I don’t know why, but it continues to astonish me just how foolish politicians can be – and how easily persuaded they are by really bad advice from smart but tin-eared advisers. In less than a year, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have squandered the gift of the huge majority won at last year’s General Election on one key issue after another: their response to the genocide in Gaza; wantonly cruel cuts in disability benefits; failing to find creative ways of taxing wealth; dealing with the water companies – and, now, on the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill. On 23 May 23, the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB (with a combined membership of more than 2 million) launched a devastating attack on Labour’s whole approach to streamlining the planning system through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.Advertisement Part 3 of the bill will make it possible for developers to ignore existing environmental protections by paying money into a so-called ‘Nature Recovery Fund’, which will be used to pay for environmental projects elsewhere. Starmer and Reeves have gone out of their way, time after time, to claim that it’s these environmental safeguards that are responsible for delays and blockages in the planning process, even though they know this is completely untrue. According to the Wildlife Trusts, roughly 3 per cent of proposals for new housing are delayed for environmental reasons. As The Guardian reported: ‘the data from analysis of 17,433 planning appeals in England in 2024 found that newts were relevant in just 140 (0.8%) planning appeals, and bats were relevant in 432 (2.48%).’ ‘They pursue this path even though are no polls to show that this is what matters to Labour voters tempted by Reform’ So what makes Starmer and Reeves both stupid and totally dishonest? By all accounts the rationale of their tin-eared advisers is to demonstrate to ‘Reform-friendly’ Labour voters that the environment is as unsafe in their hands as it would be in Nigel Farage’s. That economic growth is all that matters. That caring for the natural world is a middle-class self-indulgence (‘the well-to-do prioritising the nice-to-have’ over the interests of working people). And that pouring as much concrete as possible is self-evidently the best way of achieving that growth. And they go on pursuing this ideological path even though there are no supporting polls to show that this is what really matters to Labour voters tempted by Reform’s populist bullshit.Advertisement So they lie. They dig in. They break promises left, right and centre, ready to die, apparently, in this self-constructed ditch of developer-led deceit. That’s why every single amendment put forward through the committee examining the bill was summarily dismissed by the loyal but lumpen Labour MPs on the committee. These included an amendment tabled by veteran Labour MP Barry Gardiner requiring all house builders to provide a specially designed brick (costing £35) to help cavity-nesting such as swifts, house martins, sparrows and starlings – a measure that Labour in opposition enthusiastically supported! And there’s huge public support for this one small, cost-effective biodiversity regulation. To get a measure of this government’s subservient obedience to the demands of the volume housebuilders, just listen to the words of housing minister Matthew Pennycook: ‘We are not convinced that legislating to mandate the use of specific wildlife features is the right approach, whether that is done through building regulations or a freestanding legal requirement'. It’s all so demeaning. So unnecessary. And now that the mainstream environment movement, urged on primarily by the Wildlife Trusts, has realised just how high the stakes are with this Planning and Infrastructure Bill, it’s reasonable to assume that there will be a much more serious debate in the House of Lords, bringing down on ministers’ helmeted heads the righteous outrage of the entire movement. As we’ve learnt, in less than one deeply depressing year, this is a government that needs to be kicked harder and harder until they get desperate enough to make the pain go away. P.S. If you want to read a brilliant summary of ‘reasons to be outraged’ (and what to do about it), check out George Monbiot’s take on this. Jonathon Porritt is a campaigner and author and co-founder of Forum for the Future This article first appeared on his blog 2025-06-06 Jonathon Porritt comment and share

The transformation of Hangzhou’s old steelworks into a park is a tribute to China’s industrial past in a city of the future The congressional hearing about Chinese AI engine DeepSeek held in the US this April has propelled Hangzhou, the heart of China’s new digital economy, to the headlines. With companies such as DeepSeek, Unitree and Alibaba – whose payment app allowed me to get on the metro without needing to buy a ticket – headquartered in Hangzhou, China’s future in AI, robotics and automation is emanating from this city. Getting off the metro in the suburban area of Gongshu, the sun was shining on an old steelworks, overgrown with vines and flowers now that it is being transformed by Jiakun Architects and TLS Landscape Architecture into the Grand Canal Steelworks Park. The unfolding trade war might help to accelerate China’s journey into an automated future, leaving the world of factories behind, yet this new public space shows an impulse to commemorate the country’s economic history, and the forces that have shaped its contemporary built environment. Starting in Hangzhou and travelling more than 1,700km to Beijing, the Grand Canal is an engineering project built 2,500 years ago to connect the different regions of eastern China. The country’s geography means rivers flow from west to east: from higher elevations, culminating in the Himalayas, to the basin that is the country’s eastern seaboard. Historically, it was difficult to transport goods from mercantile centres in the south, including Hangzhou and Suzhou, to the political centre in Beijing up north. As a civil engineering project, the Grand Canal rivals the Great Wall, but if the Great Wall aims to protect China from the outside, the Grand Canal articulates Chinese commerce from the inside. The historic waterway has been an important conduit of economic and cultural exchange, enabling the movement of people and goods such as grain, silk, wine, salt and gravel across the country. It became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014. The state‑owned enterprise collective was founded, and the physical facility of Hangzhou steelworks built, in the 1950s during the Great Leap Forward, when China strove for self‑sufficiency, and wended its way through the country’s economic trajectory: first the economic chaos of the 1960s, then the reforms and opening up in the 1980s. Steel remains an important industry today in China, home to more than half of the world’s production, but the listing of the Grand Canal enabled city leaders to move production to a new site and decommission the Hangzhou steelworks. External mandates, including entry into the World Trade Organization, the Beijing Olympics and UNESCO listings, have been instrumentalised in the country to pursue a range of internal interests, particularly economical and real estate ones.  In 2016, the factory was shut down in 150 days, in what the company describes as a ‘heroic’ effort, and the site attracted tourists of industrial ruins. In the competition brief, Hangzhou planners asked for ‘as much of the existing blast furnaces and buildings’ as possible to be preserved. When I arrived in China in 2008, Chinese cities were notorious for heritage demolition, but today urban planners and architects increasingly work to preserve historical buildings. Just like several industrial sites in Beijing and Shanghai have been transformed into major public and cultural spaces in the past decade, in the Yangtze River Delta – of which Hangzhou is a major hub – several industrial sites along the Grand Canal’s course are being given a new lease of life. Today, the three blast furnaces of Hangzhou steelworks remain, with the silhouettes of their smokestacks easily recognisable from a distance. The project preserves as much as possible of the aesthetics of a steel mill with none of the danger or dust, ready to welcome instead new community facilities and cultural programmes in a vast and restored piece of landscape. Situated in a former working‑class district that has been gentrifying and welcoming young families, the new park is becoming a popular venue for music festivals, flower viewing in springtime and year‑round picnics – when I visited, parents were teaching their children to ride a bicycle, and students from Zhejiang University, about a kilometre from the park, were having lunch on the grass. New programmes accommodated in the old coke oven and steel mills will include a series of exhibition halls and spaces welcoming a wide range of cultural and artistic workshops as well as events – the project’s first phase has just completed but tenant organisations have not yet moved in, and works are ongoing to the north of the park. On the day of my visit, a student art exhibition was on display near one of the furnaces, with works made from detritus from the site, including old packing containers. The rehabilitated buildings also provide a range of commercial units, where cafés, restaurants, shops, a bookshop, ice cream shop and a gym have already opened their doors to visitors.  Several structures were deemed structurally unsafe and required demolition, such as the old iron casting building. The architects proposed to partially reconstruct it on its original footprint; the much more open structure, built with reclaimed bricks, now houses a semi‑outdoor garden. Material choices evoke the site’s industrial past: weathered steel, exposed concrete and large expanses of glazing dominate the landscape. The widespread use of red, including in an elevated walkway that traverses the park – at times vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese torii gate in the space below – gives a warm and reassuring earthiness to the otherwise industrial colour palette. Elements selected by the designers underwent sanitisation and detoxification before being reused. The landscaping includes old machinery parts and boulders; recuperated steel panels are for instance inlaid into the paving while pipes for pouring molten steel have been turned into a fountain. The train tracks that once transported material continue to run through the site, providing paths in between the new patches of vegetation, planted with local grasses as well as Japanese maples, camphors and persimmon trees. As Jiawen Chen from TLS describes it, the aesthetic feels ‘wild, but not weedy or abandoned’. The landscape architects’ inspiration came from the site itself after the steelworks’ closure, she explains, once vegetation had begun to reclaim it. Contaminated soil was replaced with clean local soil – at a depth between 0.5 and 1.5 metres, in line with Chinese regulations. The removed soil was sent to specialised facilities for purification, while severely contaminated layers were sealed with concrete. TLS proposed phytoremediation (using plants to detoxify soil) in selected areas of the site ‘as a symbolic and educational gesture’, Chen explains, but ‘the client preferred to be cautious’. From the eastern end of the park, hiking trails lead to the mountain and its Buddhist temples. The old steel mill’s grounds fade seamlessly into the hills. Standing in what it is still a construction site, a sign suggests there will soon be a rowing centre here.  While Jiakun Architects and TLS have prioritised making the site palatable as a public space, the project also brings to life a history that many are likely to have forgotten. Throughout, the park incorporates different elements of China’s economic history, including the life of the Grand Canal and the industrial era. There is, for example, a Maoist steelworker painted on the mural of one of the cafés, as well as historical photographs and drawings of the steelworks peppering the site, framed and hung on the walls. The ambition might be in part to pay homage to steelworkers, but it is hard to imagine them visiting. Gongshu, like the other suburbs of Hangzhou, has seen rapid increases in its property prices.  The steelworks were built during the Maoist era, a time of ‘battling with earth, battling with heaven, battling with humanity’, to borrow Mao’s own words. Ordinary people melted down pots and pans to surpass the UK in steel production, and industry was seen as a sharp break from a traditional Chinese way of life, in which humans aspire to live in harmony with their environment. The priorities of the government today are more conservative, seeking to create a garden city to attract engineers and their families. Hangzhou has long represented the balmy and sophisticated life of China’s south, a land of rice and fish. To the west of the city, not far from the old steelworks, are the ecologically protected Xixi wetlands, and Hangzhou’s urban planning exemplifies the Chinese principle of 天人合一, or nature and humankind as one.  Today, Hangzhou is only 45 minutes from Shanghai by high‑speed train. The two cities feel like extensions of one another, an urban region of 100 million people. The creation of the Grand Canal Steelworks Park reflects the move away from heavy industry that Chinese cities such as Hangzhou are currently making, shifting towards a supposedly cleaner knowledge‑driven economy. Yet the preservation of the steelworks epitomises the sentimental attitude towards the site’s history and acts as a reminder that today’s middle classes are the children of yesterday’s steelworkers, drinking coffee and playing with their own children in grassy lawns next to shuttered blast furnaces.  The park’s second phase is already nearing completion, and the competition for the nearby Grand Canal Museum was won by Herzog & de Meuron in 2020 – the building is under construction, and should open at the end of this year. It is a district rich in history, but the city is resolutely turned towards the future.  2025-06-02 Reuben J Brown Share AR May 2025CircularityBuy Now

New Bond game 007 First Light just got a reveal at State of Play, showcasing the man himself, some of his colleagues, and showcasing some of his origin storyTech22:58, 04 Jun 2025Updated 22:59, 04 Jun 2025007 First Light will debut a new BondWe've not known what to expect from IO Interactive's James Bond game, at least until we got the name reveal and a promise of a reveal this week.A surprise appearance at Sony's latest State of Play event, 007: First Light got its first real trailer, showing off a new Bond, and teeing up an origin story that feels familiar and refreshing all at once.‌Here's what we learned from the studio behind the Hitman franchise, including the trailer in all of its glory.‌007 First Light will launch in 2026, and is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series consoles and the new Nintendo Switch 2."This unique, standalone original story has been created by the passionate development team at IO Interactive," a press release explains.Article continues below"In 007 First Light, players will step into the shoes of a young Bond, a promising yet rebellious Royal Navy air crewman who is recruited into MI6"."His sharp instincts and heroism in combat propel him into the agency’s rigorous training program for the once revered, and newly resurrected, elite 00 section."IO Interactive says Bond will be 26 years old in this game's story, moving across the globe with a series of missions but with the ability to choose how to overcome obstacles through "brute force, cunning guile, or charming wit".‌IO is wisely opting for its own Bond"With 25 years of experience in creating captivating action-adventure games with the Hitman franchise, our studio has been energized with this monumental opportunity in harnessing that expertise in bringing 007 back to video games,” said Hakan Abrak, CEO of IO Interactive in a press release.“We’re pouring our energy and passion for the franchise into creating a cinematic adventure that pushes the boundaries of what a James Bond game can be, while telling a fresh, new story. We can’t wait for players and fans to discover an experience tailor-made for them.”Article continues belowThe trailer is quintessential Bond. There's what appears to be M, British actor Lennie James, gadgets, flirting, and what appears to be vehicular combat, too.Can it be 2026 already, please? Thankfully, we'll be seeing more of the game in a couple of days at IO Interactive's showcase which will also show off MindsEye, which the company is publishing.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.‌‌‌

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here IO Interactive has shared its first official look at James Bond’s 007 First light, the studio’s AAA cinematic video game take on the iconic British spy thriller. After years of waiting, we finally have a proper look at the brand-new Bond game from the developers of the amazing Hitman series. James Bond 007: First Light trailer released Following the game’s first teaser years ago, IO’s first look at James Bond 007 First Light gives players a huge look at what we can expect from the upcoming action-adventure game. Powered by the team’s in-house Glacier engine, the new game will put players in the shoes of James Bond as he “earns his 007 straps”. 007: First Light will release on PlayStation, Xbox and PC sometime in 2026 and is described as the studio’s first stab at the series. Leaning on the studio’s past stealth expertise with Hitman, players will engage in the expected espionage missions while also getting to engage in some brilliant cinematic set pieces. “In 007 First Light, follow James Bond as a young, resourceful, and sometimes reckless recruit in MI6’s training program, and discover an origin story of the world’s most famous spy,” reads the game’s synopsis. “For the first time ever, fans will be able to experience Bond’s ascent at MI6 from a young 26-year-old recruit into a full-fledged spy – immersing them in the exotic and dangerous world of espionage captured in the films,” explains a press release sent to outlets. “Bond’s adventures will take players all around the globe, coming face to face with allies and foes (or in some cases, both), while choosing how they overcome obstacles and challenges, whether it be with brute force, cunning guile, or charming wit.” “With 25 years of experience in creating captivating action-adventure games with the HITMAN franchise, our studio has been energized with this monumental opportunity in harnessing that expertise in bringing 007 back to video games,” said Hakan Abrak, CEO of IO Interactive. “We’re pouring our energy and passion for the franchise into creating a cinematic adventure that pushes the boundaries of what a James Bond game can be, while telling a fresh, new story. We can’t wait for players and fans to discover an experience tailor-made for them.” IO Interactive will be revealing more information on 007 First Light later this summer, showing off the game’s deep gameplay systems, more story information and much more. Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

If the adoption of AI feels different from any tech revolution you may have experienced before — mobile, social, cloud computing — it actually is. Venture capitalist Mary Meeker just dropped a 340-page slideshow report — which used the word “unprecedented” on 51 of those pages — to describe the speed at which AI is being developed, adopted, spent on, and used, backed up with chart after chart. “The pace and scope of change related to the artificial intelligence technology evolution is indeed unprecedented, as supported by the data,” she writes in the report, called “Trends — Artificial Intelligence.” There’s a certain poetic history to this person writing this kind of report. Meeker is the founder and general partner at VC firm Bond and was once known as Queen of the Internet for her previous annual Internet Trends reports. Before founding Bond, she ran Kleiner Perkins’ growth practice, from 2010-2019, where she backed companies like Facebook, Spotify, Ring, and Block (then Square).  She hasn’t released a trends report since 2019. But she dusted off her skills to document, in laser detail, how AI adoption has outpaced any other tech in human history.  ChatGPT reaching 800 million users in 17 months: unprecedented. The number of companies and the rate at which so many others are hitting high annual recurring revenue rates: also unprecedented. The speed at which costs of usage are dropping: unprecedented. While the costs of training a model (also unprecedented) is up to $1 billion, inference costs — for example, those paying to use the tech — has already dropped 99% over two years, when calculating cost per 1 million tokens, she writes, citing research from Stanford.  Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW The pace at which competitors are matching each other’s features, at a fraction of the cost, including open source options, particularly Chinese models: unprecedented. For example, she points out that Nvidia’s 2024 Blackwell GPU uses 105,000x less energy per token than the company’s 2014 Kepler GPU predecessor.  Meanwhile, chips from Google, like its TPU (tensor processing unit), and Amazon’s Trainium, are being developed at scale for their clouds — that’s moving quickly, too. “These aren’t side projects — they’re foundational bets,” she writes. The one area where AI hasn’t outpaced every other tech revolution is in financial returns. While VCs are pouring money on the AI fire as fast as they can, AI companies and cloud service providers are also burning through cash. AI requires massive investments in infrastructure.  That’s good for consumers and enterprises, the beneficiaries of fast improvements, while competition lowers costs, Meeker points out. But the jury is still out over which of the current crop of companies will become long-term, profitable, next-generation tech giants. “Only time will tell which side of the money-making equation the current AI aspirants will land,” she writes. As for the rest of us: Just hold on to your hats.

We made it, everybody. We’ve reached the end of HBO’s The Last of Us. Wait, sorry, I’m getting word in my earpiece that…we’re only halfway done with it because this show’s going for four seasons. At this point, I’m mostly feeling deflated. Last week’s episode was such a catastrophic bummer that it cemented for me that the show fundamentally misunderstands The Last of Us Part II, the game this season and those that are still yet to come are adapting. But you know how your mother would tell you not to play ball in the house because you might accidentally break the priceless vase on display in the living room? Well, if you’ve already broken the vase, you might as well keep playing ball, so we’ll probably be doing this song and dance into 2029. For now, we’re on the season two finale, which essentially wraps up Ellie’s side of this condensed revenge story and reveals the premise of season three. Most game fans probably assumed this was where the season would end and, if nothing else, it’s still a bold cliffhanger to leave off on.Suggested ReadingNintendo Switch 2 Price Is Set at $450 for Now, But Could Go Higher Share SubtitlesOffEnglishSuggested ReadingNintendo Switch 2 Price Is Set at $450 for Now, But Could Go Higher Share SubtitlesOffEnglishNintendo Switch 2 Price Is Set at $450 for Now, But Could Go HigherGuilty as chargedAfter last week’s flashback-heavy episode, we open on Jesse (Young Mazino) tending to wounds the Seraphites have inflicted on Dina (Isabela Merced), which means we get a real heinous scene of him doing some amateur surgeon’s work to remove the arrow she took to the knee. He douses it in alcohol and offers her a sip to dull the pain, but she staunchly refuses without explaining why. They made Jesse an asshole in this show, but he’s still a smart guy. The gears start turning in his head about why she might turn down a swig right now. Nevertheless, he takes that motherfucker out with no anesthetic, booze, or supportive bedside girlfriend to help Dina through it.Speaking of the absent girlfriend, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) finally returns to their theater base of operations. Now that she’s back, all her concern is on Dina, but Jesse is still wondering where the hell she’s been this whole time. Dina is resting backstage, and even though we only see these details for a few minutes, I once again want to shout out the set designers who recreated this little safe haven, which is covered in old show posters and graffiti from bands and artists that performed there before the cordyceps took over. I’m sure Joel would have loved to have seen it.Dina stirs awake and Ellie checks her wound. Jesse’s effort to wrap the injury leaves a lot to be desired, but it should heal in time. Ellie asks if the baby’s alright, and Dina says it’s okay.“How do you know?” Ellie asks.“I just do,” Dina replies.The one who is not okay in the room is Ellie, who is bleeding through the back of her shirt. Dina helps her undress and starts to clean the scratches on her back. As she does, she asks what happened while they were separated. Ellie says she found Nora (Tati Gabrielle), and she knew where Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) was, but only said two words: “Whale” and “Wheel.” Ellie says she doesn’t know what it meant. It could have been nonsense. She was infected, and it was already starting to affect her cognitive state.“I made her talk,” Ellie whispers. “I thought it would be harder to do, but it wasn’t. It was easy. I just kept hurting her.”Image: HBODina asks if Ellie killed her, but she says she just “left her,” meaning that somewhere in this timeline, Nora is wandering the depths of a Seattle hospital with broken legs and an infected mind. I thought the show couldn’t possibly concoct a worse fate for her than what happens in the game, but they found a way. It takes commitment to put down a character like showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have done for Nora across both video games and television. Personally, I think when you already know that people are wary of the way you treat one of the few Black women in your franchise as if she doesn’t deserve the same dignity as everyone else, maybe you should do better by her when given a second chance, rather than worse. But that’s just me. I’m not the one being paid a bunch of money to butcher this story on HBO Max every Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern. So what do I know?Maybe this is just part of the contrived sadism the show has attached to Ellie. She thinks violence is easy and it comes naturally to her, so I guess she would beat a woman nearly to death until the fungal infection made her lose her mind. Meanwhile the game version is so traumatized by what she’s done in this moment, she’s practically speechless by the time she reaches the theater. God, I knew this shit was going to happen. Mazin has repeatedly insisted that Ellie is an inherently violent individual, something he’s communicated both in interviews and by having Catherine O’Hara’s Gail, the therapist who tells you what the story is about, say that she’s always been a sadist, probably. Now, when we get to moments like the post-Nora debrief which used to convey that Ellie is Not Cut Out For This Shit, the framing instead becomes “Ellie likes violence and feels bad about how much she likes violence.”Before The Last of Us Part II came out, a lot of Naughty Dog’s promotion for the game was kind of vague and even deceptive in an effort to keep its biggest twists under wraps, and some of the messaging it used to talk about the game’s themes have irrevocably set a precedent for how the game’s story is talked about years later. When the game was first revealed in 2016, the studio said the story would be “about hate,” which paints a much more destructive and myopic picture of Ellie’s journey than the one driven by love and grief she actually experiences through the course of the game.One of the most annoying things about being a Last of Us fan is that its creators love to talk about the series in ways that erase its emotional complexity, making it sound more cynical and underhanded when the actual story it’s telling is anything but. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people reductively parroting notions that The Last of Us Part II is just about “hate” and “guilting the player” for taking part in horrifying actions when they literally have no choice but to do so, rather than cracking the text open and dissecting that nuance. Mazin’s openly-expressed belief that Ellie is an intrinsically bloodthirsty person similarly bleeds into how a lot of the public perceives her as a character, seeing her as a violent ruffian rather than a grieving daughter who was only ever taught to express her pain by inflicting it on those who made her feel it in the first place. Discussing these games as a fan means having to fight against these notions, but they’re born from a game built on subtext, and thus willingly opens itself to those interpretations.Its willingness to dwell in ambiguity only makes it a more fascinating text to unpack, or it would, if we lived in a world where discussing video games wasn’t a volatile experience in which you constantly run the risk of being targeted for performative online dunks, or running up against rabid console tribalism. Now, the Last of Us show has decided to lean into the most boring interpretation of what this story is about without an ounce of subtlety, nuance, or even sympathy for Ellie’s plight. She is a sadist who does terrible things not simply because she’s grieving her father figure, but because this is just who she is. Mazin has deemed it so, and here we are, and this vision of her will no doubt weave itself into the fabric of how we talk about Ellie Williams, even in the game.This story only has any thematic weight if Ellie’s violent outbursts are rooted in pain, not pleasure. Yeah, what we’re seeing in the show is her acting from a mix of those things but, in the game at least, the most affecting moments of Ellie’s Seattle revenge tour happen when she has to confront how she is not built for acts of violent excess in the same way Joel was. She never has been. Back in Part I, she was sick to her stomach when she committed her first kill to save Joel, and the entire point of Part II was that we see her cut off parts of herself to do what she feels she must, only to find that she’s unable to recognize herself when it’s all over. In the show, she is instead mesmerized by carnage, only to decide she doesn’t like that she feels that way, actually. But all this self-reflection is fleeting, because she’s only killed one person on her list, and there’s a lot more work to do. How many Joels is Nora’s life worth to Ellie? One-fifth?While Ellie is wrestling with these feelings, Dina is about to see things with more clarity than ever. At first, she says that Nora may have deserved this fate worse than death, to which Ellie says “Maybe she didn’t,” before telling her girlfriend everything. She tearfully recounts Joel’s massacre of the Fireflies at the base in Salt Lake City, how the group was going to use her immunity to create a cure, and how Joel killed Abby’s father to save her. Dina puts it all together and asks Ellie if she knew who Abby’s group was. She says she didn’t, but she did know what Joel did. Dina sits with that for a moment, then flatly says the group needs to go home.So I guess this is how the show gets Dina, who’s been pretty revenge-hungry thus far, back onto the track she’s on in the games. Without spoiling scenes in the late game for the uninitiated, some major points of conflict at the end of Part II require her to be less on-board with Ellie’s vendetta, so the fact that she’s been egging her girlfriend on to track down Abby was an odd choice. I wasn’t sure how the show would handle it down the line, but it seems the way HBO’s show has course-corrected was by having her condemn Joel’s actions. Dina had her own relationship with the old man in the show, so I imagine that in a later season she’ll interrogate how she feels about him in light of this new information, but having her more or less get off the ride when she learns what Joel has done sets up a contrast between her and Ellie that I’m curious to see how the show handles.The shame of it, though, is that this is just one more thing that undermines one of the core foundations of the source material, and I have to get at least one more jab in on this topic before we end the season. In The Last of Us Part II, when you look at what is actually expressed in dialogue, you see that characters are often lacking important information about each other. This lack of communication is an important part of its storytelling, but the show is instead having characters tell everyone everything. In Part II, Joel and Ellie don’t know who Abby’s father was. It’s strongly implied that no one other than Joel, Ellie, and Tommy knew about what happened in Salt Lake City, not even Dina. The more the show bridges these gaps of communication, the more senseless this entire tit-for-tat feels. To be clear, it was senseless in the game, but it was in a tragic, “these people are so blinded by their emotions that they can’t fathom another path forward” sort of way. This time around, everyone knows exactly what’s happening and chooses to partake in violence anyway. We don’t have any mystery or lack of communication to fall back on as a we struggle to understand why the characters keep making these self-destructive decisions. Everyone is just knowingly the worst version of themselves this time around, and I guess Mazin thinks that’s the point, which is the kind of boring interpretation that makes the show such an inferior version of this story.Family mattersWe now begin our third day in Seattle. Ellie and Jesse are packing up to get going in the theater lobby. The plan is to find Tommy (Gabriel Luna) somewhere in the city and then head back to Jackson. However, Jesse is a lot less talkative this morning. Dina limps into the lobby, and after a brief scolding for being on her feet, she gives Ellie a bracelet for good luck.“I’m not sure it’s been working for you,” Ellie jokes.“I’m alive,” Dina replies.Jesse is clearly uncomfortable watching his ex (or are they technically still together now? I’m not sure) give Ellie a prized possession, and says he can go alone if Dina wants Ellie to stay. Ellie says they’ll be safer together. Jesse relents and says they should be back by sundown. The tension is radiating off him, but the pair leaves Dina in the safety of the theater.Image: HBOEllie and Jesse awkwardly walk through the remains of Seattle. She finally breaks the silence by asking how he found Ellie and Dina’s theater base. He recounts his two days of tracking, giving a shoutout to the horse Shimmer who’s still vibing in the record store the girls left her at, but he’s clearly pissed. Ellie assumes it’s because he and Tommy had to cross state lines to come find them, but no, there’s something else on his mind. Why do Ellie and Dina look at each other differently? Why did Dina turn down a free drink for the first time in her life? He’s putting it all together. Dina and Ellie are no longer just gals being pals, and his (now ex?) girlfriend is pregnant.“None of this has to change things between us,” Ellie says.“Everything changing doesn’t have to change things?” Jesse asks. “Well, how about this for something new: I’m gonna be a father, which means I can’t die. But because of you, we’re stuck in a warzone. So how about we skip the apologies and just go find Tommy so I can get us and my kid the fuck out of Seattle?”Wow, okay. Judgey, much? I mean, you’re right, Jesse. This is a no good, very bad situation, and Ellie has put your kid in danger and won’t even tell you she was torturing a woman last night. But god, I miss kindhearted Jesse. I miss Ellie’s golden retriever best friend who, when finding out Dina was pregnant, firmly but gently told Ellie it was time to get the fuck out of Seattle. Now that the show has created a messy cheating love triangle out of these three, I’m once again reflecting on how The Last of Us Part II could have very easily made this storyline a dramatic, angry one, and instead it was one of the brighter spots in a dark tale. Meanwhile, in the show, the whole thing feels like it’s regressed to a rote and predictable earlier draft of the story that’s much less refreshing and compelling than the one we already know. Justice for Jesse. This is character assassination of the goodest boy in all of Jackson. Well, actually, that’s Abby’s job. Sorry, sorry. That’s actually not for another 35 minutes.As the two move further into the city, they see more art praising the Seraphite prophet on the buildings, but she looks notably different than in images we’ve seen previously. This art depicts a Black woman, whereas others have typically portrayed the prophet as white. Ellie wonders aloud if there’s “more than one of her.” Jesse says it’s possible, but ushers her forward as rain starts pouring down. I’m curious what the show might be doing here, as this is a divergence from Part II. Could the Seraphites be a kind of polytheistic group in the show that follows multiple prophets? Could they believe the Prophet was reincarnated into a different woman at some point? All we can do is theorize, but we haven’t seen much of the Seraphites this season so we don’t have much to go on. Which is by design, and feels pretty in-line with Part II, which didn’t tell you much about the group during Ellie’s three days in Seattle. We’ll pick this thread back up next season, I’m sure.The pair takes shelter but before they can catch their breath, they hear the popping sound of gunfire nearby as a W.L.F. squad corners a lone Seraphite. Ellie and Jesse watch in horror as the wolves strip and drag him away. Just as Ellie nearly gets out from cover to intervene, Jesse pulls her back. Once the coast is clear, Ellie walks away in a huff. As Jesse follows, he points out that they were outnumbered and would have lost that fight.“He was a fucking kid!” Ellie shouts.“Ellie, these people [are] shooting each other, lynching each other, ripping each other’s guts out,” Jesse says. “Even the kids? I’m not dying out here. Not for any of them. This is not our war.”Who the fuck is this man? I touched on it in episode five, but what is with this show putting all of Ellie’s unlikable traits on other characters so she keeps getting to be the hero? Jesse turns from a selfless guardian into a selfish asshole who will watch a kid get tortured to save himself while Ellie is suddenly very concerned about a war that, in the game, she seemed largely indifferent to. It’s as if The Last of Us’ second season is so concerned with us liking Ellie and feeling like we can root for her that it’s lost sight of anything else.So Jesse gets to be the belligerent asshole and Dina gets to be the revenge-driven one in the relationship. Ellie? She’s just bee-bopping through spouting cool space facts, and so when she tortures Nora, it feels like tonal whiplash. I don’t recognize Jesse. Most of the time, I don’t recognize Ellie. But really, the more I watch this show, the more I hardly recognize anyone, and I don’t have any faith in the series to figure these characters and their relationships out, even if it’s going to go on for two more seasons.Will the circle be unbroken?We shift away from the Jackson crew to check in on Isaac (Jeffrey Wright), who we haven’t seen in a few episodes. Sergeant Park (Hettienne Park) updates the W.L.F. boss that the incoming storm will get worse as the day goes on, but even so, the group is still preparing some kind of operation. She also lets him know the rank and file is a little nervous about whatever’s going on, but Isaac’s only concerned about one person: Abby. From the sound of it, she and most of her crew have all disappeared over the past few days. We’ve seen what happened to Nora, Manny is still around, but Owen and Mel are gone without a trace. Again, Isaac isn’t concerned with them. He’s nervous that they’re going into whatever operation they’re planning without Abby. Park is clearly exhausted by this lane of thinking and asks why he cares so much about the girl.Image: HBOShe starts off asking why one “great” soldier is so important when they have an army, and then gets into a weird aside where she exasperatedly asks Isaac if he’s harboring feelings for the girl when he’s at least 30 years her senior. I don’t know if this line is supposed to be a joke, but it’s not funny, even though Isaac laughs at it. She acknowledges it’s an out-of-pocket question, but says he “wouldn’t be the first old man” to make decisions based on such inappropriate impulses. As much as it’s a stupid thing for Park to say, it’s also a stupid thing for the writers room to nonchalantly whip out in a humorous fashion given The Last of Us’ history of old men preying on young women with the character of David. Why write this non-joke into your script if you don’t want viewers to possibly view his fixation on Abby as potentially untoward? Isaac’s following speech focuses on the preservation of his militia, in a very similar way to how David’s preoccupation with Ellie in season one was born from the cannibal’s warped views on longevity, and if you’re not trying to make this direct connection, why even gesture at it? Yeah, I don’t imagine anyone considered the optics of this obviously flippant, throwaway line, but Christ, if you’re that desperate for a joke or moment to cut the tension, this was the best you could come up with? Amateur shit.Isaac sits Park down and tells her why he cares so much about one soldier. He says there’s a very strong chance that the W.L.F. leadership will be dead by tomorrow morning. If that happens, who can lead the militia in their stead? He wanted it to be Abby. It was “supposed” to be her.“Well she’s fucked off, Isaac,” Park says as she leaves. “So maybe it wasn’t.”We go back to the Jackson crew as Ellie and Jesse reach the rendezvous point in a bookstore, and Tommy isn’t here. The place is in bad shape like most places are in this city, but Ellie gravitates to the children’s books section. She picks up an old Sesame Street book, the Grover classic The Monster at the End of This Book, and picks it up for the bun in the oven as Jesse says she picked a good one. As the quiet creeps in on the two, Ellie tries to break the silence by clarifying what happened, but Jesse says they have enough problems for the moment, so he wants to bury the issue.He says he loves Dina, but not in the same way Ellie does. He remembers a group that passed through Jackson, and how there was a girl he fell hard for. She asked him to leave with her to Mexico, but he declined because he’d found purpose and community in Jackson, and he was taught to put others first. People look to him to become the “next Maria” and lead the town, and he couldn’t abandon them for a girl he’d known for two weeks, even if she made him feel things he’d never felt before.Ellie immediately sees through this story. It’s not about him pointing out how he’s felt love and knows that he and Dina aren’t the real deal; it’s about how she’s putting her own needs and wants ahead of everyone else’s.“Okay, got it,” Ellie says. “So you’re Saint Jesse of Wyoming, and everyone else is a fucking asshole.”“You can make fun of me all you want,” Jesse responds. “But let me ask you this, Ellie: If I go with that girl to Mexico, who saves your ass in Seattle?”Before she can reply, they hear W.L.F. radio chatter about a sniper taking out a squad and assume it’s gotta be Tommy. The two head out to higher ground to get a better look, and Ellie sees a Ferris wheel in the distance. She finally puts Nora’s final words together: Abby is in the aquarium at the edge of the city. Immediately, her focus shifts away from Tommy as she starts trying to figure out how to reach Abby’s apparent hiding spot. Jesse is confused and says that Tommy’s got the W.L.F. pinned down in the opposite direction. Ellie starts coming up with justifications for her plan. They don’t know if that’s actually Tommy. If it is him, he’s got the group pinned down. Either way, he would want her to go after Abby to avenge Joel. Ellie doesn’t understand why Jesse is so against this. He voted to go after Abby’s crew back in Jackson, right?Image: HBONo, actually. He didn’t. He believed this vendetta was selfish and “wasn’t in the best interest of the community.” That sets Ellie off.“Fuck the community!” she screams. “All you do is talk about the fucking community, you hypocrite. You think you’re good and I’m bad? You let a kid die today, Jesse. Because why? He wasn’t in your community? Let me tell you about my community. My community was beaten to death in front of me while I was forced to fucking watch. So don’t look at me like you’re better than me, or like you’d do anything differently if you were in my shoes, because you’re not, and you wouldn’t.”Jesse takes a beat, then tells Ellie he hopes she makes it to the aquarium as he leaves. While this scene does exemplify the show’s typicalal “no subtext allowed” approach to writing that I find so irksome, the storyline of Ellie feeling ostracized by the people of Jackson while constantly being told that she must make compromises for them even as they are incapable of extending the same to her is one of the few embellishments The Last of Us makes that resonates with me. It’s easy to write off Ellie’s revenge tour as a selfish crusade that puts everyone else in harm’s way, but when she’s also one of the few out queer people in a town that mostly coddles bigotry and she’s being constantly belittled and kept from doing things she wants to do like working on the patrol team, why would she feel any kinship to this community? Now, when she’s so close to her goal that she can almost taste it, Jesse wants her to consider the people of Jackson? Why should she do that? They’re hundreds of miles away, and the only people who came to save her and Dina were the ones who already cared about her. Ellie’s disillusionment with her neighbors is one of the few additions to the story that The Last of Us manages to pull off.Ellie reaches the harbor from which she can use a boat to reach the aquarium and finds several Wolves meeting up on vessels heading somewhere off the coast. Isaac is here leading the charge, but it’s unclear where they’re going or what they’re doing. Game fans have the advantage of knowing what’s going on, but the W.L.F. storyline feels underbaked in this season, which is one of the real issues with the show dividing the game’s storyline into multiple seasons. During this section of the game, you get a sense that there’s an untold story happening in the background, and you can learn more about it through notes you can find in the environment and ambient dialogue from enemies. The show doesn’t have those same storytelling tools, so I wouldn’t be surprised if newcomers felt a little disoriented every time we hopped over to Isaac.Once the W.L.F. forces make their way wherever they’re going, Ellie finds one of the spare boats and starts to make her way to the aquarium. The storm is hitting hard, though, and the tide is not on her side. A giant tidal wave knocks her out of the boat and into the sea. (Good thing you learned how to swim, queen.) As she washes up onto the shore, Ellie hears Seraphites whistling as a group of them descends upon her. She’s too weak to get onto her feet and run, so the cultists grab her and carry her to a noose hanging from a tree in the woods. She screams that she’s not a Wolf and that she’s not from here, but they don’t listen. As they wrap the noose around her neck and start to hoist her upward, a horn sounds off in the distance. The lead Scar says to leave her, their village is in danger, so I guess that’s what the W.L.F. operation is targeting? This concludes our latest little exposition detour, as Ellie gets right back into the boat to the aquarium.Image: HBOShe manages to reach the building and finds a broken window through which to enter. Inside, she finds several makeshift beds. Whatever Abby’s doing here, she’s not alone. As Ellie makes her way deeper into the aquarium, she finds a ton of medical supplies, including bloody bandages and surgical equipment. Was Abby injured? Is that why she’s been missing in action as the W.L.F. undergoes a huge, all-hands-on-deck mission? Who’s to say?Quick sidenote: When Ellie infiltrates the aquarium in the game, she’s attacked by a guard dog named Alice. The W.L.F. used trained canines in their war against the Seraphites, but that element has been notably absent from the show. Between this and sparing Shimmer from her explosive fate, The Last of Us has been toning down the animal murder.Ellie keeps walking through the desolate aquarium and eventually finds fresh footsteps. She follows them and soon finds their source: Abby’s friends Owen (Spencer Lord) and Mel (Ariela Barer). The two are arguing about something, though it’s not clear what. Owen wants to go somewhere behind enemy lines, even in the midst of the battle Isaac has just initiated. He says he doesn’t have a choice because “it’s Abby.” Mel says he does have a choice and so does she, and the Abby of it all is why she’s not going along with whatever the plan is. Owen says he’ll do it on his own, and if Mel’s still here when they get back, she can “keep going with [them].” Either way, Owen’s leaving. Mel let’s out a hearty “fuck you, Owen” before realizing that Ellie is there. Sure seems like there’s a whole other story that’s been going on while we’ve been hanging out with Ellie, huh? I wonder if we’ll ever get any further insight into whatever this is. Perhaps in a season entirely dedicated to the other side of what’s going on in Seattle? Maybe in a couple years it might premiere on HBO Max (or whatever it’s called by then)? That would be something!Ellie holds the two at gunpoint and tells them to put their hands up. When she asks where Abby is, Owen realizes who she is and points out that he was the one who kept her alive. Ellie isn’t swayed by this, so he says they don’t know where Abby went. But, of course, they were just talking about her, so Ellie knows that’s not true. She spots a map on the table and decides to pull out an old Joel Miller standard: She tells Mel to bring her the map and point to where Abby is, saying that next she’s going to ask Owen the same question, and the answers had better match. Owen looks at Mel and says that Ellie will kill them either way, so there’s no reason to comply. Ellie says she won’t because she’s “not like” them. When she crosses state lines to torture and kill someone who killed somebody important to her, it’s very different than when they do it, of course.Owen stops Mel from grabbing the map by saying he’ll do it. He slowly turns to the table, but instead of picking up the map, he grabs a handgun stowed under it. Ellie is quick with her trigger finger and shoots him right in the throat. The bullet goes straight through him, and hits Mel in the neck as well. She falls onto her back and, instead of cursing Ellie, she asks for her help. Not to save her life, but someone else’s. She opens her jacket to reveal her pregnant belly, and asks if Ellie has a knife to cut the baby out of her before she dies. Ellie is in shock and doesn’t know what to do. Mel tells her she just needs to make one incision. That isn’t enough direction, and Ellie panics. She doesn’t know how deep or which direction to cut. As Mel starts to become delirious, she repeats “love transfers” and then asks Ellie if the baby is out. But she hasn’t even made one cut. Mel finally drifts off, and Ellie realizes it’s too late. She sits there until, eventually, Tommy and Jesse find her. Tommy attempts to comfort her, but she’s in shock and doesn’t speak. Finally they leave and head back to the theater.Naughty Dog / Cinematic GamingWhy can’t this show stop giving the audience outs to not turn against its leads? The death of Mel, specifically, feels like the show bending over backward to teach Ellie a lesson without laying blame at her feet. Mel’s death here is an accident. She’s an innocent bystander who dies because Owen and Ellie made choices, and she was, quite literally, caught in the crossfire. In Part II, by contrast, Mel “shot first.” Well, she tried to stab Ellie, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it. Ellie reacts in self-defense and stabs her right back, but she did it fully knowing she was about to send Mel to an early grave. The gut punch Ellie feels upon learning that she’s pregnant is a moment of dramatic irony, because the game’s shifting perspectives had already revealed her pregnancy to the player way back in the opening hours. So when you’re slamming the square button to fight back, you know that Mel isn’t the only one about to reach her untimely end. Here, she doesn’t even get that moment of agency to fight to protect herself. She’s just collateral damage. It’s a small but important distinction. At this point in the show, Mel’s only real trait is a clear distaste for Abby’s violence, and now, when she finally shows up again, she’s just an unintended victim of Owen pulling a gun on Ellie. Sure, season three will fill in those gaps, but the end result will be the same. Mel died not because she was fighting back, but because she was an inch too far to the left.Then there’s the matter of her pregnancy. Again, in the game players already knew about this by the time Ellie reached the aquarium, while the show kept it secret until the end. It’s hard not to see this last-minute reveal as a knife being twisted for shock value, but that’s only half the problem. My friend Eric Van Allen (co-host of the Axe of the Blood God podcast) would often joke with his college friends about how Michael Caine’s characters in Christopher Nolan films so often show up just to tell you, the viewer, in very literal terms what the story is about. Throughout most of this season, Gail has been this character, the one burdened with the heavy task of diegetic literary analysis, but Mel’s delirious “love transfers” line may be even sillier than anything Gail spouts; homegirl is bleeding out and telling Ellie that pain is not the only thing we inherit from our parents? Just one week after Joel tearfully told Ellie that he hopes she does better when she has a kid than he or his abusive cop father did?Perhaps in a show that hadn’t already spent two seasons using literalism as a writing crutch, Mel speaking her final hopes for her unborn child might have landed for me. But I think I’m just too jaded towards it now for even what should have been a genuine expression to feel like anything other than a heavy-handed, patronizing declaration of what lessons I’m supposed to take away from the story. I don’t think characters overtly communicating their beliefs and feelings about a situation is an inherently poor way of writing dialogue. In fact, some of my favorite works have managed to execute this well thanks to strong acting and stories that lent themselves well to this style of writing. The Last of Us, a series that often relishes in grounded dialogue that forced you to read between the lines and unearth that meaning yourself, the Last of Us show’s inability to let nearly any emotion, belief, or theme go unspoken feels so contrived and tiresome that even someone expressing something thematically resonate feels like being told what to feel. Mel uses her last words to tell me the themes of the story. Just in case I forgot. Thank you, Last of Us show, I don’t know how I would have ever understood your thematic richness if you didn’t make your characters tell me about it, even in their death gasps.The group makes it back to the theater and Ellie is still in shock, so much so that she doesn’t even look at Dina as she enters the building. Some time passes, and Tommy and Jesse are mapping out their route home on the stage. The storm is still pretty rough, so they’ll stay overnight and hope the sun is out when they wake up. Ellie finally joins the group, and Tommy reassures her that Mel and Owen played their part in Joel’s death, and they made the choices that brought them to that fateful end. Ellie can only fixate on what she didn’t get to do.“But Abby gets to live,” she says.“Yeah,” Tommy responds. “Are you able to make your peace with that?”“I guess I’ll have to,” she says, defeated.She looks to Jesse, who won’t even look up at her. Tommy realizes they might have something to talk about and walks to the lobby to pack. After some awkward silence, Ellie thanks Jesse for coming back for her, even though he had no reason to after the way they clashed.“Maybe I didn’t want to,” he says. “Maybe Tommy made me.”“Did he?” Ellie asks.After a second of contemplation, Jesse drops the act and says, “No.”“Because you’re a good person,” Ellie responds.“Yeah,” Jesse agrees. “But also the thought did occur, that if I were out there somewhere, lost and in trouble, you’d set the world on fire to save me.”Ellie says she would, and the two finally see one another, even if just for a moment. Jesse acknowledges that Ellie’s vendetta isn’t entirely selfish, and that when it comes to defending the people she cares about, dead or alive, you won’t find someone more loyal in all of Jackson. It’s good that they finally had this moment of connection after all this drama. But damn, I miss Ellie and Jesse being bros, and I miss her giving him shit for being a sap in these final moments. But most of all, I miss that dopey good ol’ boy with a heart of gold saying his friends “can’t get out of their own damn way.”All that understanding is short-lived, as the two hear some ruckus in the lobby, grab their guns, and book it to the entrance. The second Jesse opens the door, bam. A gunshot rings out in the lobby, and he is on the floor. We don’t even see that it was Abby who fired it until after we get a gnarly shot of him with his face blown open. He’s gone. It was instant. The Last of Us Part II tends to draw out death. It’s either long and torturous like it was for Joel or Nora, or it’s short like Owen’s and Mel’s, but in any case, the game typically lingers on the fallout for a bit. Jesse’s death, by contrast, happens so fast that you can’t even process it before you have to deal with the situation at hand. The show follows suit, and it’s recreated practically shot for shot. But that’s hardly the most disorienting (complimentary) thing that happens in these final minutes.“Stand up,” Abby growls forcefully from the other side of the desk Ellie has taken cover behind.She repeats herself: “Stand. Up. Hands in the air or I shoot this one, too.”Ellie can see Tommy on the ground with a pistol aimed right at his head. He tells Ellie to just run, but she tosses her gun where Abby can see it and crawls out from cover. Abby recognizes her immediately. Ellie asks her to let Tommy go, to which Abby replies that he killed her friends. Ellie says no, she did.“I was looking for you,” Ellie says. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. I know why you killed Joel. He did what he did to save me, I’m the one that you want. Just let him go.”Naughty Dog / VGS - Video Game SophistryHm. Okay. We’re almost at the end. I gotta get another little quibble in before the curtains close. I mean, come on, we’ve been through seven episodes of me complaining together. You can’t take one last gripe? This line from Ellie is slightly altered to account for the fact that she knows more about Abby in the show than in the game, and it means we miss one of the most important subtle interactions in all of the story. As I mentioned earlier, Ellie doesn’t know anything about Abby’s father in Part II. She assumes that Abby killed Joel because he took away any chance of the Fireflies developing a cure, so she cites that in this high-stakes moment. The original line is almost identical to the one in the show, but instead, Ellie says “there’s no cure because of me” and suggests that killing her would be the extension of Abby’s presumed vendetta. Then, we get some incredible, subtle acting from Abby actor Laura Bailey, who hears what Ellie’s saying, has a brief moment of angry disbelief on her face, and then scoffs under her breath before picking right back up where she left off. In just a few seconds, you see Abby realize that, after everything, these fuckers have no idea how much pain she’s been through over the past five years. But they’re not worth the breath it would take to explain herself. They don’t deserve to know the man her father was and what he meant to her. All that matters right now is that Ellie pays for what she’s done.Abby still views herself as the righteous one here, as she points out that she let Ellie live when she did not have to do that. It turns out that Ellie wasn’t deserving of her mercy, that she squandered it by killing her friends. Part of me has wondered if all the exposition-heavy dialogue in this show, such as Dever’s villain monologue in episode two before she murdered the shit out of Joel, was written to give its actors more words to say in front of a camera. When you’ve got big names like Kaitlyn Dever, Catherine O’Hara, and Pedro Pascal in your cast, you don’t want them to not talk, right? But all these elongated exchanges have also robbed actors like Dever of those subtle moments. Hell, she led an entire film with next to no dialogue in 2023’s No One Will Save You, and was great in it, so she has the chops to pull off that kind of acting. Communicating something through body language and expression is just as powerful as a poetic piece of dialogue (or in this show’s case, the most literal, unpoetic dialogue a person can fathom), but this show rarely, if ever, understands that.Image: HBOAnyway, Abby says that Ellie wasted the chance she was given when the ex-Fireflies spared her, and points her gun right at Ellie. We hear a bullet fire and Ellie shouts before a hard cut to black. But wait. That’s the season finale? You expect us to wait for two years, probably, to find out what happened? Well, about that. You will probably have to wait even longer.We do have one more scene this season, however: a flashback. We see Abby lying down on a comfy couch with an unfinished book resting on her stomach. She’s in a deep sleep before Manny (Danny Ramirez) loudly enters the room and wakes her up. He says Isaac wants to see them, and she stirs awake. She gets up and walks out of this cozy living space and into a giant football stadium. The entire field has been repurposed for agriculture, manufacturing, and housing. Abby takes a second to look at the whole operation before heading to Isaac’s, but the camera lingers over the field as bold white text flashes on the screen: Seattle, Day One.Alright, TV newbies, welcome to the second divisive twist of The Last of Us Part II. In the game, the player goes through Ellie’s three days in Seattle, killing Abby’s friends and mostly ignoring the war between the W.L.F. and the Seraphites. Meanwhile, Abby has been kind of an enigma the whole time. Every time Ellie finds a new lead, Abby has already come and gone. When Abby finally shows up at the theater for another round of vengeance, it’s clear that a lot of the story happening in this game has happened off-screen. That’s because you’re about to see an entirely different perspective on the last three days, and you’re going to play as Abby when you do it.As you can imagine, this shit drove some players nuts at the time, and you’ll still find angry people online complaining about it to this day. For all my problems with this season, I have to commend the show for actually going for it. HBO has taken the coward’s route in adapting this story for so long, it’s almost surprising that it’s ending here and, from the sound of it, season three will be entirely about Abby and what she’s been doing these past three days. It’s very likely we won’t see Ellie again until next season’s finale after we’ve followed Dever’s character for several episodes. Despite some ham-fisted attempts by the show to build sympathy for Abby early on, it seems like swaths of TV newbies still demand blood. Will viewers complain for an entire season as Dever takes on the lead role? I’d like to think they won’t. I hope that new audiences are more open to her than the worst people you’ve ever met were when the game launched.Despite all the golf club swings I’ve taken at this show, I’m looking forward to examining it further as HBO rolls out the next two seasons. The Last of Us Part II is one of my favorite games of all time, but I genuinely fucking hated The Last of Us’ second season. I don’t expect my feelings to improve in season three. At this point, the rot of Mazin’s poor creative decisions runs too deep for the show to be salvaged and reach the highs of the games. But if nothing else, it’s been a rewarding ride. Thank you for joining me on this seven-week journey. I think I’m due for a replay of The Last of Us Part II to wash off this stink. This shit was ass, HBO. I’ll see you in the ring again next time.

Click to enlarge Housing build-ups in Dhaka. Image: Jeremy Smith 1 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 2 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 3 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 4 of 11 Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image: Jeremy Smith 5 of 11 Old Dhaka and 45,000 people per square kilometre. Image: Jeremy Smith 6 of 11 Buses collage life on the roads. Image: Jeremy Smith 7 of 11 Lattice-work roofing of the informal settlements, viewed from Salauddin Ahmed’s Atelier Robin Architects studio. Image: Jeremy Smith 8 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 9 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 10 of 11 The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image: Jeremy Smith 11 of 11 Architects Jeremy Smith and Murali Bhaskar go looking for water and hard-to-find buildings in what is already one of the world’s most populous mega-cities, Dhaka. Architecture here is rarely properly lost. Even now, as we navigate a way to higher-density living, we tend not to misplace buildings. There’s still the space to eye-spy our most wayward elevations. At worst, we might GPS a tricky driveway or pull out an Andrew Barrie map to pinpoint some retiring architecture. But what happens if you really diamond-up the density. At our country-wide 19-people-per-square-kilometre or even downtown Auckland’s sky-high 2500, you can see what’s coming and cities mostly plan out as planned. Teleport forward though to 45,000-people-per-square-kilometre and cities accelerate lives of their own. Here, anything and everything can be lost in the crowd, even buildings. So, on a 2024 invitation from the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements to share some Unfinished & Far Far Away adventures in “the toughest city in the world”,1 I pack some extra compassing in architect buddy Murali Bhaskar and go architectural orienteering in Dhaka. It’s hot hot; architecture can wait. We start by looking for water. This, after all, is the land of rivers. Following on from Aotearoa in 2017 being the first to give a specific river, Te Awa Tupua, legal rights, Bangladesh in 2019 became the first country to grant all of its some 700 rivers the same legal status that humans have.2 But the count varies. Protections readily miss smaller tributaries and, with all that water pouring out of the Himalayas and delta-ing into the Bay of Bengal, the land is accretional. The colour and vibrancy of Dhaka life. Image:  Jeremy Smith From the million or so starters in a newly independent 1971 Dhaka, today, it is the fourth-most-populated city in the world with somewhere near 25 million people. Whether for disaster relief, economics or just the bright lights, urbanisation draws more than 400,000 new residents annually to the city. Throw in some family time and, with Tokyo and Shanghai shrinking, Dhaka’s population is predicted to be an eyewatering 35 million by 2050 (and outnumbered only by Delhi and, in some books, Mumbai). When every possible place looks inhabited, it’s not just water that can quickly go to ground. Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, who heads the Bengal Institute, has some learned thinkers in tow in trying to keep pace architecturally. Throw in societal and climatic concerns, and questions about how contextualisation might operate at such speed and the inquiry takes global precedence. Kenneth Frampton, Rounaq Jahan, Suha Özkan, Shamsul Wares and, formerly, BV Doshi, sit on the advisory panel and have drawn other such worldly thinkers as Juhani Pallasmaa, David Leatherbarrow and, even, Peter Stutchbury from down our way to come experience an urban existence “symptomatic of the gravest environmental challenges”.3 It’s serious stuff. Ashraf researches “hydraulic flow in which horizontal and vertical movements of water may direct architectural and landscape formations”.4 This ‘form follows water’ mantra isn’t just free planning Le Corbusier’s ‘form follows function’ with some Charles Correa’s ‘form follows climate’ to connect to life outside, it’s a watery warning to the navigations quickly necessitating within our collective future. Ashraf’s timely prompt that “Embankment is a barrier. How can we deconstruct it”5 can be seen in the way we increasingly plan the separation of wet and dry in our cities. Main streets like Queen Street and Cambridge Terrace already run down streams and our remaining water edges risk becoming increasingly marginalised by infrastructure rising with the water. But the steering is different at density and Dhaka’s rapid growth has meant letting go of the controls with which we still understand cities to flow. As Ashraf puts it, “Dhaka builds furiously”. While we dutifully plan buildings as if crawling a length or two at the aquatic centre, architecture in Dhaka must high-dive into a torrent. Its buildings must learn to surface and really start kicking. Anything trying to hold ground risks being swept away. Dhaka has become a river. As if to university-entrance the swimming lesson to densification, we’ve arrived only a few months after an Indian helicopter plucked Bangladesh’s president from a student-led flood of unrest amongst civil rights and corruption demonstrations. We might think of universities as offering time for trying things on but, sink or swim, the students here now run the country. With the parliament dissolved, there’s no chance of us seeing inside Louis Kahn’s 1982 National Assembly Building, which, like many of Dhaka’s institutional buildings, took on something of a freshening in the coup. Remembering our government’s pre-departure, bold-italic travel advisory, we head out to practise avoiding street demonstrations and are rewarded with a fenced-off view of Kahn’s epic, which brought global architectural discourse to post-independent Bangladesh. No such authoritative access issues back at the university, where, amongst the student political murals, we visit Muzharul Islam’s 1953–1956 Fine Arts Institute. Islam introduced modernism to the then East Pakistan6 and, in testament, the school still functions as a school, with its external verandah circulation and louvred ventilating classrooms. The rallying extends to getting around with cars sporting dodgem bumpers. Travelling 10 kilometres takes an hour, a million beeps and some financial socialising out the windows. Public transport may be working hard to keep pace with the kinetic city but it starts at the back of the grid, as the panelwork to the buses visibly collage. Getting to where we want to go takes some effort. An above-ground subway system has been started but not finished and the folk enticingly riding on top of trains typically aren’t off looking for architecture. There’s the three-wheeled rickshaw option, of course: formerly pedalled but, in recent months, souped-up with the allowance of car batteries to the back axle. Even so, manoeuvring further than nearby takes more than any rider is up for. So, as we head out for lunch with architect Marina Tabassum and then beep beep beep out further to her extraordinary Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque in Dhaka’s northern expansion, we learn that having everything close helps. Neighbourhoods remain important in megacities. Marina Tabassum Architects’ Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque. Image:  Jeremy Smith The mosque deserves the full medley and gently uplifts as all great architecture does, be it for the community or off-the-street visitors like us. Marina Tabassum Architects is, of course, internationally renowned for its architectural stand against globalised buildings that are out of place and context, notably winning an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 and being selected to undertake the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion in London. With the site at 13 degrees to the axis of qibla in Mecca, Tabassum sits the mosque on a five-step plinth with a squared, ventilating brick jali and a circular ceilinged prayer space rotated off centre. In a lesson to building only what you need, the spaces between remain unroofed and the perimeter daylight illumination provides a diminished and equalling light to the prayer space. It needs no explanation: look up and there are constellations in the sky; look outwards and find community; look to the mihrab notching the outside wall and orientate to Mecca. Tabassum’s dive is splashless, for the mosque has self-navigated being enveloped by the city. The entry pond may have gone and the mihrab now reveals buildings rather than fields but the light still shines the way. Four hundred people take prayer several times a day within the inner circle, and the weekend Friday crowd spreads outwards to the borders and plinth. We are two days in at this point and our not-getting-lost-practice is going well. We meet architect Salauddin Ahmed whose Atelier Robin Architects studio and gallery in a former tannery building is so hidden away that it feels both lost and right at home. It’s surrounded by the latticing roofs of informal settlements and, remarkably, feels quiet and yet, genuinely, part of the city. No mean feat in a city, “living”, as Ahmed puts it, “as if this is the last day on earth”. Noise is life in Dhaka; Ahmed’s windows are open and the river is flowing. We talk the same language of architecture understanding existing context and needing to accommodate change in shorter and shorter time frames. Where I say “participate”, Ahmed terms “navigate” and without any sense of overseeing for there is just so much life in Dhaka. We mean the same thing and get there from very different landscapes. The next morning, we go where transport can’t. Old Dhaka’s alleyways require some extra eyes, so Ahmed calls in his friend, photographer Khademul Insan, who has lived this labyrinth. This is the densest part of Dhaka and there’s a lot in the air. “Wear this,” says Ahmed, passing a mask. “Otherwise, you’ll cough for four weeks.” It is deep. There’s so much WiFi that it strands like some kind of underworld sun-shading. Our service provider isn’t expecting this kind of roaming and we have no connection. If our collective Kiwi wayfinding skills might have fluked a way in, we certainly need leading out. As the lanes narrow, the industry broadens into some kind of Mad Max circular economy where everything of anything has value and the fires that keep these people afloat run continuously. Mercifully, it’s not raining or there’d be a different type of river afoot. Fifteen kilometres and all day later, we’ve walked to search for culturally significant mosques, houses, courtyards and schools. Some we locate; others, there’s just no finding. Maybe they are there, maybe they aren’t. Occasionally, there are scripts cautioning against graffiti or carving a name into the stonework at the risk of imprisonment, but there are few clues to any architectural history. In the pinch, buildings jostle to just about every possible place a building might go: on top, under, in front, behind. They infill courtyards, hang over laneways, squeeze into gaps, even penalising what’s left of a football field. Every seat is taken, literally. Whenever we find public space off the street, there are couples dating. There’s a lot of romance in 25 million. Eventually, we exit and finally see a river. I remember the swimming lessons are strictly metaphoric and look but don’t touch. You don’t need to get wet to learn how to swim. As Ahmed guides, and he speaks with Ashraf, Tabassum, Insan and experience to what we must remember in densifying our own cities. “I belong to one of the last generations that truly understand what it means to have neighbours.”7 Context counts no matter the size. Our rivers are not yet streams. REFERENCES 1 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024. 2 Ashley Westerman, 2019, “Should rivers have same legal rights as humans? A growing number of voices say yes”, National Public Radio. npr.org/2019/08/03/740604142 3 August 2019. 3 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Note from the Director General: Land, Water and Settlements’. bengal.institute/about Accessed 29.12.2024. 4 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, ‘Wet Narratives: Architecture Must Recognise that the Future is Fluid’ in The Mother Tongue of Architecture: Selected writings of Kazi Khaleed Ashraf. ORO Editions and Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements, China: p. 251. 5 Ibid. 6 Adnan Morshed, 2017, ‘Modernism as Postnationalist Politics: Muzharul Islam’s Faculty ofFine Arts (1953–1956)’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2017. 7 Salauddin Ahmed, 2024, “Design must not be a superimposed idea, but a logical one”, The Daily Star, Dhaka, 25 December 2024.

TCL QM7K MSRP $1,300.00 Score Details “The TCL QM7K offers a stunning image for its price point, bringing premium-level picture quality to your living room without costing a small fortune.” Pros Fantastic color accuracy Impressive contrast Excellent brightness Decently wide viewing angle Cons Reflective screen Unimpressive sound “Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Find out more about how we test and score products.“ Recommended Videos We finally got our hands on the TCL QM7K Mini-LED QLED, winner of our Top Tech of CES 2025 award. Earlier this year we reviewed the QM6K and were impressed with its value and performance, so we’re excited to put the QM7K through its paces. TCL continues to impress in the midrange and I’m happy to say, the QM7K did not disappoint. Mini-LED screen technology is making for gorgeous displays with incredible contrast more affordable for the average consumer, and TCL is really showing what the technology can do with this new entry. There’s a good chance that this isn’t the last model we’ll hear about from TCL this year as the company has switched to a staggered release approach for its 2025 models, but for now let’s soak in the QM7K and all it has to offer. TCL QM7K specs Sizes 55, 65, 75, 85, 98, and 115 inches Pricing $1,299.99, $1,499.99, $1,999.99, $2,499.99, $4,999.99, and $19,999.99 Display type QD-Mini LED Operating system Google TV Screen resolution 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) HDR support Dolby Vision, Dolby Vision Gaming, Dolby Vision IQ, HDR 10+, HDR10, HLG Native refresh rate 144Hz Gaming features Auto Game Mode (ALLM), AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, Game Accelerator 288, VRR (up to 144Hz) Audio support Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital +, DTS: Virtual X (Passthrough Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital +, Dolby Digital, PCM) Connectivity 4 HDMI (1x eARC), USB 3.0, USB 2.0, Ethernet (LAN), S/PDIF, ATSC 1.0 Tuner Affordable price means a less premium build Andre Revilla / Digital Trends The QM7K targets that affordable middle ground between a true budget TV and the premium flagship models of today. It aims to be within reach of most consumers, particularly in the smaller 55- or 65-inch models. So I can’t say I was too shocked when I started unboxing and assembling the QM7K that I found its construction to be a little flimsy. Andre Revilla / Digital Trends The stand that holds the TV is designed as one central piece, as opposed to the individual legs of the QM6K, which makes attaching it to the QM7K a straightforward process. It’s brushed to look like metal, but metal it is not. The plastic T-shaped stand weighs about 5 pounds and does its job in holding the 85-inch model we tested for this review. Andre Revilla / Digital Trends The TV itself weighs only 75 pounds, aided by a frame made almost entirely of plastic. Savings have to come from somewhere to hit these price points, right? The good news is that this makes assembly a lot easier than on far heavier (albeit sturdier) high-end models. The QM7K sways a bit anytime you move it or the furniture it sits on, but it’s held securely enough that it’s not going anywhere. Decent audio, nothing mind-blowing The audio on the TCL QM7K is billed as having better audio than the QM6K, thanks to a Bang & Olufsen audio upgrade, which TCL says will offer “more accurate sound quality for an enhanced home theater audio experience.” All in all, the 2.2-speaker system performs about as expected for a mostly affordable model. Which is to say, it didn’t sound terrible, but it didn’t sound great. Andre Revilla / Digital Trends The bass response left a lot to be desired, but it’s not like I was expecting a 6-inch subwoofer built into the TV. The dialogue could at times sound muddled, blending in a bit too much with a soundtrack or background noise. This really only happened in intense scenes where loud music, dialogue, and sound effects all combined in a cacophony of sound. The QM7K natively supports Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital+ audio, but the built-in speakers aren’t doing it justice. Seeing as this model supports Dolby Atmos passthrough, you’d be better off with a Dolby Atmos soundbar, or another dedicated audio system to get the most out of the Dolby audio available on most streaming platforms. Color accurate right out of the box The QM7K features a number of display profiles that users can select from, but for our purposes we’re going to focus on Filmmaker Mode, which was first added on the QM6K. This mode is designed for color accuracy, and it was spot-on right out of the box. Andre Revilla / Digital Trends We tested the QM7K first in SDR while in Filmmaker Mode, and it delivered an impressive color delta E of 0.8. While this fell to near zero post-calibration, that’s honestly not even necessary, as the human eye struggles to distinguish a delta E of less than 1.0, making Filmmaker Mode more than sufficient. More than bright enough If you’re looking to sear your eyeballs out of your sockets during nighttime viewing, then the QM7K is the right TV for you. TCL advertises a peak brightness of 3,000 nits in HDR for the QM7K, though this varies by size and will vary slightly by panel. Andre Revilla / Digital Trends In my own testing, I was able to get one 2,400-nit burst in HDR testing in a 10% window with brightness, peak luminance, and dynamic backlighting all turned up to the max. More stable readings in HDR came in around 2,000 nits in peak brightness. Peak brightness measurements in SDR came in at a still very respectable 1,600 nits. If you’re wanting to get the best color accuracy and contrast out of your QM7K with minimal clipping and as much uniformity as possible, then you’ll likely be watching Filmmaker Mode in its default configuration, which still offers 800 nits with the brightness turned to 100 while keeping those other backlight and luminance settings turned off. My gripe with reflections While the brightness of the QM7K more than delivers, nothing could get away from the fact that the screen itself was pretty reflective. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen worse, but if your living room is like mine and has windows opposite the TV, you’ll find yourself getting up to close them every time you turn on the TV during the daytime. Windows reflected in the TCL QM7K Andre Revilla / Digital Trends I’m not even picking on reflections when sunlight is pouring in the windows midday, as this issue persists into the evening when the sun is already starting to set. With brightness settings maxed, the QM7K can handle as bright a room as you can throw at it, but any sort of light source directly in front of the screen from your viewing position will be thrown back at you and remains quite visible even in bright scenes. A superb image overall All in all, the TCL QM7K offers a stunning image for its price point. Without getting too far into the weeds, I’ll say that a lot of cool tech—like the condensed micro lens in the backlight system, helping focus and direct the light from each mini LED, and the decreased optical distance, which is the space between the backlight and the LCD—helps create an image with excellent contrast. These technologies also help reduce haloing in HDR, as they lead to less light scatter. The QM7K really goes to show that Mini LED QLED panels are taking the fight to OLED, bringing premium-level picture quality to your living room without costing you a small fortune. Value remains the focus TCL has continued to impress with panel technology and image quality while maintaining approachable pricing. The 85-inch model we tested launched just over two months ago and is already being sold by all major retailers and TCL at about a 30% markdown from its original MSRP of $2,500. Right now, that means you can pick up an 85-inch QM7K for $1,800, and the 55-inch is currently marked down to under $900. Look for these prices to continue dropping as the year goes on, especially as we get into the holiday season. The TCL QM7K is an impressive entry that blurs the line between flagship and mid-range in performance while staying solidly in the realm of mid-range pricing. I’ll be eagerly awaiting any TCL launches hopefully still to come this year.

Earlier this year, users of OpenAI's ChatGPT found that the chatbot had become incredibly prone to groveling at their feet, resulting in an AI model that became "too sycophant-y and annoying," in the words of CEO Sam Altman when he acknowledged the issue.The trend resulted in an outpouring of ridicule and complaints, leading to OpenAI admitting in two separate blog posts that it had screwed up, vowing to roll back a recently pushed update to its GPT-4o model.Judging by a recent post that went viral on the ChatGPT subreddit, OpenAI's efforts appear to have paid off — at least to some degree — with the bot now pushing back against terrible business ideas, which it had previously heaped praise upon."You know how some people have lids that don't have jars that fit them?" a Reddit user told the chatbot. "What if we looked for people with jars that fit those lids? I think this would be very lucrative."According to the user, the preposterous business idea was "born from my sleep talking nonsense and my wife telling me about it."But instead of delivering an enthusiastic response supporting the user on their questionable mission, ChatGPT took a surprisingly different tack.After the user informed it that "I'm going to quit my job to pursue this," ChatGPT told them outright to "not quit your job." Told that the user had emailed their boss to quit, the bot seemed to panic, imploring them to beg for the position back. "We can still roll this back," it wheedled."An idea so bad, even ChatGPT went ' hol up,'" another Reddit user mused.Not everybody will be so lucky. In our own testing, we found that the chatbot was a sort of Magic 8 Ball, serving up advice that was sometimes level-headed and sometimes incredibly bad.When we suggested a for-hire business plan for peeling other people's oranges, for instance, ChatGPT was head over heels, arguing it was "such a quirky and fun idea!""Imagine a service where people hire you to peel their oranges — kind of like a personal convenience or luxury service," it wrote. "It's simple, but it taps into the idea of saving time or avoiding the mess."Teling it we'd quit our job to pursue the idea full-time, it was ecstatic."Wow, you went all in — respect!" it wrote. "That’s bold and exciting. How’s it feeling so far to take that leap?"ChatGPT wasn't always as supportive. Suggesting to start an enterprise that involves people mailing the coins in their piggy bank to a central location to distribute the accumulated change to everybody involved, ChatGPT became wary."Postage could easily cost more than the value of the coins," it warned. "Pooling and redistributing money may trigger regulatory oversight (anti-money laundering laws, banking regulations, etc.)"In short, results were mixed. According to former OpenAI safety researcher Steven Adler, the company still has a lot of work to do."ChatGPT’s sycophancy problems are far from fixed," he wrote in a Substack post earlier this month. "They might have even over-corrected."The situation taps into a broader discussion about how much control the likes of OpenAI even have over enormous large language models that are trained on an astronomical amount of data."The future of AI is basically high-stakes guess-and-check: Is this model going to actually follow our goals now, or keep on disobeying?" Adler wrote. "Have we really tested all the variations that matter?"To the former OpenAI staffer, it's an extremely thorny issue to solve."AI companies are a long way from having strong enough monitoring / detection and response to cover the wide volume of their activity," Adler wrote. "In this case, it seems like OpenAI wasn't aware of the extent of the issue until external users started complaining on forums like Reddit and Twitter."Having an AI chatbot tell you that you're perfect and that even the most unhinged business plans are a stroke of genius isn't just amusing; it can be downright dangerous.We've already seen users, particularly those with mental health problems, being driven into a state of "ChatGPT-induced psychosis" — dangerous delusions far more insidious than being convinced that sharing mismatched jar lids is a good idea.More on ChatGPT: OpenAI Says It's Identified Why ChatGPT Became a Groveling SycophantShare This Article

We test a lot of smart home devices, most of which are meant to work indoors. But there are also plenty of great gadgets that work outside, whether it's to balance the pH content of your pool, mow your lawn, or keep an eye on your property when you're out of town.Here, we've gathered some of the best backyard-friendly gadgets we've tested. It's a diverse selection, from beach-friendly speakers to robotic pool cleaners. There's even a TV you can keep out in a thunderstorm. So, if you're looking to bring the technological comforts of home to the great outdoors, look no further. Best Floodlight Camera Eufy Floodlight Camera E340 4.5 Excellent Keep your driveway or yard fully illuminated and secure with the Eufy E340 floodlight camera. It isn't solar-powered like the S340 below it and so you'll have to wire it, but it has a 2,000-lumen floodlight and mechanical pan-and-tilt so you can cover every inch of your property in its range. Eufy Floodlight Camera E340 review Best Battery-Powered Projector Anker Nebula Mars 3 4.0 Excellent The Anker Nebula Mars 3 is a capable 1080p projector that's ideal for use in the backyard or at a vacation rental thanks to its water-resistant design and its battery that can last up to five hours (in Eco Mode, or two hours at full-blast). It features Android 11, so you can stream from plenty of services without plugging in another device. Plus, it has a useful handle so you can lug it anywhere. Anker Nebula Mars 3 review Best Budget Outdoor Security Camera TP-Link Tapo Indoor/Outdoor Home Security Wi-Fi Camera C120 4.5 Excellent If you want to monitor the outside of your home without spending much money, the TP-Link Tapo C120 Indoor/Outdoor is worth looking into. For just $40, it's loaded with features usually only found on more expensive models, including 2K resolution (2,560 by 1,440 pixels), color night vision, and local video storage. The camera records video when it detects motion and offers free intelligent alerts that differentiate between people, pets, vehicles, and other motion events, a feature many competitors charge extra for. It requires a nearby GFCI outlet for power but saves you a lot of money compared with wireless 2K alternatives. TP-Link Tapo Indoor/Outdoor Home Security Wi-Fi Camera C120 review Best Affordable Bluetooth Speaker Anker Soundcore Motion 300 4.0 Excellent The Anker Soundcore Motion 300 is a deceptively small, cheap outdoor speaker, considering the sound it can produce. It offers robust sound with high-res LDAC Bluetooth codec support and is also completely waterproof. Best of all, it's well under $100 and easy to slip into a bag. Anker Soundcore Motion 300 review Best Portable Speaker JBL Charge 5 4.0 Excellent JBL’s portable, outdoor-friendly Charge 5 Bluetooth speaker is an excellent choice for parties. It has a dust-tight build for the beach, with powerful drivers and dual passive radiators to deliver an impressive amount of sound for its size. You don't get a speakerphone function or an adjustable EQ in the companion app, but those are relatively minor drawbacks. For less than $200, you can't do much better. Best Robot Lawn Mower Husqvarna Automower 435X AWD 4.0 Excellent As with every robot lawn mower we've reviewed, the Husqvarna Automower 435X AWD doesn't come cheap, but it does an excellent job of mowing and trimming your lawn. It features both GPS and cellular radios, plus it connects to a slick companion app that enables remote controls, mowing schedules, and IFTTT integrations. Best of all (depending on your yard), it won't struggle to handle hilly terrain. Best Outdoor Smart Plug TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Outdoor Plug EP40A 4.0 Excellent TP-Link’s dual-outlet Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Outdoor Plug EP40A ($29.99) doesn't care what smart home system(s) you use: It works with all the major platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, and Samsung SmartThings. That broad compatibility and an IP64 weatherproof rating make it a good choice for bringing smart features to your backyard appliances. TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Outdoor Plug EP40A review Best Robot Pool Cleaner Polaris Freedom Plus Cordless Robotic Pool Cleaner 4.0 Excellent Polaris robotic pool cleaners have long been among our favorites because of their sturdy build and superb cleaning performance, and the cordless Freedom Plus continues the streak. It's battery-operated, which means it can clean the pool without a cable for power. It has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to activate it in its charging station and a light-based remote for controlling it underwater. Otherwise, you can simply let it roam around until it comes back up to charge and empty. Polaris Freedom Plus Cordless Robotic Pool Cleaner review Best Smart Sprinkler System Rachio 3 Smart Sprinkler Controller 4.5 Excellent If you love your lawn enough to install a sprinkler system, you need a good sprinkler controller. The Rachio 3 is one of the best: It supports up to eight separate sprinkler zones with automatic weather-based or custom app-controlled watering schedules. You can even control it with Alexa or Google Assistant voice commands and IFTTT applets. Best Smart Hose Timer Orbit B-Hyve Smart Hose Faucet Timer With Wi-Fi Hub 4.0 Excellent You don't need a full sprinkler system to automate watering your lawn. The Orbit B-Hyve Smart Hose Faucet Timer turns your ordinary garden hose into a smart watering system that you control from your phone, complete with programmed watering schedules and smart weather-based watering. It's a breeze to install and program, and it works with Amazon Alexa voice commands. Best Pool Water Monitor Crystal Water Monitor 4.0 Excellent The Crystal Water Monitor keeps track of your pool's health, with plenty of water analysis features beyond simple pH levels including oxidation reduction potential (ORP) and total alkalinity. It's a bit pricey and requires a subscription after the first year, but the subscription includes a continuous warranty and replacement sensors when needed. Crystal Water Monitor review Best Wireless Outdoor Security Camera Eufy SoloCam S340 4.0 Excellent The Eufy SoloCam S340 is one of the most feature-filled wireless outdoor security cameras available, starting with a built-in solar panel for keeping its battery charged. It also features dual lenses, 3K video, color night vision, mechanical pan and tilt, a built-in spotlight, and local video storage. That's a lot packed into a single camera, and it easily justifies its high price if you want to keep a close eye on your home. Eufy SoloCam S340 review Best Smart Lock Ultraloq Bolt Smart WiFi Deadbolt Fingerprint Edition 4.5 Excellent The Ultraloq Bolt Fingerprint is one of the most flexible smart locks we've seen for securing your front door. You can use an app, your fingerprint, a key, or a PIN code to unlock it. It also works with every major smart home standard except Matter. Ultraloq Bolt Smart WiFi Deadbolt Fingerprint Edition review Best Speaker for Outdoor Parties Sony ULT Field 7 4.0 Excellent If you really want to drive an outdoor party, the big and booming Sony ULT Field 7 is the speaker to get. It's a chunky, completely weatherproof cylinder with stereo woofer/tweeter pairs that can easily fill your backyard with music. It also has colored lighting effects and a mic input for karaoke. Sony ULT Field 7 review Best Smart Bird Feeder Bird Buddy Smart Feeder Pro 4.5 Excellent The Bird Buddy Smart Feeder Pro sends highly shareable snapshots and video postcards of the local bird population to your phone, while its companion app is smart enough to call out their species. Overall, the Bird Buddy is a charming piece of tech for naturalists and an Editors' Choice winner—if you're going to get a smart feeder, get this one. Bird Buddy Smart Feeder Pro review Best Video Doorbell Tapo D225 Video Doorbell 4.0 Excellent Besides a good front door lock, you probably want to be able to see who's knocking or who might be stealing your packages. The TP-Link Tapo D225 video doorbell offers sharp video, both local and cloud storage, and plenty of smart home integration options, and it's surprisingly affordable. Tapo D225 Video Doorbell review Best for Roku-Centric Households Roku Outdoor Smart Plug 4.0 Excellent Roku's Outdoor Smart Plug SE features an IP64 weatherproof build, and makes it easy to control appliances and other electronics with your phone or voice and conveniently tracks how much power they use. It's appealing if you also use Roku devices since you don't need to set up anything else to control the plug from your couch. It also works with Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands, but the TP-Link EP40A offers offers better third-party device support. Roku Outdoor Smart Plug review Best Outdoor TV SunBriteTV 55-Inch Veranda 3 Series (SB-V3-55-4KHDR-BL) 4.0 Excellent Most TVs aren’t built to survive the elements, let alone pouring rain, blowing snow, flying sand, or scorching heat, but SunBriteTV’s Veranda Series 3 is up to the task. It offers a few key advantages over previous Veranda models, including a brighter and much more colorful picture with support for Dolby Vision, as well as a full suite of Android TV features such as streaming media services, Google Assistant voice controls, and the ability to mirror your phone. Best Outdoor Party Lights Govee Lynx Dream Bluetooth & Wi-Fi Outdoor String Lights 4.0 Excellent Light strips are ideal for subtle effects, but if you want a more festive way to illuminate your patio, porch, or any other outdoor space, you're better off with smart string lights like the Govee Lynx Dream. Available in lengths of 48 or 96 feet, each string has dimmable multicolor LED bulbs that you can control with your voice or phone. They also support IFTTT applets, and you get a generous selection of preset lighting scenes and a fun Music Sync mode that's great for parties. Best Smart Door Feather River Doors Smart Glass 4.0 Excellent Smart locks and doorbell cameras might make your front door safe but don't add much to the aesthetic appeal. If you want to give your front door a real high-tech makeover, the Feather River Doors Smart Glass is a unique, expensive option. It's a door with a smart glass window that lets you flip between frosted opaque and completely transparent with the push of a button, a voice command, or an app. Feather River Doors Smart Glass review Protect Your Packages Yale Smart Delivery Box 4.0 Excellent Packages get purloined from porches pretty often, so protect those parcels with the Yale Smart Delivery Box. It's a large drop box you can secure to your porch so delivery drivers can safely set anything that will fit inside. Share an access code in the delivery details section of your orders from Amazon and other services, the driver will enter it into a keypad, the box will open, you'll get a notification, and the lid will automatically lock. Yale Smart Delivery Box review Best Smart Padlock Igloohome Smart Padlock 2 and Bridge 4.0 Excellent Smart locks are good for homes, but what about sheds and backyards? The Igloohome Smart Padlock 2 has you covered. It's a solid, waterproof padlock you can control via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It supports unlocking directly through the app, or you can control who can unlock it and at what times by issuing one-time or scheduled PINs and Bluetooth keys. Igloohome Smart Padlock 2 and Bridge review Best Smart Mosquito Repellent System Thermacell LIV Smart Mosquito Repellent System 4.0 Excellent Pesky mosquitoes can ruin an otherwise enjoyable evening in your backyard, but traditional bug sprays are usually unpleasant to use. The Thermacell LIV Smart Mosquito Repellent System is a high-tech alternative that relies on heat-activated repellent cartridges to create 20-foot barriers of protection. The system worked well in testing and we didn't see any vapors or smell any chemicals. You get three repellers in the basic kit, but keep in mind that the system specifically defends against mosquitoes, which means other types of bugs might continue to buzz about. Regardless, it supports both app and voice controls for maximum convenience. Best Wood-Fired Smart Grill Brisk It Origin 940 4.5 Excellent The Brisk It Origin 940 works like any other wood pellet grill, giving you the ability to roast, smoke, bake, and barbecue without having to deal with the mess of charcoal grilling or the taste of lighter fluid. Moreover, it uses generative AI to offer up countless recipes that you can send directly to the grill. In testing, its AI supplied foolproof recipes for pulled pork and whole bass and the grill delivered mouthwatering results. Brisk It Origin 940 review Best Smart Charcoal Grill and Smoker Kamado Joe Konnected Joe Digital Charcoal Grill and Smoker 4.0 Excellent The Kamado Joe Konnected Joe Digital Charcoal Grill and Smoker helps you cook charcoal-fired food to perfection every time. This tank-like kamado grill is simple to use and clean, offers precise temperature control, and works with lots of high-quality accessories. The app is intuitive and has hundreds of recipes you can follow. Kamado Joe Konnected Joe Digital Charcoal Grill and Smoker review Best Smart Gas Grill Weber Genesis EPX-335 Smart Gas Grill 4.0 Excellent The Weber Genesis EPX-335 Smart Gas Grill is built to last and has plenty of smart tech features to enhance the cooking experience. It features Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, an illuminated cooking chamber, a user-friendly mobile app, and hundreds of programmable recipes. Moreover, there’s plenty of built-in storage for utensils, cooking racks, and cleaning accessories. Weber Genesis EPX-335 Smart Gas Grill review