The world's most powerful playlist; John Galliano is doing fast fashion?; rare Francis Bacon painting now public; and more

Welcome Digest [3.18.26]

Mar 18, 2026

Welcome To March 18th

Today’s Important Headlines

The most powerful playlist in the world is inside GTA VI

The GTA series has long had the ability to transform niche tracks into streaming hits by putting its hundreds of millions of players onto new music through its in-game radio curated by artists like Frank Ocean, Vegyn, Cara Delevingne, and Flying Lotus. That influence is already evident in GTA VI’s trailers: “Love Is a Long Road” by Tom Petty surged 37,000% after the first trailer, while “Hot Together” by The Pointer Sisters jumped 182,000% within hours of the second. A placement in GTA VI won’t just revive songs, it could redefine careers.

One of the most expensive paintings ever, unseen for over a decade, is now public

Public viewings of Three Studies of Lucian Freud, a portrait of Lucian Freud by his longtime friend and rival Francis Bacon, have been exceedingly rare since its $142.4 million sale in 2013, which made it one of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction.The triptych, whose panels were separated for 15 years after its creation, will become the first work by Bacon to enter the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

John Galliano will rework Zara’s “archives”

The experimental designer will rework the brand’s so-called “archives,” a term rarely, if ever, associated with Zara, into a series of seasonal collections. John Galliano’s partnership signals a more troubling rise in high fashion designers aligning with fast fashion, from Glenn Martens and Mugler at H&M, and JW Anderson at Uniqlo. Together, these collaborations raise deeper questions around luxury and sustainability, and whether economic incentive is beginning to outweigh ethical responsibility in fashion.

The US. Mint removed the olive branch from the dime.

When unveiling new dime designs to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, one omission stood out: the absence of an olive branch in the bald eagle’s talons. Its removal is difficult to read as accidental, given that Charles Thomson, who helped define the symbol, described the olive branch as representing the power of peace. Beyond the dime, the rest of the coin series has also been redesigned, marking the most significant overhaul since the United States’s 1976 Bicentennial.

We’ve all been training AI for free

Recent reports show that for years mundane internet actions, like catching Pokémon or logging into websites, have been being used to generate training data for AI systems. Pokémon GO players helped build hyper-precise mapping models now used by robotics companies, while reCAPTCHA turned everyday log-ins into billions of hours of unpaid data labeling to train self driving Waymos. Together, these systems reveal how such widespread digital experiences have doubled as invisible labor pipelines, raising deeper questions about consent, the surveillance state, and who ultimately benefits from the data we produce.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)