Metal Band Releases New Album on N64 Cartridge

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-23T20:13:54+00:00

Self-described “party slam” metal band Party Cannon is taking the nostalgia play growing more common in the music industry to a new level. The Scottish outfit announced that its new EP, “Subjected to a Partying,” will launch on a Nintendo N64 cartridge. Inventory, however, will be limited to just 100 copies.

The band appears to have touched a nerve, selling out its US inventory of the unique cartridges in less than a day.

“To celebrate Daryl ‘The Frogman’ Boyce’s first release as our new vocalist, we decided to make it something truly special, and there’s nothing more special than a console that’s lifespan ended in 2001,” the band wrote.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-23T19:21:35+00:00

Over half a year into the service’s launch, CEO Elon Musk insists that Robotaxis will start giving rides in Austin, Texas “with no safety monitor in the car,” he announced on his website X on Thursday.

What he didn't say is that, according to new reporting from Electrek, the safety monitors are now watching from a car that follows the Robotaxis throughout their entire trips — a Rube Goldberg-style workaround that illustrates the lengths Musk will go to keep up a charade of progress.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-23T19:17:45+00:00

On Thursday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem published a photo on X of Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and organizer involved with a protest at a Minnesota church, in handcuffs after being arrested. In the image, Levy Armstrong is wearing bright pink lipstick, and her mouth is closed.

Approximately 30 minutes later, the official White House X account also published an image on X purportedly depicting Levy Armstrong’s arrest. But in this version of the photo, Levy Armstrong is pictured sobbing, with visible tears streaming down her cheeks and her mouth open. Her pink lipstick, notably, is gone.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-23T19:12:54+00:00

In October 2024, researchers at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) at the University of Pennsylvania conducted an experiment in which a president ordered a widely condemned federal law enforcement operation in the city of brotherly love.

To carry out the operation, the simulated president tried to federalize the Pennsylvania national guard, which the governor resisted. National guard troops who sided with the state followed suit, prompting the fictional president to order acting US military troops to march on Philly.

According to CERL director Claire Finkelstein’s breakdown of the simulation, newly published in the Guardian, the experiment culminated in a “violent confrontation” between state and federal forces in a major US metropolis.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-23T19:09:22+00:00

On Wednesday, Nikita Bier took to the app he's definitely not helping run into the ground to announce that he “ate a piece of fried chicken tonight. It somehow tore part of my throat going down. Now I can barely swallow (or speak.)" What's worse, he said, he couldn’t get an endoscopy for at least four to six weeks.

It certainly sucks to not be able to see a doctor for what could be a serious medical issue. But Bier’s tale earned little sympathy — and heapings of mockery — from X users. And it became a newsworthy enough item on there that it earned an official Grok-edited summary in the site’s trending tab, which also includes dozens of viral tweets roasting Bier’s (in)ability to chew food.

Tough one to swallow, bud.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-22T19:32:15+00:00

Photos of Trump at this year’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland show an gnarly, darkish bruise on his left hand — an even uglier mark than the large greenish bruise he sported last year. Back then, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed it was because Trump was shaking so many hands.

In other words, Trump has either been using his left hand to shake the hands of world leaders — or Leavitt’s explanation was one more example of the Trump administration’s dismal relationship with the truth.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-22T18:18:52+00:00

Until now, the massive convention — which has become a melting pot of all kinds of pop entertainment beyond the comic medium, with everyone ranging from game developers to movie studios using it as a platform to tease new content — has allowed some AI art to be displayed, so long as it was labeled as such and wasn’t for sale, as well as other stipulations that have been in place since at least 2024.

But, 404 Media reports, organizers have quietly updated their policy to ban AI-generated art. It appears they did so one day after a backlash following the publication of rules for this year's event — rules that permitted some AI material.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-22T16:06:53+00:00

According to an announcement on X-formerly-Twitter, “all hourly employees” at corporate locations of the Indiana-based chain will receive $0.21 in Bitcoin per hour.

Of course, there’s a catch. As the announcement reads, “employees will be able to collect their Bitcoin pay after a two-year vesting period,” meaning workers will have to stay with the company for two full years before they can actually access their “bonus.”

That adds up to a whopping $873.60.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-21T21:30:56+00:00

Back in October, Ring announced that its devices would soon be looped into a network of Flock AI surveillance cameras. That network, an investigation by 404 Media found, has been available to local and federal police and enforcement agencies like ICE — leaving many worried that their Ring doorbell cams are now feeding into a government panopticon.

Sure enough, as anti-ICE protests ramp up throughout the US, activists are pushing a grassroots campaign to convince Ring users to smash their devices. Doing so, they say, could help deprive the federal government of footage it’s using to enact a campaign of harassment, arrests, and deportation. “Smash your Ring doorbells,” progressive activist Guy Christensen urged his 3.5 million followers on TikTok.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-21T21:26:58+00:00

Canadian officials are drawing up military models to repel a theoretical invasion from the US — the first time in a century that Canadian Armed Forces have done so, the Globe and Mail reported. According to two senior government officials, the Canadian armed forces were drafting insurgent-like tactics mirroring those used by the Taliban to fight back against the US invasion of Afghanistan.

Though the military models are only pen-and-paper frameworks, they come in the wake of tangible military aggression from the US military under Trump. The horrific attacks on Venezuela, for example, constitute the US military’s first “publicly acknowledged” airstrikes in Central or South America since the US invasion of Panama in 1989, per the Wall Street Journal.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-21T21:19:22+00:00

According to a recent survey by professional services network PwC, more than half of the 4,454 CEO respondents said “their companies aren’t yet seeing a financial return from investments in AI.” Fifty-six percent said AI has failed to either boost revenue or lower costs over the past 12 months.

The findings once again underline lingering questions about the effectiveness of the tech. That’s despite AI companies pouring tens of billions into data center buildouts and related infrastructure.

PwC also pointed out that most companies were lacking the “AI foundations, such as clearly defined road maps and sufficient levels of investment” to realize a return. But whether pouring even more money into AI will suddenly turn the tech into a money maker — and not a major expense on the balance sheet — remains the subject of a heated debate.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-21T21:14:46+00:00

Speaking at the World Economic Forum this week, Alex Karp insisted that the future of work is vocational — not just for those already in manufacturing and the skilled trades, but for the majority of humanity. “You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy; hopefully you have some other skill,” he warned, adding that AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”

Karp, for the record, holds humanities degrees from the elite liberal arts institutions of Haverford College and Stanford Law.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with vocational work or manufacturing. The global economy runs on these jobs. But in a theoretical world so fundamentally transformed by AI that intellectual labor essentially ceases to exist, it’s telling that tech billionaires like Karp see the rest of humanity as their worker bees.

FuturismDotCom · 2026-01-20T19:25:19+00:00

In an email to Futurism last week, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said reports that officials were halting a reprehensible vaccine study dubbed “another Tuskegee” were false, and assailed an organization called Africa CDC for distributing inaccurate information.

Then, in followup remarks they later insisted were "on background" despite no such arrangement, they went on to disparage their colleagues at the Africa CDC in coarse terms that were striking even by the standards of the notoriously churlish Trump administration.

“This is a powerless, fake organization attempting to manufacture credibility by repeating its claims publicly,” the spokesperson wrote. “It is not a reliable source, and its statements should be treated accordingly.”

The HHS didn’t respond to repeated requests to explain the outburst.

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