Culture
culture
Jamie Wilde
12/27/24

Vitalik Buterin is now Moo Deng’s dad

The shiny little hippo that captivated the world with its silly antics just got a rich benefactor.

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin “adopted” Moo Deng, the ultra-dewy pygmy hippo that gained fame for bouncing around and biting hose water... and zookeepers. Buterin made his honorary two-year adoption official by setting aside 88 ether (more than $290,000) as a donation to Moo Deng’s zoo in Thailand, which Buterin visited last month.

The funds will be used to upgrade Moo Deng’s enclosure and the rest of the zoo, or for Deng’s “frens,” as Buterin put it.

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US Powerball jackpot climbs to $1.7 Billion

Your upcoming Powerball loss is DraftKings’ gain

As the Powerball jackpot has stretched to $1.8 billion, users are flooding into DraftKing’s Jackpocket lottery app.

culture

Paramount and Microsoft’s Activision agree to partner on a “Call of Duty” movie

Less than a month after forming, Paramount Skydance has landed another major piece of intellectual property. The studio said it’s signed a deal with Microsoft’s Activision to create a live-action “Call of Duty” film.

The competitive shooter is one of the most popular gaming franchises in the world and has been the US’s bestselling series for the past 16 years. The next title in the 22-year-old franchise, “Black Ops 7,” will debut in November.

Paramount, which closed its merger with Skydance in August, has had a summer of big deals. It acquired UFC broadcast rights in a $7.7 billion deal with TKO last month, following a $1.5 billion deal for “South Park” rights in July. The company also lured “Stranger Things” creators away from Netflix last month for a four-year film and TV development deal.

The competitive shooter is one of the most popular gaming franchises in the world and has been the US’s bestselling series for the past 16 years. The next title in the 22-year-old franchise, “Black Ops 7,” will debut in November.

Paramount, which closed its merger with Skydance in August, has had a summer of big deals. It acquired UFC broadcast rights in a $7.7 billion deal with TKO last month, following a $1.5 billion deal for “South Park” rights in July. The company also lured “Stranger Things” creators away from Netflix last month for a four-year film and TV development deal.

culture
Tom Jones
9/1/25

“Blinding Lights” just officially hit 5 billion streams on Spotify

Over the weekend, The Weeknd’s biggest hit crossed over the impressive threshold, with Spotify marking the feat with an Instagram post that the artist shared to his story.

According to Spotify data collated by Kworb, the song now has a staggering 5,000,010,581 streams on the platform, and is racking up nearly 1.5 million streams each day at the time of writing.

Blinding Lights crosses 5 billion chart
Sherwood News

While Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” released about two years before “Blinding Lights,” looks like it’ll be the next song to hit the 5 billion boundary, “Starboy,” another song from The Weeknd, might not be too far behind.

Besides those two megahits, The Weeknd has 26 other songs that have been streamed more than 1 billion times on Spotify — more than any other artist on the platform.

Blinding Lights crosses 5 billion chart
Sherwood News

While Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” released about two years before “Blinding Lights,” looks like it’ll be the next song to hit the 5 billion boundary, “Starboy,” another song from The Weeknd, might not be too far behind.

Besides those two megahits, The Weeknd has 26 other songs that have been streamed more than 1 billion times on Spotify — more than any other artist on the platform.

$30B

Americans are set to gamble a record $30 billion on the NFL this season, according to estimates from the American Gaming Association.

For context, that’s the same price tag as all US sports broadcasting rights combined. Leading sportsbooks like DraftKings, Flutter Entertainment’s FanDuel, Caesars Entertainment, and MGM’s BetMGM are positioned to cash in, with each battling for market share through promos, partnerships, and increasingly sticky mobile apps.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are ramping up efforts to crack down on illegal sportsbooks: this month, 50 attorneys general urged the Justice Department to take action against unlicensed gambling, warning that states are losing roughly $4 billion in tax revenue.

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