Yet another reminder to be careful what you post online, since anyone can see your tweets: hiring managers, lawyers accusing you of surveillance pricing, your parents. Andrew Phillips lodged a class-action lawsuit on Wednesday, claiming JetBlue uses personal data to raise ticket prices—which the airline appeared to admit to in an X post.

How’d it get from tweeting to suing? The suit cites an interaction between a customer and the official JetBlue account on X last week. The customer lamented a rapid ticket price hike, saying, “I love flying @JetBlue but a $230 increase on a ticket after one day is crazy, I’m just trying to make it to a funeral.” The JetBlue account responded, suggesting they try clearing their cookies and booking the flight in incognito mode.

The response was quickly deleted, and JetBlue has since said the social media post was incorrect, denying that it uses cached data or personal data to set ticket prices. The airline said prices can change quickly based on availability.

But…other X users quickly piled on, accusing the company of using surveillance pricing, or adjusting ticket prices based on available data about a customer. And amid the uproar, even members of Congress demanded more information from the CEO of JetBlue about the reply.

Pay-what-you-can afford

JetBlue is not the first company to face similar allegations. And whether you call it dynamic pricing, surveillance pricing, or we-know-you’ll-pay-3x-the-price-because-it’s-an-emergency, people are mad about it:

• Last year, Delta faced significant pushback for introducing plans to roll out AI-powered dynamic pricing.
• Uber has been accused of charging higher prices when your phone is dying (the company has denied this).

Looking ahead…your summer travel might still be a mess, but maybe the groceries can be saved. Maryland is set to become the first state to ban price changes based on customer data in grocery stores. A bill passed earlier this month by the state legislature targets digital price tags in stores and online shopping.—MM

New developments in Iran war regarding Hormuz and Lebanon, plus a Pentagon press conference scheduled for this AM. With Iran continuing to block the Strait of Hormuz amid the current ceasefire, President Trump said on social media yesterday that he had ordered the US military to “kill any boat” that is placing mines in the vital waterway for global shipping. Yesterday evening, President Trump said that Israel and Lebanon extended their ceasefire by three weeks following a second round of peace talks at the White House. And last night, the Pentagon announced that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine would hold a news conference at 8am ET today.

Microsoft offers buyouts to 7% of US staff. In the latest sign that tech jobs are not as stable as they once were, Microsoft will offer buyouts to US workers at the senior-director level and below whose years of employment and age add up to 70+. The voluntary retirement program is the first in the history of the 51-year-old company, which, like its fellow tech giants, is committing tons of cash to developing AI. Microsoft is also updating how it awards bonuses and stock options. Meanwhile, Meta confirmed yesterday that it will lay off about 10% of its workforce, cutting about 8,000 jobs.

Warner Bros. investors approve Paramount takeover. Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favor of the acquisition, which is valued at $111 billion and would transform the film industry. It puts David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance one step closer to owning the storied studio—despite opposition from Hollywood stars—after a messy bidding process that Netflix ultimately dropped out of. But it’s not time for Porky to say “That’s all folks” yet, as antitrust regulators must still bless the deal before it can be finalized.—AR

Federal prosecutors allege a US soldier involved in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took advantage of his access to classified information to win $400,000 by betting on the timing of Maduro’s ouster on Polymarket.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, was involved in the planning of the raid as of early December 2025, and placed 13 bets by the end of that month on the Venezuelan leader being out by Jan. 31, prosecutors claim. The US captured Maduro in early January.

Van Dyke faces years in prison if convicted on the charges, which include unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, commodities fraud, and others.

Unpredictable actors

Though prediction markets have rules against market manipulation, Van Dyke is hardly the first accused of cheating on them. Polymarket’s rival Kalshi recently fined and suspended three candidates for betting on their own elections.

And some try to make their own luck: Paris police are currently investigating suspected tampering with meteorological equipment after some recent wins in long-shot Polymarket bets on local weather. The French national weather service believes someone may have messed with a sensor at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, which the prediction market used to gauge the city’s temperature. Weather enthusiasts speculate that meddlers might’ve used a hairdryer to heat the air around the sensor, creating anomalous temperature swings that led to big payouts, Le Monde reported.—AR, SK

If you ever catch us using the following phrasing, trust that it was written by a human who was just tired that day: Experts say the sentence structure “it’s not X, it’s Y” is a classic indicator of AI-generated writing, and its usage in corporate communications has spiked, Barron’s recently reported.

For example, “Our ship is not just on the horizon—it is coming in,” as Citizens Financial Group said in its 2025 shareholder letter, or “Engineering AI’s future is not just a software challenge, it’s a physics challenge,” as Synopsys’s CEO said on a December earnings call. Both companies told Barron’s that their corporate communications teams use AI assistance.

Across large US companies:

• Barron’s spotted this phrasing in 208 documents last year, up from 100 in 2024 and 49 in 2023.
• Companies using the phrase of late include Progressive, Royal Caribbean, Coca-Cola, Dollar Tree, Cisco, Accenture, Workday, McKinsey, Microsoft, and Schwab.

But…it’s “no smoking gun for AI use,” an AI detection company told TechCrunch. The phrase may simply be a hallmark of AI writing because it was already such a linguistic cliché. Schwab told Barron’s that the quote it identified was “100% human-generated.”

Regardless…studies show that this sentence structure can backfire by causing our brains to focus on the wrong thing.—ML

One of the surest signs of rising prices? The hottest place to grab a drink may be your place. With the average price of a cocktail in the US at $13.61 (which would be cheap in some cities), people with 401(k)s are pregaming like college students to save cash, the Wall Street Journal reports:

• In a survey conducted by consumer-insights platform Zappi, nearly one-third of people who had drinks in the past three months said they pre-drink to avoid shelling out money later.
• And among those who told Zappi that higher prices influence their decision about going out, 37% pre-drink and 41% have switched to a non-alcoholic option when out and about.

Others are choosing a stealthier method of getting buzzed for less: sneaking their own booze into venues. And since that crowd gravitates toward smaller bottles, it’s shifting sales. Suntory’s chief executive told the WSJ the company has seen increased demand for nips of Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, Diageo has started making mini versions of its high-end Don Julio 1942 extra Añejo tequila, and ALB Vodka said sales of airplane-sized bottles more than tripled in Q1 compared with last year.—AR