Top athletes from around the world, including Olympic medal winners, are gathering this Memorial Day weekend for a new Donald Trump Jr.-backed sports competition—and drugs are not only allowed but encouraged.

In the world of I Love Boosters, color reigns supreme.

I was in a pub in London, catching up with my oldest friends. One friend turned to another: “What is that phone you are holding?”

2015 was a different time. One of the most polarizing discussions online was about whether the color of a striped dress was blue and black or white and gold. The class of 2015 was graduating into an election year. And Stephen Colbert was just gearing up to become the host of The Late Show.

At 3 a.m., in the midst of labor, a doula we’ll call Renee stepped into the hallway to steady herself.

AI-generated images are already all over the internet, and now magazines are getting in on the act, too.

Last summer, I stumbled onto a brilliantly useful tool that ended up being one of the most well-received discoveries we’ve ever shared in these quarters.

AI woes are coming for the food service industry, and social media can’t help but celebrate.

Generative AI arrived in education everywhere all at once. Today’s students are surrounded by tools that promise help, answers, and efficiency at every turn. But learning has never been about convenience alone. As AI reshapes how students engage with academic material, the questions are whether it is being built to support how humans actually learn and ultimately improve outcomes.

Delta Air Lines has become the new go-to carrier that American travelers consider when purchasing a flight, leapfrogging rivals American Airlines and United Airlines, according to an annual study released this week by YouGov.

Focus Features wants to make people obsessed with its newest horror movie—and it seems to be working. 

Scientists have been sounding the alarm on just how bad AI and data centers are for the environment. And now, researchers have proof that data centers are also making nearby neighborhoods 4 degrees warmer, according to a new study from Arizona State University.

I recently talked to a marketer whose company added Claude to their org chart. Not as a joke, but as a real role, with defined responsibilities and a clear place in the workflow.

A Utah data center proposed by Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary is expected to be massive.

After more than a decade of mixing and kneading dough in his family’s Brooklyn pizzeria, Salvatore Lo Duca recently made a distressing discovery: A key component of their thin-crust pies, bromated flour, contained a suspected carcinogen already banned in much of the world.

So, in the back kitchen of Lo Duca Pizza, the 39-year-old began tweaking the original recipe handed down by his parents — with unexpected results.

“When we started playing around with a different flour, I actually took a liking to it,” said Lo Duco, who runs the shop with his five brothers. “It’s a little more expensive, but the quality is there.”

A looming ban on the additive, potassium bromate, may soon force thousands of pizzerias and bagel shops across New York into a similar transition.

The bill, passed by state lawmakers and awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature, has divided dough-makers, triggering fears that even a minor change to long-established baking practices could have dramatic implications for the city’s most iconic foods.

“This is an earth-shaking event for New York pizza,” said Scott Wiener, a pizza historian who leads tours of notable slice shops. “That ingredient is part of the identity of the slice.”

Employees at several stores that use bromated flour declined to comment for this story. But Wiener estimated that around 80% of pizza and bagel shops rely on a flour that contains the oxidizing agent, which reduces rest time for dough and helps ensure a stronger, chewier product.

To some, the quintessential qualities of the New York bagel — its height and structure, external crispiness and springy bite — would not be possible, or at least as ubiquitous, without the chemical shortcut.

“You could achieve that same bagel texture, but it’s a lot more work and it’s going to be a lot more expensive,” lamented Jesse Spellman, the second-generation owner of Utopia Bagels.

Ahead of the possible ban, he too has been adjusting his family recipe, experimenting with yeast concentrations and rise time.

“It’s going to take some time to get a product that we’re happy with,” Spellman said.

Others, meanwhile, see the proposed ban on potassium bromate as long overdue. The additive is already outlawed across the European Union, China, India, Canada and — as of next year — California. Some experts have theorized that its absence outside the United States could be one reason that many Americans find baked goods in Europe and elsewhere more tolerable.

“From a consumer’s point of view, there’s nothing good about potassium bromate,” said Erik Millstone, a professor of science policy at the University of Sussex focused on the health impact of chemicals in food.

Going back to the 1980s, he noted, studies have shown it can cause cancer in laboratory animals, even in “perfectly reasonable” doses.

“Most well-informed people would prioritize a long healthy life over a slightly softer and more soluble bun,” he said.

Already, many of New York’s most celebrated pizzerias, particularly newer and more artisanal-leaning shops, tout their use of “unbromated” flour.

But neighborhood slice shops still overwhelmingly rely on a General Mills flour called All Trumps, a standard ingredient since the city’s first grab-and-go pizza parlors opened nearly a century ago, according to Wiener. General Mills now sells an unbromated flour for roughly the same price, though other alternatives are costlier.

In Wiener’s view, the move away from bromated flour could ultimately improve the quality of slices across the city.

“Without such a fast turn around for dough production, you’re going to get more well-fermented doughs, which is going to lead to lighter pizzas that are easier to eat and leave you with less of a stomachache,” he said. “It will require more of a process. But everything will be built back better.”

If the legislation passes, businesses will have a one year grace period to continue using the additive, plus additional time to go through unexpired bags. A spokesperson for Hochul said she would review the bill.

In the meantime, the possibility of the ban has rippled beyond New York’s borders.

“Pizza in Florida is officially better than pizza in New York,” crowed Mario Mangilia, the owner of DoughBoyz in Florida in a recent Instagram post. He added that “my grandfather would haunt me” if the shop’s dough recipe were ever changed.
But after he was confronted by several prominent pizza accounts over the additive’s health concerns, Mangilia appeared to walk back his pro-bromate stance.

“I’ll tell you what,” he replied to a Long Island-based pizza owner. “I’ll test some different flour out to check it out.”

A Trader Joe’s could be coming to your hometown. On Wednesday, Trader Joe’s announced it would open nine new stores, in addition to the previous batch of 18 new stores it announced in April.

The newest batch of locations will pop up across eight states including Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Utah. 

Stephen Colbert chatted with Paul McCartney and joined him on stage for a raucous performance of “Hello, Goodbye” on the final broadcast of CBS’ “The Late Show” on Thursday night, a bittersweet farewell for a canceled show that still had a few barbs left for the network that ended its 33-year run.

At the top of his last show, which grew more surreal and absurd as it went on, Colbert highlighted the “joy” that he and his team felt creating more than 1,800 episodes of “The Late Show.”

“The energy that you’ve given us, we sincerely need that to have done the best possible show we could have for you for the last 11 years,” Colbert said. “You’ve given it to us. We’ve given it all right back to you.”

Colbert pretended that Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pope, was his final guest, but the pontiff refused to come out of his dressing room because he hadn’t been supplied the correct kind of snacks, especially hot dogs.

McCartney then offered himself as a replacement, striding across the stage as the audience screamed. “I think you’d be a perfect last guest,” Colbert said.

McCartney said he happened to be in the area, doing errands. He offered a framed photo of the Beatles at the Ed Sullivan Theater, the final home for “The Late Show.” The two chatted about when the Beatles first came to America in 1964, creativity, his new album and McCartney’s childhood.

The housing market might finally start shaking off some dust after a few years stuck in a rut.

Remember Donald Trump’s response in the 2016 presidential debate, when Hillary Clinton blasted him for paying virtually no federal taxes?

“That makes me smart,” Trump said.

By that logic, Trump is looking smarter than ever now.

On Tuesday, the Internal Revenue Service agreed to drop all pending probes of Trump over whether he’s paid his fair share of taxes, to settle a lawsuit brought by the president over a leak of his tax returns. That could include, assuming it was ongoing, a long-standing audit into a technique Trump reportedly used to avoid paying taxes years ago that could have hit him with an estimated $100 million bill if the IRS found wrongdoing.

Trump has repeatedly denied he did anything wrong and has blasted the IRS investigation as politically motivated, without providing proof.

Details of IRS audits are not public and the merits of each side’s arguments are impossible to tell. But the way the president’s case against his own government’s IRS was resolved is highly unusual, experts say.

Trump sued the IRS, a federal agency within his administration, putting him in the unusual position of challenging an agency overseen by the executive branch he leads — a rare move, experts say, and possibly unprecedented. Then that agency decided, in another unusual move, to grant him immunity.

The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for next year could reach 3.9%, according to a new report.