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Sabrina Carpenter is gearing up to make her feature film debut; the pop star will produce and star in a new musical movie inspired by Alice in Wonderland for Universal Pictures. Inspired by the Lewis Carroll book, the as-yet-untitled film will be written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, best known for directing several episodes of Succession—for which she earned two Emmy nominations—and helming the movies Hustlers and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World as both a director and writer.

While plot details are still being kept under wraps and a release date is not yet in sight, Carpenter’s new project does list Marc Platt as a co-producer, through his company Marc Platt Productions, as well as Alloy Entertainment’s Leslie Morgenstein and Elysa Koplovitz Dutton.

On the strength of her new album, Man’s Best Friendwhich she released this past September, Carpenter scooped up six nominations at the upcoming 2026 Grammy Awards. One of the biggest looks is her nomination for Song of the Year, with “Manchild,” marking her second time in the category, following last year’s run with “Please Please Please.” As with last time, Carpenter shares the nomination with co-writer Jack Antonoff.

Rounding out Carpenter’s Grammy Award nominations this time are Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for Man’s Best Friendas well as Record of the Year, Best Music Video, and Best Pop Solo Performance, for “Manchild.” See the full list of nominations here. The awards ceremony is set for February 1 and will be broadcast live on CBS.

If you’re distracted while driving, it’s difficult to shoot your enemy. During World War II — a notoriously distracting period in human history — this profound observation provoked the development of a variety of largely mechanical user aids that we now categorize as “head-up displays” (HUDs): effectively transparent information displays that allowed fighter and bomber pilots to keep their attention on the actual horizon, not the gauges or handheld maps inside the cockpit, the better to put bullets into enemies or bombs on top of their war stuff.

Despite what you might think based on Iron Man hrs star wars, layering information is only “futuristic” if you ignore the incremental practical progression from gun sights (raised tabs of metal that, when aligned, show that a straight barrel sits more or less on a ray from the bullet to the target) to reticles (crosshairs or sights) to simulated horizon lines or projected radar displays, which, during the multinational innovation laboratory of a global conflict, progressed pretty dang quickly. (Am I saying that gun sights were the first augmented-reality technology? Well, I’m not swimming saying it.)

At the beginning of World War II, airplane armament was aimed using reflector sights and gyroscopically stabilized reticles that could “lead” a target — clever stuff, but not hugely advanced over technology used during the previous World War. By the end of WWII, some bombers had onboard microwave radar systems with television-based displays, although only a select number of specialized night flyers, like the zippy wooden-framed de Havilland Mosquitowere equipped with what we would consider to be a true HUD, which reflected the radar information, including an artificial horizon, onto a piece of glass just in front of the pilot controls.

So that’s the head-up display, completely sorted in the early ’40s: Take some hopefully useful information from some electronics, project it onto some glass, keep your hands on ten and two, try not to put your machine where any bullets are, and hopefully get your airframe safely back home. And while postwar engineers continued to develop the HUD for the burgeoning commercial aircraft market, it didn’t take too long before automakers — staffed by many veterans themselves — began to see the utility of a HUD in a car, albeit at an abbreviated pace.

Designers at General Motors were at least sketching out the idea of ​​putting a HUD in a vehicle by 1965during the conceptualization for the Mako Shark II, a concept car that informed the curves of the late-’60s, early-’70s C3 Chevrolet Corvette. (The fiberglass-body one, stereotypically driven by pricks in period movies, but also astronauts and half the population of the mid-century Midwest. They’re beautiful cars, and readily available for purchase at a reasonable price even today, since Chevy sold zillions of them, and they look faster than they actually drive.) However, the HUD never made it off the page into any Mako Shark II concept car that was actually built.

It would take over 20 years before a regular car buyer could actually purchase a car with a head-up display. After the acquisition of Hughes Aircraft by General Motors in 1985, and a subsequent merger with GM’s in-house electronics division Delco, the faintly phosphorescent stars aligned: Fifty 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Convertibles (Indy Pace Car Edition) were equipped with a Hughes-derived head-up display that projected a digital speedometer and turn-signal indicators onto the windshield. (Full disclosure: I’ve done freelance work with General Motors in the past.) General Motors hired legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager to drive the drop-top Cutlass around the track to really tie together the whole aircraft lineage story during the car’s launch, and soon began to offer a HUD as an option in cars across the company’s various car brands (including Corvettes), although technically Nissan beat them to market for the first mass-market car HUDwith the 1989 model 240SX and Maxima.

These days, almost every luxury car brand offers at least an optional head-up display that does pretty much the same thing: reflect some information from a small TFT panel onto the windshield, usually something similar to what is shown on the instrument cluster display — speed, GPS-guided turn-by-turn directions, maybe what song is streaming through Spotify. (This rebooted Lincoln Navigator’s head-up display is a good example — large, elegantly kerned, art directed with restraint.)

Yet driver affinities for HUDs are largely mixed. Some drivers I know wouldn’t buy a car without a HUD; others find them to be an annoyance. (Famously driver-focused Porsche doesn’t even offer a HUD in their sports cars, but finally relented to include them as options in their SUV and grand tourer, the Cayenne and Panamera.)

Even the best automotive HUDs are limited by a simple technical limitation: They can only project a two-dimensional image into the field of view of a driver. You may be able to fiddle with a dial or change exactly where the ghostly pane floats in your view, but a two-dimensional display can only ever look like a translucent tablet screen superimposed over the real world.

What’s missing?

“I cannot emphasize this variable enough,” says Juliana Clegg, CEO of Falcon AR, one of several companies designing what they hope will be the car head-up display of the future. “Depth, depth, depth.”

“Depth — variable depth between the driver and, say, 30 meters in front of the vehicle — is vital to make a real safety impact.”

Volumetric HUDs, like those from Falcon AR or competitors like WayRay, will allow something like true augmented reality to not just project flat information in front of a driver’s face, but can position little overlays — lane markers, or GPS arrows — such that they appear to be floating in the real world. A tiny, flat arrow that indicates a left turn is handy, but your phone or touchscreen center-stack display can already do that, if you glance down or up. A 3-D arrow that curves in front of you to show exactly where the next intersection is in real life is much more handy.

If any of the augmented-reality HUDs can be made to practically work, that is. Falcon AR has more modest ambitions: a relatively inexpensive technology that adds depth to a head-up display for just the driver. WayRay, by comparison, aims to create a holographic display that can project across the entire front windshield — think navigation information for the driver, Netflix for the passengers — but requires specially bonded layers of windshield glass that add more cost to the overall expense of the car.

WayRay’s CEO Vitaly Ponomarev says that manufacturers might be able to subsidize the added expense through “advertising options” — virtual billboards could entice passengers to stop for a quick plate of chicken, for instance — which might sound far-fetched but seems entirely plausible if, say, the self-driving taxi business ends up being structured like the smartphone app economy. (And automakers like General Motors and Ford are already mulling using the tremendous amount of data they collect from cars to sell to advertisers.)

However it shakes out, the problem of keeping a driver’s eyes scanning the real world, not a screen, will continue to be solved by attempting to put a different type of screen in front of drivers. And as cars are increasingly packed with sensors like RADAR and LIDAR, as well as machine-learning-educated cameras, there is a real opportunity to increase drivers’ awareness of hazards in their field of view: kids on bikes, potholes, high-calorie milkshakes. Cars already attempt to be aware of these hazards so that the safety systems, like lane-keeping or automatic emergency braking, can operate.

Whether or not telling the driver about these hazards through an augmented-reality overlay is a safety boon remains to be seen through.

News broke late on Wednesday that Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Chinese telecom giant Huawei and daughter Ren Zhengfei, the founder of the company, was arrested by Canadian officials during a stopover in Vancouver in order for Meng to be extradited to the United States.

The Department of Justice has so far remained mum about the case, but Republican senator Ben Sasse said the arrest was linked to Huawei’s doing business with Iran. “Americans are grateful that our Canadian partners have arrested the chief financial officer of a giant Chinese telecom company for breaking US sanctions against Iran,” he said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

It’s hard to overstate the size and importance of Huawei both inside and outside of China, and how shocking this arrest is. The top-line stat you’ll read about Huawei (pronounced “wow-way”) is that it recently surpassed Apple to become the number-two manufacturer of mobile phones in the world, second only to Samsung.

But casting Huawei as the Chinese equivalent of Apple understates its reach and importance — Huawei also manufactures a tremendous amount of the equipment used by phone and internet companies, as well as providing IT consulting services both in China and around the globe. Combine Apple, Cisco, and Booz Allen, and then imagine this company working very closely with the US government, and you’re getting closer to the true significance of the company to China.

Meng, beyond being Huawei’s CFO, is seen as the heir apparent to the company. Think what would happen if Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was arrested by Chinese authorities for unclear reasons, and you start to get a sense of the uncertainty rippling across global markets right now.

The Chinese government has demanded that Meng be released. “The detention without giving any reason violates a person’s human rights,” said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson. “We have made solemn representations to Canada and the US, demanding that both parties immediately clarify the reasons for the detention, and immediately release the detainee to protect the person’s legal rights.”

“There has been very little information provided to Huawei on the specific allegations. Huawei is not aware of any misconduct by Ms. Meng,” said Huawei’s CEO in a statement posted to WeChat, China’s most popular communications app.

Huawei, along with many other Chinese phone manufacturers and telecom equipment makers, is viewed with significant suspicion by the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, comprised of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All countries have agreed not to use Huawei while rolling out 5G networks, fearing that the company — founded by a former People’s Liberation Army officer — would allow Chinese intelligence operatives to spy on other nations. The US has also banned all governmental agencies from buying or using Huawei phones or equipment.

The arrest came shortly after news broke that China and the US had agreed to a 90-day suspension of their ongoing trade war. Stocks of most major chip manufacturers fell after news of the arrest broke, with chipmaker stocks usually serving as a bellwether for investor confidence in US-China relations. As of this morning, that relationship appears very, very rocky.

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We still need to find ourselves prepared to look chic while lying horizontally (or working).

If you’re interested in becoming a sweat-suit connoisseur yourself (no time like the present to develop a new hobby) and upgrading your sweatpants drawer, below you’ll find the matching sets you’re going to want to live in any case. Trust us: We’ve only included the sweat suits we’ve continuously tried and tested inside (and outside) our homes over the past few years.

➼ Our top picks
➼ More tried-and-true options
➼ Our experts

Material: Cotton and nylon fleece | Colors: 10| Sizes: S to XXL

Writer Marjon Carlos inspired us to check out this option from Hanes. She wrote on Instagram that she used to wear it when she worked from home as a freelancer, and it got her through “just about everything.”

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Material: Cotton and polyester | Colors: 8 | Sizes: XS to XXL

Gymshark’s cute but reliable gym gear is beloved, and its sweats and hoodies for off days are just as good. With an oversize fit, thick fabrics, and cozy interior, these are ideal for post-workouts in the fall and winter.

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Material: 70 percent cotton, 30 percent polyester | Colors: 7 | Sizes: XS/S to XL/XXL

One of Lululemon’s best-selling sweat suits is this oversized hoodie and wide-leg pants set. The high collar and hood create a scuba silhouette for maximum comfort; it essentially doubles as a scarf to protect the neck area in cold weather. This set also has four pockets in total, so it’s perfect for running errands.

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Material: 77 percent cotton, 23 percent polyester | Colors: 24 | Sizes: XXS to XXL and petite, regular, or tall length

The Gap describes this set as “softer than soft,” which is the only type of sweat suit acceptable for lounging on the couch. Both pieces have a classic vintage-inspired cut, and the joggers have a comfortable elastic waistband.

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Material: 70 percent cotton, 30 percent polyester | Colors: 4 | Sizes: XS to XL

On a picture-perfect fall day when it’s 65 degrees outside and the sun is shining, the only thing I want to wear is a sweatshirt with shorts. It’s a dreamy combination. This FP Movement set is sporty and cozy, featuring ribbed cuff and hem details on the sweatshirt and a retro side stripe on the shorts.

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Material: 61 percent recycled polyester, 39 percent cotton | Colors: 1 | Sizes: XS to XL

If you’re fully committed to the sweatsuit look, we recommend this Adidas set from the brand’s original Wales Bonner capsule collection. Inspired by old-school marathoners, it’s fashion forward yet functional and made from recycled tech-jersey material. Layer a camel coat over it and you’ve got the perfect casual look for fall.

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Material: Polyester, viscose, spandex Colors: 3 | Sizes: XS to XL

If this LESET set could speak, it would say, “I’m not your regular sweat suit. I’m a cool knit sweat suit.” This cropped cardigan and pocket pants duo is more elevated than a casual sweat suit, creating a look that’s minimal and chic.

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Material: 100 percent organic cotton | Colors: 18 | Sizes: XXS to XXL

The Pangaia sweat suits are about as cool as they get. With over 1 million followers on Instagram and an ethos dedicated to science, purpose, and design, this brand is hard not to fall in love with. Everyone on our feeds seems to have one, and now there’s a recycled-cashmere one.

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Material: 80 percent cotton, 20 percent polyester | Colors: 14 | Sizes: XS to XL

Velor has never looked cooler, thanks to NYC-based tracksuit brand Suzie Kondi. This set has a relaxed, oversize fit and drapey silhouette that’s ideal for long travel days.

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Material: 87 percent merino wool, 13 percent polyamide (medium-weight wool) | Colors: 2 | Sizes: XS to XL

If you’re not into sweat suits but want something to wear on lazy days — or vice versa: you pretty much exclusively wear sweat suits but need to look more put-together every once in a while — you’ll love Gigi Hadid’s version. The hoodie is a chunky knit with raglan sleeves and a cozy “cocoon fit.” The joggers also have a relaxed fit and drawstring waistband but can easily be dressed up with the matching Guest In Residence cardigan.

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Material: 54 percent cotton, 46 percent rayon (French terry) | Colors: 5 | Sizes: XS to XL

This flattering slim-fit sweatshirt is slightly cropped, so it’s versatile enough to wear with the matching sweatpants, high-waisted trousers, or low-rise jeans. Both the sweatshirt and sweatpants have a subtle logo in the top right corner that makes them feel more elevated than your typical sweat suit, plus they’re easy to mix and match with other pieces from Eterne’s loungewear collection.

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Material: 78 percent cotton, 22 percent polyester (mid-weight fleece) | Colors: 30 | Sizes: 2XS to 2XL and petite, regular, or tall length

You’ve spent the past few months in various cargo pants and shorts, and now you can expand the storage to your sweatpants. With a wider leg and plenty of colors to choose from, mix and match these mid-weight fleece sweats with hoodies and sneakers.

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When Top Chef embraces a filming location (and all the support its local government provides throughout the season), it really embraces it. From the challenges to the judges to the elaborate kitchen set, this show isn’t afraid of risking tackiness in the name of a theme. If you invited Top Chef to a theme party, it would commission an elaborate custom piece and scoff at your paltry Party City attempts.

Which is to say: This week’s episode leans into the Canada of it all so hard that it once again feels like a giant (accidental!) middle finger to all those nonsensically pushing anti-Canada agendas right now. I’ll leave it to actual Canadians to dissect how successful the show’s depiction is, but from where I’m sitting, it’s making our northern neighbor look pretty great.

After Massimo kicks the morning off by leading a rooftop yoga session (we’ve only just begun to peel back Montreal Fabio‘s onion layers, huh?), the chefs meet Kristen, Official Top Chef Canadian Ambassador Gail Simmons, and Sarah Levy, aka “Twyla from Schitt’s Creek,” aka daughter of Eugene, aka sister of Dan. The Quickfire challenge? Poutine! Make it good, make it interesting, make it Top Chef. Just make poutine.

With 30 minutes on the clock, the 14 chefs grab all different kinds of potatoes to make their poutines stand out. We’ve got sweet potato (Lana), yucca (Tristen and Henry), and plantains (Paula). We’ve got a potato in “tomato gravy” (Vinny), a take on stroganoff (Anya), and an affectionate ode to “fromage squeak squeak” (Massimo, obviously). We’ve got it all, and I want it all — except Bailey’s “Korean shrimp arrabbiata,” which commits the classic Quickfire sin of being more of a (Miranda Priestly voice) pile of stuff than a coherent plate of food.

Corwin, meanwhile, confesses that he’s never made poutine and doesn’t really understand “what the hell is in that sauce… stuff…” — which is surprising since he comes off as a man who likes to do his homework. The second these chefs knew they’d be going to Canada, they absolutely should’ve prepared for a poutine challenge!

Shuai did exactly that, and so the creamy fondant potato he practiced to death before the show actually came out perfectly. It would almost be a shame he had to use it on a Quickfire, but the win banks him $5,000 and a priceless confidence boost. Also in the top are two more straightforward takes on poutine, fittingly from Montreal Massimo and Kat, who grew up in Wisconsin and wasn’t about to mess up cheese curds. Landing in the bottom are Henry (for the sin of a spongy scallion pancake), Paula (for texture issues), and Bailey (for the aforementioned Pile of Stuff). The face Bailey pulls after her name is called betrays her annoyed frustration; she hasn’t clicked into a groove and doesn’t seem to know how. In other seasons, she might have gotten more time to figure it out. But as part of a cast that Gail calls “the Quickfire kings,” there’s no time to waste.

Onward to the Elimination Challenge, which somehow manages to get even more Canadian. After declining to introduce Daniel Boulud on the (correct) basis that he doesn’t need an introduction, Kristen gives a brief history of maple-syrup “sugar shacks,” which will also serve as the serving site for their meals. Split into two random teams of seven, the chefs have to create a seven-course progression meal that includes maple in every dish. As such, they’ll also have to cook brunch, because this show loves to provide exposure therapy for chefs confronting their worst nightmares. Case in point: Boulud also cheekily requests that someone make him a soufflé. The chefs keep their cool, but if we could get a glimpse into their brains Inside Out style, you best believe Anxiety would be making a beeline for the fire alarm.

The Brown Team — made up of Lana, Shuai, César, Zubair, Tristen, Paula, and Corwin — throws out ideas ranging from toad in the hole, French toast, and chawanmushi, a Japanese steamed egg dish that Corwin is confident he can pull off even if it makes Tristen openly nervous. The Green Team — Kat, Katianna, Henry, Anya, Massimo, Vinny, and Bailey — also keeps it relatively simple, although Vinny volunteers to take Boulud up on his soufflé challenge. Massimo, who has? cited Boulud as his first and most influential mentor, is happy to let “Mr. Immunity” take that bullet. (“I’m … not making a soufflé for Daniel. I’m making steak and eggs.”)

Of course, Top Chef wouldn’t be Top Chef if it didn’t throw in yet another twist, preferably one that makes only marginal sense on behalf of a sponsor. This time, Kristen has the unenviable task of scaring the shit out of them in the Whole Foods parking garage to explain that, in honor of their Wells Fargo Active Cash Cards (LOL), they’ll get 2 percent of their budget back (LMAO). So they’ll get to buy a few more ingredients — but for the other team, which will have to use whatever they get in at least one dish. Also, the winning team gets $35,000 to split between them, so another $5,000 per chef is once again up for grabs.

This group of chefs seems like they’re genuinely having fun with the show and each other, which is always great to see, and, frankly, usually produces better food overall. But given 50 bucks to shop for their competition, the knives came out. Even as the Brown Team starts off agreeing they don’t want to “screw them screw them,” that approach changes after Paula points out that the Green Team has Massimo, who will absolutely delight in the opportunity to mess with them. Cut to Massimo absolutely delighting in the opportunity to mess with them, cackling at the idea of ​​shopping for everything from live eels to tripe to (as per Vinny’s diabolical suggestion) “a whole pizza.” Saboteurs!

The Brown Team ends up grabbing just two items: a bottle of white truffle oil and a whole precooked lasagna. The Green Team diversifies, selecting a few slices of stodgy pizza before hitting up the candy aisle for candy corn, Red Hots, and caramel corn. With every villainous giggle Massimo unleashes, I fear I love him more and more.

There’s some overlap between the teams’ menus, between Tristen and Massimo taking on steak and eggs, Lana and Katianna maple-curing salmon, and Henry and Zubair doing their own spin on fried chicken. But with only two hours of cooking time, most of the kitchen drama comes down to timing. Bailey overmixes her custard to the point of splitting, forcing her to restart her tarts from scratch. Corwin’s chawanmushi does indeed prove tricky to cook all the way through, to the point that he doesn’t get all the steaming plastic off the bowl and cruelly ends up going to Chef Boulud. Even if he wins Top Chefwatching a baffled Boulud peel Saran Wrap off his fingers will undoubtedly haunt Corwin forever.

Overall, though, everyone did a pretty good job! This is clearly a strong cast that’s down to get creative with the challenges, which is excellent news. I was also glad to see the production avoid a pet peeve of mine Top Chef progression challenges like last season’s Miller High Life™ one, which served each course from both teams simultaneously. How can you properly judge an individual progression menu when you’re eating two different menus at once?! You can’t! So it was a relief when this episode just let each team serve their dishes all in a row in the true style of a progression meal so the judges could actually understand their choices.

The Brown Team goes first, immediately serving up one of the dishes adjusted on the fly post-sabotage. Shuai incorporated the pizza into his toad in the hole with a maple togarashi-cured yolk, which Gail and the judging table agree “sort of works!” Lara’s maple-cured salmon with everything bagel spice gets generally positive reviews, as does César’s poached lobster, although his curry biscuit gets dinged for density. Tristen’s maple jerk steak and dukkah grits are well seasoned (with Red Hots!), and even though Paula’s French toast is very sweet, thanks in large part to having to make “candy corn crème anglaise,” the judges still enjoy it.

But it’s Zubair’s tandoori maple-fried chicken that proves a clear standout, ultimately winning him both immunity and this episode’s award for No. 1 Dish I Personally Need to Eat Immediately (™ previous Top Chef recapper Roxana Hadadi). You only need one look at it to understand why Zubair credits this sandwich as the reason for his success as a chef. It’s bursting with color and crisp and flavor, and if I don’t get fried chicken in my mouth ASAP, I may have to sue myself for neglect.

Despite their eventual loss, the Green Team is also quite successful. The highs — Kat’s congee with maple bacon chili crisp, Anya’s Siberian-inspired syrnitki, and Vinny’s gutsy soufflé — are high. Katianna’s maple-cured salmon tartare with whipped silken tofu and Massimo’s steak and eggs with “maple lasagna Bordelaise” are good but don’t have enough maple flavor to satisfy the judges.

But the gods of Top Chef chaos, unmoved by efficiency, still demands a sacrifice. And although Corwin’s steaming disaster briefly threatens to sink his team, the other menu’s maple shortcomings seal their fate. The bottom two are Henry’s limp fried chicken (fried in the remains of Zubair’s winning oil, no less) and Bailey’s maple tart, which was so underbaked that all Kristen could taste was flour. Plus, her choice to also use honey ended up negating the maple flavor, leaving the judges with a sad, pale disc of dough and pineapple. Having never hit her Top Chef stride, Bailey packs her knives and goes to try her luck on Last Chance Kitchen.

• “I hate brunch.” —Tom Colicchio, reminding us he’s a chef’s chef first and always.

• Kristen Kish Suit Envy Watch: Her white-blue-and-khaki striped suit was perfectly brunch appropriate and only ranks at a 7 for me personally because I’m a winter who doesn’t look great in those colors. (At least she, unlike Gail, avoided tie-dye, which … we simply don’t have time to unpack.)

• I LOL’d when the music cut as Vinny and Henry held their breath to stare at the soufflés. Very cute editing choice.

• Would love for Henry to stick around, both because he’s a sweetheart and to see more of his beautiful watercolors.

• Lovely to see Evelyn Garcia of Top Chef: Portland again! I’m not surprised to hear Henry say that running a restaurant with her means laughter all day, every day; what a gem.

• Zubair getting laid off from his finance job during the 2008 recession and becoming a chef is a truly admirable career pivot; good for him and everyone who gets to eat his sandwiches!

• Anya’s pine cone jam made her the runner-up for Dish I Personally Need to Eat Immediately™. No one at the judging table had ever eaten anything like it, so I’m sure I haven’t either, and now I must.

Bucket or Chuck It? is a series in which staff writer Rebecca Alter reviews the latest promotional popcorn buckets. You can watch her full hands-on demo on TikTok. For a breakdown of her score, read on.

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the … butter? The sequel to last year’s Wicked is finally in theaters, and with it comes follow-up promotional popcorn buckets. In truth Wicked megamerchandising fashion, multiple buckets have been released, but by far the most thrilling is Regal’s Wicked: For Good music box, which marks a milestone in popcorn-bucket technology: It plays music! Will this be a totally fine and unobtrusive part of the moviegoing experience or a What technological hell have we wrought? crossing of the rubicon bucket?

Assessing the appearance of the bucket based on creativity, attention to detail, and how willing a person would be to put their hand inside it.

I see a lot of buckets molded into all manner of fantastical shapes in this line of work, so I appreciate the elegant simplicity of this one as a deceptively ornate little box. Yes, it’s plasticky, but inlaid in the plastic are all kinds of flourishes that tie into motifs from the movie: tiaras and flowers for Glinda; witch hats and leaves for Elphaba; a big round “Oz” insignia on the back. Instead of going with the obvious and overdone pink and green, the box is teal and purple, which is a very nostalgic ’90s-Disney-princess color scheme. Pink and green still show up in some decals: Glinda’s wand and Elphaba’s broom on top and an intertwined G-and-E monogram on the front, which I read as Gelphie fan service. I like that it has little legs instead of sitting flat.

Pop open the lid and it’s a working music box with a small mirror behind little figurines of Glinda and Elphaba with charmingly crappy-painted smiley faces. Wind the little metal crank on the back and they spin while the music box plays a slow, tinkly horror-trailer-core version of “For Good.” Considering that Wicked: For Good is a musical, and that so much of it centers around the Wizard and all of his little Tinkertoys, a music-box bucket just makes so much conceptual sense. And I want to put my hand in it because my friends Glinda and Elphaba are in there, and it looks a bit like a treasure chest.

Score: 5 out of 5

Testing the effectiveness and durability of the bucket’s movable features and determining how easily popcorn can be accessed while a person is seated in the theater.

To quote one of my favorite bonkers Stephen Schwartzisms from Wicked“Sure I meant well, well, look at what well-meant did!” Because yeah, he said idea of a music-box popcorn bucket is fun and innovative and makes sense for the material. But you said reality of a music-box popcorn bucket is that its music-boxiness completely undermines and impedes its primary function, which is being a bucket that you eat popcorn out of in a movie theater. These things are noisy — sometimes uncontrollably so! Even if you think that the music box has run out of steam, movements like jostling the box or even just opening the lid sometimes lead to it unexpectedly making more noise. Imagine 20 of these little music boxes firing off at intermittent points throughout a screening of Wicked: For Good. Maybe this is why most popcorn buckets don’t have audio.

Score: 2 out of 5

How much popcorn fits in the bucket?

The box can hold ten cups, or a small-sized popcorn. Wicked: For Good is a family movie, and this music box seems like it’s aimed at kids, so it gets a passing grade from me.

Score: 3 out of 5

Judging whether the creativity, quality, and keepsake potential of the bucket align with its price tag.

The Wicked: For Good music-box popcorn bucket weighs in at $49.95, a price that includes a large popcorn. This is expensive, but so are all of these popcorn buckets, and this one has more reuse value than most as a roomy little chest for storing little treasures. I will note that Elphaba’s hand and broom immediately snapped off upon opening the box, so it is not the highest quality construction, but the music-crank mechanism is sturdy.

Score: 3 out of 5

Final score: 13 out of 20

We live in a world that is drowning in endless Wicked merch, and I do believe that this music/popcorn box stands out for its unique concept and color scheme. Of the many, many buckets we have in the Vulture Popcorn Laboratories, this is one of only two (along with the Naked Gun beaver) that I want to take home.

When the city rezoned the area around Grand Central Terminal in 2017, the idea was that the neighborhood would get a makeover. Most buildings in Midtown East are either stolid masonry prewar offices and hotels — typically about 20 to 40 stories tall, built in the same era as the terminal itself — or the postwar generation of steel-and-glass skyscrapers. The former group (the theory went) would be replaced with sleek new spaces, drawing first-rate tenants back from downtown and beyond. Few people imagined that the 700-foot tower at 270 Park Avenue, dating to only 1960, would be among the first to come down. But it’s gone now — the second-tallest building ever demolished not by a terrorist act — and JPMorgan Chase is well on the way toward supplanting it with 1,400 feet of brawn.

Its form, by Foster + Partners, partly depends on 24 immense steel columns that merge into big knuckles at street level. The base is chamfered away from the street, making the building more approachable because you don’t encounter an enormous sheer wall rising from the sidewalk. The visual effect is to have all that heft balance, quixotically, on ballerinas’ toes.

When 270 Park was being planned, JPMorgan Chase presumably wanted to squeeze more out of its plot, did the math, and decided to build anew. Since 2020, however, any such project has taken on another role, that of human-resources management and willful optimism. The bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimonhas prominently called for employees to come back to their offices and is literally putting his money where his mouth is. This big showy building, set to be completed in 2025, will now exist partly to entice those bankers in from Cos Cob and more broadly to express a corporate bet on the city as a place that’s growing rather than treading water, one where going to a midtown office remains central to our way of life. If you build it, 270 Park says, they will commute.

I saw the price of gold fall on Thursday, with the profit increasing, after the yellow metal reached its highest level in about a week during the previous session.

By 11:15 a.m. Moscow time, futures gold futures for next Saturday fell by 0.19% to $4,194.50 an ounce, while spot contracts traded at $4,162.73 an ounce.

The dollar index, which measures the performance of the American currency against a basket of major currencies, fell by 0.1% to 99.5860 points.