Awesome Leisure

This amazing book is loaded with more than 100 cross-sections of vehicles and spaceships from the Star Wars universe. Each image features call-outs detailing the inner workings of the vehicles from every Star Wars feature film. Highlights include Boba Fett’s Slave I, Vader’s TIE Advanced X1, and a Republic Gunship.

This hand-powered flashlight won’t ever leave you in the dark, even if its battery runs out. The Fenix E-Star is the perfect addition to your emergency kit, outputting up to a 100-lumen beam with the squeeze of your hand. Pumping its handle loads up its supercapacitor, providing about 2 minutes of light for 20 seconds of input.

Mashup maker Bill McClintock combined tracks from two bands at opposite ends of the musical spectrum: Steely Dan and Mötley Crüe. The result is a delicious blend of jazz, rock, and heavy metal. Listen closely, and you might hear some Ted Nugent and Van Halen too.

(PG-13: Nudity, Language) Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, and Jean Smart star in this epic film about characters living it up in 1920s Los Angeles, where decadence, deviance, and drama rule the early days of Hollywood. Written and directed by Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land). In theaters 12.25.2022.

If you visit Normandy, France, 60 euros will give you the chance to float off the ground strapped to your own personal blimp. Each blimp is filled with about 70,000 liters of helium and has a harness and wings for controlling flight. Tom Scott visited Aéroplume Écausseville to take the low-altitude flight inside of an aircraft hangar.

This fascinating machine uses gravity to draw smooth spiral images known as Lissajous curves. It’s modeled on a 19th-century device called a harmonograph, updated with self-aligning gimbals and a spring-loaded pen holder that can accept various writing instruments. It attaches to any tabletop using a single clamp.

Luke Skywalker’s X-34 Landspeeder is one of the most iconic Star Wars vehicles. Inspired by the one in the movies, Joel Creates added a real turbojet engine to a pint-sized Landspeeder for kids. It needed additional mods to make it roll smoothly and bypass the safety systems. Fingers crossed he makes a 3-jet version.

The battle between good and evil – the Jedi and the Sith – is at the heart of many a Star Wars story. In this video for WIRED, filmmaker and superfan Kevin Smith offers his take on all of the Jedi and Sith characters in the Skywalker Saga and its associated movies and TV series.

Harpist Kristan Toczko offers up an early Halloween treat with this seamless medley of music from Call of Duty: Black Ops – Zombies, Halloween, Stranger Things, and The Walking Dead. Then she finishes things off with a little bit of Still Dre. We also love her cover of The Simpsons theme.

Nick Fury is back on Earth after working with the Skrulls in deep space for years. Now, these shapeshifting aliens have infiltrated our planet and are hiding in plain sight. Samuel L. Jackson is joined by Ben Mendelsohn, Cobie Smulders, Martin Freeman, and Don Cheadle in this new Disney+ series slated for 2023.

You know those pin art toys that take an impression of your hand or face? I Like to Make Stuff built a super-sized version of the plaything for their Maker Alliance pal Mark Rober to put in his new offices. He used large sheets of PVC, insulation foam, and 1000 PEX tubes to create the structure and its pins.

SpiderHeck is an action-packed co-op brawler where you play as a laser-wielding spider. Battle against your friends or work together to defeat an army of shared enemies as you swing from wall to wall in its dynamic and sometimes deadly environments. Coming to PC and all consoles 9.22.22.

LEGO celebrates a legendary Marvel superhero with this impressive 19″ tall bust. The model captures Black Panther’s shiny, silver-accented helmet, spiky necklace, and gloved hands in the iconic “Wakanda Forever” pose. The 2961-piece kit is designed for intermediate and advanced LEGO builders.

If there’s one thing we’re sick of, it’s the endless reboots of TV shows and movies. This comedy series imagines a network’s attempt to reboot a sitcom with the original cast, but a lot has changed since the show first aired. Stars Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer, Johnny Knoxville, and Paul Reiser. Coming to Hulu 9.20.22.

Musician Luca Stricagnoli is known for his captivating acoustic guitar arrangements. His performance of the Dire Straits track Money for Nothing offers a unique take on the 1985 hit, combining fingerstyle playing with the twangy sounds of a reverse slide neck, an accessory created by Luca and luthier Davide Serracini.

This compendium from Phaidon combines and updates the three-volume Phaidon Design Classics into a single 592-page hardcover book. A must-own for appreciators of industrial design, the book showcases the most iconic and influential products and objects from the 17th to the 21st century.