Key Points
The latest roundup covers today's roundup.
The latest roundup covers the Air Jordan 13 "Flint" return, NFL camps opening, JAY-Z's pursuit of a Fenty Beauty stake, and Nvidia's $500 billion Korea deal.
- Nike's Kobe Dunk Low Protro "WNBA All-Star" drops today at $135, leading a full slate of All-Star sneakers.
- The 2026 WNBA All-Star Game tips off Saturday at Chicago's United Center on ABC; Skills Night runs tonight at Wintrust Arena.
- New Music Friday is a lane-switch week: Tyla's "A*POP," Rico Nasty's "RX," and Cypress Hill's first all-Spanish album.
- The White House accused China's Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic's Fable model to build Kimi K3; OpenAI launched its Presence agent platform and a $30B Georgia data center.
It's an All-Star Friday. The WNBA takes over Chicago this weekend, and Nike is meeting the moment with a full rack of All-Star sneakers led by a $135 Kobe Dunk. Off the hardwood, a loaded New Music Friday lands from Charli xcx and Tyla, and Washington escalated the AI cold war by accusing a Chinese lab of copying an American model. Here's what matters today.
Sneakers
Nike is treating WNBA All-Star Weekend like its own sneaker holiday. The headliner is the Kobe Dunk Low Protro "WNBA All-Star" (Black/Hot Punch, style code IQ3919-001) at $135 — a Mamba-coded Dunk timed to Chicago. It lands next to the Nike A'Two "All-Star" ($145), A'ja Wilson's second signature in a Summit White and Metallic Silver dress, and the Sabrina 4 LX "White Label" ($155), Sabrina Ionescu's Sail and Metallic Silver make-up that officially releases today. Guards get the Nike Ja 3 "White Label" ($150, IO7666-100) and a Sue Bird-inspired Air Zoom Huarache 2K4 ($200), while adidas counters with Crazy Energy player exclusives for Sophie Cunningham and Satou Sabally.
Sports
The league that made those shoes gets its showcase this weekend. The 2026 AT&T WNBA All-Star Game tips off Saturday, July 25 at 8:30 p.m. ET at Chicago's United Center on ABC, with founding legends Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon drafting the rosters as GMs — a format change for the league's 30th season. Team Spoon (A'ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston) opened as the betting favorite over Team Coop (Breanna Stewart, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese). Tonight is the undercard: Skills Night and the 3-point contest run at 8 p.m. ET at Wintrust Arena. In baseball, the trade market is warming ahead of the July 31 deadline: the Astros shipped Lance McCullers Jr. to the Brewers for prospect Jadyn Fielder, with a full slate on the schedule tonight.
Culture
It's a reintroduction week on New Music Friday: Tyla rebrands her sound as pop on A*POP, Rico Nasty reunites with Kenny Beats on RX, and Cypress Hill raps a full album in Spanish for the first time, with WILLOW and Charli xcx also switching lanes. At the box office, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey — which opened last weekend to a career-best $264.1M worldwide ($124.5M domestic), 2026's largest live-action debut — holds into its second frame with a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score and an "A" CinemaScore.
Technology
The AI arms race got geopolitical. White House OSTP director Michael Kratsios accused China's Moonshot AI of "large-scale covert industrial distillation," alleging the lab distilled Anthropic's Fable model to build Kimi K3 — the 2.8-trillion-parameter model that launched July 16 and posted a 76% win rate over Claude Fable 5 on one coding benchmark. It's an allegation, not a proven finding, but it lands as Washington tightens access to US models and chips. Stateside, OpenAI had a busy day: it launched Presence, an enterprise agent platform that wires agents into internal company systems (early users include BBVA and SoftBank), and confirmed Project Camellia, a 3.2-gigawatt, $30B-plus data-center campus in Effingham County, Georgia. The money kept moving, too — inference-chip startup Etched raised a $300M Series C at a $10.3B valuation led by Sequoia.
Today on Uristocrat
The weekend's headline act got the full treatment: the WNBA handed roster control to two founding legends in our look at Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon running the All-Star Game as GMs — the first time the game uses a GM draft instead of player-captains, with Cooper the four-time champion whose Comets name the league is now reviving in Houston.
Sneakers: We covered the Nike Sabrina 4 LX "White Label" ($155) ahead of today's release, the Nike Air Max Muse "Glacier Blue" ($160), and the Nike KD 19 "Blueberry Blast" ($155) arriving July 29.
Sports: Beyond the All-Star preview, we broke down the Astros trading Lance McCullers Jr. to the Brewers for prospect Jadyn Fielder, and rounded up Thursday's schedule in Games to Watch.
Culture: Our New Music Friday breaks down six releases worth your time — Tyla's A*POP, Rico Nasty's RX, and Cypress Hill's first all-Spanish album among them.
Technology: We detailed AMD launching its Instinct MI400 GPUs and Helios AI racks and signing a 2GW compute deal with Anthropic.
For the latest, today's roundup covers the Air Jordan 6 "Oreo" return, the Kawhi Leonard investigation ending its fact-finding phase, CVC Capital Partners' DistroKid acquisition, and Nvidia's $250 billion OpenAI Ohio talks.
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