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How to watch the 2026 Emmys: Start time, presenters, full nominee list and more
Are you ready for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards?
Rob Reiner honored with posthumous Emmy Award for ‘The Bear’
Filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner was honored with a posthumous Emmy Award at Sunday’s Creative Arts event in Los Angeles, which were held in advance of the 78th Primetime Emmy
Family of armed man shot by police speaks out after calling police over mental health crisis
Family members are demanding answers after Phoenix police shot and killed 20-year-old Johnathan Delgado in an alley near 18th Avenue and Cheryl Drive following a mental health call. FOX 10's Jacob Luthi hears more from the family.
WSU comes up short in Apple Cup loss, 24-10
The 2026 opener didn’t end how Washington State wanted. However, the game itself gave signs of encouragement for the rest of the season. The Cougars opened with the 118th edition of the Apple Cup at Husky Stadium and lost to archrival Washington, 24-10. Despite some early offensive woes, WSU (0-1) found themselves in a one-possession […]
Strasbourg hit Troyes for six as Amo-Ameyaw sparkles
Strasbourg thumped Troyes 6-2 away in Ligue 1 on Sunday as English winger Sam Amo-Ameyaw scored twice as a late substitute.The 20-year-old Amo-Ameyaw, in his second season since joining from Southampton, scored in the 85th and 88th minutes.
Jonathan Aranda's Extra-Inning Blast Lifts Rays Past Rangers
The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Texas Rangers 6-3 in extra innings to improve to 85-57 and maintain a four-game AL East lead. Jonathan Aranda hit a three-run homer in the 10th, Junior Caminero launched his AL-leading 38th home run and Drew Rasmussen dominated.
Manny Rutinel resigns from Colorado legislature to focus on congressional race
The Democrat running for a key congressional race — whose outcome could decide the balance of power in the U.S. House — on Friday resigned from the Colorado legislature. State Rep. Manny Rutinel is turning his attention to his campaign in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, where he is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans. The […]
Democrat Manny Rutinel resigns from state House to focus on competitive race in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District
Democratic Rep. Manny Rutinel resigned from the state legislature Friday to devote his full attention to his campaign in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, where he is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans. The open seat in House District 32 will be filled by a vacancy committee. The Adams County Democratic Party has not responded to […]
Michigan House candidate Katrina Manetta talks about healthcare access and affordability
Manetta is challenging Republican state Rep. Ron Robinson in the 58th District in the Nov. 3 election.
Halloween: The Game Launches In 'Advance Access' Today, And Here's What The Reviews Are Saying
Ahead of the full release on September 8th
Bath show highlights sibling finds – and England’s first paid female astronomer
Exhibition features artworks in townhouse where William and Caroline Herschel worked and lived in late-18th century
Nintendo Announces Two Directs For Next Week, 8th & 9th September 2026
Zelda news, anyone?
Television Academy and National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Announce Recipients of 2026 Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Awards
Emmys for Exceptional Achievement in Broadcast Technology to be Presented Oct. 14 in Los Angeles
Kiggans, Underwood Recognize September 1st-8th as National Clinical Nurse Specialist Week
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Congresswoman Jen Kiggans (VA-02) and Congresswoman Lauren Underwood (IL-14) introduced a resolution to recognize the first...
Former student Delgado-Pedraza returns to Calcutt as 8th-grade science teacher
CENTRAL FALLS – Calcutt Middle School’s newest 8th-grade science teacher, Desireee Delgado-Pedraza, recently expressed her joy about being back home in her community.
Walk in Central Park with Bill Ritter in CaringKind, ABC7 brain health campaign
The watershed moment of the campaign will happen on Saturday, Oct. 17, at CaringKind's 38th annual Alzheimer's Walk & Brain Health Day in Central Park.
Ayesha Curry Confirms Stephen Curry is Ready for His 18th NBA Season with Warriors
Ayesha Curry opened up about how Stephen Curry is approaching his future with the Golden State Warriors.
Steve Jobs’ 8th-grade science fair project sells for nearly $35,000
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A science fair project created by Cupertino eighth-grader Steve Jobs in 1968 sold for nearly $35,000 at an auction this month. Just days after turning 13 years old, Job…
Steve Jobs' 8th grade science project sells for $34,375 as rare Apple memorabilia fetches millions at auction
Even in middle school, Jobs was fascinated with the tech world.
Here\'s when the Schreiber Center\'s Rubber Duckie Race and Festival returns
The Schreiber Center for Pediatric Development’s 38th annual Rubber Duckie Race and Festival will be 2-5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13, at 625 Community Way in Lancaster.
Tarik Skubal Reflects on Emotional Tigers Reunion After Dodgers Win
Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Tarik Skubal had a heavy outing on August 28th against his former beloved team, the Detroit Tigers. Entering free agency, and with the Tigers left unable to afford Skubal, Detroit was essentially forced to deal…
Steve Jobs' 8th Grade Science Project Sells for $34,375
A science project that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs built for his 8th-grade science fair sold at auction for $34,375. Jobs was attending Cupertino Jr. High when he designed the project, which is titled "What is the SCR?" The lot includes a display board built from plywood with three explanatory panels and a 10-page report with the same title.
Steve Jobs' 8th Grade Science Project Sells for $34,375
A science project that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs built for his 8th-grade science fair sold at auction for $34,375. Jobs was attending Cupertino Jr. High when he designed the project, which is titled "What is the SCR?" The lot includes a display board built from plywood with three explanatory panels and a 10-page report with the same title.
Steve Jobs' 8th-grade science fair project sold for over $34,000
Someone did, in fact, buy the Steve Jobs 8th-grade science fair project for roughly the same price as a brand-new midsize sedan.
2026 Hardee’s Friday Night Blitz Preview Tour: Dan River Wildcats
ROANOKE, Va. (WFXR) — Here’s a preview of the 2026 Dan River Wildcats. Head Coach: Micah Knight (3rd Season) Last Season: 5-6….Lost at Gretna in Region 2C Quarterfinals 2026 Schedule August 28th – vs. Tunstall September 4th – vs. Halifax County September 11th – at Bassett September 18th – at Martinsville September 25th – vs. […]
Nebraska State Fair brings in entertainment for all tastes and budgets
GRAND ISLAND, NE – The 2026 Nebraska State Fair begins this Friday, August 28th and runs through Labor Day, September 7th in Grand Island. The 2026 Nebraska Lottery Concert Series features a great…
Final Fantasy Resonance is getting a 120-song original soundtrack
The Final Fantasy Resonance Original Soundtrack will release on 28th October, pre-orders are now live.
2026 Hardee’s Friday Night Blitz Preview Tour: Gretna Hawks
ROANOKE, Va. (WFXR) — Here’s a preview of the 2026 Gretna Hawks. Head Coach: Shaun Miller (6th Season) Last Season: 10-3….Lost at Glenvar in the Region 2C Finals 2026 Schedule August 28th – vs. Jefferson Forest September 4th – at Bassett September 11th – vs. Tunstall September 18th – at Halifax County September 25th – […]
Madison back-to-school Free Haircutz event pairs style with health services
Families packed the Alliant Energy Center for the 18th annual Back to School Free Haircutz event.
A ‘Survivor’ Castaway’s First Challenge: Finding an Apartment
Stephanie Berger was pretty confident about securing a spot on the 48th season of the reality TV series. She was far less certain about her house-hunting skills.
Milwaukee business owner hit by third break-in in two months
38th Street Mart owner Jessica Jimenez says her Milwaukee business was burglarized for the third time in less than two months, despite added security.
Meijer to demolish former 28th Street Flowerland for gas station
Meijer acquired the former Flowerland on 28th Street, with plans to build a new mExpress convenience store.
Following Andy’s Footsteps: Luke Petittte Begins Yankees Career In Tampa
Luke Pettitte, the son of former Yankees left-handed pitcher and five-time World Series champion Andy Pettitte, will begin his Yankees career in Low-A Tampa, according to MLB Pipeline and the Yankees transaction logs.The Yankees drafted the younger Pettitte in the eighth round (248th overall) out of Dallas Baptist University, a Division I program in Dallas, […] The post Following Andy’s Footsteps: Luke Petittte Begins Yankees Career In Tampa appeared first on HEAVY.
Steve Jobs’ 8th-Grade Science Fair Project Is Up for Auction
The project and other items from Apple's history are being auctioned off to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary.
Steve Jobs' 8th-grade science fair project goes up for auction
Collectors have proven avid fans of Steve Jobs memorabilia over the years, and a new piece seems likely to attract...
Parkinson's double frustration as Wrexham denied
Phil Parkinson bemoans his team's lack of ruthlessness – and the amount of stoppage time at the end – after a 98th-minute equaliser denies Wrexham victory at Cardiff.
Patriots Star A.J. Brown Ranked 8th-Best NFL WR by Fox Sports
Fox Sports has ranked A.J. Brown of the New England Patriots the eighth-best WR in the NFL.
Drag performer upset over political ad that used photo
Drag performer Lady Lydia has become an unwilling political symbol in the 8th District race between U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan and Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti.
Business Briefcase: Labor and employment law summit set by MAEA
POTTSVILLE — The locally based Northeast Pennsylvania Manufacturers and Employers Association will have the 18th annual Labor & Employment Law Summit 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sept. 24 at Mountain Valley Clubhouse, 1021 Brockton Mountain D…
Rocco Reitz after debut: "It was quite a challenge"
On Saturday, Rocco Reitz was rewarded for his hard work in pre-season. In the 58th minute of the Telekom-Cup, our summer signing was brought on for Nicolas Seiwald and played his first half an hour in...
Yessss Drew Gilbert
Drew Gilbert had never hit lead-off before. The vast majority of his plate appearances this season have come out of the 8th and 9th spots in the batting order. There’s plenty of reasons why Gilbert wouldn’t be seriously considered to bat first when constructing a Major League line-up. Mainly, he doesn’t hit for average, he […]
18th & Vine tour with KC council members highlights preservation and small business
An 18th & Vine walking tour showcases preservation projects, new development and support for Black-owned Vine Street businesses in Kansas City.
Essentia Health partners with United Way of Cass-Clay to prepare students for upcoming school year through annual School Supply Drive
Essentia Health was proud to once again support and sponsor the 28th annual United Way of Cass-Clay School Supply Drive and to serve as the drive's
New Mexico Department of Health announces 18th measles case for 2026
The New Mexico Department of Health reported its 18th measles case of 2026 in the southeastern portion of the state.
'They all happen to be Republican': Curley not surprised WA ranked 38th best state to start a business
KIRO host John Curley wasn't surprised to find out Washington was ranked near the bottom on WalletHub's list of best states to start a business.
Science Zone invites you to annual charity event supporting scholarships for low-income families
Join us at the Science Zone on Friday, August 28th for our annual charity event Elemental Evening, a night to support the museum with science-themed
Health screenings are 1 way the Black Family Reunion is keeping families strong
The Midwest Black Family Reunion returns this week for its 38th celebration.
Spanish teen Jodar ousts eighth seed Lehecka at Montreal
Spanish teen Rafael Jodar defeated Czech eighth seed Jiri Lehecka 6-3, 6-3 on Saturday to reach the quarter-finals of the ATP Montreal Masters.Jodar will play for a semi-final berth against French 18th seed Arthur Fils, who defeated Britain's Cameron Norrie 6-2, 7-6 (10/8).
49ers News: Congratulations to Hall-of-Famer Roger Craig
Your daily San Francisco 49ers news for Saturday, August 8th, 2026
Summer on 7: 158th Wisconsin Valley Fair draws thousands to Wausau with animals, entertainment and community
The 158th Wisconsin Valley Fair is open at Marathon Park in Wausau — here's what to expect this week.
AHF • ‘We the People’ Coalition Merges Faith & Politics to Engage Black Voters -- L.A. Gospel Concert & Panel, Sat., Aug. 8th
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the world's largest HIV/AIDS healthcare organization, currently provides medical care and services to more than 1.75 million clients in 45 countries. With more than 7,000 employees worldwide, AHF now has treatment clinics and other operations in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region, and Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth, and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare.
Seeds Rybakina, Pegula and Gauff advance at WTA Toronto event
Second seed Elena Rybakina, third seed Jessica Pegula and fourth-seeded Coco Gauff advanced to the third round of the WTA 1000 tournament in Toronto on Wednesday.Rybakina hit back-to-back double faults to drop the second set and three double faults while serving for the match before advancing to next face 28th-seeded American Ann Li, who eliminated Canadian wildcard Kayla Cross 7-6 (7/2), 6-3.
Trump-endorsed candidate loses to Michigan man who dropped out of race
Thomas J. Smith suspended his campaign for Michigan’s 8th District. Yet he is projected to beat Amir Hassan, a rival backed by the president.
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
A Seemingly Rock Bottomless Glass
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State Rep. Tara Hong is challenged by former Lowell Mayor and current Lowell City Councilor Sokhary Chau for the 18th Middlesex District seat.
Northern Kentucky Magazine to induct four into 8th Annual NKY Business Hall of Fame
Staff report Northern Kentucky Magazine will present its 8th Annual NKY Business Hall of Fame celebration on August 12, 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at Receptions in Erlanger. The new inductees are…
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The first-gen Kindle Scribe is a big e-reader and digital notebook that’s $150 refurbished
The deal lasts through August 8th.
Red Sox hit back-to-back HRs in 8th to beat A's 5-4
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Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame to Host ‘Blotto Fest’ This November 8th
Long Island’s Blotto band member ‘Broadway Blotto’ (L) will host the upcoming Blotto Fest event. Photo credit Steve Leung. Classic Blotto Band photo (R) circa 1980's. Photo credit Martin Benjamin. Stony Brook, NY —Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHOF) will host Blotto Fest at its Stony Brook Village location (97 Main Street) Fest on Sunday, Nov. 8th at 3pm. The event is free for members and included with general admission ticket or $10 at-the-door concert ticket. LIMEHOF is giving local bands a chance to participate in this unique tribute to the iconic New York group.
Vikings Rookie’s Latest Comments Have Fans Watching Closely
The Minnesota Vikings were able to get an important injury update from one of their confirmed that he was healthy and ready to go for the start of the season.Banks was selected with the 18th overall pick in the first round of the 2026 NFL draft. The former Florida Gators star measures in at six-foot-six, […] The post Vikings Rookie’s Latest Comments Have Fans Watching Closely appeared first on HEAVY.
August 8th 'Women in Sports Night' to include a pregame Panel Discussion at the Pub at the Park
The Official Site of Minor League Baseball web site includes features, news, rosters, statistics, schedules, teams, live game radio broadcasts, and video clips.
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WordSword Creations, DoubleDot Studios and Your Family Entertainment AG Join Forces for the Worldwide Distribution of 'Zola and Friends'
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138th Boonville-Oneida County Fair Opens Tuesday
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Kyle Rudolph on Giving Back and the Business of Football
Kyle Rudolph on Altru's $20M raised, NFL's 18th game, private equity explained, and sports betting integrity.
Kyle Rudolph on Giving Back and the Business of Football
Kyle Rudolph on Altru's $20M raised, NFL's 18th game, private equity explained, and sports betting integrity.
Max Muncy ties Ron Cey in Dodger home run history
Max Muncy was the hero for the second time over the Dodgers’ last five games, smashing a two-run home run against Zack Wheeler to make the difference in a 2-1 win on Tuesday. Muncy continues to climb the franchise home run list, as his blast on Tuesday was the 228th home run hit as a […]
Top 5 Reasons to Participate in the 2026 Health Benefits Survey This Year
Member News It’s hard to believe but this year is the 28th year that Greater Rochester Chamber has conducted our annual Health Benefits Survey! Like all of our HR benchmarking surveys, this survey is only open to Corporate and Partner members for participation once a year. We know how important it is for members to…
UFC Freedom 250 Fails to Knock Out The Ratings
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) If UFC fans wanted one image to say, “Hey, Paramount+ is crushing it with their UFC rights deal,” I could provide that image. Here it is: (Reminder: this is my creation of the Nielsen Top 30, since Nielsen doesn’t combine the lists or include sports. I take all three lists and combine them. Some streaming TV shows probably have higher ratings than many of the films on this list.) Look at that! UFC Freedom 250 is number one! It topped the Nielsen “Top 30” list for shows and films that made the top ten the week of 15-June. So if you’re a UFC fan or supporter of Paramount+, that’s the good news for you this week. This program topped the ratings charts for one week. Everything else is bad news, or at least a huge caveat to that story, which I’ll explain today in the first part of this week’s Streaming Ratings Report—for the weeks of 8-June and 15-June—which is a double issue since I’ve been writing on a bunch of topics recently. UFC Freedom 250 is one of the biggest streaming events of the year, and super relevant to Paramount+’s strategy, so it merited its own article. Let’s dive in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of June 8th to June 21st 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Check Out My Interview on UFC 250 at MMA Draw After you read this article, if you want even more thoughts on UFC and Paramount-Skydance/Paramount+, I did a written interview with MMA Draw. They asked me to answer some questions about UFC Freedom 250, and I was happy to chat with them. Find it here: [ The MMA Draw Newsletter Did Paramount really overpay for the UFC? What the data tells us so far If you know the history of American television, you also know that combat sports is often a leading indicator of the future… Read more a day ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Nate Wilcox and Zach Arnold ](https://www.themmadraw.com/p/did-paramount-really-overpay-for?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) I never thought I’d need a combat sports newsletter in my life, but the good folks at MMA Draw publish an excellent one on UFC, MMA, pro wrestling, boxing and more, analyzing both the sports themselves and the politics, economics and antitrust issues that impact them. Check the article and their newsletter out! Paramount+ Has Its Best Sporting Event of All Time…But Was It Worth It? Before we look at the UFC Freedom 250 data in particular, let’s talk about what we can’t say. Namely, let’s start with the lack of comparisons. First off, I’d love to put a chart out comparing this fight to past UFC fights on Paramount+…but we don’t have the data. This is the first time we’ve gotten Nielsen data about a Paramount+ UFC fight. As far as I can tell, Paramount provided data for the first fight, but it was a proprietary datecdote (saying it had “an average minute audience” of 5 million “views”) and then, for two fights, we got the linear viewership numbers when they aired on CBS, but no streaming data. Everything else was crickets. We also can’t compare this fight to other fights/combat sports on streaming, in particular the MMA and boxing, because Netflix also didn’t use Nielsen to track those events, opting for TVision and VideoAmp, respectively. (This isn’t Paramount’s fault, but does still suck.) We also can’t compare to UFC’s fights that used to be on ESPN+, since we don’t have any data for that, plus Disney+ didn’t have marquee fights. The comparisons would not be apples-to-apples. Can we compare to past Pay-Per-View fights? Absolutely not. The comparisons would absolutely NOT be apples-to-apples. That didn’t stop Paramount+, though, who bragged that their UFC events have reached drastically more people than past PPV fights. Duh. Sorry, but I gotta make this point again. A basic tenet of economics is that the cheaper something becomes, the more people consume or buy it. That’s Econ 101. (Sometimes pundits call things “Econ 101” that are actually like Econ 210 or even PhD-level economics, but no, this is really like first or second class basic economics.) Yet I still see one analytics firm consistently say that more people watch films on streaming than PVOD proves streaming which means that the streaming window is more valuable than the PVOD window. No, it’s not! Same thing here. Pay-Per-View events back in the day could be really, really, really expensive! So whole groups of people pitched in to buy them. That increased the perceived value of, say, the Mike Tyson fight. Or a UFC numbered event. So yes, the fact that Paramount+ makes numbered UFC fights essentially “free” if you’re already a Paramount+ member means consumption will go up. Obviously. Same for Netflix and their boxing matches. They’re talking about fights that used to cost consumers, in some cases, $50 in 1996…which is over $100 in today’s dollars. Over 1.6 million people paid that to watch the Tyson-Holyfield fight! Again, streaming is essentially “free”. Or $10 to $20, depending on what streamer we’re talking about and what tier you’re on. No wonder more people are “watching”. (Plus, Nielsen’s out-of-home viewing also helps these numbers.) UFC Freedom 250 Did Well…But I Have A Lot of Worries So what can we compare the fights to? Well, the good news is Nielsen put out that the fight averaged 7.0 million viewers for UFC Freedom 250, which is a solid number for a fight. We also know the length, at roughly 4 and a half hours. (I saw different run times, but this seems to be the consensus considering it started at 8 pm, had a delay and then finished after midnight on the East Coast. If you assume a shorter run time, then yes, the total hours viewed would go down.) That means I have the two numbers needed to add this to my Nielsen database. And then…I can compare this viewership to the NFL: And, uh, not great. But also within striking distance, mainly because the runtime for this event was so long. I’d also add that this event had viewership equal to a regular season NFL game on streaming, but if anything, it was more comparable to an NFL playoff or Super Bowl-esque event. And you can compare viewership to the top football games on broadcast, cable and streaming, and it’s not impressive at all: We can also compare it to other sports that week, including the NBA Finals and start of the World Cup: Again, not great. The NBA generated roughly four times as many average viewers each game for its NBA Finals. The World Cup has similarly big numbers. Also, that’s just a tiny fraction of the 25 most watched sporting events each week. The NBA, NHL and FIFA World Cup had many, many more games racking up hours. We could also compare this to other streaming programs to get an idea of “is this a good investment?” and here is how it ranks compared to other top Paramount+ programs: The worry here? Well, unlike scripted programming, which has rewatchability, older fights/sporting events have very little library value. Very, very few people are rewatching these fights, especially years from now. Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers. Then, in their quarterly earnings report, they only ended up with 700K subs. Not great! They claimed they dropped lower-value international subscribers, but that’s why I tend to discount subscriber additions when they’re leaked to the press.1 I expect we may see a bump again for UFC Freedom 250, but I’d caution using subscriber growth so soon after these events to judge the success, since new subs with high churn (see Peacock) aren’t great either. Also, analysts often want to attribute all subscriber growth to their favorite/pet show, and that just doesn’t make sense. The biggest caveat for UFC Freedom 250 and Paramount’s very first UFC marquee event is that these could be high watermarks for the sport. UFC Freedom 250 had an incredible amount of earned media coverage compared to most UFC fights. I mean, it had wall-to-wall national news coverage in the lead up to the event. (The first fight also had a lot of promotion from Paramount since it was first.) Other fights could reach this bar—say the Conor McGregor return to the Octagon—but they’ll be fewer and far between. Was This Deal Worth It? All to ask: is this Paramount deal worth it? In this case, I think the UFC Freedom 250 numbers are more distracting than helpful. This fight did well and compares well to other top sporting events. But we know that the first marquee event was at least a third smaller, if Paramount’s own data is to be believed. And it’s likely the other fights are much, much, much smaller. And then you get to the paycheck that Paramount-Skydance paid. FIFA’s World Cup cost about the same for Fox, but clearly generated multiples more total viewership. (Though it’s only every four years.) The NBA is much more expensive, but until the playoffs, they likely didn’t pay for itself. Even still, Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video likely overpaid. So, in that context, the NBA may be an overpay that makes the UFC look not so bad. But two overpays don’t make an underpay, to paraphrase the old cliché about wrongs and rights. And looking at UFC Freedom 250 as the likely ceiling of MMA on Paramount+, Paramount-Skydance likely paid too much. Share 1 I would love regular reports on subscriber additions by programs, but as is, it’s mostly leaked or rumored in haphazard ways.
Give Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 a Go in Its PS5 Beta Next Month
Full open beta runs 28th Aug - 1st Sep
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Grambling Legends Sports Hall of Fame Inducts Eight into 2026 Class
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The Mac Speaks: ‘We’ll Be Back!‘
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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.
Neutrino Day draws crowds to Lead for free science festival
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Brewers' Late Draft Pick Has Confident Message
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Aaron Boone Provides Insight On Yankees Drafting Andy Pettitte’s Son
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ETSU’s Michael Harpster drafted by Yankees in seventh round
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18th annual Neutrino Day brings free science activities and researchers to Lead
10 PM KOTA Territory News - Saturday
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The event returned for its 18th year with various activities and speaker sessions for the public
Neutrino Day returns to Lead Saturday with free science festival
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RI falls to 48th in CNBC’s annual business friendliness rankings; Mass. is 15th
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