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Valley State Prison hosts wellness fair

Valley State Prison in Chowchilla recently hosted a health and wellness fair. The event brought together 13 information booths.

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Sep 29 • 9:38 AM EDT • Health • cdcr.ca.gov
Ostrander business shutting its doors this weekend

An Ostrander business has announced it will be permanently shutting its doors this weekend.

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Sep 28 • 7:01 PM EDT • Business • kaaltv.com
How Taxing AI Could Save Jobs

Advice for policymakers and large employers, who will be enlisted in minimizing job losses.

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Sep 28 • 12:36 PM EDT • Business • chicagobooth.edu
Netflix’s #1 Show Is a Reboot Fans Say Actually Gets it Right

Netflix’s #1 show is getting rave reviews from viewers, including longtime fans of the original. Find out more here.

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Sep 28 • 12:08 PM EDT • Entertainment • purewow.com
PS5-exclusive Marvel’s Wolverine now boots on PC, Demon’s Souls reaches 40–50 FPS

KyTyPS5 development has produced two new demonstrations covering both compatibility and performance. Marvel's Wolverine can already reach its menu, while Demon's Souls now runs at up to around 50 FPS.

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Sep 28 • 10:24 AM EDT • Technology • videocardz.com
Your 2026 MLB Wild Card Series announcing schedule

Major League Baseball revealed the television schedule and scenarios for the 2026 postseason’s Wild Card Series on Sunday. Details have since emerged about the announcing crews that will call the games across NBC platforms. As was the case during the regular season, local analysts will be in the booth to give each broadcast a familiar…

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Sep 28 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Free Health Education And Local Shopping Come Together Thursday At Sartell Community Center With Giveaways And Chances To Win Norsemen Tickets

Thursday night at Sartell Community Center, local women are gathering for free health education, local shopping, and wellness booths all in one place.

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Sep 28 • 6:52 AM EDT • Health • wjon.com
Hackers crack PS3 bootloader, opening path to custom firmware on Slim and Super Slim consoles

PS3 researchers have recovered a real lv0ldr per-console body key by glitching the Cell processor's SPU, potentially opening a path toward full CFW on later Slim and Super Slim consoles.

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Sep 27 • 9:43 AM EDT • Technology • videocardz.com
Israel’s election should be decided by Israelis, not American politicians

When Israelis enter the voting booth, they will have plenty to consider: security, the economy, religion and state, the judicial system, the conduct of the war, and the failures of October 7.

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Sep 27 • 2:11 AM EDT • Politics • jpost.com
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Desman Stephens must be dismissed from USC football program

Desman Stephens' lack of personal remorse reflects the larger lack of accountability in Lincoln Riley's program. Now Riley must boot him off the team

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Sep 26 • 11:51 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Tulsa Health Department's Food Safety Measures Protect More than One Million People at the Tulsa State Fair

TULSA, OKLA.– [September 25, 2026] – The Tulsa Health Department (THD) is preparing to protect the health of more than one million attendees at the Tulsa State Fair, ensuring fairgoers can enjoy their favorite foods without fear of contracting a foodborne illness. With more than 200 food booths to inspect, THD’s dedicated team is working […]

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Sep 25 • 2:47 PM EDT • Health • tulsa-health.org
Darrell Waltrip’s Former Colleague Sends Well Wishes After Sad Health Update

Larry McReynolds, who once stood alongside Darrell Waltrip in the NASCAR on FOX broadcast booth for nearly two decades, is sending his former colleague well wishes after an unfortunate health update.On Wednesday, it was revealed that Waltrip has been diagnosed with Frontotemporal Degeneration (FTD) complicated by possible Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Waltrip’s family believes it […] The post Darrell Waltrip’s Former Colleague Sends Well Wishes After Sad Health Update appeared first on

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Sep 24 • 8:17 PM EDT • Health • sports.yahoo.com
Local business celebrates 30 years of bringing Mexican Western wear to north Georgia

Boots may be her business, but selling her culture is her passion.

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Sep 24 • 7:10 PM EDT • Business • wsbtv.com
First in entrepreneurial excellence: FSU celebrates local businesses at inaugural Impact Awards Gala

The Entrepreneurial Impact Awards Gala provided a formal night out for Fayetteville’s business community. The event took place at the Rudolph Jones Student Center on Thursday, Sept. 10. Photo by GFBJ. Fayetteville State University (FSU) and the Fayetteville-Cumberland Regional Entrepreneur and Business HUB (FSU HUB) came together to celebrate Fayetteville’s business community. The two organizations rolled out the blue carpet at the Rudolph Jones Student Center for their inaugural Entrepreneurial Impact Awards Gala held on Thursday, Sept. 10.The gala honored outstanding entrepreneurs and business leaders who demonstrate excellence, foster growth and inspire the next generation of innovators within the FSU and broader business community.FSU HUB Director Dr. Tamara Colvin was able to highlight that this new milestone was a great way to show local success stories, not just tell.“That one-stop shop that’s across the street, we never promised that everyone would be successful, but what we did promise was access. Four years ago, we opened up an entire ecosystem: counseling, capital, contracts, connections, certifications,” shared Colvin. “I want to thank the judges who took up hard work for choosing tonight’s honorees. That’s never an easy task when the whole region is full of people worth recognizing at the HUB. We practice what we preach: Res Non Verba: Deeds, not words.” A few of the inaugural recipients of the awards shared their statements with the Greater Fayetteville Business Journal.STUDENT ENTREPRENEUR Boolean Wiring LLC, Esean Rose, owner “I am truly honored and grateful to receive the Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award. I want to thank Fayetteville State University, the judges and everyone who has supported me throughout this journey. This award represents more than recognition for where Boolean Wiring is today. To me, it represents the potential of where we are going. I am excited about growing the company, creating jobs, serving our community and building something that can have an impact far beyond Fayetteville.”VETERAN-OWNED BUSINESS SpeediPrint Inc., Dazrell Fleming, owner “I’m honored to accept the Veteran-Owned Business Award on behalf of the entire SpeediPrint team. A special thank you to Dr. Tamara Colvin for creating this opportunity through the Entrepreneurial Impact Awards, and to my mentor, Mr. Julius Cook, whose guidance during the Boots to Business program truly paid off. This recognition reflects the hard work of my staff and the trust our customers place in us every day — I’m grateful to serve this community and excited for what’s ahead.”MULTI-GENERATIONAL EXCELLENCE BJL Construction, Cleopatrice Robinson, president“This award is especially meaningful because we are more than a business — we are the continuation of a family legacy built through faith, hard work, craftsmanship, integrity and service. I gratefully acknowledge my grandfather, Deacon Benjamin “BJ” Lacy, Jr., whose example helped establish the foundation upon which our family’s entrepreneurial legacy was built. I also honor my father, the late Dr. Wilson Lacy, former president of BJL Construction. Working alongside him was both an opportunity and an education. He taught me that a business’s reputation had to be earned on every project through honesty, excellence, quality and service. As the current president, I recognize that I did not arrive at this moment alone. I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me, and I am sustained by those who continue to walk beside me.”MICRO BUSINESS Maybridge Development, LLC, Latisha Perkins, owner “I accept this award with so much pride and a whole lot of gratitude. First and foremost, I want to thank my higher power for continuing to guide me and give me the strength to keep going.When I first started this business and moved here to Fayetteville, I had no clue what I was getting myself into. This business has turned me every which way but loose, and I definitely had some moments where I was ready to just pack it up and head back to Georgia. I want to thank my Maybridge team, my village, The Hub, the FCEDC team and all the people and organizations here in Fayetteville who have believed in me and Maybridge and helped us get here.”COMMUNITY IMPACT Greater Life of Fayetteville, Georgeanna Pinckney, CEO & executive director “We are deeply honored to be recognized by FSU and the FSU HUB with the Community Impact Award presented to Greater Life of Fayetteville. I am especially grateful for this recognition because it tells us that you see what we do – and, more importantly, why we do what we do. Our commitment is to serve, empower and create meaningful opportunities for youth and families in our community. Most importantly, we give God first and foremost all the glory. We thank Him for giving us the wisdom, strength, vision and unity to continue doing this great work in our community.” SMALL BUSINESS OF THE YEAR Crowder Trucking LLC, Carlos & Valerie Morrison Crowder, owners “I want to thank God for always keeping his hands on Crowder Trucking. I’m truly honored and grateful to receive the Small Business Award from the FSU HUB. Running a small business is not always easy. There are long days, difficult decisions, unexpected challenges and plenty of moments when you have to remind yourself why you started. But there are also incredible moments like this one that remind you that the hard work is worth it,” shared Valerie Morrison Crowder.OTHER WINNERS INCLUDE: Alumni Entrepreneur - The Two-Six Project, Grant Bennett, founder and president Fayetteville State University Faculty Award - Dr. Christy Swinson Emerging Business Award - Genuine Luxury Beauty Salon Legacy Award - Gillis Farms Inc. Industry Titan of the Year - Eaton Corporation Entrepreneur of the Year- Let Me Cater to You, Chef Judith Cage, owner

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Sep 24 • 3:47 PM EDT • Business • bizfayetteville.com
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Delta Peanut receives $5 million loan to continue operations

Peanut farmers in Northeast Arkansas and in the Missouri Bootheel have potentially staved off a disaster. A $5 million loan has been allocated from the Governor’s Quick Action Closing Fund...

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Sep 24 • 3:30 PM EDT • Business • talkbusiness.net
VIDEO AVAILABLE: Reporter Boot Camps, In-Person Visits, and Science Comms Training - Best Practices Webinar
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Sep 24 • 12:40 PM EDT • Science • newswise.com
"It genuinely breaks my heart"- Confusion and frustration reign as gaming communities react to Xbox's drastic restructuring this week

Rare, Obsidian, Age of Empires, and Ninja Theory communities are reckoning with the fallout from Xbox's latest restructuring.

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Sep 24 • 12:38 PM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Ryan Murphy’s ‘Glee’ Reboot Just Hit a Major Milestone

The 'Glee' reboot is looking more real by the minute, and Ryan Murphy just gave fans a major update. Here’s what he revealed about the script and the original cast.

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Sep 24 • 11:09 AM EDT • Entertainment • purewow.com
'Forgotten Island,' 'Primetime,' 'Heart of the Beast' top new films

'Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty,' 'Deep in the Heart 2: Texas Rivers,' and 'Charlie Harper' are also being released

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Sep 24 • 7:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • houstonchronicle.com
Apple says software update to fix iPhone 18 Pro rebooting bug is coming next week

On Monday, we reported on an issue where iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max users were seeing their...

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Sep 24 • 2:43 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
Will Simmons, Smothers play for Texas against Volunteers?

AUSTIN (KXAN) – As Texas football gets set for their SEC opener against Tennessee, they hope to head into Knoxville at full health. The Longhorns got a bit of a scare in their final non-conference game against UTSA when defensive standout Colin Simmons exited and was seen in a walking boot. Now, it looks like […]

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Sep 23 • 9:04 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Showcase your research at Science is Wonderful! 2027

Science is Wonderful! is the annual science fair organised by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA). It invites EU-funded researchers from around the world to come to Brussels and explain their work to children and youngsters. MSCA is calling on its fellows and alumni to apply and present their research project to over 4,000 pupils coming from all corners of Belgium to see science come alive. The 2027 edition will take place in Brussels, from 17 to 19 March 2027. Teams of researchers will showcase their work at booths through live experiments, interactive presentations, floor games, physical challenges, and many other

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Sep 23 • 7:31 AM EDT • Science • euneighbourseast.eu
Harrisburg LaunchBox, Rotary Veterans Initiative partner for business bootcamp

The Harrisburg LaunchBox, housed under the Lambert Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Penn State Harrisburg, has partnered with the Rotary Veterans Initiative to host a six-week, veteran-focused business bootcamp, beginning in October.

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Sep 22 • 4:57 PM EDT • Business • psu.edu
‘Halo’ to move under Call of Duty publisher as Xbox announces layoffs

The cuts affect Halo Studios, other first-party developers, and management and central functions within Xbox, according to an announcement posted this morning by Matt Booty, Xbox’s chief content officer. The company is now about 75 percent finished with a restructuring announced earlier this year.

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Sep 22 • 10:38 AM EDT • Technology • washingtonpost.com
How lip-syncing to AI let Forced Entertainment ‘play the game of theatre’

Today we have a fascinating piece by long-time Forced Entertainment fan Ben Kulvichit, speaking to Tim Etchells about their latest show Cold Sweat, how they are integrating lip-sync and AI voices into their work, the question of ‘authenticity’ on stage, and how lip-sync has even opened the door for them to make “something a little bit like drama”. This piece is a paid partnership with the Southbank Centre, where you can see Cold Sweat next month – we’re very grateful to the Southbank Centre for their ongoing support for Exeunt. Holly Williams ‘It was immediately interesting and uncanny’ **By Ben Kulvichit** “Is the microphone on?” So goes one of the opening lines of Signal to Noise, delivered by a human performer lip-syncing to an AI-generated voice. The voice is American, cheery but sluggish, slowed down into a gelatinous drawl. It repeats ad infinitum in a farce of stuckness; an answer never materialises. I find myself asking the same question as I hop on a Google Meet call with Tim Etchells, the artistic director of Forced Entertainment. We spend five or ten minutes frowning at each other, muting and unmuting, me gesticulating in semaphore into my webcam, checking if I am coming through now, restarting the laptop. To Etchells, I appear exaggeratedly mouthing words, my voice missing. In this gloopy purgatory of broken communication, life imitates art imitates life imitates art. We try a Zoom instead. Forced Entertainment, the pioneering British theatre company who have been at the avant-garde of performance since the 1980s, turned an interesting artistic corner with Signal to Noise, created on the occasion of their 40th anniversary. The whole performance employed this lip-sync technique to AI voices; on the face of it a left-field move from a company whose identity has long been grounded in the earthy, immediate presences of its performers and its unassuming, low-tech approach to theatricality. The technique, however, turned out to provide the company with a “rich new seam” of artistic enquiry, and has now spawned a trilogy of works. The second instalment, Cold Sweat, plays at Sheffield Theatres, Southbank Centre, and Lancaster Arts in October, while the third part, Everything Must Go, has been touring in Europe and is slated to come to the UK in 2027. As is often the case with Forced Entertainment shows, the main conceit for this work didn’t arrive until quite late. They were “four or five weeks into rehearsals for Signal to Noise,” Etchells recalls, and getting nowhere. Away from rehearsals, he had been playing around with feeding “weird texts” to AI voices to see how they would cope with them – “basically for my own amusement” – and was compelled by the uniformly “serviceable, benign, good-natured” tone they would read in, no matter how poetic, fractured or experimental the writing. On a hunch, he brought some examples into rehearsals and the performers gave lip-syncing a go. “It was immediately interesting and uncanny,” he recalls, with the performers having to deal in the moment with the problem of mapping themselves onto another artificial ‘performer,’ which itself was dealing with the problem of a very human text. “Almost all the writing for these projects would be useless to us unless it was done in this way,” says Etchells. “We wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s too poetic. It’s too fictional. It’s too tangled.” But exploring lip-syncing along to the text has opened “an enormous reservoir of ways of thinking about writing and performing.” Subscribe to Exeunt, and get two in-depth pieces on theatre a week, direct to your inbox Subscribe Forced Entertainment have long been sifting through the detritus of popular culture, from daytime TV to end-of-the-pier vaudeville, magic acts and clown shows, to find frameworks for their own unusual entertainments. Lip-syncing, then, makes sense for them to experiment with. As a mode of performance, it’s wired into popular consciousness through pop stars trying to convince stadium audiences of their liveness, or those same voices as channeled through the made-up lips of contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, or movie dialogue spreading virally through the host bodies of TikTok users. For Etchells, lip-syncing is often about “approaching real voices and trying to take on their aura,” subsuming that original human presence into yours. “There’s a very basic, elemental sort of theatre magic to it, produced in this very easy way.” This broad approach resonates with instances of lip-syncing within contemporary performance, too. In works like Re-Member Me and Showmanism, performance artist Dickie Beau acts as a kind of spirit medium for archival recordings (this process of re-membering – as in, giving corporeal form to voices – relies on his masterfully precise actor’s technique), while Frankie Thompson is similarly possessed by a host of characters ranging from a nine-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg to Cliff Richards, all of whom she finds compellingly nauseating, in the exorcism ritual that is her latest show, Horrible Things. What’s different about Forced Entertainment’s use of lip-syncing is that here, there is no original presence to be channeled. The performers are instead taking on what Etchells describes as “the voices of nobody,” or rather the “phantasmic, aggregated echoes” of the many many voices on whose data the AI has been trained, and which are now conjuring into existence words they never actually said. There is a sort of mournful, empty quality to these voices, having “washed up” far away from the people they originally belonged to, to find themselves in stranger’s mouths listing objects, wondering if anyone can hear them and glitching in interminable loops. There is a cold, sad anonymity to it all. Etchells remarks that occasionally the software company he used has notified him that particular people are withdrawing their voices from the platform, instructing him to cease use of those voices. Using these technologies in performance certainly brings up ethical questions around digital rights, consent, identity and ownership, although in the grand scheme of things, Etchells is fairly blasé about it: of all the purposes someone’s voice might be put to without their knowledge, “an avant-garde performance is probably the least of their worries.” [ ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) [ Frankie Thompson: How I manage my own ‘horrible things’ at the Edinburgh Fringe ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) Exeunt · Aug 25 [ Read full story ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) For the performers, though, lip-syncing to these strange, artificial voices is an odd task, requiring them to bend their live, human presence into the shapes produced by machines. Politically, it mirrors processes that are already at play in the continued computational automation of human life. Etchells brings up James Bridle’s writings on new technologies as a reference point: one example Bridle gives is of “chaotic storage”, a logistics technique employed by Amazon fulfilment centres whereby items are stored not according to traditional methods of categorisation or alphabetisation, but in a way that an algorithm determines to produce the most efficient routes for ‘picking’ based on customer purchase patterns. This appears completely random and incomprehensible to humans, with paddling pools sitting next to USB sticks sitting next to blowtorches, and so for the warehouse workers, the process of picking items becomes completely reliant on technology which tells them where to go. Our world is increasingly being designed not with humans in mind, but rather machines. As Etchells puts it, “technology malforms the space, and then you end up having to live in it.” Initially, Forced Entertainment tried their best to live in the world of machines: “I was in the it’s-got-to-be-perfect school of lip-sync,” says Etchells. But with their aesthetic being so tied to the failing act, the slipping mask, the shoddy costume, “it’s no surprise really that that didn’t last.” Instead, the performers got to enjoy being late for a line, or playing games with each other, “stealing” each other’s voices. Etchells compares it to the principles of ventriloquism, in which a free-floating voice unattached to a body is fundamentally discomforting and “sort of traumatic”. That discomfort is equally as alluring to Forced Entertainment as the satisfaction of precision, the pretence of authenticity only interesting if shown to be a pretence. Lip-sync has also opened up new avenues for the company. Having been allergic all their lives to Plays-with-a-capital-P, with Cold Sweat Forced Entertainment find themselves approaching something a little bit like drama. Rather than the presentational arena of Signal to Noise’s open white stage, Cold Sweat places us more decisively in a “fictional locale”: what appears to be “the aftermath of some disastrous party or backyard drinking binge” where three figures – family members, or neighbours, perhaps – are the last ones standing. “It’s all quite acrimonious and accusatory, everyone’s talking over each other.” For Etchells, this more fictional mode is “a door that we’ve never been able to open. We’ve just never really gone there.” Perhaps it is the technique of lip-syncing, an extra buffer of mediation, that allows them to venture away from the here-and-now without feeling that they have to commit to the “psychological claptrap” that comes along with acting; to be able to “play the game of theatre, without getting one’s hands too dirty.” As I wonder how else the impulses behind Forced Entertainment’s work have changed over time, it occurs to me that over the last ten years of new creations, with the exception of If All Else Fails, the company’s performers haven’t ever spoken on stage: there were two shows without any language at all, Out of Order and Under Bright Light, and then this trilogy of lip-sync works. Etchells agrees it’s a shift away from earlier productions, that were so often about “the actual voices of the performers and their actual presences. We had a lot of money, in some ways, on an authentic approach to what it might mean to speak on the stage.” But this sense of authentic presence itself had a fakeness to it; these days, Etchells can’t stand that mode of being onstage where performers “are here to be cheeky and witty versions of themselves. I don’t want to be charmed.” Pulling back into a more anonymous space has resulted in works that feel slightly sharper-edged, more brutal in a way. “All of these shows are post-Brexit, post-Trump, post-truth, post-everything,” Etchells notes. Speech, charisma, authenticity – these things feel politically loaded, and perhaps warmth and openness just don’t feel like the right tools to reflect the world we’re living in. “It feels like the space is closing down, and we’re trying to deal with the fact that the system, the structure that you’re in, is more oppressive and more powerful. It probably always was, but I think we’re just more tuned to it now.” Yet even without their voices, the performers’ distinctive presences – ones that many audiences have followed around for years, if not decades – still, inevitably, shine through as they physically navigate whatever unending task the system of the piece has set for them. They’re still trying to keep up with the onslaught of text, still running about, changing costumes, moving stuff around. The human is always stuck in the teeth of the machine, jamming the smooth, frictionless cheeriness of the not-real, gesticulating silently, trying desperately to communicate. Cold Sweat is at Sheffield Theatres, 2 to 3 October; Southbank Centre, London, 9 to 10 October; Lancaster Arts, 14 October [ ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) [ Exeunt recommends... the best autumn theatre ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) Exeunt · Sep 16 [ Read full story ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) This piece was paid for by the Southbank Centre. Such support helps Exeunt to keep publishing the most interesting writing, about the most exciting theatre. Interested in partnering with Exeunt? Visit our Advertise with Exeunt page, where you can get more information, download an advertising pack, and find our contact details.

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Sep 22 • 5:02 AM EDT • Entertainment • exeuntmagazine.substack.com
Doc Rivers, retired from coaching, steps back into TV booth for NBC Sports

Rivers last worked in the booth for ESPN/ABC before leaving to coach the Milwaukee Bucks in 2022.

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Sep 21 • 5:17 PM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
Face ID bug is causing some iPhone 18 Pro models to malfunction

Unlocking Face ID-protected apps is causing some iPhone 18 Pro units to freeze and reboot.

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Sep 21 • 4:01 PM EDT • Technology • phonearena.com
‘Voices Unlocked’ fills St. Andrew’s Hall with science, song and support

The second annual “Voices Unlocked” event was held at St. Andrew’s Hall on Sept. 17. With its live music, resource booths, and speakers from the scientific community, the event aimed

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Sep 21 • 3:15 PM EDT • Science • thesouthend.wayne.edu
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Drake, Don Toliver Flip Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas" in 'FOMO' Film

Drake takes his Ella Langley fandom into the booth for 'FOMO.'

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Sep 21 • 11:36 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Academy Sports wants to turn Western wear into a bigger business

After expanding Ariat beyond work boots and into apparel, the sports retailer is giving the brand dedicated spaces as demand for Western and lifestyle products grows.

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Sep 21 • 9:30 AM EDT • Business • retailbrew.com
Punch and Judy Man's treasure trove up for auction

The collection features puppets, booths and props amassed by entertainer Frank Turvey.

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Sep 21 • 8:38 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
New TV shows to watch this week: Tune in to 'Youth' on HBO, stream 'Slow Horses' on Apple TV and revisit 'Gilmore Girls' on Hulu

"Slow Horses" is back, "A Different World" gets a reboot and Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson team up in "Brothers."

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Sep 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Whether you like it or not, celebrities have an impact on politics

The global groundswell of support for Macklemore’s pro-Palestinian advocacy serves to remind us that maybe celebrity activism really is that deep after all, writes Cheek’s Varsha Yajman. Subscribe In the last week, publications, podcasts, and influencers that have either rarely or never spoken about Israel’s genocide in Palestine have flooded my social feed. And it was all because singer Ed Sheeran and his team dropped Macklemore as his opener for saying “Free Palestine” on stage. Millions raised, millions speaking up in support of Palestine - all of this confirming my view that, whether I like it or not, celebrities do have an impact on political outcomes. And this is interesting when much of the time celebrity activism can induce an eye roll - I love to see Charli XCX pointing out a Palestinian flag in the crowd, but it’s hardly the bold symbol of allyship that some fans would make it out to be. But there’s a line between healthy scepticism and outright dismissal - and I’d argue that the latter lets the rich and powerful off far too easily. For instance, actress Jennifer Lawrence, once outspoken about her political views, last year told The Times she no longer believes celebrities have a role to play: “Celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.” While it’s a narrative she might find comfort in, it simply is not true. Grassroots movements often garner worldwide attention when celebrities and other high-profile spokespeople bring a mainstream platform to their causes. And this frustrates me. We have had three years of a live-streamed genocide. Macklemore himself has been calling for a Free Palestine long before he booked the Sheeran concert. Yet it’s the high-profile fallout of the last week that finally seems to have made saying “Free Palestine” socially acceptable in the mainstream. It feels like the collective mood has shifted, where calling out censorship is now the obvious response - not just the business of ‘radical’ activists. To recap, Sheeran’s decision followed an ultimatum from billionaire Robert Kraft, owner of Gillette Stadium, one of the venues Sheeran was scheduled to perform at: either drop Macklemore as your opener after only two of the eight scheduled shows, or you do not play at any stadiums. Sheeran’s disappointing decision to stand on the side of billionaire-led censorship has ultimately seen a surge in support for Free Palestine. It began when all his openers and his backing band pulled out of Sheeran’s tour, in solidarity with Macklemore and with the Palestinian cause. It was met with an uproar of support from those who had never or barely touched politics before: influencers lip-syncing to Macklemore’s music, singers like Jack Antonoff singing “Free Palestine,” and publications and podcasts standing with Macklemore. And finally, we saw material support: Macklemore donated $1 million in profits from his two nights opening for Sheeran’s tour to several Palestinian aid groups and called for Sheeran and Kraft to match it, which they have since promised to do. We’ve also seen children’s entertainer Ms Rachel follow suit with a $1 million donation to Palestinian aid, and publication PopBase has donated $10,000. Anera, a humanitarian aid group working in Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan, said donations since Macklemore’s announcement were more than triple this month’s daily average. The group’s Instagram page has also gained 8,000 followers. Macklemore far from the first celebrity to speak and participate in politics in the Western World. In 1924, singer Al Jolson supported Republican candidate Warren G. Harding for president, and decades later, celebrities such as Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, and Aretha Franklin voiced their public support for the Civil Rights movement. More recently, in the lead-up to the 2024 US election, ‘The Daily Show with Trevor Noah partnered with the organisation Power the Polls to recruit poll workers to address shortages- a problem disproportionately affecting voters of colour. The campaign saw 170,000 new sign-ups - 35,000 of which came directly through the TV show’s link - resulting in the recruitment of 713,000 total poll workers that year, an almost three-fold increase on the organisation’s goal. Alongside recruiting workers, celebrities in the US (where voting in elections is not compulsory) have made a huge difference by calling for people to register to vote. Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024 saw over 400,000 visitors on the voter registration site within 24 hours of her Instagram post. In 2023, Swift had urged her fans to register, resulting in 35,000 new voter registrations. Similarly, Ariana Grande promoted voter registration in 2019 by setting up booths at concerts on the American leg of her tour, resulting in over 33,000 voters registering. And the same thing is happening closer to home. This year, musician Jack River successfully called for government action to ensure creatives in Australia do not have their work scraped by generative AI companies. Celebrity as the mediator between the punter and the politician Celebrity activism isn’t just a feel-good news story - research tells us it actually makes a difference. By directing attention to issues affecting the average person, like voting inaccessibility or a lack of action on a genocide, researchers Alfred Archer and Amanda Cawston state that “celebrities can play a useful bridging role between political elites and the people they represent”. Alternatively, in a world where talking about politics is “not cool,” or where people lack exposure or knowledge to engage with politics, celebrities can act as an educational resource or an entry point into the political world - when they speak up about an issue, their audience gets exposed to it. Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields festival is a perfect example. Rodrigo partnered with twelve organisations focused on women’s issues, such as reproductive rights. These organisations had stalls at the festival for people to meet them and were also featured heavily on social media, giving their issues global attention and raising $20 million for the organisations. We have also seen celebrities at award shows such as the Emmys wearing F*CK ICE pins, referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s treatment and detainment of people - generally people of colour. When celebrities speak up about political issues in public forums, they put the issue at the forefront of mainstream media, rally their supporters, and make it clear that, however much they disagree, the government cannot simply ignore it. Our over-reliance on celebrities versus our politicians As much as I love seeing my favourite celebrity use their platform for a good cause, there is an important question to ask: not whether celebrity activism is good or bad, but whether we should have to rely on celebrities. And the answer would, in an ideal world, be no. In an ideal world, or merely a just world, action on Palestine would’ve happened decades ago, climate change would be taken seriously, and most importantly, people would understand their democratic rights. However, that is not our reality. Only around 28 per cent of Australian Year 10 students reach proficiency in civics and citizenship. In the US, almost two-thirds of people under 30 say high school civics education didn’t prepare them to understand voting deadlines, how to research candidates, or how to vote by mail. When civics education is weak, our trust in these institutions and our understanding of change-making processes also decline. ​This is where celebrity steps in and becomes our main source of reliance. As Mary R. Connelly notes in _The Tartan, “_Celebrities will always be involved in campaigns in one form or another, but their presence is not what causes people to vote blindly. The lack of political engagement and literacy is what allows celebrities to wield their influence on the political sphere so impactfully.” About the author ​Varsha Yajman is the Digital Content Producer at Cheek Media. She is a youth advocate and lawyer with a background in climate litigation and is passionate about looking at the intersection between race, climate justice, and mental health. Thanks for reading Cheek Media Co. ! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share

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Sep 21 • 3:54 AM EDT • Politics • cheekmedia.substack.com
45th annual Health Fair and Expo brings free screenings to Mountain Home on Oct. 7

Twin Lakes area residents can get free health screenings, lab test vouchers and time with local providers on Wednesday, Oct. 7, when the Health Fair and Expo returns for its 45th year. Baxter Health and KTLO, Classic Hits and The Boot present the fair, which runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the gymnasium

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Sep 21 • 3:00 AM EDT • Health • mhobserver.com
Mental Health Awareness Month

Reboot Recovery members carry a banner in Thursday's mental health awareness walk through Princeton.

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Sep 20 • 9:41 PM EDT • Health • pdclarion.com
Charles Schwab Bank is making a big investment in Fort Worth entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Also, burger brand loyalty; Goodwill opening; rodeo boots up; Mansfield real estate; and more Tarrant County business happenings.

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Sep 20 • 3:56 PM EDT • Business • fortworthreport.org
More Bad News as Celtic Player Pictured in Protective Boot

There is more bad news for Celtic, following another defeat against the Rangers, as one player was pictured in a protective boot on Sunday.

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Sep 20 • 2:32 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
‘Resident Evil’ Reboot Shatters Franchise Record With $60 Million Opening Weekend

It’s also the biggest opening so far for director Zach Cregger, whose film “Weapons” was a breakout hit in 2025.

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Sep 20 • 12:31 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Storytelling Bootcamp: Shop Owner Fulfills Dream with Downtown Business

Whether it’s in an ice cream shop or a clothing store, Beth Kornick has always loved the retail industry.

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Sep 20 • 12:00 PM EDT • Business • dailyinterlake.com
Box Office: ‘Resident Evil’ Breaks Franchise Records With $60 Million Opening Weekend

“Weapons” director Zach Cregger has electrified the box office again, this time with his take on “Resident Evil.” His reboot of the ’90s zombie video game has collected $60 million in its opening week...

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Sep 20 • 10:42 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Business Ins and Outs | The Nest, Spice & Tea Merchants, Rita's Italian Ice and coffee shops open

Hub Bootery announces new location in Crown Point.

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Sep 20 • 8:15 AM EDT • Business • nwitimes.com
Laser Your Way Into Debug Mode On The RP2350

The RP2350 is actually a pretty secure chip, all things considered. It has secure boot, ARMv8’s TrustZone to split secure and non-secure execution, and you can permanently disable debug — the…

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Sep 19 • 10:00 PM EDT • Technology • hackaday.com
What are we doing? Apparently, rebooting 2017

Back to the present

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Sep 19 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Campaign to combine health care advocacy with civic engagement and voting comes to Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood

Young people face health care decisions shaped by policy. Vot-ER is working to connect health care experiences with civic engagement and voting.

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Sep 19 • 5:30 AM EDT • Health • whyy.org
😐 Neutral (19%)
From Shaun the Sheep to The Split Up: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

Aardman’s woolly hero reckons with a mysterious beast and Abi Morgan’s lawyers-in-love TV drama gets a Manchester-set reboot

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Sep 19 • 1:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • theguardian.com
Deep dive
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Kylian Mbappe Drops Nike for On Sponsorship Deal

Kylian Mbappe ended a 20-year Nike partnership Friday to join Roger Federer-backed On, taking equity in the brand as it launches football boots in 2027.

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Sep 19 • 12:59 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Olsen Stelzer building preserves Henrietta history while welcoming new business

The historic Olsen Stelzer Boot and Saddlery Building in Henrietta is getting a new chapter while preserving its connection to the community’s past.

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Sep 18 • 2:43 PM EDT • Business • newschannel6now.com
Political boot camps for women could redress gender imbalance

Immersive boot camps for women could be a way to overcome the stark gender imbalance in political leadership, according to new research that examined how to increase the political ambitions of talented ...

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Sep 17 • 7:40 AM EDT • Politics • phys.org
Google Home just became a power user’s paradise

Google Home MCP opens the smart home to every AI agent; Android 17 QPR1 and One UI 9 land the same week; Trash: the 39 toll booth for your light bulbs.

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Sep 17 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
Does 'Resident Evil' have a post-credit scene? Everything you need to know before watching.

Prepare yourself for this gory horror reboot.

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Sep 17 • 5:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • mashable.com
GLE partners with ACOLAP in Latin America

Strategic collaboration brings Global Leisure & Entertainment's international development expertise closer to a region with significant potential for the next generation of leisure and entertainment destinations

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Sep 17 • 3:49 AM EDT • Entertainment • blooloop.com
Xbox's Fable reboot was allowed a 10-year development because the RPG series is "vital to the DNA of the platform", developer Playground Games says

Fable survived its long development cycle because people inside Xbox think highly of the franchise.

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Sep 16 • 9:57 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Federal charges in Texas are part of broader Trump focus on noncitizen voting

Seven people in Texas who are not U.S. citizens have been charged with illegally voting in federal elections or falsely claiming citizenship.

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Sep 16 • 9:33 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
'Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!' review: A feel-good movie about grief

Rinko Kikuchi shines as a dancing widow lusty for her teacher.

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Sep 16 • 5:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • mashable.com
UAMS offers on-demand healthcare at XNA

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Northwest Regional Campus said Tuesday (Sept. 15) that it has installed a telehealth booth at Northwest Arkansas National Airport, giving XNA travelers, staff,...

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Sep 15 • 5:55 PM EDT • Business • talkbusiness.net
Ed Sheeran: Choice to boot Macklemore from tour 'not mine'

Ed Sheeran speaks out about his tour promoter's decision to drop Macklemore from the remaining dates of his Loop tour.

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Sep 15 • 5:54 PM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
Sneaker Politics x Timberland Premium 6-Inch Waterproof Boot Rodeo

Timberland's iconic Premium 6-Inch Waterproof Boot is getting two limited-edition releases with cowboy boot-inspired details from Sneaker Politics.

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Sep 15 • 2:14 PM EDT • Politics • wwd.com
Cliff Booth’s next act: Quentin Tarantino’s new novel arrives as David Fincher directs the sequel

Quentin Tarantino continues to expand his career as an author.

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Sep 15 • 7:46 AM EDT • Entertainment • seattletimes.com
Cliff Booth’s next act: Quentin Tarantino’s new novel arrives as David Fincher directs the sequel

Quentin Tarantino continues to expand his career as an author | WWL

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Sep 15 • 7:45 AM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
Cliff Booth’s next act: Quentin Tarantino’s new novel arrives as David Fincher directs the sequel

Quentin Tarantino continues to expand his career as an author | Talk Radio 1210 WPHT

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Sep 15 • 7:45 AM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
Cliff Booth’s next act: Quentin Tarantino’s new novel arrives as David Fincher directs the sequel

Quentin Tarantino continues to expand his career as an author | Newsradio 1140 WRVA

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Sep 15 • 7:45 AM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
Will Netflix’s Latest Horror Film Save Its Summer? And Introducing a New Data Source...

(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.) All month, I’ve been polling you, my readers, on how we think the summer’s biggest blockbusters will do when they eventually land on streaming, and I wanted to share the results. First up, how readers think The Odyssey will perform when it comes to Peacock... People are pretty bullish that The Odyssey will smash it for Peacock. I don’t know that it will have as much rewatchability as Wicked did for kids, but we’ll see. It is now Universal’s highest-grossing film of all time. One note: almost half of Christopher Nolan’s films weren’t available for streaming the week The Odyssey came to theaters, including some of his biggest films like Inception, Dunkirk, Tenet, Oppenheimer and Insomnia. If you did want to watch the others, Prime Video had Memento and The Dark Knight trilogy, HBO Max only had The Dark Knight trilogy (even though Warner Bros. produced most of Nolan’s films), Hulu had The Prestige and Interstellar, and Paramount+ had Interstellar. So you needed at least two streaming subscriptions to catch the rest. Warner Bros. whiffed right here. I know they have long term licensing deals, but they should have tried to get as many Nolan films on HBO Max for launch as possible. Here are the results for Spider-Man: Brand New Day: The audience is a bit more mixed on this one, with everyone agreeing Spider-Man will swing to a big opening, but not necessarily elite or best all time. On to this week’s issue. Netflix continues searching for a hit straight-to-streaming summer film and Lioness and Ted Lasso allow me to look at the difference between a “hit” and a ‘hit for them”. All that, plus new YA/teen melodramas on Prime Video and Netflix, the House of the Dragon finale, USA Network claims a big opening, more big NFL ratings, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. But we start with a fun new data announcement. Let’s dive right 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 August 3rd to August 9th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe A New Data Source: Reelgood’s Data on Content Libraries Here’s a fun new treat for you. Reelgood—an online service and app that lets users track where shows or films are streaming—is providing data every month for the Streaming Ratings Report on the size of each streamer’s catalogue, along with the new shows and films for each streamer. Yay! Previously, I had pulled “new shows on streamers premiering on the first of the month”: While I liked that data cut, it was a big wonky since it didn’t show all of the new shows or movies that came to a streamer each month. Instead, I would have preferred something like this from Reelgood’s annual report: And now we have it! I’m going to feature Reelgood’s data monthly, showing both total catalogue size and new shows and films appearing on the charts. That’s going to make these two cool new charts. First, here’s the size of various streamers’ film catalogues… (By the way, Reelgood offered to make the charts for me, but I like doing that task by hand to understand the data better.) They also provided data back to last year. Here’s the number of films timeline: And here are the new films on each streamer for the month prior to Aug: As I get used to this data, I plan to keep tinkering with how I display it, but I’m excited to feature it monthly. Today, I’m sharing the film charts; next issue, I’m going to feature TV shows by streamer. Now, in full disclosure, Reelgood is a sponsor of this little-newsletter-that-could. But in my constant quest to figure out what streamer various shows and films are on, I was already a Reelgood user before this sponsorship. I go to their website all the time, and their data is very accurate on where shows are (or have been). Plus, I’ve been sharing their weekly top ten lists for years now, pre-sponsorship. For me, this is a great win-win, since I get to amplify a service I love, and I get a cool new data source to play with. Now, normally folks don’t usually mention their sponsors directly, but as I wrote before, as I start featuring ads in my newsletter, I plan to be extremely open about who is sponsoring my writing so you can trust what I write. Television - Two Big Returning Shows Look Set to Take Over The Charts One key question when it comes to judging streaming shows is whether a show is a “hit” or a “hit for them”. To be clear, the former means a show that’s one of the top shows on streaming, no questions asked. The latter means a show is one of the biggest, for a given streamer. That distinction makes a big difference! It’s really good to be one of the biggest shows on a streamer; it’s much better to be the biggest on streaming, despite the size of a streamer. Because, as we’ve seen now, nearly every streamer—while lacking the number of subscribers or usage of Netflix—can make hit TV shows: Paramount released Landman, whose first and second seasons were among the top two TV shows the year they came out. HBO Max’s The Pitt’s second season is the biggest show of the year so far. Love Island USA was the top show in 2025 for Peacock. And, crucially for today’s discussion: Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in 2023, Ted Lasso was actually the top streaming show of the year according to Nielsen! So even Apple TV (formerly +) can make hit shows. It just doesn’t make them that often. And looking at the Nielsen charts this week, we have two prime candidates for this discussion: That’s right: Ted Lasso returned to Apple TV for its fourth season. Did it return in all its expected glory? Sure, though right now it’s still just a “hit for Apple TV”, but we’ll see how long it lasts on the charts. Its ten episodes are coming out weekly. (Smart choice, Apple!) Ted Lasso started out strong, actually making the Nielsen charts the week before new episodes dropped, which is a rare feat. (Shows like Stranger Things or Bridgerton have pulled that off. That’s terrific company to join!) On Nielsen, it opened to 14.4 million hours in its first week, and 16.6 million the week of 10-Aug. Here’s how that compares to previous seasons: Apple put out that this is their biggest TV launch through two days ever, and looking at the chart and Apple TV’s viewership history, I’d believe it. Here’s Apple’s top shows for season two and beyond: Other data tells a (mostly) similar story. Ted Lasso made Samba TV and it has elite IMDb scores, an insane 8.7 on 465K reviews. The only outlier is Luminate, where the latest season only had 7.4 million hours, and no other seasons made the top ten. As you’ll see below, that’s well below some other solid, but not spectacular shows like Sterling Point, Ride or Die or Furious. I’d be surprised if Ted Lasso isn’t bigger than those other shows, but it’s fine for different data sources to occasionally disagree. And while it’s sucky to bring this up, given that Warner Bros. produced this show, I do wonder how the streaming wars may have been different if Ted Lasso landed on HBO Max initially instead of Apple. I don’t think one show can make or break a streamer, but given HBO’s brand, it could have helped bring people to that streamer much earlier in its lifespan. (Though yeah, I don’t love calling out executives for passing on hit shows, since that’s just the nature of the job. Even the absolute best execs will pass on lots of successful shows. The key is not greenlighting the under-performers/misses.) The other show I’m thinking about in the “hit or hit for them” category is Lioness from Paramount+. Like Ted Lasso, its first season missed the charts, but it’s grown its audience since then. Here’s how season three opened: We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… How Lioness did on streaming... Two new melodramas for Netflix and Prime Video... Whether Netflix’s latest horror film saved its summer... Hulu’s Furious and Prime Video’s Ride or Die continuing their strong runs... The latest high profile showrunner to flop on streaming... All the flops, bombs and misses... And a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Next week, we’ve got a double issue—since the week of 17-Aug had very few notable new shows or films—so I’ll look at HBO’s Lanterns, Prime Video’s Reacher, Netflix’s Tires, Outer Banks (which posted up huge numbers four years ago), an Aussie romance, and another baseball event (that didn’t resonate). And a bunch of movies like the latest dramedy from an Adam Sandler daughter, Don’t Say Good Luck, Camp Rock 3 on Disney Channel and Disney+, Michael on Starz, and more. Later this month, we’ve got a ton of shows and films to analyze! Movies will be the big story, featuring a box office bomb (Supergirl on HBO Max) and an “underperformer” (The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+) contending with a bunch of star-studded straight-to-streaming films like Netflix’s The Whisper Man (Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan and De Niro!), Mayday on Apple TV+ (Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh!), The Runner (Gal Gadot) and The Last Sunrise (Eva Longoria and Maia Reficco) on Prime Video. Plus, a ton of TV shows have sophomore seasons coming out. Will The Gentleman put up big numbers on Netflix or suffer from a sophomore slump? Leanne and Beauty in Black on Netflix seem small, but they both might be bigger than you think. Hulu has a bunch of shows: a new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (the first after all the controversy last year) and the second season of Chad Powers (from Peyton Manning’s production company and starring Glen Powell). This one flopped last year; can it score a touchdown this year? Same goes for FX’s Adults, which I didn’t track last year; will it hit this year? Peacock’s The Office spinoff, The Paper and Apple TV’s Dark Matter also return for second seasons. And Netflix has more Untold specials featuring Vince Young, Raygun (that horrible breakdancer) and Mr. T. Long term, Paramount+ is rebooting yet another franchise, Clueless, and I’m somewhat bullish on this new show. The talent attached (Alicia Silverstone) and creative Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (of The O.C. and Gossip Girl) also feel solid...if they make it funny like the original.

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Sep 14 • 6:43 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma May Have Personally Responded to Your Customer Support Ticket

New-ish Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy first six months on the job, including killing the divisive "This is Xbox" marketing campaign, slashing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate's subscription price, and unfortunately also overseeing mass layoffs and development studio spin-outs. But as Sharma has gotten settled in her job, she's also been spending time understanding Xbox's products and customers in another way: by fielding customer support tickets.

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Sep 14 • 5:20 PM EDT • Technology • ign.com
The Latest Sneaker Politics Collab Takes on the Classic Timberland 6-Inch Boot

Sneaker Politics is bringing more southern charm to its collab archive with a pair of black Timberland 6-Inch Boots. Find images and info here.

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Sep 14 • 2:30 PM EDT • Politics • soleretriever.com
JJ Watt proves to be a solid replacement for Tony Romo as CBS’s No 1 analyst

With the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback on leave after his arrest in July, CBS brought a dependable presence into the booth with Jim Nantz

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Sep 13 • 8:33 PM EDT • Sports • theguardian.com
NFL Week 1: What game is Tom Brady calling today?

Fox analyst and future Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady returns to the booth on Sunday and is scheduled to call an NFL game.

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Sep 13 • 9:46 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
☹️ Negative (-40%)
Donald Trump election 'dividend' proposal reboots Chris LaCivita feud with Ron DeSantis

The past isn't forgotten even though it's been papered over.

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Sep 11 • 8:41 AM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
Soul City Sirens offers beginner roller derby boot camp

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF)- For those of you looking to get into roller skating, get your skates ready because there’s a Soul City Sirens bootcamp coming your way. The Sirens are Augusta’s only women’s flat track roller derby league, an active not-for-profit organization in Augusta. This six-week bootcamp is designed specifically for beginners, so you don’t […]

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Sep 9 • 11:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Scientists Rebooted This Forgotten Battery—and It Recharges in Seconds. This Could Be the Future of Energy.

They last more than 12,000 charge cycles—and could be the solution for power-hungry data centers.

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Sep 9 • 4:35 PM EDT • Science • popularmechanics.com
Wright State’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp helps veterans turn ideas into businesses

The veterans were on campus for a residential program focused on entrepreneurship fundamentals, business development and growth strategies. Continue reading →

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Sep 9 • 2:38 PM EDT • Business • webapp2.wright.edu
JYP Entertainment aims to unmask anonymous Stray Kids bootlegger

South Korean music firm JYP Entertainment is turning detective to uncover the anonymous bootlegger who uploaded a new track by a member of Stray Kids to streaming services under a different name.

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Sep 9 • 8:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • musically.com
Matos urges Vipotnik to find form of last season

Vitor Matos hopes Zan Vipotnik's goal in Swansea City's defeat at Southampton will spark a return to the form which earned him last season's Championship golden boot.

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Sep 8 • 6:46 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
The Metro: An initiative wants to remove money from Michigan politics. Can it?

The Michiganders for Money Out of Politics measure is on the ballot this November. Sean McBrearty breaks down the proposal.

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Sep 8 • 2:51 PM EDT • Politics • wdet.org
SEC sets meeting to discuss booting LSU from conference

The Tigers didn't ultimately add any NFL players to their roster ahead of Week 1, but that hasn't stopped the SEC presidents' crusade against them.

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Sep 8 • 2:39 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
☹️ Negative (-10%)
Tech Tuesday: Can AI help make political polling more accurate?

A group of researchers at Ohio State is working to find out if AI can play a role in helping to make the results of political polls more accurate.

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Sep 8 • 1:01 AM EDT • Politics • wosu.org
Swansea's golden boot winner yet to kick start season

Zan Vipotnik has been backed to return to form for Swansea City, even though he is still not guaranteed to return to the starting side.

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Sep 8 • 12:20 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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100%
X-Men Reboot’s Wild 4-Movie Comparison Includes Batman V Superman

A leaked script review for Marvel Studios’ X-Men reboot draws comparisons to four wildly different films. The surprising mashup description hints at the tone and style audiences can expect from the MC...

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Sep 7 • 11:41 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Sony WH-1000XM4C launch for $299 alongside two more affordable headphones

As rumored, Sony is reviving its WH-1000XM4 headphones with a new WH-1000XM4C reboot, bringing some new colors to a much...

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Sep 7 • 5:15 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
Drew Brees replaces Maxx Crosby on SiriusXM’s ‘Let’s Go!’

The media renaissance of Drew Brees continues unabated. Not only will the former New Orleans Saints quarterback embark on his first full season in the booth alongside Adam Amin for the NFL on Fox, but the 47-year-old will also co-host SiriusXM’s Let’s Go! alongside Matthew Stafford, Jim Gray and Peter King, effectively replacing Las Vegas…

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Sep 7 • 2:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
At the annual Pyramid Hill Art Fair, food and entertainment accompany more than 60 artisan booths

Creators and art lovers from across the southwest Ohio region are gearing up for Art Fair, Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum’s annual signature event.

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Sep 7 • 2:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • journal-news.com
15 discouraging hours with Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and 10 brilliant ones with He Who Watches

In the last few weeks, while playing some video games that I might review, I emailed two cries for help. I sent the first to a rep for Capcom, confessing that the company’s samurai game Onimusha Way of the Sword (out today for PC and console) was crushing me. “Feels like I’m playing ‘hard’ mode, not ‘normal,’” I wrote. “And I don’t want to have to knock it down to “story”. I’m exploring, trying to level my gear, but these two-phase boss fights with no mid-fight checkpoints are brutal.” I wagered I was only about halfway through the game, if that. I wasn’t sure I could keep up with the steepening difficulty curve. Was I missing something? Then, on Monday, I took some photos of some puzzles that were baffling me in the mind-bending He Who Watches (out now on PC), wrote out lengthy descriptions of how I’d been trying to solve them and asked Bobby Vanden, the game’s solo developer, for a nudge in the right direction. I told Vanden I’d spent hours on these puzzles. “I’m stuck in triplicate,” I told him. Could he tell me if the solutions I was attempting were even on the right track? I didn’t mention that the puzzles—coupled with major time pressures from other work—were stressing me out so much that playing the game was giving me headaches. This double dose of panic was unusual. I’m used to managing a workload full of reporting and reviewing, used to a crowded schedule and the need to stay calm amid the bustle. But I was stressed about these games. No one was forcing me to review them, nor even play them. I’d simply found them interesting enough to start, hoped they’d be interesting enough to write about and I’d sunk hours into them assuming I’d made the right call. Suddenly, however, I felt trapped. I was emailing for a way out. Above: This guy took me about an hour to beat. The feedback I got from Capcom confirmed my fears. They didn’t say it, but I will: Onimusha Way of the Sword is not for me. It’s a brutally hard game in need of a normal difficulty level. It’s a game that spikes so severely during its abundant boss fights—yet offers such flawed ways to improve when outside of them—that it feels like a bait-and-switch. In the new Onimusha, you play as famed samurai Musashi Miyamoto, aided by a magical soul-absorbing gauntlet that is possessed by a lady who offers advice. (Way of the Sword is a continuation of Capcom’s long-dormant Onimusha series, but that set-up had me wondering if the company was cribbing from their ill-fated Bionic Commando reboot; read about “wife-arm” when you get a chance). Way of the Sword is partially set in 17th century Kyoto, an explorable city where Miyamoto can fight demons, help civilians and eventually rescue ghostly dogs. The city evolves over time, with new mini adventures and obtainable loot on offer, all feeding into systems that promise to upgrade your gear and sword-fighting skills. Upgrades, however, are so incremental as to be imperceptible, causing the exploration of Kyoto to feel like inconsequential busywork. From that hub, players can go on linear missions into forests and old temples, where they will encounter many of the game’s tough bosses. Combat in Way of the Sword is akin to many modern melee games. Players are asked to mix attacks with dodges and parries. They’re encouraged to deplete an enemy’s stamina bar in order to do greater damage to its health bar. The old Onimusha games’ signature move was the issen, a counter-attack so sudden it’s all but pre-emptive. You strike just as they begin to strike toward you, beating them to the cut. By definition, the issen is a high risk move, leaving you wide open to pain. It feels risky in the game, especially against bosses, who can maul you in just a few blows. A game might train you to perform an issen well by offering a variety of lesser enemies who are not as tough as the boss but get close. Or it might offer a toehold against bosses by saving or checkpointing the player’s progress when a boss’ first health bar has been destroyed and before the second health bar appears. It might offer the less skilled player a chance to over-level their character, should the player simply commit to playing through its optional sidequests. Way of the Sword does none of this. Fighting its trivially easy grunt enemies and then its ferociously adept bosses is like playing a game of chess where I’ve got a rook, while the opposing side is all pawns and five queens. Bosses simply don’t checkpoint. You may be able to clear a boss’ first phase without taking much damage. Good for you. Do it again, every time you fail the second phase. As for the the central Kyoto hub, I kept pace with all of its added side activities and never felt like I was overpowered. Bosses could still easily buckle me. The new Onimusha, I concluded, is just too discouraging to keep playing. The advice I got from Capcom had been well-intentioned. They reminded me of the game’s various systems. They alerted me to an optional assist that flashes recommended button inputs (basically: counter this move; dodge that move). It was a little helpful. So was dropping down to “story mode,” which I tried last night. Story mode turns on those button prompts by default. It makes countering and dodging way too easy, nearly automatic. I don’t consider myself a master of action games like these, but I’ve cleared the likes of God of War, Stellar Blade, Star Wars Jedi and others of sub-Sekiro difficulty and had a fun time doing so. Not here. Not yet. Unless they patch Onimusha: Way of the Sword and add a middle difficulty or just checkpoint the damn bosses when they’re between health bars, my streak of loving Capcom games released in 2026 will likely end at two. It’s a shame, because I was having a good time finding those ghostly dogs. And then there’s He Who Watches, a phenomenal first person puzzle game with Portal vibes, except instead of a portal gun you’ve got a magical bow that shoots one arrow that can activate switches or be used to drag blocks. The twist is an actual twist: you can also walk on walls and the ceiling, reorienting gravity as you do, thereby placing blocks onto those other surfaces. Walking on walls and ceilings to solve problems is really the best thing. Would that I could in reality. He Who Watches consists of locked-room challenges, each brief enough to only require about a minute to actually solving, though it will take five, 10, eventually 30 minutes to figure out said solutions. They are not obvious! It’s a game of layered mechanics and shocking solutions. For example, see if you can follow this: You can drag a block to a wall. Then you can walk on the wall, which now feels like the floor, and drag that block across the wall. Later, back on the floor, you might realize you can look up. The block is still on the wall, stuck to it. You can shoot your magic arrow to its underside. Doing so creates a tether, so that you can yank the block off the wall and carry it, as if it were a balloon, into the spot where you need it to be to solve the puzzle. Here, watch Vanden explain some of the game’s basics in this launch trailer: As with any great puzzle game, the solutions to He Who Watches’ puzzles elicit relief and amazement. Oh my god, that worked! I didn’t even think that could be possible! Learning to solve the game’s puzzles feels like learning magic. But, oh, does the game get hard. Its Steam reviews, mostly glowing, are full of players remarking how quickly He Who Watches made them sweat. Wrote one: “loving this one already although my brain is hurting!” Wrote another: “As you get further in the game it feels like you need an IQ level of at least 120+.” Vanden has shown some mercy. Each locked room puzzle includes an optional junior version of the puzzle, meant to teach you. Difficulty nevertheless ramps severely. By the time I was emailing Vanden for help, I was struggling to even clear one of the hint puzzles. When I messaged him, my stress was exacerbated by strange things I’d found in the game’s various hubs: suspicious passageways, odd blocks and some intriguing locked doors. These were hints of secrets, I realized, yet I sensed I needed to play further into the game to understand them. I was stuck, but I wanted to see the rest. Vanden offered to give me the exact solutions, to solve those three puzzles for me, but first he gave four nudges. Three were for the specific puzzles, but his best hint was for all and ultimately proved to be a terrific life lesson: go back a bit, he suggested. Do the puzzles right before those. They were teaching you something. Focus on what their lesson was. Don’t rush, in other words. Recognize what you’ve accomplished. Build off of that. I did so. I absorbed the lessons. I saw those three tough puzzles in a new light. I solved one the night after he wrote back, another the morning after. I left a third for another time. I didn’t need it and I wanted to plunge deeper into the game, closer to the moment when I was sure I could start unlocking those secret doors. My head stopped hurting, too. He Who Watches feels special. It’s got more challenges, and I’m undeterred. It’s also nice that its puzzles don’t have a surprise second health bar. Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Item 2: In brief… 🎮 Ilari Kuittinen, co-founder of Helsinki-based Housemarque (Super Stardust HD, Resogun, Returnal) has stepped down from his studio, after a 31-year run, saying he’s “ taking a rare and well-deserved breather.” Sony purchased Housemarque in 2021, and the studio released its newest game, Saros, earlier this year. Trend-watch: Sony-owned Insomniac saw its founder Ted Price retire in early 2025, after a 30-year run. Sony-owned Sucker Punch saw its co-founder Brian Fleming step down in late 2025, after a 28-year run. 👀 Savvy Games Group chief Brian Ward is stepping down from the Saudi-government-backed games conglomerate, Bloomberg reports. No word on a long-term successor yet, nor if this augurs any closer integration between Savvy and Electronic Arts. EA was purchased by a consortium led by Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, in early August. 💿 Square Enix has denied a Japanese media report that the company was planning to go private. In very different Square Enix news, the company revealed that the physical version of Final Fantasy VII: Revelation, the April 2027 finale of its radical remakes of FFVII, will include just one disc in its case, requiring a download for the rest. The first two FFVII remakes in the trilogy shipped on two discs apiece. While Square hasn’t commented on the reason why, a feature here in Game File last month broke down the processes and costs for physical games. The expense of a second disc comes out of the game publisher’s cut of each copy. Square could be saving in excess of a dollar a copy with this move. 🟥 Grand Theft Auto IV’s 26-minute ’‘extended look” gameplay showcase that premiered on Netflix last week—and was exclusive to the platform for six hours—drew 31.1 million views in its first four days, the streamer announced. (Netflix calculates views as total viewed hours divided by runtime; excludes replays). Compared to YouTube: The version that later premiered on Rockstar Games’ YouTube channel is sitting at 22.6 million views after seven days (YouTube’s more liberal counting system tallies anyone who viewed even just the first few second.) Compared to other Netflix mega-events: Last year, Stranger Things season 5’s first four episodes, which debuted together, drew a record 59.6 million views in their first few days on Netflix. For more of a live event type of comparison, in 2024, the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match drew 65 million concurrent streams as it happened; Netflix didn’t release live numbers for the GTA premiere. ☁️ Microsoft is changing the way it charges for cloud gaming, from an all-you-can-play offer for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, to caps for the subscription’s tiers (15 hours per month at the Ultimate tier), with the option to buy more hours in bulk beyond that. The company also said it will sell batches of cloud gaming time to non-Game Pass subscribers, details TBA. Microsoft does not release figures for cloud game usage, but said its changes would impact 4% of Game Pass subscribers. That implies a small portion of its subscribers exceed the 15-hour monthly mark. Cloud gaming offers the promise of playing games without the need for console or PC hardware, as the graphics, sound and controls are all transmitted via a streaming connection. Microsoft notes that its cloud gaming service can be used for a range of things, including Xbox One players using it to play newer-gen Xbox Series games via streaming; and people playing games via streaming, sans any console, “in markets where consoles are less available or affordable.” (That latter use case could even be relevant in Xbox’s home market soon, as console prices keep rising.) Take Two Interactive chairman Strauss Zelnick recently told investors he expects game-streaming tech, which has been only lightly adopted by gamers for over a decade, to be widely used within three years. 🇺🇸 The Trump administration has published multiple agenda-driven web video games to the White House’s website. One called Build The Wall partially clones Tetris as it asks players to build a wall to stop a “zombie border siege.” While actual Tetris involves clearing lines and basically not building a wall, the Trump-backed game omits the line-clearing aspect (and omits the fun as well). On Instagram, Tetris’ official license holders reacted by stating: “At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them. To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we’re grateful to have you in our community. P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall.’ P.P.S.: We take copyright infringement very seriously.” Item 3: The week ahead: Tuesday, September 8 Game releases: Mewgenics (consoles; already out on PC) is an engrossing tactical combat game (with cats). It is getting its console port right after the release of a Star Wars tactics game and ahead of the late September launch of a Fire Emblem–a bumper crop for the genre. Wanderburg (PC) is an auto-shooting game like Vampire Survivors, but you’re a castle on wheels Event: Nintendo airs a 30-minute Nintendo Direct (10am ET) focused on The Legend of Zelda’s 40th Anniversary. A full unveiling of the upcoming remake of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is expected. Will they also show footage from next year’s live action movie? Tease the next big 3D Zelda? Add Link to Mario Kart World? Shadow-drop a new Tingle game? Wednesday, September 9 Event: Nintendo again! On this day, they’re planning to air a 45-minute Nintendo Direct (10am ET) focused on games heading to Switch 2 this winter. Followed by about an hour of gameplay demoed by the company’s Treehouse team. The September Nintendo Directs are always some of the year’s biggest. The 2025 edition included announcements of several major 2026 Switch/Switch 2 games: Pokémon Pokopia, Mario Tennis Fever, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave. Plus the return of the Virtual Boy. Friday, September 11 Game release: EA Sports NHL 27 (PlayStation, Xbox) is a hockey game. There are so few that an indie studio that had been making wacky sci-fi first-person shooters just announced that, hey, we’re going to fill a void and make a hockey game for PC.

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Sep 4 • 6:23 PM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news
HBO's new 'Harry Potter' trailer looks familiar. Some fans say that's the problem.

New actors are taking over the iconic roles, but the latest trailer suggests HBO isn't straying far from the wizarding world fans already know.

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Sep 3 • 10:05 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
‘Mayday’ review: Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh reboot the buddy movie

Apple TV's 'Mayday' mashes the Cold War with 'Top Gun' and every buddy adventure-comedy you've ever loved and serves it up with stars who appear to be having as much fun as audiences will.

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Sep 3 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
Fort Bragg Veteran celebrates expansion of high-end experiential entertainment brand

Photo provided by EscapologyAfter 15 years as an Army officer at Fort Bragg, Fayetteville resident Dan Cooke transitioned to business ownership to bring high-end experiential entertainment to North Carolina, applying strict military operational systems to scale his footprint across the state.Cooke got his start in the Army’s Boots to Business program.“Boots to Business was instrumental in preparing me to start a company. The program taught me how to develop a business plan, conduct market and financial analysis and critically evaluate whether a business concept was actually viable,” shared Cooke. “What made the program particularly valuable was that the instructors and mentors had real-world business experience…At the end of the course, I had to present and defend that plan. From there, they directed me to SCORE, where mentors helped me further refine the plan. I eventually presented it to a bank, which was impressed with the level of preparation, and I secured the financing necessary to build the business.”As Cooke neared the end of his military career, he began to wonder what would come next. Through his faith and some valuable mentors, he found the right avenue for his entrepreneurial interests.“While working on my instrument pilot rating, my flight instructor happened to tell me about escape rooms and the economics behind building them. He thought they could make for an interesting business. I took the analytical skills I had developed in the military, along with what I learned through Boots to Business, and began comparing the escape-room model against other opportunities I was considering,” explained Cooke. Cooke opened his first Escapology location in Fayetteville in 2019.“My approach was to start small and prove the model. Fayetteville made sense because I was already there, understood the market and could minimize my initial risk. It also became clear very quickly that I needed a partner that could provide the creative design, branding and industry knowledge that I did not have. After researching a number of options, Escapology became that partner,” added Cooke.Following the success of his initial venue in Fayetteville and a venue in Charlotte that opened in 2023, Cooke recently expanded into Raleigh with his third Escapology venue at Crabtree Valley Mall.His North Carolina footprint now includes:Fayetteville: A 5-room venue launched right after his Army transition in 2019.Charlotte: A 10-room venue opened in 2023, doubling his original operational footprint.Raleigh (Crabtree Valley Mall): A 6-room venue opened in May 2026, with plans to expand to 10 full rooms.Beyond his venues, Cooke expanded his local footprint by launching Jade Solutions in Aberdeen, N.C., an OEM manufacturing business that now builds prop and technical solutions for Escapology venues systemwide.Cooke shared that his long-term goal is to continue expanding Escapology in a healthy and sustainable way while enjoying the journey. “I actually did not start an entertainment business because I personally loved escape rooms. I started a business because I love the game of business itself. Growing up, I loved military simulation games and business tycoon games. I eventually had the opportunity to experience the first of those in the real world — I went to war, led troops and played my part in the military. Today, I would much rather apply that same drive to the real-world game of building businesses.I don't play business computer games anymore. I get to wake up and do it for real every day,” shared Cooke.

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Sep 2 • 4:07 PM EDT • Entertainment • bizfayetteville.com
Candidates, voters, merch: Politics bingo ingredients are everywhere at Minnesota State Fair

Turn your State Fair visit into a hunt for politics bingo.

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Sep 2 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • mprnews.org
What Box Office Bomb Crushed Obsession on Streaming?

(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.) Before we get into this week’s issue, let me ask you for some suggestions. At the risk of coining too many names for too many things (hence my dictionary of terms...), I need a name for straight-to-streaming films that are too expensive to justify a straight-to-streaming release, but not big enough to justify a theatrical release. Like some of the films I highlighted in last week’s tally of the biggest film flops of 2026 so far: Hulu’s Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, Pizza Movie or Never Change! They don’t feel like “made for TV movies” (think Hallmark and Lifetime movies, cheap Netflix romcoms, or Disney Channel Original movies, for example) but they don’t feel big enough for the big screen. They’re not “cinematic” enough, so to speak. As I wrote... “I still need a name for this middle zone of film that’s too expensive to go straight-to-streaming but too small to justify a theatrical release (with all the PR, distribution, marketing and whatnot costs that go along with it), the Goldilocks zone of streaming film death.” Friend of the newsletter Brandon Katz has suggested the “Bermuda Budget Triangle”, “The Platform Gap” and “The Distribution Deadzone”. I love that first one. I’d offer up the much wordier “The Streaming Budget Dead Zone” or “the Goldilocks Zone of streaming film death” but that last one isn’t accurate since, unlike Goldilocks’ porridge, these films are the opposite of “just right”. That’s the problem! Anyway, if you have any suggestions, let me know! On to today’s Streaming Ratings Report. As you can tell by today’s headline, things are going to be spicy! I’m looking at a box office bomb that did really, really well on streaming, somewhat challenging a few different narratives. And another Netflix series declined in its second season. All that, plus Wicked: For Good switching streamers, The Hawk continuing its strong run, _The Bear’_s finale season finally dropping off the charts, the WNBA posting a big viewership number, “shallow libraries”, a sitcom spinoff failing to launch, more big budget IP flopping on Paramount+, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right 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 July 20th to July 26th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - The Latest Theatrical Success Story on Streaming In the latest edition of “Flops, Bombs and Misses of the First Half of 2026”, I made a crucial change: I started including theatrical films with the streaming misses. The streamers have collectively—including Netflix, but not to as big of an extent—stopped making a lot of straight-to-streaming films, and the ones they do make aren’t as expensive as in the heyday of the streaming bubble. After the following two films bombed in theaters, you’d guess that they’ll be included in my next collection of flops, bombs and misses six months from now: Masters of the Universe on Prime Video (only $64 million domestic box office) Mortal Kombat II on HBO Max ($79 million domestic) But you’d be wrong! Masters of the Universe, a reboot of the He-Man franchise, a toy from the 1980s, came to streaming on 22-July and did great! This long-gestating project—it’s been at every studio for years, and came close to getting a greenlight at Netflix—then finally came to theaters in June, and showed up on streaming less than two months later. (I don’t love this short theatrical window.) It surprisingly grabbed nearly 20 million hours on its debut: That means, wait for it, Masters of the Universe is currently the eighth biggest film on streaming through two weeks. My rough bar for “hit” is shows or films in the top 15%. Ergo…Masters of the Universe is a legit, streaming hit! (One quick caveat: if it falls out of the top ten next week, it will move to 13th overall, just on the edge of the top 15.) Of course, that’s the data for just 2026. Here’s how it stacks up to Prime Video’s theatrical films: That drop into its second week is typical for Amazon films, but also a worrying sign. I have a feeling interest in this film is front-loaded and we’ll see it drop off after this. As for Mortal Kombat II, in this case, the viewership numbers roughly match the theatrical outing, with only 4.1 million hours in its first week. Here’s how it stacks up to other HBO Max films: The best defense of this number is that, as a relatively violent rated-R film, Mortal Kombat II never had a good chance at breaking out. So now it’s time for a little big of “Entertainment Nuance Guy”: First, yeah, my headline is obviously facetious, since Masters of the Universe besting Obsession says more about horror as a genre than it does that film. Second, I read and listened to quite a few “nobody wanted this IP” takes about Masters of the Universe, and that’s not really true. At least enough people wanted it to power a 20 million+ hour debut! Third, both this film and Mortal Kombat II were considered “average” by viewers, but not great films, with a 6.4 and 6.3 respectively on IMDb. That’s just shy of the level needed to be a word-of-mouth hit. Fourth, in the olden days, strong word of mouth could transform a box office miss into a cable/DVD hit, like Austin Powers or The Shawshank Redemption. We haven’t seen a lot of examples of that on streaming, though. And there are far fewer ways to monetize the post-theatrical life of a film these days. Fifth, Prime Video has shown an ability to push their own titles well, likely because they control the Amazon Fire TV ecosystem. Add it all up, and here’s my nuanced take on Masters of the Universe: it was a box office bomb, but, shockingly, a streaming hit. Unfortunately, while being a theatrical hit saves your film financially, being a streaming hit does not. Both Masters of the Universe and Mortal Kombat II had big budgets and needed to make more money in theaters to justify them. So…Straight-to-Streaming or Theaters? We’ve hit a really fun point in the streaming calendar, since the films that came out in theaters in April, May, and June are now arriving on streaming. So the “Do theatrical releases help streaming performances?” question is gonna get a fresh round of updates nearly every week. No single week will answer the question, but we may get some insights. For example, so far in 2026, it looks like theatrical films are lasting longer on the weekly Nielsen film charts. Here’s a list of films that have made the charts in their fourth or fifth week of release, separated by “for kids” and “general entertainment”: It certainly seems like theatrical films are lasting just a pinch longer on the charts, with Project Hail Mary being the current five-week champion. One Battle After Another did well for HBO Max too, and even The Sheep Detectives made it four weeks. The only exception to this trend? Obsession, which only lasted two weeks on the charts. You might tempted to overreact to this news. Don’t. Obsession is a huge horror hit, but horror just doesn’t do as well on streaming. By the way, here’s the Google Trends for various theatrical and stremaing films: Plus, when it comes to Netflix in four months, Obsession may have another big boost. Quick Notes on Film Note that when I write, “the streamers have pulled back on straight-to-streaming films” that doesn’t mean “abandoned” because Netflix is gonna Netflix. On 24-July, they released 72 Hours, a Kevin Hart comedy. Along with Eddie Murphy, Mark Wahlberg, John Cena and Adam Sandler, Kevin Hart is a streaming film star now. Did this latest one work? Not really. It only garnered two weeks of 13.2 and 12.2 million hours on its debut, well below the 20-million-hour hit threshold. It also was poorly received critically—a 44 on Metacritic—and by customers—a 5.4 on IMDb on 21K IMDb reviews. We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… The latest Netflix true crime doc to pop on the charts… How The Bear finished its run… Netflix’s latest Western to return to streaming… What Paramount+ animated film flopped… And what sitcom also missed… All the flops, bombs and misses… And a whole lot more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! I’m behind by a week, so we’ve got two issues coming your way this week, including one in a couple of days or so, then we’ll be all caught up**.** Next issue, inspired by The Super Mario Galaxy Movie coming to Peacock, I’m going to take a look at the workhouse of streaming TV: kids films. Plus The Devil Wears Prada 2 continues theatrical films’ big run on streaming. All that, plus another surprise hit on Hulu, Lioness on CBS, and a whole lot more. Long term, LeBron James is filming his own “Last Dance”-style docu-series, surprising no one. But as I’ve been writing about a lot this summer, this genre is really overrated, so whoever ends up buying it (reportedly ESPN) really shouldn’t pay too much for it.

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Sep 1 • 6:15 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Madhav Rajan reappointed as dean of UChicago’s Booth School of Business

Madhav Rajan has been reappointed for a third term as the Steven S. Wymer Dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, President Paul Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker announced.

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Sep 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • news.uchicago.edu
Scott's Addition's newest pizza parlor, Pizzeria Delores, opens for business

After leasing the former ice cream shop last fall, Max Sayer and Jacky Welch set out renovate the space to pay tribute to pizzerias of the 1980s with wood-paneled walls and vintage Schlitz Beer chandeliers hanging over booths.

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Sep 1 • 2:03 AM EDT • Business • richmondbizsense.com
Fable Leans Hard on "Limitless" Life Sim and RPG Gameplay

The upcoming release of the Fable reboot has generated quite a bit of hype, with the studio behind the game recently revealing some impressively forgiving minimum hardware requirements for PC gamers. Following that reveal, Polygon published an interview with Xbox about Fable and its content,...

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Aug 31 • 1:05 PM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com
Fable Gets Forgiving PC Minimum Hardware Requirements and Potential 60 FPS Cap

Following the official announcement that Fable would be released on February 23, 2027, Playground Games and Xbox Game Studios have finally released the full PC minimum and recommended hardware requirements for the series reboot, and if the game runs well on the promised hardware, it looks as...

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Aug 30 • 12:10 PM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com
Multiple developers report equipment stolen from their Gamescom booths

Several Gamescom exhibitors, including indie dev Ryan Laley and publisher iam8bit, say laptops were stolen from their booths overnight in Cologne.

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Aug 30 • 7:38 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
David Trinko: Golden age for entertainment in Lima

Someone walking by the newspaper’s booth at the Allen County Fair last week complained loudly, “There’s nothing to do in Lima.”

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Aug 29 • 8:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • limaohio.com
The Biggest Booths And Coolest Sights Of Gamescom 2026

Check out all the most impressive displays at the world's biggest gaming convention. - Game Informer

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Aug 28 • 8:00 PM EDT • Technology • gameinformer.com
Indie Dev Posts Tearful Message After Laptops Stolen At Gamescom

The creator of the forthcoming Mimic and others had equipment taken from booths overnight

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Aug 28 • 12:00 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
Bills Receive Encouraging News on Keon Coleman’s Injury

The Buffalo Bills seemed to receive good news on Keon Coleman, who has been in a walking boot for almost two weeks. The post Bills Receive Encouraging News on Keon Coleman’s Injury appeared first on HEAVY.

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Aug 28 • 1:25 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
☹️ Negative (-10%)
Longtime NJ sports announcer's dream comes true in Phillies' radio booth

Longtime children's sports announcer Lewis Kalb went viral after he appeared in the broadcast booth at a Phillies game.

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Aug 27 • 12:51 PM EDT • Sports • abc7.com
Longtime NJ sports announcer's dream comes true in Phillies' radio booth

Longtime children's sports announcer Lewis Kalb went viral after he appeared in the broadcast booth at a Phillies game.

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Aug 27 • 12:51 PM EDT • Sports • 6abc.com
Out of the Lab: Business Course Gives Scientists Opportunity to Explore Entrepreneurship - Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The Entrepreneurship for Science and Medicine course gives University of Chicago graduate students, postdocs, and faculty the opportunity to explore the intersection of science and business. Taught by Chicago Booth School of Business Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship Robert Altman, MBA ‘88, and offered in partnership with the Polsky Center, the course examines how scientists can

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Aug 25 • 2:03 PM EDT • Science • polsky.uchicago.edu
Out of the Lab: Business Course Gives Scientists Opportunity to Explore Entrepreneurship - Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The Entrepreneurship for Science and Medicine course gives University of Chicago graduate students, postdocs, and faculty the opportunity to explore the intersection of science and business. Taught by Chicago Booth School of Business Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship Robert Altman, MBA ‘88, and offered in partnership with the Polsky Center, the course examines how scientists can

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Aug 25 • 2:03 PM EDT • Business • polsky.uchicago.edu
Quest VR Headset Becomes Unlocked Hardware

The Quest virtual reality headset gets a fully unlocked bootloader thanks to the QuestStack tool, which automates a complex process of privilege escalation to provide stable, privileged access to t…

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Aug 25 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • hackaday.com