In Luminate’s annual midyear report for 2026, a few key takeaways are apparent: R&B/hip-hop continues to lose ground, but remains the biggest streaming genre in the U.S.; dance/electronic music is on the come up; and the kids are loving CDs. (Robinson, Billboard)
Read MoreThe regulator said the two search engines were the primary way that children accessed adult websites and that their top results regularly featured sites without age-verification systems. (Titcomb, The Telegraph)
Read MoreNo decade can be summed up any more than a country can be summed up, but if we wrote an autobiography not of words but of works — books, music and art, ideas, dress and culture — these 25 would be among the most momentous. (The Washington Post)
Read MoreAn obscure and extremely powerful psychedelic called 5-MeO-DMT is drawing intense interest from the pharmaceutical industry, where biotech companies are racing to turn it into a commercially available treatment for severe mental health disorders, like depression, anxiety and PTSD. (Ferdman, The Wall Street Journal)
Read MoreChildren are being arrested for sex offences in record numbers amid evidence of more abusive relationships, a government-backed report has revealed. Police data show that the number of children arrested for sexual offences in 2024-25 rose by nearly a fifth to 3,809, from 3,225 in the previous year. (Hymas, The Telegraph)
Read MoreSports betting is illegal in California, but prediction markets like Kalshi aren’t. That’s because users buy and sell contracts among themselves, instead of placing bets against a house. The distinction allows platforms to operate under federal rules for financial exchanges, rather than state gambling laws. (Mukheriee, Laist)
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