Ripped from the Headlines: October, 2019: This Week In Culture: October 5–11, 2019

Controllers for the just-announced Playstation 5 will have adaptive triggers, with variable resistance that's programmable by developers. The author looks forward to a raft of innovations regarding controllers, platforms, and virtual reality. Affective, as in "Seasonal Affective Disorder" refers to how you feel; in this context the physical sensation of holding a more responsive controller should make you feel better about playing a game.

"The King", a film adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV and V starring Timothée Chalamet, premiers in theaters this week. The story follows Prince Hal from his misspent youth (mentored by Falstaff, played by Joel Edgerton) to his coronation and victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt, where English longbows proved decisive in that historic upset. An allegory is a story, but everything in that story stands for something else.

When Daryl Morey, GM of the Houston Rockets, tweeted support for protestors in Hong Kong, the response from China was quick and ferocious. The government and a couple of major sponsors immediately announced they were ending their relationships with the NBA. The league's response, widely seen as trying to placate China without alienating fans elsewhere — who have admired the league for its social conscience — was widely viewed as terrible and a sellout to the abusive Chinese government.

The Downton Abbey movie, which takes place fifteen years after the story began, nonetheless features an extremely young-looking Daisy, played by Sophie McShera. The issue highlights a major problem for shows that cover long periods of time: actors age in real time, not story time. The author theorizes that since she doesn't age, she must be a vampire, which makes perfect sense, since vampires are denizens of castles.

Brie Larson, star of Captain America, says that she's been talking with Marvel Studios about an all-woman Marvel film. It's not a done deal, but after the successes of Wonder Woman and Captain America it's a safe bet that something will come together soon. To emphasize something means that you put stress on it so that it stands out. The "em" tag in HTML, which italicizes text, making it seem important, stands for emphasize.

On Wednesday, The Atlanta Braves lost to the Saint Louis Cardinals in game 5 of the National League Division Series, making this the ninth consecutive postseason series they have lost since 2001. This defeat earns them a spot alongside the Chicago Cubs in the record books, who also lost 10 series in a row, though it took them considerably longer: from 1908 to 2003.

People called "transhumanists" enjoy having electronics like microchips or LEDs implanted in their bodies, believing that such modifications represent the next step in human evolution. One woman, disabled in an accident, had a chip implanted in her hand that unlocks her front door, leaving her hands free to hold her cane. Magpies are birds that gather flashy scraps of trash to decorate their nests, so using the word to describe people who implant LEDs in their bodies seems apt.

Marcello Giordani, an operatic tenor from Sicily, died this week of a heart attack at 56. His father supported his decision at 19 to study singing in Milan, and his gamble paid off with a successful career at the top of the very competitive field, touring the world and performing with living legends like Renée Fleming. He was renowned for his powerful voice and also for his stamina; he rarely cancelled performances due to illness and often subbed in for singers who did.

Venerable icon of cheesy pop culture David Hasselhoff remains inexplicably huge in Germany, where he's touring to support his 14th(!) album. He's also commemorating the 30th anniversary of the toppling of the Berlin Wall; he performed there shortly after it came down and still hasn't gotten over himself. A highlight of the tour is a replica of KITT, the talking car he drove in "Knight Rider", a TV show that your parents made fun of when it first aired about a hundred years ago.

For a long time, sciences were viewed by many people as the principal means for comprehending not just the world around us, but also for understanding ourselves. From charting evolution to decoding DNA to creating vaccines, science has continuously deepened our knowledge of what it means to be human. Now, cloning, genetic engineering, and cybernetics might change that definition forever. As reality rapidly moves closer to science fiction, these questions will grow more pressing.