By Robert Scucci
| Updated 3 hours ago

When was the last time you watched 1993’s Demolition Man? It’s one of those movies that feels like a sci-fi classic because it is. Whenever I talk about it with people who haven’t seen it in a while, or even revisited it as an adult, I always get the same answer, something along the lines of, “That movie is so dumb.” It’s the same treatment Starship Troopers gets when people only experience it at face value. In actuality, it’s a perfect satire about future life that reminds me more of Idiocracy than anything else, just in a more sophisticated, less overtly slapstick kind of way.

That is all to say, if it’s been a minute since you’ve watched Demolition Man and you’re of the mind that it’s not a very smart movie, you might want to give it another shot. If you picked up on the satire the first time around, I’d still suggest another watch because it’s such a fun movie.

But if you’re asking, and I’m being real here, I still don’t know what the three seashells are used for in the bathroom.

Swearing Is Illegal, But Taco Bell Is A Black Tie Experience

I’m not going to spend too much time talking about the plot to Demolition Man because it’s pretty barebones. What really sells the movie is the world it inhabits, and how the worldbuilding is drip-fed to us instead of ever being explicitly explained. It’s the same thing Officer John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) experiences when he wakes up in the year 2032 and suffers the worst kind of culture shock.

John’s problems started in 1996 while facing off against the most charismatic psychopath ever committed to film in the form of Wesley Snipes‘ Simon Phoenix. When a hostage situation goes horribly wrong, resulting in piles of dead hostages thanks to John’s miscalculation, both John and Simon are convicted and sentenced to lengthy terms at the California Cryo-Penitentiary.

During a parole hearing in 2032, a thawed Simon escapes and embarks on a crime spree that’s inadvertently facilitated by the “subliminal rehabilitation techniques” used during his incarceration, allowing him to adapt to his new surroundings with an alarming amount of precision. Given John Spartan’s history with Simon Phoenix, Officer Zachary Lamb (Bill Cobbs) advises Lieutenant Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) that the best course of action is to thaw John out and let him loose after his arch nemesis.

Woozy from cryosleep and in a complete state of shock over how different life is in 2032, John has his work cut out for him. He’s familiar with Simon’s modus operandi, but everything else is foreign. Why is he now living in the city of San Angeles? Why is eating at Taco Bell a formal affair? And WHAT THE HELL ARE THE THREE SEASHELLS FOR?!

Somebody, please, answer me.

World Building Through Serious Scene Chewing 

One thing that Demolition Man doesn’t get enough credit for is its unwillingness to explicitly lay out how society works in 2032. The advantage this offers is twofold. We’re just as confused as John Spartan when he receives written citations for swearing and engaging in other carnal pleasures now deemed immoral. John is a smart guy who relies on instinct when he’s in his element, but the world he came from no longer matches the one he now lives in. Most of the humor comes from him asking questions that anybody in 2032 would take for granted, resulting in bemused stares and stifled laughter despite the fact he’s serious as a heart attack.

On the other side of the coin is Wesley Snipes, whose scene-chewing charisma steals every single scene. He’s mentally enhanced thanks to the “rehabilitation” program, and basically all that means is that he’s one step ahead of everybody because he possesses talents he never had before. The dude is running around hacking computers, stealing weapons, and cackling every step of the way. Snipes in Demolition Man has the same energy he brings to White Men Can’t Jump (1992), but instead of conning Woody Harrelson as a means of survival, he’s dead set on unleashing absolute chaos and antagonizing the very officer who locked him up decades earlier.

Rounding out the cast is Sandra Bullock with her portrayal of Lenina Huxley. While Stallone and Snipes dish out cynicism in healthy doses, Bullock brings a child-like sense of naivety with her fascination for late 20th century culture, something she’s only learned about through history lessons. This naturally evolves into a romantic entanglement between Lenina and her new de facto partner, John, who’s from the very time and culture she’s obsessed with. It’s an odd-couple dynamic given how apprehensive they are toward each other at the beginning of the film, but it leaves them both with plenty of room to grow by the time the credits roll.

Demolition Man earns its keep as a satire because it shows instead of tells. The city of San Angeles in 2032 is as perplexing as it is amusing, and we’re learning about it alongside John when we’re dropped into this world. The logic is established early on, but the incidental things we take for granted, like going to the bathroom (again with the shells), are left open to interpretation. The film merely alludes to the franchise wars before dropping you into the ridiculousness of a formal Taco Bell dinner. Before long, you’re used to the profanity-policing drones, and you’re completely immersed in the world. 

If you’re willing to give Demolition Man a second chance, overdue for a rewatch, or simply never saw it, you can stream it on Tubi for free as of this writing.

By Robert Scucci
| Published 22 seconds ago

I’ve been putting it off for a very long time, but I finally revisited 1999’s Deep Blue Sea this past weekend, and I’m so glad I did. The funny thing about movies from this era is that the CGI is pretty terrible because it was relatively new technology, generally speaking. I remember laughing at the creature design when I was 11 years old, but after a few decades of CGI in movies somehow getting exceptionally worse, I was actually impressed by what I saw.

I think Deep Blue Sea’s real charm is its willingness to show us the monster, which is normally the worst thing you can do. Have you seen the Jurassic World movies or Disney’s Haunted Mansion (2023)? The screen is so dark during some sequences that you can’t even see what’s going on half the time, and it’s by design. Bury the CGI in darkness and nobody will notice how bad it is. But here’s the problem: nobody can see what the heck is going on, so everybody loses.

Deep Blue Sea, on the other hand, shows us shark attacks up close, for better or worse. Fortunately, everybody brings their A game to the table, and it never feels like a bunch of actors on a soundstage talking to a green screen. It feels lived in, even if it doesn’t always look like it. The moral here is that if you thought movies like Deep Blue Sea were crappy back in the ’90s because of their visual effects, it’s time to revisit them. They look so much better by comparison when pitted against the crap coming out today.

Let’s Make An Apex Predator Even Smarter, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? 

Oh boy, where do we begin? Deep Blue Sea centers on the idea that shark brain tissue may be the key to curing, or at the very least slowing, the damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease. We’re introduced to doctors Susan McCallister (Saffron Burrows) and Jim Whitlock (Stellan Skarsgard), who are basically trying to play God in their underwater research compound. When one of the sharks escapes and wreaks havoc on the public, Samuel L. Jackson’s Russel Franklin, a corporate executive, is sent down to see what all the hubbub is about.

While visiting, he’s introduced to ex-con shark wrangler Carter Blake (Thomas Jane), marine biologist Janice Higgins (Jacqueline McKenzie), and engineer Tom Scoggins (Michael Rapaport), who are all moments away from watching all hell break loose in the form of a super-intelligent shark destroying the facility and eating anybody who gets in its way. Their one goal is to escape back into the ocean, which would be a terrible outcome because we soon find out that, in order to speed up their research, the scientists genetically engineered the sharks to have larger brains. That means there’s not only instinct behind all those razor-sharp rows of teeth, but advanced intelligence as well.

It wouldn’t be an action thriller without some comic relief, though, and that’s where LL Cool J’s Sherman Dudley comes in. Sherman spends most of his time cooking for the crew, quoting scripture, and getting into verbal spats with his pet parrot. He knows how to make the perfect omelet, and he wants the world to know it more than anything else.

Straight Up Popcorn Spectacle That We Should Fully Embrace

Deep Blue Sea is one of those movies you go into with low expectations thanks to hindsight and the film’s reputation for swinging and missing with its special effects. But even Roger Ebert, who once commented that the sharks looked like cartoons, gave the movie three out of four stars for being an effective thriller. Once the setup is out of the way, the whole thing is basically one action sequence after another in rapid succession, and sometimes that’s all you need from a movie.

The best way to think about Deep Blue Sea is as a big-budget B movie. It’s your standard monster movie survival fare, but with $82 million thrown at it, and it couldn’t be cast more perfectly. While it’s a far cry from Jaws, it still has a lot more going for it than the Sharknado films when it comes to set design and its overall level of seriousness.

Don’t get me wrong, Deep Blue Sea is a fun movie and has plenty of comic relief to go around, but at the end of the day it’s a big-budget sci-fi thriller that holds up shockingly well nearly 30 years after it made its initial splash.

As of this writing, Deep Blue Sea is streaming for free on Tubi.

Phia’s browser extension was supposed to help shoppers find better deals, but it may also have redirected affiliate commissions to itself. Let us explain.

A celebrity-backed shopping startup co-founded by Bill Gates‘s daughter Phoebe Gates and her former Stanford University roommate Sophia Kianni has been suspended from affiliate platform Impact.com. The suspension came after a July 9 Bloomberg investigation found that its browser extension claimed credit for purchases it did not actually generate.

Testing conducted separately by Bloomberg, Capital One Shopping, and independent researcher Ben Edelman found that Phia could silently open a new browser tab during checkout and load its own affiliate link to the retailer. In some cases, that replaced the tracking code belonging to the website, advertisement, or publisher that originally sent the shopper there.

The practice is known as “cookie stuffing” or attribution fraud. In plain terms, Phia could receive credit, and potentially a commission, for a purchase even when the shopper had not discovered the product through Phia or interacted with one of its recommendations.

Our big Guessing Game is back! Enter now for a chance to win an Apple watch.

Affiliate marketing normally works by assigning a unique link to a publisher, creator, or shopping platform. When a shopper follows that link and completes a purchase, the retailer can identify which affiliate generated the sale and pay it a commission.

According to Bloomberg, Phia’s extension sometimes inserted itself at the end of that process. A shopper could arrive at a retailer independently or through another publisher, only for Phia to replace the original referral code as the shopper approached checkout.

In one test described in the investigation, Bloomberg followed a Nordstrom link from a Wirecutter article about Fourth of July deals. Phia allegedly opened another tab in the background during checkout and replaced Wirecutter’s referral information with its own. The extension reportedly behaved similarly when Bloomberg reached a shopping site through a paid advertisement from another publisher.

Impact.com suspended the company after being alerted to the behavior, and the platform told Bloomberg that activity within the extension appeared to be inconsistent with its policies and that it was reviewing potentially affected transactions. Social media immediately was abuzz with conversation, with some people upset while some defend the 23-year-old co-founder.

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Phia acknowledged that there had been a problem, although the company characterized it as a software issue rather than an intentional business practice.

“Within the last 24 hours, we were made aware that in a recent release our codebase was causing misattributions from a subset of users,” a Phia spokesperson told Bloomberg. The company said its team worked through the night to identify and correct the issue.

Bloomberg retested the extension after contacting Phia and found that it had stopped automatically claiming the referral click. Independent researchers also reportedly confirmed that the behavior was no longer occurring. It remains unclear whether the fix will be enough to satisfy Impact.com, retailers, and other affiliate partners reviewing the affected transactions.

Phia launched in April 2025 as an AI-powered shopping assistant available through a mobile app and browser extension. The product is often described as a version of Google Flights for shopping. While someone browses clothing or accessories online, Phia searches more than 40,000 retail and resale websites for the same item, similar products, lower prices, and discount codes. It can also compare a full-price product with secondhand listings, helping shoppers decide whether to buy it new or look for a cheaper resale option.

The company makes money in part through affiliate commissions. When Phia directs a user to a retailer and that person completes a purchase through its link, the retailer may pay the startup a percentage of the sale. That makes accurate referral tracking central to Phia’s business model: The code attached to the purchase determines which platform gets credit and potentially gets paid.

Phia grew quickly after its launch. Within its first week, the app reportedly reached No. 21 on Apple’s App Store and by September 2025, the company said it had crossed 500,000 downloads.

Its funding grew almost as quickly. Phia raised an $8 million seed round in September 2025, followed by roughly $35 million in additional funding in January 2026. The later round pushed its reported valuation to approximately $185 million less than a year after launch and brought its total funding to more than $43 million.

Phia has also attracted an investor roster that looks less like a cap table and more like a Coachella lineup. Backers include Khloé Kardashian, Hailey Bieber, Sydney Sweeney, Paris Hilton, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jessica Alba, Mindy Kaling, Ice Spice, Alix Earle, Karlie Kloss, and The Chainsmokers, alongside a collection of tech executives and venture capital firms.

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Some have compared the situation to Honey, the PayPal-owned coupon extension that has also been accused of replacing creators’ affiliate links with its own during checkout. Honey remains the subject of an ongoing class action lawsuit, and PayPal has disputed claims that the extension improperly took commissions from creators.

The Phia allegations also arrive after an earlier controversy involving the amount of information collected by its browser extension. In November 2025, cybersecurity researchers found that the extension was transmitting copies of webpages users visited back to the company’s servers, including pages unrelated to shopping.

Those pages could include sensitive websites such as email inboxes and bank accounts, according to the report. Phia said the data was anonymous, was used to determine which websites involved shopping, and was not stored. The company removed the feature after concerns were raised and said it would limit its collection to website URLs.

Phia says the affiliate issue has been fixed, but Impact.com is still reviewing what happened and whether any transactions require further action. The extension may have stopped opening tabs in the background, but Phia’s affiliate business is now getting a very public checkout.