Joel Cunningham

Joel Cunningham

Deputy Editor

Experience

Joel Cunningham is Lifehacker’s Deputy Editor. He has 15 years of experience as a writer and editor. Previously, he was managing editor of content marketing for Barnes & Noble, where he founded the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

Topline

The surprising success of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” the fourth movie to star Tom Holland as the titular character, continued Wednesday as the movie became the highest-grossing film at the box office so far this year, topping “Toy Story 5” just seven days after its release.

A high-concept romantic comedy is a difficult thing to pull off. The success of any romcom is so dependent on any number of ordinary yet intangible factors — star chemistry, warmth, a general sense of goodwill toward all involved — that when you massively complicate the rules of the game, the balance is thrown off. With “One Night Only,” those intangibles are largely in place: In Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner, it’s got two attractive, pleasingly grown-up leads whom you wouldn’t mind seeing get together; it’s set in New York City at its most invitingly balmy; it even has the odd one-liner that nets an actual laugh. (Not to be taken for granted in a genre increasingly heavy on dialogue with the cadence of jokes, but not the punchlines.)

Employees at ABC News‘ digital division voted unanimously to form a union with the Writers Guild of America East.

WGA East — which has repped unionized employees in ABC News’ TV operations for decades — said it reached an agreement with ABC regarding the union representation process for employees of ABCNews.com and ABC News’ social media platforms. The union said ABC and WGAE “have engaged in productive and constructive discussions, reflecting a shared commitment to maintaining a collaborative and supportive workplace.”

Aniket Deosthali, CEO & Co-Founder at EnviveAI.

getty

Retail history tends to reward companies that recognize where consumer decision making is actually happening, not just how transactions are completed. In the early 2000s, when Amazon began to compete seriously with big-box retailers, many incumbents focused on its visible advantages, such as lower prices, faster shipping and operational efficiency. While those factors were real, they ultimately distracted from a more fundamental shift that was already underway.​

Stephen Johnson

Stephen Johnson

Senior Staff Writer

Experience

Stephen Johnson is a senior staff writer at Lifehacker covering pop culture and technology, including the columns “The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide to Kid Culture” and “What People Are Getting Wrong This Week.”

E-commerce software maker Shopify seems to be benefiting handily from people using AI to search.

On the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said AI has become a “complement to search, rather than a substitute for it,” and had particularly benefited the long tail of e-commerce, including the smaller merchants that make up the majority of its customer base. Indeed, the company credited its earnings beat and soaring revenue to AI search, at least partly.

Leopold Aschenbrenner (L) and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.

Photo: Josh Edelson (L) | Oscar Molina (R)

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan on Wednesday called the recent near collapse of high-flying AI hedge fund Situational Awareness a warning shot for financial markets that are being fueled by elevated valuations and borrowed money.

No, Chef!

Matt Johnson recreates the wonder years of a snot-nosed punk who’ll grow up to be a celebrity-chef icon. Call it Bourdain the Man the Show the Movie

Anthony Bourdain summed up his late teens in a typically eloquent, withering fashion: “I was,” he wrote in his bestselling memoir Kitchen Confidential, “a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” That self-deprecating description opens Tony, writer-director Matt Johnson’s movie about the one crazy summer that changed a thoughtless young lout’s life; for good measure, the quote does double duty as the tagline on the film’s poster. This parable then spends 99.9 percent of its running time making a rock-solid case for those last seven words. You may not recognize Bourdain, the future Keith Richards of the kitchen and globe-hopping TV personality, in the restless-youth chrysalis form presented here. You will undoubtedly agree, however, that this loudmouth jackass slouching toward Bethlehem, a.k.a. Cape Cod, is in serious need of a proper walloping.