As this year’s Oscar nominations rolled out this morning, I told my boyfriend that Sinners, with 16 noms in total, had made history. “Woke is back,” he replied.

He was joking (don’t come for him!), but his quip highlights a pretty stark dichotomy. Last year, as everyone from President Donald Trump down harped on about the perils of DEI, the biggest cultural breakthroughs—Sinners, KPop Demon Hunters, Heated Rivalry, One Battle After Another—all showcased diversity in fresh ways. And it succeeded. These works weren’t just popular among leftists or critics, they were bona fide cultural phenomena.

Sinners, a horror movie set in the Jim Crow South, used vampires as a metaphorical device to explore systemic racism and cultural theft—and director Ryan Coogler scored a feat in his deal with Warner Bros. that gives him the rights to the film in 25 years. KPop Demon Hunters, a story by a female Korean-Canadian director who’d been waiting over a decade for her chance to direct a feature, placed a huge emphasis on authenticity and brought the already-massive subculture around K-pop even more into the mainstream. Heated Rivalry, a small Canadian television production picked up by HBO, had an extremely subversive take on hockey by chronicling the horny-yet-poignant love story between two closeted pro players. And One Battle After Another—decried by conservative commentators who felt it lionized left-wing violence—offered complicated views on motherhood and activism while skewering ICE-like agent Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw and his desperate attempts to fit in with other racists.

In a year when the White House issued multiple executive orders doing away with DEI programs in the federal government, the successes of those projects felt like a form of resistance. Corporate media followed Trump’s suit, with Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon, Paramount Global, and Disney all reportedly scaling back on their diversity efforts. Skydance, founded by David Ellison, son of billionaire Trump supporter Larry Ellison, acquired Paramount, which briefly removed Jimmy Kimmel from the air due to his joke about Charlie Kirk supporters and gave CBS News a seemingly conservative makeover. Meanwhile, shows that offered red meat in the form of farmers, grumpy MAGA adherents, cowboys, and Christian values were greenlit and promoted.

“There is a feeling from … this administration that the only stories that matter are stories of straight white men, and that is just simply not the case,” says Jenni Werner, executive artistic director of the New Harmony Project, which develops theater, film, and TV projects and says it is committed to anti-oppressive and anti-racist values.

“Audiences want to feel transformed. You want to be able to sit down and watch something, whether it’s in your home or in a theater, that takes you into a new place and maybe gives you a new understanding of something.” She adds that she has faith that artists will keep making “boundary-pushing work,” even if it keeps getting harder.

Even before Trump’s second term, trying to get out-of-the-box stories made in Hollywood has been a slog. According to UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report, released in December, nearly 80 percent of directors of theatrical movies in 2024 were white, along with about 75 percent of leading actors.

The report also suggests this discrepancy is leaving money on the table, noting that BIPOC moviegoers “were overrepresented as ticket buyers for films that had casts of more than 20 percent BIPOC.” Sinners grossed $368 million at the box office, a feat that puts it in the “horror hall of fame,” per The New York Times.

Other Switch 2 Accessories to Consider

iMP Tech DLEX+LED Multi-Function Charger Stand for £35: Perfect for streamers or desk-bound players, this will keep your gaming space tidy and your controllers fully juiced. It has charging slots for four Joy-Con 2s and four original Joy-Cons on the main base unit, all with charge indicators, while two pop-out USB-C cables at the rear allow you to connect more conventional joypads, like the Switch 2 Pro Controller. Power is provided through the charging adapter you already plug into your console’s dock, which is in turn locked in place on the DLX2 with a dual USB-A block that feeds the power through. It’s compatible with the Switch 2, original Switch, and the Switch OLED, and the two USB slots you lose on the dock itself are replaced with pass-through ports on the left of the base for other accessories. Organizationally, the stand gives you somewhere to hang your headset, while a spring-loaded tray on the right holds and hides up to nine Game Carts. It can be a little fiddly to set up, and overall charging can slow down if you try to connect the maximum 10 devices, but once done, it’s a great storage solution, elevated by subtle but striking RGB lighting. However, like iMP’s mouse adapters, stock seems limited to Amazon UK at the time of writing. —Matt Kamen

Spigen Rugged Armor for $18: This molded grip case has heavy bumpers and thick Joy-Con grips, but it was tough to remove, which you’ll have to do a lot, because it won’t fit in the dock with the case on, and you can’t separate the Joy-Cons either. This would be a good case if you’re buying the console for a younger kid whom you don’t trust to treat it gently.

Belkin TemperedGlass Screen Protector With Blue Light Filter for $30: While I liked the look of this screen protector, and the blue light filter is handy for late-night gaming sessions, the lackluster applicator frame isn’t quite as nice as the other options. It’s also a bit expensive, at $30 for just one.

Dbrand Prism 2.0 for $35: I liked the Prism 2.0 screen protectors and their application process as much as the Spigen above. But they’re slightly more expensive and only available directly from Dbrand, so if you buy them on their own, you’ll have to pay shipping. If you’re buying anything else, like a case or a skin, you’ll get a discount and likely qualify for free shipping, making these well worth it.

Jsaux Joy-Con Charging Grip for $15: If you often play with the Joy-Cons detached, this charging grip from Jsaux lets you continue playing while charging the controllers in the process via the USB-C slot at the top of the handle. It also puts them at a more ergonomic angle, but keeping them attached makes some motion controls unusable, and I would’ve liked to see an internal battery.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warns that the rapid roll-out of artificial intelligence (AI) throughout society will cause “civil unrest” unless governments and companies work together to mitigate its effect on job markets.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Dimon said that although AI can deliver “a more productive society… [and] cure a lot of cancers”, the roll-out needs to be phased to stave off the potential for massive social unrest.

“My view is, ‘Don’t put your head in the sand.’ It is what it is. We’re going to deploy it. Will it eliminate jobs? Yes. Will it change jobs? Yes. Will it add some jobs? Probably. It is what it is,” said Dimon. “However, I do think it may go too fast for society. And if it goes too fast for society, that’s where government and business in a collaborative [need to] way step in together and come up with a way to retrain people or move it over time.”

Highlighting the example of the two million commercial truck drivers in the US, Dimon said that if AI is imposed on them in one fell swoop when effective driverless vehicles hit the road, all those people could potentially go from making $150,000 a year to $25,000 in their next jobs: “Should you do it all at once?… No, you will have civil unrest, so phase it in.”

Acknowledging that even JPMorgan will likely have fewer employees in five years due to its use of AI, Dimon went on to urge governments to plan for these eventualities now, by developing retraining, wage support and relocation programmes to support workers displaced by the technology. He added that governments would also need to develop new incentives for companies to slow their deployments of AI and ensure they provide income assistance.

“If a town loses a factory and they lose jobs, you have income assistance, relocation, early retirement, retraining. We may have to do that…to save society,” he said.

When interviewer Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief at The Economist, pointed out that previous Trade Adjustment Assistance programmes in the US were “incredibly poorly done”, Dimon agreed, saying: “We need to be prepared to have something that works this time.”

Commenting further on JPMorgan’s own use of AI, Dimon said the Wall Street lender has so far developed around 500 use cases for the technology across its business units, noting while there are clear efficiency benefits to be gained from AI, it could also fundamentally change the business as it develops further.

“If you take it to the next step, agents, that could change your business, the speed at which things happen, how people access our systems,” he said, adding that companies will need to develop their AI capabilities to remain competitive, particularly in the financial sector given the explosion of fintech companies in recent years.

“If you put your head in the sand, you will lose. I think that was true 30 years ago, but it’s probably more true today. And the brain power and money that’s going to this [AI] thing is extraordinary. And so, if we don’t do our job faster, quicker, we’ll lose soon.”

Job losses have already begun hitting the tech sector itself, with firms globally cutting their workforces as they look to increase spending on and investment in AI tools. In October 2025, for example, Amazon laid off 14,000 employees, a decision that was specifically prompted and enabled by the firm’s AI investments.

In August 2025, the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) warned that AI-fuelled economic growth is leaving workers behind and highlighted the importance of collective bargaining as the technology becomes more embedded in the workplace.

Noting that AI may be used by some employers to cut costs and automate existing processes, rather than invest, expand and innovate, it said in a report: “Such decisions will more likely displace or deskill workers rather than augment, expand or retrain the workforce as part of technological upgrading.” 

The paper’s authors noted that if machines do more tasks and reduce the demand for skilled workers or for labour overall, workers could become less able to command a fair share, with the surplus increasingly captured by employers and AI companies.

In November 2023, the Autonomy think tank in the UK argued that while automating jobs with large language models (LLMs) could lead to significant reductions in working time without a loss of pay or productivity, realising the benefits of AI-driven productivity gains in this way will require concerted political action.

The think tank added that this was because it is clear that productivity gains are not always shared evenly between employers and employees, and depend on “geographic, demographics, economic cycle and other intrinsic job market factors” such as workers’ access to collective bargaining.

To deliver positive AI-led changes for workers and not just employers, Autonomy recommended setting up “automation hubs”, underpinned by trade union and industry agreements, to boost the adoption of LLMs in ways that are equitable.