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Everyone has a favorite moment from Super Bowl LIX. Eagles fans likely will long cherish the decisive victory over the Chiefs. Some will discuss Kendrick Lamars game-changing halftime show. Me? I was happy to see Puppy Monkey Baby again. The former Mountain Dew mascot, which made its disturbing debut in 2016 and was widely hated by pretty much everyone, was part of DoorDashs 2025 Super Bowl commercial, a spot that crammed in more corporate mascots than anyone thought possible. For some reason, that stirred some nostalgic feelings in me and I took to Facebook to post I, for one, am THRILLED to see the return of Puppy Monkey Baby!!! Thats when things got weird. I made the post, basically, to amuse myself. A short while later, during a less interesting commercial break, I decided to see if any of my friends were equally excited about the weirdest of all possible mascots. (They were, for the most part, not.) However, I had received a notification from Meta saying I could manage invites to friends on and off Facebook by creating an event and it had taken the liberty of choosing the time, date and informational copy for this event, which it dubbed Puppy Monkey Baby Returns! The wait is over!, the page read. Puppy Monkey Baby is back and better than ever! Join us for a fun-filled evening of laughter, joy, and excitement as we celebrate the return of our beloved Puppy Monkey Baby. With special performances, giveaways, and surprises, this is an event you wont want to miss! This preview, it added in small print at the bottom, was generated by AI. Ah. Yes. Of course it was. On the one hand, this made sense. Puppy Monkey Baby looks like something an AI system would generate when its in the midst of a hallucinogenic fever dream. And perhaps keywords like baby and thrilled led the system to think I was about to become a father and wanted to celebrate. But where in the heck did it get the idea there would be special performances? And giveaways? Not only was I learning about a party I hadnt planned for a nightmare-fuel corporate mascot, but I had to offer prizes to people who came? When Fast Company contacted Meta, a spokesperson for the company confirmed that it was a new feature. This feature can help people create events directly from their Facebook posts through AI suggestions,” said a Meta spokesperson. “You can choose to either edit or disregard a suggested event and provide feedback on the quality of the AI-generated suggestion, which helps us improve the experience. Meta has said in the past that its AI systems are still a work in progress. The company, on Monday, was expected to begin carrying out a series of company-wide layoffs, reducing its headcount by as much as 5% as it prepares to spend $60 billion on AI development in 2025. One upside, I suppose, is that at least Facebook didnt automatically invite any of my friends to this non-existent party, which was scheduled for 5:00 p.m. the next day. (Good thing, too! The time it gave me to prepare would have meant a menu largely made up of leftover buffalo dip and some cold pizza.) I looked online to see if I could find if anyone else had seen their posts seemingly transformed into an invite. There werent many (and none, that I could find, whose mystery invites revolved around Puppy Monkey Baby), but I wasnt entirely alone. One users political post in January saw him getting the strange notification about managing invites for friends. Invites are kind-of, sort-of hot once again, following the introduction of Apples Invite app for iCloud+ subscribers. Meta has never been shy to clone features of other tech companies (i.e. Instagram Stories, which had many of the same characteristics as Snap, and Reels, which is presented as an alternative to TikTok). That said, theres no evidence that Meta is looking to extend its invite or event segment beyond its current walls. Metas in a fight with Google, Microsoft, X, OpenAI and more for supremacy of this burgeoning market and is looking for ways to incorporate it into peoples lives. This misfire, though, should serve as a warning to Meta and those other companies. Sometimes its best to make sure your experiments are locked in the lab when youre still working on them. Otherwise, well, you could end up with a different sort of Puppy Monkey Baby.
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E-Commerce
The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm watch from Tuesday morning until Wednesday morning, as back-to-back winter storms are predicted to affect much of the nation this week. A total of three winter storms will bring snow, ice, and rain to more than 40 states, with 29 million Americans facing a winter alert in the Central Plains, the Midwest, the Ohio Valley, and the Mid-Atlantic regions. Winter Storm Harlow is expected to bring ice and snow Tuesday morning into Wednesday to the Ohio Valley, spreading east to the Mid-Atlantic, according to the Weather Channel. This first storm will start in the Central Plains and bring rain and ice to Oklahoma and Arkansas and moderate snow from Kentucky to Maryland, per NBC News. The Mid-Atlantic (which includes Washington, D.C., Maryland, and several contiguous states) may get 3 to 6 inches of snow, Philadelphia may get 2 to 3 inches, and New York City around an inch. Winter Storm Iliana is forecast to bring an even-more wintery mix from Wednesday into Thursday to the Plains and Midwest including Denver, Kansas City, and Oklahoma City, and across the Northeast on Thursday, according to the Weather Channel. This second storm should bring light snow to Colorado, then moderate to heavy snow from Kansas to Michigan, with the heaviest snowfall predicted for Chicago: anywhere between 4 and 8 inches of snow, NBC Chicago meteorologist Alicia Roman said. The storm will then travel north, exiting to Canada, and along the way, bring snow to Boston and the rest of New England, and turning to rain down the coast to Raleigh, North Carolina, per NBC News. Both storms combined are expected to result in large snow totals, and could cause flooding in the South, according to ABC News. A third storm is set to impact California later in the week, bringing heavy rains and high-elevation snows, possibly resulting in flash flooding, with the threat of mudslides “across the burn scars of Southern California” on Thursday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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E-Commerce
Lets say you own one of the most valuable homes in a lush, gated community that has been earmarked as a future point of growth for decades to come. One day, a letter appears in your mailbox, offering to buy your property for between a third and two-thirds of its value on the open market. On the face of it, you should turn it down. But the person offering to buy it owns every house in the estate, and runs the HOA. Theyre also friends with the police chief and the fire department. So you have to think carefully. Thats the situation OpenAI CEO Sam Altman finds himself in today as an Elon Musk-led group launches an audacious bid to buy the nonprofit arm of OpenAI, the hottest ticket in tech, for $97.4 billion. The bid, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is undoubtedly a cheeky one. OpenAI was last valued at $157 billion late last year when it last went into the market to seek investment. And just this week, SoftBank, the Japanese investment company, valued it at $260 billion. That makes Musks bid to take over the company a cut-price one, worth significantly less than the going market rate. The idea that OpenAIwhich has spent the past year or more in an on-again, off-again court case against Musk over an argument dating back a decade to the latters involvement in setting up the AI company as a nonprofitwould accept the offer for the nonprofit arm seems preposterous. Yet, we are in an era where Elon Musk has emerged as a right-hand man for Donald Trump. Things are no longer normal in politics or business, and Trump sees OpenAI as a strategically important business for the United States. (For proof, just look at his recently announced AI project, the Stargate Project.) It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was, Musk said in a statement made through his attorney announcing the bid. We will make sure that happens. Well soon find out whether thats the bluster of a businessman who has long made audacious bets (many of which have paid off), or the commentary of someone whose quasi-governmental position allows him to exert power. For now at least, Sam Altman appears to be treating it like the joke it is. no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want, he quickly tweeted. no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want— Sam Altman (@sama) February 10, 2025
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E-Commerce
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