Most of this is ads. Or sad stories. Let’s get to it.
The Money Pit
Stream your shows. Save a buck. Or two. Peacock is handing out codes for 40% off right now. We’re talking up to $80 saved if you catch the wave in May 2026.
WIRED says grab those Peacock coupons before they vanish.
Over at HBO Max, the discount is even juicier. 50% off if you hurry. And students? Hulu is practically giving it away for $1.99 a month.
It’s cheap entertainment. Inexplicable, mostly, but cheap.
Writing for the Robot Overlords
I work in Hollywood. Used to mean TV. Now? It means feeding data to AI.
It’s the new waiting tables. Soul-crushing gigs for soul-less platforms. I’ve signed twenty of these contracts in eight months. Five different apps. None of them pay enough to buy silence.
It’s bad. Worse, it’s normalized.
And the people who made Hacks? They hate it. Cocreators Paul W. Downs and Lucifer Aniello are done with the chatter. Ahead of their finale, they called AI “deeply disturbing”.
Censorship scares them more. Consolidation scares them more. But the artificial minds? That’s the dealbreaker.
The Digital Guillotine
Alexis Goldstein got fired for filming the DOGE incursion. Former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employee. Recorded the chaos. Lost the job.
Now she’s running for Congress.
Power moves. Or just spite. Probably both.
Then there’s the trial of the century. Sort of. Musk vs. Altman kicks off soon. It’s not just a feud anymore. It’s structural damage. The DOJ gutted the Voting Rights Unit while the AI war rages on.
Is the job apocalypse overhyped? We discussed it on Uncanny Valley. The answer isn’t comforting.
The trial could reshape OpenAI. And everything around it.
Real Life is Weird
Portable translators. They promise you’ll sound like a local. Your phone does the basics, sure. But these bespoke tools? Immersive. Or isolating. You choose.
And then there’s Billie Eilish.
She’s unsure if her era is replicable. SoundCloud gave her everything. Will the next artist have that path? Probably not.
Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 36) comes out soon. Maybe she’ll know then.
Finally, D4vd.
The internet made him a star. The same internet thinks he murdered Celeste Rivas Hernandez. Fourteen years old. The fans found clues on Discord. Now they want him convicted.
Virality has teeth.
Speaking of fakes, Sam Altman’s company Orb claimed a Bruno Mars partnership. Didn’t happen. Bruno’s camp laughed in WIRED’s face. “Never approached,” they said.
We lie. We sue. We stream.
What comes next? Who knows.
But the algorithms are watching.
