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Happy Friday, Future Party. Sometimes, the movies really do mirror real life. Three astronauts are stuck aboard China’s Tiangong space station after a small piece of space debris — a growing problem in Earth’s orbit — damaged their ride back. The station can support them for a while, but China is already putting together a new mission to bring the stranded astronauts home. Yeah, we want to rewatch Gravity now, too.

Legacy publications are partnering with prediction-market platforms to boost revenue, reach younger audiences, and better understand what readers want more information about.

The Big Gamble: Sports betting has been around for a long time, but the new trend in gambling is betting on everything — elections, quarterly earnings reports, and even box-office results. While that usage is concerning for culture, it does provide a strong bellwether for where a publication’s resources should be quickly allocated.

Between The Bets: Publishers are gambling that prediction markets are here to stay, according to Axios.

Final Wager: Prediction markets like Galactic and Polymarket want to partner with publishers for the same reasons that we get our news from them — they’re vetted, accurate, and held to high standards. Or, as Galactic senior advisor Howard Mittman puts it: they “allow us to find the signal in the noise.”

In our fractured online world, that’s exactly why publishers desire these deals, too. If you want to see where people’s obsessions lie, follow the money.

Our Prediction: The era of gamifying good journalism is upon us.

Achieving SOC 2 compliance can help you win bigger deals, enter new markets, and deepen trust with your customers — but it can also cost you real time and money.

Vanta automates up to 90% of the work for SOC 2 (along with other in-demand frameworks like ISO 27001 and HIPAA), getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving you up to 85% of associated costs.

Innovators like LangChain, Writer, and Cursor scaled faster and closed bigger deals by getting security right early with Vanta.

Download Vanta’s free SOC 2 checklist to learn more about the process and the road ahead.

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a way for people to feel the real-life textures — like denim or velvet — of images on a screen.

Why It Hits: Being able to feel digital objects is something straight out of a sci-fi movie… and it has some incredible real-world applications across various fields. That could be a game changer for e-commerce, accessibility, and even entertainment.

Behind The Textures: Our fingertips are getting an upgrade.

Last Touch: Publishing their study in Science Advances, the researchers are the first to successfully develop “human resolution” — what Fast Company describes as the ability to “accurately match the complex way a human fingertip senses the world.” In fact, the study found that users could “identify fabrics like corduroy or leather with 81% accuracy.”

In other words, now you can check how soft that shirt really is before you order it.

The Future: With sight and sound mastered, touch may now be the hottest touchpoint in digital marketing.

AI was the most in-demand skill of 2025, according to the World Economic Forum — but how many of us actually mastered it before jumping into 2026?

Now Black Friday’s here, and people are chasing deals and burning money instead of investing in what will actually help them earn it.

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33.9% of you voted I wouldn’t in yesterday’s poll: How do you feel about using an AI tool to help prepare a meal?

“How does AI taste? How can it combine flavours and textures without the ability to experience eating and savouring? I am a trained chef, and I go by taste, texture, aromas, and visual cues to build my recipes.”

“If you consider finding a recipe as part of ‘preparing a meal,’ I do that on the web anyway. AI is just another, albeit possibly better, search tool — why not? I still put it all together with my own hands. Don’t you?”

“I am training for a bodybuilding show and have used it to help me hit my macros eating a recipe vs. just plain protein, fat, and carbs. Some of the recipes are decent, others are horrendous. None of them have been stellar yet, but I keep working on it with AI to start to enjoy eating while training.”

“ChatGPT helped me get over my fear of farmers’ markets. I input a list of what’s for sale, and it comes up with recipes that take advantage of them (plus what’s in my pantry) and help minimize food waste.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

🎤 The Weeknd now has the top-earning tour by a solo male artist after the After Hours Til Dawn Tour surpassed a billion dollars.

🍿 Netflix says it will keep Warner Bros. movies in theaters if it’s successful in acquiring the company.

🎢 Disney plans to adopt a dynamic pricing model similar to airlines and hotels at its US theme parks.

🫠 President Trump is set to sign an executive order that would allow the Justice Department to sue states that pass their own AI-regulation laws. Okay, then.

🎸 Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music have all signed a licensing deal with AI startup Klay.

📺 Amazon is leveraging AI to create video recaps of shows between seasons.

🎲 Coinbase is launching its own prediction market in partnership with Kalshi.

🏦 Crypto exchange Kraken has filed to go public in the US.

🛒 Target is making its app available in ChatGPT, giving the retailer more control over its customers.