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The messy politics behind Google’s big AI shakeup

Google’s AI leadership changes may have come down to pressure to speed up products — and internal ethical conflicts.

Aug 6 • 9:26 AM EDT • Politics • theverge.com

Science|Business summer reads of 2026

As most people in the European research and innovation policy bubble are going on a well-deserved summer break, we have come up with a list of our favourite books, podcasts and essays from the past year that ask deeper questions about science, technology and politics.BooksPasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, by Donald StokesIf you haven’t read Pasteur’s Quadrant yet, now is the time. In the EU and elsewhere, we’re living through a period of dwindling faith that curiosity-driven research automatically leads to economic growth and technological progress. Pasteur’s Quadrant, published in 1997 by the Princeton academic Donald Stokes, is the most influential critique of the standard “linear model” of R&D: the idea that new discoveries made in ivory-tower labs get neatly passed on for commercialisation by start-ups. In reality, Stokes argues, practical applications often inspire more theorical lines of inquiry. Of course, we have long known that things are more complex than the linear model, but even today, it’s still often assumed in Brussels discourse. The book is a useful corrective, and is being used now to argue for new types of scientific institutions. David MatthewsThe Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism, by Jacob Hale Russel and Dennis PattersonAre society’s problems solvable by technical expertise alone? “If only the benighted would listen,” say Jacob Hale Russel and Dennis Patterson, two professors at Rutgers Law School who got frustrated with how scientists and politicians handled public health communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the book, they argue that clichéd mantras about scientific evidence and expertise perpetrated by academics, journalists and politicians have harmed public trust in the very institutions they were trying to defend. Paradoxically, slogans such as “we believe in science,” “follow the science” and “defer to the experts” can fuel mistrust in science, experts and democratic institutions. The authors criticise “condescension” and “technocratic paternalism” in the public discourse and make the case for a more nuanced approach to scientific and expert policy advice that rests on humility, doubt, scepticism and open dialogue. “Most complex social questions in fact revolve around values, not the recitation of unambiguous facts,” they say. Florin ZubascuBreakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan WangIn this book, Dan Wang compares the structural differences between the US and Chinese industrial policies, but raises a very timely question for innovation policy wonks: how can advanced manufacturing know-how contribute to technology-intensive economic growth? Wang says technology has three components: the tools, the blueprints and patents, and the process knowledge. The third component represents the “proficiency gained from practical experience, which isn’t easily communicated and requires years of implementation.” According to Wang, rather than seeing tools and blueprints as the ultimate ends of technological progress, policymakers should see them as milestones in the training of better scientists and manufacturers. Over the past decades, China has amassed “process knowledge” because capital flowed to complex fabrication facilities, while investors in the West have parked their money in capital-light businesses such as digital platforms or chip companies that focus on design. As it turns out, thanks to its oversized focus on manufacturing, China has gained remarkable advantages in the global technology race. Florin ZubascuBaltic: The Future of Europe, by Oliver MoodyWhat can Europe learn from the nine countries surrounding the Baltic Sea? Alongside the familiar stories about Estonia's digital transformation, the book examines how the region has used technology, resilience, education, governance and long-term thinking to respond to geopolitical, economic and security challenges. Innovation policy wonks might find fresh perspectives on how innovation can strengthen defence, societal resilience and Europe's capacity to adapt in an uncertain world. Whether or not you agree with all of Oliver Moody's conclusions, the book is a useful guide to a region that is increasingly shaping European debates on security, competitiveness and technology. Goda NaujokaityteThe Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf This book chronicles the wild and adventurous life of natural science pioneer Alexander von Humboldt who at some point in the 19th century seems to have been just about the most famous person in the world. Through scientific expeditions to the Andes Mountains and to the depths of Siberia, von Humboldt contributed a host of discoveries and concepts. During his life he met and formed relationships with historical figures as different as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Simon Bolivar, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles Darwin. He is also claimed to be the person in the world with most things named after him, a list that includes an ocean current, a penguin and a region of the Moon. Still venerated in Germany, with numerous scientific institutions named after him, von Humboldt has slipped out of public consciousness in most of the rest of the world. For anyone not familiar with him, this book does a good job of describing his fascinating life. Ole EllekrogCareless People, by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsYou may have heard this referred to as the book Meta doesn’t want you to read. The 2025 memoir from Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of global public policy at Meta, then just called Facebook, includes explosive claims about everything from a toxic workplace culture to how the company worked with advertisers to target vulnerable teens, and the lengths it was prepared to go to in order to break into China. It’s a fascinating insight into how and why the tech company gradually shifted its approach to policy, whether in the US, Europe or Asia. Meta has denied the allegations in the book, and last year won an emergency ruling to prevent Wynn-Williams from promoting it. In response, the author is now suing her former employer. If that doesn’t make you want to read it. Martin GreenacrePodcastsThe Europeans: Europe’s anti-ElonThis podcast is a great choice for a light-hearted dose of European policy and culture news. Most of it has little to do with research, innovation and technology, but this particular podcast features an interview with Mastadon’s founder Eugen Rochko. He talks about his experience running an open-source, federated, European-made social media platform, and leaving it all behind. The conversation, which starts 14 minutes in, gently encourages us to reflect on what kind of technology we, as Europeans, want to make. Goda NaujokaityteSolarpunk and how we escape dystopiaNew technologies are very often taken from science fiction. Alberto Santos-Dumont, inventor the airship, was inspired as a child by the adventure stories of Jules Verne. OpenAI’s attempt to build a personal assistant with the voice of Scarlett Johansson was lifted from the 2013 film Her, completely ignoring the movie’s cautionary message. So if we want better tech, we need to imagine it first. Unfortunately, the state of current sci-fi is relentlessly dystopian, giving inventors precious few ideas or hope. However, a new genre, Solarpunk, which envisages a technologically advanced but ecologically harmonious future, is now taking off. The actual tech the genre imagines, such as permaculture, renewable energy or community repair workshops, while nice, isn’t all that inspiring or ambitious. But it’s a first step towards rescuing sci-fi from its pessimistic Blade Runner rut. David MatthewsEveryday AbundanceLaunched in June, Everyday Abundance is a podcast that tells the stories of the inventions we now take so for granted that we barely given them a second thought. For example, the washing machine, which liberated women from a lifetime “bent over washtubs and washboards.” Or modern dentistry, which ended the reality that “tooth pain was simply part of human life.” Historians of technology, Virginia Postrel and Charles C Mann are very much on the optimistic end of the spectrum when it comes to the capacity of invention to improve human life. Here, they set out their case: if it wasn’t for progress, you might be hunched over a washtub with toothache rather than reading these words. David Matthews‘We will not know what we lost’: Conservation fallout a year after USAID shutdownSince his return to the White House, Donald Trump has been on a mission to undermine science. He slashed jobs at federal agencies, terminated grants in some research areas, took unprecedented control over university affairs and, within hours of his inauguration, suspended the US Agency for International Development. While its initial focus was to administer health and food aid around the world, it had since expanded to conservation projects. The result? Some of these projects were stopped abruptly. In this Mongabay podcast, environmental reporter Michelle Nijhuis tells the story of the EcoGuard conservation programme in Liberia, whose local patrols had helped protect rainforests, monitor endangered wildlife and track illegal threats. From one day to the next, these were left without salaries. Luckily, she notes, the initiative was able to get emergency funding from international NGOs, but its future remains “incredibly uncertain.” Juliette PortalaEssaysThe Mars Delusion, by Henry WismayerWhy is humankind so fixated on establishing a colony on Mars? asks London-based writer Henry Wismayer. From space evangelists promoting Martian settlement as an insurance policy, to billionaire Jeff Bezos, who said humans should settle on Mars “because it’s cool,” the mission is not running short of advocates. However, in this essay, Wismayer reminds us that some critics expect any future Mars pioneer to end up “irradiated, sick, mad and dead.” Scientists have already looked into the possible effects of prolonged exposure to Martian gravity, and it’s not pretty: muscle shrinking, bones weakening, changes to the central nervous system and other biological modifications to make us all reconsider the journey. “Some researchers have forecast that the future settler, after generations of evolutionary conditioning, will look less like an Übermensch and more like ET,” Wismayer writes. Juliette Portala

Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net

Federal recognition and what the future may hold for the Lumbee Tribe

We look at the behind-the-scenes story of the Lumbee Tribe getting full federal recognition after 137 years.

Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Fact vs. Fiction: Separating the Myths from the Science Behind GLP-1 Medications

From social media claims to questions about safety, UConn Health OB/GYN and obesity medicine specialist Dr. Jason Schneider explains what patients should re ...

Aug 5 • 12:48 PM EDT • Science • today.uconn.edu

Behind The Scenes Of IVE’s “Show What I Am” Tour

K-pop group IVE takes NYLON behind the scenes of their "Show What I Am" tour stop in Austin, Texas.

Aug 5 • 9:06 AM EDT • Entertainment • nylon.com

It Ain’t Just Sports: Let’s catch up ft. Sam Burwell

In this episode: We are catching up on all the latest sports news with a special guest who is usually behind the camera, our director, Sam Burwell.

Aug 5 • 8:15 AM EDT • Sports • 12onyourside.com

Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.

There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. I am particularly pleased that it goes out for free to thousands of subscribers around the world. But, writing this newsletter takes a lot of work. If you are enjoying it and would like to support the project, sign up for one of the subscription options here. It is the equivalent of a fancy cup of coffee per month! Subscribe

Aug 5 • 7:18 AM EDT • Politics • adamtooze.substack.com

Dems rally behind Michigan prosecutor to champion party in crucial House race

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Aug 4 • 8:15 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com

Politics Chat, August 4, 2026

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Aug 4 • 7:42 PM EDT • Politics • heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Yankees call up George Lombard Jr.

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Aug 4 • 10:31 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

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Aug 4 • 8:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • nylon.com

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Aug 4 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • news.rice.edu

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Aug 4 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • rmpbs.org

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Aug 4 • 6:30 AM EDT • Sports • theringer.com

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Aug 4 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • researchinformation.info

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Scientists at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are reviewing potential scenarios if lobster stocks change in the waters off Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick, including the effects of reducing season lengths and trap limits, altering size limits, and other measures.

Aug 4 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • cbc.ca

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The Global Business Travel Association cited solid economic growth and business investment as the positives behind its projection that 2026 business travel spending will increase more than 7 percent year over year, even after a 2025 that outstripped GBTA's previous projections.

Aug 4 • 12:00 AM EDT • Business • businesstravelnews.com

NASCAR: Sponsor Hints at Jimmie Johnson Reunion In 2027

Jimmie Johnson will strap into a NASCAR Cup Series car for one final race in 2027. The season-opening Daytona 500 is set to be the finale of the seven-time Cup Series champion’s decorated career behind the wheel.During the TNT pre-race broadcast last week at Indianapolis, it was revealed that Johnson will sport his famed No. […] The post NASCAR: Sponsor Hints at Jimmie Johnson Reunion In 2027 appeared first on HEAVY.

Aug 3 • 11:05 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

The studio behind Pokémon struggles to find its voice in Beast of Reincarnation

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Aug 3 • 8:00 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

Louisville Water scientist explains the science behind safe drinking water

Louisville Water’s Casey LaFollette shares how scientists test, research and protect the community’s drinking water supply.

Aug 3 • 5:34 PM EDT • Science • wdrb.com

Phoenix developer behind Atari Hotel wants to give downtown 'character and identity'

Zac Cohen's Intersection Development is transforming downtown Phoenix with the Atari Hotel and adaptive reuse projects designed to give the neighborhood unique character.

Aug 3 • 4:48 PM EDT • Business • bizjournals.com

[Interview] [Galaxy Unpacked July 2026] Inside the Design Behind the Latest Galaxy Z Series and Galaxy Watch

On July 22 at Galaxy Unpacked July 2026, Samsung Electronics introduced Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold8, Galaxy Z Flip8, Galaxy Watch Ultra2 and Galaxy

Aug 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • news.samsung.com

The Science Behind Being Kind

Research suggests kindness isn’t just a virtue — it’s measurably good for your health.

Aug 2 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • medscape.com

Raiders Sign New Tight End As They Explore Depth Options

The Las Vegas Raiders are looking for depth behind Brock Bowers and Michael Mayer, and Jack Kunz is a possibility.

Aug 2 • 10:35 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Watch Why Think Tanks are a Billion Dollar Business

Think tanks bring together experts and shape debates in Washington, but how do you measure the value of an idea? From the Aspen Institute to the Heritage Foundation, this episode explores the business of ideas, the billions of dollars behind America's leading think tanks, and how they measure success.

Aug 2 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • bloomberg.com

What a new Justice Department filing says about the ‘botched’ Reflecting Pool renovation

The Justice Department on Friday said the rush to complete President Donald Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool led to “hasty and botched work,” shedding new light on the problems behind the Washington landmark’s $14 million facelift.

Aug 2 • 7:25 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

'Natural Protection From Asthma And Allergies': Scientists Isolate Bacteria Behind The Immune System Farm Effect

A bit of dirt can be good for you.

Aug 2 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book devs talk about how they benefited from Nintendo Switch 2's hardware power

The developers behind Yoshi and the Mysterious Book have spoken about how they were able to take advantage of Nintendo Switch 2’s power while making the game. As we previously reported, the game actually started out as a Nintendo Switch 1 title. However, later on, it shifted over to the latest console. Senior producer Etsunobu Ebisu, director Masahiro Yamamoto, and...

Aug 1 • 4:30 PM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com

Pegula defeats Shnaider to reach Washington Open final

Jessica Pegula, seeking her third title of the year, advanced to the women's final of the WTA and ATP Washington Open by defeating Russia's Diana Shnaider 7-5, 6-4 on Saturday.World number three Pegula, who won her first WTA title in 2019 at Washington, fell behind 5-2 at the start but battled back to reach her fourth final of the year.

Aug 1 • 4:09 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Fulham capitalise on penalties against Farense

Fulham wrapped up their pre-season training camp in Portugal with a 2-1 victory over Liga Portugal 2 side Farense. Despite a dominant first-half performance, Farense went into half-time with a one-goal advantage after beating Fulham goalkeeper Benjamin Lecomte with a neat finish. The Cottagers came out with a renewed energy in the second half though, hitting back with two goals from the penalty spot in the behind closed doors friendly.

Aug 1 • 4:04 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Bike Check: Wes Lukens' Custom Frameworks 26/24" Mullet

Built to handle the abuse of an 11-year-old phenom, Neko Mulally shares the engineering tricks, reverse-engineered shock curves, and adjustable dropouts behind Frameworks'...

Aug 1 • 1:26 PM EDT • Technology • pinkbike.com

The Manchester mayoral result holds the key to the future of progressive politics

Voters on the left may be fragmented – but they will pull together behind a convincing cross-party message, says Neal Lawson, director of cross-party campaign organisation Compass

Aug 1 • 8:50 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com

The supplement behind the C15:0 trend is now available as a gummy

The popular Fatty15 supplement is now available in gummy form. Discover the benefits of C15:0, ingredients, flavor and current pricing.

Aug 1 • 6:34 AM EDT • Health • usatoday.com

Jim Cramer Is Sad About nternational Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)’s Performance

International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is another stock that Jim Cramer has been quite optimistic about. However, its shares are down by 23% year-to-date and by 12% over the past year. The primary reason behind the weak performance is International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)’s preliminary second-quarter earnings report released on July 14th. The results saw […]

Jul 31 • 10:36 PM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Behind the Scenes in Washington with Kaitlan Collins

Jul 31 • 7:42 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Cowboys Truth Behind Dak Prescott's 'Controversial' Super Bowl T-Shirt

Jul 31 • 7:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Caesars Entertainment, real estate firm developing plans for Las Vegas NBA arena

VICI Properties and Caesars are reportedly planning a new NBA arena behind the Las Vegas Strip for a potential expansion team.

Jul 31 • 6:29 PM EDT • Entertainment • fox5vegas.com

Trump Blames Minnesota, Not Iran, for Cyberattack, Despite Initial Investigation

President Trump claimed without evidence that Minnesota’s Democratic government was “behind” a cyberattack on the state’s own water systems. Investigators believe Iran is likely responsible.

Jul 31 • 3:48 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

Tencent’s “GTA Rival” Last Sentinel Collapses After Six Years of Development as 80 Layoffs Hit the Studio Behind It

Tencent's "GTA rival" Last Sentinel has collapsed after six years in development, with 80 layoffs hitting LightSpeed LA, the studio behind it

Jul 31 • 3:00 PM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com

Book reviews: ‘On the Origin of Sex: The Weird and Wonderful Science of Reproduction’ and ‘You Won’t Get Free of It’

The real story behind reproduction and a collection of essays focusing on mothers and daughters

Jul 31 • 1:42 PM EDT • Science • theweek.com

Wildfire smoke poses hidden health threat

Wildfires are often associated with the destruction they leave behind, but the smoke they produce can pose a serious health threat far beyond the fire zone, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

Jul 31 • 11:47 AM EDT • Health • news.un.org

Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Celebrates National Lifeguard Day

On National Lifeguard Appreciation Day, we’re recognizing the dedicated lifeguards who work behind the scenes to help create a safe environment for every guest who visits our pools and water attractions across The Sweetest Place On Earth. Our certified lifeguards believe that every splash, laugh and swim is not possible without one important t...

Jul 31 • 7:50 AM EDT • Entertainment • stories.hersheypa.com

Thousands of Women Reported Disrupted Periods in June. Here's The Science Behind It.

Was it a real trend?

Jul 31 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com

UC San Diego expert available: The business of Hollywood—from Toy Story to the Paramount-Warner merger

As Hollywood continues to reshape itself through blockbuster franchises and industry consolidation, UC San Diego associate professor of communication Shawna Kidman is available to provide context on the forces transforming the entertainment business. Kidman studies media industries, intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, and the business strategies behind Hollywood's biggest successes. Her research examines how companies build enduring franchises, why media consolidation matters to co

Jul 31 • 4:00 AM EDT • Business • newswise.com

Joe Barrett's WSJ piece on Archer debate ignores the politics behind the Astroturfed "rebellion" against the safety project

And traffic safety advocates who were interviewed for the article say they have issues with the reporter omitting other important info from the article.

Jul 31 • 1:37 AM EDT • Politics • chi.streetsblog.org

Makers of unreleased Nicolas Cage movie sue Netflix for $105 million after theft of film

The filmmakers behind an unreleased Nicolas Cage movie have sued streaming giant Netflix for $105 million, after a copy the company had been given to screen was stolen.

Jul 31 • 1:10 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Microsoft Adds $450 Billion In A Day, Beats Nvidia. What's Behind The Surge

Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform, reported stronger-than-expected growth as companies continued spending heavily on AI infrastructure.

Jul 31 • 12:55 AM EDT • Business • ndtv.com

Politics Chat, July 30, 2026

A newsletter about the history behind today's politics.

Jul 30 • 9:51 PM EDT • Politics • heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Harris County: Body found behind business on FM 1960

Authorities are investigating after a body was found behind a business in Harris County on Thursday evening.

Jul 30 • 8:45 PM EDT • Business • fox26houston.com

Cedar Crossing Casino announces new opening date

Peninsula Pacific Entertainment, the company behind the casino project, previously said the casino would open around New Years Eve.

Jul 30 • 5:09 PM EDT • Entertainment • kcrg.com

Behind the science in the Nanopatterning Cleanroom

Hamish Carr Delgado, a PhD student in materials science and engineering, shares how he’s working at the nanoscale to produce more energy-efficient chips for AI data centers.

Jul 30 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • news.stanford.edu

After Hobbes vs Rousseau: Politics must move beyond human nature

Since the great debate between Hobbes and Rousseau, our political theory has been organised around a single question: is human nature essentially good or essentially corrupt? Graham Harman, the philosopher behind object-oriented ontology, argues that this is simply the wrong question to be asking. The real forces governing our collective fate - climate change, artificial intelligence, geography, and pandemics - are non-human; therefore, questions about human nature are not the central ones. Instead, Harman proposes a politics reorganised around our relationship to non-human objects and environments, in which quasi-government institutions incentivise and deter actions with the aim of extending the survival of the human race. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This has become one of the most popular phrases among twenty-first-century intellectuals. Often misattributed to Fredric Jameson, it has been warmly embraced by such influential authors as Slavoj Žižek and the tragically departed Mark Fisher, and has fueled the notion that the major problem with the political Left is that it simply needs to become more speculative and creative. Naturally, this is never a bad idea in any human pursuit. But what if the political distinction between Left, Right, and Center itself results from a failure of imagination? SUGGESTED READING Hobbes vs Rousseau: are we inherently evil? By Robin Douglass This particular division has been with us only since the summer of 1789. During the simmering prelude to the French Revolution, it referred originally to the physical position in the National Assembly of radical figures on one side and loyal monarchists on the other. These positions are linked with two entirely different camps of modern political theory. On the Left we find a series of authors ranging from the moderate (Locke) to the supercharged (Rousseau) to the truly radical (Marx), all of them contending that exploitation of the many by the few justifies revolutionary overthrow of the existing order. On the Right they are countered by the likes of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Schmitt, a group of thinkers convinced that corrupt human nature can be tamed only by force. In the words of the Nazi supporter Schmitt: “One could test all theories of nature and state and political ideas according to their anthropology and classify these as to whether they consciously or unconsciously presuppose [humans] to be by nature evil or by nature good.” This is the division we continue to face today, even in the daily retail politics of Western democracies.___Our species has regularly proven itself capable of both the noblest gestures and the most scathing cruelties, making it hard to define us as essentially either emancipatory or brutal in our aims.___The most refreshing feature of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s 2021 book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was their awareness that the forced choice between Rousseau and Hobbes (as they put it) is no longer sufficient. Our species has regularly proven itself capable of both the noblest gestures and the most scathing cruelties, making it hard to define us as essentially either emancipatory or brutal in our aims. Far from being stationed “beyond good and evil,” we seem to be fully entangled with both. We are not naturally good or evil, Graeber and Wengrow contend, but naturally experimental and imaginative. They rest their case on the archaeological record, which seems to bear witness to numerous episodes of seasonally shifting governments and festivals, which vacillate in the same society (even in the same year) between the egalitarian and the dictatorial. Such praise of political experiment makes a good fit with the generally anarchist position defended by these authors. Yet it is also what I find most disappointing in their position. Although they are right that the forced choice between Hobbes and Rousseau falls short of what our new situation requires, the authors simply replace it with praise for the human being as a political tinkerer and performer. In other words, they give us just another theory of human nature, one that would not have been out of place in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. What other options might we have?___The time is ripe for a retheorization of politics on the basis of something other than human nature… We are not just alienated and limited by objects, but also empowered and unleashed by them___One fresh approach would be to treat politics within a broader framework than human nature, given that the polis does not exist in a vacuum filled exclusively with people. When Bruno Latour went to observe the baboons of Kenya with the San Diego anthropologist Shirley Strum, they jointly concluded that these primates were more socially interdependent than our own species. Each baboon is so reliant on the dynamics of the group that they find themselves locked into constant surveillance of their potentially dangerous peers. The group structure turns out to be inherently volatile. Humans, by contrast, are able to stabilize their societies to a large degree through the mediation of inanimate objects. Although one’s position in society may seem to fluctuate over time, considerable stability is produced through such items as apartment keys, wedding rings, and identification cards, all of them serving to secure us a place distinct from that of our fellows. The Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris has written at length about the crucial role of documents in establishing social relations, making him a hero among notaries in his country. Proper names and license plates cement our position amidst other humans, as do symbolic achievements such as graduation from a top university or distinguished wartime service with its various medals and ribbons. None of this is found among baboons, despite their closeness to us on the evolutionary tree: after all, we did share a common ancestor just 25 to 30 million years ago. SUGGESTED VIEWING The goodness paradox With Richard Wrangham The time is ripe for a retheorization of politics on the basis of something other than human nature, whether understood in the manner of the Left or of the Right. We are not just alienated and limited by objects, but also empowered and unleashed by them. But initially, it is true, we face non-human things primarily in the form of constraints. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to form a human civilization underwater, deep underground, atop Mount Everest, or in outer space. Human dependence on the non-social background takes on subtler form in discussions of political geography, especially unloved on the more idealistic Left. Consider the luckless position of Poland during World War II, sandwiched between Hitler on one side and Stalin on the other. By contrast, note the good fortune of the United States in not having a military peer positioned on any land border. Anglo-American geopolitics, since the writings of the American naval commander Alfred Thayer Mahan and the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder, has been wedded to the notion that one or more liberal offshore naval powers should prevent any authoritarian “heartland” regime from gaining effective control of Eurasia. That remains the case whether the opponent is the impatient Napoleon, the swashbuckling German Kaiser, the villainous Hitler, the murderous Stalin, or the industrial juggernaut Chinese. In their current Foreign Affairs article “Heartland vs. Rimland,” Michael Beckley and Hal Brands analyze the current and coming state of the world on the basis of these same rather durable principles. In recent years a similar outlook has been embraced, in inverted form, by the Putin-loving Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, an icon of the Rightist intellectual underworld. For Dugin, the Anglo-Saxons are an evil force bent on destroying the spiritually superior people of the land: much like Athens in its failed war with Sparta, or Carthage in its eventual collapse against Rome. But the shared notion on both sides is that any strategy that fails to take geography into account is likely to end up as a defeated form of excessive optimism.___When dealing with environmental degradation, then, we are doing business with forces that promise dire effects on our species as a whole.___More striking for us today than geography is the non-human object called climate, which threatens rimland and heartland equally. Even if we contend that humans are one hundred percent responsible for triggering the climate crisis, it remains non-human in the sense of being an independent force beyond our effective control. In a major work published just before his death in 2002, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould noted the tendency of evolutionary theorists to focus too closely on the fate of individuals in view of their successful or failed adaptation to circumstances. With climate change, however, we confront a force that goes well beyond the scope of any individual life. Whereas Richard Dawkins extended evolutionary questions downward from individuals to the sub-individual gene, Gould pushed it upward, speaking of entire species or clades as impacted by environmental change. The asteroid that struck the Yucatán 66 million years ago is only the most famous example of this sort. In the wake of that catastrophe, large animals needing abundant supplies of food were at a fatal disadvantage by contrast with the smaller birds and mammals of the planet. When dealing with environmental degradation, then, we are doing business with forces that promise dire effects on our species as a whole. The effect is to shift our attention away from individual beings towards the survival of the group.In the United States in particular, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked considerable backlash among those who asserted a nearly absolute degree of individual freedom. In California I encountered those who demanded that their businesses be allowed to reopen, that it was enough to cover their mouths but not their noses, or that they should have the right to enter any public area despite refusing vaccination. Yet public health is probably the clearest argument against libertarianism, which often merely asserts the autonomy of individuals against any claims of the commons. In normal times the individual is worth defending; under conditions that threaten the survival of part or all of our species, compulsion may be our only resort, as with perfectly reasonable blackouts and rations in wartime. To rebuild human society under the constraints of climate change will be one of the great challenges of the century to come, as will our improvised grappling with artificial intelligence. Such phenomena pose existential risks for humanity, and leave far less room for tolerance of individual brattiness. Cases are mounting of devastating wildfires caused by arson. Recently it was reported that there is even a website where one can bet on the location of coming wildfires, raising the specter of deliberate blazes set to collect on wagers. The death penalty has steadily lost support in a world where many stress the infinite value of human life. But if we focus instead on entire ecosystems, those who purposely burn the forests may begin to look worse than serial murderers.___The politics of the future may be splintered by disagreement over such topics as how to manage our environing background and how to permit or restrict the entry of new objects into the political sphere.___So far I have spoken of force, authority, and punishment: measures sure to have greater appeal to those who identify with what we know as the Right. But other implications of the post-anthropocentric world are likely to have different backers. If non-human objects are seen as structuring political space, it stands to reason that they can no longer be introduced solely by the pace of technical breakthrough. Fields ranging from cybernetics to energy will demand increased politicization once they are reconceived not just as products of individual human investment, but as renovations of collective political geography. This need not involve world government, with its inherent risk of tyranny, but may involve quasi-governmental enforcers of prestige along the lines of a less corrupt FIFA or International Olympic Committee, punishing deviant states not with violence but with less tangible incentives.Politics will never lose its historic links with conflict and faction. But rather than factions aligned by differing theories of human nature, the politics of the future may be splintered by disagreement over such topics as how to manage our environing background and how to permit or restrict the entry of new objects into the political sphere. This will prove just as incommensurable with the modern Left/Right spectrum as a globe is with a two-dimensional map.

Jul 30 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • iai.tv

'Children of Blood and Bone' film drama continues with a new claim

After the 'Children of Blood and Bone' trailer dropped, author Tomi Adeyemi claimed a behind-the-scenes ordeal was so painful she can never see the movie.

Jul 29 • 10:46 PM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com

New book breaks down the science behind swimming

Former University of Hawaiʻi head swim coach Jans Prins breaks down the biomechanics of swimming in his new book, “Freestyle Biomechanics.”

Jul 29 • 8:37 PM EDT • Science • hawaiipublicradio.org

European soccer officials eye Qatari sports executive to challenge Infantino

Anger over FIFA’s plan to sell stakes in the World Cup has pushed European soccer leaders to rally behind a potential challenger: Paris Saint-Germain boss Nasser al-Khelaifi.

Jul 29 • 7:09 PM EDT • Sports • politico.com

The FCC Just Banned Chinese Humanoid Robots. That's Not the Story Business Leaders Should Focus On

The real lesson behind the FCC's ban isn't politics—it's what China's robotics dominance reveals about cost, manufacturing scale, and competitive strategy. The FCC's ban on foreign-made humanoid robots grabbed headlines.

Jul 29 • 1:02 PM EDT • Business • inc.com

Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham sits behind Anthony Fauci

Jul 29 • 1:00 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Google TV is reportedly the #3 streaming OS in the US

According to new data, Google TV is apparently the #3 streaming platform in the US market, barely behind Fire TV.

Jul 29 • 12:25 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com

A $400 million insurance and benefits business is about to become its own company

The Grant Thornton-CBIZ deal is the largest accounting takeover in a generation. The part that matters most to insurance professionals is what gets left behind

Jul 29 • 8:18 AM EDT • Business • insurancebusinessmag.com

The science behind slow moving low pressure systems

But unlike the fast-moving storms we're used to seeing, this system is taking its time, and that changes everything.

Jul 29 • 8:01 AM EDT • Science • wgme.com

The science behind the slice

Last Wednesday, farmers and hobby gardeners stood together in a dusty, dry field in Starkville. At their feet were watermelon vines, planted by the dozens across a few acres.

Jul 29 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • cdispatch.com

What's the Antidote to Political Polarization?

As the United States commemorates 250 years of independence in 2026, the landmark event has arrived during a time of increased political polarization. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 69% of Americans are dissatisfied with how things are going in the U.S., and 59% believe the country’s best days are behind it. Yet a majority (68%) still feel hopeful about the nation’s future. Bestselling author, social scientist, and Vanderbilt University professor Dr. Arthur Brooks shares that optimism—in part because he sees a clear path out of the divisiveness.

Jul 29 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • pew.org

A decade later, Ellicott City business owners remember what the flood left behind

Ten years after the 2016 flood ravaged Howard County’s Ellicott City, shop owners on Main Street still remember the tragedy that swept through the town.

Jul 29 • 5:00 AM EDT • Business • baltimoresun.com

Lightspeed LA Lays Off Staff as It Shifts LAST SENTINEL's Creative Direction

Lightspeed LA, the developer behind LAST SENTINEL, announced that it’s making a big shift in creative direction that will impact some members of its staff.

Jul 28 • 9:41 PM EDT • Technology • ign.com

OpenAI's First Devices: Speaker, Smartphone, and More

OpenAI's hardware roadmap has sharpened considerably in recent months, with its first device now identified, a smartphone said to be arriving as soon as next year, and a wider lineup taking shape behind them. AI Smart Speaker OpenAI's first product is a portable, screenless smart speaker developed with former Apple design chief Jony Ive, designed to act as a personal companion in the home rather than a conventional voice assistant.

Jul 28 • 9:00 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

Politics Chat, July 28, 2026

A newsletter about the history behind today's politics.

Jul 28 • 8:14 PM EDT • Politics • heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

The science behind social media's 'Early Bird Dinner': How early dining may impact sleep and weight

The problem with eating later in the evening is often what's on your plate, one doctor says.

Jul 28 • 6:19 PM EDT • Science • abcnews.com

Behind Closed Doors, Trump Huddles With Netanyahu and Zelensky

The visits by the leaders of Israel and Ukraine underscored just how deeply President Trump was enmeshed in conflicts he had promised — and failed — to end quickly.

Jul 28 • 5:19 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

How vaccine skeptics use storytelling to create powerful and medically inaccurate messaging

Recognizing the stories behind people’s concerns with vaccines can help public health advocates build a more inclusive approach to healthcare.

Jul 27 • 10:09 PM EDT • Health • washingtonpost.com

Experts share the science behind massive earthquake in Texas Panhandle

We don't often think of earthquakes here in Texas, but the U.S. Geological Survey reports a 5.0 magnitude quake hit last week in the Texas Panhandle.

Jul 27 • 7:34 PM EDT • Science • abc13.com

Urban Climate: The Science behind Resilient Cities under Changing Climates

More than 6 in 10 humans now live in cities. As urbanization accelerates and climate change intensifies, cities have become the critical frontier where weather, climate, and human resilience intersect.

Jul 27 • 5:31 PM EDT • Science • headlines.ametsoc.org

Science with Stevie: Rainbows

Meteorologist Stevie Daniels discusses the reason behind how rainbows form in the sky in this Science with Stevie segment!

Jul 27 • 5:21 PM EDT • Science • wmar2news.com

Brian Kelly CBS Sports job, explained: What former college football coach will be doing in new broadcast role

Brian Kelly will be behind the microphone in 2026 after last year's LSU firing.

Jul 27 • 3:46 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

I'm a 4-foot-6 stuntwoman. Then I got the call to double Matt Damon in 'The Odyssey.'

'The Odyssey' stuntwoman Devyn Dalton opens up about doubling Matt Damon, the training behind the role and the viral praise that put her in the spotlight.

Jul 27 • 3:17 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

The Future of AI in Sports Is Not What You Think It Is

AI in sports is only as powerful as the data behind it. Learn why connected data, not AI models, will define the future of performance.

Jul 27 • 3:01 PM EDT • Sports • teamworks.com

Vietnam Should Release Ailing Political Prisoners

Can Thi Theu, 64, is serving an eight-year prison sentence at Prison No. 5 in Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa province because she joined protests against land confiscation and environmental degradation in 2016 and publicly supported other human rights activists and political prisoners languishing behind bars.

Jul 27 • 12:00 PM EDT • Politics • hrw.org

Even China’s A.I. Powerhouses Can’t Figure Out How to Profit Off A.I.

Chinese A.I. models are gaining ground. But the companies behind them do not have a clear strategy to make money from that success.

Jul 27 • 10:23 AM EDT • Business • nytimes.com

Three wins out of four for basketball sides

Scotland men's hopes of reaching the quarter-finals of the 3x3 Basketball at the Commonwealth Games suffered a blow with a 21-13 defeat by New Zealand. The Scots had defeated Nigeria 21-16 earlier on Sunday but now sit third in the Pool A table behind Australia and New Zealand. While Scotland have won three of their five games, the two Antipodean sides have won four, with Australia also having a game in hand.

Jul 26 • 3:51 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Pirlo position further weakened by fresh Russian gambling revelation

Andrea Pirlo’s hopes of becoming Italy coach took another battering after FC United owner Sergey Lomakin denied he was behind the contract with Russian gambling company Fonbet.The global brand ambas...

Jul 26 • 3:50 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Astros Even the Series Behind a Dominant Hunter Brown Outing

The winning streak continues for Houston. The Astros beat the White Sox 4-1 Saturday night to take the series lead.

Jul 26 • 1:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Stanford lecturer says red light therapy has real science behind it — but not every device works

Red light therapy has become a fixture on social media, with influencers claiming it can improve skin, reduce pain and speed recovery. Rachele Pojednic, faculty at Stanford University and chief science officer at Restore Hyper Wellness, said the science behind it is more solid than many people assume.

Jul 26 • 12:46 PM EDT • Science • ktvu.com

Red Light Therapy - social media fad or real science?

Red light therapy has become a fixture on social media, with influencers claiming it can improve skin, reduce pain and speed recovery. Rachele Pojednic, faculty at Stanford University and chief science officer at Restore Hyper Wellness, said the science behind it is more solid than many people assume.

Jul 26 • 12:30 PM EDT • Science • ktvu.com

The surprising science behind 'corn sweat'

Jul 26 • 10:11 AM EDT • Science • usatoday.com

Trauma and taboos: how Portugal takes care of migrants' mental health

Migration is increasingly essential to Portugal's economy, but the mental health of many new arrivals to the country is affected by the trauma of what they have left behind, long and arduous journeys,…

Jul 26 • 8:59 AM EDT • Health • rfi.fr

How do garbage trucks work?

Behind every trash day is a powerful, sophisticated machine.

Jul 26 • 8:03 AM EDT • Science • popsci.com

SEC football not just chasing Big Ten. It lags behind other SEC sports

The Big Ten has won the last three national titles in football. But the SEC is distinguishing itself in basketball, baseball, softball.

Jul 26 • 5:02 AM EDT • Sports • knoxnews.com

Florida State to Rely on Revamped Ground Game in 2026

With star production departing, the Seminoles turn to SEC transfer Quintrevion Wisner and returning speedsters to ignite a revamped ground game behind an experienced offensive line.

Jul 26 • 1:15 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com