Steve Jobs, the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple, has been posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom alongside 16 other "individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors."

The White House and U.S. President Joe Biden announced the seventeen recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on July 1, and the full list includes Simone Biles, Sister Simone Campbell, Julieta Garcia, Gabrielle Giffords, Fred Gray, Steve Jobs (posthumous), Father Alexander Karloutsos, Khizr Khan, Sandra Lindsay, John McCain (posthumous), Diane Nash, Megan Rapinoe, Alan Simpson, Richard Trumka (posthumous), Wilma Vaught, Denzel Washington, and Raúl Yzaguirre.

"President Biden has long said that America can be defined by one word: possibilities," the official announcement reads. "These seventeen Americans demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation – hard work, perseverance, and faith.

"They have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities – and across the world – while blazing trails for generations to come."

The awards for these 17 nominees will be presented at the White House on July 7, 2022.

Jobs passed away at the age of 56 on October 5, 2011 and, alongside starting Apple and being the driving force behind such products as the iPhone, iPad, iPod, iTunes, iMac, and so much more, Jobs was also a majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors, and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Disney has announced that Splash Mountain at Walt Disney World and Disneyland will become Tiana's Bayou Adventure in 2024 and will bring a bit of The Princess and the Frog magic with it into the theme parks.

As announced during ESSENCE Fest, guests will be able to visit Tiana's Bayou Adventure at Magic Kingdom Park in Florida and Disneyland Park in California, and it promises to "pay tribute to the rich culture and history of New Orleans community."

"Walt Disney Imagineers have been frequent travelers to Louisiana while conducting extensive research to ensure Tiana’s Bayou Adventure preserves the heart and soul of the city that inspired Princess Tiana’s story," Disney Parks Blog writes. "From exploring the French Market and the bayou, to consulting with academics, chefs, musicians and cultural institutions, Imagineers have received inspiration from all over the region and learned from local experts along the way."

“In many ways, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is a love letter to New Orleans," Charita Carter, executive producer of relevancy activations at Walt Disney Imagineering, said. "Like the musical city that inspired this attraction, Tiana’s second act is about a community working in harmony to achieve something extraordinary. She reminds us of an immutable truth we can all relate to: ‘if you do your best each and every day, good things are sure to come your way.’ And that’s a melody we can all sing along to!”

The new attraction will also be a "celebration of Black joy as we bring Tiana's story to its roots" and Disney is proud to be "advancing the storyline of Princess Tiana at our parks."

Tiana's Bayou Adventure was first announced in 2020 and will pick up right where the events of the film left off. Guests will join Princess Tiana, Naveen, and Louis the jazz-loving alligator as they get ready to host a Mardi Gras celebration where "everyone is welcome." There will also be apperances by familiar faces and original music inspired by songs from the film.

Splash Mountain first debuted at Disneyland in 1989 before arriving in Tokyo Disneyland and Magic Kingdom in 1992. The ride is based of the 1946 Disney film Song of the South, which Disney has chosen not to release on Disney+ as it is "not appropriate in today's world."

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

This story contains detailed spoilers for Westworld.

Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) is arguably the emotional core of Westworld. She’s the character who guided audiences between the multiple timelines of season one and her transformation is what pulled support from audiences as she shifted through personas. It’s through her that we come to better understand the work of the park’s creators, and through her that we experience the Host’s revolution. So it’s difficult to imagine the series without her. But that’s what Wood and showrunner, Lisa Joy say they want you to do.

At the end of season three, Dolores is erased. Hunted by Maeve (Thandie Newton) and Serac (Vincent Cassel), Dolores and her duplicates are (mostly) eradicated, and Dolores Prime is erased at the feet of Rehoboam. And of course, like for any good series with stakes, that means it’s time to let Dolores go. Or is it?

For Season 4, Wood is back, this time as the mysterious brunette, Christina. Speaking to Inverse, Wood insisted that Christina is “a completely new character.” Joy and Wood have spoken about how the characters might be similar, while holding firm that Christina is a new character experiencing a very different life than Dolores. But they have a lot in common. Both seek, “beauty and romance and poetry in this mundane world,” and both wake up every morning in the same position, a glance away from an easel. When we meet Christina, she’s immediately coaxed into a decision by her roommate, Maya (Ariana DeBose — who is also a bit suspect if we’re being honest, feeling a bit like fake Francis from Season 3), asking her to select black or white heels. She then participates in her repetitive life, needing encouragement to branch out into social situations, holding desperately on to a romantic view of the world she longs to discover.

If they really are one and the same, this wouldn’t be the first time Dolores was more than one character. Firstly, Dolores is the original A.I. Host and her programming was used to create all the Hosts who came after her. Even as Dolores Prime, she was also known as Wyatt, a character seeming quite separable from the rancher’s daughter introduced early in season one. Later, her copied consciousness lived in multiple Hosts, with five Dolores duplicates running around in season three. And though we’re meant to believe Dolores has been erased, there’s the potential there are some unaccounted-for pearls, and the copy of her that was used to create “Halores” (Tessa Thompson, whom we’ll from now on refer to as “Charlotte Hale” or “Hale”) is still up and running. So while we’re meant to believe the real Dolores has been wiped from existence, it’s near impossible to not suspect she might live on in the mysterious Christina.

We can pull apart Christina to decipher just how her and Dolores might be related. Christina is a full-time writer at Olympiad Entertainment. She writes NPC characters for video games. Cheeky. (She’s, in fact, offended when her date refers to NPCs as “canon fodder”). And while Olympiad Entertainment is a brand-new mystery, keen eyes will notice that their logo is a mirrored duplicate of Delos’.

To promote the show, HBO released an employer brand video for Olympiad Entertainment that boasts working there being, “a dream come true,” a parallel to Dolores’s repeated line, “I’m in a dream.” This line is often accompanied by other dialogue expressing that she fears being trapped within dreams.

Westworld seasons tend to have core themes, and Christina could be living in a mirror world (perhaps one that’s like a dream) not existing on our same plane of existence. One where Olympiad is creating videogames as opposed to Delos creating video game-like IRL experiences. There are a few major clues that Christina is at the very least not existing on the prime timeline (like her world having no graffiti or references to the anniversary of the revolution), the largest being the long fades to black. In Season 1, Dolores was experiencing two different timelines shown simultaneously. Her memories (or reveries) were getting mixed up and she was experiencing flashbacks and two very different experiences. It was later revealed that these stories happened in succession, and audiences were being fed them the way her AI was experiencing them- jumbled up and at the same time. To denote the separation in the timelines, cuts between them were marked with long fades to black. These same fades sandwich all scenes featuring Christina.

Then, there’s the presumption that Christina’s writing is affecting people in her world. She is stalked by a man who is obsessing over the presumption that she is writing the terrible things in his life. Christina also raises alarm bells by writing characters that resemble the Man in Black (Ed Harris), and even Dolores, the woman seeking a happy ending.

Next, there’s the reappearance of James Marsden presumably as his original character, Teddy. Teddy was Dolores’s great love (unless you count young William), believed to have had his physical Host self decommissioned and his consciousness uploaded to the Valley Beyond (aka The Sublime). Though we can’t know if he’s Teddy just yet, we do know someone else was stalking Christina (as someone left a print of the maze on her fire escape), and that someone protected her from the stalker. At the end of episode one when Christina begins to write the new character that sounds like the original Dolores, and she mentions the happy ending, the shot pans to Marsden gazing lovingly up to her fire escape.

So what does this mean for who and where Christina is? Trailer clues suggest the Man in Black himself or the Host controlled by Charlotte Hale, will face the breach of the Valley Beyond. In the opening of the first episode, William (or more likely, the Host copy of him under Hale’s control) visits the servers which presumably house the Valley Beyond, and he threatens and murders his way towards access. Though this scene opens the series, we can deduce it happens later in the timeline, since we see Hale working on her mind control flies with the politicians in Episode 2, which is likely how she successfully weaponized the mind control seen in episode one. Trailers also show Hale standing on the streets outside Christina’s apartment, suggesting she appears in the area.

There’s not much to go on at this point, but it seems that Christina’s story is either in a parallel mirrored and non-corporeal universe happening simultaneously to the prime timeline, or she exists in a Delos infiltrated version (as a result of the work of Hale and her MIB Host) of the Valley Beyond. We don’t have many clues about what the Valley Beyond looks like for the hosts, and there’s no real reason to expect it’s the green pastures where the Host minds are all living on the land. A Dolores descendant of sorts could be living in her own “dream come true,” creating and writing the world around her, this time, being in control of the “NPCs” as opposed to being a controlled NPC in a world not unlike the one in WandaVision. The word “Doloris” is Latin for “grief” or “sorrows,” and the idea of a grief ridden redhead creating a world where she controls the NPCs seems incredibly fathomable.

Perhaps the Valley Beyond is truly impenetrable, but episode one suggests that the servers service more than one entity. It’s possible Olympiad Entertainment is leeching off the same space and using a new generation of Dolores AI that’s just close enough to the real thing to be familiar. Teddy’s consciousness has been festering without his love in the Valley Beyond, and perhaps Christina, a later generation of Dolores’s consciousness, is now in a shared space where Teddy is able to reunite with her. Maybe each of their conscious mind’s chosen worlds are ones where they both exist, and Teddy is visiting a lasting Dolores in her digitally created space. One where familiar things that live in Dolores’s reveries, like a backwards version of Delos and choices between black and white, still exist.

A consistent theme in the series has been Delos’s great plan to understand and map human behavior. Season two ended with the revelation that human minds were being cataloged as a means of predicting human behavior. Season three followed the work of Incite and Rehoboam being used not just to predict human behavior, but to interrupt and influence it. Though this season takes place seven years after the tear down of Rehoboam and the AI control, Hale and William are very much still in play, attempting to replace powerful politicians with believable Hosts, and to penetrate the Valley Beyond. Perhaps Christina writing NPCs (mirroring old Delos human data) for Olympiad Entertainment is part of their success. Alternatively, perhaps Christina is in living in a self created nightmare in the Valley Beyond that’s slowly fracturing around her.

The first episode of season four is entitled, “The Auguries.” “Augury” refers to an ancient Roman practice of interpreting omens from the behavior of birds. And as Christina begins to, um, question the nature of her reality, she sees images of a tower and stumbles across a dead bird. The omen, as it were, could be yet another attempt to shake Dolores out of the loop in her fantasy, and force her to see the world around her. This time, hopefully not the same world that corrupted Wyatt and Hale.

Ultrawide curved gaming monitors can transform your gaming experience, and you can jump on board today with a 34-inch option at GameStop that's over $165 off. And, if you still haven't jumped on the Elden Ring hype train, today is a great day to change that, as the game and preorders for its strategy guide are on sale. In other deal news, grab a Monster Hunter Rise pro controller before it's gone, score a WD P10 2TB portable game drive for only $39.98, the HP Reverb G2 VR headset for only $399, or a 1TB PS5 SSD for only $110. And, pick up Assassin's Creed Valhalla with the Ragnarok DLC for cheap.

QLED Ultrawide Curved Gaming Monitor for 30% Off

Once you start gaming on an ultrawide monitor, you'll never want to go back. Today you can grab this 34-inch Cooler Master QLED monitor at GameStop for just under $390, which is a pretty great discount. This will transform compatible games into a 21:9 aspect ratio, further immersing you in your favorite worlds. And, it can help you be more productive on the work side of things as well, giving you more room to lay out tabs and apps as needed to get your important projects done.

Tapela E7 Wireless Active Noise Cancelling Headphones Are 60% Off

Everyone can use a great pair of noise cancelling wireless headphones, and this option from Tapela is on sale for cheap today at a 60% discount. For $40, you'll get a solid 28 hours of battery life, a built-in microphonefor voice calls and voice commands, comfotable ear cups, and good sound quality with deep bass. With Bluetooth 5.0 support, connecting to all your favorite devices is easy. And, the range reaches up to 50 feet, so you can go all around your home without having to bring your music device with you.

Get Elden Ring On Sale on PlayStation and Xbox

Elden Ring has cemented itself as the must-play game of 2022 so far, and you can get it on sale today, no matter what console you're playing on. Elden Ring is on sale on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One, so you can hop into the Lands Between and see just what all the hype is about. And, if you're finding the game too difficult, you can check out the deal on the strategy guide for Elden Ring below.

40% Off Elden Ring Official Strategy Guides Preorder

Out July 29

There's no question that Elden Ring is a difficult game, so don't feel bad if you find yourself struggling. Fortunately, you can get a little help in the form of FromSoftware's official Elden Ring strategy guide that comes out next month. It's comprised of two volumes, each unveiling secrets, tips, and maps of everything that Elden Ring has to offer. Even if you've got this game down pat, you might want to pick up these books simply to learn more about the lore and enjoy the canon artwork. These books are normally $49.99, but today they're only $29.99, a whopping 40% off discount.

55" Sony A80J 4K OLED TV for $998

Supports 4K @ 120Hz for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X gamers

Sony's 55" OLED TV dropped in price today; whereas normally Sony OLEDs are pricier than LG OLEDs, that's not the case right now. The Sony A80J is $100 less than LG's 55" C1 and $800 less tahn LG's 55" C2. The A80J is a true OLED 4K TV with near infinite contrast ratios, best-in-class black levels, excellent color rendition, and super fast response times. It also supports 4K @ 120Hz over HDMI 2.1.

48" LG C1 4K OLED Smart Gaming TV for $797

Supports 4K @ 120Hz for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X gamers

This is the lowest price we've seen for both the 48" TV. Yes this is a TV, but it happens to be one of the best gaming PC monitors as well. Compared to traditional LED LCD TVs, OLED panels offer better image quality, deeper blacks, better contrast ratio, wider color gamut, and super fast response times. OLED TVs excel at both gaming and viewing 4K HDR content. In terms of general usability, they consume less power and they're very thin and sit flusher against the wall. Amongst OLED TVs, the LG C1 is oft considered the flag bearer; it's the one TV that all other OLED TVs are compared against. The LG OLED TV boasts several generations of optimizations under its belt and the latest C1 model is future proofed with technology like HDMI 2.1 (4K @ 120Hz), variable refresh rate, G-SYNC, the newest LG A9 Gen4 processor and a revamped webOS smart TV interface.

PS5 Compatible XPG 1TB M.2 SSD for $109.99

The XPG Gammix S70 Blade is the least expensive 1TB PS5 compatible SSD available right now. Just because it's the cheapest doesn't mean it's the slowest. In fact, the S70 is actually one of the fastest SSDs available with transfer rates up to 7,400 MB/s. It's on par with the likes of the WD Black SN850, the Samsung 980 Pro, or the Seagate Firecude 530. This is a PCIe Gen4 SSD that was pretty much released specifically for PS5 gamers in order to double or triple the storage capacity of their PS5 without limiting the speed. To make this deal even sweeter, it already comes with a very low-profile heatsink.

WD Black P10 2TB Portable Game Drive for $39.98

This is an excellent price for one of the fastest portable hard drives around. It boasts speeds of up to 140MB/s. Sure that's not as fast as an SSD, but can you get a 2TB portable SSD for less than $40? Even though it's marketed as a game drive, it performs just as well as a standard portable hard drive.

HP Reverb G2 VR Headset

The Reverb G2 normally sells for $599, but the HP Store has it for $200 off. That makes it the same price as the Oculus Quest 2 256gb model but with some significant upgrades under the hood. The Reverb G2 sports the second highest resolution of any VR headset with 2160×2160 pixels per eye (even more than the already impressive Quest 2's 1832×1920 resolution), manual IPD adjustment, a far more robust headstrap than the Quest 2, inside-out tracking that doesn't require external sensors, and off-ear headphones so they don't get as grimy and maintains your peripheral hearing.

Nintendo Switch Pro Controller Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Edition Is Available Now

This controller isn't on a discount, but it is in stock, and that's very notable. You see, once most Switch Pro Controller special editions go out of stock, they never come back. We've seen it time and time again with the Smash, Splatoon, and Xenoblade controllers. This time, the special edition in question is the Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak controller which has art of the game's flagship monster, Malzeno, across the whole controller. If you'll one day wish you had this in your collection, it's best to grab it now before it's gone.

Nintendo Switch High Speed Car Charger for Under $10

Nintendo Switch is great on the go, but what happens when you run out of battery on a long car trip? With this high speed car charger from HORI, you'll never have to ask that question again. For under 10 bucks, you can grab the HORI USB-C car charger, which is officially licensed by Nintendo. With this, you'll be able to charge your Switch while on the road, meaning you never have to stop playing Zelda, Pokemon, or Mario due to battery restraints.

GTA V Is $19.99 On PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X

Grand Theft Auto V has launched on pretty much every console since the PS3, and that now includes the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. If you want to return to the world of GTA V while we endure the seemingly endless wait for its sequel, you can do so for just $19.99 today.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Ragnarok Edition

This Best Buy-exclusive version of Assassin's Creed Valhalla includes the base game and the Dawn of Ragnarok DLC. So if you just can't wait to experience Ragnarok in the upcoming God of War sequel, maybe this Assassin's Creed expansion can help alleviate that wait just a bit. This version ofthe game originally went for $99.99, but you can grab it today for just $39.99.

Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda

Score a rare 20% off this popular little Zelda collectible. The Game & Watch is a miniature retro handheld game system that comes preloaded with The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. It's very well designed with a vibrant full color 2.36" LCD screen and intuitive control buttons, all in a tiny footprint that can even fit in your pocket. Walmart is currently the only vendor that has it at this price.

Get Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE Encore For 50% Off

This RPG combines the worlds of Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei into a bright, colorful Persona-like experience. Usually going for $60, you can grab this Switch game today for just under $30. In our review of the game, we praised it for "dazzling combat and catchy music".

55" Hisense U8G 4K Android TV for $599

HDMI 2.1 for 4K @ 120Hz

Thie Hisense U8G is a fantastic TV at a budget price. It's one of the highest end TVs that Hisense sells and its picture quality competes with the top-end LED LCD TV models from Samsung, LG, and Sony. The U8G is the 2021 model that replaces the 2020 U9G. It has two HDMI 2.1 ports and a native 120Hz panel so it can push 4K @ 120Hz with PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. It does a great job at displaying HDR content thanks to its high peak brightness and excellent black levels. It also makes a good gaming TV since it has a fast response time. Don't be fooled into thinking this is a bad TV because of the brand; it's one of the best 55" TV you'll find in this price range.

Vantop Snaptain SP7100 Drone for $50 Off

Have you always wanted to fly a drone? If so, don't miss your chance with this deal on the Snaptain SP7100 drone from Vantop. It comes with the remote control and a carrying case, so you'll be ready to go right out of the box. This model is equipped with a high-quality 4K camera, so you can take guaranteed clear real-time images with the drone.

Logitech BRIO 4K Ultra HD Webcam for $140

If you want the best video quality from a consumer webcam, there's nothing better than the Logitech BRIO. It's capable of streaming 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps. It also includes a privacy shutter and supports Windows Hello. The Logitech BRIO normally retails for $200, but it's currently almost $60 (30%) off on Amazon.

55% off Polypropylene Ninja Training Sword

Whether you're a ninja in training or a cosplayer, having a non-life-threatening replica ninja sword on hand is practical and convenient. Get two so you can spar with a buddy. This polypropylene sword measures 33.5" long and includes a sword guard.

Franklin Sports MLB Electronic Baseball Pitching Machine

Want to practice your real-life home run hitting skills? Check out this baseball pitching machine from Franklin Sports. With adjustable height for multiple types of pitches, and a red light indicator to let you know when the next ball is on the way, this is a great way to get active with a ball and a bat. Plus, it comes with six plastic baseballs, so it'll be ready to go straight out of the box.

Razer Anzu Smart Glasses

These Razer smart glasses retail for a ridiculous $199.99. Fortunately, they're on sale today for a much more reasonable price of $59.97. The Razer Anzu glasses comes with two types of interchangeable lenses; blue-light filtering lenses for PC use and polarized lenses for outdoor use. They also feature a built-in mic and bluetooth speaker for hands-free calling.

4 Free Months of Amazon Music Unlimited

Log into your Amazon Prime account to see this deal

If you're an Amazon Prime member and you've never signed up for Amazon Music Unlimited, you can get 4 months of service completely free. Amazon Music Unlimited normally costs $9.99/mo. You get access to millions of songs similar to other streaming services like Spotify or Pandora. You can choose from preset playlists for pick out specific songs and build your own. Since music streaming services can rack up in price and don't offer too many discounts or free months, this is a deal worth signing up for.

3 Free Months of Audible Premium Plus

Log into your Amazon Prime account to see this deal

This is another targeted deal for Amazon Prime members who have never subscribed for the Audible Premium Plus service. That's right, no hidden fees, no cost, just a straight-up 3-month free trial including three audiobooks of your choosing. That's an outstanding deal considering the membership would usually set you back $14.95 per month, so in total you're saving almost $45 overall on the service.

Alienware Aurora R10 RTX 3080 Gaming PC for $1673

Amazon has the best price on this RTX 3080 equipped Alienware Aurora gaming PC. It's $150 cheaper than getting the same configuration from Dell directly even compared to Dell's sale price. In addition to the powerful RTX 3080 GPU, this PC boasts a liquid-cooled AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-core processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

Dell S2721DGF 27" 1440p GSYNC Gaming Monitor

This excellent monitor has hit a new price low for Black Friday. It's one of the best 27" gaming monitors you can buy for under $500. The S2721DGF boasts a high quality IPS panel (better than the VA panel found on the popular S3220DGF model). It features wide viewing angles and excellent color rendition including 98% DCI-P3 color coverage, a super fast 1ms response time and up to 165Hz refresh rate through the DisplayPort. It's also FreeSync Premium Pro and G-SYNC compatible.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 GPU for $769.99

These are easily the best prices we've seen for an RTX 3080 video card since launch. At this price point, the RTX 3080 is a better value than the 3080 Ti, which costs at least $250 more at reputable vendors. The performance gap between the 3080 and 3080 Ti is about 3%, hardly noticeable. The 3080 is significantly more powerful than the previous generation's flagship RTX 2080 SUPER. This is the card you want to get if you plan to game at 4K.

Razer Iskur X Gaming Chair

The price of the Razer Iskur chair has dropped by a whopping $150 down to $249.99. This is a fantastic price for a Razer Iskur gaming chair. The Iskur X model is very similar to the original Iskur model. It lacks the adjustable lumbar spline and has 2D armrests instead of 3D, but the build quality and premium materials are identical. It's a superior chair than Razer's economically priced Enki chair, and with this discount it's cheaper too! The Razer Iskur commands a high retail price tag for a reason; it's well-engineered with plenty of high quality materials and usable features. It's upholstered in multi-layered synthetic leather that's more durable than PU leather. There's also plenty of high density foam cushioning to keep you comfortable during intense gaming marathons.

New 2022 Apple MacBook Pro 14" M2 Laptop

We're finally seeing a 2022 Apple MacBook Pro laptop equipped with the brand new M2 chip in the wild. Amazon has the 14" model up for sale right now for a very reasonable MSRP of $1299. The new M2 chip is reported to be about 18% more powerful than the previous generation M1 chip, which was already a speed demon for its price range. The M2 chip is also extremely power efficient, with this laptop boasting up to 20 hours of battery life on a single charge. In addition to the new M2 CPU, this laptop features a gorgeous 13" Retina display with 500 nits of brightness and P3 wide color, 10-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.

$70 Off Apple AirPods Max Headphones

Not everyone can afford Apple's best AirPods, but for those who can, they'll be treated to a $70 discount from Amazon. Obviously the sound quality on these AirPods Max headphones are phenomenal, but what really takes the cake is the build quality. There are no other headphones in its price range that is built as well as the AirPods Max. They are literally a work of art.

$70 Off the Apple Watch Series 7

$50 Off the Apple Watch SE

The Series 7 is Apple's latest and greatest watch. The biggest upgrade the Series 7 has over the Series 6 is the display. It has the same always-on Retina display, but it's 20% bigger and features a more crack-resistant front crystal screen. It also adds on even more health-related features, like measuring your blood oxygen or taking an ECG. It's inarguably the best smartwatch on the market right now. If you don't need the health related features, you can save $100 and go with the Apple Watch SE instead. Despite the low price tag, this watch is still big on features, such as a large Retina OLED display, 2x faster CPU than the Series 3, heart rate monitoring, GPS, swimproof design, haptic feedback, and more.

3 Months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $1

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate normally costs $14.99 per month, but right now new customers can get 3 months for only $1. The sheer amount of value you get with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is impressive. This membership gives you both Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass for PC. Xbox Live Gold is required for online gaming. Xbox Game Pass gives you access to a huge library of games that is free as long as you maintain your membership. The list includes AAA games that you can play as early as launch day. These include Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, Sniper Elite 5, Farming Simulator 2022, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and much more.

New 42" LG Evo C2 4K OLED Gaming TV

Supports 4K @ 120Hz for PS5 and Xbox Series X

For many of you who have been patiently waiting for the LG Evo C2 42" 4K OLED TV, now you can rejoice. The majority of the 2022 Evo C2 lineup had been released earlier in the year, but for whatever reason LG had decided to hold off on its new 42" size until now. This highly anticipated TV is finally orderable on Amazon and ships immediately. The 42" replaces LG's 48" as its smallest 4K OLED TV on the market. It performs just as well as its larger sized siblings as a gaming TV, but where it really shines is as a gaming monitor for your PC.

65" TCL 4-Series 4K Roku TV for $398

55" for $298

For most people, the two biggest priorities for a TV are (1) price and (2) size. That's why a TV like this TCL 4-series is so popular; if you're looking specifically for a 65" or 55" TV, you'd be hard pressed to find a lower price. This TCL TV offers solid picture quality without burning a hole in your wallet, and it even has built-in Roku smart TV functionality. It might not look as good as a $1500 TV, but you could fund the rest of your home entertainment or gaming system with the amount you just saved.

Klipsch Promedia 2.1ch Computer Speakers

Update: This is the newer model with wireless Bluetooth streaming.

The Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers have been around for over 2 decades, but it's still considered one of the best computer speakers under $200. It's normally listed for $169.99, but today Walmart has it for only $89, a 48% savings. This THX-certified speaker set includes two satellite speakers with 3/4" soft dome tweeter with 3” midrange drivers and a 6.5" 200W powered subwoofer for some intense bass.

Jurassic Park is a nearly perfect film, and it really didn’t need a sequel – but as the saying goes, “Life, uh, finds a way.” Here we are 25 years and five sequels later. Jurassic World Dominion isn’t the WORST way to cap off a sequel trilogy in recent memory, but it’s certainly more of a whimper than a roar. However, there’s another Universal Studios franchise that Jurassic Park could take cues from. I’ll give you a hit: it’s the one with all the cars.

The original Jurassic Park had a lot going for it – the source material of Michael Crichton’s excellent novel made for an airtight story, it had an incredible cast without feeling too Hollywood, and behind the camera, Steven Spielberg was in top form. And, of course, it wouldn’t have become such a cultural touchstone without the groundbreaking special effects that brought the dinosaurs to life. They were breathtaking in 1993, and they still hold up great nearly 30 years later.

A word often thrown around about Jurassic Park is “WONDER” – the movie is filled with moments where characters are dumbstruck with awe, whether it’s watching a baby raptor hatch, or hearing a triceratops’ heartbeat, or looking up and seeing a real, live dinosaur for the first time. In these moments, we’re right there with them. They can’t believe John Hammond actually brought dinosaurs to life, and we feel the same about Spielberg and company.

At least that’s how it was for a lot of us seeing it the first time, and it’s understandable to want to chase that high. But that’s genuine movie magic, and trying to replicate it is about as realistic as cloning actual dinosaurs. A John Williams needle drop at the right moment might tug some heartstrings, and a cleverly executed callback might dredge up some fond memories of your first time seeing a classic, but that’s nostalgia. Ironically, a film franchise about resurrecting 200-million-year-old animals deserves better than just capitalizing on the past.

See, here’s the thing: Jurassic Park has so much more going for it than just that sense of wonder. It’s got action scenes, horror elements, and a surprisingly good sense of humor. At its core, Jurassic Park is a monster movie. It combines tropes like Frankenstein’s “reckless pursuit of knowledge” with King Kong’s “nature’s fury” and reimagines them as a gigantic, hydraulically-powered T-Rex puppet that instantly became as iconic as any movie monster before it. And really, if you want to get pedantic, this is a sentiment shared within the movies. In Jurassic Park III, Alan Grant dismisses the idea that Hammond’s clones even count as dinosaurs, calling them “genetically engineered theme park monsters, nothing more, nothing less.” In monster movies, the monsters are the real stars. Not only is it okay if the characters and story take second billing to the featured creatures, it should be encouraged.

Jumping the Shark

Jurassic Park isn’t Universal’s first rodeo when it comes to franchising a hit summer film about big animals eating people that was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a bestselling novel. That already happened with Jaws. Spielberg’s Jaws was arguably the first summer blockbuster, and it disrupted the entire motion picture industry, changing how movies are made to this very day. Despite the first film’s success, Spielberg was NOT open to the idea of making another. In 1975 he told the San Francisco Chronicle he’d been offered Jaws 2, but didn’t dignify it with a response, going on to describe sequels as “venal” and something that was done for the sake of exhibitors, not audiences. In any case, Jaws sequels happened without Spielberg, and the series went on for another two movies before the fourth entry jumped the shark so high it sank the franchise entirely.

Obviously, Spielberg soon warmed up to sequels, and wasted no time following up Jurassic Park with The Lost World, which didn’t even try to adapt Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name, instead cherry-picking fun elements and incorporating ideas from the first book that hadn’t been put on film yet. The Lost World cleaned up at the box office, but the general consensus to this day is that it’s nowhere near as good as the first movie. In fact, it’s flat-out dumb as hell at times. You might recall the scene where a middle-schooler uses gymnastics to kick a raptor out a window. However, The Lost World did one thing extremely right: it raised the stakes, with a grand finale that turned a T-Rex loose on the mainland to wreak havoc in true monster movie fashion.

It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make a sequel without some form of escalation. It’s a fine line to walk: not enough escalation and you have a disappointing rehash of the first installment; too much and you have a story that collapses under the weight of its own ambitions or goes so over the top it’s hard to take seriously. Luckily, there’s another Universal movie property that’s gotten this down to a science: The Fast and Furious franchise. It began as a movie about an undercover cop delving into the world of street racing to bust a ring of DVD player thieves. Nine movies later, Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson are driving a Pontiac Fiero into space. Has this series gotten a little stupid? Absolutely! But it’s all in the name of making a fun and entertaining movie.

Entertainment is subjective, but there’s some evidence to support this claim: by and large, the more bombastic Fast & Furious sequels have gotten, the better they’ve been received critically, and the more they’ve made at the box office.

Go Big or Go Home

Jurassic Park BEGAN as a movie about a dinosaur theme park where the dinosaurs break out and terrorize everyone, which is already an almost comically outlandish premise. How do you escalate that concept? Well, aside from the T-Rex’s brief San Diego vacation, it took four sequels to actually get the dinosaurs off an island. Even after rebranding the series Jurassic World, it took a movie and a half to go beyond the theme park setting. And from there, for whatever reason, Fallen Kingdom turned dinosaurs loose in a mansion, a setting that’s even SMALLER than an island! Dominion FINALLY gave us a glimpse of a literal Jurassic World, where dinosaurs are an invasive species. But it ultimately reigned things in and relegated most of the dinos to a remote valley, which, for all intents and purposes is… just another island.

Of course, this was between backburnering the big lizards to focus on genetically engineered locusts and human clones. That could make for compelling plots in another film franchise that doesn’t have a whole sandbox full of dinosaurs to play with, but that’s not what most people bought tickets to see.

There’s an argument to be made that the human characters are why the first Jurassic Park is so good, and there’s no denying that they’re great. There’s a certain charm to being reunited with Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler and the unforgettable Ian Malcolm – but again, nostalgia is cheap, that original wonder can’t be recaptured, and fixating on these characters misses the whole point of why we’re familiar with them in the first place. They went to an island to see some dinosaurs, because who wouldn’t want to see a dinosaur?

That’s not to say you ONLY need dinosaurs. In fact, it's quite the opposite. A human element is necessary to resonate with human audiences. Are the Fast films just about cars? Of course not, they’re also about family – but they’ve never lost sight of the fact that the promise of fast-moving vehicles is what got people in the door in the first place. The human relationships are the connective tissue between car chases and wrench fights and batshit insane setpieces that defy the laws of physics whenever it makes for a cooler scene.

Any six-year-old can tell you that a car is different from a dinosaur, but they do have a few key things in common: virtually everybody knows what cars and dinosaurs are, and if they EVER thought they were cool, they probably still do. It’s quite fitting that Universal has film franchises about cars and dinosaurs, because the appeal of those things is exactly that – universal.

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

The Jurassic World films have some really fun moments, but too often, they trip over themselves focusing on something other than fun – whether that’s trying to expand the Jurassic Park mythos by delving into the finer plot points of shifty biotech companies and corporate espionage, or bending over backwards to set up a callback to something from the first film. Or both, like bringing back Lewis Dodgson. In the words of Dennis Nedry, “See? Nobody cares.”

The original Jurassic Park is genuinely smart science fiction. Among other things, it plays with real-world concepts like DNA, chaos theory, virtual reality, cybercrime and the UNIX operating system. But we are far past the point of no return for smart Jurassic Park sequels. That ship has sailed… and there was a T-Rex on board. It wrecked San Diego. They made a whole movie about it.

So, where do you take the series next? The writing’s on the wall… or rather, written on a banner falling from the ceiling at the end of the first film. Show us what it’s like when dinosaurs rule the earth, again. Give us an actual Jurassic World where the dinosaurs have established dominion over mankind. Zombie fiction has shown us time and time again you can tell interesting human stories against a backdrop of people getting eaten. If that sounds too bleak, build a Jurassic Park on the moon, or if we’re really short on ideas, hire Dominic Torreto and company to hijack a train full of pissed-off velociraptors. Get it? Because they’re ALSO fast and furious. The series needs to evolve beyond just giving the dinosaurs more feathers.

Universal will not make a better, smarter dinosaur adventure film than the original Jurassic Park, so why try? Make like a brachiosaurus and be big and stupid. We give a lot of dumb blockbuster movies a pass by saying “they’re a ton of fun if you turn your brain off,” and equating them to theme park rides, but in this case, it all started with a theme park – maybe these movies SHOULD have more rollercoaster DNA.