What's on Your Mind?

On prediction markets, users can bet on anything and everything. But for those swinging big wins, is it just luck? Some users don’t seem to think so. In one recent event contract on Polymarket, users are wagering on the final storylines for the characters in the latest season of Euphoria, creator Sam Levinson’s HBO series about the messy lives of young people. The market, titled “Who will die in Euphoria: Season 3?,” ranks Nate Jacobs (played by Jacob Elordi) and Rue Bennett (the lead character, played by Zendaya) as the characters with the highest likelihood of dying this season, at 82% and 61%, respectively. Set to resolve by May 31, the same day as the seas…

LinkedIn on Wednesday joined what’s become a near-daily drumbeat of layoff announcements among tech companies. The Microsoft-owned company will reportedly eliminate about 5% of its headcount, which might total roughly 875 employees based on the latest headcount estimate. The cuts are part of a broader reorganization, as LinkedIn CEO Daniel Shapero detailed in an internal memo to staff. As has been true among several other tech companies recently, Shapero didn’t specifically mention AI as a reason for the layoffs in his missive sent at 7 a.m. Pacific. Rather, he emphasized a shifting landscape, according to the text of his memo obtained by Business Insider. “…

When Olympic skier Eileen Gu walked the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Met Gala on May 4, she wore a short, shimmering gown that appeared to be made of thousands of iridescent soap bubbles caught mid-float, clustered across her body and trailing into the air behind her. Eileen Gu It was created by Iris van Herpen in collaboration with the Tokyo-London design studio A.A.Murakami. Assembled from 15,000 hand-formed glass bubbles, it took 2,550 hours to construct, and contained hidden microprocessors that released real bubbles into the air as Gu moved. It was also a glimpse into the show that opens at the Brooklyn Museum on May 16: Iris van Herpen: …

Graduation season is upon us, which means copies of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! are flying off bookstore shelves—since whimsical Seussian life advice has been the go-to gift for new graduates since 1990. But handing over a picture book seems especially unhelpful for the class of 2026. While every generation of young graduates seems to face a unique set of woes in their early adulthood, this year’s new grads are coming up against some particularly turbulent times. AI is gobbling up the entry-level jobs that new graduates need to get their foot in the door. Adding insult to injury, commencement speakers are encouraging grads to embrace their new AI overlords. But …

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Fashion’s biggest night out returns to New York City tonight as the Metropolitan Museum of Art prepares to welcome couture-wearing celebrities back to its steps. But as tech billionaires buy their way into the mainstream, the event is making headlines even before the kickoff, not for who might be the best dressed, but who is underwriting the festivities. Held the first Monday of every May, the Met Gala is an invitation-only benefit fundraiser in support of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. The gathering has become an iconic event, synonymous with status and fashion, with its organizer, Anna Wintour, filling the tables with celebrities and th…

Since he was seven years old, voice actor and influencer Hunter Peterson has told people that his biggest dream was to start and run an airline. In the wake of Spirit Airlines’ recent shutdown, he believes his golden opportunity has arrived at last—and the internet appears to agree. On May 2, Spirit Aviation Holdings, Inc., the company that owns Spirit Airlines, announced what it called “an orderly wind-down of operations,” effective immediately—in other words, Spirit is going out of business. The news followed years of financial struggles for the airline, multiple bankruptcies, and, most recently, an untenable rise in fuel prices due to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran…

The glory days of self-serve fountain drinks at McDonald’s are almost over, and people are not happy. Self-serve soda fountains have been a staple of fast food restaurants like McDonald’s for decades, allowing visiting customers to self-pour, refill, and even customize their order by mixing all available soda options. But as fast food chains look to optimize their operations, not all beloved features are making the cut, and fountains are quietly disappearing. In September 2023, McDonald’s announced it was eliminating the self-serve soda fountains, with a goal to remove them all by 2032, a decision made to drive consistency for staff and customers across its many o…

Bose is rethinking its approach to smart speakers. While the company has released plenty of Wi-Fi-connected speakers over the years, its new Lifestyle Ultra line is a strategic reset, with a new platform that Bose spent the last few years building. (The name is also a nod to Bose’s original Lifestyle systems from the 1990s.) The new Bose offerings include a $299 standalone speaker, a $1,099 soundbar, and an $899 subwoofer, which can also be combined into a surround system. Raza Haider, Bose’s president of premium consumer audio, says these are the first of many speakers that it will launch on the new technology stack. “It’s a completely brand new platform, whe…

I have a very conflicted relationship with my jute rug. I love the organic, textured aesthetic that makes my dining room feel earthy and relaxed. But over time, I’ve come to resent how scratchy it feels underfoot, how the fibers shed and splinter, and how if my toddler spills yogurt on it, there’s no way to get it out of the nooks and crannies, so it becomes part of the rug forever. Ruggable, the company that launched nearly a decade ago on the premise that rugs should be washable, has been on a mission to reimagine the jute rug. And after nearly two years of development, it is launching a machine-washable rug called Performance Weave that mimics jute so convincingly, yo…

AI isn’t all about automating core business functions at Fortune 500 companies. Small and medium-sized businesses can also use AI to optimize, economize, and in some cases compete more effectively against much larger rivals. An Austin, Texas–based vegan cheese-maker called Rebel Cheese used it to level the playing field against a larger supplier. Specifically, the company developed a small system of AI tools to help it claw back overcharges from a major shipping carrier. The company is perhaps best known for winning a $750,000 investment from Mark Cuban, money it used to grow Rebel Cheese into what it says is now a $20 million business. Cuban recently spoke about …

Last month, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated Tax Day by making good on a campaign promise. “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich,” Mamdani said in a viral video posted to social media. “Today, we’re taxing the rich.” Mamdani went on to describe New York’s proposed pied-á-terre tax, a collaboration with Gov. Kathy Hochul. The tax specifically targets the owners of residential properties in New York City worth more than $5 million that they don’t live in full time, or “the richest of the rich,” as Mamdani called them in his video. One such property that would be subject to the new tax belongs to billionaire Citadel CEO Kenneth …

From dating apps spreading the paradox of choice onto young daters to social media stunting the social skills of generations to come, modern relationships are comically complicated. For daters trying to navigate what seems like a minefield of one bad experience after another, they are turning to social media to share their past experiences and dating dealbreakers with the new “date cancelled” trend. The meme is simple: users follow a template-like structure, posting “date cancelled” followed by their personal icks and irks collected from past relationships. While the format has expanded to various social media platforms, most of the users engaging with the tre…

American workers are stressed. Like, really stressed. In Gallup’s annual workplace deep dive, half of U.S. employees reported significant daily stress—in fact, the highest rate in the world out of all nine regions Gallup tracks for the report. Nerves are in tatters: Over half (52%) have experienced anxiety or panic-like symptoms at work in the last month, while nearly two-thirds (63%) of Americans have used alcohol, cannabis, or unprescribed drugs to cope with work stress in the past year. Some 52% have done so during the workday itself. And while work, in its very essence, is stressful, 2026 is serving up a particularly volatile cocktail of RTO friction, AI anxiety,…

Spirit Airlines abruptly ended operations in the early morning of Saturday, May 2 following a failed government bailout for Spirit Aviation Holdings, Inc. The company shutdown left customers stranded—it flew over 50,000 people the day before—and about 17,000 employees without a job, effective immediately. Now, some of those employees have turned to GoFundMe for support during this tumultuous time. Searching “Spirit Airlines” on the donation site leads to campaign after campaign from former captains, flight attendants, and ground staff. Many of the campaigns highlight that the person is looking for new employment, but until then, needs support to stay on their…

Few people know fame like Robert Downey Jr. The Oscar-winning actor has done everything from critical darlings like Oppenheimer to pop culture juggernauts like The Avengers. While Downey took a more traditional path to celebrity, many up-and-coming stars got their starts on social media. Two of this year’s Grammy nominees for Best New Artist, Addison Rae and Alex Warren, were known for their TikToks before they were known for their music. Several of the biggest new names in filmmaking, including directors Danny and Michael Philippou of Talk to Me and Kane Parsons of the upcoming Backrooms, went viral on YouTube before breaking into Hollywood. But according to Dow…