Instagram, racing to improve its algorithm to catch up with TikTok, is asking its users for some input.
The social media app, owned by Meta Platforms Inc., is now allowing users to select and indicate that they are “not interested” in multiple posts at once within the Explore tab, the section on the app where users can discover content and accounts they aren’t already fo…
Read moreJaiden Stipp was watching a Star Wars movie at his afternoon youth group in Tacoma, Washington, last March when the bids started coming in. First it was a fragment of an Ethereum coin, worth about $300 at the time. Then it was more. Eventually Stipp—who is 15 years old and will soon be starting his sophomore year of high school—sold his artwork, a digital illustration of a waving, a…
Read moreThere’s a lot of sensitive subtext shrouding Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which hits U.S. theaters on Dec. 9.
Based on Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 off-Broadway play of the same name, The Whale follows Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a reclusive 600-pound gay English teacher grieving the death of his partner, while trying to reconcile with his estranged daughter El…
Read moreTraditionally, corporations that do business with countries that are considered international pariahs have drawn a bright line between matters of trade and matters of state. Many CEOs see it more or less as Mark Weil of global business service provider TMF group does: “If I start saying, I don’t much like that government—and there are plenty of governments whose actions one mi…
Read moreRising food costs have hit stores, restaurants, households—and schools, too. School cafeterias across the country are battling soaring inflation, staffing shortages and supply chain disruptions, forcing many of the nation’s school districts to raise their prices or serve more limited menus as students head back to classrooms this fall.
Although schools are racing to find innov…
Read moreWhat do public orgies, mountains of cocaine, and a party-crashing elephant have in common? They all make an appearance in the first 20 minutes of Damien Chazelle’s new movie Babylon.
In the three-hour-plus Hollywood epic, out Dec. 23, writer-director Chazelle (La La Land, Whiplash) paints a depraved picture of late 1920s Tinseltown—and he wastes no t…
Read moreThere’s a cat-centric scene in The Marvels that I can’t get out of my head. At a pivotal moment in the movie, which was released in theaters on Nov. 10, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the S.A.B.E.R. crew are trying to find a way off their ship after half of the evacuation pods on the ship stop working. One of the crew members discovers an egg none of them have ever seen before. …
Read moreSix days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, the YouTube account of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posted a new video.
In a style part investigative journalism, part polemic, the video’s hosts report that one of President Vladimir Putin’s allies, Russian senator Valentina Matviyenko, owns a multimillion-dollar villa on the Italian seafront. The video contras…
Read morePatrick Byrne, the founder of the online home goods store Overstock.com, has made strange headlines for decades: for dating a Russian spy; for mocking business rivals with Star Wars-based insults; for putting all his money into crypto and precious metals.
This month, Byrne is back in the news cycle, as the latest larger-than-life character in the ongoing saga of the Capital riot in…
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