What's New

Hello, dear reader, and welcome to another edition of The Monitor, WIRED's look at all that's new and news in the world of pop culture, from casting news to TV show renewals. What’s on the docket today? The Walking Dead is getting (another) new season, Anya Taylor-Joy and Edgar Wright are teaming up, and Disney is going to keep the Deadpool movies R-rated. Deadpool Will Stay R-Rated As you may have heard, the Walt Disney Company is in the process of acquiring 21st Century Fox.

"Do you like Instagram?" Bee Fisher asks her son, Tegan Fisher, a 3-year-old Instagram sensation who specializes in posing next to his family's enormous Newfoundlands. He doesn't seem to understand the question. "Is this yogurt cooled down?" Tegan replies. "Do you like Instagram? Do you like taking pictures?" Bee asks again. Once again, the temperature of yogurt prevails. "He means, 'Has the yogurt thawed?' Our fridge froze them," Bee explains.

First, I saw the tweet. “I miss having a real connection w/ real people. My Community. From now on you can just text me. I won't be able to respond to everyone but at least we can be real w/ each other & I can share the unedited latest & greatest in my world,” wrote Ashton Kutcher, the celebrity and tech world adjacentist, on Tuesday afternoon. And then he posted his phone number: 10 digits that held the promise of so much more. I threw the link into Slack and then did it.

Once again, it's time for The Monitor, WIRED's look at all that's new and news in the world of pop culture, from casting rumors to the current recipients of Netflix's largesse. This week: Batman gets a release date, Oscar Isaac might be going to Dune, Universal has a new plan for its monster mashup, and Zack Snyder is going back to making zombie flicks. Tune in. The Batman Is Coming in Two Years—Without Ben Affleck The Batman is coming. Yesterday, Warner Bros.

Several hours into my tour of Casper Labs, I start to feel sleepy. Casper, the company famous for its internet-sold mattresses, set up this facility in San Francisco to test its products. There are levers that press down to measure the springiness of the mattresses' foam, wire coils that take the temperature beneath the wool-blend duvets, and many nice, pillowy things. Walls are padded with fabrics, each of them soft and inviting. A collection of jars contain down feathers, foam, curly wool.

In 2007, New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, in a belated embrace of the 21st century, required that every taxi plying the streets of the five boroughs start taking credit card payments. For cash-weary New Yorkers, the new readers made life easier.

Even though I've spent a lot of time driving electric cars, the acceleration that comes with silent, instant torque can still raise my heart rate and elicit a nervous laugh. But this time, add in the fact that the driver of the new Mercedes EQC SUV looked like he was rocketing on a collision path with one of my colleagues, and my pulse spiked a little higher than normal. https://twitter.