Damian Pickett · No. 46
Monday 19 October 2026
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary opened to $15 million, one of the strongest opening weekends ever for a documentary and another data point for A24’s box-office pull.
Most Character.AI staff who were offered jobs at Disney have accepted, according to a regulatory filing, though the deal remains a stalking-horse bid another company could still top.
Drake Maye threw three touchdowns as New England beat the Jets 26-19 at Gillette Stadium, extending the Patriots’ winning streak to three games after wins over the Bills and Raiders.
Read · Lenny's Newsletter
Lessons from how 40+ brands measure their marketing impact, including McDonald’s, H&M, TikTok, Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber
A24’s $15 million weekend is proof of brand power; this is the playbook 40-plus brands, from McDonald’s to Airbnb, use to prove their marketing actually works.
Listen · Founders
A media empire built on storytelling and scoops, which should resonate with Damian’s own broadcast-journalism roots.
Listen · David Senra
A first-time CEO at 39 who rebuilt wealth management’s incentive structure, the kind of rule-rewriting operator Damian studies.
Listen · Acquired
The business story behind a 30-year-old sitcom still watched by 72 million Americans this year alone.
Anthropic said it will commit 5% of its shares to a newly created public benefit fund, though it has not yet detailed how the fund’s proceeds will be used.
Willison patched his LLM plugin for querying Datasette databases after it broke when LLM switched its HTTP library to httpx2, a reminder of how small dependency changes ripple through a plugin ecosystem.
Willison revisited llm-echo, a debugging plugin that mimics a model’s responses without calling one, while testing pull requests ahead of a new LLM release.
Benchmark’s five remaining partners discussed staying disciplined and based in San Francisco even as the venture market around them has sped up and grown more frenzied.
The acclaimed deck-building horror game Inscryption is heading to mobile, with its developer marking the five-year anniversary of the original release with a Twitch stream.
Developer Lean Rada describes using the document.currentScript property to drop a tiny inline script element into a page without extra boilerplate, a small trick for embeddable widgets.
Starlink offers two different $55-a-month plans, Residential and Roam, that trade download speed against data allowance depending on how you use it.
MacRumors reports Apple is likely to begin a run of Friday product releases on November 6, potentially including OLED MacBook Pro and iMac models with M6 chips and an OLED iPad mini 8.
An EU energy label confirms the iPhone Duo has a 4,883 mAh battery, settling earlier leaks and giving a clearer picture of how Apple’s folding phone compares with the rest of the iPhone line.
Apple has hired Scott Tucker, previously of Meta, as its new vice president of global litigation, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Taika Waititi confirmed his Star Wars movie, in development since 2020, has been put on ice indefinitely while he promotes his new film, Klara and the Sun.
Jesse Eisenberg’s musical comedy The Debut closed the London Film Festival on a high note, with star Julianne Moore calling the script one of the best she has ever read.
The BFI London Film Festival gave its main prizes to Imperium, Concrete Land and 9 Temples to Heaven, while Aman won the short-film competition and three other films received special mentions.
Netflix disclosed box-office numbers for one of its films for the first time ever, with Spanish drama La Bola Negra taking $277,500 from four theatres as its awards-season run begins.
Boston closed its preseason with an overtime win over the 76ers, a tense finish that had the CelticsBlog team on the edge of their seats despite it being only an exhibition game.
Hugo González closed out a preseason of visible growth for the Celtics, built on his summer with Spain’s national team at the FIBA World Cup qualifiers.
The Celtics converted Devin Carter’s Exhibit 10 training-camp deal into a two-way contract after a single preseason appearance impressed the coaching staff.
A.J. Brown had a difficult first home game for the Patriots at Gillette Stadium, saying afterwards: ‘There are no excuses. I’ll be better.’
Morgan Moses was unable to finish Sunday’s win over the Jets after suffering an ankle injury, and was later seen in a walking boot.
Drake Maye praised the Patriots’ offensive line after Sunday’s gutsy win over the Jets, joking that Ann Michael should keep bringing them baked treats.
Max Verstappen pushed back on criticism of the 2026 regulations from former drivers, suggesting their complaints come from not understanding the new rules.
Ferrari is preparing its largest upgrade package of the 2026 season for the United States Grand Prix, with just two months of the season left to run.
Mercedes is on course to become double F1 world champions in 2026 for the first time since the Covid-hit 2020 season, according to the numbers behind its resurgent form this year.
Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu and Caleb Durbin are among this year’s Gold Glove finalists, with all three considered strong contenders for the award.
Karimoku New Standard and ASICS have released furniture cushioned with upcycled foam from unused trainers, a small, satisfying piece of circular design.
