Hey, and welcome back to THREE NEW THINGS Issue #002! This week we’re covering the horror movie “Weapons”, the catchy alt-pop song “I Can Be Your Dog” by Edgehill, the roguelike card game “Balatro”, and that weird object from outside our solar system - 3I/ATLAS. Let’s get into it!

Since I’ve gained quite a few subscribers since Issue #001, let’s go over the rules again. There’s really only ONE rule, and it’s this - new means RELATIVELY NEW. I’ll cover a lot of stuff that just came out the previous week. But I’m also going to cover things - video games especially - that may have come out in the last few years. It’s completely at my discretion to decide what qualifies as NEW, so consider this newsletter a “seantocracy” in that regard. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

Weapons is the latest film from Zach Cregger, who seems to be charting a course similar to that of Jordan Peele, making a transition from sketch comedy to horror. Cregger was a founding member of the comedy troupe, The Whitest Kids U’Know. His previous horror film, Barbarian, started as a scene loaded with uneasy moments, but ultimately became a full-length horror film crafted around research Cregger came across that showed women have a keener sense of danger in everyday situations than men.

Like Barbarian, Weapons is also a horror movie with underpinnings based in human psychology and trauma. The premise is simple. One night, at exactly 2:17 a.m., 17 children from a classroom of 18 open their front doors and run away. The movie shifts between several points of view as it slowly unpeels what actually happened, but the two main characters are the teacher of the class, played by Julia Garner, and a grieving, obsessed father of one of the children, played by Josh Brolin.

I won’t get into the subtext of the film so as not to spoil it. It seemed clear to me what the movie was truly about. But there’s one brief scene where the subtext very much becomes the text, and I feel the movie would have been stronger without it. But that’s a minor quibble in what is a fun, twisty film that’s more mysterious and creepy than it is outright scary. I won’t go so far as to say it’s “fun” for the whole family, but children 12 and older could probably watch it.

This boppy little ditty is one of my wife’s personal favorites based on the number of times she’s played it around the house. Some songs you like within the first few notes, and “I Can Be Your Dog” was one of those songs for us both.

The song is by Edgehill, a Nashville-based alternative/indie rock band. (Alternative / Indie Rock is mostly what’s going to be featured in this section. Not exclusively, but mostly.) “I Can Be Your Dog” has a more power pop sensibility than the rest of Edgehill’s music. The reason being, they wrote it in response to a request from their management team to try writing a pop song. Instead, they wrote a sarcastic pop song.

The song has the same soft/loud dynamic alternative rock bands have been using since The Pixies. Kurt Cobain famously borrowed it to write “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and Foo Fighters have used it on most of their hits. But hey… if it works. And it does work! But judge for yourself.

I’ll only be featuring one new song per week, so be sure to check out the THREE NEW THINGS playlist on Spotify for ALL the best songs of 2025. (Just click on the “3” to open up the playlist in a new window.)

Last week I covered one of the most Triple-A of all Triple-A video games - Cyberpunk 2077 - created by one of the largest and most well-respected developers on the planet. Today, I’m covering a game made by just one guy. That game is Balatro, and it is the creation of a single person operating under the nickname “LocalThunk.”

Balatro is a mashup of two types of games - Poker and Roguelikes. The former you’re probably familiar with. The latter, unless gaming is a main hobby of yours, you’re probably not familiar with. So, we’ll skip the explanation of what Poker is and jump straight to what a roguelike game is.

Roguelikes are a lot like the movie “Live, Die, Repeat” (or Edge of Tomorrow or whatever title they eventually landed on for that film). If you’ve not seen it, you should as it’s one of Tom Cruise’s standout films, right up there with the best Mission Impossible movies. In a roguelike, you get one video game life to get as far into the game as you can. When you die, you’re sent back to the beginning. Each run is procedurally generated and different every time. Sounds like hell, right?

What makes the experience fun instead of maddening is that you gain upgrades, powers, and abilities along the way, and you get to keep them for your next run. Your overall power increases after each run until, in time, you’re powerful enough to make it to the very end of the game.

Roguelikes can take many forms, but the main two are dungeon runs and card games. Balatro is the latter, allowing you to build increasingly powerful hands of cards in order to progress farther into the game and get the highest possible score. There are several different mechanics at play, but the main one is “Jokers,” which allow you to add multipliers, modifiers, and synergies as you go. You win the game when you defeat the final “boss blind” in Ante 8. But getting there and winning isn’t easy.

If Balatro sounds like your particular brand of vodka, and you want to learn how to play the game in earnest, here’s a five-minute prime.

You may have heard about 3I/ATLAS over the last few weeks and been wondering what the big deal is. The big deal is that it’s an interstellar object, from outside our solar system, that’s now in our solar system, and we can’t COMPLETELY - as of yet - rule out the possibility that it’s alien tech. IT’S MOST LIKELY NOT. But the fact that we can’t definitively say it isn’t yet, is why it’s getting so much press. So, let’s get into WHY alien tech is even a remote possibility, and then get into what 3I/ATLAS most likely is.

Before we delve into the alien tech explanation, it’s important to keep in mind something Neil deGrasse Tyson likes to say - “That you don’t know what something is, isn’t proof that you know what it is.” What he’s saying is that, just because you don’t have an explanation for something doesn’t mean it’s aliens. With that out of the way, why COULD it be aliens?

First off, just look at this trajectory. 3I/ATLAS passes right by Mars, Venus, and Jupiter, but keeps a healthy distance from Earth. The odds of that path occurring randomly? 0.005%. If you were going to plan a fly-by, this is how you’d do it.

Next, the tail has a high nickel-to-iron ratio. Why does that matter? Because the compound nickel tetracarbonyl associated with industrial processes on Earth is not found in natural comets.

Finally, there’s the “anti-tail.” 3I/ATLAS featured a tail that was pointing TOWARD the sun rather than behind the comet, something you might find in a ship that was doing a controlled deceleration.

Okay, now let’s spoil the fun. 3I/ATLAS is unusual, but keep in mind, it’s only the third interstellar (from outside our solar system) object we’ve ever closely observed. So, it’s not unusual that it’s a little unusual. Moreover, it has an icy nucleus, a coma (fuzzy cloud of gas and dust), and tail, it’s rich in carbon dioxide and nickel vapor, and its behavior is still very consistent with comet behavior - all of which means, it’s most likely just a comet. One unlike any we’ve seen before, but still a comet.

That brings us to the end of Issue #002! If you’ve read this far, thanks! I know I said we’d be covering Baldur’s Gate 3 in this issue, but I’m going to save that until the subscriber base is built up a little further. In Issue #3, I’m going to cover a BRAND NEW game just released on Oct. 22 called “Dispatch”, the Hulu show Chad Powers, and a song to be determined. See you all next week! And have a Happy Halloween!