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I’ve learned the hard way that Metallica fans can spot a “signal” in the tiniest detail. A new font. A shifted shade. A logo nudged two pixels to the left. So when the band quietly revamped the look of its social media accounts on Tuesday, it didn’t feel like a simple design tweak—it felt like someone had moved the furniture in a house we all know by heart. And of course the question followed immediately: Are they about to announce something big?

Have you ever watched a billionaire pick a fight with a newsroom and thought, “This is either dark comedy or a warning label”? Because that’s what it felt like when Elon Musk publicly pushed back against a recent piece by The Verge that described him—bluntly—as a “killer,” arguing that his slash-and-burn approach to government and foreign-aid funding has been linked to mass death abroad.

With the Memorandum of Understanding DocuSigned by all parties, the 108-day war prompted by Donald Trump and Israel’s unprovoked attack on the sovereign nation of Iran officially ended on June 15th. But just because the fighting has stopped, the Strait of Hormuz is once again open, and America’s coffers are down $113 billion (plus $300 billion in restitutions to come), it doesn’t mean we’re yet done being humiliated or shocked by this historic blunder. It may take months or years for the full ramifications of this globally destabilizing act of imperialism to be fully felt and analyzed.

Picture it: the world has ended in the usual inconvenient ways. Maybe it’s the towering robotic dinosaurs stomping through what used to be your neighborhood. Maybe it’s those mysteriously still-working radios that refuse to play anything but syrupy 1950s hits, on an endless loop, like the universe is punking you with a doo-wop soundtrack. Maybe it’s the nagging fear that you’ll wake up in a basement that smells like canned peaches and bad decisions, realizing—too late—that you should’ve read The Road with a little more attention.

Five days into the Trump administration’s sudden freeze on access to Anthropic’s most advanced AI models—Fable 5 and Mythos 5—and I’m still trying to figure out what, exactly, we’re meant to believe is happening here. Is this a narrowly tailored national security move? Or the opening shot in a much bigger attempt to put the entire U.S. AI sector under an export-control style leash?

The return of X-Men ’97 is almost here, and I’ll admit it: I’m both excited and slightly suspicious of my own excitement. How often does a revival manage to feel like a continuation rather than a nostalgic cash-in? In just a few weeks—on July 1—Marvel Television’s animated hit is set to come back for its second season on Disney+, picking up threads that started decades ago in X-Men: The Animated Series.

Have you ever watched an actor talk about a role and thought, “Okay, this person has been waiting their whole life for this”? That’s the vibe I get from Jason Momoa right now. He’s gearing up to appear as Lobo in Supergirl, and he sounds less like someone taking a new job and more like someone finally getting to open a present he’s been shaking for years.

A bill to curb the use of unauthorized AI deepfakes has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, significant movement for a top legislative priority for the entertainment industry this year.

The legislation passed the committee unanimously by voice vote on Thursday, although three Republican senators — Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and Eric Schmitt — raised First Amendment concerns.

The bill is meant to address the proliferation of unauthorized “deepfakes,” as a number of performers have testified on Capitol Hill about the use of their voice and likeness.