SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY

Search headlines

Find the stories shaping the conversation.

Search mode
Refine results
Active filters Keyword All time

Results for " competing " 409 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle

AI token Hunger Games are coming for software engineers at work

AI token spending soared from companies pushing unlimited use. Now tech workers are competing for compute as companies rethink budgets.

businessinsider.com logo
Jun 17 • 5:30 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
War, sports collide as Iran's World Cup kicks off in Los Angeles

CBC News reported on the unchartered territory FIFA World Cup 2026 is finding itself in as members of Team Iran arrive in Los Angeles, inviting a divisive collision of geopolitics and sports in an area with a large Iranian diaspora. "You've never had two countries engaged in active military conflict matching up against each other, competing in the same tournament," said Salma Mousa, an assistant professor of political science and affiliated faculty with the Bedari Kindness Institute. Mousa, who studies the intersection of sports and conflicts, worries that a potential July 3 face-off between Iran and the U.S. in Texas might “increase tensions to kind of a cataclysmic degree.” Read more about UCLA in today’s Washington Times.

newsroom.ucla.edu logo
Jun 16 • 6:09 PM EDT • Sports • newsroom.ucla.edu
Palmetto Sports Daily: Kevin Schnall talks competing in SEC, wrestling returns to USS Yorktown

Kevin Schnall talks about competing in the SEC, and the crew discusses The Citadel hosting the 3rd wrestling event on the USS Yorktown.

wistv.com logo
Jun 16 • 5:21 PM EDT • Sports • wistv.com
😐 Neutral (2%)
Merchants of Doubt and the attacks on Extreme Event Attribution science

Last week, I attended a meeting at Columbia University on attribution science and climate law, hosted by the Sabin Center. It was a fantastic event, bringing together scientists and legal experts working at the intersection of extreme event attribution and climate law. Subscribe For those unfamiliar with it, extreme event attribution attempts to quantify the contribution of climate change to an extreme event. For example, several groups analyzed the impact of climate change on Hurricane Harvey’s enormous rainfall totals over Houston, Texas and they found that climate change increased rainfall by 15 to 38%. One thing that came up again and again was how terrified fossil-fuel interests are of extreme event attribution science. They are acutely aware that this research could land them in court. And losing those cases would leave them legally liable for billions of dollars in climate damages. Because the legal stakes are so high, the blowback has turned ugly. I spoke with several scientists at the meeting who are facing ongoing harassment over their work. This blowback is a coordinated campaign to make the entire field look suspect. The goal is to create the impression that attribution science is too uncertain, too political, or too conflicted to be useful in court or in public policy. The strategy is not based on actual science or evidence of misconduct, but on the generation of doubt. The new Merchants of Doubt We’ve seen this before. In fact, not that long ago: We only have to go back a year to the Department of Energy (DOE) Climate Working Group (CWG) report to see an example of using doubt as the tool to push back against well-established science. This strategy is laid out in an email from a member of the CWG, Dr. Roy Spencer, that was released during litigation over the Climate Working Group process. The key quote is: About all I can hope is that what we write will provide sufficient “reasonable scientific doubt” regarding the science claims in the 2009 TSD [technical support document], based upon almost 2 decades of new science, to call into question the original reasoning for the EPA Administrator’s decision that CO2 presents a threat to human health and welfare. This statement is strong evidence that at least some members of the committee were working to support a particular policy outcome: revoking the Endangerment Finding. The email also explains how they planned to do it: by attempting to generate “reasonable doubt”. This is going to be hard, Spencer implies. Despite falsely claiming that “2 decades of new science” weakens the case, Spencer explicitly acknowledges that the actual peer-reviewed science of climate change overwhelmingly rejects his position: But if the science argument is decided upon by a vote, or by the number of published citations, we lose the science argument. We can go back even further: This CWG email shares unmistakable DNA with the infamous 1969 tobacco memo that declared: “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” The tobacco memo also acknowledges the limit of this strategy: Like the CWG, they knew the science was not on their side. Share The new new Merchants of Doubt The people attacking the IPCC chapter on extreme event attribution are the newest iteration of the Merchants of Doubt. Their goal, like all Merchants before them, is to introduce doubt into the process. Because the report is not even out yet, they cannot attack its conclusions. So they are attacking the authors instead. Here is a press release from the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee: In the letter, the Chairmen express concerns about potential conflicts of interest involving members of the Attribution Committee, stating that “publicly available information suggests a troubling pattern” in which committee members are affiliated with nonprofits that support climate accountability lawsuits, “raising the appearance of impropriety and member bias.” To be clear, this is just innuendo. There is no actual evidence of bias. And given the robust process that these reports go through, including multiple lines of peer review, it seems very unlikely that significant bias can survive into the report. When the report comes out, critics will have the opportunity to make legitimate criticisms of the report — if any exist. If none do, however, they’ll still make criticisms, but they’ll be bogus, simply designed to generate doubt. We’ll see. A note to the press: Fix your frame To any journalists reading this: The public debate over extreme event attribution science is not going away. The science is simply too dangerous to fossil-fuel interests for them to stop fighting it. You very well might be assigned to write an article about this area of research in the future. When you do, do not automatically adopt the framing that climate misinformers want you to use. They want you to frame the story around questions like: Are climate scientists trying to put their thumb on the scale to achieve a predetermined, politically motivated result? Are climate scientists improperly letting their politics invade the science of the IPCC? That frame is a trap. Instead, you need to view this through the historical lens of the Merchants of Doubt. How does the ecosystem of doubt operate? Who funds it? What methods do they use to misrepresent science and slime researchers? What scientific results are they trying to keep people from understanding are legitimate? Ultimately, you instead need to focus your article on the generation of doubt as a way to maintain the fossil fuel industry’s social and legal license to keep burning oil, gas, and coal. If you treat the misinformers’ frame as a legitimate, good-faith scientific critique, you are helping them produce doubt. Don’t do it. Don’t be a Merchant of Doubt. Thanks for reading The Climate Brink! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe other stuff The Staying Curious Substack has an interesting post about the different flavors of climate sensitivity. This is crucial information if you want to understand how scientists think about how much warming the Earth will experience. I’d be grateful if you could hit the like button ❤️ below! It helps more people discover these ideas and lets me know what’s connecting with readers.

theclimatebrink.com logo
Jun 16 • 4:55 PM EDT • Science • theclimatebrink.com
😐 Neutral (5%)
wow
59%
ahah
41%
Global multipolarity through the lens of network science and game theory

npj Complexity - The “Theory of Competing Networks”, which integrates network science and game theory, reveals that cooperation is more stable than hierarchy, offering insights into...

nature.com logo
Jun 14 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • nature.com
UFC Freedom 250 Final Face-Offs

During Saturday's UFC Freedom 250 Ceremonial Weigh-In at the Lincoln Memorial, the fighters competing on Sunday's historic event at The White House faced off with their opponents a final time. The event takes place on the South Lawn of the White House and is headlined by a lightweight title ...

sports.yahoo.com logo
Jun 13 • 10:56 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (1%)
wow
100%
Gauntlet 5K raises funds for Connecticut’s largest adaptive sports program

Hundreds of athletes are competing in the 12th annual Gauntlet 5K on Wednesday morning.

wfsb.com logo
Jun 13 • 7:27 AM EDT • Sports • wfsb.com
😐 Neutral (2%)
ahah
75%
wow
25%
Novant, UNC Health vying to add hospital beds in New Hanover County

Health systems are competing to expand hospital capacity in New Hanover County.

wect.com logo
Jun 12 • 5:49 PM EDT • Health • wect.com
Why Anthropic freaked out the AI industry this week

Anthropic limits AI model use, citing safety concerns. But it's also trying to stop open-source models from competing.

businessinsider.com logo
Jun 12 • 1:02 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Health 'War Room,' Digital Tools Are Tracking Disease Risks During World Cup

By Deanna Neff HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, June 12, 2026 (HealthDay News) — With 48 teams competing across 16 host cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, tracking the health and location of World Cup players and fans is a logistical challenge that public health experts want to get a handle on. One ...

usnews.com logo
Jun 12 • 10:09 AM EDT • Health • usnews.com
Endeavor Games bring adaptive sports competition across Oklahoma

The Endeavor Games kick off Thursday, featuring more than 250 athletes competing in 12 adaptive sports events, including three new additions, across multiple Oklahoma venues.

koco.com logo
Jun 11 • 10:46 PM EDT • Sports • koco.com
MCWS 2026: College baseball has become a perfect parity showcase

With a whole new set of teams competing in the MCWS yet again, nothing needs to change in college baseball.

espn.com logo
Jun 10 • 7:45 AM EDT • Sports • espn.com
It used to be boxing and baseball. Now, Panama’s sports fans have ‘unwavering passion’ for football

As part of a special World Cup series, The Athletic is speaking to fans of all 48 competing nations to capture their unique football culture

nytimes.com logo
Jun 10 • 12:10 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
😐 Neutral (13%)
wow
100%
Broncos' backup quarterback competition underway (is there a favorite?)

Sam Ehlinger and Jarrett Stidham are competing for the Broncos' backup quarterback job this summer.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Jun 8 • 10:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Attorney general race: Johnson and Middleton offer competing visions

Democratic Sen. Nathan Johnson of Dallas says he wants to depoliticize the attorney general’s office. Republican Sen. Mayes Middleton of Galveston says he wants to use it to fight the left.

dallasnews.com logo
Jun 8 • 7:27 AM EDT • Politics • dallasnews.com
Who, exactly, is this World Cup for?

The great paradox of this historic, expansive event is that more countries are competing but fewer fans can afford tickets.

nytimes.com logo
Jun 8 • 5:00 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
These 3 Democrats want to replace Nate Blouin in the Utah Senate

As Nate Blouin vies to head to Washington to represent Utah's new left-leaning 1st Congressional District, three Democrats are competing to replace him in state Senate District 13.

sltrib.com logo
Jun 7 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • sltrib.com
Serena Williams Continues Return, Adds Berlin Tennis Open to Schedule

Tennis icon and Los Angeles native Serena Williams has committed to participating in a second tournament after nearly four years away from the sport. Williams announced earlier this week she is competing doubles with Victoria Mboko in the HSBC Championships in London. On Friday, it was announced she would also be playing doubles at the […] The post Serena Williams Continues Return, Adds Berlin Tennis Open to Schedule appeared first on LA Sports Report.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Jun 6 • 6:40 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Liverpool is pushing to beat Arsenal to sign two attackers

Liverpool and Arsenal have both been linked with moves for several of the same attacking targets, and The Times reports that the duo are now competing for two highly rated forwards in the current tran...

sports.yahoo.com logo
Jun 5 • 1:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Democrats spar over big tech during debate for coveted congressional district in Manhattan

Democrats competing over a coveted congressional district in Manhattan have slugged it out during a heated debate

washingtonpost.com logo
Jun 4 • 10:39 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Kevin Magnussen Is Finally Coming to NASCAR

After years competing at the highest levels of motorsports, former Formula 1 driver Kevin Magnussen is finally getting his shot in NASCAR. The Danish racing veteran will make his Cup Series debut with Trackhouse Racing's Project 91 program at San…

sports.yahoo.com logo
Jun 3 • 10:38 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (18%)
wow
39%
love
38%
ahah
23%
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science

With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!

iai.tv logo
Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • iai.tv
NCAA Men’s Golf: Arizona falls to UCLA in semifinals

Arizona men’s golf’s best postseason in decades ended just short of competing for a national championship. The Wildcats fell to UCLA in the NCAA semifinals Tuesday at Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, Calif. after knocking off Vanderbilt earlier in the day in quarterfinals action. Arizona’s run to the semifinals marks the program’s best finish […]

sports.yahoo.com logo
Jun 3 • 12:14 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
SF: Two Competing Business Tax Measures Both Falling Short In Early Results

Two dueling business tax measures in San Francisco -- Propositions C and D -- are both lagging behind the necessary majority each needs in order to pass, early results showed Tuesday night.

sfgate.com logo
Jun 2 • 8:08 PM EDT • Business • sfgate.com
Labour figures who wrote competing ‘manifestos’ join forces to warn against tribalism

Mathew Lawrence and Mark McVitie, previously seen as favouring Burnham and Streeting respectively, say change of direction is needed

theguardian.com logo
Jun 2 • 10:53 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
How Science Works

The 2nd Weather and Climate Livestream is now underway. It is organized by a group of early-career researchers concerned about declining funding for the field and eager to demonstrate how weather and climate research makes a difference in our lives. Last year’s event was a great success, drawing terrific press coverage including a piece in the NY Times. This year features a strong lineup of talks aimed at a general audience — I highly recommend tuning in. Share I gave a talk yesterday about How Science Works in Three Steps. You can see the short presentation here (I’ve appended a transcript below): And please tune into the livestream here. It runs through tomorrow at 6 pm ET. Thanks for reading The Climate Brink! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Cleaned up transcript: Thank you, and thanks to everyone tuning in. I want to talk about something I think a lot of people don’t really understand: how science actually works. Arguments over any scientific topic — climate change, vaccines, you name it — revolve around competing claims. For climate change, the claims are: Is the Earth warming? Are humans to blame? What will the impacts be? Over the last 150 years, the scientific community has developed a remarkably robust method for sorting out which claims are true and which aren’t. That method is what I want to walk through. So how does science generate knowledge? If you ask a high schooler, they’ll give you the version they learned in ninth grade: an individual scientist forms a hypothesis, runs an experiment, and draws a conclusion. That’s more or less what happens at the individual level, though in practice it’s more iterative — you design, test, and refine all at once, landing on a slightly different idea each time until you reach a conclusion about whatever hypothesis you’ve ended up with. But this isn’t science. It’s only step one. Any individual scientist can make mistakes — scientists are human. Maybe there’s a bug in the code, maybe there’s an error in the experiment. Just because someone ran an experiment and reached a conclusion doesn’t mean it’s right, and scientists don’t treat a single result as settled truth. Step two is peer review, the first layer of quality control. The scientist writes up what they did and submits it to a journal, which sends the paper to other experts in the field. Those experts judge whether the methods are sound, whether it properly references prior work, and whether the conclusions actually follow from the data. Ask any scientist and they’ll tell you peer review is miserable — the comments come back brutal, often harsh, and you have to revise and resubmit, sometimes multiple times, before an editor finally accepts the paper. Peer review catches an immense amount of bad science, but it can’t catch all of it. Reviewers get sloppy or overworked, they miss obvious mistakes, and they can’t catch hidden errors — a bug in the code, a misread instrument. So a peer-reviewed paper making it into a journal doesn’t mean the paper is right. Nobody treats a single paper as the final word. That’s where step three comes in: the crucible of science. Important results get retested by the broader community. If you publish something interesting, it gets dissected. Sometimes people try to reproduce your work directly but more often they test its implications. If someone claims X is true, and that implies that Y is also true, then scientists will go check Y. If a claim survives this gauntlet long enough, it becomes accepted. That’s how we generate knowledge. Let me give an example: the ozone hole. In 1985 — and I doubt many people watching were around then, but I remember it well — Joe Farman and his colleagues published observations from Antarctica showing that a huge chunk of ozone was disappearing every year. This was shocking because most atmospheric chemists had expected ozone loss to occur at mid-latitudes and high altitudes, not over the South Pole. When scientists see something they don’t understand, they rush to explain it, and several competing hypotheses quickly appeared in the peer-reviewed literature. One pointed to chlorine chemistry from chlorofluorocarbons. A second blamed nitrogen chemistry, possibly driven by solar proton events — meaning the sun was responsible. A third argued it wasn’t chemistry at all but dynamics: winds were carrying naturally low-ozone air from the lower atmosphere up into the stratosphere. Then the community went to work testing which theory could survive the crucible. Aircraft flew into the ozone hole and found no nitrogen, ruling out the nitrogen theory. Measurements showed the air in the polar vortex was descending, not rising — which would bring high-ozone air down, eliminating the dynamics theory. Meanwhile, those same flights measured enormous amounts of chlorine, strongly correlated with exactly the regions where ozone was being destroyed. That became known as the “smoking gun” paper, and it established that chlorine chemistry was the cause. Through this process, a consensus emerged. And it’s worth being clear that this consensus is organic. There’s no vote, no poll, no meeting where it gets decided. Scientists go to conferences, talk to one another, and independently arrived at the same answer. It’s the ultimate free market of ideas. After the consensus was established, the peer-reviewed literature doesn’t even mention the rival theories — it simply takes chlorine chemistry as given. That’s what a consensus looks like. It doesn’t mean every single scientist agrees, but it does mean there’s no longer any legitimate debate. So where can you see what scientists actually think? It’s all in the peer-reviewed literature, which contains the entire historical record of the argument: the discovery, the competing theories, the debate, the testing, and finally the community coalescing around one answer. But there’s a lot of room for misrepresentation. You can dig up an old paper claiming the ozone hole was caused by dynamics and wave it around as if there still was a debate about the cause of the ozone hole — without mentioning that the idea was disproven long ago and that even its own authors no longer believe it. There’s a bigger problem, though: the peer-reviewed literature is written in a language I call “nerd.” It’s extremely hard to read — honestly, some of it is hard for me to follow. It takes graduate students years to work through the literature in a single field, so we can’t expect policymakers or ordinary people to do it. This is where scientific assessments come in. The most famous is the IPCC — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The job of an assessment is to read and summarize the peer-reviewed literature, synthesizing what’s settled, what’s been disproven, and what remains genuinely debated. To ensure the assessments accurately summarize the peer-reviewed literature, assessments are written by large teams, which are far less prone to bias than individuals and which dilute the influence of any one scientist with an axe to grind. The teams are deliberately assembled to avoid stacking the deck, and the reports themselves go through multiple rounds of peer review. That rigorous process is exactly why you can trust them and why people consider the IPCC to be the gold standard of what we know about the climate system. An assessment produced through a different process may well not be credible. You can even watch the consensus evolve across assessments. Take the attribution of warming. The 1990 IPCC report said the observed warming was broadly consistent with model predictions but also comparable to natural variability — in other words, we don’t know whether humans are responsible. By 1995, it concluded that the balance of evidence suggested a discernible human influence — a sentence only a committee could write, and one that barely commits to anything. By 2001, most of the warming over the previous 50 years was judged “likely” due to greenhouse gases; by 2007, “very likely”; by 2013, “extremely likely.” The 2023 report says essentially the same as 2013 — there’s not much stronger language available. So, to wrap up: science is our ultimate tool for deciphering the universe — the most successful method we’ve ever developed for determining what’s true and what isn’t. Our understanding is written into the peer-reviewed literature, so if you want to know what scientists think, that’s where to look. And for those of us who don’t speak nerd, scientific assessments are the Rosetta Stone — they translate nerd into English. Let me open the floor to questions. Thank you.

theclimatebrink.com logo
Jun 2 • 10:35 AM EDT • Science • theclimatebrink.com
😐 Neutral (8%)
ahah
64%
wow
36%
Fil-Am designer R’Bonney Gabriel joins ‘Project Runway’ season 22

Filipina American fashion designer and Miss Universe 2022 R’Bonney Gabriel, also known professionally as R’Bonney Nola, is among the 22 designers competing in “Project Runway” season 22. - Photos from R’Bonney Gabriel’s social media account The Miss Universe 2022 titleholder will compete in the fashion design series’ largest contestant lineup. Filipino American fashion designer and Miss Universe 2022 R’Bonney…

asianjournal.com logo
Jun 1 • 6:05 AM EDT • Entertainment • asianjournal.com
Woman qualifies for World strength competition

Jade Skill only started competing in events last year.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Jun 1 • 12:38 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Inside California Politics: Final Emerson poll sets up intriguing election day

(Inside California Politics) — A new poll released just days before polls close in California’s gubernatorial primary show a tight race with three candidates competing for just two spots in t…

fox40.com logo
May 31 • 10:00 AM EDT • Politics • fox40.com
How are North Bay alums doing in college sports?

Checking in on athletes competing at the next level around the U.S.

pressdemocrat.com logo
May 29 • 6:42 PM EDT • Sports • pressdemocrat.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (15%)
wow
70%
love
30%
Rep. Young Kim Introduces BOOST for American Business Act toStrengthen U.S. Economic Competitiveness Abroad

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Congresswoman Young Kim (CA-40) introduced the Building Overseas Opportunities & Strategic Trade (BOOST) for American Business Act to support American businesses abroad and protect critical American industries from foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). American businesses competing in international markets too often lack a strong advocate in their corner.

youngkim.house.gov logo
May 29 • 1:04 PM EDT • Business • youngkim.house.gov
KSU club sports teams build national success through leadership and competition

While balancing classes, jobs, and leadership roles, Kennesaw State University Club Sports participants spent the 2025-26 academic year competing on some of the nation’s biggest stages.

kennesaw.edu logo
May 29 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • kennesaw.edu
Hamilton Middle School, West High School students compete at 2026 Science Olympiad National Tournament

Competing at the 2026 Science Olympiad National Tournament, students from Velma B. Hamilton Middle School and West High School earned several top finishes on Friday, May 22 and Saturday, May 23.

wmtv15news.com logo
May 28 • 5:46 PM EDT • Science • wmtv15news.com
Hamilton Middle School, West High School students compete at 2026 Science Olympiad National Tournament

Competing at the 2026 Science Olympiad National Tournament, students from Velma B. Hamilton Middle School and West High School earned several top finishes on Friday, May 22 and Saturday, May 23.

nbc15.com logo
May 28 • 5:46 PM EDT • Science • nbc15.com
😐 Neutral (15%)
wow
45%
ahah
33%
love
22%
Ben Roethlisberger makes bold Super Bowl prediction for Steelers

Ben Roethlisberger has predicted what the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2026 season could look like, and it may involve competing for a Super Bowl.

sports.yahoo.com logo
May 28 • 2:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Zwe Spacetime, brother of 2021 champion, among 9 Scripps Spelling Bee finalists

Nine young spellers advance to Thursday’s Scripps National Spelling Bee finals after nine grueling rounds, competing for $50K, a trophy and glory.

scrippsnews.com logo
May 28 • 6:43 AM EDT • Entertainment • scrippsnews.com
Expected NC budget won’t restore GLP-1 weight-loss drug coverage for state employees, treasurer says

State Treasurer Brad Briner doesn’t expect North Carolina lawmakers to include funding in the upcoming budget to restore State Health Plan coverage of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, as costs and competing budget priorities keep the benefit off the table.

wral.com logo
May 27 • 4:06 PM EDT • Health • wral.com
Tapped: Worst winter in memory triggers cascading economic strain in Colorado mountain towns

Editor’s Note: The Denver metro region sits at the center of one of the American West’s most complex and consequential water challenges. This series examines the interconnected systems that determine how the region secures, stores, and conserves its water while navigating the competing demands of fast‑growing urban communities and the increasingly unpredictable mountain snowpack that […]

coloradopolitics.com logo
May 27 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com
Texas primary election runoff results 2026

Ken Paxton and John Cornyn are competing in the GOP primary runoff for U.S. Senate. In the Houston region there are multiple U.S. House runoffs, including two Democratic incumbents facing each other in District 18.

houstonpublicmedia.org logo
May 26 • 5:15 PM EDT • Politics • houstonpublicmedia.org
BioTools Innovator 2026 Cohort Includes Top 30 Life Science Tools and Diagnostics Companies

BioTools Innovator selected 30 life science startups for its 2026 Accelerator, with companies competing for $300K in funding.

businesswire.com logo
May 26 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • businesswire.com
3 competing for Democratic nomination in Iowa House District 2

Three Democratic candidates vying for their party’s nomination to Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District will face off in the primary election June 2.

telegraphherald.com logo
May 25 • 2:00 AM EDT • Politics • telegraphherald.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
Trump postpones executive order on AI over China concerns

The US president said he doesn’t ‘want to do anything to get in the way’ of tech firms competing with China

theguardian.com logo
May 22 • 7:24 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
😐 Neutral (16%)
ahah
60%
wow
40%
I started powerlifting at 75 after recovering from surgery

Barbara Phillips began competing in powerlifting at 75 after hip replacement surgery and decades of staying active.

businessinsider.com logo
May 19 • 10:39 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Girls flag football championships highlight rapid growth of the sport in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

New Jersey's top girls flag football teams took the field Monday at the Eagles' Jefferson Health Training Complex, competing for a state title ahead of Pennsylvania's championship matchup later in the day.

6abc.com logo
May 18 • 7:17 PM EDT • Sports • 6abc.com
Cannes standout 'Paper Tiger' reveals a new side to Miles Teller

One of only two American films competing for the Palme d'Or, James Gray’s “Paper Tiger” has been one of the standouts of this year’s Cannes | KMBZ

audacy.com logo
May 18 • 1:27 PM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
New MatterChat Model Helps AI to ‘See’ the Language of Science

From writing emails to generating computer code, much of the artificial intelligence prevalent in our daily lives has succeeded by mastering one domain: text. However, this leaves a major blind spot in the physical sciences, where models depend on the high-resolution, three-dimensional data of the physical world, like the intricate lattice of atoms in a crystal. Delivering on the promise of using AI for science requires teaching these data-driven text models to seamlessly “talk to” physics-based models. Now, a new AI framework from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), called MatterChat, solves this problem by creating a specialized “bridge.” It connects the conversational power of a Large Language Model (LLM) with a physics-based AI that models “interatomic potentials”: the complex physical forces between atoms. The resulting system already significantly outperforms general-purpose AI tools like GPT-4 at predicting material properties, and the team hopes it can accelerate scientific discovery by serving as a robust research partner that provides grounded insights and generates step-by-step instructions for synthesizing novel materials. A paper describing this work was recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence. “Traditional simulations can provide the physical rigor required for materials science, yet their computational cost remains prohibitive for high-throughput screening. Conversely, while LLMs excel at rapid knowledge synthesis, they inherently lack the ‘structural vision’ to interpret materials directly from their underlying atomic coordinates,” said Yingheng Tang, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Applied Math and Computational Research Division (AMCR) and lead author on the paper. “MatterChat was built to solve this dilemma, empowering LLMs with a structural ‘vision’ that allows researchers to leverage their full potential for solving complex, real-world materials challenges.” Empowering language models to solve complex challenges in materials science To build MatterChat, the Berkeley Lab team drew inspiration from technologies like Vision Question Answering (VQA) and Text-to-Image (T2I) generation. In these tasks, AI must translate high-level text concepts into visual images, or vice versa. Doing so requires developers to build tools that “bridge” two fundamentally different forms of data. The researchers adapted this concept to the physical sciences. With MatterChat, they created a “bridge model” that successfully connects an LLM’s general knowledge with the deep understanding of the atomic-scale world encoded in scientific interatomic potentials. Until now, researchers using LLMs to solve materials problems usually had to feed them raw data files as if they were just strings of text. It’s like asking an AI to understand a complex 3D engine based only on a parts list: the LLM can read the names, but it can’t “see” how the atoms fit together in space. MatterChat solves this by training a specialized AI bridge model, pre-trained on millions of crystal structures and an LLM, to align the LLM’s representation of the world with the interatomic potential’s representation of the world. The bridge model can translate physical insights into a format the LLM can actually understand. By giving the LLM these “scientific eyes”— a scientific “inductive bias” in the terminology of AI — the Berkeley Lab team has transformed it into a robust research tool capable of providing grounded scientific insights into complex materials challenges, such as predicting thermal stability or analyzing electronic band gaps. “We think of atoms as living in a physical space, but from a machine learning perspective, they are just vectors living in some very non-trivially structured manifold in a high-dimensional Euclidean space; and, of course, the same is true for the sentences and paragraphs that we use to express our ideas about those atoms,” said co-author Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Lab’s Scientific Data Division (SDD) AI Initiative Research Lead. “The bridge model basically gets those two structures to ‘talk with’ each other.” As a proof-of-concept of this general approach, the team trained their bridge model on a dataset curated by pairing nearly 143,000 stable atomic structures from the Materials Project with their corresponding physical properties. This training data was automatically assembled using the Materials Project’s API and deliberately enriched with properties fundamental to microelectronics design — like formation energy and bandgap — allowing MatterChat to learn the complex patterns connecting a material’s atomic blueprint to its functional performance. To validate their model, the researchers benchmarked MatterChat against a suite of other AI systems, from general-purpose LLMs to other specialized scientific AI methods. The results show that MatterChat consistently outperformed its competitors across a range of tasks. The model was more accurate in classifying material types and demonstrated superior precision in predicting numerical properties. For example, it excelled at predicting a material’s bandgap, a property critical for designing new electronics from high-capacity energy storage to next-generation computer chips. “Our design is significantly more efficient because we don’t have to build a massive AI model from the ground up,” said co-author Zhi (Jackie) Yao, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s AMCR. “Instead, we take two powerful, pre-trained models — a structural encoder for materials physics and an open-source LLM — and use them off-the-shelf. The only component we actually train is the lightweight ‘bridge model’ that translates between them. It’s the difference between building an entire car factory and simply designing a smart adapter that connects a world-class engine to a world-class navigation system. This approach is not only computationally efficient, but also makes the system modular, so we can easily upgrade components or adapt the bridge for other scientific domains in the future.” Crucially, this modular design highlights exactly how institutions like Berkeley Lab and the Department of Energy are carving out a highly valuable niche in the booming AI landscape. Rather than competing with Silicon Valley tech giants to build ever-larger language models from scratch, the lab is focusing on the specialized connective tissue that makes commercial AI useful for hardcore science. Because the bridge model approach underlying MatterChat is forward-compatible, it is perfectly positioned to leverage these parallel tracks of innovation. As Mahoney pointed out, “We expect that industry will continue to develop improved LLMs, and we expect domain scientists and facilities will continue to generate new data. An important part of scientific machine learning is not simply to solve problems on today’s data, but instead to develop general methods that will be forward-compatible with orders of magnitude more data, whether from scientific domains or from LLMs.” According to Yao, the MatterChat project, which was initially developed and enhanced with funding from a Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) Program, will now expand its capabilities. In a collaboration with Fermilab, MatterChat is already contributing to a U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission project — called Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon (AXESS) — that aims to speed up the development of next-generation, high-speed, radiation-hardened detectors for challenging particle physics experiments by using advanced 3D integrated circuits (chiplets) and AI-driven data analysis. In addition to the LDRD support, the team also credits supercomputing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located at Berkeley Lab, with MatterChat’s success. “We are incredibly grateful to NERSC; this research simply would not have happened without access to the Perlmutter supercomputer through their AI for Science program,” said Tang. Wenbin Xu, a NERSC postdoctoral fellow at the time, was also a major co-author of the work, as was Benjamin Erichson, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s SDD, highlighting the benefits of AMCR-SDD collaboration on AI for science. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

newscenter.lbl.gov logo
May 18 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • newscenter.lbl.gov
Disillusioned with F1, Max Verstappen is about to start his longest motor race yet

Max Verstappen has expanded his interest in competing outside F1 in recent years. Now he's taking on his first 24-hour sports car race

nytimes.com logo
May 16 • 5:00 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
😐 Neutral (13%)
wow
100%
Boonville searching for new hotel to accommodate traffic from sports venues

The town hasn’t added a new hotel in 20 years, and said it is yet to find a brand willing to build in Boonville instead of nearby competing markets.

komu.com logo
May 15 • 5:45 PM EDT • Sports • komu.com
🙂 Positive (50%)
wow
100%
Sendoff photos for Stanley Clark's middle school Science Olympiad team

Stanley Clark School held a sendoff for its middle school Science Olympiad team before competing in the national tournament at USC in California.

southbendtribune.com logo
May 14 • 5:05 AM EDT • Science • southbendtribune.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (0%)
Iowa politics: KCCI's full interview with Josh Turek, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate

KCCI sat down with Josh Turek to discuss affordability, health care, immigration, agriculture, party leadership and electability. Turek and Zach Wahls are competing for the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s open U.S. Senate race.

kcci.com logo
May 13 • 2:18 PM EDT • Politics • kcci.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (18%)
love
36%
wow
36%
ahah
28%
After watching his brother battle for a state title, a St. Charles shortstop gets his chance

Dax Pregeant watched from the bleachers when older brother Cade Pregeant played his final game in a St. Charles Catholic uniform while competing for a state championship.

nola.com logo
May 13 • 5:01 AM EDT • Sports • nola.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
Live Results: Nebraska midterm state and congressional primaries

One of the more notable matchups in Nebraska’s state primary on Tuesday features two Democratic contenders for U.S. Senate who accuse each other of being “fake” candidates with no intention of competing to win the general election.

pbs.org logo
May 12 • 10:47 AM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
🙂 Positive (35%)
Can The Jumper Be Hacked? Inside Basketball's Next Arms Race

In the summer of 2024, during the WNBA’s Olympic break, several Atlanta Dream players who weren’t competing in Paris had gathered for a midseason training camp of sorts. Anyone watching would have seen what looked like a typical 3-on-3 scrimmage. In reality, it was anything but. The Dream weren’t playing in any ordinary gym, but…

defector.com logo
May 12 • 9:01 AM EDT • Technology • defector.com
Medina business owner bound for France to compete in four-wheeler race

While local business owner Jessica Elioff has enjoyed four-wheelers most of her life, she didn’t start racing them until 2019. And after seven years of success competing stateside, Elioff will travel to France in August with a team of two other women to compete in the international endurance race, Pont-de-Vaux.

cleveland.com logo
May 12 • 2:14 AM EDT • Business • cleveland.com
Primary 2026: Two candidates running for Republican nomination for PSC District 1

Republican Randy Pinocci has held a seat on the Montana Public Service Commission since 2019. Now, he’s termed-out, and two candidates are competing for the Republican nomination to succeed him.

ktvh.com logo
May 11 • 9:35 PM EDT • Politics • ktvh.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (16%)
wow
57%
ahah
43%
Iowa politics: Watch KCCI's full interviews with all 5 GOP candidates for governor

Eddie Andrews, Randy Feenstra, Zach Lahn, Brad Sherman and Adam Steen are competing for the GOP nomination and the chance to face Democrat Rob Sand in November.

kcci.com logo
May 11 • 4:23 PM EDT • Politics • kcci.com
New Rocket League Paris Major Bundle: All Net Sales Going to Competing Players & Teams

Net sales from the Paris Major Bundle will go directly to competing players and the teams that got them there.

rocketleague.com logo
May 11 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • rocketleague.com
Acrobatic gymnasts head to international event

The young squad will be competing against teams from Italy, France, Brazil and Switzerland.

sports.yahoo.com logo
May 11 • 1:26 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Trans athlete dominates California girls’ track meet as protesters demand: ‘Keep men out of women’s sports’

AB Hernandez swept the field in multiple events at a California girls’ track meet while protesters demanded biological males be barred from competing against girls.

sports.yahoo.com logo
May 9 • 11:13 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (9%)
angry
34%
ahah
22%
love
22%
The Chaotic New Era of British Politics

Keir Starmer’s unpopularity has led Labour to a humiliating defeat in local elections. Now, with five major parties competing for votes, the far right could be well positioned for a general-election victory.

newyorker.com logo
May 8 • 6:38 PM EDT • Politics • newyorker.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (9%)
ahah
50%
wow
50%
Gorsuch says ideological divides on Supreme Court come down to ‘how you read law,’ not politics

Justice Gorsuch, who calls himself a “proud textualist," stressed that competing legal philosophies, not partisanship, shape rulings and relationships on the high court.

foxnews.com logo
May 8 • 12:51 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
A woman for all seasons: Mescher teaches science and coaches wrestling at Battle when she's not competing in roller derby

A lifelong soccer player, Battle wrestling coach Kelsey Mescher now satisfies her competitive itch through coaching and in the roller-derby rink, where she is a staple of the circuit.

columbiamissourian.com logo
May 8 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • columbiamissourian.com
Colorado Gov. Polis faces intense lobbying blitz from DC-based groups over credit card ‘swipe-fee’ bill

Colorado’s long‑running fight over credit‑card swipe fees entered its final round Tuesday, when lawmakers sent a proposal to Gov. Jared Polis and rival industry coalitions immediately launched competing campaigns to sway his decision. The clash pits groups urging Polis to sign the bill — restaurants, hotels, breweries, liquor stores, small businesses, and big‑box retailers — […]

coloradopolitics.com logo
May 7 • 6:15 PM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com
Republican candidates for Oregon governor spend millions to push competing messages in final stretch

Each of the candidates say they are confident in their preferred campaign strategy.

oregonlive.com logo
May 6 • 3:24 PM EDT • Politics • oregonlive.com
IU Kelley Student Competing in Open-Wheel Racing, While Also Pursuing a Business Degree

For more than 100 years, the Indiana University Kelley School of Business has created career momentum for thousands of students. But this May, a junior studying finance and accounting, will experience it faster than any Kelley student who has come before him. The Kelley School is supporting Joey Brienza, a Kelley direct admit and Hutton Honors College student and a race car driver who competes in the USF Pro 2000 Series, a premier open-wheel racing series in the ladder to INDYCAR. On May 9, he w

newswise.com logo
May 6 • 9:15 AM EDT • Business • newswise.com
Student Startups Take Center Stage at Seton Hall’s 2026 Pirates Pitch

From AI-powered video editing to sustainable refill systems, Seton Hall students pitched innovative startup ideas at the 2026 Pirates Pitch Competition, competing for $16,000 in prizes.

shu.edu logo
May 5 • 11:39 AM EDT • Business • shu.edu
Select list of nominees for 2026 Tony Awards

The Tony Award nominations have been announced, featuring a strong lineup for 2026. Competing for best musical are “The Lost Boys,” “Schmigadoon!,” “Titanique,” and “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across

yakimaherald.com logo
May 5 • 9:31 AM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
Deep dive
🙂 Positive (34%)
wow
58%
sad
42%
Students use GIS to compete in ‘the science of where’

Students competing for the U-Spatial Prize use maps, data and more to tell highly engaging stories about their research.

twin-cities.umn.edu logo
May 5 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • twin-cities.umn.edu
Maine State Sen. Jim Libby endorses Bush for governor

Even with Libby out, there are still seven men competing for the right to run for governor as a Republican in November. In addition to Bush, Bobby Charles, Ben Midgley, Garrett Mason, David Jones, Owen McCarthy and Robert Wessels will be on the ballot.

spectrumlocalnews.com logo
May 5 • 7:14 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
Assertio parlays competing offer into $26 million bump for take-private deal

The 21% price hike would put the value of the transaction at nearly $151.5 million.

chicagobusiness.com logo
May 4 • 2:37 PM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com
Class Act: Great Falls CMR's Eli Crist balances two sports with leading club, 4.0 GPA, national competitions

Eli Crist balances the two sports with serving as president of CMR's Business Professionals of America club, maintaining a 4.0 GPA and competing in national conferences.

montanasports.com logo
May 3 • 12:48 PM EDT • Sports • montanasports.com
How The Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) Narrative Is Shifting With Mixed Analyst Signals

Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s fair value estimate has been trimmed slightly to US$17.59 from US$17.98, a small reset that keeps the overall framework intact while adjusting assumptions. That move sits against a mixed wave of analyst calls, where several downgrades and price target cuts are balanced by an upgrade to Buy with a US$17.40 target. This reflects competing views around competition, earnings visibility and the recent share pullback. Read on to see what is driving this split...

finance.yahoo.com logo
May 3 • 7:08 AM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com
LIVE! Watch ‘Benavidez vs. Zurdo’ Prelims For Free

Before David Benavidez challenges WBO and WBA Cruiserweight champion, Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez, for his WBA title later TONIGHT (Sat., May 2, 2026) inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on DAZN PPV, you can check out some of the early “prelims” for free on YouTube. “The Mexican Monster” and “Zurdo” will also be competing for […]

sports.yahoo.com logo
May 2 • 5:15 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (21%)
angry
100%
Democrat David Costello says he’s a viable alternative

David Costello and Graham Platner are competing to take on Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican seeking a sixth term. Democrats hope to take control of the Senate by flipping four seats, with Maine considered a top pick-up opportunity.

spectrumlocalnews.com logo
May 1 • 2:03 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
Black Female Driver Dystany Spurlock Set To Make NASCAR History

History is on the verge of being made by female driver Dystany Spurlock. Spurlock, who is Black, is set to make her NASCAR Truck Series debut next week. The Black female driver is set to drive the No. 69 truck for MBM Motorsports/Garage 66. She'll be competing at Watkins Glen. The female driver ...

sports.yahoo.com logo
Apr 30 • 10:23 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Davenport’s Horizon Science Academy students earns top places at STEMCON

Horizon Science Academy Davenport, delivered an exceptional performance at Concept Schools’ annual STEMCON event, according to a news release. Competing against more than 1,000 students in grades 4…

ourquadcities.com logo
Apr 29 • 9:39 PM EDT • Science • ourquadcities.com
Newcastle braced for intense transfer summer

As intense as last summer's transfer window was for Newcastle, there could be even more transfer activity in the coming months as such a rebuild is going to require smart trading, given the financial rules in place. A theory has been put forward externally that Newcastle would benefit from dropping out of European football, as it would enable the club to spend up to 85% of their football-related revenue and net profit/loss from player sales under the Premier League's new squad cost regulations, as opposed to 70% for those competing in Uefa's competitions.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Apr 29 • 5:50 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Inside Iowa Politics: Zach Lahn’s challenge to other GOP candidates for governor

Zach Lahn, one of the Republicans running for governor of Iowa, issued challenges against the others competing for the nomination.

ktiv.com logo
Apr 28 • 8:59 PM EDT • Politics • ktiv.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (3%)
wow
100%
UNBELIEVABLE: TEAM USA’S SPRINT QUEEN ANNOUNCES HER RETURN WITH EYES ON THE LA28

In July 2022, Allyson Felix hung up her spikes after competing in […]

panamsports.org logo
Apr 28 • 1:50 PM EDT • Sports • panamsports.org
Hear from the candidates running for Iowa's open US Senate seat

Two Republicans and two Democrats are competing in Iowa's June 2 primary election for the U.S. Senate. Meet the candidates.

desmoinesregister.com logo
Apr 27 • 6:51 AM EDT • Politics • desmoinesregister.com
Aggressive “hulk” lizards are wiping out millions of years of evolution

For ages, wall lizards coexisted in three distinct color types, each with its own strategy for survival. Now, a powerful green variant is taking over. These dominant “Hulk” lizards are outcompeting the others, causing yellow and orange morphs to vanish. It’s a dramatic reminder that evolution can flip the script much faster than expected.

sciencedaily.com logo
Apr 25 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
UFC Vegas 116 weigh-in results: All fights officially set

The UFC octagon is back in Las Vegas for Saturday's UFC Vegas 116: Sterling vs. Zalal fight card at the Meta Apex. The event is headlined by a featherweight bout between former bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling and No. 7 ranked Youssef Zalal. On Friday, the athletes competing on the fight ...

sports.yahoo.com logo
Apr 24 • 1:50 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Scientists just discovered a 60-foot long, kraken-like octopus

The discovery, using novel techniques to analyze fossilized jaws, details how colossal octopuses hunted the Late Cretaceous depths, competing with apex predators.

washingtonpost.com logo
Apr 23 • 2:00 PM EDT • Science • washingtonpost.com
“Dancing With the Stars” season 35 reveals first 2 contestants

"Summer House" star Ciara Miller and Maura Higgins of "Love Island" fame will be competing on the ABC series this fall.

yahoo.com logo
Apr 22 • 9:05 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Clearing Every Bar: How Brooklyn Marcee Balanced Athletics, Leadership, and Business

For Brooklyn Marcee, the dream of competing as a collegiate athlete started early — and it became the foundation for a college journey defined by discipline, leadership, and determination. Marcee ... Clearing Every Bar: How Brooklyn Marcee Balanced Athletics, Leadership, and Business

ualr.edu logo
Apr 22 • 9:00 AM EDT • Business • ualr.edu
Who are the Democrats hoping to run against Rep. Warren Davidson?

Two Butler County Democrats are competing for the chance to unseat Republican Rep. Warren Davidson this May.

cincinnati.com logo
Apr 22 • 12:20 AM EDT • Politics • cincinnati.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (5%)
wow
100%
Senate hearings with RFK Jr. put Cassidy’s competing loyalties to Trump and science on display

Sen. Bill Cassidy faces a tough situation as he prepares to question Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in two Senate hearings | WWL

audacy.com logo
Apr 22 • 12:02 AM EDT • Politics • audacy.com
😐 Neutral (18%)
Senate hearings with RFK Jr. put Cassidy’s competing loyalties to Trump and science on display

Sen. Bill Cassidy faces a tough situation as he prepares to question Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in two Senate hearings | 97.3 The Sky

audacy.com logo
Apr 22 • 12:02 AM EDT • Politics • audacy.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
When the CEO Becomes the Brand

Research suggests that Elon Musk’s political stance appears to have reshaped how different groups perceive Tesla. Overall sales trends hint at trouble. The company’s growth stalled in 2024, and deliveries fell 8.5% in 2025. But those headline numbers hide what is happening beneath the surface. When the data is broken down by political orientation and by changes in views of Musk, a more complicated pattern emerges. Among right-leaning respondents and those whose opinion of Musk has improved, Tesla’s brand appeal is significantly higher and willingness to pay exceeds that for many competing brands, including Ford, Chevrolet, and Rivian. Among left-leaning consumers and those whose view of Musk has worsened, the opposite is true: Preference and willingness to pay for Tesla drop sharply. The outcome is not a uniform decline but a polarization of demand. Some consumers appear to feel alienated, while others feel more aligned with the brand. This raises an important strategic question of whether companies can influence purchasing decisions across these divided segments by strengthening the underlying value proposition.

hbr.org logo
Apr 21 • 8:05 AM EDT • Politics • hbr.org
😐 Neutral (6%)
sad
100%
Five tips for managing small business employee recruitment and hiring

Commentary: Small businesses are feeling the squeeze, as big corporations often have deeper pockets and endless resources to attract top talent. But competing isn't about money, it's about strategy.

rbj.net logo
Apr 21 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • rbj.net
How MLS is changing to compete with world football’s elite

Major League Soccer is preparing for one of the most ambitious transformations in its recent history. The goal is to position the league as a global benchmark capable of competing with Europe’s bigg...

sports.yahoo.com logo
Apr 20 • 3:52 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
World's largest collection of Olympiad-level math problems now available to everyone

Every year, the countries competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad arrive with a booklet of their best, most original problems. Those booklets get shared among delegations, then quietly disappear. ...

phys.org logo
Apr 20 • 12:40 PM EDT • Technology • phys.org
A Majority of Americans, 54-26% View It as Good For Sports for Coaches And Athletes To Speak Out On Perceived Social Injustices

Majorities Remain Opposed to Transgender Athletes Competing with Those Who Share Their Gender Identity – But 20% Say They ‘Don’t Know’ If Prompted 62% Have Used a Streaming Service to…

sri.siena.edu logo
Apr 20 • 9:00 AM EDT • Sports • sri.siena.edu
City Council supports Team Clinton traveling to National Science Olympiad

Clinton City Council allocated $5,000 to support Clinton High and Middle School teams competing at the National Science Olympiad in Los Angeles this May, acknowledging their recent South Carolina state win.

golaurens.com logo
Apr 19 • 7:04 PM EDT • Science • golaurens.com
UFC Winnipeg weigh-in results: All fighters on point

The fighters competing on Saturday's UFC Winnipeg fight card officially weighed in on Friday at the host hotel. All fighters officially weighed weight for the contests. The event is. headlined by a welterweight bout between former title challenger Gilbert Burns and Canadian Mike Malott. Both men ...

sports.yahoo.com logo
Apr 17 • 12:21 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (12%)
angry
100%
Business Case Team earned first place

Brookdale’s Business Club is celebrating a major victory after its Business Case Team earned first place at the statewide Business Case Competition hosted by Rutgers Business School in Newark on April 10, 2026. Competing against

brookdalecc.edu logo
Apr 16 • 2:37 PM EDT • Business • brookdalecc.edu
iPhone Ultra to beat competing foldables in one key aspect to win over customers

Apple waited years to perfect this one aspect of the foldable iPhone. It now appears that it pretty much has.

phonearena.com logo
Apr 13 • 6:59 PM EDT • Technology • phonearena.com
RAMageddon has come for Microsoft’s Surface Pro and Surface Laptop

Surface devices might have a harder time competing against Apple.

theverge.com logo
Apr 13 • 4:45 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
After falling during hurdles, Beckham Borquez shall rise again

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame hurdler Beckham Borquez fell while competing in hurdles at the Arcadia Invitational, but he is planning an immediate comeback.

latimes.com logo
Apr 13 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • latimes.com
'iPhone Ultra' Will Solve Two Key Problems

Apple reportedly plans to unveil a foldable iPhone in September, and the device will supposedly solve two problems with foldable smartphones. In case you missed it, a leaker on Chinese social media platform Weibo recently claimed that the foldable iPhone will be named "iPhone Ultra". According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the device will have improved screen quality and overall durability compared to competing foldables.

macrumors.com logo
Apr 11 • 11:40 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com