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“Innovation,” Jeff Bezos once said, “happens by gently lifting a grandfather and asking him for six different ideas.”

Actually, that kudzu bit of biz-speak inspiration isn’t entirely attributable to the Amazon CEO. It’s the work of Botnik, a new AI-assisted humor application that scours various types of human-created, word-crowded content—from season-three Seinfeld scripts to Yelp reviews to Bezos' shareholder letters—in order to build predictive, idiom-specific keyboards. Those keyboards, many of which are available on Botnik.org, can then be used to write new, inevitably askew versions of well-known works: An episode of Scrubs, perhaps, or a Bachelorette soundbite.

The best Botnik creations, like this PBS-derived set of otter facts, retain the structure and wordplay of their source material, while adding a goofy, appropriately robotic sense of stiltedness. They all represent a new form of comedy, a human-computer collaboration, one that “gathers all these evocative phrases from a genre, and then builds them together in an absurd collage," says Botnik cofounder Jamie Brew.

Botnik began in earnest last year, when Brew—then a writer for The Onion’s site Clickhole—began talking with Bob Mankoff, the artist and former New Yorker cartoon editor who, in 2005, launched that magazine’s popular caption-writing contest. During his New Yorker stint, Mankoff worked with both Microsoft and Google's Deepmind department on projects that attempted to make algorithmic sense of the contest's thousands of entries, with middling results. "I thought, 'The computers [alone] aren't going to solve this,'" Mankoff says. "'If the humor problem is going to be solved, or even partially solved, it's only going to be solved people working with machines."

He then heard about a predictive-text generator that Brew had created, one that was inspired by hours spent on his smartphone, using its text suggestions to craft hilariously dull sentences. The phone's bare-bones text-predictions, Brew says, "channeled the voice of the most boring person in the world. But when I noticed you can get a kind of poetry out of just taking this machine's very limited suggestions, the next natural step was to try to apply this to other texts."

The two paired up, and with support from Techstars' Alexa Accelerator program, the Botnik team spent this past year building and fine-tuning several corpuses—essentially large language databases, each one culling from a specific pop-cultural genre or entity, like beauty ads, or *Savage Love* columns. Those terms populate the site's individual keyboards, which allow you to craft sentences—each word dictating your options for the next—and ultimately your own weirdo missives.

It's technology as well-informed collaborator, as opposed to a coldly automated content-creator. "What's generated automatically by a computer only has a transient interest for us," says Mankoff. "But [with Botnik], it's a person working with a computer, and adding a kind of mastery to it. It's based on the idea that you can write anything: If you want to write a country-western song, you're accessing the predictive text of country western songs—but you're not simply spitting it out. You're modifying it."

As of now, there are Botnik keyboards dedicated to Tennyson, pancake recipes, and animal facts—all genres with their own familiar structures. Much of the strange, spun-out prose these devices generate is then overseen by an editorial community of about 150 volunteer writers, including staffers from Saturday Night Live and The Onion. Using Slack, they upvote and cobble together the best entries, resulting in works like this Seinfeld script…

…or this cooking-tutorial video:

In both examples, the logic and structure of the original form remain intact—but they've been infused with a blunt, weird, hilariously assured sensibility that make the familiar seem alien. As Botnik chief scientist Elle O'Brien notes, the best Botnik entries "are the ones that hit you in that perfectly uncanny spot, where you recognize what they're trying to mimic." There's even a keyboard dedicated to Wired's product reviews, which yielded:

There have been other recent attempts to combine the fields of AI and comedy 1, including DEviaNT, a program designed to spout out "that's what she said" at the exact appropriate (or inappropriate?) time. But the hope for the Botnik team—which recently contributed material to Amazon's Alexa device—is that the application will be expanded beyond humor. "It's a brainstorming tool for all kinds of creativity," says Mankoff, who's currently the cartoon and humor editor at Esquire. "One of the possibilities for this going forward is that you're stuck in the middle of an article, and the corpus you're looking at is everything Brian Raftery ever wrote." Which is a terrifying prospect—partly because it would require a computer to scour years of my bad-pun-filled writings, but also because it could possibly put me out of work.

Still, Mankoff insists no one should be worried about being replaced: "We're not going to give it over the machines," he says with a laugh. "Human beings always have to be at the center, just for the sake of humanity." That's what she said.

1 UPDATE 2:52 ET 10/25/17: This story originally mentioned LOL-bot, a "robot" at a comedy festival that appeared to create its own jokes. However, that appearance was an April Fool's Day prank; the robot was being controlled by comedians backstage. The mention has been removed. #FakeRobotNews

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Last weekend's events in Charlottesville, Virginia, showed the ugliest face of white nationalism in the United States. That racism is a problem—in both its structural and personal forms—shouldn't surprise anyone. But even if you knew that virulent hate groups existed, they're fringe enough that most Americans have never spoken to their members. Aside from a few figureheads like David Duke, you're more likely to have seen one of their memes than one of their faces.

WIRED OPINION

ABOUT

Dave Algoso (@dalgoso) is a social change consultant. He was raised in Virginia and graduated from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Today, that's no longer true. We know exactly what they look like. The weekend was well-covered, with participants and journalists capturing most scenes from multiple angles. Last Friday's tiki torch march through the University of Virginia, last Saturday's rally in Emancipation Park, and the violence that accompanied both reached us in real-time over Facebook and Twitter. The nightly news and front pages of newspapers have replayed those images in the days since.

Crowd-sourced sleuthing soon turned up the identities and social media profiles of several participants. The willingness to show their faces
put "Unite the Right" attendees in stark contrast to the iconic hooded Klansman. As sociologist and educator Eve Ewing commented on
Twitter: "They're all confident they'll have jobs on Monday."

They turned out to be wrong. Cole White had lost his job at a California hot dog joint by Sunday morning. Peter Tefft faced a scathing open letter from his father in North Dakota,
denouncing his son's hateful beliefs and attendance at the Charlottesville rally. Peter Cvjetanovic, a college student from Nevada,
defended his participation after he was identified; more than 40,000 people have signed Change.org petitions calling on the university to expel him. Chris Cantwell, featured in a Vice documentary on the weekend’s events, was kicked off the dating site OkCupid.

The trolls of the so-called alt-right are making a twisted "free speech" defense, playing the victims of an intolerant left. They claim they're being punished for their political beliefs. But the weapons that rally participants brought to Charlottesville undercut that claim. Last Friday's assaults on students and last Saturday's attacks on counter-protestors—including the group beating of local resident Deandre Harris in a parking garage—reveal the group's insincerity. And the murder of Heather Heyer by a member of white supremacist group Vanguard America shows the argument to be a cover for a cynical, hate-filled world view.

If this had been a peaceful rally within the realm of normal political discourse, then publishing the names of attendees or firing them from
their jobs would be an unreasonable reaction. That's not the case here. No one responded this way in the past, even for white nationalist
rallies. This wasn't even the first time they'd marched in Charlottesville this summer: A smaller group had held a torch-lit preview at the same park in May. But it was the first time white nationalists showed up armed, in large numbers, and became violent.

Fascist views were already well outside acceptable politics. By enacting those views with violence, the rally violated a deep norm that undergirds our social contract. As political scientist David Karpf argued on Twitter, these violations must be met with penalties or the norms fade away. The Trump
administration has seen norms against nepotism, kleptocracy, and profiteering soften because a Republican-controlled Congress has refused to impose any penalties. In this case, ordinary people can step in and assert that these norms matter. We should applaud them for it. (Though the task could be approached with more care: Misidentification is a problem, and even accurate identification shouldn’t be followed by threats of
violence.)

Unfortunately, this penalty only applies to the rank-and-file. The organizers and leaders were never anonymous. Their names were on the
rally posters. Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler have proudly sought notoriety by promoting white nationalism. Last weekend drew rebukes from the mainstream right, but rally leaders saw a victory in President Trump's reluctant, kid-gloves condemnation. They left Charlottesville emboldened and empowered.

The job losses and other punishments facing the members of this mob are necessary but will have unintended consequences. When those individuals woke up on Monday morning, they returned to the same online forums and Twitter feeds where they'd first encountered hateful ideologies. Social sanctions may even deepen their involvement. When part of your identity is challenged, you double down on it. Movements unify when under attack.

Society needs a follow-up to the rebuke. We need to help white supremacists unlearn the ideologies that took them to the streets of Charlottesville. One group doing active outreach is Life After Hate, a nonprofit run by former far-right extremists who now work to bring others out of the movement. They were approved to receive federal funding by the Obama administration, only to have their funding paused and then cancelled by the Trump administration. In response, the group launched a crowd-funding campaign that’s taken off since last weekend, raising more than $200,000 for their programs.

One group can't do it alone. Churches and religious groups are also critical to this effort. Drawing on research from violent groups around
in the world, peace and conflict expert Rebecca Wolfe has pointed to the important role of families in pulling extremists back from the brink. Institutions like faith and family provide people with narratives about themselves and their
identity that can counter those offered by white supremacist groups. Many of these groups are ill-equipped to do this work on their own,
especially given the role of online communities in radicalization. Lessons from anti-gang work show the need for a whole-of-community approach.

Reaching white nationalists isn’t just about restoring their own humanity. Their place at the extreme end of the spectrum legitimizes other forms of white supremacy. Conservative politicians can swat away accusations of racism—even while advancing policies of mass incarceration, police violence, racial profiling, economic inequality, inhumane deportation, and voter suppression—by pointing to the crazies in the street and saying: “Me? A racist? I’m not one of those neo-Nazis!”

By reining in the extremes, we can shift the middle ground toward justice. The goal should be to leave people like Spencer and
Kessler out on their own, without support from the political establishment or their previously anonymous troll army. That creates
more space for the hard work of dismantling white supremacy in its more prevalent forms, bringing allies and waverers over toward active
anti-racism. Let's not just ostracize the neo-Nazis. Let's counter-recruit their base out from under them.

WIRED Opinion publishes pieces written by outside contributors and represents a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here.

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For more than 15 years, Andy Serkis has been Hollywood's go-to performance-capture guy, playing such digitally enhanced characters as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series, Caesar in the recent Planet of the Apes films, and even King Kong himself. But the 53-year-old actor—whose directorial debut, Breathe, hit theaters earlier this month—believes there are still plenty of misconceptions about one of filmmaking's most crucial innovations. "It's not just about mimicking behavior," Serkis says. "This is about creating a character."

And if anyone could tell people a thing or two about performance-capture tech, it's Serkis. In fact, he could teach a master class. In the video above he traces the history of the technology, from its early days as a videogame innovation to the glory days of Gollum to this summer's stunning War for the Planet of the Apes, perhaps the most impressive merger yet between high-end technology and big-hearted performance. In the early motion-capture days, he says, playing a creature like Gollum—which required him to watch his virtual performance in real time on a monitor—was "like being a puppeteer and a marionette at the same time." By the time of 2005's King Kong, he had moved into the realm of performance-capture, allowing him to craft detailed facial expressions: "It's almost like looking at a costume that you’re going to put on [or] choose as an actor," he says. "And you find a relationship between yourself and the avatar."

Later films like Tintin and the Planet of the Apes, made with the help of head-mounted cameras, gave him greater mobility—though they'd also require him to work in all sorts of challenging environments. (You think your job's tough? Try wearing a full body suit in 100 percent Louisiana humidity, as Serkis did during 2015's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.) Ultimately, he says, working with the technology "[is] no different than any process you go through to create a role, whether you're on a stage, or in front of a screen in a more conventional sense. The actor's performance is the actor's performance." Sounds like he captured it perfectly.

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It wouldn't be a Thursday on the internet if folks weren't irrationally upset over something. The latest installment? A bunch of dudes who are mad that Austin's Alamo Drafthouse is planning a women-only screening of Wonder Woman on June 6. It shouldn't really be a surprise, because if there's one thing men have proven themselves to be throughout history, it's prone to childish overreactions whenever someone says something isn't for them. But let's not dwell on that ridiculous outcry. Instead, let's focus on this pitch-perfect response from the theater in question:

Ah. Sometimes there is good in the world. There's also, well, some bad. Here are all of the things you might have missed online from the past seven days. Don't shoot, we're just the messengers.

Awkward Papal Photos: Horror Edition

What Happened: It's the team-up everyone has been waiting for: President Donald Trump and the pope! Together, they fight crime! No, wait. That's not right. Together, they take really uncomfortable photos. Well, uncomfortable for them, but delightful for the internet.
What Really Happened: Last week, President Trump and his entourage headed to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis.

Sounds like the meeting went better than the last time Trump and the pope had a run-in. Or did it? Photos from the meeting suggest it wasn't quite as sunny as Trump's tweet made it seem.

As news of Trump's visit hit mainstream media, though, Photoshop masters quickly turned images of the meeting into a horror-filled meme.

Considering the Trumps showed up looking like the Addams Family, it was only a matter of time before this happened. But the volume and frequency with which these Photoshops hit the internet was pretty remarkable, and for a while it seemed as though the only thing that would stop them was divine intervention. Once they did peter out, it was hard to determine which was the best, but this Shining-themed GIF might come out on top:

The Takeaway: Apparently, papal supremacy applies to the internet, too.

So, About That Picture of Trump with the Glowing Orb…

What Happened: President Trump also proved adept at providing the internet with meme-worthy material while in Saudi Arabia.
What Really Happened: Trump gave the internet a lot to riff on last week. In addition to the aforementioned pope photos, he also told an audience in Israel that he "just got back from the Middle East" and got repeatedly, visibly rebuffed by his wife. But none of those tidbits were as strange as this:

That, surprisingly, isn't a faked photo or one that's been altered in any way. That's actually a real thing that happened during Trump's trip. As could only be expected, Twitter was enamored with the visual:

Of course, the media was just as fascinated, both by the photo op and the online reaction. But perhaps the best, most surreal follow-up was this extended Twitter joke:

The Takeaway: Perhaps people shouldn't mock the orb too much. After all, they don't know its true power.

The Shake Down

What Happened: Completing a hat trick of providing meme-worthy content last week, Trump was photographed sharing a rather unpleasant handshake with the new president of France.
What Really Happened: Of all the meetings Trump had at this week's NATO summit, it was his first encounter with newly elected French president Emmanuel Macron that caught the internet's eye. Why? Well, watch this first.

OK, that was kind of weird. Twitter?

The handshake quickly became a thing. While surely no one involved wanted that strange moment to be a talking point, it was relatively innocuous compared to the other info that came out of Trump and Macron's meeting.

Really? That doesn't sound right.

Oh. So maybe that's why Macron seemingly avoided Trump when they saw each other later?

For something so critical, international politics really can seem like high school sometimes.

The Takeaway: Wait, did we say high school? It might be elementary.

Teachable Moments

What Happened: A potentially doctored school assignment created a new internet hero, who very deservedly got ice cream.
What Really Happened: For a brief moment let's forget politics and think about something genuinely silly and viral to close out this week, shall we? Here, this girl's review of her teacher's disciplinary actions should do nicely.

Now, before we go any further: Yes, the handwriting on the last two lines looks suspiciously different from the rest of the page, but don't harsh our need for happiness with your logic. This is great, even if it's a little fudged.

Unsurprisingly, almost everyone voted for ice cream, which led to the obvious conclusion.

Was it real? We'll never know, although that handwriting thing didn't really help its case. What matters is that the girl got her ice cream—either for her wonderful teacher feedback or for her willingness to be a prop to gain social media attention. Ice cream is important; everything else is futile. C'mon, it's the weekend—you should spend it with some ice cream too!
The Takeaway: Amongst those who were in favor of the ice cream option, The Man:

Drumstick Twitter, can't you be a little better at being subtle? Take a lesson from the Alamo Drafthouse!

When Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem of a preseason NFL game just over a year ago, he did so at the end of a hostile summer that claimed the lives of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two unarmed black men who were gunned down by law enforcement. The 49ers quarterback was mindful of a singularly American truth: the distance between life and death for black people is shorter, and more precarious, than for most.

As the 2016–17 season pushed forward, the loss continued, its pace relentless: Anthony Ford, Terence Crutcher, Keith Lamont Scott. All unarmed and shot by police. A handful of players joined Kaepernick in silent protest. Still, the league ignored the roar of the world. Its willful evasion was almost a matter of policy: For decades the NFL has tried to keep politics out of the game and protect the purity of its brand, which also meant ignoring the realities of CTE, painkiller addiction, and domestic abuse in the league.

But the pull of history is unavoidable. On Sunday, galvanized by President Trump’s recent remarks in which he exhorted team owners to “fire” any “son of a bitch” who refused to stand for the national anthem, hundreds of players took a cue from Kaepernick and kneeled in harmonious dissent. Last night, on Monday Night Football, Dallas Cowboys players and coaching staff locked arms while their opponents were announced. On the surface, the demonstrations were moving and powerful. Yet, it was hard to divine anyone’s motivations. Had the parade of black death finally become too heavy a load for players and team owners to cast aside, or were they simply pushing back against Trump’s remarks?

As president, Trump has done his very best to preserve the ways of white supremacy. In a mere nine months, he has attempted to strip health care from millions of people, sympathized with white nationalists, and attacked US citizens who simply exercised their right of free speech. His continued defense of his own invective—doubling down on Twitter, then doubling down again—suggests that he sees kneeling during the anthem as unpatriotic. But patriotism in America is a complicated business. It requires one to answer these questions: Just who is this country for? And how did you arrive at such a conclusion?

The answers prove more expansive than Trump’s razor-thin understanding of them. In a press conference after one game on Sunday, Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin noted the false virtue in the president’s claims. “This is our country,” he said. “What we were founded on was protest.” Baldwin, like Kaepernick, is keenly aware of the inherent paradox in our definition of patriotism. “It has always been my understanding that the brave men and women who fought and died for our country did so to ensure that we could live in a fair and free society, which includes the right to speak out in protest,” Eric Reid wrote in The New York Times; the 49ers safety was the first teammate to kneel with Kaepernick.

So, who is this country for? I like to believe it’s for kids like Jordan Edwards, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and Michael Brown. For people like Kalief Browder who are wrongfully funneled through the prison system. For women like Sandra Bland who are treated like monsters. For men like Eric Garner who are made into ghost stories before our very eyes.

Genuine patriotism bears no one hue, political ideology, or class. Understanding this, though, requires men like Trump to relinquish the old ways of reasoning and accept that the American flag and our national anthem, for all their metaphorical valor and pride, so rarely represent the interests of the marginalized. In August, when a coalition of 40 players sent a memo to league commissioner Roger Goodell asking for concrete support around issues such as police transparency and prison reform, they were doing so because they understood that hollow symbols don’t shield the constant threat to black lives.

When I said that patriotism was a complicated business, I meant it. It is a business. In 2015, it was reported that the Department of Defense spent tens of millions of dollars for acts of “paid patriotism” during sporting events, including NFL games. This consisted of “on-field color guard, enlistment and reenlistment ceremonies, performances of the national anthem, [and] full-field flag details.” The Monday night show of solidarity, which included even Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, seemed for all its pageantry like a piece of that same strategy: Jones looked straight into a broadcast camera at one point. “Great show of unity,” Goodell tweeted, which only made it feel even more like an empty promotional ad for the NFL: We Are Strong. We Are United. We Cannot Be Broken.

And then I wondered. Did Jones know who Ezell Ford was? Had Goodell heard how Rekia Boyd was hunted down? Did the league honestly believe in Colin Kaepernick’s cause, which really wasn’t his cause alone but all of ours? Were they aware that protest and patriotism are not mutually exclusive, but instead linked biographies in the American fight for justice? I wondered if they understood. I wondered if they knew that kneeling was only as courageous as the actions that followed it.

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When Amazon’s Forever debuted earlier this month, it announced itself with a kernel of discord hidden within. Viewers reaching the show’s sixth episode found it stripped of its main characters—June (Maya Rudolph) and Oscar (Fred Armisen), a married couple trapped in unchanging circumstances—and instead angling its view in a different direction. “Andre and Sarah,” directed by series co-creator Alan Yang, ferries us into the lives of two realtors who slowly fall in love over a lifetime.

Andre (Jason Mitchell) is a married father who finds his equal in Sarah (Hong Chau), also in a committed relationship. The two real estate agents bond over difficult clients, wine, and terrible food opinions (she hates pizza—don’t ask). It’s easy and natural, a one-in-a-lifetime connection. Eventually their love blossoms into a real and true thing, but the two never quite unfasten from their former lives, or their spouses. The episode was a clever inversion of the show’s thesis: what does it look like when you try to forge forever with the person you are meant to be with but can’t have? It was also a structural aberration more and more shows resort to—a formal and narrative detour that often achieves more in a single half-hour slice than a series does in an entire season.

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The standalone episode is a curious, imprecise artifact, reflecting back everything a show is capable of, and everything it isn’t. The trend is creeping into all manner of shows. Atlanta’s most inspired episodes across its two seasons—“B.A.N.” and “Teddy Perkins”— were both standalones. The former parodied BET by having Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) appear on a fictional Charlie Rose-style talk show called Montague. But it didn’t end there. Donald Glover, who wrote and directed the episode, bookended Paper Boi’s interview with satirical commercials that solely featured black people, a world within a world.

The latter, “Teddy Perkins,” will likely go down as Atlanta’s most-talked-about episode, and rightfully so: it was a feat of storytelling that chronicled the aftermath of showbiz horror. Darius (Lakeith Stanfield) travels into the deep south to buy a piano from the reclusive and astronomically talented Teddy Perkins, a past-his-prime singer living out his last days haunted by fame and family, a dark parallel of Michael Jackson’s own final years. Episodes like that are a nifty repackaging of genre expectations: a stylistic trick as much as it is a shock to the narrative’s instinctive movement.

Though standalones disrupt the arcs of their parent shows, they themselves are no longer peculiarities of the medium. During its recent seventh season, the quietly fantastic animated Netflix series Voltron: The Legendary Defender shifted its focus for a single episode: transporting the Paladins into a dream fantasia where they were contestants on a game show that tested each group member’s moral fiber. It was an episode that felt tangential at best. A nice deviation, but one that didn’t propel the show forward so much as it added more solidity to the outline of its main characters. There was also BoJack Horseman’s “Fish Outta Water,” a third-season standout that subverted every element the viewer had come to appreciate about the show by excising all its dialogue—and thus its razor wit. Shows like Master of None (“New York, I Love You”) and, to a lesser degree, Transparent (“The Open Road”) have also experimented with episodic detours of self-discovery.

But what is the purpose of the standalone episode? Does it have one? Critics Kathryn VanArendonk at Vulture and Alan Sepinwall at Rolling Stone have praised such anatomical quirks in BoJack, Atlanta, GLOW (“The Good Twin”), and Breaking Bad (“The Fly”) for reorienting the viewer’s anticipation. “They can be TV at its best,” VanArendonk wrote, “and they’re always TV at its most fundamentally TV—using the space of one episode to play around with a new idea.” Positioned one way, the standalone provides a respite from the linearity of the series—but its existence also implies that viewers need a break. What, then, does that say about the show? And what does it say about what the viewer requires of the show?

Last year, IndieWire compiled an “anti-binge” list titled “10 Great Standalone Episodes You Can Stream Without Watching an Entire Season.” The gist was simple: in our fattened golden age of Too Much Television, you could set your focus on one episode that “offer[s] a convenient non-pilot entry point.” But standalones aren’t necessarily representative of a show—they hint at creative daring, but more often than not skew too far leftfield to speak to the plot’s scale and scope.

That atypicality, though, has its own twist ending: demanding its own re-enactment. I count myself among the faithful who remain haunted by Forever. But after watching “Andre and Sarah,” I wondered what more the show could accomplish by leaving its structure behind altogether. That may sound selfish—really, the show was enough as it was—but even now I can’t help but think of how the concept and texture of “forever” might look and feel if it were anthologized, a la Black Mirror or Easy. After all, no one’s forever is the same. What more might Glover enlighten us with if each episode of Atlanta played with its own framework, adapted a more macabre outlook like “Teddy Perkins” or got more neurotically insular like “B.A.N.”?

I don’t have the answers to those questions; like you, I’m just one viewer. But I bring them up to raise a point—that even as eye-opening as a standalone episode has been known to be, it is often just as damaging. More than anything else, though this may be the fun of TV in the current moment: watching the medium figure out just what it wants to be.

If you heard anything about the Justice League last weekend, it was probably regarding the new trailer that dropped on Sunday for the upcoming movie. But what you might not have heard is that the Justice League—Wonder Woman, Batman, The Flash, Cyborg, Superman, even Aquaman—was out in full force at New York Comic Con.

"DC" clearly stood for "dozens of coplayers," judging from how many ersatz Leaguers descended on the Javits Center over the con's four days, rocking their best superhero looks. Wonder Woman owned this year’s installment by a wide margin (we’re really starting to think that movie had an impact!), but her fellow superdudes weren’t far behind—Batman and Superman costumes were just as popular as ever. (And can we just say the prevalence of little kids in Flash costumes is really encouraging?) So even though the Justice League movie cast might not have been able to make it to NYCC—Gal Gadot gets a pass, she and her Diana Prince outfit were busy making out with Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live—the fans were happy to step in and unite to save the world.

From a fabulous Superman to the wonderful Wonder Women, there were some great costumes on display at this year's New York Comic Con. Check out some of the best of the best above. And in case you haven’t seen it yet, we’ll leave that Justice League trailer below. Just in case.

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Ah, fall. A wonderful time of football, things inexplicably getting pumpkin spice flavoring, and way more new TV than anyone could ever possibly watch. Seriously, there are a gajillion channels and streaming networks now, how can anyone dream of knowing what to turn on? Between all the superheroes, strictly-for-adults animated programs, and 1990s reboots out there it's impossible to keep up. But we have some ideas. Below are WIRED's picks for what you should watch (or at least DVR) this season—and one or two suggestions for what you can easily skip.

The Orville (Fox)

By far the funniest part of this science fiction adventure comedy is when the opening credits say "created by Seth MacFarlane," because longtime Star Trek fans will immediately recognize everything else as the DNA (and proteins, bones, musculature, and central nervous system) of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It might be the weirdest thing on television—produced by a Trek stalwart, Brannon Braga, The Orville is a gleaming exploratory starship that seeks out weirdly foreheaded aliens with moral quandaries. Just find-and-replace the preachiness with a little snark. And you know what? It works. I liked TNG, and flying aboard the Orville feels like coming home. —Adam Rogers

Watch: Thursdays, 9pm/8pm Central

American Horror Story: Cult (FX)

By now, you know if you’re an American Horror Story person or not. Now in its seventh installment, FX’s anthology series has collected many devoted acolytes. If you’re in that camp, Cult is here and waiting for you, complete with all of the usual Ryan Murphy players: Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Billie Lourd, etc. If you’re not on the AHS train, though, its latest incarnation likely won’t make you a convert. A twisted look at life in America after the 2016 election, it’s got all the usual scares and camp, but—as Entertainment Weekly rightly noted—it can occasionally devolve into muddled satire. Perhaps not as strong as the series’ highpoints like Asylum or Hotel, Cult has its moments (or at least has in its first few episodes), but isn’t yet totally firing on all cylinders. But give it time, it could come around. If nothing else, it’ll be there for everyone to binge when they finally join the AHS movement. —Angela Watercutter

Watch: Tuesdays, 10pm

Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders (NBC)

Less than two years after FX's Emmy-winning The People v. O.J. Simpson, NBC makes its own journey to the era of peak tabloid-TV with a limited series focusing on the brutal 1989 double-murder of wealthy Los Angeles couple Jose and Kitty Menendez. The prime suspects? Their own rich-kid sons, Lyle and Erik, whose subsequent trials—full of tales of big spending, and allegations of abuse—would rattle LA and fuel a gazillion episodes of A Current Affair. Edie Falco plays defense attorney Leslie Abramson, alongside a that cast includes Josh Charles, Lolita Davidovich, and Heather Graham. Expect plenty of of cross-examinations, a perhaps a few tent-sized double-breasted suits. —Brian Raftery

Watch: Tuesdays, 10pm/9pm Central

Big Mouth (Netflix)

After Nick Kroll and John Mulaney became kinda-household names with improv-show-turned-recurring-sketch-turned-Broadway-sensation Oh Hello, they took their talents where so many other comedy vets have been as of late: Netflix. Rather than starring as crusty old Manhattanites all over again, this time the pair voices hyperhormonal proto-teens coming of age in the New York suburbs—with all the basketball-playing-penises fantasy sequences that entails. Friend-of-every-pod Jason Mantzoukas is a regular, along with Jordan Peele and enough SNL alums for a "Californians" episode, so if your dream stream is a mashup of Comedy Bang Bang, Freaks and Geeks, and Bojack Horseman, get your Emmy write-in pencil ready. —Peter Rubin

Watch: September 29

Inhumans (ABC)

If you were one of the handful of people who paid to see The Inhumans in IMAX, then you already know: This show is pretty bad. Like, not campy, comic-book-adaptation bad, actually hard-to-watch bad. And if you didn’t pay to see it in IMAX, then you probably still know it’s not great because you’ve seen, well, any of its production stills and/or Friday night time slot. Set simultaneously on Hawaii and the moon colony Attilan (just go with it), it sets up the kind of us-vs.-them dynamic that has been at the core of any story about people with special abilities, except it seems to do it with little or no blood in its veins. It’s hard to place exactly where it goes off the rails—is “everywhere” an acceptable answer?—but when it does, it’s not worth following. Also, most of its heroes' superpowers aren’t that super. (See here.) Not everything to come out of the Marvel TV universe has been knock-down stellar, but coming from the same family that produces Jessica Jones and even Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it’s pretty inhumane. —Angela Watercutter

Watch: Fridays, 8pm/7pm Central, starting Sept. 29

Punisher (Netflix)

The beauty of the Marvel Netflix shows has always been that they can get away with everything the summer tentpole movies and ABC shows can’t: Sex! Drinking! Cursing! Punisher promises to turn that up to 11. Based on the trailer alone, the show has more blood and gunplay than any of the Defenders’ shows have offered up so far. Starring Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal as the titular antihero, Punisher goes deep and dark on the story of Frank Castle, a man who becomes a vigilante after the death of his wife and children. Sure it’s another "gritty crime show in New York," but, hey, if you haven’t tired of those yet, why start now? Also, based on his fired-up appearance at Comic-Con International this year, Bernthal is ready to go all-in and all-out on this one. It’ll be fun to watch. —Angela Watercutter

Watch: Date TBD

Ghosted (Fox)

Clearly, Adam Scott and Craig Robinson had their eyes on each other during the Parks and RecreationThe Office softball games on the NBC lot, because they've eloped to one of the weirder paranormal comedies that TV has. Co-created by Scott and his wife Naomi, the show stars the two ensemble vets as strangers recruited by a—stop me if you've heard this one—clandestine government agency in order to investigate the disappearance of another agent. The odd-couple dynamic feels forced in the pilot, but the two actors have enough experience and chops to develop things further. Even if things err toward the broad and kinetic early on, it's probably worth a close encounter of the second kind, if not the third. —Peter Rubin

Watch: Sundays, 8:30pm/7:30pm Central, starting Oct. 1

The Deuce (HBO)

David Simon, architect behind HBO’s cult favorite The Wire, creates with the flair and patience of an attentive carpenter—which is to say it’s all in what he sees. Thematically, Simon has always had a creative fetish for how institutions work: the way, say, a school system operates or a city government falls apart. With The Deuce, Simon sets his sights on a nascent 1970s porn boom and prostitutes who stalk the sidewalks of Times Square. With frequent collaborator George Pelecanos, and veterans like Michelle McLaren and Richard Price attached to the project, Simon gathered the precise blend of ingredients for a slow-simmering, high-stakes drama. There’s crime and porn and drugs and the atmospheric charm of a disco-era period piece. James Franco plays the part of twin brothers, Frankie and Vincent, whose fates are eternally intertwined; there’s also Gbenga Akinnagbe’s slick-tongued Larry Brown, a hard-nosed pimp with a heart, and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Candy, a sex worker and single mother with big dreams. There’s corrupt cops, soulless mobsters, wayward college students, and women just trying to survive the lure of a New York City night. The show’s sleek prowess is a sure credit to Simon & Co.’s deliberately downplayed thesis; it never over explains or feels like cultural voyeurism. The Deuce simply says: This is Vincent and Larry and Candy. And this is how they live. (Davis Simon pro-tip: Wait until the show concludes and binge watch the series over the course of a weekend—it’s more delectable in one long bite.) —Jason Parham

Watch: Sundays, 9 pm

The Gifted (Fox)

Super-powered mutants go on the run in a world that hates and fears them. But because The Gifted is on Fox, owner of the rights to the X-Men, this Marvel Comics-based show actually gets to use the word “mutant,” and the characters are a delightful scrape of the X-books. Hey, it’s the teleporting Blink! And Polaris, Mutant Mistress of Magnetism! But let me sweeten the pot: Garret Dillahunt is the bad guy. Genially hilarious in Raising Hope, laconically terrifying in Justified and Deadwood … Dillahunt is the best. And the showrunner is Matt Nix, whose show Burn Notice was the spy version of MacGyver, and if you hate that, we’re not friends. —Adam Rogers

Watch: Mondays 9pm/8pm Central, starting Oct. 2

Lore (Amazon)

The first ever podcast-to-Prime adaptation, Lore is a six-episode anthology series based on Aaron Mahnke's hit horror show, bringing together re-enactments and archival footage to dramatize (supposed) real-life tales of spookiness. The cast includes ex-X-Files star Robert Patrick and Teen Wolf's Holland Roden, but the real star might be the trailer's creepy, dead-eyed doll, who looks kind of like a Motherboy costume come to life. Arriving just in time for Halloween, Lore will at least give folks something new to dig into after they've rewatched A Nightmare on Elm Street for the gazillionth time. —Brian Raftery

Watch: Oct. 13

Back (Sundance Now)

Even if comedy duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb hadn't given us the absurd perfection that is "Numberwang," they'd still deserve a lifetime achievement award for sitcom Peep Show, which lasted for nine seasons of perspective-shifting bliss. (Seriously, everyone, watch Peep Show.) And now, they're back! The new sitcom—in which a beleaguered man (Mitchell) is reunited with a long-lost, and insufferably smarmy, foster brother (Webb)—reprises the superego-vs-id dynamic the pair is so beloved for. Granted, it's on Sundance's streaming platform, Sundance Now, meaning you'd have to pony up for yet another subscription, but if you have a VPN you can watch it for free on the site for UK network Channel 4. And if not … well, what would Superhans do? —Peter Rubin

Watch: Nov. 5

Future Man (Hulu)

Seth Rogen and writing partner Evan Goldberg have taken on just about every genre out there, from disaster movies (This Is the End) to comic-book adaptations (Preacher) to animation (Sausage Party), but it's taken them until now to bring their filthy comedic lens to sci-fi. A janitor (Josh Hutcherson) finds out his favorite video game is actually a recruitment tool—and now he's conscripted by the game's heroes (Eliza Coupe and Derek Wilson) to put those skills to use, time-hopping through his family's history in a bid to stave off global disaster. At least, that's the masturbation-joke-free version; the real version is exactly what you'd expect, if Rogen and Goldberg had shared a Back to the FutureLast Starfighter-psilocybin smoothie. —Peter Rubin

Watch: Nov. 14

The Runaways (Hulu)

Super-powered teenagers go on the run in a world that hates and fears them. But because The Runaways is on Hulu and made by Disney-Marvel, this Marvel Comics-based show does not have mutants or X-Men. Nosiree. Maybe some Inhumans. Thing is, the comic was created by Bryan K. Vaughan, and its X-Manly premise is that the millennial kids find out their Gen-X parents are super villains. Which seems right. Like the Netflix Marvel shows, Runaways is nominally set in the same universe as the Avengers, but, shyyeaah, whatever. Oh, remember James Marsters, who was so yummy as bad boy Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Well, he’s the dad now, so let that sink in. —Adam Rogers

Watch: Nov. 21

She's Gotta Have It (Netflix)

Movie-to-TV remakes are one of the hardest gambles in television. Which is not to say there haven’t been successes; Fargo and Friday Night Lights are as equally beloved as their cinema archetypes. It’s just that it can be difficult to live up to the film’s original glory. (The cynic in me would do away with TV remakes altogether; creators have a duty to construct modern ideas not rework used concepts). Spike Lee's episodic update of his 1986 debut feature falls somewhere in the middle. It’s got a phenomenal score, mouthfuls of beautiful camera work, and emerging talents like Anthony Ramos as Mars Blackmon, who is nothing but electricity and charisma. But it’s still a 2017 Spike Lee joint, which means the seasoned auteur is regrettably going to rely on some of his old habits—mainly, his heavy-handed approach to storytelling. Rarely does he let the viewer do any of the labor, or arrive at their own conclusions. Even so, She’s Gotta Have It is a treat to watch, especially its small, digressive conversations about gentrification or white privilege or sexual hypocrisy. It’s here, in the intimate space between lovers and friends, where Lee hits his stride. —Jason Parham

Watch: Nov. 23

Happy! (Syfy)

Of all the Grant Morrison comics you can imagine as a TV show, Happy—his 2013 miniseries about a cop-turned-hitman who changes his ways when he finds himself saddled with a tiny imaginary talking blue unicorn—might be the last. Then again, you're not Syfy. With Chris Meloni as the hired gun in question, and Patton Oswalt as the titular unicorn, this one is poised to be a holiday miracle. Assuming it's a faithful adaptation, hope you don't mind some psycho Santas and sex crimes with your eggnog! Not for the faint of heart, but it might be just the thing to get you in the state of mind for some time with the family. —Peter Rubin

Watch: Dec. 6

Will & Grace (NBC)

It’s been 11 years since Will & Grace went off the air. But after the cast reunited for a get-out-the-vote video during last year’s election, America—or rather, NBC and show creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick—decided it was time to bring Will (Eric McCormack), Grace (Debra Messing), Jack (Sean Hayes), and Karen (Megan Mullally) back to TV. Although the showrunners have promised W&G v. 2.0 will address the current political climate the way its previous Bush/Cheney-needling seasons did, they’ve also sworn it won’t be all-Trump-jokes-all-the-time. A lot has changed in the queer rights movement and in the TV landscape since Will & Grace ended in 2006, and its hard to tell if the show can be as revolutionary now as it was when it first aired in 1998. But even if it doesn’t change the world, watching it reclaim its magic will be a hoot. —Angela Watercutter

Watch: Thursdays, 9pm/8pm Central

More TV testimonials

  • Adam Rogers and Brendan Nystedt LLAP after the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery
  • Angela Watercutter breaks down the brilliant dystopia of The Handmaid's Tale
  • Jason Parham on the genius of Atlanta's storytelling

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Having Hope Van Dyne be front-and-center in Ant-Man and the Wasp was a big deal. Before that film, a female hero had never had her name on a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Her appearance, and subsequent success, shifted the Marvel movie landscape in way that hadn’t happened in 19 previous films. So yeah, it was very very important.

Yet, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) isn’t the film’s only heroine. Danielle Costa also deserves some credit. Marvel's head of VFX (she’s worked on every MCU movie since the first Thor) was the one responsible for making sure all of the Wasp's—and Ant-Man's—stunts looked as real as possible. And in a universe where the scale goes from larger-than-life to sub-atomic, that's no easy task. But it was one that was important to Costa because of the gravity of the film.

"What was really cool about this particular movie is the first time the female heroine got her name in the title of the film," Costa says. "She really came to life in a totally different way and we saw a whole other side of Hope Van Dyne in this film than we had in the first film."

How did Costa do that? Well, for one she helped fine-tune the Wasp's costume, shifting it from a more dragonfly-like design to one "more tech-y." She also made sure the heroine’s kitchen-fight scene—you know, the one where she shrinks and runs length-wise down a knife some bad guy threw at her—looked impeccable. "You have to be able to convincingly integrate live-action photography with computer-generated elements, artfully," Costa says.

Find out more about the artist’s VFX tricks in the video above.

If you're a fan of online music journalism, Tuesday was not a great day. Twitter, never adept at evading controversy, went on a suspension spree, freezing the accounts of popular music outlets Fader and Pigeons & Planes, along with more than 20 other smaller accounts. The crime wasn't posting graphic content, or doxxing people, or the targeted abuse or harassment of others, or any of the truly toxic terms-of-service abuses Twitter lists. It was posting short clips of the BET Awards, a four-hour telecast that had happened two nights prior.

According to a DMCA takedown record first surfaced by Vice, BET parent company Viacom had requested that Twitter suspend the accounts in question—a request Twitter granted within 24 hours. If that seems extreme to you, you're not alone: The suspensions soon spawned an obligatory hashtag campaign, with people bemoaning the move. Yet defending Fader was only part of the sentiment; the more trenchant strain of indignation focused on the social media platform's seemingly selective approach to account suspension.

Despite the fact that trademark and copyright violations are at the literal top of Twitter's list of "The Rules," posting clips of award shows is standard social-media fare. In fact, according to Deadline, the BET Awards were the biggest TV show on social media for the week—and as with the Emmys, Oscars, Grammys, and so many others, those millions of interactions could never come from official accounts alone. It's the starkness of the reaction that appears so unbalanced, especially given Twitter's notorious permissiveness around sexual and racial harassment.

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Pigeons & Planes and Fader weren't the only site accounts to be muzzled by Twitter, either. An editor for music site Hip Hop N More tweeted that Atlantic Records had filed a complaint against them recently for posting the tracklist for Yung Thug's then upcoming album Beautiful Thugger Girls. (Atlantic Records did not immediately respond to request for comment, and the DMCA takedown in question, which also includes 2DOPEBOYZ, came at the behest of an unidentified party.)

These kinds of suspensions have happened before. Twitter has taken down sports media accounts like Deadspin and SB Nation, as well as sports-GIF-laden accounts run by average citizens. Looking through the Lumen database of online material-removal requests, though, shows that external complaints tend to come from big businesses. If the suspended account belongs to someone making sports GIFs, chances are the FIFA or the NFL was behind it. (Not, notably, the NBA, which seems to grasp the power of online culture and #engagement better than any other sports league. In fact, the NBA Awards aired on Monday night, and despite clips swarming across Twitter like a trap defense, the league didn't issue a single takedown request.)

Meanwhile, civilians routinely tweet about the difficulty they have convincing Twitter to suspend bad actors—spammers, harassers, impersonators. It's difficult not to read this disparity as Twitter favoring wealthy businesses over smaller users. Some of that partiality is to be expected, considering the deep pockets of media corporations. "Viacom and some of these larger companies have a lot of bandwidth to sue, and have put a lot of energy into protecting their copyrights," says Kate Klonick, a lawyer at Yale who studies private platform content moderation. "Twitter, YouTube, and others are on the hook if they don't comply, so they perhaps over-remove possibly infringing posts at the expense of user speech."

But while it's easy to rant about the relative toxicity of alt-right figurehead Richard Spencer's account, it's important to not get falsely equivalent here. "Looking for copyrighted material is a lot easier than finding hate content," says Jen Golbeck, a computer scientist at the University of Maryland. While social media platforms like Twitter and Youtube have access to a vast database of copyrighted material they can easily crosscheck posts' images, video, and audio against, no such tool exists for hate. Yet, anyway: "Twitter has the world's best database of hate content in the form of tweets that have been reported and removed," Golbeck says. "They could easily use that to develop the world's best filters for hate content, but they don't seem to have put much money or effort into that." So to all the beleaguered music blogs and victims of harassment: If you want to get your needs to the top of Twitter's priority list, you'd better start making some serious money.

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