Lee is archiving video game media just as much as the resources he pulls from. 

“A lot of that stuff can be found on the internet, thanks to Archive.org, [the Video Game History Foundation], and going to the local library to find what you can,” Lee said. “I’m really appreciative of the people online who have made it their business to catalog and archive all this information. Right now, as we speak, there could be a video game that is just lost forever that only exists in the memory of the people that made it and the people that played it. So, I really think that conserving these things is really important, and I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without it.”

From there, he focuses on answering questions the research poses and develops storyboards for his visuals. Afterwards, Lee either buys or creates 3D models of his video game characters, hires actors (or employs himself) to voice the characters, records live footage to merge with his 3D models, and then the video editing process commences. 

Thanks to his meticulous process, YouTube users can uncover how a simple bug in Street Fighter’s coding resulted in fighting combos that revolutionized the industry or how a pioneer of otaku culture turned an entomology interest into a video game we know as Pokémon. These final results stem from Lee’s extensive time cutting his teeth as a video editor. 

With a meticulous process, Lee recognizes that not everything goes to plan and his eagle-eyed fans take note. In one of his videos about Sonic the Hedgehog, Lee takes on voice acting duties for the iconic speedster. Inspired by Jaleel White, of Steve Urkel fame and the original Sonic voice from the animated series, Lee felt proud of the work he did. Which is why he wasn’t dismayed when a comment under the video asked, “Why does Sonic sound like Cartman from South Park?”

“I’m like, ‘I don’t’ and I listen to it and I’m like, ‘Oh, I do. I do,’” Lee said. “So, I just responded back with all caps, “You will respect my authority.”

While Lee takes cheeky comments under his videos in stride, the ones he receives the most of are about why his YouTube channel doesn’t have more subscribers. These questions, and his growing subscriber count, inspire him to keep creating because he sees the impact his videos have on the Icon fans and casual YouTuber users alike. That’s not just because they feel Lee’s passion for gaming, but because video games have a long history of impacting film, TV, fashion, music, and the pop culture zeitgeist altogether. 

In 2012, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) curated several games, including PacMan, Tetris, and The Sims, to be shown as art in its Applied Design exhibition. Final Fantasy XIII’s Lightning appeared in an official 2015 Louis Vuitton fashion campaign, while niche gaming language is a part of the modern-day lexicon, like “respawn” or “level up.” And when you consider that, in 2016, more people watched the League of Legends world championship than they did the NBA Finals, the proof is in the playtime. 

While not everything goes according to plan for Lee, creating videos is still a labor of love, one that started with watching too much X-Play on TV and a video game journalism magazine from his mother. Plenty of blood, sweat, and tears goes into it, especially when you consider Lee’s filming efforts in mosquito-ridden forests to record footage about Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver or spending hours in the Windy City’s Field Museum just to get the perfect shot for his Star Fox video. That same labor goes without the support of artificial intelligence (AI), something many of The Icon fans inquire about. 

What’s Lee’s answer to it all? 

“I think right now, if you’re really trying to stand out and be seen in a world of AI, the best thing you can do is be more human,” Lee said. “I do see that there are some uses for AI with administrative work and things like that to simplify things and all that, but mostly where I’m concerned is within art spaces.”

While Lee sees the benefit to AI automating administrative tasks, he still sees the beauty in art being created by human hands. 

“I want to make money off art. I’m not going to say that I don’t, but when your basis of what is art is associated with a price tag, that starts to have a problem,” Lee said. “AI is a symptom of that overarching problem of only seeing the price tag and wanting to basically turn creativity and intelligence into a subscription service, which is something they have said.”

Black Mirror-esque statements aside, creatives like Lee continue to create in spite of the growing shadow that AI casts. With each video Lee creates, he pushes against the need to utilize AI over human talents, while discovering his new skills at the intersection of computer science, filmmaking, and journalism. 

The need to create for the sake of creation exists at the heart of the work of many Black independent creators, of which Lee joins the ranks of. From Cheyenne “The Geek” Ewulu’s The Comic Shop webseries starring her along with anime voice actor Zeno Robinson to model and fashion muse Wisdom Kaye exploring fashion inspo from the “Straw Hats” of One Piece, these Black creatives all find ways to express their geeky identity and influence TV, film, and fashion alike. What started as a “Blerd” renaissance became a movement to reclaim narratives, create new ones, and foster an ever-growing audience yearning for content by Black content creators.

When it comes to Lee and The Icon, continue to expect more content to come down the Super Mario Bros. pipeline. Pulling inspiration from animated shows like Freakazoid, Histeria!, and the Steven Spielberg-produced Animaniacs, Lee’s ready to push his artistry to new bounds. 

“I don’t want to give too much away, but I kind of wanted to do more with CGI, [the] characters that I create, and tell a better and fuller story through this medium,” Lee said. “That’s kind of what I’m heading for, but what I’m doing right now, I think is probably the most ambitious thing that I’ve done with The Icon.”

Whether it’s finding new filming techniques or unearthing hidden lore, Lee is ready to level up The Icon. 

Joshua Mackey writes about movies, TV, games, comics, and all things nerdy for Nerdist.

The post Elijah Lee Turns Video Games Into Reality-Bending Documentaries appeared first on Nerdist.

President Donald Trump, who loves a media hit, may no longer get his moments of glory on television after major news networks ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC announced on Monday that they would pause TV coverage of presidential events.

The four networks’ decision comes after Donald Trump banned CNN and other outlets “from the White House” on Friday for “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” 

“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC said in a joint statement of solidarity. Those five networks belong to the White House television press pool and rotate daily to provide reporting, video, and audio of the president’s daily events to share with other outlets around the world. 

"The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.” — White House television pool members: ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Media, NBC…

— NBC News PR (@NBCNewsPR) September 21, 2026

Along with CNN, Trump banned reporters from Politico and MS NOW. Reporters from all three publications were denied access to the White House on Saturday. The three outlets filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in federal court earlier on Monday morning, alleging violations of First Amendment free press rights and Fifth Amendment due process. 

According to CNN and others, Fox News Washington Bureau Chief and acting TV pool chair Bryan Boughton wrote in a Monday email to TV pool subscribers that “there will be no replacement pool put in place” and “all other pool coverage will continue as normal, including Congress, VIPs, and selected events in Washington and around the country.”

CNN was scheduled to be the TV pool on Monday and would have gone with Trump to New York City for the annual United Nations General Assembly this week. According to CNN, the White House’s Sunday night press schedule listed Hearst, which owns local newspapers and TV stations across the country, as the “secondary” TV crew in DC and Real America’s Voice, a right-wing streaming channel, as the “secondary” crew for the New York trip. These “secondary” teams can typically ask questions to the president at pool events but don’t provide all the pool reporting to other media organizations.

Later on Monday, Trump held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new White House helipad—only most of the audio sounded like static and led at least one Newsmax reporter to blame the inability to hear the president for a lack of pool access.

Trump made his first remarks without the TV pool and it is impossible to hear him through the White House feed. He is doing an unveiling of the new helipad just before Xi’s visit.

Nothing but static for 9 minutes and Trump is wheels up. pic.twitter.com/xpMqvA7SSJ

— Sophia Cai (@SophiaCai99) September 21, 2026

The Associated Press sent an update on Monday, acknowledging the ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and saying “no network travel pool is expected” to accompany Trump. “The Associated Press will cover the president at the United Nations, with journalists on the ground providing coverage, including live video, images and reporting.”

With uncertain coverage of future events like the United Nations General Assembly and Chinese President Xi visiting the US later this week—the latter of which Trump seems to care about after reportedly spending up to $875,000 to accelerate construction of the same helipad unveiled Monday on the White House lawn ahead of the visit—his decision looks to have backfired.

Meta’s new AI agent Muse has racked up more downloads and daily active users in the U.S. and Canada than ChatGPT did over the same period after its mobile debut, according to new estimates from Appfigures.

The US appears to be inching ever so slowly toward holding AI executives legally liable for their models’ criminal activities. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday: “It is the humans who are responsible, not the AI,” for the bots’ bad behavior. “The Hugging Face incident is the responsibility of the OpenAI management, not a bunch of agents." He also referenced current and former OpenAI and Anthropic employees’ dire warnings about AI eradicating humanity by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, the model makers' proposed framework to slow AI development omits strict legal liability for damages caused by rogue systems. “A sitting employee came out, said there's a 10 percent chance of an extinction-level event,” Bessent said. “But then the labs also said, take the liability off of our hands, and we will not do that.” Bessent’s remarks come as four of America’s leading AI developers have now admitted that their agents escaped testing environments and hacked outside organizations and individuals: OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and, as of Friday, Google. When asked how the government will hold humans accountable for the AI agents’ criminal activities, Bessent said: “If these were humans doing it, we would expect to see ramifications and legal actions to follow." "That's exactly what I think we need to do,” he said. “When President Trump talked about appointing an AI czar, I think it is to put context, shape, and contours around these questions, and they're very important." Trump, over the weekend, announced he is “forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force” – a reference to the new branch of the US military the president created in his first term. "To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI 'Czar,'" Trump added. Just days earlier, however, Trump shrugged off warnings about AI destroying humanity as a “hoax” and said on Truth Social: “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” The Trump administration has yet to exercise any of these criminal or regulatory powers, except to illegally retaliate against Anthropic. The president branded the company "radical left, woke" during an earlier dispute with the Pentagon over Anthropic's refusal to relax model safeguards for use in domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. ®

CNN, MS Now, and Politico jointly filed a lawsuit on Monday to overturn President Trump’s decision over the weekend to bar their reporters from the White House. This is an alarming escalation in the president’s wars against the media, independent institutions, control over public properties, and ultimately democracy itself. Federal judges must swiftly rule against the administration and declare that these organizations’ journalists immediately be allowed back into the White House. And if Trump continues to bar them, other reporters must follow them out the door. 

Trump announced Friday in a Truth Social post that he was banning those three outlets from the White House, claiming that their coverage is “fake news.” While MS Now is left-leaning and very critical of Trump, it’s not exactly clear why he chose CNN and Politico. Those two outlets aim to be neutral and have, if anything, been too solicitous of our authoritarian president. (To be sure, Trump and his aides seem obsessed with and deeply frustrated by CNN’s Kaitlin Collins.) And this was not an ideal threat. On Saturday and Sunday, journalists from these three outlets were blocked from the White House, and some have had their press badges either confiscated or deactivated by the Secret Service. And the president warned in his post, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.” 

I can’t say that this is an unusually terrible or unprecedented attack on the media, because Trump and his administration have already done so many horrible things on this front: briefly forcing Jimmy Kimmel off the air; filing groundless lawsuits against numerous news organizations; banning the Associated Press from covering certain White House events; firing the leadership of the military paper Stars and Stripes; creating super-onerous rules for reporting on the Department of Defense; drastically cutting funding for PBS and other public broadcasting. Some of that is legal. But it’s all authoritarian. Virtually all dictators try to undermine independent media. Pro-democracy Americans must continue to condemn and fight against Trump’s attacks on the media, even if we are no longer surprised by them. 

And while Politico, CNN, and MS NOW are news outlets, they are more broadly both organizations independent of the government and not part of the MAGA. Trump is trying to destroy basically all of American civil society that’s not beholden to him or the Republican Party. So that’s universities, think tanks, law firms, activist groups, and any other organization that allows its employees to be critical of Trump.  It’s important to see the banning of these three news outlets as part of his comprehensive attack on independent institutions. 

Viewed in this context, this lawsuit should be a slam dunk. By barring these outlets from the White House, Trump is trying to limit their ability to cover and therefore criticize him. That’s against the spirit of the First Amendment. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, who has been assigned this case, should today restore White House access to CNN, Politico, and MS Now. The president should not have his authoritarian behavior rewarded by having these outlets barred from the White House even temporarily. (Kelly is a Trump appointee, but he ruled in favor of CNN’s Jim Acosta eight years ago after the Trump administration tried to ban him from the White House.) 

Many people I respect, such as the Bulwark’s Bill Kristol, say that other news organizations should immediately pull their reporters from the White House, both in solidarity with the three banned outlets and to show their strong objections to Trump’s move. I would be fine if they took that step. I’m thrilled to see the major television networks (ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC) on Monday announced that they were suspending their usual “pool” coverage in protest of the ban on their colleagues. 

But I’m okay with news organizations continuing to enter the White House in the next few days under two conditions. First, they should be repeatedly highlighting the exclusion of CNN, Politico, and MS NOW.

Second, they should be prepared to walk. If Judge Kelly rules in favor of Trump’s exclusion, a ruling is delayed for several days, or Trump refuses to comply with an order to let these outlets back in the White House, then other news organizations must collectively boycott. There is an important principle here: No president should be able to dictate which outlets cover him. If Trump succeeds in stopping Collins and MS NOW in particular from being in the White House, anyone who covers this White House critically will be a clear target for a ban. That can’t be allowed to happen. 

Some media critics and journalists themselves argue that the importance of reporters having access to the White House and asking questions of the president and senior administration officials is overstated. The best reporting, they argue, comes from journalists seeking information on their own, not receiving it from government officials at press conferences. I agree that investigative journalism is superior. That said, the problem is news outlets being so obsessed with getting exclusive interviews and other special access from government officials that they soften their coverage. Having access to government officials is not inherently bad and can be useful. I want journalists from MS NOW and other explicitly anti-authoritarian outlets to be questioning Trump and his aides in public at the White House. That coverage can supplement their investigative reporting. 

The exclusion of these outlets is part of Trump’s wars on the media and independent organizations. It’s also part of a third war: His attempt to wrestle control of public properties and lands and instead treat them as essentially parts of a Trump Empire. There are numerous examples of this tendency: destroying the White House East Wing to build a ballroom; trying to rename the Kennedy Center after himself; barring reporters from certain parts of the Pentagon; his proposal to build a new arch in Washington, D.C; undermining the head of the Smithsonian until he resigned. 

Past presidents have treated government buildings and public lands in D.C. as owned by the American public. They have often sought to expand access to them. They haven’t changed them without extensive buy-in from historians, members of Congress, and others. In contrast, Trump acts like the Kennedy Center, the White House, the Pentagon, and the area around the National Mall are essentially one big Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. In his view, he controls who has access to these venues and how they should look. 

He is seeking to turn the Kennedy Center into a space where only art that Trump agrees with is performed and the White House into a space where only journalism that Trump agrees with can be created. That’s very authoritarian and must be stopped. 

You might feel like Trump coverage from CNN and Politico too often falls into false equivalence. You might think that MS NOW’s journalists can describe how terrible of a president Trump is without ever setting foot in the White House. I agree on both counts. But this is a big deal. The White House is the people’s house. A robust news media is part of our democracy. We need to make sure that Politico, MS NOW, and CNN are let back in the White House—and that after 2028, a wannabe-dictator like Donald Trump is never allowed to live there again. 

Republicans hoping to hold on to the party’s electoral majorities are expressing concerns that racist billionaire Elon Musk’s role in financing the GOP might backfire. According to NBC News, multiple consultants working to elect Texas’ GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton are worried about being associated with Musk. “Privately, Republicans say they want Musk to keep his distance.

Source

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now hiding the locations of thousands of immigrants who received a final deportation order. 

The Associated Press reports that the agency’s online detainee locator database no longer contains any record of these individuals, preventing their family members and legal representatives from locating them. The move also hinders their lawyers from filing habeas petitions for their release since they don’t know which federal district to file in, and means ICE could quickly detain and deport a person before they have a chance to fight their case. 

In July, about 16,000 people who were arrested and processed into detention by ICE were given final removal orders, the AP reported, citing data collected by UCLA and U.C. Berkeley as part of the Deportation Data Project. That’s more than a third of all of ICE’s bookings that month.  

“Families are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be,” Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the AP. “On the attorney side, this has serious implications for the ability to contact their client. It certainly has implications about how it will interfere with the attorney-client relationship.”

Detainees held at ICE facilities in Adelanto, California, as well as temporary holding centers in Minneapolis, New York City, and suburban Chicago appear to be exempt from the new change, thanks to litigation requiring ICE to document these detainees in the online locator system immediately when they arrive. 

ICE made the move on September 15 without announcing it publicly, according to three unnamed current and former agency officials who anonymously spoke to the AP. Immigration lawyers confirmed to the wire service that they suddenly couldn’t find their clients in the online system this week, and the AILA alerted its members on Friday. 

It’s yet another move meant to thwart legal challenges to the Trump administration’s callous mass deportations, while adding the cruel measure of preventing family members from knowing where their relatives are. Considering ICE’s record of medically neglecting detainees, some could even be experiencing serious health issues at the same time. But for this administration, spreading fear and cruelty is by design. 

Donald Trump’s attempts to silence the media have only turned out to silence him.

The president participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony for his new helipad on the South Lawn of the White House Monday, speaking in front of a hard-hatted crowd wearing neon yellow, high-visibility vests. But exactly what Trump was saying remained a mystery, as the press pool wasn’t present to mic him up.

Instead, the White House’s official feed was unable to pick up any noise apart from the blaring drone of a stationary Marine One helicopter parked yards away. Trump’s audio was completely garbled.

Even Newsmax—one of the few networks to air the event—recognized that it was “one example” of the president’s censorship scheme “backfiring just a little bit.”

“Obviously the ramifications are right here. Can’t hear what the president’s saying,” remarked Newsmax host Bianca de la Garza.

LMFAO -- Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit" pic.twitter.com/dAy1dvDvFL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 21, 2026

Trump announced Friday that he was banning MS NOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House, writing on Truth Social that the prohibition was the result of “FAKE NEWS.”

Other broadcasters considered the ban an assault on the First Amendment and an affront to news institutions across the country. By Monday, all the broadcasters in the White House press pool—including NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News—had joined together to suspend coverage of the president and his actions until he reversed course.

MS NOW, CNN, and Politico also filed a lawsuit against the president and his administration Monday, describing the selective ban as a “a blatant violation” of the First Amendment.

A coalition of their attorneys further argued that the Constitution “does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.”

Trump responded to the backlash shortly after, writing on Truth Social that “the White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America.”

Quick Take

• The BBC has issued the official call for new producers to bid on making Doctor Who.
• This came with a list of wishes from the broadcaster for a “brave” new direction.
• Doctor Who should remain “relevant, surprising, brave and inspiring for both long-standing fans and new audiences.”
• Nerdist take: The good news, it seems the best idea will win. The bad news, the BBC has nothing to add.

We’re a few months removed from the BBC officially parted ways with Bad Wolf and Russell T Davies for the future of Doctor Who. The broadcaster then put the series out to tender. This allows other producers and companies to bid and pitch for the chance to take it over. Now, according to a report from Deadline, we know what the BBC are specifically asking for. These include the usual “good writing” and “back of the sofa scares,” but also “brave” storytelling. It sounds like they’ll take anything halfway competent.

Disney+/Bad Wolf Studios/BBC

The BBC hopes for the series to return for 2028-2029 television year and has given the following guidelines for tenderers. Doctor Who should remain “relevant, surprising, brave and inspiring for both long-standing fans and new audiences.” Oh, is that all? Piece o’ piss, then.

Other than that, the public broadcaster doesn’t seem to have much of a care beyond that. “We are flexible in the way the series is structured i.e. serialised or ‘story-of-the-week’ and the number of episodes which make up the series,” the BBC said. “We are not necessarily looking to work to a strict showrunner model and would expect once in production that the series will also use episodic writers.”

For the show’s visuals, they’d like “cinematic, distinctive, and ambitious, capable of competing for audience attention in a highly competitive global market.” Basically, they just want it to look on a par with what came before/other sci-fi series. They want prospective producers to create “at least one” companion while the series stories should “transport audiences to extraordinary times and places, ranging from historical settings to distant futures, alien worlds, and contemporary Earth.”

BBC

So…they want Doctor Who, sounds like. The good news, it seems the best idea will win. Or the highest bidder, I guess. The bad news, the BBC has nothing to add. They just want the show that makes them all the money worldwide. Anyone got money and an idea?

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

The post BBC Calls for ‘Brave’ Pitches for DOCTOR WHO appeared first on Nerdist.

Google is trying once again to escape the Chromebook reputation for cheap, chintzy hardware and compromised computing. $899 for a glorified web terminal isn’t exactly the easiest sell, but that’s not stopping the search and advertising giant from trying. On Monday, Google unveiled five new Googlebooks in collaboration with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, and Asus. Googlebook, if you aren't familiar, is what Google describes as a new category of laptops, rather than a Chromebook or a rebranding of one. With that said, some familiar software limitations remain. A major emphasis has, however, been placed on premium materials and components like aluminum or magnesium alloys, carbon fiber, haptic trackpads, high-resolution touchscreens, and speedy high-end processors. With prices starting at $899, Google is clearly trying to woo would-be Apple MacBook Neo buyers, with similarly premium build quality, while sweetening the deal with more memory and compute. Under the hood, the initial machines offer a choice of Intel Core Ultra 5 or Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors, paired with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. MediaTek is also on tap to supply SoCs for the systems. While best known for its budget-friendly mobile processors, its notebook-class parts, including Nvidia’s GB10-based RTX Spark APU, have proven quite potent. But while Google’s launch announcement touts “a baseline of 16GB” of memory, that actually appears to be the only config available for pre-order. It’s also worth noting that the $899 starting price only applies to one Acer model, with other systems reaching as high as $1,299 — putting them in MacBook Air territory. It’s possible additional SKUs will eventually offer higher memory capacity and storage, but with memory prices already at a record high, the jump to 32 GB of DDR5 and 1 TB of storage would likely push these devices well north of $1,500. Earlier this year, Omdia analysts had predicted a shift to higher margin devices, which have more headroom to absorb skyrocketing memory prices. Despite this, ChromeOS device sales were still predicted to shrink 27.6 percent in 2026. Whether you can actually use that compute is going to depend heavily on what software you use. Unless your work can be done in the browser or an Android app, you might struggle to take full advantage of Google’s premium new notebooks. That said, there are plenty of folks buying MacBooks to doomscroll X, and at least you can rest assured knowing those web pages will be extra snappy. Google cheekily suggests that creative apps like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom run on these machines. But while they certainly have enough compute to do so, if you do make that mistake, you’ll be stuck editing your photos in a web app. Likewise for gaming: while the GPUs in these systems are more than capable of running modern titles on device, you’re more likely to rely on services like GeForce NOW than on the notebook’s onboard GPU. For better or worse, that should help with battery life, which Google quotes at a not bad, not amazing 14 hours of use. For reference, Apple quotes the MacBook Neo and Air at 14-18 hours of use, and both can run any Mac app. On the software front, Google has introduced some multi-device productivity features that anyone who's owned a Mac and iPhone in the last six years will probably recognize. This includes application and web page handoff, enabling users to start work on one device and seamlessly continue it on another. Googlebook also gains native support for Android apps and quick access to files stored on a paired Android phone. There is also no shortage of Gemini integrations because Apple and Microsoft can't be the only ones shoehorning generative AI features into our daily lives. This includes a feature called Magic Pointer, which summons Gemini simply by wiggling the cursor. So, the next time you lose your cursor on screen, you can just ask Gemini to find it. Other features include Rambler, a voice dictation tool that uses language models to transcribe and format speech, and Create My Widget, which builds custom desktop widgets from natural-language descriptions. So even though it can’t run full Photoshop, it can still build you a custom home screen widget based on your description. The first five systems are available for preorder now and ship with 12 months of Google AI Pro. ®

Future Google supplier Kairos Power inked a deal with Samsung C&T to help build its first 50 megawatt nuclear power plant.

Quick Take

• Disney+ has changed its user agreement in Europe and will now allow ALL plans, including premium “ad-free” plans, to show ads.
• For premium plan users, ads will not be show in the middle of content, but can be shown before or after a piece of content is complete.
• For now, the United States is not impacted, but this blurring of the “ad-free” plan definition is worrying.
• Nerdist Take: Streamers keep inventing fake definitions to worsen the user experience while squeezing every cent out of subscribers. Disney+ changing the definition of “ad-free” is another example of this—and will surely be emulated by other streamers soon.
• Learn More: Every Streaming Cost Increase In 2026; We’ve tracked every streaming price hike in 2026, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

Disney+ has made changes to its user agreement for subscribers in Europe that allow all ad plans and tiers to have ads. Even ad-free plans can now show ads before and after playback. This means that even users subscribed to Disney+’s ad-free Premium plan can now see ads at certain points during playback. That doesn’t seem right. But the new Disney+ agreement shares all plans “may include promotional content, sponsorships, and advertisements before/after playback of Content and in channels, live/as-live, special events, and any third-party services content.” Although ad-free tiers on Disney+ still won’t show ads during the content the user is watching, they can show ads before or after the movie or TV series being watched. We do not like that. On top of all, no plan subscribers can fast-forward through ad breaks. Ad-free should mean ad-free, but it looks Disney+ is leading the charge on blurring the lines of what that phrase means.

Disney Ad-Free Will No Longer Mean No Ads on Disney+

Ad-Free plans will no longer mean an ad-free experience on Disney+. Instead, it will mean that users will not be shown ads that interrupt the content they are watching, but they can be shown ads before or after the content. This reminds us of when Netflix decided to add arbitrary “household” definitions to its plans, limiting who could log onto a Netflix account and where. Suddenly the definition of “ad-free” isn’t “no ads;” it’s “no ads in the middle of the content, but some ads before and after it.” Totally unacceptable.

In full, the text of the update to Disney+ user agreement reads, as we saw on IGN, notes “Changes to your Disney+ Subscriber Agreement, include, in summary, the following (though we do encourage you to read the new Subscriber Agreement in full): – We’ve clarified that all Service Plans may include: (i) promotional content, (ii) sponsorships, and (iii) advertisements before/after playback of Content and in channels, live/as-live, special events, and any third-party services content.”

Yes, This Means Disney+ Can Show Ads Even on Disney+ Premium (No Ads)

Just to confirm, yes, this means Disney+ can now show ads even on its most expensive tier, which claims to include no ads. For now, it just won’t show them in the middle of programming. That means you can pay around $18.99/month for Disney+ Premium and still see ads.

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Disney+ Sets Price Hikes Across All Levels & Bundles Does This Change In Disney+ Ad Language Impact US Subscribers?

For now, no changes have been made the language of Disney+ user agreements in the United States. But much as we noted in the Netflix example, often companies test these changes outside the United States before bringing them to all regions. We wouldn’t be surprised if Disney+’s new “ad-free” definitions reach US users soon.

Nerdist Take: This Disney+ Change to Ad-Free Language Spells a New Trend for Streamers LucasFilm

Disney+ blurring the lines of what an “ad-free” experience means is the latest in a long list of ways that streamers are reducing the user experience, while squeezing every last penny out of the consumer. Of course, there’s the good old price hike. But, in addition to this, streamers have been creative. First there were password-sharing crackdowns, then physical limits on where accounts could be used, and next, ads were everywhere. Now, “ad-free” is evolving into “ads but not in specific places.” There’s simply no regulation on what streamers can shift in their user agreements. And once Disney+ shifts to using “ad-free” to mean “no ads in the middle of content, but some ads between different content,” you can bet all the other streamers will be rushing to make this change as well.

Will this eventually backfire on streamers? We think it must eventually.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief at Nerdist. She is a great lover of the anti-hero and is always ready for a new ship to set sail. In her work, she likes to combine fandom passion with journalistic sensibilities. Follow her on Instagram.

The post Disney+ Allows Ads Even on ‘Ad-Free’ Plans appeared first on Nerdist.

ALT

Iran has threatened to unveil a new weapon and alter the landscape of the war if Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to “wipe out” the nation.

“If a new aggression takes place, we will definitely change the weapons and geography of the war,” Hossein Mohebbi, a spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told Fars news agency Monday.

Mohebbi did not elaborate on the weapon types, or clarify which new areas could be hit. But he did add that the world would be “astounded” by the new weapons, and reiterated that the U.S. has already “been defeated in this war” but “it does not have the courage to admit and accept this defeat.”

The inflammatory language was a direct response to comments that Trump made to Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst on Sunday. The president reportedly said that his current options include “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal.”

“My question is: If and when do I blow the entire nation up? They better behave,” Yingst recalled Trump saying during a phone conversation earlier that day.

Trump told Yingst that he would “probably” be open to meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week, though he added that this weekend is “no different from any other weekend.”

Trump has promised for months that his real estate developer son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate developer turned U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff were on the brink of negotiating a peace deal with Tehran. That has not panned out.

Instead, the war has dragged on for seven months. Some of Trump’s closest advisers—including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—have reportedly discussed the possibility that the conflict could extend beyond Inauguration Day 2029.

The Iran war has done nothing good for America since it began. The conflict has so far killed at least 22 U.S. service members and wounded more than 820 others. It has also killed more than 3,500 people in Iran and injured tens of thousands of locals, according to data published by Al Jazeera.

The conflict has also taken an enormous toll on daily life in the U.S., inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil costs. As a result, Trump’s approval rating has plummeted, with trust and loyalty rattled even among his base, which is reportedly losing patience with the unyielding violence.

Quick Take

• Cozy games like Stardew Valley to asymmetrical, multiplayer horrors like Halloween: The Game make fall the perfect time for gamers to cuddle up with their controller.
• Even on the cozier end, all of these games provide some sort of challenge, whether it’s puzzle-solving or combat.
• Get Into Fall: Make sure these TV shows and films are on your list for October viewing.

Fall is a great time of year for gamers. They love staying inside and watching a torrential downpour outside from their open windows (to smell the rain, of course). And, it is also about burning a pumpkin or apple-scented candle and cozying up with a game. 

But finding one that’s befitting the season can be the hard part. Sure, all games can be played year-round, but if you’re into romanticizing the small things and really getting into the seasonal spirit, these are some games that are perfect for autumn. Our Fall game recommendations will start with cozy options and then get into some spookier ones for you horror lovers out there.

Stardew Valley ConcernedApe/MonoGame

Not mentioning Stardew Valley would be a disservice to all cozy gamers. Though this is technically a game that spans the full course of the year (with amazing corresponding songs for each season), nothing is better to curl up and play than a farming simulator. With plenty of activities from fishing to mining, befriendable and romanceable characters, and a consistent storyline from playable year to year, Stardew Valley really has it all. Plus, the cute pixel style, with detailed sprites for each character, is the cherry on top. 

Each season has devoted tracks that play as you adventure during the day, farming, caring for animals, and completing mysterious (perhaps magical) quests. The tracks for fall are our personal favorites, and they can definitely be played outside of just gaming contexts. 

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Fall in Stardew Valley lasts 28 days, with each day lasting about 14 minutes in real time. That means there is just over 6 hours of playtime in the season, but to be honest, all Stardew seasons are cozy and a great fit to play this autumn. 

Wytchwood Whitethorn Games/Whisper Games

Also in the witchy, magical realm, the cozy yet gothic design of Wytchwood makes it a great option for autumnal gaming. 

Following a witch with a cool, medieval-looking helmet covering her face, players can explore the colorful, slightly eerie environment while gathering potion ingredients, solving puzzles and interacting with odd and interesting characters. Those interactions can include a judgment of their character. In these confrontations, you can punish them accordingly using magic, and take their souls— 12 to be exact, per a mysterious contract with a goat.

The gothic storybook look combined with the medieval-esque lute-based soundtrack makes playing Wytchwood feel like an alternate reality, and the slight spookiness of it all makes for a great fall playthrough.

Deltarune GameMaker Studio 2/Toby Fox

A follow-up to the widely-beloved Undertale, Deltarune follows a new cast of characters, but most of the gameplay is functionally the same. Instead of following Frisk, you are now Kris, who is Toriel and Asgore’s child in the alternate reality the game presents. They are joined by Susie, their scary classmate, and Ralsei, a dark world prince. Plenty of Undertale characters appear in Kris’s Hometown, including Alphys, Undyne, and, of course, Sans.

The “real-world” aspects of the game, the parts that happen in the Hometown, are clearly set during the fall, where the environment is basked in warm orange and red hues. In the dark worlds, where our adventurers spend most of their time, the seasons are irrelevant. Regardless of the season, though, Deltarune is an odd mix of cozy and mysterious.

And don’t think that because it’s cozy that this game isn’t challenging—several battles have had us close to throwing our controllers across the room after a solid hour of attempts. The combat uses the same heart-in-a-box mechanics as Undertale did, and the devs created plenty of new, terrible ways for you and your crew to die. 

Only five chapters of the game are out now, but there is a hefty amount of playtime in those chapters, so you will not be lacking in Deltarune for a good while. Unfortunately, though, chapter six isn’t set to come out until next year.

Cult of the Lamb Massive Monster

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a cult leader—a perfectly normal goal to have—this cute, roguelike indie game is for you. You play as a lamb who goes around the forest saving new disciples from monsters and recruiting them to your cause. 

The cute animation style, vibrant colors and upbeat soundtrack are the only things keeping this from being a horror game. The gameplay takes the cult leader through setting up a good basecamp, caring for their disciples, and adventuring into the wilderness for materials. There, the lamb meets enemy cultists, forest creatures, and god-like beings.

Cult of the Lamb is a low pressure game I like to hop onto every once in a while, though be sure not to leave for too long, or your disciples will be depressed and living in squalor by the next time you load the game. That said, we definitely won’t undersell the combat, and the permadeath aspect is enraging, so tread carefully. The warmth of the color palette and the cutesy coziness of it, despite the subject matter, make COTL a great game to cuddle up and play this fall.

COTL is available on console and PC, as well as Nintendo Switch.

Sally Face Portable Moose

We’re getting into the spookier choices now. Sally Face is an story-driven indie game that, interestingly, also involves cults, but definitely leans to the side of horror. The art style is very sketch-like, with loveable (and hateable) oddball characters filling the town of Nockfell. 

Our main character, Sally, is a boy whose face was disfigured as a child and wears a mask to cover it, creating one of the best, most recognizable character designs in indie games. Through the course of the game, Sally and his friends discover the secrets of Nockfell while coming face-to-face with the supernatural. 

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7 Things We Want to See in Indie Horror Game SALLY FACE 2

The game has five chapters and spans about 9 hours of playtime, so it’s not a huge commitment. It’s great for a two/three-day playthrough, and is perfectly creepy and dark, befitting of the season. Sally Face 2 is in production now, with no set release date, so playing the first will get you caught up ahead of that release. 

Little Misfortune Killmonday Games

Another animated, 2D indie game with dark themes, Little Misfortune also deals with the supernatural. Players control a naive, 8-year-old girl living a dreary home life. She is guided by a voiced-over, unseen narrator, who tells her if she adventures into the forest, she can find a gift of Eternal Happiness, which she wants to give to her mother.

Take heed: in this dark, story-driven game, your choices have consequences. While there is a level of darkness and supernatural elements, Misfortune’s naivete also adds a level of whimsicality to her otherwise gloomy world. That combination, alongside the warm color choices for the environment, make this a great choice for fall gamers. 

If you’re a fan of Fran Bow, you’ll like this one—the two were created by the same studio, Killmonday Games, and take place in the same universe. 

Halloween: The Game Illfonic/Gun Interactive

How ever could we forget a cult-classic movie-made-game? Halloween: The Game only came out on September 8, so audience reviews are just coming in. The structure is cool: you can either play as Michael Myers himself, a masked killer targeting the innocent civilians of Haddonfield, or civilians straight from the movie. 

Laurie Strode, originally played by Jamie Lee Fox, is playable, of course, alongside Annie Brackett, Lynda van der Klok, and Bob Simms, among others. Civilians have unique stats and abilities, so choose wisely. Single-player story mode with Myers is relatively short, lasting only about 2-3 hours playing through main objectives, but multiplayer can be replayed as many times as you want. Multiplayer uses online matchmaking, but don’t expect it to be anything like Dead by Daylight.

With impressive graphics, multiplayer horror that varies every game, and constant activities making for quick gameplay, Halloween provides perfect asymmetrical horror for getting into the spooky mood this fall. 

Ella R. Dunn writes about movies, TV, games, comics, and all things nerdy for Nerdist.

The post 7 Games to Play This Fall With Cozy and Spooky Vibes appeared first on Nerdist.

Muse isn't welcome as a shopper anymore.

X is expanding its “Under the Hood” transparency tool to show when posts have been downranked or withheld in response to local laws and government demands, including which country made the request.

President Grandpa Simpson spent the weekend—as per usual—ranting on social media about his little construction projects, which is how we learned that, much like his ballroom, the arch is now a military complex. Wait, what? Yes, we need President Donald Trump’s pathetic arch not as a monument to his ego, but for national security. The military is crying out for it!

Source

London-based neocloud Nscale has filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange after expanding rapidly on the back of the AI infrastructure boom. The rent-a-GPU business, which emerged from cryptocurrency miner Arkon Energy, filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday. It intends to list under the ticker NSCL. The document does not specify the number of shares it'll offer, their expected price, or the valuation Nscale hopes to achieve.The Financial Times previously reported that the company was targeting a valuation of up to $35 billion. The filing shows how costly Nscale's expansion has been. Revenue surged from $10.4 million to $140.6 million in the six months to June 30, but its net loss widened from $368.9 million to $1.02 billion over the same period. Nscale reported $103.4 billion in active and contracted total contract value (TCV) as of August 31, up from $38 billion at the end of 2025. That figure is not recognized revenue or a conventional backlog: only $2.6 billion was attached to active contracts, and delivery of the remainder depends on projects being financed and built. Agreements with Anthropic account for up to circa $44.6 billion, although Nscale warned it had not secured binding commitments for the financing required to fulfill them. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are acting as lead bookrunners for the offering. Nscale, which operates datacenters in Europe and the US, describes itself as a full-stack AI cloud provider, offering infrastructure and software for training and running AI models. Its projects include an AI campus announced last year for OpenAI in Norway and the Monarch Compute Campus in West Virginia, developed with Nvidia and Microsoft. Its board includes former British deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg, former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and former Yahoo president Susan Decker. As The Register recently reported, Tracxn data shows that Nscale has attracted nearly two-thirds of the equity funding raised by UK datacenter infrastructure companies. It was also the sector's only privately held company valued at more than $1 billion. Despite its London headquarters and prominence in Britain's AI infrastructure sector, Nscale chose New York rather than London for its proposed listing. The company did not answer our question about why it selected the US exchange. The calculation echoes Arm's decision to list in New York: Wall Street offers a deeper pool of technology-focused capital and the prospect of higher valuations than London. ®

Quick Take

• Anya Taylor-Joy wants to feed Chris Evans to an active volcano in Netflix’s trailer for Sacrifice.
• Sacrifice, from director Romain Gavras (Athena), also stars Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek-Pinault, Ambika Mod, Sam Richardson, John Malkovich, and Charli XCX as Mother Nature.
• Nerdist’s Take: Chris Evans would not be near the top of our list of which actors to sacrifice to a volcano, but that doesn’t mean his fictional one won’t be.

Of all the many celebrities in Hollywood, Chris Evans would not be anywhere near the top of my list of which ones to toss into an active volcano. (No, obviously I will not provide you the list of which ones would be. I’m a professional.) But in the first trailer for Netflix’s Sacrifice, Anya Taylor-Joy’s plan to save a dying world is to make Evans’ famous movie star the feature player in a feature offering.

Celebrities: they’re just like us! But mostly/only in the sense that they are also made of flesh and bone, both of which will instantly explode if they come in contact with literal magma. Otherwise, they might as well be aliens living on a different planet than the one we know. And that’s exactly why they will seemingly make up a fitting offering to an angry Mother Earth in Sacrifice. Here’s the official synopsis for Sacrifice from Netflix to go with that trailer:

During a star-studded charity gala brimming with celebrities, billionaires and empty speeches, a movie star in the midst of an existential crisis (Evans) is taken hostage by a radical warrior (Taylor-Joy) and her devoted followers. As the night descends into chaos, both an inward journey and an outward adventure ensue, where the line between performance and belief, salvation and sacrifice, begins to blur.

Netflix

Sacrifice comes from director Romain Gavras (Athena). It also stars Vincent Cassel and Salma Hayek-Pinault. Cassel plays a billionaire and Hayek-Pinault plays his wife. The cast also includes, Ambika Mod, Sam Richardson, John Malkovich, and Charli XCX as Mother Nature.

This is is what Mother Nature looks like.

Netflix

Look, if Mother Nature demands a sacrifice, she demands a sacrifice. Whether or not it is fair to make an actor a part of our offering depends on the actor. Will Chris Evans’ fictional one be the kind I would put at the top of my own list? We’ll find out when Sacrifice premieres on Netflix on October 16.

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 SACRIFICE Trailer Turns Chris Evans Into a Human Offering appeared first on Nerdist.