Table of contents for Winter 2026 in Kandy Magazine

AI-ENABLED PET CARE Because “Good Boy” Deserves Preventive Medicine Too Samsung’s AI-powered Pet Care initiative may be one of the quietest reveals at CES 2026, but it is also one of the most revealing about where consumer technology is headed. Pets, long treated as emotional companions rather than data participants, are now being folded into the same intelligent ecosystem that manages sleep, food, and home security. Through SmartThings Pet Care, Samsung uses AI-driven image analysis to evaluate pet health by interpreting photos taken inside the home. With on-screen guidance, users capture images that the system analyzes for indicators of common conditions such as dental disease, patellar luxation, and cataracts. The emphasis here is not diagnosis, but early awareness - flagging potential issues before they escalate into costly or traumatic interventions.…

Shadow Ops: Jeep’s “First Mission” Truck With Main-Character Energy The 2026 Gladiator Shadow Ops doesn’t read like a trim package. It reads like a mission brief. Jeep is rolling it out as the first “drop” in a Convoy campaign, and the message is loud even when the truck is dressed in black: this is for people who don’t want a pickup that blends in, they want a pickup that looks like it’s on assignment. The Gladiator already lives in a weird, wonderful category by itself: part midsize truck, part open-air Jeep, part rolling personality test. Shadow Ops leans into that with a stealth-forward aesthetic and the kind of factory gear that signals you plan to leave pavement. It’s not trying to convince the practical buyer who cross-shops appliances. It’s built…

SYNOPSIS Crime 101 is a sunburned neo-noir that rides the margins of Los Angeles morality, a sleek meditation on discipline and desire. Chris Hemsworth plays Davis, a meticulous jewel thief haunting the 101 freeway with precision crimes that feel almost ceremonial. As he prepares what may be his final score, his trajectory intersects with two figures defined by professional erosion: a high-end insurance executive (Halle Berry) confronting institutional betrayal, and a detective (Mark Ruffalo) whose belief in the law has become both compass and curse. What follows is not a conventional chase, but a slow convergence toward moral inevitability, where choice and consequence become indistinguishable. THE MOOD Los Angeles, Unromanticized Director Bart Layton turns Los Angeles into both playground and pressure cooker. Freeways hum with existential weight, glass towers and…

[Zinio readers enjoy a second dose from our archives – Erika Othen. Here’s a look back at her Kandy Magazine feature and snippets from her interview, shared for the first time in Zinio.] Erika probably looks very familiar to our reality television readers. She appeared on MTV’s Making The Band 3 and ABC’s True Beauty 2. Besides acting and modeling, Erika sings, writes, and produces her own original music in addition to hosting her own weekly radio show, “Beauty and The Grumble”, which discusses celebrity gossip, politics and current events in a clever, dynamic and comedic way. In 2011, she made her Primetime sitcom debut in the premiere episode of the ’New Girl’ on Fox as well as in the Lifetime documentary ’Project 5’. On the following pages, Erika shares…

The Return of Loud: Dodge Just Gave the Internet a Reason to Argue Again The new Dodge Charger Scat Pack isn’t here to politely “expand the lineup.” It’s here to start problems, the fun kind. Dodge is basically planting a flag in the modern muscle-car ground and yelling, “We’re still doing this,” except now the flag is twin-turbo and the yelling is coming through a performance-tuned active exhaust that sounds like it wants to pick a fight with your neighborhood’s noise ordinance. This is the Charger’s most important trick: it doesn’t try to win you over with an apology tour. It shows up with old-school attitude, new-school boost, and the kind of numbers that make your group chat suddenly very active. Dodge is calling it the most powerful car under…

SYNOPSIS When Grievance Becomes Theater Dead Man’s Wire revisits a nearly unbelievable 1977 hostage standoff and reframes it as a study in spectacle, grievance, and American self-mythology. Bill Skarsgård portrays Tony Kiritsis, a financially cornered man who stages a grotesquely theatrical kidnapping to force the system that failed him to finally listen. Gus Van Sant resists moral instruction, allowing the crisis to unfold in real time as law enforcement, media, and public fascination collide. The result is not a true-crime reenactment, but a pressure chamber in which outrage, desperation, and performance feed upon one another. Starring Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Colman Domingo, Myha'la, Cary Elwes, and Al Pacino VAN SANT’S RETURN The Outsider, Amplified This marks Gus Van Sant’s most volatile work in years, and one of his most pointed.…

Introduction CES has always been about spectacle. Bigger screens, thinner devices, faster chips… technology as adrenaline rush. But at CES 2026, Samsung arrived with something more unsettling, and ultimately more ambitious: a vision of technology that does not merely respond but accompanies. Under the banner “Companion to AI Living,” Samsung reframed artificial intelligence not as a feature set or a buzzword, but as an operating philosophy - one that spans not only entertainment but home, health, and care. This was not an announcement of isolated products. It was a declaration that AI is no longer a layer added to devices; it is the connective tissue binding them together. Samsung’s CES presence made one thing clear: the company is no longer asking what devices can do. It is asking how technology…

HOW DID A CHEERLEADER FROM A SMALL LITTLE TOWN IN TEXAS RAPIDLY ASCEND TO ONE OF THE HOTTEST, GLOBAL SHEJAY’S? Determination! The one thing we took away from our conversations with Laura Cavender, professionally she is known as DJ LC, is that she is a very determined woman. She has an inner strength that comes from a very personal battle where she fought cancer with her mother for ten years. In a town where people take pride in tearing you down, Laura’s inner strength helps her rise above it all and keep her eye focused on the prize. What is the prize? Well, you are going to have to read on to find out. Editor’s Note: In Year 1 of KANDY Magazine, Laura Cavender graces our third cover. We now…

Xbox Stops Pretending the Couch Is Mandatory The ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X exist because Xbox finally accepted a hard truth: modern players are not rearranging furniture, syncing HDMI inputs, or waiting patiently for a TV like obedient house pets. Built by ASUS but supervised by Xbox’s software sensibilities, these handhelds are an admission that gaming has gone nomadic. This is not “Xbox on the go” cosplay, it is Xbox conceding that the future lives somewhere between a backpack and a power bank, with Windows quietly muzzled in the background. HARDWARE Ergonomics: Congratulations, You Listened Early PC handhelds felt like bricks with delusions of grandeur. ASUS corrected course. The Ally line actually fits human hands, borrowing shamelessly from Xbox controller ergonomics and good. The grips are contoured, the weight…

SYNOPSIS When the System Decides You Are Guilty Chris Pratt does not walk into a courtroom in Mercy. He is trapped inside one. In this near future, justice has been stripped of personality and upgraded for speed. Pratt plays Detective Chris Raven, a man accused of murdering his wife and handed over to an artificial intelligence built to deliver verdicts without hesitation. No jury. No sympathy. No appeal waiting in the wings. The clock starts at ninety minutes, and the machine does not care how convincing he sounds. Surveillance footage replaces witnesses. Behavioral modeling replaces motive. Emotional response is logged, analyzed, and quietly dismissed. Every word Raven speaks is compared against a system that believes certainty is morality and efficiency is truth. The real cruelty is not the accusation. The…