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Social media platform Bluesky has launched Trending Topics into beta, the company announced in a post on its platform. The new feature is one of the most-requested by users and matches a function that has been on rival Threads for around nine months, and on X (Twitter at the time) since at least 2017. The Trending section shows the top viral content on the platform, with topics like "Christmas," "Nosferatu" and "Wikipedia" (thanks to Elon Musk) currently on top. It can be found by clicking on search in both the desktop version and mobile apps, or you can disable it altogether in the settings, TechCrunch noted. Any words that you have muted won't appear in Trending topics either. Bluesky recently hit a big milestone with 25 million users, many of whom recently fled X following the US elections. Though still relatively small compared to Threads and X, users have remarked on the high levels of engagement along with the lack of bots and harassment compared to Elon Musk's platform. Other highly requested features still not implemented include bookmarks, editing, verification badges and private posts. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-launches-a-trending-topics-feature-in-search-140049208.html?src=rss
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Spoilers follow for Joy to the World. If theres one thing Steven Moffatt loves to do with Doctor Who, its to find a monster buried in the mundane. Hes made statues, shadows, lost children and even the idea of silence into some of the shows most terrifying villains. Sadly, the mysterious extra door you often find in older hotel rooms isnt as universal a concern, but its still a rich seam for him to mine. Thats the inspiration for Joy to the World, Doctor Whos 2024 Christmas Special. Which is light, fun and a little bit scattershot, much like Christmas is meant to be, right? When Doctor Who returned, the show was woven back into the UK's cultural firmament in a way it never had been before. Part of that process was adding the show to the BBC One Christmas Day schedule, making it a universal cultural touchstone. For most of its post-2005 run, it has aired an episode next to the Strictly Come Dancing and EastEnders festive specials. Imagine the British equivalent to those everyone-gathered-around-the-TV events like the Super Bowl or the Macys Day Parade, but on Christmas Day. Even if you dont like any of the fare on offer, youre still expected to sit with the family and consume it. With these specials, the prestige timeslot, longer runtime and bigger budget are burdens as much as they are benefits. The show has to play to a far broader audience than normal, with diehard fans sitting elbow-to-elbow with elderly relatives filling every silence with gossip about their neighbor's garden project. Consequently, the story needs to be a little looser, with less need for the audience to be paying undivided attention to whats going on. And it needs to be an oasis of fun in the melodramatic drudgery that is the BBC One Christmas Day schedule. Normally, the festive special would be the sole province of the showrunner but Russell T. Davies handed the reins to Steven Moffatt. Moffatt succeeded Davies as showrunner the first time around, co-created Sherlock and is widely-regarded as the best Who writer of the 21st century. With a pedigree as impeccable as that, and having already written "Boom" for the Ncuti Gatwas first season in the title road, expectations are high. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios Moffatt is an arch farce writer and has a strong grasp of structure, so its no surprise we open in medias res. The Doctor is offering room service to a variety of people in different time periods including Edmund Hilarys base camp at Everest and the Orient express before stumbling in on Joy in a miserable London hotel room in 2024. After the credits, we spool back to the Doctor arriving in the Time Hotel, which allows guests to vacation throughout history. Dont worry about causality or any A Sound of Thunder shenanigans, the Hotel is somehow built to protect its guests from screwing up the timeline. The Doctor is looking to steal some milk for his coffee from the hotel buffet, but his eye is caught on something sinister: A person carrying a briefcase with a handcuff chain is trying to check into a room. The Doctor recruits Trev, one of the employees, to keep watch while he scouts ahead to work out what scheme could be afoot. As it turns out, the case is sentient and evil, leaping from host to host and possessing each one in turn. Once its leapt to the next host, the last one disintegrates. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios Its here the Doctor bumps into Joy who, through hijinks, winds up handcuffed to the case in place of the hotel manager. When the Doctor opens the case to try and find a solution, the case threatens to kill whoever its connected to unless it gets a four digit code. Who shall provide the code? The Doctor, emerging from his own future, taking Joy with him while leaving our Doctor trapped in 2024 without the TARDIS. As the hotel door closes, the Doctor hurls abuse at his future self, about why hes always alone and people are always leaving him. Hes doubly upset as he never normally has to travel the long way around, one day after the other. And so, the episode essentially stops to give us an extended sequence of the Doctor making friends with Anita, the hotel manager. The Doctor gets a job as the hotels handyperson, and slowly lets his guard down, spending more time with Anita until theyre a platonic couple. Its a sequence youd never see in a regular episode, with snatches of the Doctor and Anitas life. He makes the microwave bigger on the inside, repaints Anitas car TARDIS blue and they even sit and talk to one another on chairs a key visual given the lack of chairs on the TARDIS. But as the year elapses and its time for the Doctor to return to his own show, he waves goodbye to Anita. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios Returning to the time hotel, the Doctor bursts back in on the events of a year ago, sharing the code and yanking Joy off to new adventures. The Doctor works out the briefcase holds the embryonic form of an artificially-created star that would offer a source of imaginable power to whoever owned it. But unless you own the Hand of Omega, stars take a long time to develop, far longer than anyone would be able to wait and test their experiment. Unless, of course, you hijack a time hotel and send it back to dinosaur times, waiting for when human history begins to see if it works. Joy, still possessed by the case, heads to the hotels dinosaur room while the Doctor tries to break its hold over her. To do that, he provokes an emotion strong enough to poison the link between the case and its host before it obliterates them. He bullies her, goading her into disclosing why she's staying at a downmarket London hotel. Turns out shes grieving the loss of her mother who died of COVID-19 in an isolation ward and Joy was unable to say goodbye to her in person. Sadly, before the Doctor can deactivate the star seed, its eaten by a (brilliant-looking) dinosaur, putting it out of his reach. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios The Doctor and Joy head back to the hotel and, 65 million years later, find the star is now ready to detonate. Its been locked inside a stone structure with a heavy stone door that neither of them can move, and time is running out. So, the Doctor, who boasts that hes good with rope, steals a rope from the Everest base camp, hanging it off the back of the Orient Express to haul the stone away.. Its an impressive and kinetic sequence let down only by the dreadful CGI when Gatwas standing on the train. Typical Doctor Who: It can now do convincing dinosaurs, but now cant do a convincing train. Its here things lose their coherence, since Joys eyes flash with possession energy, but by the time the Doctor returns, Joy has eaten the star? Absorbed it somehow? Made friends with and bonded with it? He finds her standing on a cliff edge, where Joy says shell merge with the star and take it to the heavens, where it will do nobody any harm at all. At this point in my notes, I wrote Dont let this be Bethlehem, when the camera pulls out to reveal thats exactly where they are, complete with three camels parked outside a stable. Oy. Bad Wolf / BBC Studios Joy reunites with her mother and the Doctor goes back to traveling, but not before he gets Anita a job running the Time Hotel. We also get a little shot of Ruby Sunday, who will return to the show for its second season proper. As I said at the top, you cant judge Joy to the World on the merits of a regular episode since its serving multiple masters. But I dont think we could call it the strongest episode of either Steven Moffatts oeuvre or the shows various Christmas Specials. Like all of the Disney-era episodes, it has a slightly incoherent quality where the pacing sags and zips in all the wrong places. Im for the lengthy aside where we see a normal year in the life of the Doctor, but the story framing it should have been tighter to balance out the slowness. Its a fun enough way to pass an hour with a stomach full of holiday turkey (or your preferred equivalent) with enough mawkishness to make you think youve seen something quite profound. But I dont think Ill be coming back to watch this one again and again like I would for, say, The Christmas Invasion.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/doctor-who-joy-to-the-world-review-what-a-star-190018215.html?src=rss
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If you received a bunch of gift cards for the holidays, consider it a blessing. Whoever gave them to you likely wanted to give you a gift you'd actually use, and rather assume (incorrectly), they wanted to ensure you'd get their money's worth on something you actually like. Maybe there's nothing on your wish list at the moment, but you're keen to spend that gift card on something that will make your commute easier or your home feel more cozy. Below are some of our favorite items that are well worth that $50 gift card you're eager to use up, from power banks to streaming sticks to smart lights. Check out the rest of our gift ideas here. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-ways-to-spend-your-50-gift-card-130021816.html?src=rss
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