Category Archives: Blog

Mike Bloomberg’s got boatloads of cash and he’s parting with it like the ships are sinking. 

The latest folks to cash-in from the presidential candidate’s efforts to take the White House? Meme accounts on Instagram.

Reporter Taylor Lorenz broke down Bloomberg’s novel Instagram efforts at the New York Times, revealing the campaign was working with a group called Meme 2020. Mick Purzycki, chief executive of Jerry Media — of Fuck Jerry and Fyre Fest fame — is the lead strategist for the group, according to the Times, which has crafted Instagram posts designed to make Bloomberg look self-aware and funny.  Read more…

More about Instagram, Influencers, 2020 Presidential Election, Mike Bloomberg, and Culture

This year Mashable is celebrating the season of love with Horny on Main, an exploration of the many ways that thirsting for sex affects our lives.

Five days into 2020 I received an unexpected email from Fairfield University, the Connecticut college I graduated from in 2015. It informed me that my five-year reunion is coming up in June.

After a few minutes spent panicking over the fact that I’ve been out of school for nearly half a decade, I had a thought that turned all my worry to excitement: I can’t wait to see my crushes.

I couldn’t go to my five-year high school reunion, so I don’t have any firsthand attendee experience, but from what friends had told me, reunions sound horny as hell. Read more…

More about Lifestyle, High School, Sex And Relationships, Horny On Main, and Reunions

In our Love App-tually series, Mashable shines a light into the foggy world of online dating. It is cuffing season after all.

Brian and Michelle met in 1999 on Match.com. Though neither of them had a profile photo, they still matched and quickly hit it off. The two then decided to spend the rest of their lives together. Read more…

More about Mashable Video, Online Dating, Valentine S Day, 90s Nostalgia, and Love App Tually

28,000 people reportedly voted for photographer Sam Rowley’s photo in the Wildlife Photography Awards.  Read more…

More about Photography, Animals, Mashable Video, Mice, and Culture

Donald Trump does not like Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, and that dislike may have just cost Microsoft — yes, Microsoft — $10 billion. At least for now, anyway. 

According to CNBC, Microsoft’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing contract with the Pentagon was just put on hold in response to a legal challenge filed by Amazon. Why? Well, that would be because Amazon thinks Trump has it out for them and inappropriately influenced the awarding of the contract. 

Amazon placing the blame for the loss of the hotly contested contract on Trump’s feet isn’t itself new. The company has long claimed that the president is after Amazon. Read more…

More about Microsoft, Amazon, Donald Trump, Tech, and Big Tech Companies

If you’re going to fake something for Instagram, IKEA is pretty much the perfect place to do it. 

YouTuber Natalia Taylor tricked her followers into believing she took a luxurious tropical vacation in Bali, but she really just went to Ikea. Dressed in a bright pink dress she bought for a much more local trip to Vegas, she and a photographer had a guerrilla photoshoot in Ikea’s model rooms. 

Despite the Easter eggs she left in the photos — in one, she posed in front of a tag that literally said Ikea — Natalia successfully tricked her fans. 

“I mean that’s not a lie, it’s just not the life you think I’m living,” she said when one follower congratulated her on living her best life.  Read more…

More about Youtube, Ikea, Culture, and Web Culture

Since its founding in 2013, the free mental health support service Crisis Text Line has focused on using data and technology to better aid those who reach out for help. 

Unlike helplines that offer assistance based on the order in which users dialed, texted, or messaged, Crisis Text Line has an algorithm that determines who is in most urgent need of counseling. The nonprofit is particularly interested in learning which emoji and words texters use when their suicide risk is high, so as to quickly connect them with a counselor. Crisis Text Line just released new insights about those patterns. 

Based on its analysis of 129 million messages processed between 2013 and the end of 2019, the nonprofit found that the pill emoji, or 💊, was 4.4 times more likely to end in a life-threatening situation than the word suicide.  Read more…

More about Artificial Intelligence, Mental Health, Suicide, Social Good, and Health

Facebook delayed the European launch of its dating service just one day before its planned rollout, after privacy officials “conducted an inspection” of the company’s Dublin offices. 

The social network had planned on launching Facebook Dating in Europe on Feb. 13 to coincide with Valentine’s Day. But Facebook opted to change its plans after the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the body responsible for enforcing Europe’s privacy laws, showed up to search its offices. 

In a statement, the DPC said that it was “very concerned” Facebook had given them only ten days notice of the planned European launch of the service.  Read more…

More about Tech, Facebook, Social Media Companies, Facebook Dating, and Tech

On Tuesday, Samsung unveiled a new lineup of Galaxy smartphones and the company’s already set expectations high by jumping from the S10 straight to the S20.

While we already wrote about the new Galaxy line’s glo-up, we know the burning question on all of your minds: How does it compare to its closest rival, the iPhone 11 Pro?

Here’s a quick comparison of the two phones’ most sought-after features.

Design

At 7.9mm, the Galaxy S20 is ever so slightly thinner than the iPhone 11 Pro, which measures in at an 8.1mm thickness. But where Apple has Samsung beat is in its color options: The S20 comes only in three colors — cosmic gray, cloud blue and cloud pink — while the iPhone 11 Pro is available in four. Both phones, however, feature near bezel-less displays.  Read more…

More about Apple, Android, Samsung, Iphone 11 Pro, and Galaxy S20

Another big media merger is a go as the proposed combination of Sprint and T-Mobile has been approved by a federal judge.

Judge Victor Marrero (U.S. District Court, Manhattan) ruled in favor of the telecom companies after an anti-trust lawsuit was brought by a group of attorneys general representing 13 states, led by New York, California, and the District of Columbia. 

The merger had already received the blessing of the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, paving the way for the deal to go through. Originally valued at $26 billion in all-stock deal, the two sides are likely to do some tweaking and renegotiating to the terms before the deal is finalized, probably in April 2020. Read more…

More about T Mobile, Sprint, Wireless Companies, Corporate Merger, and Tech