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Results for " making " 3,619 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle

Sony is launching a new camera tomorrow – and we’re all invited along to watch!

Sony has released a teaser, making it clear that a new Sony cinema camera is coming on July 22. Here's how to watch

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Jul 21 • 12:36 PM EDT • Technology • digitalcameraworld.com
Axing UK science department risks slower policymaking, say tech leaders

Industry figures welcome Kanishka Narayan’s promotion as AI minister but warn shake-up could push sector down agenda

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Jul 21 • 9:56 AM EDT • Science • ft.com
Nintendo keeps making shooters more friendly and approachable

A fresh take on looter shooters.

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Jul 21 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
Samsung Launches Health Assistant Beta — First Fully Integrated AI-Powered Personal Health Assistant

Today, health information is often fragmented across multiple devices, apps, and services, making it difficult for people to build a complete understanding of their overall wellness. While access to health data has never been greater, many users still struggle to interpret what their data means and understand how they can make meaningful changes in their […]

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Jul 21 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • news.samsung.com
Making nutritious meals for older relatives can be hard. Follow this guide.

These simple steps lead to healthier meals.

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Jul 21 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • washingtonpost.com
Locals continue to enjoy Curve entertainment

Even though the stadium is in Altoona, Bedford folks just can’t resist making the trip to watch the Curve team play baseball.

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Jul 21 • 5:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • bedfordgazette.com
Arizona Snowbowl Invests in Forest Health & Mountain Enhancements for Winter 2026/27

Arizona Snowbowl is investing in forest health, snowmaking enhancements, and beginner terrain upgrades ahead of the 2026/27 season. Learn what's new and get your Season Pass.

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Jul 20 • 5:19 PM EDT • Health • snowbowl.ski
Here's How Your Dream Cars Change As You Get Older

As we get older we need cars to do different things. Maybe you have kids that you need to haul around, making a McLaren F1 or Ford GT unrealistic.

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Jul 20 • 4:45 PM EDT • Technology • jalopnik.com
Mamdani rolls out 50-plus fixes for NYC’s small-business bureaucracy

Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled more than 50 changes Monday aimed at making it easier to open and operate a small business in New York City — from seeking to

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Jul 20 • 4:20 PM EDT • Business • amny.com
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Wheeling Athletics Set to Host 2nd Annual Fall Sports Media Day July 27th

Wheeling, W. Va. - With the 2026-2027 season right around the corner, the Wheeling University Athletic Department is making its final preparations for fall camp. On Monday, July 27, each of the department's fall sport head coaches will take the podium for the second annual Fall Sports Media Day. Each coach will give a season preview as fans get ready to cheer on the Cardinals in 2026-2027.

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Jul 20 • 1:24 PM EDT • Sports • wucardinals.com
Will a new Trump rule kill the US edge in science?

Grantmaking would be decided by political appointees instead of experts

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Jul 20 • 11:58 AM EDT • Science • theweek.com
Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process

[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe

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Jul 20 • 9:29 AM EDT • Science • democracysos.substack.com
Celebrities from across sports, entertainment and more spotted at World Cup final

Making his first appearance at this year’s World Cup, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were joined in their suite by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and wife Diana and more.

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Jul 20 • 8:02 AM EDT • Entertainment • sportsbusinessjournal.com
‘Complete shock and dismay’: scientists unite against Trump’s $1tn grant attack

OMB proposal would upend entire grant-making system – and put vast sums into hands of political appointees

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Jul 20 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • theguardian.com
What it takes for moms inspired by Serena Williams to return to sports

For mothers who left sports behind, getting back in the game takes more than motivation. A new mommy-and-me tennis class and childcare grant are making their dreams possible again.

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Jul 20 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • latimes.com
Commentary: Hollywood's guaranteed paydays for stars are bad bets now

Rather than making a summer splash, Disney’s live-action "Moana" remake floundered at the box office. Opening with $43 million domestically against a $250 million production budget, the film is already

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Jul 20 • 5:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • recorderonline.com
Commentary: Hollywood's guaranteed paydays for stars are bad bets now

Rather than making a summer splash, Disney’s live-action "Moana" remake floundered at the box office. Opening with $43 million domestically against a $250 million production budget, the film is already

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Jul 20 • 5:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • thederrick.com
Hendricks gave $25M to MAGA Inc., her largest recorded political donation ever

Many ultrawealthy people got access to President Trump after making major donations to his super PAC, MAGA Inc.

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Jul 20 • 4:00 AM EDT • Politics • wisconsinexaminer.com
As koalas disappear in Australia, scientists build a frozen genetic lifeline

Infertility means fewer joeys are being born, making it harder for populations to recover naturally.

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Jul 20 • 12:54 AM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
The New York Times

Packing light is a science, and if you're the list-making type, the 5-4-3-2-1 method is a great place to start. Here’s what it suggests for a weeklong trip: https://nyti.ms/4ffe1pc

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Jul 19 • 5:20 PM EDT • Science • facebook.com
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Tre Donaldson: Another Miami Heat Uncovered Gem

Following a dominant Summer League performance, undrafted rookie Tre Donaldson looks to join the ranks of South Florida’s developmental success stories with elite playmaking and defensive intensity.

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Jul 19 • 5:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Xbox Studio Leaders Reportedly Detest Game Pass, Arguing it Destroyed the Value of Their $40+ Games Now Available for Pennies

Xbox studio heads reportedly detest Game Pass, arguing it devalued their games by making them available for pennies through the subscription.

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Jul 19 • 10:00 AM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
Sheryl Underwood returns to her comedic roots at Helium Club

From smoky comedy clubs to 12 seasons behind the desk of CBS's "The Talk," Sheryl Underwood has spent more than three decades making America laugh. This week, Philadelphia gets the

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Jul 19 • 9:15 AM EDT • Entertainment • phillytrib.com
Plants that make real dairy protein? Scientists discover an unexpected shortcut

What if the plants growing in a field could one day produce the same proteins that give milk its nutrition, texture and cheese-making properties? A new study brings that possibility a step closer by revealing ...

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Jul 19 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • phys.org
Important Takeaways From Houston’s Summer League Blowout

A sluggish start derailed Houston’s championship hopes, but Quadir Copeland’s aggressive 24-point breakout and Bruce Thornton’s versatile playmaking provided silver linings despite a frustrating night in Vegas.

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Jul 18 • 10:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Kool-Aid McKinstry is about to silence every doubter

Kool-Aid McKinstry flashed elite playmaking ability in 2025, but inconsistency kept him from reaching the next level. With Brandon Staley’s new defensive system in place, the young Saints cornerback could be on the verge of becoming one of the NFL’s premier shutdown defenders in 2026.

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Jul 18 • 6:19 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
🤯 Never before! France have already made unwanted history

France are currently making a fool of themselves in the World Cup third-place playoff — it is already a humiliation of historic proportions. Today’s match for third place was not exactly approach...

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Jul 18 • 6:08 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Kings’ Darnell Credits Team for Ending Summer on High Note

Sacramento salvaged their tournament with a balanced offensive clinic, providing coach Chris Darnell vital evaluations of playmaking prospects and rookie shooters ahead of the regular season.

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Jul 18 • 5:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Jacob Gonzalez Making Strong First Impression With the Pirates

Jacob Gonzalez's first hit with the Pittsburgh Pirates was a go-ahead two-run home run.

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Jul 18 • 4:30 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
What is Cyclospora? Health officials explain symptoms, risks amid FDA lettuce investigation

Cyclospora has been making national headlines as the FDA investigates a possible link between a recent outbreak and shredded lettuce products in several northeastern states.

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Jul 18 • 3:33 PM EDT • Health • ktvh.com
WordPress Core "wp2shell" RCE flaws get public exploits, patch now

Public exploits have been released for the critical "wp2shell" remote code execution vulnerabilities affecting WordPress Core, making it imperative that administrators patch their sites immediately.

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Jul 18 • 1:22 PM EDT • Technology • bleepingcomputer.com
Nara Smith says 2-year-old-daughter Whimsy's cancer is in remission

The content creator, known for making elaborate meals while wearing glamorous ensembles, tells her TikTok and Instagram followers that she and her husband have spent the last eight months processing their daughter’s health battle.

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Jul 18 • 11:05 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
'AppleCare One' is Now Even More Valuable

While the monthly and annual prices of AppleCare+ plans for Macs and iPads received a slight increase this week, AppleCare One continues to start at $19.99 per month in the U.S., making the multi-device plan even more valuable. Launched in July 2025, AppleCare One allows you to cover up to three devices as part of a single subscription for $19.99 per month, and additional devices can be added for $5.99 each.

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Jul 18 • 9:25 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
I rented out my pool on Swimply to earn money after losing my business

Portland homeowner Rick Neuhoff is making money by renting out his indoor pool through the app Swimply after losing his business.

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Jul 18 • 9:21 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
"There has to be a reason for people to buy an Xbox": Making sense of Microsoft's messy return to console exclusivity

The Saturday Read | Senior leaders across Xbox detail why the platform is returning to console exclusivity, and explain why Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution are only the beginning

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Jul 18 • 8:56 AM EDT • Technology • gamesradar.com
Common antidepressant may ease long COVID’s crushing fatigue

A low-cost antidepressant may offer new hope for people struggling with long COVID fatigue. In a randomized clinical trial involving 399 adults, fluvoxamine significantly reduced fatigue and improved quality of life compared with a placebo, making it one of the first medications to show meaningful benefits for this disabling condition.

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Jul 18 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
T-Mobile is handing over the Apple iPhone 17 for free

Samsung is getting all of the attention right now, but Apple is still making some noise.

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Jul 18 • 5:00 AM EDT • Technology • mashable.com
Eben Sadie: ‘Culture, not science, makes wine’

South Africa’s pioneering winemaker, a driving force behind the country’s new wave of winemaking, talks research, instinct and succession

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Jul 18 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • ft.com
Emmy Awards Just Cut Five Major Categories Out of 2026 Broadcast, Reason Revealed

The Television Academy is making several changes to the 2026 Emmy Awards. This time, they are moving five major categories out of the main broadcast. The change is part of an effort to make the show s...

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Jul 17 • 6:10 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
The Open Championship Friday live updates, leaderboard: Bryson DeChambeau making a charge up the leaderboard
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Jul 17 • 3:37 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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How health officials are racing to track foods behind cyclosporiasis outbreak in over 27 states

Shredded lettuce is one possible culprit, although it’s highly likely there are other sources of the foodborne illnesses making people sick across the U.S.

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Jul 17 • 2:17 PM EDT • Health • nbcnews.com
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Amendment 62: New Opportunity: A.13 Accelerating Earth Solutions

A.13 Accelerating Earth Solutions (AES) seeks to accelerate the use of Earth-observing satellite measurements in decision-making.

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Jul 17 • 1:48 PM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
Portland’s 100-Foot Rule is One More Barrier to Doing Business

Scrapping the 100-foot rule will not fix everything, but it's a long-overdue step toward making Portland a city that welcomes new businesses.

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Jul 17 • 12:08 PM EDT • Business • mainepolicy.org
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'Shared cosmic experience': 'Potentially hazardous' asteroid Apophis could be visible to 90% of Earth's population during ultraclose 2029 flyby, new maps reveal

Researchers predict that up to 7.6 billion people will be able to see the potentially hazardous asteroid Apophis fly past Earth on April 13, 2029. The skyscraper-size space rock will come closer than some satellites, making it clearly visible to the naked eye.

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Jul 17 • 10:47 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Google rolls out ‘Your info’ card in Contacts app on Android with phone number sharing [Gallery]

The Google Contacts app is making it a little bit easier to find your own number on Android, with a...

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Jul 17 • 8:40 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
American College of Radiology pans proposal to shake up federal grantmaking

ACR believes a proposal to add restrictions around research funding could have "a chilling effect on academic research and innovation in the United States.”

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Jul 17 • 3:35 AM EDT • Business • radiologybusiness.com
Science behind ‘corn sweat’ and how it worsens the current heat wave

Experts say corn sweat is making an already brutal heat stretch feel even more humid across South Dakota.

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Jul 16 • 8:43 PM EDT • Science • dakotanewsnow.com
Champions to advance public health - Center Times Plus, UT Southwestern

The Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health recognized outstanding individuals whose work is making a meaningful difference. Honored for their achievements in service, scholarship, innovation, and leadership, these changemakers represent the next generation. Learn more about their goals, passions, and visions for the future of public health.

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Jul 16 • 8:10 PM EDT • Health • utsouthwestern.edu
Sacramento business owners give back to local students through donations, community support

A successful Sacramento screen-printing company is giving back to its community. Their motivation: It turns out, the local business owners have never forgotten where they came from, and they're making a difference in the lives of young students.

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Jul 16 • 8:06 PM EDT • Business • cbsnews.com
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Astronomers Find an Atmosphere on a Nearby Earthlike Planet

It’s the first potentially habitable world known to host an atmosphere, making it a lead contender in the search for life beyond our solar system.

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Jul 16 • 2:27 PM EDT • Science • nytimes.com
TikTok Shop is testing a new managed services business in the US

TikTok is rolling out a new pilot program where it will oversee key Shop operations, like hiring creators and making ads, for e-commerce partners.

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Jul 16 • 1:40 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
A Pittsburgh business is making sustainable living simple, practical, and fun
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Jul 16 • 12:36 PM EDT • Business • cbsnews.com
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NC elections board approves new rule making it easier to disqualify ballots

The elections board’s Republican majority approved a series of rules in a 3-2 vote, including one on ballots without voter ID.

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Jul 16 • 11:35 AM EDT • Politics • newsobserver.com
SUD Industry Optimistic Despite Reimbursement Woes

This is an exclusive BHB+ article. A few months ago, I was moderating a panel on M&A in behavioral health, and a theme emerged: savvy buyers could get

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Jul 16 • 10:46 AM EDT • Business • bhbusiness.com
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D Review

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D delivers fantastic gaming performance thanks to 3D V-Cache. Priced at $330, it offers more FPS than the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, at a similar price point. Energy efficiency is impressive with low temperatures, making it an strong choice for gamers wanting high-tier CPU performance without breaking the bank.

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Jul 16 • 10:10 AM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com
Move over, GPS: Navigation satellites in low Earth orbit are making a comeback

Xona aims to deploy 258 satellites into low Earth orbit as a GPS alternative.

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Jul 16 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com
COMPUTER COPS: Inside the big business of selling AI to the police

From data gathering to decision making, there’s a gold mine in police funding.

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Jul 16 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • theverge.com
TSMC Adds $100 Billion to Its U.S. Spending Plan

The pledge from the Taiwanese chip-making giant brought the total commitment to its fast-growing operations in Arizona to $265 billion.

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Jul 16 • 5:16 AM EDT • Business • nytimes.com
‘Escaping Beijing’: Why some young Chinese are quitting the capital

A slowing economy and rising prices are making it harder for young Chinese to thrive in the city.

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Jul 16 • 4:10 AM EDT • Business • aljazeera.com
After six years, Trump brings his election obsession to primetime at the White House

President Donald Trump is making a primetime address to the nation that's expected to include discussion of election issues | KNSS Radio

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Jul 16 • 12:10 AM EDT • Politics • audacy.com
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Couple making $120,000 with laundromat side hustle as passive business trend booms

The couple hopes the unexpected booming business will create more flexibility and freedom in the future.

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Jul 15 • 10:57 PM EDT • Business • au.finance.yahoo.com
5 of 10 questions policy researchers—and all healthcare stakeholders—should be asking this year and next

In healthcare policymaking, priorities are like flaming swords to a circus juggler. It’s easy to take on one too many—and overlook the overreach until a burn or laceration halts the show. The word picture is suggested between the lines of a peer-reviewed paper published this month.

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Jul 15 • 10:35 PM EDT • Health • healthexec.com
NFL Coach Drops Honest Admission on Chargers' Justin Herbert

Despite prolific playmaking and elite physical tools, rival coordinators question the star quarterback’s maturity and operational mastery as he fights to secure his first playoff victory.

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Jul 15 • 10:31 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Billy Joel credits this music legend, who turns 80 today, for his hit song ‘Just the Way You Are’

Billy Joel says a multi-platinum music legend is responsible for making his megahit song ‘Just the Way You Are’ a hit: ‘She talked me into it’

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Jul 15 • 7:50 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
The ’Gay’ Attacks on Lindsey Graham Are All About Politics

Was Lindsey Graham gay? As the author of a book about the history of gay Washington, D.C., it’s a question I’ve been asked frequently for years, and even more so since his sudden death last weekend. The South Carolina Republican’s lifelong confirmed bachelorhood, vocal intonation, and Southern dandy demeanor (if not sartorial choices) prompted many to conclude that he was, as they say in that part of the country, “light in his loafers.” Graham’s repeated attestations to the contrary had zero effect on those invested in the narrative that he was. Only about the matter of J. Edgar Hoover’s rumored cross-dressing (for which there is much circumstantial but no direct evidence) am I questioned more. Whenever I’ve been asked to speculate upon Graham’s sexuality—and speculate was all that I or anyone else could do—I always answered the question honestly. While my personal sense is that Graham was probably gay, as a journalist and a historian I cannot rely on my intuition to make factual assertions. (Gaydar hasn’t yet been scientifically perfected.) Given the absence of any known female or male romantic interests, Graham may very well have been a heterosexual unlucky in love. He might also have been asexual. Barring the highly unlikely postmortem emergence of a personal diary or some other unassailable evidence attesting to Graham’s innermost yearnings, we will never know the answer. As is depressingly the case these days when a public figure dies, a chorus of voices reveled in Graham’s passing, many of them making light of his presumed homosexuality.

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Jul 15 • 7:30 PM EDT • Politics • thefp.com
The opioid offensive: Fighting fentanyl | Investors Lab

As the clinical-stage biotech sector tackles this multibillion dollar public health imperative, a mix of established players and venture-backed innovators are making strides:

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Jul 15 • 4:52 PM EDT • Science • sciencenews.org
The States Try to Topple WarnerMount…Thus Begins the Local Antitrust Era

(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) Well, it looks like it’s time for another strategy column. Can I finally avoid writing about M&A? No, it seems I cannot. Admittedly, I’m a week early with this column, since I usually put it out every other week. But this news couldn’t wait. This will make three “Most Important Stories” in a row with a merger or acquisition as its centerpiece. First, Roku-Fox (an acquisition), then Comcast-NBCUniversal (a divestment!), and now the State AGs and the WGA’s lawsuits against Paramount’s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery (antitrust). M&A is usually the “most important” topic any given week, simply because a giant company merging or breaking up (or preventing those outcomes) can have the biggest impact on the streaming board. If you think about these companies as players in a game, changing the number of players is one of the biggest changes you can make. I shouldn’t really complain, either, since this lawsuit is very good news for customers and suppliers (econ speak for talent, workers and indie studios in Hollywood). So let me answer some questions about this potential trial, along with (shudder) making some heavily caveated predictions. I’ll also look at whether Hollywood must consolidate, whether or not the states can win, trouble at X-Box, Netflix’s YouTube binge, and more. Plus, I have five images that visualize this merger and the harm, including three brand new data looks you’ve never seen before. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Can The States and the WGA Stop Hollywood’s Consolidation (Crisis)? If every other newsletter and news outlet is writing about the same story, I try to avoid writing about it as well, but I can’t ignore a story this consequential. The story of the last year was the fate of Warner Bros. Discovery, and this development potentially extends that saga into 2027. As I tried to figure out my angle, I realized, like my last column, I’m again faced with a series of questions. These questions, though, are much more forward-looking. Will the states win? Will the WGA win? If so, what happens to Warner Bros. Discovery? Either way, will this chill the market for future mergers? So you know what that means: predictions. About the future, no less, the hardest thing to predict.1 Just remember: nothing here comes with a guarantee. And the more confident someone is in their predictions, the less you should trust them. This situation is incredibly fluid, nuanced, uncertain and tenuous. So let’s try to explain what may happen. Question: Why File this Lawsuit? I’ll admit, a few months back, I was fairly pessimistic about the fate of this lawsuit. Rumors had started bubbling up that the state Attorneys General (in particular California) wanted to settle with either some minor divestments (usually CNN) or behavioral remedies. And that tracked for me: the states usually settle lawsuits, like the recent John Deere right-to-repair suit. Yet, they plan to fight this. (As they did the LiveNation-Ticketmaster monopolization trial and the Nexstar-Tegna merger.) Honestly, that also makes a ton of sense. Frankly, this move is just good politics for these State AGs. Most are still running for higher and higher office in blue states—some folks have emphasized that only Democratic AGs joined this suit, but given the Ellison/Trump ties, and fears of retribution, that tracks—and a high profile case like this will help them move up the electoral ladder, especially since Paramount and its leadership (the Ellisons, father and heir) have sided with the other side of the political aisle. That makes them unsympathetic to Democratic voters and Hollywood workers in particular. Why did this lawsuit happen? In addition to the very real concerns about industry consolidation, this is why. That said, I don’t think we would have seen this lawsuit for Netflix and Warner Bros., simply because they’re more sympathetic and aligned with Democrats. But those consolidation concerns are real. The “town”—meaning Hollywood and such—really is seeing the damage of mergers on this industry. That’s why the WGA also filed its own lawsuit in defense of workers as well. (Wildcard: What about Europe? Will they try to stop the deal, too? There have been some rumors out of the UK they may try to fight the deal, and UK enforcers just stopped a Getty Images-Shutterstock tie up, so there is precedence. This argument could go either way, though. On one hand, the EU doesn’t need to step in, cause they states are handling it. On the other hand, this could make the EU’s case easier. Just imagine if both sides coordinated. I’ll simply say, “We’ll see!”) Question: Will The State AGs or the WGA Win? Can the state AGs play David to Paramount-Skydance’s Goliath here? That’s really the whole thing, isn’t it? If you know this result, you could make a lot of money. When things are uncertain, it’s tempting to shrug and say, “Eh” meaning it’s a 50/50 proposition. I wouldn’t, though. When in doubt, you should expect that the merging parties succeed. AT&T did successfully buy Warner Bros., after all, and Disney bought Fox without any challenges. Many judges are extremely sympathetic to mergers, and I’d bet the state AGs get a judge who will allow the merger. (Even Obama-appointed judges often allow mergers.) As I understand it, we’ll see two main attacks. First, theatrical films. The AGs are arguing that, when it comes to share of box office and the number of both “wide releases” and blockbuster (or “tentpole”) films, the merging parties will have over 27% market share. Now, the Supreme Court once ruled from on high that any merger that exceeds 30% is presumptively illegal, but that’s guidance, not an ironclad bar. Still, the states will have to argue that this is close to having too much power, and with that power, this will likely further worsen the theater/studio splits in particular. Indeed, as Matthew Stoller pointed out, “just five studios are responsible for 95% of all blockbusters; if this merger goes through, then Paramount and Disney will control 60% of that.” So yes, movie studios will be very concentrated after this merger. Want me to visualize some of that? Well, here’s the share of films that grossed over $200 million at the domestic box office since 2022. (Note: this isn’t all films released in over 3,000 screens, but it is a good look at market power.) First, here are the 43 films by studio: Notice all the blue (Disney), orange (Universal), and purple (Warner Bros)? Yeah, those studios are powerful, and this combines Paramount with one of them. Here’s the look by studio and share of the films that grossed over $200 million: Now, if you look at that and also think, “Huh, should we break up Disney?” I’m with you. I’ve seen some folks poo-poo this idea that this is a real category, but it is! For an upcoming article, I’ve been pulling data on the share of top 100 films at the box office as a share of total box office, and it’s massive. Here’s the chart: (This analysis looks at The-Number’s top 100 films and total domestic box office each year.) To be clear, tentpoles make up 80.7% of the box office each year, so I do think it’s a genuine market. (To be clear, films grossing over $50 million make up 80% of the domestic box office, and films grossing over $100 million make up 64.1%.) I mean, the top 100 films at the box office make up 95% of each year’s grosses. Worse, the combined studios will likely cut output to flex that market power. Everyone can just look at what happened to Disney and Fox to see the precedent. (With fewer films, the remaining theaters have to give more for those few films that remain.) Here’s an image I’ve used a lot, the share of wide-release films from Disney and Fox over time: The AGs will also argue that this consolidation will also impact the cable industry. In this case, the consolidation is actually worse, but that environment is…complicated. Paramount will argue that the cable industry is shrinking. That said, predictions that cable will “go to zero” also don’t look very well supported by the data, as the declines are shrinking, meaning “cable” or “vMVPDs” will likely stabilize at some point. Can the state Attorneys General win on those two main arguments? I honestly don’t know. Again, I’d bet no, since history in general supports that, but it depends on the judge/jury and how they interpret the arguments. Notably, Paramount won’t face accusations about monopoly power in other areas, like streaming, news, sports rights, or vertical integration. I tend to disagree with leaving out sports rights, but I also see the appeal for a simpler case. The states also aren’t really pushing novel theories about labor harm either, which should help. (By the way, Sean McNulty at The Ankler wrote a great run through of potential options, and Capitol Forum also wrote a great paper on theatrical consolidation. Both these pieces predated the lawsuit. Matthew Stoller is also out with his analysis of the pros and cons of the case too.) In some ways, the WGA’s case is even stronger. Quoting Sean McNulty’s summary: “The WGA is citing WARNAMOUNT as crossing a 30% market share in multiple sectors, a number that the Supreme Court has precedent for deeming “presumptively anticompetitive” in a market. According to the WGA numbers, WARNAMOUNT would have represented: - 35% of film writing jobs between 2021 and 2024 - 36% of TV writing projects between 2022 and 2025 - 38% of overall deals between 2021 and 2024” Notably, antitrust enforcers did win recently in the Penguin-Simon & Schuster merger by focusing on labor impact, so don’t count this thinking out. (Wildcard: Will the states try to get a jury trial? Most likely no, they’ll let a judge handle it. If I’m them, though, I’d try to put this in front of a jury. Juries tend to understand monopoly power in a more realistic way than judges faced with legions of economists.) Question: What if They Win? What if They Lose?

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Jul 15 • 4:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
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U.S. Mint making $1 gold-colored coin with Trump's image

The coin commemorates the country’s 250th anniversary and honors "the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said

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Jul 15 • 1:48 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
U.S. Mint making $1 gold-colored coin with Trump's image

The coin commemorates the country’s 250th anniversary and honors "the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said

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Jul 15 • 1:48 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
The downside of making Daylight Saving Time permanent

One of the most famous quotes about politics is Otto von Bismarck’s observation that it’s the “art of the possible.”

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Jul 15 • 12:11 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Y! Sports Biz: Grab an apron

Is the luxury tax system making a mess of the NBA?

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Jul 15 • 11:25 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
As Western wear booms, one Fremont Street shop shows off old-school bootmaking

Javier Martell, the owner of Old Country Boots, is among the few remaining bootmakers in the United States.

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Jul 15 • 9:00 AM EDT • Business • reviewjournal.com
Informed Decision-Making with Healthcare Analytics

In healthcare, the byproducts of past challenges — data assets and innovation—are helping us envision a future where clinicians are well equipped to predict health outcomes and make informed decisions.

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Jul 15 • 6:10 AM EDT • Health • oracle.com
Rundgren takes the stage at Twin River

Todd Rundgren has been making music for “close to 60 years,” and he’s still going strong.

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Jul 15 • 5:45 AM EDT • Entertainment • valleybreeze.com
Asking Eric: I’m over neighbors who keep making rude comments about my autism

Eric: You don’t owe anyone an explanation simply for living your life.

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Jul 15 • 4:00 AM EDT • Technology • al.com
Glen Schofield Announces Retirement in Emotional Video: 'This is an Amazing Industry'

Glen Schofield has retired from making games after a whopping 35 years in the industry. He announced this with an emotional video.

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Jul 14 • 5:35 PM EDT • Technology • insider-gaming.com
47 revelatory hours with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced

To review this month’s supposed remake of 2013’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, I must first correct the record. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced isn’t a game about pirates (and assassins) in the 18th century Caribbean. Sure, sure, that’s what the trailers would have you believe. They’ve go their clips of Edward Kenway swinging his swords and steering his pirate ship into cannon-blasting combat against British frigates. Is Resynced truly a pirate game? Of the 47 hours I spent playing Resynced over the past few weeks, I will admit I spent maybe 44 (?) of them collecting plunder with Blackbeard, drinking rum with Anne Bonny and debating the pros and cons of the lawless pirate-run settlement Nassau with Benjamin Hornigold. I may in fact have spent dozens of hours sailing to remote islands, reading treasure maps, opening messages left in bottles, sinking the odd Man o’ War with a well-timed broadside, collecting sea shanties for my crew, befriending a pet monkey, and hunting whales. I am nevertheless neither so Gullible nor so Narrow-Minded as to call the magnificent Resynced a “pirate remake.” Oh no. Forget any reviews of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced you may have read. Forget what you yourself may have played, if you’ve spent any time with the game since its launch. What Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is really about I’m here to give you the scoop (spoilers for Resynced’s Animus menu lore, which many players are probably not going to see): Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, the new game whose development was led by Ubisoft Singapore, is set in the year 2096. It’s about a societal split, about revolution, about an old Assassin’s Creed adventure repurposed in the series’ distant future as propaganda or samizdat. It’s about the overheated future of 2096, essentially conquered by the series’ well-established nefarious Templar-run company Abstergo. (In this future, Abstergo is, among other things, remaking a 2013 pirate movie called Devils of the Caribbean, but this time in VR. The VR version will be backed by a marketing plan that involves AI influencers, a 10,000-avatar “metaverse premiere event” and that manufacturing of memes aimed at “50 million VR nodes.” See what I mean about Abstergo being evil?) Resynced is about a late 21st-century population mollified by the widespread use of Abstergo’s Animus devices which let people experience the lives of historical figures culled from “genetic memories.” It’s about an insurgent faction of Assassins. And it’s about a plan to wake the population into revolutionary fervor by showing them the memories of 18th century pirate Edward Kenway, who—as depicted in the original Black Flag and again in Resynced—gradually comes to an understanding about the Assassins of his day and their centuries old fight for freedom. Resynced is also about an AI developed within the late 21st-century Animus, called Ego. It has found a way to alter genetic memories, to create and show Animus users false ones. The game is about Ego’s efforts to tell the people experiencing Edward Kenway’s memories that Kenway was wrong, that fighting against order is folly, that we should crave a world where “compliance is rewarded with power.” Who are we in this game? We’re an unnamed Animus user in 2096 who experiences Kenway’s journey virtually. At four moments during Kenway’s exploits in the Caribbean our virtual jaunt can be interrupted for 10-15 minutes, as we explore Animus “rifts” where Ego explicitly tries to tell us how wrong Kenway was. None of this is what 2013’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was about, of course. That was a different game, even if you also spent dozens of hours pirating as Kenway in that game, across missions and a map that’s been faithfully reintroduced and rebuilt for Resynced. The 2013 Black Flag was about you playing as an unnamed researcher newly hired in 2013 by Abstergo Entertainment, the video game development wing of the Templars’ evil-corp. In that game, you were assigned to use the Animus to dive into the genetic memories of Desmond Miles, a man who died in Assassin’s Creed III and who was descended from a long line of Assassins (and at least one Templar) whose adventures were featured across the prior AC games. In 2013’s Black Flag, your mission was to plumb the Edward Kenway experience for material that Abstergo could use in productions such as the motion picture Devils of the Caribbean, though the Templars had some ulterior motives for the assignment. Resynced is therefore not a remake of 2013’s Black Flag. It’s a sequel. It is a new game about a new exploration of Edward Kenway’s pirate/assassin journey, set 83 years after the framing sequences of the original game. Resynced provides a new narrative framework that, thanks to the concept of an AI that wants to alter historical memories, arrives with creative justification to tweak a now-classic 13-year old game. That makes Resynced, already a hot seller, a tantalizing hint of where Ubisoft could go with a line of Assassin’s Creed remakes. They could remake the first game, the Ezio games, even the recent ones set in ancient Egypt and Greece. And for each, they could not just modernize the graphics and controls but expand and alter their sequences of events to use them as reference points for a conflict set in the late 21st century, as rival factions try to weaponize historical memories. Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, even when that work consists of ravings about Assassin’s Creed’s modern day plot, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe A story most players will probably miss If you didn’t know any of this, I’m not surprised. If you played the game and still didn’t catch it, I’m not a bit shocked. If Ubisoft has no plans to do more of this, I won’t fall down. Almost all of what I’ve described is optional and missable in Black Flag Resynced. I nearly missed it myself, as I planned for a breezy playthrough of an old Assassin’s Creed favorite. Instead, I found myself in a 40+ hour hunt for the “real” story, buried deeper in Resynced than any gold-filled chest. The story of 2096 is Resynced’s meta-story, told in two remote pockets of the game: 1) four optional playable “rifts” that players may find as they proceed through Resynced’s pirate fantasy , 2) in dozens of text files tucked three menus deep in the game’s barely-interactive Animus hub. Assassin’s Creed games have almost always had a meta-story about people in the 21st century (usually matching the game’s release year) and their connections to the main history portions you play. Those meta-stories have always been squeezed into the margins, though seldom as severely and as, uh, graphiaclly simple, as in recent games. Back in 2013, the modern-day exploits of you as an Abstergo Entertainment employee were prominent. They were portrayed via first-person portions that occasionally interrupted the third-person Kenway experience and could be explored for hours, complete with their own missions, side quests and puzzles. Resynced’s 2096 story—of Assassin “Watchers” vs. Abstergo/Tempar goons, of rogue AIs, of panicking scientists, of a woman wondering why her Animus-addicted husband is muttering about Mary Read (“What does he mean by Assassins?”), of a fight for the population’s hearts and minds via varying interpretations of Edward Kenway’s life choices—is mostly told through unlockable text files. The files are interesting. Offered via diary entries, intercepted chats and news reports, they present varied perspectives of a world in crisis. One set works as a narrative puzzle as it reveals the Rashomonic interpretations of a massacre, or was that a successful Assassin hit? Another favorite reveals the rising bitterness of a person who, through Edward Kenway’s journey, now shakes at the ignored evil around him. One surmises that Ubisoft is averse to putting the Assassin’s Creed’s meta-story in the way of more marketable pirate playgrounds and ninja/samurai epics. Instead, we get a better-than-nothing text-in-menus approach introduced in 2025’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows. In Shadows, players unlocked the meta-story text files largely via time-gated missions that called on the user to kill X number of enemy type Y, clear three enemy castles, re-win a three-phase fighting tournament, and other grinds. Time restrictions on accessing these missions and unlocking the files meant it could take players months to access the full story in-game. But even in the most hardcore Assassin’s Creed hangouts, the fanbase instead seemed to throw up their hands rather than grind to keep up. In Resynced, Ubisoft has shown some mercy, diminishing the amount of new text files that are tied to timed grinds. Now, most of the text-based 2096 lore are associated with “data file” collectibles that players can find in the world. That includes a batch of written entries that explain a historical link between the feudal Japan era in Shadows and the piracy adventures in Black Flag. Players who explore a lot will find dozens of data files, though the game does not appear to offer any in-game tracker for finding each one. You just need to keep looking for them. As of this writing, I have most of them, but not all. I can’t find any full guide for them online. And even Ubisoft’s optional $5 microtransaction that reveals lots of items in-game does not appear to reveal the locations of the text files (at least the official description omits them from its collectibles list). That’s not a huge bother, because tracking the data files down compelled me to re-explore the waves and islands of Black Flag. That was a thoroughly pleasant task to do for the first time in a dozen years. I expect many players, though, will be content to wait for the files to be reproduced in an online AC wiki somewhere, the easier to read on a web page. It may not seem enticing to play a video game in order to gradually unlock pages of text to read. Why not, you may ask, just read a book, where they put the pages in order? For one, they’ve not tucked this latest installment of Assassin’s Creed’s meta saga in a book. I also enjoy the unordered delivery, the dawning comprehension of a story about 2096’s desperate people and questionable tech, which I glimpsed first at its middle, then the end, then the front, then other moments in between1. I am also enamored with the idea of the Assassin’s Creed games I’ve previously played, including Black Flag, being repurposed for an information war. The ideas in Resynced’s meta-story, which builds off characters and ideas in Shadows’ chunks of text, are strong. The potential of where they could go with it is exciting. As for the pirate stuff? Looks great, controls pretty well, is fun to play and oh so speedy in terms of how much of a good time you can have with each sit-down. It never gets old to chase a new shanty page across a rooftop, bombard a fort with upgraded mortars or use a diving bell to explore sunken wrecks (hats off to the team at Ubisoft Barcelona that worked on the underwater portions in Resynced; that team is now facing layoffs, such is the misery of modern gaming and oft-troubled Ubisoft). New pirate missions in Resynced involving new ally characters are brief, dramatic and add more to Edward’s story, even if the gameplay perks they provide barely enhance the gameplay. A new denouement for high-class pirate Stede Bonnet is affecting; a new hunt for Blackbeard’s treasure is a welcome extra moment. A new epilogue to hunt down a pirate killer, on the other hand, over-complicates Kenway’s character. The ending credits remain my favorite of any game I’ve ever played. Black Flag provides great source material. The revisit is well-made and a great sign of what could be. It is offered in a different wrapper that hints at an opportunity for more interesting remakes to come, should Ubisoft choose to pursue such treasures—and as we brace to resist or comply with an Abstergo future. 1 The messages that Edward Kenway finds in bottles tell another out-of-order story, one about a man reckoning with the strange memories and voices he’s heard in his head since he was a boy. That tale was also in the 2013 game and develops into one of Black Flag’s most compelling character arcs. In Resynced, it has lost its climax, because the bottle story previously paid off in the halls of the first-person Abstergo Entertainment, which is exclusive to the older game. An altered resolution, written by the 2013 game’s lead writer is fine, doesn’t invalidate the 2013 version, but makes for an inferior final note.

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Jul 14 • 3:17 PM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news
Ohio cut red tape. Now its business sector is thriving.

Permitting reform and deregulation aren't sexy policy ideas, but they are effective in driving job creation and making people better off.

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Jul 14 • 1:55 PM EDT • Business • reason.com
Chicago barely makes top 20 in American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 America's Fittest Cities ranking

Chicago just barely made the top 20 in the American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 ranking of the country's fittest cities.

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Jul 14 • 12:57 PM EDT • Sports • cbsnews.com
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LeBron James Connected to Cleveland Cavaliers Homecoming

While LeBron James is still making his decision about where he wants to play next year, don't be surprised if he ultimately winds up back where it all started, with the Cleveland Cavaliers. After eight strong seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers, James is a free agent at the age of 41, and he has ...

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Jul 14 • 12:17 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Supreme Court justices making rare appearance on Capitol Hill

Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan are testifying before the House Appropriations Committee and Senate Appropriations Committee.

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Jul 14 • 10:53 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
The new trust crisis: What fraud means for media and entertainment

To fight media and entertainment fraud, CTAM's Vicki Lins and AARP's Kathy Stokes recommend making proactive consumer education, empathetic customer support, clear communication and industry collaboration a priority.

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Jul 14 • 10:38 AM EDT • Entertainment • smartbrief.com
Dying Light: The Beast Cancelled for PS4 and Xbox One Consoles, 10 Months After Current-Gen Launch

This gruesome open world isn't making its way to last-gen machines.

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Jul 14 • 9:27 AM EDT • Technology • digitalfoundry.net
Your coffee habit may be making your liver healthier

A new study adds to the growing evidence that coffee is good for you.

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Jul 14 • 8:15 AM EDT • Science • washingtonpost.com
LeBron James Rumors: Free Agency Decision Could Be Coming Soon

The LeBron James rumors have run the NBA offseason for more than a week now. The entire league is on hold as the greatest player to ever play the sport makes his decision. The spotlight is on, but for how long? The King appears to be getting closer to making a final decision, and his […] The post LeBron James Rumors: Free Agency Decision Could Be Coming Soon appeared first on Stadium Rant.

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Jul 14 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Flex Raises $70 Million To Put Business Banking On Stablecoin Rails

Invisible stablecoin rails are making cross-border banking faster for business owners. Flex has raised a $70 million Series B1 to capitalize on the shift.

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Jul 14 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • forbes.com
Can humans hibernate their way to Mars?

Scientists are trying to recreate the biology that lets animals survive months without food or water, in hopes of making deep-space travel possible

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Jul 14 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • theguardian.com
Kentucky Wildcats News: UK commits in updated Rivals rankings

The Cats are making a statement.

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Jul 14 • 6:45 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Sotheby’s Big T. Rex Auction Raises Concerns Hype and Wealth Are Upending Science

Private buyers are increasingly outbidding museums for fossils. That’s making it difficult—or even impossible—for researchers to improve our understanding of the past.

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Jul 14 • 5:30 AM EDT • Science • wired.com
Building better therapeutic antibodies: the science, progress and ...

As therapeutic antibodies become more complex, where is the field making real progress and which problems are proving hardest to solve? Hear leading experts share their perspectives.

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Jul 14 • 4:44 AM EDT • Science • drugtargetreview.com
ADHD and periods: Are my hormones making my symptoms worse?

A first-of-its-kind study by UK researchers is looking at the link between menstrual cycles and ADHD.

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Jul 13 • 7:00 PM EDT • Technology • bbc.com
‘Check Your Political Identities at the Door’: Lawmakers Come to UVA Darden to Practice Leadership

A select group of state legislators gathered at UVA Darden for a nonpartisan leadership program focused on productive disagreement, values-based decision-making and leading across political differences.

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Jul 13 • 2:53 PM EDT • Politics • news.darden.virginia.edu
THE WEEK OF JULY 13, 2026

- NSF tightens collab rules - Grantmaking rule comments close - Skeptic to lead next climate report

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Jul 13 • 2:35 PM EDT • Science • aip.org
Madonna’s Knockdown Center Set Was Sexy, Latex-Clad History in the Making

A report from the century’s most consequential confluence of gay guys and plus ones.​

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Jul 13 • 2:13 PM EDT • Entertainment • them.us
New York Yankees Cannot be Fooled by Jasson Dominguez

The New York Yankees cannot let Jasson Dominguez prevent them from making the necessary moves before the MLB trade deadline.

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Jul 13 • 11:09 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
The World Cup semifinals are set

The World Cup semifinals are set, with Spain, England, Argentina and France making up the chalkiest final four in tournament history.

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Jul 13 • 8:21 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
⚽️ Y! Sports AM: The final four

The World Cup semifinals are set, with Spain, England, Argentina and France making up the chalkiest final four in tournament history.

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Jul 13 • 8:21 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Scientists discovered the brain doesn't make decisions the way we thought

A new study suggests the brain begins making decisions much earlier than scientists previously thought. Researchers found that even primary sensory regions are influenced by higher brain areas through rapid feedback loops, rather than simply passing information forward. This more dynamic view of brain function could help engineers design future AI systems that think more like biological brains while using far less power.

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Jul 13 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
The One Healthcare Goal That Could Change Everything

A cross-sector goal—making sure every American always knows the date of their next primary care appointment—could be transformative in its impact.

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Jul 13 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • forbes.com
Xbox Seems To Be Making A Fortune On The New Black Ops Ports For PS5

They've been spotted trending higher than GTA 6

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Jul 13 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • purexbox.com