GoKawiilis editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 121, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, good luck in the Elite Eight, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you an app to make your travels easier, a bizarre and delightful new show to watch, a new reason to play an old Mario game, and much more. Let’s do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / downloading / vibe-coding this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
The Drop
Flighty . Ordinarily I’d only recommend Flighty to people who travel a lot — it’s an amazing app, but not cheap, and very much for power users. Right now, though, we could all use a little help navigating security lines, delays, and changes. The new Airport Intelligence feature might pay for itself pretty fast.
Bait . The premise of this show — about an actor auditioning to be James Bond, and all the weird stuff that follows — is so thoroughly internet-pilled and meta that it definitely shouldn’t work. But at least from what I’ve seen so far, it completely does. Though to be fair, I’ll watch Riz Ahmed in anything.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder . Like my colleague Andrew Webster says , it’s always a good time to get back into this game. The new Switch 2 update comes with a bunch of new levels, boss battles, and characters — it’s not a ton of new content, but for me it was a great reason to basically start the game all over again. Zero regrets.
The HTML Review issue 05 . This online magazine remains one of the coolest things going in digital literature. This year’s issue is, as always, full of beautiful writing and cartoons and interactive design — the web is so cool, y’all. This online magazine remains one of the coolest things going in digital literature. This year’s issue is, as always, full of beautiful writing and cartoons and interactive design — the web is so cool, y’all.
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