All posts tagged: mega

Agnes Gryczkowska Discusses Curating Marina Abramović’s Berlin Mega Show

Agnes Gryczkowska Discusses Curating Marina Abramović’s Berlin Mega Show

Published by Jenni Sidey

Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, a new ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world. Last week, Marina Abramović opened her first solo presentation in Berlin since the 1990s, the bombastically named, “Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition” at Gropius Bau. Set to run through August 23, the show brings together historical and recent works, tracing her long-standing engagement with ritual, eroticism, death, and the body as a site of political and spiritual intensity. Drawing on Balkan folklore, alongside Abramović’s performance history, the exhibition moves between film, installation, sculpture, and live action to create an environment where the boundaries between individual and collective experience are continually tested. At its core, the show frames the erotic as a driving force, linking fertility, mortality, and transformation. Moments of humor sit alongside lamentation and ritual intensity, underscoring the exhibition’s refusal of a single, fixed reading. Related Articles At the packed opening, a huge screen showed Abramović’s video work, Tito’s Funeral (2025), broadcasting women beating their chests in a near trance-like state, …

Mega Influencers Are Replacing Themselves With AI Clones

Mega Influencers Are Replacing Themselves With AI Clones

Published by Sam Flores

Already, AI clones have been used to cut down on production time, allowing talent more bandwidth to pursue other opportunities. “Instead of five service days in-person,” Shannon said, “It’s three service days, [plus] the right to digital assets to do post-production fixes, or [for] their avatar to do things around the edges.” “Everyone says YouTube is all about authenticity, and they assume that it has to be the real ‘you.’ But authenticity can come from a lot of different areas.” Every deal is unique, so there are no set rates related to these AI deals. The structure depends on myriad factors and is constantly shifting based on the nature of a partnership. “I don’t think the market dollars have been determined yet. It’s still relatively early days, and the business models are being formed in real time,” Shannon said. “Frankly, I think it’s going to come down to what consumers want.” Eric Wei, cofounder of Karat, a financial firm for creators, told me that AI cloning won’t work for all influencers or celebrities. The effects …

Mega Bestselling Thriller Writer Freida McFadden’s Identity Revealed

Mega Bestselling Thriller Writer Freida McFadden’s Identity Revealed

Published by José Betancourt

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the biggest headlines from last week. The Millions Has Released Their Spring 2026 Book Preview The Millions released their Great Spring 2026 Book review—one of their biannual Great Book Previews—just this past Friday. Right off the bat, it gets into some of our most anticipated. There’s One Leg on Earth by ‘Pemi Aguda, London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez, and My Dear You by Rachel Khong, to name a few. A List of Black Book Festivals Throughout the Country Sisters from AARP has published a list of Black Book Festivals happening throughout the country this year, and all I have to say is nobody told me nothing! I’m kidding, but only a little. It’s nice to be able to look at everything in one place. The dates start as …

SpaceX files confidentially for IPO in mega listing potentially valued at .75 trillion, report says

SpaceX files confidentially for IPO in mega listing potentially valued at $1.75 trillion, report says

Published by skeptic

SpaceX, the technology conglomerate founded by Elon Musk, reportedly filed disclosures confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of an initial public offering. SpaceX could seek a valuation of $1.75 trillion, according to Bloomberg, which cited anonymous sources. Under SEC rules, a private company can file its IPO registration statement confidentially 15 days before it begins marketing its shares to public investors, allowing it to receive feedback from the agency in private. The company has also lined up an unusually large number of 21 banks to manage the mega IPO, internally codenamed “Project Apex,” Reuters reported Tuesday. The company expects to raise $75 billion, which would make it the largest IPO in history, far beyond oil giant Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion listing in 2019. SpaceX has raised an estimated $10 billion as a private company. Founded in 2002, SpaceX is the world’s leading space company, flying a fleet of reusable rockets and spacecraft, and operating a 10,000-satellite communications network, Starlink. Musk brought Silicon Valley culture to the staid world of space contracting and disrupted the …

The iconic leading ladies of the 80s RomCom mega hits – where are they now?

The iconic leading ladies of the 80s RomCom mega hits – where are they now?

Published by Daniella Wilson

From Sally to Baby, Buttercup to Tess McGill, these ’80s leading ladies ruled the screen and had us rooting for their on-screen romance in the decade’s best romcoms. But what have they been up to since their days on the medieval farm, in the corporate office and adventures through the jungle? We’re catching up with the ’80s best who swapped a simple ‘I love you’ for ‘as you wish’ and would never be put in the corner. © Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images,Getty Images Meg Ryan is a beloved regular in several iconic Nora Ephron romcoms Meg Ryan, When Harry Met Sally Sally Albright is a shining light for those of us with Type A tendencies and won over ’80s audiences with her charm and stubbornness. Meg Ryan brought the journalist to life in 1989, opposite Billy Crystal’s Harry Burns. Since the streamers were swept up from that iconic New Year’s Eve party, Meg returned to romcoms with Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, and more recently reclaimed her place as a romcom lead …

VC mega funds are back with General Catalyst, Spark rumored to be raising billions

VC mega funds are back with General Catalyst, Spark rumored to be raising billions

Published by skeptic

Following news last month that New York’s hottest venture firm, Thrive, just raised $10 billion for a new fund — its largest ever, double the previous one — another big-name VC firm is attempting to equal that raise. General Catalyst is in talks to raise $10 billion, unnamed sources tell Bloomberg. This firm, which has recast itself as a broader financial services company, raised $8 billion just a couple of years ago in 2024. Meanwhile, Spark Capital is trying to raise $3 billion, sources tell The Information, which would also be a big boost from its previous funds. And, as TechCrunch just exclusively reported, Founders Fund is about to close a new $6 billion fund, too. All of this follows Andreessen Horowitz’s $15 billion in new funding announced in January. Venture firms were already sitting on a record amount of so-called dry powder, meaning money available but not yet invested, at the end of 2025, according to the year-end report by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. But 2026 is already shaping up as …

Watch Out, Meta. I Tried Alibaba’s Qwen Smart Glasses and They’re Mega Impressive

Watch Out, Meta. I Tried Alibaba’s Qwen Smart Glasses and They’re Mega Impressive

Published by skeptic

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona might be a European tech show, but for the past few years, the event has largely been dominated by Chinese phone companies such as Xiaomi and Honor. This year, they were joined by tech giant Alibaba, which launched its Qwen smart glasses at the show — and having tried them, all I have to say is, Meta should watch its back. The Qwen glasses are among the first wearable devices Alibaba is building on top of its Qwen AI family of large language models, and the company brought two different models to the MWC.  The first pair, the Qwen S1 specs, have a heads-up waveguide display etched into the lenses, and serve as a rival to Meta’s Ray-Ban Display model (minus the gesture control). My first impression of these AR glasses was that they were light and comfortable to wear — I wouldn’t have known that they were smart glasses by their weight alone. At the end of each arm are swappable batteries, which snap off easily so you can keep …

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery make Mega Deal Official

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery make Mega Deal Official

Published by Daniella Wilson

Paramount‘s megadeal for Warner Bros. Discovery is officially a go. The two companies formally unveiled the deal Friday morning, after Netflix formally bowed out of the running Thursday, citing a price that was “no longer financially attractive.” David Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Paramount, a Skydance Corporation, said: “From the very beginning, our pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery has been guided by a clear purpose: to honor the legacy of two iconic companies while accelerating our vision of building a next-generation media and entertainment company. By bringing together these world-class studios, our complementary streaming platforms, and the extraordinary talent behind them, we will create even greater value for audiences, partners and shareholders — and we couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.” David Zaslav, President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery said: “I’m very pleased with the outcome we achieved for WBD shareholders and the entertainment industry. Our guiding principle throughout this process has been to secure a transaction that maximizes the value of our iconic assets and our century-old studio while delivering as much certainty as possible for …

Metadata Exposes Authors of ICE’s ‘Mega’ Detention Center Plans

Metadata Exposes Authors of ICE’s ‘Mega’ Detention Center Plans

Published by skeptic

A PDF that Department of Homeland Security officials provided to New Hampshire governor Kelly Ayotte’s office about a new effort to build “mega” detention and processing centers across the United States contains embedded comments and metadata identifying the people who worked on it. The seemingly accidental exposure of the identities of DHS personnel who crafted Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mega detention center plan lands amid widespread public pushback against the expansion of ICE detention centers and the department’s brutal immigration enforcement tactics. Metadata in the document, which concerns ICE’s “Detention Reengineering Initiative” (DRI), lists as its author Jonathan Florentino, the director of ICE’s Newark, New Jersey, Field Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations. In a note embedded on top of an FAQ question, “What is the average length of stay for the aliens?” Tim Kaiser, the deputy chief of staff for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, asked David Venturella, a former GEO Group executive whom The Washington Post described as an adviser overseeing an ICE division that manages detention center contracts, to “Please confirm” that …