Inverse - ⚔️ 'Vox Machina' returns

Jan. 20, 2023

The Dungeons & Dragons world might be on fire right now, but Critical Role is not letting that stop them.

Amid controversies surrounding D&D brand owner Wizards of the Coast, the beloved D&D-based animated series The Legend of Vox Machina is returning for its second season on Amazon Prime Video today — and it's stronger than ever.

Read our interview with the cast of The Legend of Vox Machina as they speak about the future of tabletop roleplaying, and what we can expect in Season 2 and beyond.

What’s New
CRITICAL HIT
'Legend of Vox Machina' will continue — even if Dungeons and Dragons doesn't

Anyone with the hobby of playing Dungeons & Dragons might be feeling like it’s the apocalypse.

Earlier in January, D&D publishers Wizards of the Coast strove to update a 23-year-old agreement to the game, the Open Game License (OGL). Under the original OGL, anyone can use D&D as a starting base to make their own content, and even publish it commercially with few limitations. Fans did not respond kindly to Wizards’ recent actions to change it.

One of the biggest success stories from D&D’s era of openness was Critical Role, the popular livestream hit where professional voice actors — whose credits span the biggest hits in TV, anime, and video games — role-play an epic adventure via Dungeons & Dragons. After breaking Kickstarter records in 2019, Critical Role now boasts a streaming series on Amazon Prime Video, The Legend of Vox Machina.

Today, Vox Machina returns to roll the dice with its second season. Inverse spoke to Critical Role's array of cast members to unpack the road ahead for both the series and the RPG hobby that started it all.

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LIGHT POLLUTION
Future humans may not be able to see the stars from Earth — study

In most of the world, we’re winning the battle against darkness — but not how we want to be doing so.

Light spills from our open windows, banishes the shadows from our streets and parks, and fights for our attention on storefronts and billboards. And it shines into the sky, where it reflects and scatters off air, water droplets, and dust. All that scattered light makes the whole sky seem to glow faintly, around the clock. It’s never really dark anymore.

That unceasing glow gets brighter every year, according to a recent study, and it’s swallowing up stars in the process. Starting with the faintest, the stars’ light fades into the background of skyglow. If a child born today can look up and see about 250 stars in the night sky, by their eighteenth birthday 150 of those stars will have faded from view, lost in the endless glow of our electric twilight.

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EGGCEPTION
Dinosaur fossils complicate our understanding of how they reproduced

In 1877, English naturalist Richard Lydekker unearthed the first titanosaur fossil in the Lameta Formation in central India. Many more fossils would come from the subcontinent in the decades to follow.

Titanosaurs were sauropods — long-necked herbivores with four trunk-like legs who lived between 66 million and 140 million years ago during the Cretaceous Era, and were among some of the biggest dinosaurs to walk the Earth.

Nearly 150 years after the first discovery, researchers have unearthed and described 92 fossilized titanosaurid nests from the Lameta Formation, comprising 256 eggs in total. A paper published this week in the journal PLOS One from the University of Delhi offers new insight on how the fossils endured and how these dinosaurs may have lived.

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Movies
'Tron 3' is confirmed, will unfortunately star Jared Leto

Disney loves a science fiction franchise, which makes sense given that its two massive tentpole sagas, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars, have made the company so much money that accountants have had to invent new numbers.

However, not all of its sci-fi franchises have been whopping successes. In 2012, the curse of Disney original sci-fi movies reached new depths with John Carter, an adaptation of a 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs serial that sees a Confederate veteran be teleported to Mars. Even last year, the animated sci-fi movie Strange World underperformed after a confusing marketing campaign.

Now, another failed franchise is being exhumed from the dustbin of movie history, with a huge (and controversial) name attached: Jared Leto.

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Gear
How Uber's bus-like EVs could revive a transit pipe dream

Uber is designing its own cars. The ride-hailing and food delivery company is working with automakers to develop and create custom EVs, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi shared at a Wall Street Journal event on Thursday.

The company hopes to design vehicles purpose-built for ridesharing and delivery as part of its larger goal of electrifying its entire fleet by 2040. With the possibility of cars that have “lower top speeds” and seats “where passengers can face each other,” it’s easy to write the plan off as another example of “Silicon Valley inventing the bus,” but if anything, the cars Uber’s describing sound like mobility concepts that have plagued major trade shows like CES for the past decade.

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Older messages

🌌 Ancient galaxy candidates

Friday, January 20, 2023

Plus: Inverse's 23 most anticipated movies of 2023. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

🍿 Gerard Butler is flattered to be called “King of the B-Movie”

Friday, January 20, 2023

Plus: Webb Telescope just found its first exoplanet. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

🌎 #ExxonKnew

Friday, January 20, 2023

Plus: Why Apple is working on touchscreen Macs after years of denial. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

🧠 Let’s talk about you

Friday, January 20, 2023

This week we're talking about our core beliefs about ourselves — and how we can improve them. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

🤖 Is 'M3GAN' a real threat?

Friday, January 20, 2023

Plus: Ancient Siberian DNA upends our understanding of Native American migration. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

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