Finally, You Can Buy Audiobooks for Your Dog

Plus, the ACLU will defend Milo Yiannopoulos’ right to free speech and ‘Dawn’ and ‘Neuromancer’ are coming to TV

The weekend is looking up for pups, sci-fi fans, and Milo Yiannopoulos. (Two out of three ain’t bad.) Audible for Dogs’ catered selection of titles promises to calm antsy and sad dogs left at home by owners, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit in defense of Yiannopoulos’ right to advertise his book on the DC metro, and Octavia Butler’s Dawn and William Gibson’s Neuromancer will be coming to small screens near you.

Audible and Cesar Millan release dog-friendly audiobooks

Do you have a stressed pupper, or just one that’s always wanted to finish Pride and Prejudice? Thankfully, Amazon has devised a way to ease the minds of our furry friends while their owners are out of the house. Dubbed Audible for Dogs, the service has a rotating selection of titles sure to keep dogs engaged and combat loneliness. The company conducted research on 100 dogs in partnership with infamous dog whisperer Cesar Millan and his Dog Psychology Center in Santa Clarita, California, discovering that 76% of participating owners observed that their dogs relaxed with audiobooks. Among the curated titles are classics such as Huckleberry Finn so your fluffy pal can contemplate life outside the crate; Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood to bring your pooch up to speed on racial tensions; and W. Bruce Cameron’s A Dog’s Purpose to calm (or perhaps trigger) your pup’s existential crisis. Heckin’ great.

[Mental Floss/Kirstin Fawcett]

The ACLU files lawsuit for Yiannopoulos’ right to free speech

A plot twist has arisen in the never-ending saga regarding professional whiny gadfly/white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos’ book. This week, he got some support from what might seem like an unlikely corner: the American Civil Liberties Union, usually not a fan of hate speech. Just last month, the former Breitbart editor’s self-published memoir, Dangerous, was released amidst criticism and scathing reviews. Yiannopoulos filed a lawsuit shortly thereafter against publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster for dropping his book, claiming defamation. And now, yet another lawsuit has been filed — this time, on behalf of Yiannopoulos, by the ACLU. The civil rights organization has accused the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority of violating the white nationalist’s right to free speech by refusing to let him promote his book on the metro. This prohibition stems from the WMATA guidelines, which forbid ads that are “intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions.” Yiannopoulos isn’t the only client the ACLU is representing; abortion and birth control provider Carafem and the animal advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are also being represented in the lawsuit. Though the ACLU has stated that the organization is against many of the values Milo espouses, it says it is adamant about the preservation of the First Amendment. (Unlike many entities that get to decide whether they take money for ad space based on any criteria they fancy, WMATA is actually a government organization.)

[HuffPost/Curtis M. Wong]

Octavia Butler’s ‘Dawn’ and William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ are coming to small screens

Two new sci-fi adaptations are on the horizon! Ava DuVernay’s new project, alongside Charles D. King and Victoria Mahoney, will bring Octavia Butler’s novel Dawn to television. The project will bring to life the story of Lilith, an African-American woman who works with aliens to resurrect the human race 250 years after nuclear war. Although the TV rights were optioned in 2015, the adaptation fell through. Dawn is the first in Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy; there’s no word yet on whether the series will continue into later books, or for that matter how the show will handle the novel’s copious amounts of alien-human sex. Also coming to small screens is an adaptation of William Gibson’s sci-fi novel, Neuromancer. Deadpool director Tim Miller has signed with Fox to lead this project, with X-Men franchise architect Simon Kinberg set to produce. Neuromancer is a cyberpunk classic that follows a former hacker hunting a rogue AI through the novel’s virtual world, “the Matrix.” (Yes, but Neuromancer did it first.) Like Dawn, the project has been a target for adaptation before, but previous attempts failed. Hopefully now people are hungrier for visions of any future besides the one we’re currently facing.

[Variety/Erin Nyren]