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Its founders insist the event platform offers a simple service for free. But in a time when users are aware of privacy and surveillance, Partiful has to prove it’s not too good to be true.
Readers are scrambling to develop ways to detect whether generative AI was used to write fanworks. The results are questionable.
Neill had starring roles in Peaky Blinders and the Oscar-winning film The Piano. He is best known for playing Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. News of his death was announced on his Instagram page.
What’s in, what’s out, and what’s a bit of both this summer.
After more than a year and a half in court, satirical news site The Onion is rebooting Alex Jones’ InfoWars — even as the conspiracy channel hangs in legal limbo. Comedian and writer Tim Heidecker has been tapped as creative director, and he came on the show to share his vision for the platform. Also mentioned: peptides, The Beatles, and the state of Tim’s vocal chords. Enjoy!
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Malik, who founded the tech blog GigaOm in 2001 before eventually transitioning into venture capital, died on Wednesday at Stanford Hospital “after a long health journey with his heart,” said Om’s family in a post on his website.
[On my Om]
Over the weekend, the DoorDash X account posted repeatedly about the World Cup, but instead of tagging New Zealand soccer player Tim Payne, the account tagged musician T-Pain — who responded accordingly. The posts had no indication that they were an ad (as the Federal Trade Commission requires).
I asked DoorDash if this was a coordinated effort and whether T-Pain was paid for his posts. Head of social Zaria Parvez said in an email that the company noticed Payne was a fan favorite and happened to share a nearly identical name with T-Pain. “So, in partnership with T-Pain, we executed a fun campaign to connect fans from around the world and remind people that DoorDash has whatever they need throughout the World Cup.”
A major case surrounding lookalike products (“dupes”) came to a close this week, in which Deckers, the maker of UGG boots, sued direct-to-consumer brand Quince, alleging it had knocked off its shearling ankle boot. A jury found that Quince’s version was indeed substantially similar to the design patent for the UGG boots — but also that the patent itself was invalid in the first place.
As I wrote last year, brands are increasingly using design patents to go after dupes. The Deckers decision stress-tests that tactic.
The YouTube star has gone from reviewing synths to taking on the surveillance state.
The Vatican and Ferrari go way back, so a little cross promotion of the all-electric Luce is to be expected. But not even divine intervention will pacify Ferrari fans eager for a return of sharp, aggressive lines. Still, I think we can all agree that it looks better than the all-electric G-Class popemobile which also cost half a million dollars.
A handful of supporters showed up to a pretrial hearing with New York City-issued press passes.
I was on Vox’s Today, Explained podcast to talk about why our feeds are just clips now — what we’re calling “the clippening” of content online. You’ve probably seen these videos of podcasts, musicians, TV shows, livestreams and more. Underneath it all is an economy of clipping companies pumping out mountains of paid content.
Some evidence collected by police in the killing the UnitedHealthcare CEO can’t be shown to a jury, a judge ruled on Monday — including a cellphone, a passport, a loaded magazine for a handgun, and a computer chip found during a search of Mangione at a McDonald’s.
But the ruling is a mixed bag: the judge overseeing the New York state case against Mangione also ruled that other items discovered — including a notebook and a gun — can be used as evidence.
If Palantir can stick its logo on French workwear, why not The Verge? That gets my vote in our new call for Verge merch ideas.
Blernsball:
French chore coat obvs.
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The data mining company with extensive defense contracts is making merch to signal which side you’re on.
In an era when Liz Lopatto is asking about the “Ask Jeeves-ification of online search” via AI chatbots, the originator just faded away. Its owner, IAC, says that as of May 1st, 2026, “we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com.”
Alex Karp has Palantir; Palmer Luckey has Anduril; Peter Thiel has Mithril Capital. Together they’re like a Silicon Valley axis of cursed Lord Of The Rings references. Sons and daughters of actual Earth: hold your ground! Hold your ground!
This tome does not belong to one person, but to all. Let us together rebuild this world of LOTR references. Leave a comment with your best idea for a company that can fight against this darkness so we may share in days of peace. My idea? A company called Evenstar (Elfstone) that lets you see whether something is AI-generated.
Extra credit will be awarded to those who crack open The Silmarillion.
I missed this last week, but the XOXO organizers put together a wonderful website where you can watch all the videos from past years of the conference (which held its last iteration in 2024).
I encourage you to explore the whole site, but if you watch just one talk, make it this one from Panic’s Cabel Sasser.
[XOXO]
Verge favorite Matt Levine weighs in on the New Allbirds Thing. The financing is the crucial part — so some “institutional investor” is “essentially buying $50 million worth of stock at the old, defunct-sneaker-company price, and selling it at the new, AI-neocloud-company price,” maybe. Neocloud market looking frothy, imo.
[Bloomberg]
I haven’t been keeping close track of the AI set’s various perversions — maybe they’re into chatbots, idk — but swinging, orgies, and open relationships were a major thing among the Gen X and older Millennial sets out here. Anyway, here’s an anonymous look back at sex in the Valley during the rise of Donald Trump and the #MeToo movement that followed.
[Oakland Review of Books]
Glitchy lo-fi art. Inscrutable plot. Fake backstory about a 35th anniversary release. Kings. Swords in stones. Spaceships. Oh, and an absolutely killer soundtrack. You owe it to yourself to go spend a few minutes exploring the strangely beautiful (in an ugly sort of way) world of Ruin.
Developer Niels Leenheer decided to see if he could recreate the classic FPS using the language that describes webpage formatting. cssDOOM is a bit messy and definitely pushing the limits of what is possible using cascading style sheets, but it’s undeniably impressive.
20-foot tall Evangelion statue: $326,000. Visitors: ≈51,800 from April to January. Payoff: $6.9 million in economic impact. I’d vote for one in my town!
The proliferation of automated podcast tools has reached a sadly inevitable outcome: WebinarTV is scraping open Zoom meeting links and turning call recordings into content for its platform without telling anyone. (Or paying for anything, of course.) Our friends at 404 Media have the whole story.
Wisdom Kaye is one of the most impressive creators I’ve had the joy to experience, and one of my favorite TikTokers. If you want to go down an incredible rabbit hole just go watch all of his videos. (Here’s one of my favorites.) But this one is for the ages — he just styled the solar system. If you’re not blown away you’re living in another galaxy.
We just published our new Decoder interview with Chris Cocks, the head of Hasbro. I asked him directly about how he thinks about author J.K. Rowling’s politics and what it’s done to the Harry Potter fandom, following Hasbro’s major Harry Potter merchandising agreement announced just last month. Here’s what Chris had to say.
The popular fanfiction archive has been up and down since around noon ET yesterday. While service was temporarily restored by 8PM ET, the platform went down again shortly after, and will remain so for “at least several hours” while AO3 attempts to resolve the issue.
[Organization for Transformative Works]
Redfin is doing a geoguessing-themed game of skill to give away a million-dollar house in its app, based on clues found in its Super Bowl ad, and Rainbolt is part of the promo — but he’s not allowed to help, based on the rules here.
Meanwhile, Salesforce’s Mr. Beast ad promises a million-dollar giveaway based on the clues in its 30-second ad.
If you believe internet rumors claiming the Stranger Things finale had “two hours” cut from its two-hour runtime, and have ignored actors and others saying that the claim is fake, the show’s creators have responded.
Asked about it by Variety, Matt Duffer said, “Obviously, that’s not a real thing,” while Ross Duffer added, “I don’t think there’s a single cut scene in the entire season.”
Critic Ben Davis rounds up the art words that helped him better process 2025. I think the term “delightmare” hits the spot:
A word I latched onto in an essay thinking about the prevalence of the feeling of “being terrorized by stupid shit.” This is a horror-adjacent genre of cultural stuff linked to overconsumption and brainrot. Because it’s all about stupid trivia becoming actually sinister, it spans art and the news. It was on my mind all year with the gibbering ghoulishness of the White House’s social media feeds and its yen for A.I. art.
It’s also present at this year’s most cursed art installation in Miami. For more on that specific vibe, read this.
Frog costumes, Luigi hats, and the press frenzy at the viral murder trial.
