New York Magazine

This is New York: @thecut @vulture @intelligencer @curbed @grubstreet @strategist

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

On the eve of the presidential election, three of World Liberty Financial’s top executives offered the billionaire Justin Sun an investment opportunity that, should Donald Trump win a second term, might also conveniently help relieve the legal pressure on him. Sun, who was raised in China by middle-class parents, built his fortune by launching his own blockchain, Tron. But in 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under the Biden administration charged him and his companies with fraud.

World Liberty was being launched by then-candidate Trump and his three sons. The Trumps’ passion for World Liberty, the founders told Sun, came from being offloaded as clients by JPMorgan and Capital One in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. They were committed to pursuing a crypto alternative for their wealth.

“They said they were the victims of those centralized controls,” says Sun. “I believe in the vision of what was presented.”

Between November 2024 and January 2025, Sun — who previously bought a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.2 million in an auction — transferred $45 million to World Liberty Financial and came aboard as an adviser. He was immediately the biggest investor in the project.

Over the next year or so, Sun would come to believe he’d made a colossal mistake. World Liberty would disappoint his expectations and those of many other investors: The decentralized crypto products it promised would largely never materialize; the money investors put in would remain mostly locked away from them; and the $WLFI cryptocurrency would crash, leaving many token holders with huge losses while the president and his partners made hundreds of millions in profits.

“Today, the thing I regret the most is not only that my money got stuck but that my name is on the project,” Sun said. “I believe many other people also got harmed.”

(In April 2026, he filed a lawsuit against World Liberty alleging fraud and breach of contract. In May, World Liberty sued him for defamation; in June, the company filed a motion to dismiss Sun’s case.)

For our Cover Story, Jen Wieczner reports on the billionaire fighting against World Liberty: https://t.co/pfdNlUSdYc

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

John Galliano will be the third designer to get a Met Gala tribute in his lifetime. Revisit these vintage ‘Conan’ sketches to learn why that’s a controversial choice. https://t.co/0hq4U73TDD

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Tom Holland, like Peter Parker in the new Spider-Man movie, has been dealing with some growing pains. ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ starts off by speeding through what would have been Peter’s college years to pick up with him in his early 20s. He has also been going through a spider puberty of sorts, causing his wrists to sprout organic web slingers that render his old mechanical ones unusable and making him prone to fits of black-eyed aggression. This is his equivalent of a spider molting, shedding its old exoskeleton to hopefully emerge — stronger and more resilient — into adulthood. “But the movie has no idea what that adulthood might look like,” writes film critic Alison Willmore.

Part of this is a Spider-Man problem — growing up has never entirely suited Peter Parker, who’s always felt most natural as some kind of student. But part of this is an issue with Holland, who’s risen to movie-star status on the strength of the Marvel character but who himself is teetering on the edge of a grown-up career that feels a lot less certain. When Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, with whom Spider-Man is inexplicably paired up for this installment, growls, “I’m gonna kill that kid,” it’s a reminder that Holland also just spent ‘The Odyssey’ playing a boy waiting to come of age while elsewhere in the same film actual children get enlisted into war.

“Timothée Chalamet is the same age but plays characters whose core tension is their desire to be taken seriously as men despite their youthfulness,” writes Willmore. “Unlike him, Holland feels perched on the edge of the unknown — like the movies aren’t allowing him to grow up because they’re not sure what a grown-up Holland character entails.”

Read Willmore on how, in the latest ‘Spider-Man’ film, Holland, like the superhero he’s playing, struggles to show us what might be next: https://t.co/NwGHjLMRXG

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

New Radicals have put their bucket hats back on to provide the title song to ‘One Night Only,’ the movie about a world where pre-marital sex is criminalized. https://t.co/NDMCTpyvSq

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

The Trump Administration has finally admitted that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was not attacked by former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, but was instead the victim of a botched renovation by Trump’s hand-picked no-bid contractor. https://t.co/qzuSmpdIE4

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

John Oliver will keep making ‘Last Week Tonight’ through 2027, meaning he’s been renewed past the date Paramount-Skydance is set to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Antitrust cases notwithstanding. https://t.co/qz3Aq2V7ik

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Every week, The Cut’s ‘Sex Diaries’ column features a new sex and dating story from an anonymous city dweller. In this edition, a 30-year-old queer woman has her first orgasm thanks to a woman she meets on Hinge. https://t.co/eYFEG0acsW

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Designer John Galliano will be the focus of the Met Costume Institute’s 2027 spring exhibit and upcoming Met Gala. The instillation will show the designer’s archive, as well as addressing his 2011 antisemitic comments. https://t.co/sAUiOyXsWC

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Mahershala Ali’s take on the ‘Blade’ reboot sounds like advice from r/relationships. “If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it,” he said of the MCU’s attempted reboot of our fave daywalker. https://t.co/rJbrR7avoF

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has released the two ransom notes reportedly sent by Nancy Guthrie’s kidnappers to Tucson news station KOLD. They are asking the public to help identify the authors via syntax clues. https://t.co/oNbEN54uoW

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ makes Tom Holland’s Peter Parker an accidental villain, thanks to a very rash decision. https://t.co/zNeLTKVyFD

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

In the playful and moving ‘Wild Inside,’ documentarian Penny Lane takes on the subject of Flaco the owl, whose one year flying around New York came to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. https://t.co/BA5Oksx1sZ

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Lucie Franc de Ferriere says she grew up “surrounded by cake.” Her family’s chateau, just outside Bordeaux, France, was also a winery, tearoom, and bed-and-breakfast, all serving homemade desserts. But not until a few years after moving to the city in 2018, when she began working at her now-husband Gurpreet Singh’s restaurant, Sunday to Sunday, did she realize she had a future in cake-making. “People were coming back for my baked goods, and I was like, Oh, I’m not that bad,” she recalls. “I stole all my mother’s recipes from France, and we decided to open an actual bakery.” Now her East Village storefront, From Lucie, is known for its delicate seasonal flavors of cake piled high with flowers and herbs; recently, she published her first cookbook, Cake From Lucie. “My favorite moments are when I start piecing the flowers together,” she says. “That’s when I genuinely forget everything else and just sink into designing a cake with no plan for how it will look. It simply happens as it happens.”

Read Franc de Ferriere’s heat-wave #GrubStreetDiet: https://t.co/42DPRl6eSk

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

This story was featured in One Great Story, our reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly: https://t.co/Ya3KjFPO2r

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

If you’ve looked for a primary-care doctor lately, you’ve likely noticed many aren’t taking new patients . One reason: Some in the profession are switching to direct-pay and concierge practices that exclude patients who need to use health insurance. https://t.co/YUyAZI5kvC

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

The best thing on late night this week was a filthy Muppet joke. We also loved Marcello Hernández’s receipts on ‘WWHL’ and Keke Palmer’s stand-up on ‘The Tonight Show.’ https://t.co/mCerUeZHED

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

‘Barbie’ director Greta Gerwig and her husband and co-writer Noah Baumbach have an idea for a sequel, but they’re waiting until Warner Bros. signs off on the project before they share it with the studio. https://t.co/CTojUdMuO9

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘The Samurai and the Prisoner,’ a rebellious warlord throws a rival’s envoy into his dungeon but then needs him to help solve a series of Sherlock Holmes–style mysteries. https://t.co/E4fOzXlj4z

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

After eight years of marriage, Brittney Griner reportedly filed for divorce from her wife, Cherelle Griner on Thursday. The WNBA star stated in the paperwork that their marriage was “irretrievably broken.” https://t.co/6SJ1asJLTe

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Something ‘Furious,’ A ‘Brand New Day’ for Spider-Man, Olivia Wilde getting wild, and a prequel for ‘Adults’ are among the best movies and TV to watch this weekend. Websling this way. https://t.co/mpD4r8zmkL

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Our deals writer found the best of what’s on sale online right now, including Keen flip-flops, fancy perfume, fashionable running gear, and a bunch of Strategist-approved skin care. https://t.co/WOc4gRCfgY

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Juliette Lewis’s role in Apple TV’s ‘Cape Fear’ is an amusing bit of stunt casting that became increasingly nonsensical as the series kept prioritizing mystery over character. https://t.co/OKneHK8Y98