Month: September 2026

The story behind Charlotte Braun’s removal from Peanuts in early 1955 has been making the rounds again. Charles M. Schulz introduced her on November 30, 1954, then dropped the character after only 10 appearances, following a complaint from a reader named Elizabeth Swaim.

Schulz appears to have created Charlotte Braun as a female counterpart to Charlie Brown. What readers got, though, was a much louder character, complete with oversized bold lettering that clashed with the strip’s softer, gentler humor. By February 1, 1955, Charlotte Braun was gone, and a lot of Peanuts fans never even knew she had existed.

When Elizabeth Swaim wrote to Charles M. Schulz asking him to remove Charlotte Braun, he sent back a reply on January 5, 1955 that’s still startling to read. He told her that she and her friends would have “the death of an innocent child on your conscience,” and he even drew Charlotte Braun with an axe in her head, a dark little “getting the axe” joke. It never appeared in the strip itself, but it’s often treated as the closest thing Peanuts has to an implied character death.

If you follow Peanuts history, this episode has a lot going on. It shows fan feedback reshaping canon as early as the 1950s, suggests that some of Charlotte Braun’s bossy DNA may have lived on in Lucy van Pelt, and helps explain why a franchise better known for kite-eating trees, baseball losses, and Snoopy still has this odd dark footnote attached to it. You can trace the broader rediscovery of the story to Elizabeth Swaim’s 2000 donation of Schulz’s letter to the Library of Congress, and Charlotte Braun still pops up in later projects, including the mobile game Snoopy’s Town Tale.

Tesla has started running its driverless Cybercab service in limited parts of Austin, Texas. That creates a new problem for first responders because the two-seat Cybercab has no steering wheel and no pedals.

In its first responder guide, Tesla tells crews to contact the company first so it can try to move the vehicle remotely. If the Cybercab is still operable, crews can also use the on-board controls.

Anyone who works in emergency response or around autonomous vehicles should keep an eye on this rollout.

Tesla says a disabled Cybercab should be pushed only in a narrow set of circumstances: minimal fire risk, minimal high-voltage risk, and low-voltage power still available. Even then, the goal is only to clear the road. If responders need to steer the Cybercab, they have to turn the front tires by hand.

The guide also warns that pushing the Cybercab when it isn’t in Neutral or Tow Mode can overheat the motor. Crash damage may also expose electrical parts, and wheel movement can generate electricity, which adds shock risk.

The launch is already drawing federal scrutiny. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, is investigating whether the Cybercab meets safety standards because it lacks manual controls and because Tesla self-certified it. Earlier robotaxi incidents had already raised concerns about blocked traffic and interference with police and fire crews.

Tesla’s first responder guide is available now, while the Cybercab service remains limited to Austin.

The Happening landed on Peacock in September 2026, which means you can once again stream M. Night Shyamalan’s notorious 2008 thriller.

If you missed The Happening the first time around, here’s what you’re in for: Mark Wahlberg plays Elliot Moore, a science teacher trying to get out of the Northeast with his wife Alma, played by Zooey Deschanel, and a young girl as a strange mass event triggers sudden suicides across the region. Peacock added The Happening along with several other Shyamalan movies, and that’s already kicked the old argument back into motion over whether the film is misunderstood, accidentally hilarious, or just plain bad.

You’re also getting one of Shyamalan’s most battered films, still sitting at 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, according to Rotten Tomatoes, after years of complaints about the dialogue, the tone, and the performances. It came after Wahlberg’s Oscar-nominated turn in The Departed and sits alongside his 16%-rated Max Payne, again according to Rotten Tomatoes, while adding to the long-running sense that Shyamalan’s run after The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable had lost its heat.

If you have a soft spot for divisive genre oddities, The Happening is probably worth a look, especially because its $160 million worldwide gross against a $60 million budget, plus the later comparisons to Stephen King, The Mist, A Quiet Place, and so-bad-it’s-good favorites, have given it a real cult-streaming afterlife.

You can stream The Happening on Peacock now.

Ridley Scott’s two divisive Alien prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, landed on Peacock in the US on September 1, 2026. That puts this stretch of the franchise back within easy reach.

The timing stands out. Scott has said he wants to return to Alien, and that means circling back to David’s unresolved story after Alien: Covenant. All of this comes as The Dog Stars has opened weakly and picked up middling reviews.

It also arrives after Alien: Romulus gave the series a real boost. The film made about $350 million worldwide on an $80 million budget, pulled an 85% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, and reportedly has a sequel on the way. Fede Álvarez isn’t expected back after saying he wouldn’t direct another one, and Scott reportedly brushed the film off as “okay.”

Scott’s prequels still matter at the box office. Prometheus made more than $400 million worldwide, still the top grosser in the franchise, with critics mostly on its side and fans more split. Alien: Covenant cost about $110 million, made around $240 million, and sits at 65% with critics and 55% with audiences.

If you’ve been meaning to catch up with the most argued-over corner of Alien, now’s a good moment.

In the US, you can stream both films on Peacock. In the UK and Australia, the series is generally on Disney+, while other regions may depend on Netflix, HBO Max, or digital rental and purchase stores.

Hasbro’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Link figure is now up for preorder on retailer sites. The listing describes a 6-inch figure priced at $27.99, with articulation and a small set of extras: Link, a Zonai power hand, the Master Sword, a Hylian Shield, and a cape. Some store pages also show a May 2027 date, but that looks like merch timing or placeholder info, not any kind of new Nintendo game reveal.

If Tears of the Kingdom clicked for you because of Link’s redesigned arm, the mix of sky and surface exploration, or that old-tech fantasy look the game leaned into, this is the kind of figure that makes sense on a shelf. It’s built for display and posing. What that May 2027 date doesn’t look like is a hint about the next Zelda. That lines up with what series producer Eiji Aonuma has said before: after Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo seems more likely to chase new ideas, or even a different Hyrule, than make another direct sequel.

Right now, the most recent official Zelda release is The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Nintendo put it out on Switch on September 26, 2024. Princess Zelda takes the lead, and the game revolves around its echo-creation mechanic. As for the talk about an Ocarina of Time remake tied to Nintendo’s next hardware sometime around 2026, that’s still just rumor.

Tears of the Kingdom is still widely viewed as a strong follow-up to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, mostly because of its building systems, the underground areas, and those sky islands. If you want a small trip back to that version of Hyrule, the figure is up for preorder now through retailers.

At 22:12 CEST, Isar Aerospace said its Spectrum rocket made orbit on its second flight from Andøya Spaceport, deployed its payloads, and became the first privately developed launcher to do that from continental Europe.

The 28-meter two-stage vehicle lifted off from Andøya Spaceport at 22:12 CEST on “Onward and Upward.” About four minutes later, according to Isar Aerospace, it had reached orbit. The flight also marked a rebound from last March’s first attempt, which crashed after about 30 seconds, followed by later weather, technical, and range delays.

Spectrum is built to carry up to 1,000 kg to low Earth orbit for dedicated small-payload missions and precise placement, not Falcon 9-style heavy lift. Isar Aerospace said this flight carried educational and startup satellites selected through the German Space Agency’s Microlauncher Competition as part of a European Space Agency (ESA) program. The timing, just days before French President Emmanuel Macron’s Paris space summit, also points to Europe’s push to rely less on non-European providers, with Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, Andøya Spaceport, and SaxaVord all part of that effort.

If you follow Europe’s launch market, keep an eye on Isar Aerospace. Founded in 2018, the company says it has raised €270 million, has an ESA deal worth about €200 million, gets 60% of its orders from defense, plans to produce 40 rockets a year near Munich, and has its manifest booked through 2028.

You can find mission details through Isar Aerospace’s official channels.

If you’ve ever taken an interest in Dungeons & Dragons, even if only to watch Critical Role videos or even the movie from three years ago, you’ve probably heard of Ravenloft or its 5E version, Curse of Strahd, a module in which you play a genuinely terrifying adventure in the role-playing game that has been so influential that Netflix has decided it’s the perfect story to adapt into a TV series. Are they right? Well. Only partly.

Dragons and vampires, a hellish world

Actually, it depends entirely on how you see the game, because it doesn’t look like Netflix and Hasbro are going to do some kind of Abbott and Costello Meet the Ghosts with Ravenloft, giving the saga a parody twist. It looks like it’ll be a serious, scary adaptation of the module, perfect for players who never stray from the setting but that doesn’t quite adapt D&D as a whole. The movie perfectly captured what it’s like to eating chips, drinking soda, and constantly making the wrong decisions: are we sure we’ll be able to see something like that in a vampire series?

I admit that, as a D&D player and DM, I have one enormous flaw: I’ll always play for laughs. Always. Do you want to try to seduce the dragon? Go ahead, roll the dice. Do you want to eat some garlic and blow your breath at the vampire? You can certainly try. Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time imagining how a Ravenloft series would differ from any other vampire series, beyond the name. It makes sense, because horror is popular right now. But this didn’t need all that extra baggage: it’s a great campaign at the table that’s hard to adapt well into a series. That’s how it is.

Of course they’re going to put it out. And of course (no doubt about it) they’re going to get millions of views, because it’s impossible for them not to by mixing horror with one of the biggest franchises around today. For now, despite its many adaptations, there’s only been one good version of D&D. They have to experiment, sure, but… Why are they so resistant to repeating the tone that worked? Oh. The things you see.

Apple has spent early 2026 leaning harder into originals on Apple TV+. The catalog is smaller than what the biggest streamers carry, and that feels deliberate. Slow Horses and Ted Lasso are the clearest examples of quality-over-quantity approach.

The numbers suggest the bet is working. Estimates put Apple TV+ at 85 million users worldwide in early 2026, with a 12% share of the US market in Q1. Its audience also skews older, around 35 to 54, and the platform keeps pulling awards attention while adding newer German- and Spanish-language projects. The rough edge is still there, though: users continue to complain about clunky subtitle and audio controls.

Start with Slow Horses. You get the washed-up MI5 agents stuck at Slough House, Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb being equal parts brilliant and repulsive, River Cartwright straining to prove himself, and Diana Taverner turning up the pressure. Around them, a bunch of complicated, messy people stumble into kidnappings, assassination plots, and conspiracies that keep spreading outward.

Then there’s Ted Lasso. An American football coach gets dropped into AFC Richmond by Rebecca Welton, who’s expecting him to fail, and the show turns his optimism into something surprisingly disruptive. Season 4 is set to return with a women’s-team focus, and there are also reports of two more seasons.

If you’re going to Apple TV+ for genre-bending originals with some staying power, both are worth your time.

You can stream Slow Horses and Ted Lasso on Apple TV+.

The last Olympics were an example of perseverance and sportsmanship. That never changes. But there was also a spectacle that won’t be remembered precisely for representing the best of sport and humanity. It happened during the breakdance exhibition, which had been decided before the Games would not become an Olympic sport in future Games, when one of the participants put on a display that shocked the entire world. And not exactly because of its quality.

Raygun made her Olympic debut and left everyone dumbfounded with moves that didn’t look like breakdance. let alone anything even remotely artistic or athletic. Sparking days of debate over who, how, and why her performance had been allowed at the Olympics, she was one of the biggest talking points of those Games. And now Netflix is releasing a documentary about her, Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly, which is as controversial as its own protagonist.

A bit of context

The documentary puts a lot of emphasis on telling us where Raygun comes from, whose real name is Rachael Gunn. She discovered breaking through Samuel Free, the man who would become her coach and currently her husband, she would devote her time over the years to learning this combination of art and sport while competing in Australia. To show us her dedication, the documentary uses two people she has competed with for a decade: Flix and Tinylocks.

This isn’t very convincing when neither of the girls seems at any point to want to give Gunn any credit. Always avoiding any suggestion that she has talent, acknowledging her merits, and calling her “strange and unique” several times, the documentary, although it insists on casting Gunn in a positive light, never succeeds. Especially when both of them seem tremendously surprised when Gunn managed to qualify to represent Oceania at the Olympic Games after winning the qualifying tournament.

From here on, the documentary focuses on Gunn’s awareness that she isn’t up to the task. That all the other participants are far ahead of her technically and in their understanding of breaking to take part in the competition. Something that causes her tremendous anxiety.

This is where the documentary is most sincere and interesting. When it tries to show us a vulnerable woman who truly wasn’t aware of what she was doing as she realizes what’s happening. That’s where there is something genuine and interesting in this documentary and that sheds light on something we were all wondering, how could something like this happen at the Olympics? Unfortunately, that’s not what interests the documentary.

A catastrophic ending

The end of the documentary puts her coach and husband in front of the camera to say that “the performance connected with people, whether through genuine emotion and entertainment or through outrage. It generated debate and made the entire world talk about it,” as if that were the most important thing we have to take away from the whole Gunn episode. In fact ruining everything we’ve seen up to that point.

If the documentary has anything interesting, at least one part of it, it’s that it cancels out that perspective. It’s that it says not everything is acceptable. That generating debate, making people talk for no real reason, without trying to say anything specific, serves no purpose; art must seek to evoke a specific emotion or thought—otherwise it’s pointless. It is nothing more than the hollow gestures of a useless person or an idiot. But the end of the documentary shows they haven’t understood it. Neither the people behind the documentary nor Free nor Gunn herself: not everything goes.

That’s the saddest part. That despite going through everything, she still doesn’t understand it. That after taking a place that could have gone to someone better suited, who could have expressed something genuine and sincere and who truly wanted to communicate something concrete and specific, she still doesn’t understand what she did and why it isn’t okay. And she’s made a documentary to try to sell us on the idea that, deep down, it’s okay. That’s the saddest thing of all. That she still doesn’t understand her own misery, which she’s now selling on Netflix.

“Days of Future Future,” the Season 25 Simpsons episode that aired on April 13, 2014, ended up as one of the show’s most argued-over future-set stories. It throws a lot at you: Homer Simpson dies and comes back as a series of flawed clones, Lisa Simpson gets stuck with zombie Milhouse Van Houten after a cosmetic procedure goes horribly wrong, and Bart Simpson is left in a busted future with Jenda and their child. For plenty of fans and critics, that whole pileup felt more exhausting than inventive, with the dark comedy, sci-fi parody, and family drama all pulling in different directions at once.

Then the episode reveals that much of it was only a simulation inside Bart Simpson’s mind, which takes a lot of the air out of it. Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club called it “a pile of leftover Futurama jokes,” and when you put it next to “Lisa’s Wedding” or “Holidays of Future Passed,” it’s pretty easy to see why so many viewers felt the problem wasn’t the weird science fiction itself. The story just never comes together.

If you’re looking for Simpsons sci-fi with some real emotional grounding, this probably isn’t one to revisit. Looking back, the show seems to have taken the hint and saved its wilder ideas for self-contained episodes or Treehouse of Horror, never going back to this timeline, while most of the talk about its legacy stayed confined to English-language criticism.

You can watch it on Disney+.