Tag: News

• Biden has insisted several times that he's staying in the race.
• Congressional Democrats keep responding: Have you really made that decision?
• "I think there's a sense that we need to have the conversation open still," said Rep. Ro Khanna.

After House Democrats' gathering to discuss President Joe Biden's future on Tuesday morning, Rep. Ro Khanna of California — a surrogate for Biden's reelection campaign — told me that the conversation among his colleagues on the topic was just about over.

"The consensus is that President Biden's our nominee," Khanna said. "I think there's a recognition that he's made a decision that he's running, and he enjoys the support of a lot of senior leaders and important caucuses, like the [Congressional Black Caucus], and we're moving forward."

On Thursday, the California Democrat offered a rather different assessment. "I think there's a sense that we need to have the conversation open still, and listen to people," he said. "It shifts every day. One day they're like, '100 percent, he's in.' The other day it's like, 'oh, maybe not.'"

Those shifts haven't been taking place at the White House, at least publicly. Biden has reiterated that he's staying in the race, he's the Democratic nominee, he won the party's (uncompetitive) primaries, and he doesn't want Democrats to continue talking about this. He's done it several times.

The shifts have been happening on Capitol Hill, spearheaded by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House who remains a well-respected figure in the party. During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday — the same program where Biden urged his doubters to "challenge me at the convention" on Monday — Pelosi said that it's "up to the president to decide if he is going to run."

"We're all encouraging him to make that decision," Pelosi said. "Because time is running short."

"Gaslighting," a term far too often used as a substitute for "lying," refers to the manipulation of a person's perception of reality by feeding them false information. It's a charge that some Democrats made about the Biden campaign's messaging in the wake of the president's disastrous debate against former President Donald Trump last month. Everything's fine, we're moving forward, nothing to see here. Now, Democrats in Congress — by suggesting that Biden hasn't made his decision after all — sure look like they're returning the favor.

Pelosi's comments have shaken things up. After a lull at the beginning of this week, the calls for Biden to step aside from Democratic lawmakers are growing once more. The situation for the president once again feels untenable. As Khanna said, things shift every day, so it's still difficult to make a prediction about the end result at this point. Biden's press conference tonight will be pivotal. But for now, the silence that Biden and congressional leaders tried to enforce on Monday has failed to hold.

At Hakeem Jeffries weekly press conference on Thursday, I asked the House Minority Leader whether he believed Biden had made his final decision about whether to stay in the race. If that were the case, Jeffries could have said "yes." Instead, he offered a version of the statement that gave in response to three of the 11 questions he fielded about Biden.

"House Democrats are engaged in conversations with House Democrats at this moment in time. Those conversations have been candid, clear-eyed and comprehensive," Jeffries said. He likes alliteration. The Democratic leader clearly isn't taking "no" for an answer yet either.

It's probably a stretch to say that these Democrats are actually gaslighting Biden. What they're doing instead is something far more delicate: Signaling to the president that they're not satisfied with him staying in the race, while doing their best not to upset his ego, lest their efforts to nudge him out backfire. After all, the president is known to be stubborn. He's shown as much over the course of the last week as he's not only insisted that he's the best candidate to defeat Trump, but engaged in a straight-up denial of the reality of his poor polling.

That need for delicacy, however, has led to a degree of confusion. On Thursday, I asked Rep. Jim Clyburn — the South California Democrat who arguably saved Biden's candidacy in 2020 with his endorsement — whether he believes Biden's made his final decision.

"I am ridin' with Biden, no matter what his decision is. Whether or not it's final, I don't know," said Clyburn. "But I'm with him. I have no idea what's going on in his head. But I'm taking him at his word."

• Founder Chris Kirchner was sentenced to 20 years in prison for using startup funds for personal use.
• Prosecutors contended Kirchner bought a $16 million private jet, among other extravagant purchases. 
• The supply chain tech startup Kirchner founded, called Slync, shut down in October 2023.

Chris Kirchner, a startup founder convicted of defrauding investors, money laundering, and wire fraud, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison Thursday after using $25 million of his funders' cash for personal use, according to court documents.

Kirchner, 36, founded a supply chain tech startup called Slync, raising more than $50 million from venture investors, including Goldman Sachs, between 2018 and 2021. According to the prosecutors, he transferred millions of the company's funding to himself in 100 separate transactions, funneled through multiple accounts. He also wired $20 million directly to his own checking account, according to the US Attorney's office in the Northern District of Texas.

In addition to prison time to be served in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, Kirchner was ordered to pay $65,415,938.12 in restitution. The judge did not hand down a fine as "the defendant does not have the financial resources or future earning capacity to pay a fine," according to the sentencing documents.

"Even as his company was circling the drain, Chris Kirchner was spending millions of his investors' money on himself," said Leigha Simonton, US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, in an email statement. "Apparently, projecting personal prosperity was more important to him than making payroll. His duplicity earned him 20 years in prison. We are proud to hold him accountable for his crimes and are committed to pursuing all businesspeople engaged in criminal conduct."

In June 2022, some staff at Slync told BI they hadn't received their pay for weeks. At the time, Kirchner insisted the company was financially viable. In the weeks prior, he vied to purchase an English football club, Derby County, causing a stir among fans of the club on social media and in the sports press.

The startup also drew attention for participating in expensive sports sponsorships, including a five-year deal to sponsor the DP World Tour Desert Classic golf tournament, which is uncommon for a startup.

Kirchner eventually withdrew his offer for the football club and blamed his company's payroll issues on software providers. The golf deal was soon terminated as well.

Kirchner was suspended by his company's board in July 2022 and terminated the following month. The board appointed a new CEO, and the company attempted to recover but ultimately shut down in October 2023.

The FBI raided Kirchner's West Lake, Texas, home in February 2023. He was then charged with securities fraud and arrested. He was indicted in May of last year and further charged with defrauding investors in January 2024.

Kirchner's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• The box office got off to a slow start in 2024.
• Last year's strike has led to fewer big-budget movies being released.
• The rise of streaming has also made people more reluctant to get to the theater.

This year has not been great for the box office. In fact, Memorial Day was the worst weekend for the movies since the '90s. The entire domestic box office pulled in just $126 million — in years past, the No. 1 movie alone has made as much as $160 million, as "Top Gun: Maverick" did in 2022.

A few factors have led to this. Mainly, the WGA/SAG strikes last year put many productions on pause, so some of the bigger movies won't come out until later in the year.

Another factor is streaming and VOD. "Furiosa," which came out a little over six weeks ago, is already available to rent at home. For a family, it's cheaper to spend $30 to rent something at home than $50-plus on tickets, snacks, and drinks.

And finally, people apparently just aren't convinced they need to see some of these films on the big screen. Why go see Kevin Costner's new Western when you can watch him in "Yellowstone" at home?

Not all movies have bombed this year — "Inside Out 2" has pulled in $1.2 billion worldwide, a record for Pixar, Forbes reported — but these films performed much worse than anticipated.

"Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1" bombed so badly that the sequel was taken off the release calendar.

"Horizon" was a huge gamble for its star/director/writer/producer, Kevin Costner. Costner mortgaged his home in Santa Barbara and invested $38 million of his own fortune to fund the film.

He also left his lucrative role on the smash-hit TV show "Yellowstone" due to scheduling conflicts with "Horizon."

It's an ambitious task — Costner sees "Horizon" as a four-part series that he planned on releasing over the course of a few months. "Chapter 1" was released in June and made $11 million on its first weekend. A rough start for a movie that cost as much as $100 million to make.

New Line, its distributor, apparently agreed. "Chapter 2" was supposed to hit movie theaters on August 16, but the sequel was pulled from the schedule and now sits in limbo.

"Furiosa" opened to a bleak $32 million over the four-day Memorial Day Weekend.

As The Wrap pointed out, "Furiosa's" $32 million opening weekend is the lowest No. 1 total for a Memorial Day Weekend since 1995, when "Casper" topped the box office with $22 million.

Another depressing stat for the "Mad Max: Fury Road" prequel? According to Screen Rant, it had the worst second-week drop of any "Mad Max" movie, plunging a staggering 59%.

Now, why exactly is "Furiosa" flopping so hard? It might be a case of unreasonable expectations. "Fury Road" is rightfully hailed as one of the best action movies of all time, but it didn't light the box office on fire at first either. Its domestic opening in 2015 was $42.4 million, ending up at a respectable $380 million worldwide.

Also, Anya-Taylor Joy (who plays the titular Furiosa) is famous but not a definite movie star yet — arguably, her big break was for a TV show ("The Queen's Gambit"), and her last big cinematic hits ("Dune: Part Two" and "The Menu") were sold on bigger stars like Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, and Ralph Fiennes.

By July, the film hadn't crossed the $175 million mark worldwide.

"The Garfield Movie" has not been as successful as "Kung Fu Panda 4."

We can't only blame "Furiosa" for the abysmal Memorial Day box office. The other film that opened as counter-programming that weekend was "The Garfield Movie," the second animated adaptation of everyone's favorite grumpy cat.

The film, which stars Chris Pratt as Garfield, made just $31 million on its opening weekend. So, between "Garfield" and "Furiosa," the top two movies at the box office made a total of $63 million.

For context, the No. 1 movie at the box office last Memorial Day weekend was "The Little Mermaid," which made $118 million.

After the billion-dollar success of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" (also starring Pratt), "Garfield" simply couldn't measure up. The other big animated movie of the year, "Kung Fu Panda 4," opened to $57 million and has made $541 million worldwide.

When "Inside Out 2" was released, that's when it was truly curtains for Garfield. The Pixar sequel has already made $1.2 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing movie of the year.

"The Fall Guy" didn't light up box offices in the way some thought it would.

An action rom-com led by the two of the stars of last year's box-office phenomenon, Barbenheimer? You'd think that'd be a no-brainer smash, but "The Fall Guy" hasn't lived up to those lofty expectations.

Variety reported that the film was projected to debut between $30 and $40 million, but it made just $28.5 million. At this point, it's made $177 million worldwide.

As Business Insider's Jason Guerrasio noted before the film premiered, this May was the first time in 17 years (excluding 2020) that a Marvel movie of some kind hasn't kicked off the summer. Last May's Marvel film, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," made $118 million domestically in its opening weekend.

With that looming over its head, it's no surprise that "The Fall Guy," based on the little-remembered '80s TV show of the same name, couldn't measure up.

"Argylle" has made less than half its budget back.

Put aside the deeply annoying "Who is the real Agent Argylle?" marketing campaign and think about how wild this is: "Argylle," an action spy-thriller starring Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell, former Superman Henry Cavill, the former star of a multi-billion-dollar franchise Bryce Dallas Howard, living legend Samuel L. Jackson, comedy icon Catherine O'Hara, beloved actor Bryan Cranston, and current pop star Dua Lipa couldn't crack $100 million at the box-office.

Compare that to the $200 million it cost Apple to make, as reported by Indiewire, and that's a true box-office bomb, even if Apple claims otherwise.

"Madame Web" solidified that the Sony Spider-Man Universe is truly in trouble.

If you're unfamiliar with the Sony Spider-Man Universe (or the SSU), here's a quick explanation: Marvel (and, therefore, Disney) now owns the rights to almost all of its comic characters. The one property it can't get back? Spider-Man and all his related villains, friends, and love interests, which are still owned by Sony.

Although Sony and Disney have agreed on a deal that allows Spidey to appear in the MCU, Sony is still holding tight to the rest of his associates, which is how we end up with films like "Venom," "Morbius," "Kraven the Hunter," and yes, "Madame Web."

Why Sony thought this movie was a good idea is beyond us — Madame Web is a little-known character (and matters even less without, you know, Spider-Man around to help save the day), and star Dakota Johnson hasn't proven herself to be a cinematic draw outside IP-driven properties like "Fifty Shades of Grey," which made a combined $1.3 billion worldwide.

With a dismal worldwide box office of $100 million, all that the SSU has proven is that these movies make for good memes.

"The First Omen" also underperformed against initial box-office predictions.

"The First Omen" is by no means a huge disappointment for 20th Century Studios — it's made $53 million worldwide against a $30 million budget — but it wasn't the hit you might've expected from one of the most iconic franchises in horror history.

Variety even reported that projections expected the film to make $14 to $15 million on opening weekend. It made a little over half that: just $8.3 million.

"The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" was 2024's second movie starring Henry Cavill to flop.

Director Guy Ritchie's latest film is about Winston Churchill's secret special forces team that operated in World War II. This team would perform top-secret missions to take down the Nazis — it's destined to become a No. 1 dad movie in the future.

But for now, this film starring Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, and Henry Golding will be known as a movie that cost $60 million to make, according to Variety, and earned just $27 million.

It's been a rough few years for Cavill post-"Justice League" in 2017. He began starring in "The Witcher" in 2019 (a very successful show by all accounts), only to leave after season three. It's never been officially announced why he left, but the timing did line up with his cameo as Superman in the DCEU film "Black Adam" in 2022.

Unfortunately for Cavill, when James Gunn took over the DC film division, he announced his plans to scrap the entire DCEU (DC Extended Universe) and start fresh with a brand-new Superman, now played by David Corenswet.

And now, Cavill's last two films since his last appearance as Superman in "The Flash" have bombed.

"The Book of Clarence" made just 15% of its budget back.

"The Book of Clarence" is an alternate-history biblical comedy that posits the existence of a 13th Apostle, Clarence.

"The Book of Clarence" is only director Jeymes Samuel's second film. His first, "The Harder They Fall," was a critical success and enjoyed by viewers, but it debuted on Netflix, so it was hard to gauge what the box office would be like for his follow-up.

It turns out that biblical comedy doesn't go over as well as a Western. According to Variety, "The Book of Clarence" cost $40 million to produce and made only $6.2 million worldwide.

"Lisa Frankenstein" made less than $10 million worldwide.

Cole Sprouse and Kathryn Newton have been tapped as potential movie stars in the next generation of Hollywood and have each been in successful films.

However, their star power and the value of "Frankenstein" as intellectual property didn't help this '80s teen comedy earn money.

Even though it was a relatively cheap film to make at just $13 million, according to Variety, it couldn't crack double digits at the box office. It made only $9.9 million.

"Drive-Away Dolls" is the lowest-grossing film directed by a Coen brother in 33 years.

"Drive-Away Dolls" was directed by Ethan Coen and was the first film he directed on his own without his brother, Joel (excluding the 2022 documentary, "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind").

It was also the first Coen film to make less than $10 million since 1991's "Barton Fink," which made $6.2 million to "Drive-Away Dolls'" $6.8 million. The Coens have since made 14 films, some of which made as much as $252 million ("True Grit").

• Don't look, Apple: There's more bad news for the Vision Pro.
• The headset is expected to sell fewer than a half million units this year.
• The $3,500 device likely won't sell better until a cheaper model arrives.

It's been a few months since the Apple Vision Pro launched in the US, but sales are still looking pretty lackluster.

They're running below 100,000 units a quarter, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing a report from market intelligence firm IDC. That means Apple's $3,500 mixed-reality headset, which debuted in the US in February, is way behind Apple's other big product launches, like the iPhone, which sold a million devices within 75 days of its 2007 launch, and the iPad, which sold more than 300,000 devices on the first day of its US launch in 2010.

IDC estimates Apple will sell fewer than 500,000 Vision Pro units for the entire year. That's down sharply from what the Financial Times reported was Apple's initial sales target of 1 million.

As sales don't look promising stateside, Apple recently announced it's making the Vision Pro available outside the US. It started with China, Japan, and Singapore in late June and will continue with Canada, France, Germany, Australia, and the UK this month.

Some analysts have predicted that the Vision Pro may not become a bigger hit until Tim Cook's Apple comes out with a cheaper model.

Bloomberg reported last year that Apple was already working on two follow-ups to the $3,500 Vision Pro. One high-end model would have even faster processing abilities, while a cheaper version would likely drop the "Pro" in its name and have some trade-offs for the lower price, according to Bloomberg.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Hundreds of ancient tombs in Aswan, Egypt contain mummified remains and artifacts.
• Archaeologists recently found evidence of the diseases the inhabitants had when they died.
• Experts have excavated only a fraction of the necropolis, with hundreds of tombs still unexplored.

Egyptians were mummifying their dead long before the time of the pyramids. And some of those tombs remain today, filled with food, art, treasure, and bodies that are still well-preserved more than 2,000 years later.

A hillside cemetery in Aswan, Egypt is one such place. Not far from the Nile, the ancient necropolis offers a place to "better know our ancestors and the people of the past, who are not so different from us," Egyptologist Patrizia Piacentini told Business Insider.

Piacentini is part of an excavation team who's been studying the tombs as part of a joint project between the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Italy's University of Milan for the past several years.

The team has uncovered many amazing finds, including a stretcher that may have been used to carry bodies into the tombs and jars of bitumen, a tar-like substance that was sometimes used in mummification.

Most recently, the excavators have turned their focus to the mummified remains. Using X-rays and CT scans on the bodies, they've discovered how some likely died. Even among the wealthy elites, anemia, malnutrition, and other diseases, were common, the team found.

Photos from the site show how the team excavates the ancient tombs and some of the artifacts and mummified bodies they've found.

The necropolis is located near the modern-built mausoleum of Aga Khan.

Thousands of years ago, locals cut the tombs into the hill's rock. They used the area as a cemetery for nearly a millennium, starting in the 6th century BCE, centuries before the construction of Egypt's pyramids.

The necropolis is enormous, covering over 1 million square feet, the size of about 17 American football fields, and scientists have only searched about 33 of the estimated 300 to 400 tombs.

The necropolis was built for the upper classes.

The hill contains between eight and 10 terraces, or levels, with the wealthiest members of society interred at the top.

"We have, for example, a general of the army of Aswan and the administrator of temples," Piacentini said. "So very, very high positions." The funerary equipment in these tombs tends to be more valuable too, she said.

The tombs don't have evidence of the poorer classes, Piacentini said. They would have likely been buried in simpler tombs in the desert.

Thieves looted the tombs, stealing many valuable items.

The joint team of excavators aren't the first to discover this ancient site. These upper-class tombs were likely once filled with objects made of precious metals and other valuable items, but the researchers rarely find anything of the sort. Centuries ago, grave robbers probably removed them, Piacentini said.

However, there are still plenty of items for Piacentini and her team to explore, including wooden statues, clay figurines, oil lamps, and other objects.

One common item in many of the tombs is cartonnage, a kind of plaster made of papyrus. Ancient Egyptians often covered bodies in casts made from the plaster and decorated them. This image shows a cartonnage chest covering found in the tomb.

These days, there's a market for stolen cartonnages, and illegal excavators were targeting the tombs before the Egyptian government took over the site, Ahram Online reported in 2015.

Items remaining in the tombs offer valuable insights about the dead.

In addition to cartonnage masks like the one pictured here, the citizens of Aswan would stock their relatives' tombs with sycamore figs or dates left in vases.

"These were the offerings brought to the dead," Piacentini said.

It takes a team of researchers to excavate a tomb.

Chemists, paleobotanists, and bioarchaeologists are looking at every aspect of the tombs, from mummy wrappings to plant remains to animal bones.

"Our mission is an interdisciplinary mission," Piacentini said, adding that there's still much more to be learned.

The process is so slow and careful that the team can only study a handful of tombs a year, Piacentini said.

Experts use technology to virtually unwrap mummified remains.

Early excavators used to remove wrappings from bodies to examine them. Now, experts use CT scans and X-ray machines to "virtually unwrap" mummified remains.

This can help researchers learn new information about mummification techniques. For example, two children had rods between their vertebrae to help keep their bodies perfectly straight after death, Piacentini said.

Even the wealthy and privileged couldn't escape from a host of diseases.

Early results from some of the experts' research revealed that between 30% and 40% of the people in the tombs were children, from newborns to teenagers.

Many of the people, including the wealthy, showed signs of anemia, malnutrition, and other diseases. Entire families may have died from tuberculosis, according to the researchers.

In addition to disease, childbirth was another common cause of death, for both the mother and baby, across all social classes.

The necropolis is a city for eternity.

While some refer to the Aswan necropolis as a "city of death," Piacentini prefers to think of it as a city for eternity. "They wanted to live forever," she said. "And they did because we discovered them. We studied them."

And there's enough of the necropolis left unexplored that the excavations will continue, too. "It'll last forever," she said.

• Several NATO allies have agreed to design long-range missiles to strengthen their militaries.
• It comes on the heels of a joint plan to deploy US long-range capabilities in Germany.
• In both cases, European allies are recognizing critical gaps in their long-range weapon arsenals.

Several NATO allies have agreed to a plan to develop new long-range missiles that are intended to fill capability gaps that have become increasingly noticeable as Russia wages its war in Ukraine.

Following an announcement the day before on deep-strike deployment plans involving the US and Germany, the latest move further signals Europe's recognition of gaps in its arsenal and its desire to develop that capability to deter an aggressive Russia.

On Thursday, France, Poland, Germany, and Italy signed onto an initiative focusing on developing "long-range and deep-fire capacity," said French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu during the NATO summit on Thursday, per Bloomberg's reporting.

The new initiative among these NATO allies is focused on developing ground-launched cruise missiles with ranges is excess of 500 kilometers. Lecornu explained that "this is clearly a segment we don't have."

While details on the arrangement are still unclear, Lecornu suggested other allies could join in the weapon's development and that the missile would ultimately serve as a deterrent.

"The idea is to open it up as widely as possible," he said, according to reporting from Reuters, adding, "It has value, including on a budgetary level, because it obviously also allows the various costs to be amortized."

Lecornu shared a picture of him and his German, Italian, and Polish counterparts signing the letter of intent on X, writing: "The war in Ukraine shows that long-range strikes are a key issue for the defense of Europe."

The joint initiative comes a day after the US announced plans to deploy new long-range capabilities in Germany as part of a joint effort to bolster its deep-strike options. The "episodic deployments" will begin in 2026 "as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future," the US and Germany said.

The conventional long-range fires will include new SM-6 and Tomahawk capabilities, as well as unspecified developmental hypersonic weapons. These "have significantly longer range than currently lang-based fires in Europe," the two allies added.

In both cases, the shift toward improving long-range capabilities on European soil further signals NATO's understanding of critical gaps in its arsenal highlighted by the Ukraine war.

Ukraine has used Western-provided tactical ballistic missiles like the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Storm Shadow cruise missiles to strike into Russian-occupied territory such as Crimea but is short on true deep-strike capabilities. Russia, meanwhile, has regularly used its arsenal of long-range ballistic and cruise missiles to devastate Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure.

Experts have assessed that while many European states have long ignored the importance of long-range strike options, the war in Ukraine is prompting them to pursue new surface-to-surface strike capabilities and prioritize the development of such weapons.

The US, too, is hard at work on long-range ground-based capabilities in the wake of its 2019 withdrawal from the INF Treaty, which it accused Russia of violating.

The US is fast-tracking development of the Typhon Mid-Range Capability, which uses a ground-based launcher to fire the Standard Missile 6 and Tomahawk, and the Army's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon.

Responding to US plans to deploy deep-strike capabilities in Germany, among other NATO actions, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: "This is a very serious threat to the national security of our country."

"All of this," he said, "will require us to take thoughtful, coordinated, effective responses to deter NATO, to counteract NATO."

• Sometimes you can do tech reporting by talking to sources or scouring documents.
• Other times you can do it just by watching TV.
• For instance: Meta is running new WhatsApp ads featuring the cast of a defunct sitcom. That tells you a lot about where it wants to find growth.

Ten years ago, Meta bought WhatsApp for some $21 billion. How's it going today?

That's a reasonable question, but if you go looking for answers in Meta's financials, you won't find many: The company blends WhatsApp's metrics with those from Instagram and Facebook, so there's very little specific data available. A few years ago, it announced that WhatsApp had 2 billion users around the world, and that's about it.

On the other hand! You can learn quite a bit about WhatsApp simply by watching TV. That's where Meta has started running ads promoting the messaging platform, using the cast of "Modern Family," the long-running sitcom.

This isn't the first time Meta has advertised WhatsApp on TV. A couple of years ago, it ran spots playing up WhatsApp's privacy advantages, focused on ideas like "end-to-end encryption."

But the current crop of spots is much, much more simple and direct: They tell you that WhatsApp is an app you can use to send messages. And that if some of your friends and family have iPhones and others use Androids, it will work really well without the dreaded blue/green bubble issues.

One version I've seen running on Hulu even included a QR code you could use to help download the app.

Combine that messaging, along with the messengers — the cast of a broadcast TV sitcom that was very, very popular yet never discussed by people who use terms like Prestige TV — and you can draw some pretty basic conclusions: While WhatsApp is very big outside the US, Meta thinks it has an opportunity find more users in America — especially those who live in flyover country instead of big coastal cities.

I ran that thesis by Carl Woog, who runs comms for WhatsApp, and he … said I had it right: WhatsApp thinks middle America is a growth market. Particularly with older users.

Woog said the ads, which started running last month, often around big national events like the NBA finals, are aimed at people who don't live in big cities like Miami, New York, and Seattle, where WhatsApp is strongest in the US.

And he says that WhatsApp also does best with users under the age of 35 — which is why these ads are aimed at older would-be users, and why they employ the cast of a broadcast TV show that stopped running in 2020.

Oh. And I did get one data point out of Woog: He says that WhatsApp's US year-over-year growth rate is running above 10%.

So there you go: Sometimes it still pays to watch TV.

• Francis Ford Coppola opened a filmmaker-focused hotel in Peachtree City, Georgia.
• The hotel, part of The Family Coppola Hideaways, features 27 rooms and post-production facilities.
• Coppola was inspired to create the hotel during the production of his new film, "Megalopolis."

A film-production site and hotel in one, Francis Ford Coppola's new All-Movie Hotel is a filmmaker's haven and a cinephile's dream.

Located in Georgia, the hotel — which we spotted via Gizmodo — is the newest addition to The Family Coppola Hideaways, a collection of resorts in Belize, Guatemala, Argentina, and Italy.

With state-of-the-art post-production facilities and 27 rooms personally designed by Coppola, the hotel caters specifically "to the needs of filmmakers," the website says.

Coppola said he was inspired to build the hotel in Peachtree City, located around 30 miles from Atlanta, after spending two years in the area shooting his latest project, "Megalopolis."

"When I didn't want to think about the movie, I would think about this hotel," he said. "And when I didn't want to think about the hotel, I would think about the movie."

Georgia's film industry generated an estimated $4.1 billion in production expenditure in 2023 and contains multiple production facilities, including those responsible for many of Disney's Marvel movies.

However, Coppola said the lack of spaces specifically for post-production inspired him to create a facility with an "intimate connection" between luxury accommodations and post-filming studios like editing suites and sound studios.

The director vouched for the facility's quality, revealing that "Megalopolis" will say "sound mixed at the All-Movie Hotel," which he thinks will make filmmakers "come here in droves."

Take a look inside.

The hotel's Dorothy Theater can be used for reviewing new sound recordings, watching live edits, and hosting larger ADR sessions.

The screening room features a 7.4' diagonal screen, a 9.1.6 Atmos Meyer speaker set-up, and a SIM 2 Gold Nero 4s projector, according to the website. It also has two Avid S6 Consoles and a Mac Pro computer for editing in the theater itself.

The theater, named after famed film director Dorothy Arzner, can also be transformed to accommodate up to 30 guests.

During downtime, casts and crews — and regular guests — can set up the Dorothy Theater with multiple couches and tables for a cozy movie night.

The eponymous Arzner was one of few female directors in Hollywood during the 1930s, with a successful career spanning from the silent era to sound film. She was also one of Coppola's teachers at UCLA.

An editorial wing is connected to the Dorothy Theater, which contains a fully soundproof ADR suite and two editorial suites.

Each editorial room has multiple Small HD reference monitors and can be customized to your preferred editorial setup. Speakers, TVs, and a slew of other equipment are available for any editing needs.

The first floor features two more editorial suites for reviewing footage, picture and sound editing, and other production editorial needs.

Each room offers a projector, Meyer speakers, and a Mac Pro computer, according to the website. The hotel also has an IT room with a local QNAP server and can provide an engineer for further support for an added cost.

A "Green Room" offers a large kitchen, dining area, and a lending library of books.

Actors and crew can hang out in this bright communal space to cook or enjoy meals prepared by a private chef. The kitchen is fully stocked with two large refrigerators, a six-burner stove, an espresso machine, and various food staples.

Guests can book the Francis Ford Coppola Suite, where the director personally stayed during his two-year residency at the hotel.

The room, one of two extensive "star suites" located on the second floor, is furnished with pieces from Restoration Hardware, including a queen-sized bed, a sofa, and two velvet director chairs. The suite also includes a screen projector, luxury bathroom, dining table, and a full kitchenette with a bar, sink, refrigerator, two-burner stovetop, microwave, and dishwasher.

Guests can also choose to stay in a suite or room that connects to a separate bunkbed room, which can accommodate up to four guests.

Especially ideal for families with children, these rooms can either feature four twin-sized bunk beds or a lower double bed with a trundle and a twin bed on top.

Coppola also designed a suite to celebrate Japanese filmmaking history.

The Japanese suite includes two queen-sized beds, with each bedroom divided by shoji screens for privacy. It also offers a kitchenette and seating area.

The living room offers boardgames and features 'The Godfather' pinball machines.

The living room, where guests can gather or relax on the couch, is also where daily continental-style breakfast is served.

The hotel also offers a patio, a small gym, and a large swimming pool with an outdoor grill

For further outdoor recreation, guests can rent a golf cart or reserve one of the hotel's complimentary bikes to explore over 100 miles of golf cart paths.

The All-Movie Hotel is set to open on July 25th, Variety reported.

• Jimmy and Brooke Sweeney decided to leave Fort Worth, Texas, with their 4-year-old daughter, Isla.
• They've been traveling the world to find a home that fits their lifestyle since June 2023.
• They have visited 29 countries so far and spend an average of less than $200 a day.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jimmy Sweeney, a 31-year-old dad who has been traveling the world with his wife, Brooke, and 4-year-old daughter, Isla, to find a new home since June 2023. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Brooke and I have always loved traveling, and having a kid, we knew we didn't want to change that. We went to Australia and New Zealand a week after we found out Brooke was pregnant.

We lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and there was a lot we loved about it. It's a larger city but still has a small-town feel. We loved our neighborhood. We had some great friends. But ultimately, we realized that long-term, it wasn't where we felt we fit.

I've been to over 40 states, and while there are places we love, they all fall under this cultural umbrella that we feel like we are battling against often. Because of that and knowing that we didn't want to send our kid to school in Texas, given the state of education and the attacks that have been happening on public schooling in the state, we started to look around.

Given our stage of life, we were like, "Why not take the time and go see the world and try to see if there's somewhere that we just fall in love with?"

We sold our house and started our journey in Europe

We put our house on the market in April of last year. It took seven months to sell.

We should have closed a week before we left, but as housing contracts do, it fell through. We had to carry that along with us as we traveled, but it worked out.

A big thing was getting a storage unit and selling our stuff. We did a month straight of garage sales.

When we left Texas, we went to my parents' house in Florida for about a month. While we were there, we decided we would start in Europe.

We've been to 29 countries so far.

We're looking for a place that invests in public spaces, that creates a communal culture around people feeling like they can be out and about. Having public transit, being walkable, and having schools that align with the schooling we want our child to have are also important.

We want to settle somewhere by the time our kid needs to start school. Long-term, we want our kid to feel stable and have a place where they can make friends.

We have tried to match what we spent in the US

I'm a stay-at-home dad. Brooke still works for the same company she did in the US.

When we were in the States, she worked hybrid remote, and when she told them she was going to leave, they asked her to move into a role that was more like project management. She has adapted to that, allowing her to work remotely full-time.

We were just going to travel and have the money from selling our house, but it's been nice for her to be working, obviously financially, because then we get to save more. But at the same time, it also gives a little more structure to our days.

We have tried to match what we spent in the US, but in different ways because we don't have a mortgage, energy bills, or a car payment.

I've tried to stay under $100 a night for lodging. In 29 countries so far and 60-ish cities, there have maybe been five or six where I've had to do a lot of digging to get to that. As a family, we don't have the option to stay in the hostels like many other long-term travelers.

For the most part, we pay between $50 and $75 a night for lodging, which typically gets us a space with a washer, dryer, and a small kitchen. For food and experiences, we also try to stay under $100 a day.

It's different traveling long-term than being on vacation. We're not doing excursions every day, drinking alcohol with every meal, or going out to a bar every night. We are looking for parks, libraries, and free museums.

We don't spend as much on experiences as you would if you were just coming to a place for a week or two. It depends on how long we stay in one place, which can be days or weeks. We spent multiple weeks in New Zealand, Australia, and Japan.

Grocery shopping is a great way to learn about the seasonality of ingredients in a place and to see and learn about the rhythms of many people. Are you running out to the grocery to grab stuff every day just for dinner that night, or is it more like an American-style thing where you're bulk shopping for a week at a time? And you get to know the prices that way as well.

We also love to go to bookstores and libraries. Seeing the stories kids in a place are growing up with is a great way to learn about a culture. That's engaging for our kid, and she loves that, but it's also great for us to see what parents do with their kids throughout the week.

We've loved a lot of places so far

It doesn't take long to understand whether you relate to or feel a part of somewhere. There are places that you can easily cross off a list.

We love Kuala Lumpur, but you walk outside for five minutes and your entire body is dripping sweat. We have done that for enough of our lives that we're like, "Rainy season in Southeast Asia is not what we're going to insert ourselves into."

A lot of it comes with figuring out if moving there is a possibility.

Several places have opened up digital nomad visas. We enjoyed Spain a lot, and they have a digital nomad visa. But you're conflicted about the impact of moving somewhere and seeing a place that has felt the impact of the number of people immigrating there and protecting the local population.

In places like Denmark, Australia, and New Zealand, the entry point is getting a job, and that's not necessarily easy or hard. It's just a thing.

Language is also a big consideration. Even if many places conduct business in English, if we're moving to a non-English-speaking country, there's a gap in making friends in the workplace or elsewhere. Some languages are harder to learn than others.

We love that we get to bring our kid alongside us

One thing that we especially try to show with sharing our travels is that it is much more approachable with kids than you might think, especially with food.

Every kid in the world enjoys chicken tenders and french fries. You'll be able to find that somewhere or some derivative of it that looks similar. Whether the rice looks slightly different or it's a different seasoning on the chicken, those things become a gateway to her trying new foods.

When you're traveling in general, you see how much more similar we are in our day-to-day routines than you might have the perception of.

Kids are growing up everywhere. People have to learn and adapt to what to do with their kids, and it's not that different from what we do in the US.

We love that we get to bring our kid alongside us in this and experience it with her.

Travel should change us

Next year, we'll look toward continuing to travel some and being in the job application phase.

Or if digital nomad is what we need to do for a little while, doing that.

Ultimately, it's about embracing a culture, learning its history, and becoming part of it. That's my biggest hope for us at the end of this.

Traveling and experiencing new cultures should change us. It should have a lasting effect on how we conduct ourselves and live our lives.

In many ways, that's what led us on this journey. And maybe that journey for you isn't moving out of the city, out of state, or out of the country. Maybe it just means small things you incorporate into your day-to-day that help you live a more fulfilling routine.

• Walmart is America's grocery king, selling more food than the next two largest companies combined.
• The retailer is leaning heavily into AI to get perishable foods to store shelves even faster.
• Take a look inside one of Walmart's state-of-the-art distribution centers for perishable goods.

Walmart is the biggest grocery store in the US, with more shoppers getting their groceries there than from any other retailer.

To keep the shelves of its 4,600 US stores well-stocked, the retailer relies on a vast network of 42 regional distribution centers that receive and sort pallets of merchandise.

On Wednesday, Walmart pulled back the curtain on one of its state-of-the-art AI-powered refrigerated warehouses designed to handle perishable goods like meat, dairy, and produce.

The company says it has completed two all-new builds, with three more on the way, while five existing perishable distribution centers are being upgraded with the tech.

Take a look to see how it works:

Trucks arrive with pallets that have of one type of merchandise

Arriving goods are inspected by human workers.

Forklift operators put arriving pallets into a machine that separates the boxes

Walmart says automation is allowing workers to transition into higher-skilled roles.

The machine raises the pallet and scans the contents…

"We know what we own, in what quantity and where it is, all in near real time," Dave Guggina, executive vice president of Walmart's supply chain, told CNBC. "And we know that at a level of proficiency that is significantly improved than what we've been able to achieve with manual processes or legacy software."

… and send cases down a conveyer belt to be stored

The automation and tracking allow Walmart to better anticipate customer demand and keep the right amount of inventory on hand, the company says.

What makes this facility special is that everything must be refrigerated – like this cream cheese

Walmart previously revealed its automation technology at what are called "ambient" distribution centers.

The shelves reach as high as 80 feet and are accessed entirely by robots

Walmart says the additional vertical space is allowing the company to expand its fulfillment services for third-party sellers — not unlike Amazon.

Warehouse employees keep an eye on the flow of merchandise

This automated warehouse still requires about 500 workers, with starting pay at $20 to $34 per hour.

As stores report inventory requirements, an AI algorithm determines the most effective way to pack the mix of products they need onto a new pallet

The system also puts more fragile items, like eggs and fruit, toward the top of the stack.

Walmart says the model tries to ensure that pallets are loaded in a way that simplifies the restocking process for store employees

The system knows exactly which aisle in a particular store that a group of cases is headed to.

Robots then pull the items from throughout the warehouse

"You take a distribution center today, one of our associates is walking up to 10 miles a day, lifting thousands of pounds, moving pallets and things like that," Walmart CFO John David Rainey said of the traditional, non-automated system.

Selected merchandise flows to a loading area…

New construction is slated for Wellford, South Carolina; Belvidere, Illinois; and Pilesgrove, New Jersey.

… and is loaded onto a pallet according to the plan, before it is wrapped for shipping

Guggina told CNBC some pallets can be stacked exclusively with items for fulfilling e-commerce orders, rather than being put on shelves.

It's a complex system that still requires human oversight

Of Walmart's 42 distribution centers, CFO John David Rainey said the company has 15 with "some level of automation."

Finished pallets are then loaded onto a truck and sent to a store

The 15 automated distribution centers serve about 1,700 stores.

At the store, workers unload the trucks and restock the shelves

If everything goes according to plan, restocking the shelves moves more quickly.

Walmart says its automated warehouses can process twice as much merchandise as traditional ones

"When we automate one of these DCs, we see roughly twice the throughput with half the head count," CFO John David Rainey said. "And so the math on this is very, very compelling."