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How You Know Mercury Is in Retrograde I recently filled an online shopping cart with four hundred dollars worth of trading cards, and I don’t have the four hundred dollars to purchase them, so that’s one way. More to the point, astrology has seen a resurgence in popularity over the past decade or so, and I’m far from the first person to tell you. Daily horoscopes, in particular, seem to crop up everywhere, as do zodiac sign assignments to all manner of subjects, no matter how niche. Want to know what Neopet you are based on your sign? It’s out there. At some point, things like Mercury retrograde became part of today’s zeitgeist, and whether you intended to or not, you’ve heard about it. Things to do: Subscribe to The Hollywood Insider’s YouTube Channel, by clicking here. Limited Time Offer – Free Subscription to...

Above: Italian personality poster for Hedy Lamarr. Art by Sergio Gargiulo.Once promoted as “Hollywood’s No. 1 Glamour Girl,” Hedy Lamar (1914-2000) was much more than a pretty face, as the new documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story gloriously attests. Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Austria, Lamarr was catapulted to fame as the star of the scandalous 1933 Czech import Ecstasy, in which she appeared nude (and ecstatic). In America she became one of the biggest stars of the 1940s, often called the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, a designation she thought of as a curse. But she was also blessed with a curious and inventive mind. As an amateur inventor she pioneered what is known as “frequency hopping” during World War II to prevent the Nazis jamming Allied torpedoes, a technology which has become the basis of Bluetooth and Wi-fi. With that in mind, it might seem perverse to...