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Valor Mortis Costs $40 Because of 'The Craziest Fall in the History of This Business'

Promising first-person action soulslike Valor Mortis has a confirmed $40 price point, which was settled upon by its publisher because of the fall crush fueled by GTA 6.

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Sep 17 • 10:14 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Who Should Kings Not Protect in Potential Expansion Draft?

With two new teams looming, Sacramento faces tough choices. From high-priced veterans to promising sharpshooters, see which players the Kings might leave exposed in an expansion draft.

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Sep 16 • 6:35 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Truth and Politics in the Age of Post-Truth

Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work. Subscribe This is an excerpt from Global Politics in a Post-Truth Era. You can download the book free of charge from E-International Relations. The term post-truth is by now so ubiquitous in describing the state of politics in the Western world and even beyond that the most pressing issue of the day appears to be about making democracy work in the era of post-truth rather than questioning the normalisation of the term itself in the first place. The critical turning point appeared to have occurred in 2016 when the term was chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘The Word of the Year.’ On its website, the Dictionary notes the transformation of post-truth from ‘being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary and connects ‘the spike in frequency’ directly with the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald J. Trump in the United States – both occurring in 2016. Paired with the noun ‘politics,’ post-truth is defined as an adjective ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the term to a 1992 essay in The Nation by the playwright Steve Tesich as he reflected on the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal and the 1990–91 Gulf War: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world (Tesich 1992, 13; emphasis added). He then continued, The Gulf War is over but the war at home goes on. The gulf between rich and destitute widens – between those of us who live in a modern post-industrial nation and those of us who live in the Third World countries of our inner cities. The present administration’s response to this internal crisis has shifted from benign to malignant neglect. The current levels of misery and decomposition of our cities and the economic gulags of our ghettos are acceptable. Since there is only so much hope to go around, there is a freeze on hope. The have-nots have now been reclassified as never-will-haves (Tesich 1992, 13). In the context of Tesich’s essay, truth includes both facts, as in what happens, and ‘moral absolutes,’ as in the ‘self-evident truths mentioned in our Constitution’ (Tesich 1992, 14). Together, these two notions of truth entail the obligation to both act and react. The two passages cited above show that even in the early post-Cold War years, Tesich was already deeply concerned that the American people are neither prepared to act on truth nor react to truth that is disconcerting, or what he calls ‘bad news’ (Tesich 1992, 12). Accordingly, Tesich’s insight as captured by the term post-truth is not that truth is irrelevant to what we know, but rather it is irrelevant to how we act. In contrast, ‘post-truth politics,’ as defined by Oxford as a term that pitches ‘objective facts’ against ‘emotion and personal belief’ such that the latter appears to have overtaken the former in shaping ‘public opinion’ and thereby, democratic politics. When Tesich’s post-truth politics and its current usage are juxtaposed, the two are in fact not identical in terms of what truth is and how it relates to politics. Against such consideration, this chapter provides a critical survey of selected historical events and theoretical considerations for the purpose of gaining a more nuanced understanding of the relation between truth and politics. Truth and Language One notable impact of post-truth politics is that language is being overtly deployed as a political weapon not only by politicians and those in power, but among the general population. It seems that once facts are irrelevant to the validity of what is being said, language becomes the platform for an all-out political contest in which what is said is no more than an act of will expressed as an assertion of power and/or an exercise in defiance. As early as in the writings of Thucydides (460–400 BCE), the vulnerability of logos – which is the human capacity for rational discourse in tumultuous times – was already noted. Thucydides belonged to a school of Greek thought which maintained that language is conventional and that the association between name and things is a result of ‘human use and habit’ rather than ‘nature or divine dispensation’ (Connor 1984, 99). The conventional nature of language means that it is incapable of providing its users with any independent criteria for judgement. In Thucydides’ study of the Peloponnesian War (431–405 BCE), the subversion of logos as seen in the manipulation of language was introduced through his account of the civil war in Corcyra (Thucydides 1972, 236-245). The war first broke out in 427 BCE between the pro-Athenian democratic faction and the pro-Spartan oligarchic faction before it spread to the rest of the Greek world. There was a general breakdown of law and order, resulting in extreme violence and death. Language underwent changes that were reflective of the events of the time. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) translated Thucydides’ description of the situation as follows: The received value of names imposed for signification of things, was changed into arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness, was counted true-hearted manliness: provident deliberation, a handsome fear: modesty, the cloak of cowardice: to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything... he that had been so provident as not to need to do the one or the other, was said to be a dissolver of society, and one that stood in fear of his adversary. In brief, he that could outstrip another in the doing of an evil act, or that could persuade another thereto that never meant it, was commended (Hobbes 1839–1845, 8: 348; Thucydides 1972, 242-243). What concerned Thucydides most was that the meanings of words are no more than linguistic conventions that require logos to support them. The Corcyrean civil war was a reminder that such capacity cannot be assumed. This is why history understood as an authentic account of what happens matters. Guided by logos, the historian’s task is ‘the search after truth’, which is established through ‘the absence of the fabulous,’ including ‘the rejection of myth and unverifiable stories’ (de Jonge 2017, 2). Thus, history plays an important role in facilitating the stability of language – without which distinctions and judgements cannot be rendered communicable. Just like Thucydides, Hobbes was a nominalist who subscribed to the view that there is no inherent meaning to words. Hobbes’ state of nature, where there is no common authority, is precisely one in which distinctions cannot be made. As Hobbes put it, there is ‘no Mine and Thine distinct’ nor is there distinction between ‘the notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice’ (1968, 188; emphasis in original). This is clearly an unsustainable condition for everyone. Behind Hobbes’ famous words that life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ is his uncompromising argument for the ‘Leviathan’, which is described by the late American political theorist, Sheldon Wolin (1922–2015), as the ‘sovereign definer’ (Hobbes 1968, 186; Wolin 2004, 238–243). Accordingly, the social contract is importantly a ‘linguistic contract’ that binds all parties to ‘general names agreed upon’ (Peters 1979, 125; Hobbes 1968, 111). Through Thucydides and Hobbes, we can identify a line of thinking that sees politics as a contestation over the use of language, which is based on shared conventions and norms. Thus understood, politics is not a collective quest for the true nature of our being or an epistemological exercise in pursuit of true knowledge. Rather, politics is about humans living with one another by finding a shared language to communicate with one another on matters that affect them all. Truth is in that sense contingent on what is being said as opposed to setting the standard for it. In other words, truth is the embodiment of shareability among us. While truth as such ensures the viability of a political entity, truth by no means represents a normative standard to adjudicate among contesting actors in what they say, let alone in what they do. During Thucydides’ times, ancient China was also experiencing a tumultuous time as the ruling Zhou dynasty deteriorated into the period of the Warring States (481–221 BCE). This was when the rulers of Zhou no longer presided over the territories brought under its control through conquest. Instead of professing allegiance to the Zhou royalty, the lords of these territories became kings themselves to rule over their own land. The period was one marked by endless military campaigns as each of the seven major states aimed to conquer the rest (Lewis 1999). Yet, the period was also known for its intellectual vibrancy as different thinkers challenged the restoring of order among these warring states – including offering ideas and advice to rulers on good governance. Among these thinkers was Confucius (551–479 BCE). His thought, which came to be known as Confucianism, went on to become the state ideology of China from the Han dynasty (206 BCE–222 CE) until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 when China became a republic. The founding text of Confucianism was the Analects, which is a collection of dialogues between Confucius and his students as recorded by them. One key concept Confucius advanced is the ‘rectification of names’. Though the term only appears in one exchange in the Analects, it is considered a major aspect of Confucius’ thought. Generations of Confucian scholars from past and present, including Western academics, have debated over its interpretation (Makeham 2003). The passage in question reads as follows: Zi Lu said: ‘The monarch of the state of Wei wants you to govern the country, what is the first thing you plan on doing?’ Confucius said: ‘First it is necessary to rectify the names.’Zi Lu said: ‘Is that really what has to be done? You are being too pedantic, aren’t you now? How will you rectify these names?’Confucius said: ‘Zhong You, you are too unrefined. A gentleman, faced with a matter that he does not understand, takes a skeptical attitude. If names are not correct, one cannot speak smoothly and reasonably, and if one cannot speak smoothly and reasonably, affairs cannot be managed successfully. If affairs cannot be managed successfully, rites and music will not be conducted. If rites and music are not conducted, punishments will not be suitable. And if punishments are not suitable, the common people will not know what to do. So, when the gentleman uses names, it is necessary to be able to speak so that people understand. If one can say it, one can definitely do it. A gentleman should not be careless with words’ (Analects 13:3 in Cao 2016, 148). This translation is offered by the contemporary philosopher Cao Feng. As Cao notes, the passage is what started the whole debate over ‘exactly what kind of names did Confucius... wish to rectify’ (Cao 2016, 148). Of the three major groups of interpretation examined by Cao, beginning with classical Confucian scholarship, one is arguably the most influential and certainly most pertinent to the issue of language and politics. This is the interpretation that was first associated with the Neo-Confucian master, Zhu Xi (1130–1200), who argued that the ‘rectification of names is simply the rectification of politics’ (Cao 2016, 149). Within this interpretive framework, rectification has the dual functions of correction and prescription by ensuring that predetermined hierarchical roles are strictly adhered to through following ‘the system of rites and propriety’ (Cao 2016, 151). In addition, the rectification of names entails ‘using names to rectify actuality’ (Cao 2016, 151). Yet Cao rejects this whole body of interpretive works by arguing that these were ideas developed later. Instead, Cao suggests the following: The original meaning of Confucius’ rectification of names may, then, be quite simple. Confucius did not mean to establish a concrete, normative system of “names”; rather, Confucius was simply the first person in history to realize or remark upon the importance of language in politics. As a politician, he noticed and foresaw the impact that the indeterminacy, ambiguity, and arbitrariness of names would have on politics. Confucius recognized the political consequences of language’s not accurately expressing meaning or not being accurately received by people. He realized the great role that names, as a means of distinguishing right and wrong and establishing norms, could play in society and politics (Cao 2016, 168). Scholarly debates aside, Cao’s view has the advantage of identifying an interpretation of this controversial exchange in the Analects that enables its readers to extrapolate from it the observation that the meaning of words depends as much on their users as on their interpreters; neither of which can be predetermined. Accordingly, a good ruler is someone who can speak without ambiguity to his subjects and make good his words through actions. Stated differently, Cao’s view on what concerned Confucius then, who was living through times of protracted political upheaval, is that language is an indispensable political tool for those in power and can be deployed by both good and bad rulers alike. To sum up, this historical survey shows that politics as a war of words is by no means a distinctive marker of contemporary politics nor the Western world. Be it ancient or current, east or west, language is subject to manipulation to serve political purposes and when there is an outright war of words that defies existing norms, it is indicative of a political situation in which people no longer share a language and truth becomes irrelevant. Accordingly, political order entails stability in language use. Truth and Politics As previously noted, current use of the term post-truth as an adjective to the term ‘politics’ suggests that once there was a time when politics aligned with truth. Indeed, if we start with Plato’s Republic as the key founding text of Western political thought, we see that the ideal polis (city-state of ancient Greece) is where truth and politics converge, and justice is achieved. Written around 380 BCE when Athens was still coping with its defeat by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, the Republic is a defence of the rule of the ‘philosopher king’, defined as someone who is ‘guided by the truth’ and is ‘always and in every way’ in pursuit of the truth (Plato 1974, 490a). For Plato, truth converges with virtues and hence, letting the philosopher take charge of politics is to let the wisest and the most virtuous lead the less wise and the less virtuous even if it requires compulsion (Plato 1974, 499b). In Plato’s words, ‘…until the philosophers attain power in a city there will be no respite from evil for either city or citizens…’ (Plato 1974, 501e). The uncompromising rule of philosopher-kings is made palatable by the claim that we are all ‘earth- born brothers’ with random mixtures of gold, silver, bronze and iron, but only the gold can rule (Plato 1974, 414–415). Understandably, academic debates over the interpretation of Plato’s Republic revolve around the question of whether truth as attained in philosophy can be realised in politics as action and whether such a connection is even desirable. Without getting into the details of these scholarly exchanges, I suggest that they all share the concern that truth acquired through the rigorous process of philosophical reasoning is not without problem when applied to the real world of living humans. This is because not all humans are philosophers – and indeed, in Plato’s view, not everyone is capable of becoming a philosopher given the protracted and arduous training that one needs to endure to become one. Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), a highly influential political philosopher of the twentieth century, notes that ‘Plato was the first to introduce the division between those who know and do not act and those who act and do not know’ and that such a separation has remained ‘at the root of all theories of domination’ (Arendt 1958, 223, 225). What Arendt points out in this remark is not the gap between theory and practice, but rather that Plato provides the normative ground for those who know the truth to tell those who do not know what to do. Arendt herself took on the challenge of understanding the relationship between truth and politics through her analysis of Nazism and Stalinism. Arendt’s insight, which was controversial when The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951, was to identify Nazism and Stalinism as representative of a new form of political rule – totalitarianism – making it distinct from ‘other forms of political oppression... such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship’ (Arendt 1973, 460). Arendt defines totalitarianism as a self- contained system of ideas driven by their ‘logic’ and marked by a mode of reasoning called ‘ideological thinking.’ Ideological thinking as such is a distinctive form of political reasoning defined by three characteristics. First, ideological thinking claims to provide a ‘total explanation’ of all historical happenings, encompassing the past, the present, and the future. Second, while ideological thinking is an attempt to account for ‘factual reality’ in its totality, this mode of thinking is paradoxically divorced from reality and experience. This is because experience, being rooted in specificity, is clearly limited in its claim to totality. It follows that as its third characteristic, ideological thinking aims to emancipate thought from the limitation imposed by experience through a ‘specific method of demonstration.’ The method involves arranging facts into an ‘absolutely logical procedure’ that starts from an ‘axiomatically accepted premise’. It is, in short, a ‘process of deduction from a premise’ – which is the only possible movement in the realm of logic that leads to one definitive conclusion. This is how the ‘logicality of ideological thinking’ provides the basis for total explanation and the ‘principle of action’ for totalitarian movement (Arendt 1973, 468–474). Stated differently, totalitarianism is a form of uncompromising idealism that exists in one’s head irrespective of shared reality as experienced. It is the perverse form of what Arendt later refers to as ‘rational truth’, which is the product of the ‘speculative mind’ that belongs to philosophy, mathematics and the sciences. The ‘speculative mind’ is the mind working on its way to generate axioms and theories by relying on the cognitive capacity of the human brain (Arendt 1977, 231). The presence of others has no bearing whatsoever on rational truth. In contrast, ‘factual truth’ is what happens when humans are ‘living and acting together’ (Arendt 1977, 231). Factual truth is therefore particular and temporal by definition. But more importantly, factual truth is ‘political by nature’ because it can only be validated in the context of the human community (Arendt 1977, 238). In other words, factual truth is about humans in their plurality rather than in their singularity. For factual truth to be sustainable, we need what Arendt calls ‘common sense’ – understood as ‘community sense’ (Arendt 1982, 72). There is also another distinction about truth that Arendt makes which is pertinent to understanding how totalitarianism works. The issue is whether the so-called totalitarian ideology is simply an unnecessarily cumbersome way of saying that it is an all-round and polished lie. Here, Arendt calls totalitarian ideology the ‘modern lie’ – in contrast to the ‘traditional lie’. The latter is restricted by two conditions: that it is a lie about the ‘particulars’ and that it deceives only the ‘enemy’ – which means that the liar is not engaged in self- deception. The modern lie, however, involves a ‘complete rearrangement of the whole factual texture’. It also intends to deceive everyone alike, to the extent that those who initiate the lie eventually ‘fall victims to their own falsehood’ (Arendt 1977, 249–254). This distinction between the traditional and modern lie is important. It indicates that not only is totalitarianism a lie, but the lie is in fact too big to fit into the standard meaning of the word. To tell a lie from truth, we need a common standard. In the case of a traditional lie, the common standard is precisely ‘the fabric of factuality’. As such, a lie always appears as a ‘tear’ to that fabric. Yet, modern lies require making a surrogate reality with a completely different context for facts to fit ‘without seam, crack, or fissure, exactly as the facts fitted into their original context’. Arendt notes that as long as those who concoct the surrogate reality are prepared to engage in self- deception to ‘create a semblance of truthfulness’, there is nothing to prevent ‘these new stories, images, and non-facts from becoming an adequate substitute for reality and factuality’ (Arendt 1977, 253–254). Totalitarianism therefore requires a person to stand outside of the system itself in order to make sense of it. Arendt points out that it is futile for us to argue with (for example) a Nazi or a Stalinist on race or class. To confront totalitarianism requires more than just a confrontation with specific facts. It is a more fundamental confrontation between reality as experienced and its total rejection. This means that Nazism and Stalinism are more than radical ways of conducting racial conflict or class struggle. Rather: Totalitarian politics – far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist – use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality, from which the ideologies originally derived their propaganda value– the value of struggle, for instance, or the interest conflicts between Jews and their neighbours – have all but disappeared (Arendt 1973, xv). Accordingly: The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist (Arendt 1973, 474). Who then is the ‘ideal subject’ of totalitarianism? Although there is a revival of interest in Arendt’s observation on truth and politics since the onset of post- truth politics, not enough has been said about her reply to the question (Hyvönen 2018; Klinkler 2018; Lee 2019; Zerilli 2020). Yet if we take a look at Arendt’s portrait of this ideal subject, her view is even more pertinent to our current challenge. As a self-contained system of ideas that is detached from experience, totalitarian thinking offers consistency in ways that reality cannot. Arendt notes that this kind of consistency is especially appealing to those who have lost a sense of bearing in the world (Arendt 1973, 353). They constitute what she calls the ‘masses’. The ‘mass man’ is thus a highly isolated and atomised individual, who is ‘obsessed by a desire to escape from reality’ (Arendt 1973, 318, 352). In his ‘essential homelessness’ the mass man can ‘no longer bear its accidental, incomprehensible aspects’ (Arendt 1973, 352). This longing for escape from reality is a ‘verdict against the world’ in which one is ‘forced to live’ but ‘cannot exist’ (Arendt 1973, 352). Such a situation is ripe for the ‘revolt of the masses’ against ‘common sense,’ which is ‘the result of their atomisation, of their loss of social status’ and with it, the ‘whole sector of communal relationships in whose framework common sense makes sense’ (Arendt 1973, 352). In short, the masses are people who are considered to be ‘superfluous or can be spared … [who] cannot be integrated into any organisation based on common interest’ (Arendt 1973, 311). Whether one agrees with Arendt’s analysis of the social conditions in the interwar years that led to the formation of the ‘masses’, her portrait of the ‘mass man’ is a powerful account of what can happen to an individual who has become disposable to the society that they used to belong to. Hand in hand with this phenomenon is indeed the collapse of ‘common sense’ that leaves the dislodged individual scrambling for reconnection. By offering the masses a substitute reality validated by the ‘logic of an idea’ rather than by experience, totalitarianism makes it possible for them to live in a world where there is no condition of plurality. Between ‘facing the anarchic growth and total arbitrariness of decay’ and ‘bowing down before the most rigid, fantastically fictitious consistency of an ideology’, the masses will likely ‘choose the latter’ (Arendt 1973, 352). A world created by ideology, then, is more attractive to the masses not because ‘they are stupid and wicked, but because in the general disaster this escape grants them a minimum of self- respect’ by conjuring up ‘a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself’ (Arendt 1973, 353). Moreover, it is precisely this ability to guarantee consistency that makes it possible for the leaders of totalitarian movements to demand ‘total, unrestricted, unconditional and unalterable loyalty of the individual member’ (Arendt 1973, 323). While this chapter is not a study of the social factors that led to specific contemporary developments such as the result of the Brexit referendum or the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Arendt’s ‘mass man’ seem to have found their counterparts among the supporters of Brexit and Trumpism. Studies of voters’ profiles in both events point to a disproportionate share of supporters from white male lower income backgrounds without university educations. These are individuals who have either already lost their jobs to globalisation or who are at high risk of losing their job with very little capacity to be retrained for the twenty-first century market economy of advanced industrialised states (BBC 2016; Pew Research Center 2018). In short, these displaced workers are part of the tapestry forming the modern equivalent of Arendt’s ‘mass man’ – ready to be the recruits of totalitarianism. Conclusion If we step back to take a more comprehensive approach to the relationship between truth and politics, both historically and theoretically, it is not so obvious that 2016 is a defining moment. From ancient China and ancient Greece to our so-called post-truth age, the indeterminacy of language appears to be a persistent political challenge. Language is always open to manipulation by its users to serve power. Nonetheless, the tendency these days is to single out the ubiquity of social media and the proliferation of Internet platforms as the incubator for the countless cyberwars of words that in turn fuel the real world of politics. In this context, language is no longer the conveyor of objective facts and accurate information, but rather the medium for expressing subjective opinions and feelings, as captured by the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the term ‘post-truth politics’. In contrast, the historical approach used in this chapter shows that it is in fact too easy to point the figure at the Internet and digital communication for the political challenge that we face today. What is being suggested here is that with or without the Internet, language, be it used to convey facts or emotions, is simply a tool for communication that humans have invented. While language per se cannot adjudicate what is true or not true, what is right or wrong, it embodies such capacity when language is a shared norm. That shared norm cannot be sustained without some semblance of cohesion in any given community. Any war of words, irrespective of its platform, is indicative of the breakdown of such cohesiveness. Returning to the original context in which the term post-truth politics was first used by Steve Tesich helps to identify the important distinction between truth as the standard for knowledge and truth as the standard for action. The two do not necessarily coincide. Placed in the context of the history of political thought, this distinction is in fact at the heart of Plato’s Republic. Yet when the philosopher as the quintessential bearer of truth becomes king, the polis that he rules over is far from the ideal of a just state that it purports to be. Instead, it is one that is held together by lies and coercion. What Arendt reveals through her study of Nazism and Stalinism is that it is dangerous for the kind of truth that philosophy generates – ‘rational truth’ – to become the guide to politics. Politics guided by rational truth can only be uncompromising and follows a logic of its own that cannot afford the ambiguity and indeterminacy of reality as lived experiences of humans. A world of post-truth politics can be an opportunity for a new kind of politics if it is indeed about dismantling the idea that truth is the ideal that politics should strive for. But as it stands, the post-truth politics of today is more about invoking a past that never exists to judge the presence as a crisis in naming when the real crisis is about rebuilding a shared space that has room for all – be they of the left, right or centre; cosmopolitan or parochial; civic-minded or self-centred; liberal-minded or bigoted. Politics is and always will be about striving for that space, without which no human can thrive. References Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Arendt, Hannah. 1977. “Truth and Politics.” In Between Past and Future, 227–264. New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. British Broadcasting Corporation. 2016. “Brexit vote: The breakdown.” BBC News, December 7, 2016. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38227674 Cao, Feng. 2016. “A New Examination of Confucius’ Rectification of Names.” Journal of Chinese Humanities 2: 147–171. https://doi-org.subzero.lib. uoguelph.ca/ doi/ 10.1163/23521341-12340032. Connor, W. Robert. 1984. Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press. de Jonge, Casper C. 2017. “Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Thucydides.” in The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides, edited by Sara Forsdyke, Edith Foster, and Ryan Balot. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780199340385.013.17 https://www-oxfordhandbooks-com.subzero. lib.uoguelph.ca/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199340385.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199340385 Hyvönen, Ari-Elmeri. 2018. “Careless Speech: Conceptualizing Post-Truth Politics.” New Perspectives 26 (3): 31–55. https://www.proquest.com/ scholarly-journals/careless-speech-conceptualizing-post-truth/ docview/2204515132/se-2?accountid=11233. Hobbes, Thomas. 1839–1845. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, edited by Sir William Molesworth. London: John Bohn. Vol. 8. Klinkner, Melanie. 2018. “Reasonable Truth.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 14 (3): 393–99. doi:10.1386/macp.14.3.393_7. Lee, Haiyan. 2019. “When Nothing Is True, Everything Is Possible: On Truth and Power by Way of Socialist Realism.” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 134 (5). Cambridge University Press: 1157–64. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2019.134.5.1157 Lewis, Mark E. 1999. “Warring States Political History.” In The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, edited by Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy, 587–650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Makeham, John. 2003. “Zheng ming (Rectification of names).” In RoutledgeCurzon Encyclopedia of Confucianism, edited by Xinzhong Yao. Vol. 2: 813-814. New York: Routledge. Oxford Languages, n. d. “Word of the Year 2016.” Accessed 19 August 2017. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2016/ Peters, Richard. 1979. Hobbes. Westport: Greenwood Press. Pew Research Center. 2018. “An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters.” Report, August 9, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/ politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on- validated-voters/ Plato. 1974. Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett. Tesich, Steve. 1992. “Watergate Syndrome: A Government of Lies.” The Nation: 12-14. January 6/13, 1992. Thucydides. 1972. The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. Wolin, Sheldon. 2004. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Westen Political Thought. Expanded Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zerilli, Linda M. G. 2020. ‘Fact-Checking and Truth-Telling in an Age of Alternative Facts.’ Le foucaldien 6, no. 1: 2, 1–22. Theresa Man Ling Lee is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Guelph (Canada). Lee is a political theorist who specializes in contemporary political thought. Her research and teaching areas include continental philosophy, Marxism and critical theory, feminism, postmodernism, philosophy of social science, psychoanalysis, multiculturalism, human rights, disability studies, modern Chinese political thought and comparative political theory. Lee has published on a wide range of subjects in these areas, including intercultural pedagogy and the challenges of teaching as a person with multiple minority designations in a Canadian university classroom.

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Sep 16 • 7:16 AM EDT • Politics • e-ir.org
A machine learning system that identifies cancer cells based on how they scatter light

Cytology tests are widely used for cancer screening, but diagnosis can be challenging when tumor and non-tumor cells look very similar. Researchers from Japan developed a machine learning system that identifies tumor cells based on their white-light scattering spectra. The approach achieved high diagnostic accuracy for mesothelioma and showed potential for distinguishing several other tumor types, offering a promising approach for enhancing cytological diagnosis.

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Sep 15 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • eurekalert.org
Insider Believes UNC is Trying to Get Bill Belichick Out

The University of North Carolina has played well over the first two weeks of its football season, a promising sign for Bill Belichick and his program.

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Sep 14 • 10:37 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Deshaun Watson Makes Promise To Fans After Week 1 Loss

The Browns quarterback is promising to keep smiling.

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Sep 14 • 10:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Eagles’ Offensive Line Gets Concerning Stats Exposed After Commanders Game

After a shaky showing from the Philadelphia Eagles‘ offensive line during the 2025 NFL season, their first leg of a bounce-back campaign in 2026 was far from promising. As the Eagles rolled out a new offense under the first-year offensive coordinator Sean Mannion, the line was by far the most glaring weakness on the day […] The post Eagles’ Offensive Line Gets Concerning Stats Exposed After Commanders Game appeared first on HEAVY.

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Sep 14 • 9:18 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Joe Brady Opens Up About His Behavior During Bills Games

The Buffalo Bills’ head coach confronts his sideline intensity, admitting to heated headset outbursts while striving to prevent game-day emotions from compromising his late-game decision-making.

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Sep 14 • 3:22 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Cardinals get promising JJ Wetherholt injury news before Giants series

The Cardinals could get their second baseman back this season.

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Sep 14 • 10:24 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Özgür Tuncer: Health and vaccine equity

Cold-chain dependence is not just a logistical burden, it is a primary driver of global health inequality. Following promising Phase 1 results for SPVX02, StablePharma’s chief executive discusses how thermostabilisation technology can redefine global health equity.

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Sep 14 • 12:00 AM EDT • Health • healthcaretoday.com
House Speaker Mike Johnson says Trump's $5,000 'dividend' needs congressional approval

Trump made the unusual pitch at the party's midterm convention in Dallas last week, promising a “Trump Dividend” if voters keep the GOP in power on Capitol Hill.

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Sep 13 • 3:36 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
Promising Entertainment Stocks To Add to Your Watchlist

Verizon Communications, Walt Disney, Spotify Technology, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Live Nation Entertainment are the five Entertainment stocks to watch today, according to MarketBeat's stock screener tool. Entertainment stocks are shares of publicly traded companies involved in producing, distrib

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Sep 13 • 1:02 PM EDT • Entertainment • marketbeat.com
Galaxy S27 Pro and S27 Ultra to get major display upgrade

Samsung’s Galaxy S27 Pro and S27 Ultra are reportedly set to receive M16 OLED panels, promising improved brightness, color accuracy, efficiency, durability and new privacy features. The standard S27 models, however, are expected to use older M14 technology.

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Sep 13 • 12:15 PM EDT • Technology • notebookcheck.net
Egor Dëmin Will Break Out for the Nets This Season

Bleacher Report called Egor Dëmin's breakout its hot take for the Nets, but is it really a hot take? After a promising rookie season and an impressive Summer League, Dëmin looks ready to take a major leap in Year 2.

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Sep 13 • 12:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Buffalo Bills Inactives Against Houston Texans Include Promising Rookies

Buffalo sidelines rookie receiver Skyler Bell while elevating Frank Gore Jr., reshuffling the depth chart as key injuries impact the roster for Sunday’s clash in Houston.

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Sep 13 • 11:35 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Promising Entertainment Stocks To Watch Today

Verizon Communications, Walt Disney, Spotify Technology, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Live Nation Entertainment are the five Entertainment stocks to watch today, according to MarketBeat's stock screener tool. Entertainment stocks are shares of publicly traded companies involved in producing, distrib

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Sep 12 • 1:02 PM EDT • Entertainment • marketbeat.com
Dodgers Encouraged by Kyle Tucker’s Latest Surge After Swing Change

Dodgers outfielder Kyle Tucker has started to click for another promising run of games, and his season turnaround may finally be here.

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Sep 12 • 10:35 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (10%)
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Could Utah Jazz Have Center Problem?

Despite boasting elite height and frontcourt versatility, the loss of Walker Kessler leaves a void in the middle that could derail Utah’s promising postseason ambitions.

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Sep 12 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
These New Startups Are Promising to Cure Your Next Hangover. What Does Science Say?

Hangover cures are big business and a hot new wellness trend, but scientists are dubious about their effectiveness (sorry!).

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Sep 12 • 4:30 AM EDT • Science • inc.com
Video: Opinion

President Trump’s unpopularity is a threat to Republican candidates across the country. But that’s not stopping him from promising $5,000 checks to voters and telling them to pretend he’s on the ballot. The Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie argues that these efforts to woo infrequent voters are not only harmful to the party but also “profound political malpractice.”

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Sep 11 • 7:35 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Chimp convalescence, ant amputation: the wild world of animal doctors

When people are sick, we seek out medications and treatments to help heal. For a long time, scientists thought that was a uniquely human ability. But it turns out, many other animals do a version of it too! And since the late 1980s, western researchers have been trying to get a peek behind the curtain. And aside from just cataloguing all the cool examples just to know, there’s a real hope that studying animals’ medical cabinets may be the most promising way to expand our own. We get into the weeds with freelance science journalist Mandy Nguyen.Interested in more animal stories? Email us your ideas and questions to explore at shortwave@npr.org. They may become a future episode!Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.

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Sep 11 • 3:00 AM EDT • Science • npr.org
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Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Requires A Download Instead Of Shipping Complete On Multiple Discs To Avoid Compromising The 'Fidelity' And 'Quality'

Director Naoki Hamaguchi defended the move amid the current uproar over physical games

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Sep 10 • 4:53 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
Trump to send $500 rebate checks to nearly one million Obamacare enrollees

A day after promising to send $5,000 dividend payments to all Americans, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would distribute $500 rebate checks to nearly one million Affordable Care Act enrollees in 30 states.

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Sep 10 • 1:46 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
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Trump promises Americans $5K if GOP wins. And, Kirk supporters reflect on his death

President Trump tries to incentivize voters by promising $5,000 to Americans if the GOP wins the midterms. And, young conservatives reflect on the party one year after Charlie Kirk's death.

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Sep 10 • 7:27 AM EDT • Politics • kgou.org
‘Horrible Game From Drake (Maye), Disgusting’ — Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy Rips Patriots QB After Meek Week 1 Loss to Seahawks

The New England Patriots opened the season with a result that has quickly turned optimism into frustration. A promising 10-0 start against the Seattle Seahawks on Wednesday night disappeared as the Patriots struggled to finish drives and protect their lead against a team that lost its quarterback on the opening drive.

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Sep 10 • 3:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Lafferty, Highway Outlaws like to get the crowd moving

ELOY — Popular local musician Everett D. Lafferty and his Band the Highway Outlaws return to the Eloy Fiestas Patrias stage this year, promising a lineup of dance-worthy, sing-along songs.

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Sep 10 • 3:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • pinalcentral.com
UT San Antonio prepares biomedical researchers for entrepreneurial innovation

UT San Antonio is preparing biomedical researchers to think beyond scientific discovery, equipping them to consider how promising research can move from the laboratory toward real-world impact.

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Sep 9 • 2:22 PM EDT • Health • news.uthscsa.edu
Draymond Green's Klay Thompson Defense Reveals Miami Heat's Promising Plan

Draymond Green's defense of Klay Thompson offers a useful blueprint for Miami Heat expectations. Thompson's role should center on shooting gravity, off-ball movement, and complementary offense-not recreating his 2017 Golden State Warriors production. Green's Ray Allen comparison reinforces that approach after Thompson's move to Miami. What Did Draymond Green Say About Klay Thompson and the […] The post Draymond Green's Klay Thompson Defense Reveals Miami Heat's Promising Plan appeared first on S

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Sep 9 • 1:08 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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49ers lose promising defensive lineman for the year

49ers’ Alfred Collins suffers season ending injury in Australia days before clash versus Rams

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Sep 8 • 11:11 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Exclusive: Two of gaming’s biggest names are making a big investment in gaming’s future

The first thing to know about the Nova Games Foundation is that it isn’t about The Game Awards. And it’s not about PlayStation. The ambitious new grant program is the brainchild of Geoff Keighley and Mark Cerny. Keighley is the host of The Game Awards, Summer Game Fest and Opening Night Live. Cerny is a game designer of some 45 years and the lead architect for the PlayStation 4 and 5. But this new thing, which they’re revealing through Game File, isn’t about their day jobs. It’s an unaffiliated, standalone philanthropic project. It’s a bet on the artistic future of video games and a way, they tell me, to give back. “I’m nearing the end of my career,” Cerny recently told me over email. “I’m not done yet, but paying it forward—in the best way possible—is very much on my mind these days,” The Nova Games Foundation is a university-affiliated fellowship program, intended to offer six-figure grants to 20 young game designers each year, potentially for decades to come. It will offer no-strings-attached funding along with mentorship from games industry leaders, a combination intended to aid the development of groundbreaking new games, Cerny and Keighley told me. Nova will begin accepting applications in December, from class of 2026 and 2027 students from 13 affiliated gaming programs at universities in eight countries. The schools working with Nova include the New York University and the University of Southern California in the U.S., along with Abertay University in Scotland, Cnam-Enjmin in France, TH Köln in Germany, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, Cerny and Keighley said. The plan: $100,000 per recipient, with about a quarter of Nova fellows eligible for up to $500,000 more for projects that are shaping up particularly well. Payments will be delivered based on development milestones, and recipients will own their games. Nova will help promote the work, and developers will be free to pursue the publishers and platforms of their choice. Nova can help introduce fellows to publishers, but won’t take a cut. “I’ve always wanted to give back, but given my role in the industry, I’ve never felt it appropriate to commercially invest in games,” Keighley told Game File. “I’ve never owned stock in a game company or taken a financial stake in a game. Nova is philanthropy: we aren’t taking equity or looking to recoup the grants. The return we’re hoping for is creative—helping new voices make games and find their footing. “Mark and I have each made multi-million-dollar donations to establish the foundation, and we intend to keep contributing. We hope others will join us.” Cerny and Keighley have already hired an executive director, John Maconga, and a head of grants, recent Game Developers Conference director Ashley Corrigan, to help launch the effort. They’re working to recruit game industry leaders to join the effort. Keighley says “dozens of leading game directors have already expressed interest in contributing their time.” To name one, they’ve already gotten Josef Fares, lead designer from It Takes Two and Spit Fiction studio Hazelight on board with a donation and pledge to help out. “I’m proud to support Nova because it gives the next generation of creators the freedom to explore their creativity and hopefully bring their unique visions to life,” Fares told Game File. A plan forged from a friendship Keighley and Cerny have known each other a long time. It’s been so long, Cerny isn’t even sure exactly when they met. “We travel in much the same circles and I’m sure first intersected in the 90s or early 2000s,“ Cerny said. Keighley thinks it might have been during his stint writing a column about the mid-’90s console 3DO for a gaming magazine while Cerny was working on games with Crystal Dynamics or on Way of the Warrior with Naughty Dog. They became genuine friends about a 10 years ago, Keighley said, as they bonded over a shared love of games and a hope to improve the industry. “About a decade ago, we started having dinner a few times a year in LA,” Keighley said. “Just to catch up on life and the industry. Those conversations continued over Zoom during COVID. Nova grew out of that friendship and a question we kept coming back to: ‘What could we do to help the next generation of game directors get started?’” Keighley credits Cerny with the idea to figure out a way to put their money and time back into the industry. At one of those dinners, Keighley proposed the idea of a fellowship program. He’d recalled applying for a Rhodes Scholarship when he was younger. “Spoiler: I didn’t get it,” he said. He’d admired the MacArthur Foundation’s so-called “genius grants.” He liked these kinds of programs that recognized people’s talents and gave them the financial boost and the freedom to realize their potential. With Cerny, he had pondered what a game industry version of that could be. Keighley liked the idea of centering the fellowship on students, drawing inspiration from the accomplishments of Jenova Chen, the USC game design graduate who went on to lead the creation of gently moving, ambitious games such as Flower and Journey. Keighley also thought it could be useful to help promising graduates bridge the transition from student to professional. “Joining an established studio isn’t always possible—especially in today’s market—and even then, it isn’t the right path for everyone,” Keighley said. A fellowship, he realized, could give “graduates the time, resources and guidance to pursue a game of their own and not worry about the commercial viability.” As the idea took shape, Cerny also saw an opportunity to enable more games of a certain type: “The target with the grants is games as an artistic medium,” Cerny told me. “We like to say games with ‘artistic, literary and societal value.’” He added: “I’m a pretty big gamer myself, though I tend to gravitate towards the smaller and more unique or artistic titles, games like Neva, Abzu, Gorogoa, Stray or Outer Wilds. I was just playing and Roger on a flight to Japan, and was getting misty eyed to a degree that I was concerned that a flight attendant would ask me if I was OK. “So one fun benefit here is the games that will come out of the Nova Games Foundation – I can’t wait to play them myself.” Cerny believes it will also be useful for Nova fellows to hone their craft and team leadership skills. “We are looking for the next generation of visionaries,” he said. “The trick is that they will also need to have the executive function necessary to drive a small project to completion.” Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my reporting, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Going big with this Keighley and Cerny may have started Nova and may be the ones primarily backing it right now, but they’re dreaming of something that goes beyond them. “Mark and I may have helped get it started, but one of our measures of success is that Nova grows into something the entire games industry feels a sense of ownership in,” Keighley said. “Our ambition is to build a lasting endowment supported by people and companies across the industry, and an equally broad community of creators willing to give their time and experience to the next generation.” The industry has a lot of knowledge that it can pass to the next generation, Keighley said: “Nova can hopefully become a way to connect that generosity with talented young creators at the moment when it can make the biggest difference.” Cerny, who told me he believes Nova can mature “over the next 10 or 20 years,” sees an opportunity to give generations of game makers momentum. “The industry has changed immeasurably since I started in games in 1982,” he said. “These graduates have talent, training and tools that outclass what we had back in the day by an astonishing amount. But they face a tough road ahead getting traction in the industry, and many could benefit from our support. We want to be there to give it to them.” “There’s a personal side to this, too,” Keighley said. “I don’t have children, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I can do for future generations. Games have been my entire career. I’ve been incredibly fortunate, and helping someone else build a life in this industry feels like a meaningful way to give back.” Cerny’s oeuvre dates back to Marble Madness and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. He has stood on stage multiple times to reveal the future of PlayStation hardware. He’s been an executive producer for a string of modern PlayStation classics such as The Last Guardian and Marvel’s Spider-Man. Nevertheless, of Nova, he said, “It’s certainly not like anything I’ve done before.” Nova Foundation applications will be due in December and the first wave of fellows will be announced in March 2027. A full list of participating universities and steps students and recent graduates can take to apply to become a Nova Fellow is forthcoming.

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Sep 8 • 3:12 PM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news
AZ's R&D chief Barr touts internal 'science success story' after IL-33 antibody's stellar showing in COPD

With a detailed data drop that AstraZeneca’s R&D chief described as an internal “science success story,” the British Big Pharma has secured an FDA priority review for what it believes could become a flagship biologic in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In detailed results from the late-stage Oberon and Titania trials—first teased in March and detailed in full at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Barcelona this week—the drugmaker laid out the extent of its IL-33 inhibitor’s potential to reduce moderate and severe exacerbations in a wide range of COPD patients still struggling with those “lung attacks,” as AstraZeneca’s Sharon Barr, Ph.D., called them, despite using standard-care inhaled therapy. In the headline results, a 300 mg dose of tozorakimab given once every four weeks curbed those moderate and severe exacerbations in the studies’ primary population of former smokers by 29% in the Oberon study and 34% in Titania. In the overall population of both current and former smokers, these reductions were 30% and 29%, respectively, versus placebo and inhaled standard of care. The benefits also extended to clinically meaningful exacerbation reductions in all prespecified patient subgroups and specifically turned up promising signals in patients across a range of blood eosinophil counts, with Barr telling Fierce that “it’s the details that make this even more exciting than the high-level results that we’ve already shared.” In fact, during AZ’s tozorakimab poster presentation at the ERS 2026 Congress this past weekend, attendees were so enamored by the data that event organizers had to encourage people to clear the room and look at the other presentations on offer, Barr said in an interview. “I think it really speaks to the fact that there is a lot of buzz around these data because the entire respiratory community has been so desperate for new therapies for these patients,” she explained. The respiratory disease continues to represent a “staggering unmet medical need,” Barr said, highlighting the COPD exacerbations that the Oberon and Titania studies homed in on, which she added carry a greater mortality risk than a heart attack. “When a patient has a severe exacerbation, only about half of them are still alive within three and a half years,” she pointed out. As for tozorakimab specifically, Barr christened the molecule “an AstraZeneca science success story,” harkening several years back to the point at which researchers began to explore IL-33 as a driver of respiratory disease, and COPD in particular. At the same time, “there was still so much that wasn’t understood,” she admitted, highlighting the insight that IL-33 signals through both ST2 and EGFR through the RAGE pathway, a discovery Barr attributed to AstraZeneca's own scientists. Understanding the need to tackle both pathways in COPD—and aware of competitor candidates in the hopper, including one that bound ST2—the company ultimately had to make some “courageous decisions,” Barr said. These included taking a prior COPD molecule offline and going back to the drawing board to reinvent its potential IL-33 label “to make sure that we had a molecule that could block signaling through both arms of the pathway, through both the reduced form and the oxidized form, knowing that we wouldn’t be first, but striving to be best.” “When we put [tozorakimab] into the clinic, we firmly believed that we had a differentiated molecule, and we saw the other molecules blocking just ST2 or partially blocking IL-33, unable to deliver two positive pivotal studies in COPD,” Barr explained. “We kept marching forward because we believed our molecule was differentiated, and now I think we have the clinical validation that supports that.” Ultimately, AstraZeneca finds itself on much better footing these days when it comes to potential biologic rivals to tozorakimab in COPD. Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupixent, for instance, is approved to treat COPD exacerbations in patients with high eosinophil counts, but not low ones. Meanwhile, the future has become cloudier for other next-gen IL-33 candidates from Sanofi and Regeneron, as well as Roche, which have suffered trial flops in recent years. One other potential ingredient for AstraZeneca’s success in its duo of studies was that the company was “ambitious in the trial design, willing to look at an all-comers population,” Barr said, “and willing to enroll the most severe patients.” Prior studies for would-be biologics rivals in COPD “avoided enrolling” those patients, she pointed out. She also highlighted the Big Pharma’s painstaking design of exacerbations in its trial, which “gave us a very rigorous readout,” and pointed to “the extra effort and investment” the company put in to understand the effect of mucus plugs in patients. Barr described mucus production as a “key feature in disease diversity,” noting that mucus plugs—obstructing clumps of mucus that block patients’ airways—are associated with worse outcomes in COPD. In its data announcement, AstraZeneca noted that an integrated analysis of Oberon and Titania found tozorakimab “demonstrated a reduction in patients’ mucus plug score,” with the pharma claiming its biologic is the first to deliver such results in a broad COPD population. “So being able to reduce those mucus plugs, we expect, is an important part of driving benefit for patients who are living with COPD,” Barr said. Again touching on the breadth of the study populations, Barr added that tozorakimab “worked across all eosinophil levels in both current and former smokers across all levels of lung function,” which she suggested “really simplifies decision-making for clinicians, and it allows them to offer therapy to the broadest possible patient population.” In the highest patient eosinophil count group, tozorakimab helped chart a 43% reduction in exacerbation risk, which Barr stressed were “unprecedented data.” In the mid-level group, AZ’s drug delivered a 23% reduction and, in the lowest group, a 34% reduction in eosinophils, which Barr said suggests efficacy “in all patient subgroups.” As for AZ’s recent guidance upgrade on the medicine’s sales opportunity, the lift from a $3 billion to $5 billion range to $5 billion plus was informed by multiple factors, Barr said, including the fact that “in 2024, there were multiple competitors, and there aren’t anymore.” Additionally, “we know that this is a massive unmet medical need, and this is a really incredible set of data that we think will be very convincing to the clinical community,” Barr said. Looking ahead to a potential evolution of the COPD treatment landscape, Barr noted that most patients start treatment in the community with an option like a triple therapy, and for them, having an option like AstraZeneca’s inhaler Breztri will remain a “really important part” of that journey. But of the patients uncontrolled on triple therapy, which Barr described as “about half of them today,” just a “small fraction” are currently eligible for biologic therapy, which she emphasized AstraZeneca is working to change. Understanding that COPD is not a “one-size-fits-all” disease, AstraZeneca is also looking at its antibody drug Tezspire for patients with T2-driven disease, and the company continues to think about new mechanisms for tackling COPD through both systemic and inhaled drugs, Barr said.

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Sep 8 • 10:50 AM EDT • Science • fiercebiotech.com
Case for Gray becoming very hard to make

The optimism that followed Hibs' win in Dundee has well and truly drained from the support after two subsequent performances that fell well short of expectations. A hapless first half, where Hibs chased shadows, was followed by a second half that started brightly but ended prematurely with a ridiculously self-inflicted red card. The promising start to the campaign has quickly evaporated with losses to Gent, Hearts and now St Johnstone.

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Sep 8 • 6:12 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Perilla frutescens Benefits: Effects on Allergy, Inflammation, Immunity, and Gut Health

Perilla frutescens contains phenolic acids, flavonoids, and other bioactive compounds that show anti-allergic, immunomodulatory, anti-inflammatory, and gut-protective effects across laboratory and animal studies. Limited human evidence, including a small randomized trial of rosmarinic-acid-enriched Perilla extract for seasonal allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, is promising, but larger standardized clinical trials are needed.

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Sep 8 • 12:02 AM EDT • Health • news-medical.net
Kannapolis Cannon Ballers 2026 Season Review

A stronger second half and plenty of promising performances highlighted the year

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Sep 7 • 6:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
EU seeks to reassure a Trump-rattled Greenland with promise of a new partnership and investment

The European Union is promising Greenland a stronger partnership and hundreds of millions of euros in investment, wanting to reassure Greenland after U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to take control of the island.

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Sep 7 • 5:29 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
Trump keeps heralding an economic boom, but even a solid jobs report is causing problems for him

President Donald Trump has spent 20 months promising that America was on the cusp of an economic boom. But Friday's surprisingly positive jobs report ultimately provoked frustration from Trump.

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Sep 7 • 2:46 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
Bills Named Top Trade Destination For Promising 1,300-Yard WR

The Buffalo Bills could target Houston Texans wide receiver Tank Dell in a trade, an NFL analyst suggests. The post Bills Named Top Trade Destination For Promising 1,300-Yard WR appeared first on HEAVY.

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Sep 7 • 11:51 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
A game which could kick-start Coventry's season

The phrase "taking positives from a defeat" often annoys fans, players and managers but, in this case, Coventry City surely have to look on the bright side as they reflect on a very promising performance at Etihad Stadium on Saturday. It is no consolation for losing the first three league games of a season without scoring for the first time in their history, but they pushed an excellent Manchester City side all the way. Afterwards, Coventry centre-back Bobby Thomas said it was a game, despite the result, which could kick-start their season.

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Sep 7 • 4:37 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Ndiaye now at the top table of the game

Iliman Ndiaye's first comment in the interview room after Saturday's win was a bit of an understatement. Back in 2020, the Senegal winger was playing for Hyde United, on loan from Sheffield United. Six years on, Ndiaye is now at the top table of the game and it was a promising debut - including at least one bit of magic first half, which nearly set up a goal, and a half-chance with a flicked header in the second half, as well as some lovely touches throughout the game.

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Sep 7 • 2:14 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Kayvon Thibodeaux Trade: Giants, Patriots Connected In Latest Rumor

Kayvon Thibodeaux could use a change of scenery, as the pass-rushing specialist is buried on the New York Giants depth chart as he enters the final year of his rookie contract. A former top-five pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, the Oregon product started off his career in promising fashion, recording 11.5 sacks during his …

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Sep 6 • 2:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
‘A Few Good Men’ and a Benjamin Button musical highlight fall theater slate

Promising fare also includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Broadway and Brian Cox at D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre.

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Sep 6 • 10:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • washingtonpost.com
Trump keeps heralding an economic boom, but even a solid jobs report is causing problems for him

President Donald Trump has been promising an economic boom, but Friday's positive jobs report left him frustrated.

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Sep 5 • 10:11 AM EDT • Politics • clickorlando.com
😐 Neutral (25%)
Scientists detect signals of hydrogen from billions of years ago. Could this help us map out the universe?

"Hydrogen intensity mapping has long been seen as a promising way to map the universe efficiently."

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Sep 4 • 5:00 PM EDT • Science • space.com
A Single Vikings Reality Points Toward a Promising Outcome

No team can win the Super Bowl in training camp and the preseason. However, there are some teams that lose […]

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Sep 4 • 3:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Brentford v Sunderland: Key stats and talking points

Brentford are aiming to maintain their unbeaten start against a Sunderland side with one win and one defeat so far. BBC Sport takes a look at the key themes ahead of their clash at the Gtech Community Stadium on Saturday (15:00 BST). It's been a promising start to the season for the Bees, who have a win and a draw from their first two matches and were a bit unlucky to be pegged back by Leeds last weekend.

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Sep 4 • 2:04 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Cancer drug tames atherosclerosis inflammation and plaque in animal models

A new Yale study has identified a promising therapeutic avenue for atherosclerosis, a condition caused by inflammation and plaque buildup in arteries. Martin Schwartz, Ph.D., Robert W. Berliner Professor ...

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Sep 4 • 10:20 AM EDT • Technology • medicalxpress.com
Liverpool confirm Djylian N'Guessan signing

Liverpool have confirmed that promising forward Djylian N'Guessan will officially be a Reds player in January.The French youth international has come through Saint-Étienne academy and has already mad...

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Sep 4 • 5:05 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Mets Will Finally Give Promising Rookie Starter A Shot
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Sep 3 • 6:03 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
What Happens When AI Starts Doing Business with AI?

As AI agents increasingly interact with one another on commercial platforms, firms need new rules governing what those agents can see, decide, and do. In a controlled AI-to-AI simulation covering 160 governance runs and 2,560 observations, researchers tested four governance mechanisms: information disclosure, agent autonomy, reputation signals, and structured interaction protocols. Rich, machine-readable information helped agents identify promising counterparties, while greater autonomy improved their ability to move opportunities toward commitment. Reputation signals helped agents determine which opportunities deserved attention. Rigid interaction protocols, however, reduced engagement and exchange progression. The findings suggest that firms should establish clear levels of agent authority, run bounded experiments, provide structured information and reputation signals, and design explicit handoffs from agents to human decision-makers.

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Sep 2 • 8:15 AM EDT • Business • hbr.org
What’s happening in Corridor? An adults-only circus and more

A Halloween-inspired take on the circus will arrive in Cedar Rapids this month, with Paranormal Cirque: Inferno promising a show in which “awe-inspiring aerial artistry and amazing acrobatics will set you ablaze.”

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Sep 2 • 7:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • thegazette.com
Detroit Lions Lose Promising Rookie to Patriots

Former Detroit Lions rookie linebacker Erick Hunter has signed with the New England Patriots' 53-man active roster after being waived by Detroit during final roster cuts.

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Sep 1 • 4:55 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Detroit Lions Sign Promising Offensive Lineman to Practice Squad

The Detroit Lions are bringing offensive lineman Mason Miller back on their practice squad after his impressive debut at center in the preseason finale.

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Aug 31 • 3:57 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Honor Robot Phone hands-on: A gimbal phone experiment with promising results

Honor crammed a gimbal camera into a phone in a promising hardware experiment.

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Aug 31 • 11:00 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Model Helps Scientists Build Better Protein-Degrading Therapies

A team of Weill Cornell Medicine investigators has developed a computer model that will help scientists more efficiently develop protein-destroying therapies, a newer type of treatment that is particularly promising for cancer.

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Aug 31 • 9:19 AM EDT • Science • news.weill.cornell.edu
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U.S. Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli’s Meeting with Uzbekistan's Minister of Sports and National Olympic Committee

U.S. Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli’s Meeting with Uzbekistan’s Minister of Sports and National Olympic Committee Tashkent, Uzbekistan – August 31, 2026 – U.S. Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli met with the leadership of the Ministry of Sports and the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Uzbekistan to discuss the current state of the U.S.-Uzbekistan sports cooperation and prospects for its continued growth. Discussions focused on strengthening international sports cooperation, advancing the Olympic movement, and identifying promising joint projects. Special Envoy Zampolli congratulated Uzbekistan on its selection as the host of the 2027 World Fencing Championships and welcomed Uzbekistan’s possible participation in a planned World Robotics Organization. Special Envoy Zampolli also congratulated the people of Uzbekistan on the 35th anniversary of the country’s independence. “Sport brings people together like nothing else,” said Special Envoy Zampolli. This engagement builds on Special Envoy Zampolli’s prior meetings with Uzbekistan’s national sports leaders and teams and reflects the United States’ sustained commitment to sports diplomacy as a bridge for cultural exchange and international cooperation.

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Aug 31 • 8:46 AM EDT • Sports • uz.usembassy.gov
Trump-era politics reshape dating in Richmond

One woman asked if her Republican match attended Jan. 6. Another promising date ended over a Tesla.

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Aug 31 • 6:21 AM EDT • Politics • axios.com
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Four popular supplements that science says don't deliver

Walk into the supplement aisle and you’ll find plenty of products promising better health. But sometimes, basic chemistry and biology tell us those claims simply don’t add up. Before spending money on the next supplement promising better memory, faster recovery, or improved health, look beyond the label and examine the evidence.

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Aug 31 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • acsh.org
Patriots Cut Unlikely Training Camp Interception Leader After Roster Shakeup

John Saunders Jr. led the Patriots with five training camp interceptions, but a late trade helped push the promising safety off New England’s initial roster.

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Aug 30 • 9:27 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Oregon Ducks Receive Promising Update on 2028 QB Prospect

Rising high school star Tommy Devany eyes a high-stakes visit to Eugene as Dan Lanning pivots his powerhouse recruiting strategy toward a new generation of elite quarterbacks.

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Aug 30 • 3:15 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
EA breaks its silence after Iron Man gameplay leak, admitting "well, that didn't go as planned"

EA has responded to leaked Iron Man gameplay footage, promising more news once the game is ready to properly reveal it.

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Aug 29 • 10:56 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Meleek Thomas shows his confidence ahead of his rookie season with the Cavaliers

The Cavaliers have one of the most promising rookies in the league with Meleek Thomas.

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Aug 29 • 12:48 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
White House, hemp lobbyists bet on shutdown politics to delay ‘diet weed’ ban

Lawmakers say the Trump administration is promising to use the one-month punt to work on new regulations.

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Aug 28 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • politico.com
Laser-wielding mosquito killer hits market promising to track and zap backyard pests midair

Photon Matrix says its laser mosquito zapper uses lidar, radar and AI vision to detect and eliminate mosquitoes midair, but the device costs nearly $1,000.

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Aug 27 • 9:53 PM EDT • Technology • foxbusiness.com
Promising 49ers rookie suffers injury early vs. Raiders

The 49ers are taking on the Raiders on Thursday at Allegiant Stadium, and in the first quarter, they lost one of their cornerbacks.

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Aug 27 • 8:43 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Federal Committee Looks Backward as Autism Science Moves Forward

In its second meeting, federal autism committee advances plan that may stymie promising research

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Aug 27 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • medpagetoday.com
Virginia governor promises change after accused murderer flees U.S. from mental health facility

Virginia Gov. Spanberger is promising changes after an accused killer fled the U.S. while on unsupervised release from a Fairfax County mental health facility.

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Aug 26 • 8:49 PM EDT • Health • fox5dc.com
Scientists switch on a strange new form of magnetism in an ultrathin material

Scientists have found a surprising way to potentially switch on an unusual form of magnetism in ruthenium dioxide, a material that normally appears nonmagnetic. When the material was made into an ultrathin film only a few atomic layers thick and placed under strain, its electrons developed patterns consistent with altermagnetism, a recently proposed magnetic state with promising uses in advanced electronics.

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Aug 26 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Trump-endorsed candidate clears key hurdle in red state gubernatorial race

Mike Mazzei secured Trump's endorsement and defeated Genter Drummond in Oklahoma's GOP governor runoff, promising to eliminate the state's income tax.

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Aug 25 • 6:49 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
Mass Effect-like Exodus gets a release date, while showcasing an octopus companion in a mech suit

Exodus is made by former BioWare people who made Mass Effect, and it hopes to fill that void when it arrives next year. So far, it's looking promising.

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Aug 25 • 2:45 PM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Lions Part Ways With Promising RB After Injury Setback

The Detroit Lions waived second-year running back Kye Robichaux after he suffered a broken foot. The post Lions Part Ways With Promising RB After Injury Setback appeared first on HEAVY.

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Aug 25 • 1:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Scientists discover asymmetric diffusion of magnetic skyrmions in simulations

Magnetic skyrmions are nanoscale spin textures that can behave like particles and move and diffuse in real space. This makes them promising information carriers for future memory and computing technologies. A new computational study in npj Spintronics shows how geometry and topology can guide asymmetric thermal diffusion of magnetic skyrmions, offering insights for unlocking unconventional computing paradigms, including future stochastic and neuromorphic computing devices for more efficient artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

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Aug 24 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • eurekalert.org
Trump’s ‘Economic D-Day’ for Iran Must Overcome a Troubled History

The U.S. has spent 20 years promising ‘crippling sanctions’ on Iran. But the latest effort comes with a reverse twist, after military action failed to accomplish President Trump’s goals.

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Aug 24 • 7:10 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Ex-Forza Horizon Devs Finally Find a Publisher for Clutch, PS5's Promising Open World Racer

A clutch move you might say

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Aug 24 • 1:00 PM EDT • Technology • pushsquare.com
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Why politicians are punchlines at the Edinburgh Fringe

There was a time when satire had an easier gig. Politicians said something ridiculous, comedians made fun of them, audiences laughed, and everyone went home. Subscribe Now the joke is often the headline. In a world where the unbelievable regularly makes the news, where politics can veer into parody before the comedians have had time to write the punchline, you might reasonably wonder: is satire running out of material? Not in Edinburgh. At the Fringe, I can confirm satire has a pulse, even in a relentless and rapid news cycle. Politicians as punchlines Take NewsRevue, the world’s longest-running live sketch show, where politicians are turned into punchlines at industrial speed. Its latest target? Andy Burnham - or, more accurately, his doppelganger, pictured below in the middle. The joke, he tells us, is that there have been so many politicians coming and going that even satire risks suffering from political fatigue. But perhaps that revolving door is precisely why comedy matters. When the news cycle moves faster than our ability to process it, comedians can hold up a mirror - and make us think twice. Small talk Take Ayoade Bamgboye, the Saturday Night Live UK star who won the Best Newcomer prize at last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Her Fringe debut was critically acclaimed; this year she is turning her attention to one of Britain’s most baffling social rituals: small talk. Share It’s a reminder that satire doesn’t always need a politician in its sights. Sometimes the target is simply us civilians - the strange little rules and rituals we have collectively agreed to pretend are normal. Politics and Palestinian identity For British-Palestinian comedian Sami Abu Wardeh, pictured below, comedy has a more urgent job. His new show, Sami Abu Wardeh Hates You, asks who gets to hate, and whether anger belongs to everyone, not just the far right. His comedy confronts politics and Palestinian identity while refusing to surrender the simple business of making people laugh. Shakespeare meets climate crisis And then there is HAM: an “eco-hijacking” of Hamlet, which its creators describe as “a sordid wrestle between a vegan and a sausage-lover”. Shakespeare meets the climate crisis. Meat meets moral panic. The end result? You’ll leave promising to become vegan and swiftly bulk buying Linda McCartney sausages. HAM was created by theatre company Hotter Project, aka Ell Potter and Mary Higgins, pictured below. They say comedy helped them avoid the preachiness sometimes associated with climate activism - using Shakespeare as a vessel for uncomfortable questions about the planet, politics and the way we live. Perhaps that is satire’s secret weapon. It doesn’t necessarily make the world less absurd. It makes the absurdity crystal clear. And at a moment when reality increasingly feels like it has been written by a sketch writer, the Fringe is proving there is still plenty to laugh and cry at. Satire isn’t dead. It’s alive, subletting and having the time of its life at the Fringe. Subscribe Share Channel 4 News Leave a comment

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Aug 24 • 12:02 PM EDT • Politics • channel4news.substack.com
Yankees news: Cody Bellinger returns; other injury updates less promising

Bellinger back, Schuemann down; Big G’s injury setback; Weathers exits with forearm discomfort; Jones’ case to stay

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Aug 23 • 5:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
You want to join a clinical trial. Here’s what to know about the hurdles.

Connecting people with clinical trials is complicated — even if people identify a promising match, there’s a slew of potentially thorny factors, including geographic incompatibility, and financial and time considerations.

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Aug 22 • 12:00 PM EDT • Health • cnn.com
Pittsburgh Steelers lose three promising rookies for Jets game

The Pittsburgh Steelers are without many of their veteran players in their preseason game against the Jets due to injuries.

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Aug 21 • 9:30 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
It now seems possible to vaccinate against cancer

The latest results are promising, but not yet definitive

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Aug 21 • 11:57 AM EDT • Science • economist.com
Michigan football 2026 position group breakdown: Cornerbacks

Boasting a few experienced playmakers at the top, Michigan Football looks to have a promising CB room ahead of 2026:

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Aug 20 • 6:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Black hole star? Solar-system-size 'dot' from the early universe is our best evidence yet of a brand-new type of cosmic object

The James Webb Space Telescope has identified the most promising candidate yet for a black hole star, lurking 660 million years after the Big Bang. The hypothetical entity, which shines 100 billion times brighter than a typical star, could shed light on the origins of the mysterious "little red dots."

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Aug 20 • 11:25 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Sennheiser Unveils the Momentum True Wireless 5 Earbuds with User Replaceable Batteries

The Sennheiser brand today announces Momentum True Wireless 5, its most advanced true wireless earbuds yet, engineered for an uncompromising listening experience wherever life takes you. Reimagined from the inside-out, they combine intelligent innovation with the inspired engineering of their...

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Aug 20 • 7:02 AM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com
Yankees, Dodgers Outfielder Castoff Joins Surging AL Contender

The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers have gotten an update on a promising outfield option.

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Aug 20 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Biotalys Reports Half-Year 2026 Financial Results & Business Highlights

Company Provides R&D UpdateGhent, BELGIUM, Aug. 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Press release – regulated information Made substantial regulatory progress in both the U.S. and E.U. with first protein-based biocontrol EVOCA®, paving the regulatory pathway for its commercial version EVOCA NG Achieved promising results in field trials with a second lead BioFun-6 candidate from the AGROBODY® technology platform Entered into a strategic partnership with 21st.BIO, a leading precision fermentation technol

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Aug 20 • 1:00 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com
Better Business Bureau warns of fake grocery, gas vouchers that could cost customers

Got a postcard promising hundreds of dollars in free gas and grocery vouchers? The Better Business Bureau says stop before you pay a fee to "cash in."

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Aug 19 • 3:10 PM EDT • Business • abc7chicago.com
Google’s Pixel Watch 5 is promising — but it isn’t finished

Think of this as part one of the Pixel Watch 5 review as most of the new features aren’t out yet. That said, GPS rocks.

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Aug 19 • 12:00 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
Meet Seth Nabat, the 18-year-old California student who built a two-network machine-learning system to track particle collisions; he won $40,000

Every year, nearly 1,900 of the nation’s most promising high school seniors submit original research to the Regeneron Science Talent Search (Regeneron STS), the oldest and most prestigious science and mathematics competition in the United States. According to the Society for Science, which runs the competition, the Regeneron STS recognises and empowers young scientists who are developing ideas that could solve society’s most urgent challenges.

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Aug 19 • 10:39 AM EDT • Science • timesofindia.indiatimes.com
UConn Startup Acquired by Leading Animal Health Company

New materials offer promising arthritis treatment for dogs and horses

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Aug 19 • 7:15 AM EDT • Health • today.uconn.edu
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Radiology Partners petitions FDA for greater clarity around imaging AI regulations

Mosaic Clinical Technologies believes diagnostic imaging vision-language models represent an “important and promising” advancement in medicine, but one that requires greater regulatory scrutiny.

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Aug 19 • 12:15 AM EDT • Business • radiologybusiness.com
Rutgers Football Dismisses Former Four-Star EDGE Wydeek Collier-Johnson

Rutgers football dismisses former promising EDGE prospect.

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Aug 18 • 9:18 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Global health tech competition aims to accelerate innovation improving cardiovascular and brain health

DALLAS, Aug. 18, 2026 — Despite rapid advances in digital health, artificial intelligence and remote patient monitoring, many promising health technologies still fail to reach patients who need them most. To help close that gap, the American Heart...

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Aug 18 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • newsroom.heart.org
ESPN experts say Bengals have the 17th-most promising future

One bold prediction is that Erick All will emerge as a major receiving threat.

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Aug 18 • 6:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Rotating detonation engines: the science and the promises

Explore the science, advancements, and potential of rotating detonation engines, promising greater fuel efficiency for aerospace applications.

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Aug 17 • 11:00 PM EDT • Science • thehindu.com
Ollie Gordon's Costly Penalty: 1 Powerful Lesson From Jeff Hafley

Ollie Gordon gave Miami Dolphins fans a serious case of déjà vu - a promising start, a spark on offense, and then one moment of frustration derails everything. This time, something changed. The penalty didn't get brushed aside. The coach didn't shrug. The standard finally snapped into place, and every fan watching felt it, recalling […] The post Ollie Gordon's Costly Penalty: 1 Powerful Lesson From Jeff Hafley appeared first on Stadium Rant.

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Aug 17 • 8:49 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Hong Kong firm bets on Chinese open-weight models to rival CoreWeave

‘Neo-cloud’ provider Antimatter is helping businesses shift away from the US’ frontier AI models, promising lower costs and greater data sovereignty.

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Aug 16 • 9:00 PM EDT • Business • scmp.com
Science or fiction? Shadowy ‘paper mills’ let you pay to be a published author

Paper mill activity has exploded in recent years, polluting the scientific ecosystem with falsified data and compromising medical research

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Aug 15 • 4:00 PM EDT • Science • theguardian.com
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Scientists who narrowly missed out on an NIH grant were 6.1% more likely to produce a top-5%-cited paper over the following decade than equally promising scientists who just got funded — a Kellogg-led study suggesting that an early setback can have surprisingly long-lasting effects.

A natural experiment around an NIH funding cutoff found higher-impact work among near-miss scientists who stayed active, alongside substantial attrition from the system.

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Aug 15 • 6:27 AM EDT • Science • scienceblog.com
Vic Fangio Reveals Promising Words on Eagles' Jonathan Greenard

Among the many impressive moves the Philadelphia Eagles made throughout the offseason, free agency, NFL draft, and every other avenue, trading for edge rusher Jonathan Greenard was at the top of that list.

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Aug 13 • 9:53 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Promising research for ALS treatment underway at Temple Health in Philadelphia
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Aug 13 • 6:05 PM EDT • Health • cbsnews.com
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AI needs science’s search history

“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.

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Aug 13 • 11:16 AM EDT • Science • press.airstreet.com
Sony Announces Phantom Blade Zero State of Play and Everyone Knows How the Chat Is Going to Go

Promising looking action game Phantom Blade Zero is getting its very own State of Play, but if the reaction to Sony’s announcement is any indication, the chat is going to be overrun with angry comments about Sony’s decision to kill PlayStation discs.

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Aug 12 • 4:43 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com