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Is it a coincidence that this year’s Super Bowl LIX logo turns out to have the exact same colors of the teams playing? Did the National Football League know the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles would be playing Super Bowl 59 on February 9 in New Orleans all along? Or are fans taking this conspiracy theory one step too far? That’s what some fans are claiming on social media: that the Super Bowl LIX logo, which was revealed in 2024 before last year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas, is proof that the game is rigged because it’s red and green, the colors of the Chiefs and the Eagles (along with a mixture of some yellow and purple). Those fans’ theory, which is now making the rounds but is unconfirmed, speculates that the NFL picks the Super Bowl teams in advance to increase profits, or possibly, for political reasons. (Some right-wing conspiracy theorists have said Taylor Swift‘s relationship with boyfriend Travis Kelce, the Chiefs’s tight end, is a PR stunt meant to increase NFL viewership, and also that Swift was a liberal plant at Chiefs games to help President Joe Biden win the last election.) This is not the first time fans have made this claim about the Super Bowl logo. Ahead of last year’s AFC and NFC championship games, social media account @NFL_Memes wrote on X, “Anyone else notice this?” and showed a picture of the teams that played in past Super Bowl games, which matched the colors of the Super Bowl logos. But, as USA Today noted, the meme lost steam after last year’s teams broke the trend. https://twitter.com/NFL_Memes/status/1722101822410633666 This year’s big game will be played at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, with the Super Bowl Halftime Show featuring Kendrick Lamar with a guest appearance by SZA. The game will air on Fox and stream live on Tubi, DirecTV, Fubo, or the Fox Sports app. Stay tuned! We’ll have more details closer to kickoff about how to watch.
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Those searching for “cute winter boots” on TikTok at the moment might be a little confused. A recent movement of the same name has nothing to do with footwear. Its a code phrase being used to discuss resistance to President Trump and his immigration policies while skirting censorship or bans on the platform. Many users have posted videos talking about their “cute winter boots” but showing warnings or slides of information to their viewers at the same time. Some posts see users discuss details about protests or recent developments, using a notebook or pieces of paper. Meanwhile, the sound over the video is unrelated or uses trending audio in order to avoid videos being flagged. When TikTok users mention cute winter boots protecting people from “ice,” theyre referencing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Nearly 1,000 immigration arrests were carried out on Sunday as Trump’s promise of mass deportations began. ICE officials have since been directed by Trump officials to up the number of people they arrest, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500. Coded language is commonplace on social media Cute winter boots is one example of algospeak, a system of coded language designed to bypass algorithmic filters and spread warnings and information about such deportations. Another example is the phrase “Senator, I’m Singaporean,” a quote from TikTok CEO Shou Chews response to Senator Tom Cotton during a congressional hearing, where Cottons question implied that Chew was a Chinese government agent. Now, TikTok users frequently leave this phrase in comment sections to subtly warn others about potentially sensitive or flagged content in the videos. The “cute winter boots” trend also exploits the platforms algorithm, which favors product-focused content, to maximize visibility. Creators often pair their videos with unrelated but highly searchable pop-culture keywords, such as “Taylor Swift” and Sabrina Carpenter, to further boost their reach. Some of these videos also link to TikTok Shop, but instead of boots, they offer educational items like Night by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust memoir, or gear useful for protests, such as protective equipment. For those actually on the hunt for cute winter boots, youre better off searching elsewhere at the moment.
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E-Commerce
Tech stocks have erased virtually all their 2025 gains after Chinese startup DeepSeek raised concerns about the competitiveness of the artificial intelligence field with its release of a free, open-source AI tool that founders claim was created for just $6 million. The reaction from all corners has been extreme. Hackers, seemingly, have launched large-scale malicious attacks on the companys service, causing it to temporarily limit user registrations. Nvidia investors are dumping that companys stock, with shares falling more than 16% and the price hitting a point it hasnt seen since last September. Analysts, though, are a bit more sanguine about the news for the most part. Wedbushs Dan Ives acknowledged that DeepSeeks lower startup costs and reported use of reduced capacity chips from Nvidia was a shot across the bow at the U.S. tech world, but said the sell-off was a golden buying opportunity for investorsand the threat to other AI companies was overstated. DeepSeek impressed the tech community with this LLM [large language model] . . . but this is not launching 100x the capacity/algorithms that is needed to even consider this a competitive threat [to other AI companies] in our view, Ives wrote. Ives wasnt alone calling this a good chance for investors to jump into the AI space. This could be the entry point in AI stocks, Nvidia in particular, many have been waiting for, TD Cowen analyst Joshua Buchalter wrote in a note. JPMorgan, meanwhile, reminded investors that it was inevitable the heavy spending on AI would eventually be reined in, pointing to the investment cycle in Cloud technology in years past as an historical example. JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote that he saw the DeepSeek news “largely [as] a reminder to investors of the likelihood of an optimization phase for investments . . . to reach the best trade-off between efficiency and performance. Bring out the bears There were, of course, analysts who used the DeepSeek news to ding both Nvidia and AI firms. Another JPMorgan analyst Sandeep Deshpande issued a separate note, writing that Deepseeks highly efficient and lower resource-intensive AI model has shown such significant innovation and success is posing thoughts to investors that the AI investment cycle may be overhyped, and a more efficient future is possible. (Analysts from the same firm sometimes contradict each other, as they hold different opinions.) Jefferies Group analyst Edison Lee, meanwhile, wrote reevaluating computing power needs could cause 2026 AI [capital expenditures] to fall (or not grow). Long-term bullishness Some analysts noted that while DeepSeek might have launched an LLM for less and using technology thats not as advanced as what U.S.-based AI companies are using, it still faces one insurmountable problem: Its a Chinese companyand that could limit its widespread adoption. In an inevitably more restrictive environment, U.S. access to more advanced chips is an advantage. Thus, we dont expect leading AI companies would move away from more advanced GPUs, wrote Citi analyst Atif Malik. Ives may have summed it up best, saying that while creating a chatbot is one thing, its not the same as creating a robust AI system. No U.S. [major corporation] is going to use Chinese startup DeepSeek to launch their AI infrastructure and use cases, he wrote. At the end of the day there is only one chip company in the world launching autonomous, robotics, and broader AI use cases and that is Nvidia. Launching a competitive LLM model for consumer use cases is one thinglaunching broader AI infrastructure is a whole other ball game and nothing with DeepSeek makes us believe anything different.
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E-Commerce
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