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National Media Split on Ole Miss Championship Chances
After experiencing one of the program’s best years in school history, the Ole Miss Rebels are poised to make a run to compete with the nation’s top programs this season for a National Championship. With new coach Pete Golding assuming the helm and quarterback Trinidad Chambliss returning after winning his appeal against the NCAA, the […] The post National Media Split on Ole Miss Championship Chances appeared first on HEAVY.
Post-game live reaction: Seahawks vs Cowboys Preseason Game 1
The Seattle Seahawks marched down the field with Drew Lock at the helm, aided by two big penalties on the Dallas Cowboys, before punching it in for a 7-0 to kick off the game. After taking more than seven minutes off the clock, wide receiver Montorie Foster Jr. scored the first touchdown of the preseason […]
SEC Helmets ranked from worst to first
Who has the best helmet in the SEC heading into the 2026 college football season?
More than 80% of Georgia parents want more school-based mental health screening, treatment
Georgia parents overwhelmingly support school-based mental health services to help address the nation’s youth mental health crisis.
Allen, rest of Bills starters expected to play in preseason opener
For Allen, the preseason appearance will become his first in two years.
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.
A City Mobilizes Against a Stubborn Health Threat: Mosquitoes
The city of Belém in northern Brazil was overwhelmed by an outbreak of dengue two years ago. An all-out municipal effort has reduced cases and may offer lessons to American cities.
Some spikes, but hospitals not overwhelmed by World Cup-related visits
State officials reported a "noticeable" jump in alcohol-related visits around games that landed on weekends.
Higher-income families more likely to enroll kids in organized sports, an AP-Ipsos poll finds
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans overwhelmingly see major benefits to children playing organized sports, a new poll finds, but higher-income families are more likely to participate.
Higher-income families more likely to enroll kids in organized sports: poll
A new AP-Ipsos poll finds Americans overwhelmingly see major benefits to children playing organized sports, but higher-income families are more likely to participate.
Higher-income families more likely to enroll kids in organized sports, an AP-Ipsos poll finds
A new AP-Ipsos poll finds Americans overwhelmingly see major benefits to children playing organized sports, but higher-income families are more likely to participate
49ers insider shares growing concern over key position battle
The 49ers might have a tough decision to make at left guard between two underwhelming players.
The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized
Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA
Peer review is overwhelmed—can it survive in the AI era?
As research and AI-assisted papers surge, volunteer reviewers struggle to keep up.
A Shark Tanker’s Advice On Avoiding New-Business Overwhelm
As more Americans look to start businesses to shore up their income and career possibilities, they're discovering it's not as easy as it may look. Inventor Raquel Graham, who made the transition, offers seven steps on how to turn an idea into a real business.
Could Orlando Magic Have a Huge Roster Shakeup?
Pressure mounts as postseason failures linger. While the star duo remains secure, underwhelming results could force the front office to sacrifice key starters to salvage Orlando’s timeline.
SB Nation Reacts Results: We still believe!
Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Arizona Diamondbacks fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys. It’s hard to argue that the 2026 trade deadline was anything other than underwhelming for […]
St. Petersburg psychologist shares advice for long-term health improvements
Clinical psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Bendick in St. Petersburg emphasizes that improving overall health begins with establishing consistent daily habits rather than overwhelming life overhauls.
Jack Haven’s Little Death Is the Bloody, Beating Heart of ‘Camp Miasma’
The actor’s silent performance is the glue that binds Jane Schoenbrun’s meta slasher romance together.
Disagreement doesn’t have to mean disrespect
By Vincent Atchity These days, it doesn’t take long to feel overwhelmed by politics. Turn on the news, scroll through social media or read the comments on almost any political post and you’ll find anger, outrage and personal attacks. For many of us, it’s becoming harder and harder to escape. At the same time, Colorado […]
NSF Inouye Solar Telescope Enables Major Discovery of a Hidden Solar Process - NSO
Scientists using the NSF Inouye Solar Telescope discovered Kelvin-Helmholtz instability on the Sun, shedding light on solar activity and space weather.
Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.
There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. I am particularly pleased that it goes out for free to thousands of subscribers around the world. But, writing this newsletter takes a lot of work. If you are enjoying it and would like to support the project, sign up for one of the subscription options here. It is the equivalent of a fancy cup of coffee per month! Subscribe
Why Hybrid Healthcare Is a Business Imperative for Employers in Colorado
Health insurance is one of the largest line items on companies’ balance sheets and a critical factor in workforce stability. As costs and expectations rise, employers and employees want a simpler, more integrated healthcare experience. Yet for many, navigating healthcare still feels fragmented, time-consuming, and overwhelming — from finding the right care provider to understanding […]
Kansas just affirmed that abortion politics still matter - Live Updates
Voters rejected a measure that was yet another ploy to restrict the right to abortion in the state.
UFC 330 Card Called ‘Underwhelming’ by Welterweight Contender
UFC welterweight contender Sean Brady called the upcoming UFC 330 card “underwhelming” ahead of its taking place.UFC 330 takes place on August 15 at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The main event features UFC welterweight champion Islam Makhachev vs. Ian Machado Garry, while the co-main event sees UFC women’s strawweight champion Mackenzie Dern battle […] The post UFC 330 Card Called ‘Underwhelming’ by Welterweight Contender appeared first on HEAVY.
Red Sox 1B Willson Contreras back in lineup for series finale against Dodgers
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Chile declares health alert for hantavirus
The Chile Ministry of Health issued a Health Alert for hantavirus and other diseases, such as some arboviruses and avian influenza. This is the first time this measure has been taken and it will be in effect until July 31, 2027 and it extends from the Atacama region to the Magallanes region. “Hantavirus causes a disease that is endemic to Chile, transmitted by the long-tailed pygmy rice rat that lives in rural and semi-rural areas throughout almost the entire country. As a ministry, we are constantly monitoring its behavior and are very concerned and actively working because this year the virus's lethality has increased, and for this reason, we decided to declare this alert. As of last week, there were 46 confirmed cases and 18 deaths, representing a 39% lethality rate,” reported the Undersecretary of Public Health, Dr. Alejandra Pizarro. Cases have occurred in the regions of Valparaíso, Metropolitan, O'Higgins, Maule, Ñuble, Biobío, La Araucanía, Los Ríos, Los Lagos, and Aysén. By comparison, in 2025, there were 44 infections and eight deaths (18% case fatality rate). The health alert, which is preventative and prepared, will allow for the granting of extraordinary powers in the event of serious health emergencies to strengthen surveillance, ensure timely resource management, hire specialized personnel, implement health control measures, and expedite the acquisition of supplies through direct procurement. The alert does not imply that there is an ongoing epidemic or that the healthcare system is overwhelmed. Subscribe to Outbreak News TV on YouTube “Hantavirus is not exclusively a summer virus, as the long-tailed pygmy rice rat is present year-round. Therefore, we urge everyone to take extreme precautions: avoid touching rodents, ventilate homes before entering if they have been closed, clean unused spaces with water and bleach, and keep garbage covered and food stored away. Furthermore, it is crucial to be aware of the symptoms: fever, intense muscle pain, and difficulty breathing. If someone experiences these symptoms and has been in rural or semi-rural areas where the long-tailed pygmy rice rat may have been present, they should immediately go to a health center and inform the medical staff so that a hantavirus diagnosis can be considered promptly,” the official added. Since December 2025, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has maintained an epidemiological alert due to the rise in hantavirus cases throughout the Southern Cone, and that the Ministry of Health had an epidemiological alert in place since November of last year. Chile eliminates leprosy As mentioned above, the Health Alert decree also covers diseases transmitted by the Aedes aegypti, Aedes vexans, and Anopheles pseudopunctipennis mosquitoes, such as dengue and Zika, which, according to the alert, “have a high epidemic potential, which could generate high demand and overload for health facilities.” For these diseases, the alert is in effect from Arica to Los Ríos. The authority stressed that it is essential to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in stagnant water and to monitor any suspected cases of people arriving from abroad infected with any of these diseases, in order to prevent any of these vectors from biting a sick person and starting to spread the disease. In the case of avian influenza, the alert was extended to the entire country, because unlike other years, the disease has been concentrated in wild and farm birds, not in poultry farms, increasing the risk of exposure for people. Outbreak News Today is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
The US ‘golden age’ science strategy: what Europeans need to know
The US has unveiled what officials claim is the most radical overhaul of the public R&D system in a generation, which if implemented could have significant implications for transatlantic research collaboration. Science: A New Golden Age derides universities as “legacy institutions” and instead wants to prioritise funding on technological challenges, new research labs and funding that follows individual scientists, rather than being linked to their institutions. “Too much of our research enterprise has come to serve itself rather than the scientists within it,” writes Michael Kratsios, director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the only named author of the report. “Federal funding agencies should support a broader range of performers.” But some critics argue that the strategy is a smokescreen, using genuine problems in academia as an excuse to further weaken US universities, which US vice-president JD Vance has labelled “the enemy..”Even as it talks of a “golden age” for science, the White House has proposed halving the 2027 budget of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and has put forward double-digit cuts for other funding bodies, such as the National Institutes for Health. It asked for similarly steep savings in 2026, but Congress stopped them going through. Science: A New Golden Age says success will be measured by the extent to which scientists are “free” to pursue the most “vital questions,,” painting academia as currently hidebound by bureaucracy, sluggishness and consensual conservatism. And yet the Trump administration is simultaneously planning new rules that will hand political appointees unprecedented powers to screen and cancel grants. The report has pretentions to be the successor to Science: The Endless Frontier, the seminal 1945 document in which presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush set out the case for post-war government funding of basic research, helping to spur the creation of funders such as the NSF. Even the title page font is the same. But it remains unclear if the latest report will leave anything like as lasting a legacy.Here, Science|Business explains some of the biggest proposed changes in Science: A New Golden Age, and how Europeans think it might change the landscape of their biggest science partner.Universities under fireA key target of the report are US universities, which it repeatedly suggests are outmoded as research institutions. It criticises the NSF for channelling resources “overwhelmingly to a single type of performer, the university-based, principal investigator-led research group..” Universities “extract” money from researchers’ grants to support “growing administrative bloat,” alongside legitimate uses. The Trump administration has been trying to cut the overhead costs in federal research grants that flow to universities. Instead, new institutions are being built. In May, the NSF announced it would spend $1.5 billion on two new so-called X-Labs, focused on scientific instrumentation and quantum systems. The idea is that they fill a niche in the landscape, tackling problems that are too big for a university lab, but too early stage for private start-up funding. Parallel with Europe?This shift to new research organisations parallels moves in Europe to set up new innovation agencies, such as Germany’s Sprind, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and the EU’s European Innovation Council. The Dutch and French governments are looking to set up their own entities too. There’s now an emerging consensus, evident in a number of new strategies, that public R&D needs to be shaken up, Charles McIvor, an economist at the OECD, has written in response to Kratsios’s plans. “What stands out for me across these strategies [in the US, Germany, South Korea and Japan] is that governments are realising that the old ways of delivering STI [science, technology and innovation] programming no longer works,” he said in a LinkedIn post. Metascience wins?The document is, at least on the face of it, also a big win for some policy thinkers in the US who want far more experimentation with new forms of research grant and institution.It name-checks a litany of new public R&D ideas, from focused research organisations and advance market commitments to “golden tickets,” which allow grant reviewers the power to hand applicants money without requiring the consensus of other review panellists.Related articlesEuropean researchers sound the alarm that Trump rule changes will hit cooperationFocused research organisations: what are they, and how do you set them up? NIH turmoil risks reciprocal EU-US access to health research funding In addition, every federal research funding agency should set up a metascience unit, the strategy says, “with authority to run controlled experiments on review and funding mechanisms.” The UK has already set one up, the strategy points out. This mirrors recommendations to the European Commission. In 2024, a report led by former Portuguese science minister Manuel Heitor also advised the EU to set up an “experimental unit” to test out new methods of funding research. So far, however, Brussels hasn’t put forward any plans to do so. Bypass universitiesBut there’s a worry that the Trump administration is using the metascience movement to justify an overhaul of public R&D that punishes universities, which it sees as centres of political resistance. Last year, it threatened to cut Harvard University’s federal funding unless it hired and admitted a “critical mass” of new faculty and students to create “viewpoint diversity” across campus. It’s also attempted to strip academics of funding for working on politically forbidden areas, like LGBTIQ people’s health.The new strategy appears to be a “move to bypass the power of universities full stop and allow funders and political bureaucracies to handpick the projects and people who will execute them,” said Jean-Claude Burgelman, a former senior official in the Commission’s research directorate, on LinkedIn.The EU’s science counsellor in Washington, Florent Bernard, wrote that the plans risk diverting public research funding so that it “solely serves private interests.” “Who, if not independent universities, will do research that demonstrates the impact of tobacco on lung cancer or the role of human activities in our current climate crisis?” he wrote.Should we take it seriously?“I would view the overall document as a bad faith argument,” said Cole Donovan, director of science policy at the campaigning group Stand Up for Science, and a former OSTP official. “I don’t see the project itself as something that can be isolated from the broader attack on the system.” He thinks the argument that academia has become dysfunctional and in need of radical reform is being deployed as part of a “PR argument” to legitimate moves against US scientists. The strategy presents ideas like metascience units as new, whereas there were moves to set them up at the NSF during the previous administration of Joe Biden, Donovan said. The other caveat here is that the OSTP has limited power to carry out any of these recommendations. While Kratsios has issued a memo to research agencies telling them to implement the recommendations in the report, he doesn’t have direct budgetary control. “As a former OSTPer myself, this does not seem like a document that is realistic,” said Donovan.
Diederich College of Communication to host combined Student Sport Summit, Axthelm Lecture on Oct. 2
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Incoming Apple CEO aims to build on movie and TV progress
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Registered nurses at Adventist Health St. Helena vote overwhelmingly to join California Nurses Association
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San Francisco Demands Apple and Google Delete AI ‘Nudify’ Apps From App Stores
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Matt Damon calls Ben Affleck ‘one of the great loves of my life’
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Hundreds of thousands of scientists, including Nobel laureates, warn that changes to the way federal grants are approved would greatly damage American science
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MAGA's attack on science is even worse than it looks
In my post on America’s 250-year anniversary, I argued that respect for the individual was the “secret sauce” in the U.S.’ long-lasting preeminence among nations. But it was certainly not the only factor. There were plenty of institutional innovations that helped the U.S. stay on top — economically, militarily, and in terms of the attractiveness of its society. One of these was American science. Today we take things like the modern research university, government grants for science, public-to-private research spinoffs, etc. for granted, but a lot of that infrastructure wasn’t there before World War 2. It was either invented or scaled up massively by the U.S. government in the postwar period, led by far-sighted scientist-bureaucrats like Vannevar Bush (pictured above). If you want to read about this history, a good place to start would be Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson’s excellent book Jump-Starting America. Those scientific institutions didn’t exist in a vacuum, however. They were backed by the U.S. government’s abiding faith in the power of science — and, even more fundamentally, by deep popular trust in the scientific enterprise. Science gave us radar and the atom bomb in wartime, and in peacetime it gave us plastics, vaccines, cheap food, and a thousand other things that made our lives easier. Science was also the driver behind American industry — chemicals, aerospace, telecommunications, computers, electronics, and so on. We owed science our jobs, our livelihoods, our comfortable living standards, and our greatness and power as a nation. It’s little wonder that both political parties, even as they fought viciously over other issues, were steadfast in their support of science. For a long time, the only people who distrusted science were a hippie fringe on the left who disliked modernity (or thought they did, anyway), who also disliked American industry and American power, and who subscribed to an early version of degrowth environmentalism. America’s scientific enterprise is still strong, especially compared to the systems in Europe, Japan, Korea, and other developed countries. It has lost a lot of ground to China in a relative sense, but a lot of that is because of China’s incredible growth; as China has poured untold amounts of money and talent into its research labs, spending and output have overtaken the U.S. by some measures. There are a few ways in which China’s rise creates problems for American science — for example, top scientists can choose to work in China instead of in the U.S. — and of course there’s the concern that China’s technological strength will help its military to reign supreme. But overall, China’s rise in science should be good for American science, since American scientists can use Chinese discoveries for free and build on them. The much bigger problem is that the scientific enterprise America built during and after World War 2 is now being threatened with absolute decline. The biggest problem, of course, is that much of the country — the Republican half — has basically lost faith in the scientific enterprise. To what degree this loss of faith is justified is an open question, and deserves to be discussed openly. But the larger point — that the system that powered American dominance is under threat — is true either way. Most Americans still trust science, but MAGA Republicans don’t There’s a myth, popular in right-wing circles, that scientists have lost the trust of regular Americans — either due to the increasingly left-wing composition of academic departments, or to misbehavior during Covid, or to DEI-related research taking over science, etc. This also fits with a wider narrative that Americans are losing trust in all of our institutions. But it just isn’t true. Poll after poll shows that on the whole, Americans still trust scientists and want to spend more on science. For example, here’s a Pew poll from late 2025 showing that although about a fifth of Republicans did lose confidence in science in 2020, two thirds still have at least “a fair amount” of confidence: That same poll found that scientists are among America’s most trusted groups — even better trusted than the military! In fact, Americans trust scientists more than people in most other countries do. Other polls show that although Republican trust in science has dropped somewhat, Republican support for spending more on science remains very strong: A Pew poll in 2023 found the exact same thing: So when MAGA types tell you about scientists losing their credibility, or a drop in trust in science, they’re only talking about themselves. Whatever left-wing politicization of science happened during the Biden administration — and there was definitely some of that — it was not enough to make most Republicans lose faith in the scientific enterprise, or favor research cuts in order to purge unwanted ideology from the system. That doesn’t mean I think progressives should continue down the path of politicizing scientific research. They should not, and Biden made real missteps in this area. Objectivity clearly matters for public trust of science in the long term. But as of right now, there’s no crisis of trust in science, except among the smallish minority of people who are running around screaming that there’s a crisis of trust in science. But despite science’s overwhelming popularity and public trust, Trump and his administration are launching an unprecedented and devastating attack on American science — cutting funding, and forcing science projects to undergo ideological review by government commissars. Trump’s comprehensive attack on science
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Hungary moves to overhaul university models banned from Horizon Europe
Hungary’s new government is aiming to overhaul the governance model of the institutions and universities that lost access to Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ funds “in a short timeframe,” according to Péter Horváth, the new state secretary for science policy and innovation. “As of today, the two non-university foundation-controlled institutions under my remit have been transformed,” he told Science|Business. “We hope the universities will follow and that this will be enough to satisfy the EU’s demands.”Under the previous government, led by Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party, many academic and scientific institutions were restructured and made into special public trust foundations, with members strongly linked to the government given lifelong mandates and significant decision-making powers with little oversight. The European Commission deemed that this undermined academic freedom and transparency in the country, leading to a ban on 34 institutions in 2022, including 21 universities, which saw academics in Hungary lose access to Horizon Europe grants. The new Hungarian government, elected in May and led by Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party, has promised to dismantle this governance model and restore the institutions to EU programmes. As a result, the European Commission has promised to return access to the Erasmus+ education mobility programme, but so far no concrete agreement has been made on the Horizon Europe programme for research and innovation. Hungary has already made legislative changes in June to allow the institutions to be reformed and set a timeline for the implementation.The non-university foundations, which are mainly cultural centres such as the Foundation for Hungarian Culture or the Makovecz Campus Foundation, will all be dissolved by August 31 this year, a date tied to EU-set milestones that Hungary must meet to unlock frozen funds, with control transferred to relevant ministries. Meanwhile, the universities will have until 31 August 2027. For each university foundation, the government will set the dissolution date and the body to take over operations. There is no final decision on a permanent new model for the universities, according to Hungarian MEP Eszter Lakos, who is shadow rapporteur for the Horizon Europe specific programme, a separate piece of legislation detailing implementation rules for the EU’s next research programme, due to start in 2028. “The aim of the transition year is to settle this with [the universities], not to impose a model, and not to put them under state control,” she told Science|Business. “The goal is to give academic independence back to universities.”There are three models that are most likely to be implemented. One would be a return to a traditional, state-run model. Another could be a newer, more self-standing public institution. A third option would be a reformed version of the foundation models that meet EU standards. According to Lakos, the dismantling of the system put in place by the Orbán government is well underway and if all goes according to plan, Hungary could regain access to EU research money by the start of the next academic year in 2027. “I believe that the Hungarian government is doing the necessary changes so the universities could return as beneficiaries to Horizon from the next school year,” she said. In the meantime, “the universities, institutes and cultural assets carry on under proper public stewardship rather than a handful of unaccountable trustees,” said Lakos. The laws passed in June impose new safeguards: board terms are capped at four years and renewable only once, appointments are made through open competitions and sitting politicians cannot join joining these boards.It remains unclear whether a domestic science funding programme set up as a back-up scheme by the former government following the EU funding ban, called HU-rizon, could be continued. “This programme should never have had to have been established in the first place, but it has proven to be quite popular,” he said. “I am considering continuing this programme with a refined focus on helping international collaborations.”Re-organising the research network One of the first priorities for Horváth and his cabinet is to resolve questions over the future of the Hungarian Research Network, Hun-Ren. The network of academic institutes was taken away from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2019 and turned into a quasi-private organisation, with similarities in its governance to the public trust foundations.Horváth and his team have consulted over 5,000 representatives from the network and the conclusion is broad unhappiness with the directors of all the institutes involved. “We have presented the results to the president and the chief executive of the network and this is currently being discussed,” Horváth said. The plan is to re-integrate the network back into the Academy of Sciences but in an improved way, “learning from mistakes of the past,” he added. The government also wants to reintegrate four humanities and social science research centres into the network that the previous government had transferred to Eötvös Loránd University. The transfer brought sharp criticism from the academic community, with a group of Hungarian research heads, including European Research Council grant recipients, sending an open letter to Orbán warning that the transfer would “cause historically significant harm to the entirety of Hungarian scientific life.” The transfer was “one of the biggest shames in Hungarian research in the past 20 years,” Horváth said. “We want to immediately re-integrate them back into the research network and to regain the trust of these institutions, because the way they were treated was really unfair.”Another pressing issue is the Élvonal Excellence Research and Talent Development Foundation, led by Nobel laureate Ferenc Krausz. The foundation signed a financing agreement with the former government earlier this year for a budget of over €730 million over the next five years. The goal is to create a world-class centre to attract top talent from abroad and to develop local researchers. But there was little transparency about this foundation, and news of its huge budget, which is nearly as much as Hungary’s entire research budget, caused a stir in the media following the recent elections. Another issue is that, as with the foundation boards of the institutes banned from Horizon Europe, there was little-to-no oversight of decisions led by Krausz. “It was an excellent idea but an unacceptable execution,” Horváth said of the foundation. “The fact that this is out of the Hungarian funding scheme, mostly concentrating on one person who decides on the budget is unacceptable for us.”The government plans to merge the centre with the National Research, Development and Innovation Office, the country’s R&D funding agency, with a reduced budget. Horváth is hopeful that Krausz will still be involved. The new government’s R&D goalsA phrase that crops up regularly during the discussion with Horváth is “democratic process.” The new state secretary is determined to involve Hungary’s research community in shaping future policies. This marks a departure from the previous government’s approach, and several people in Hungary’s research community have commented on the openness of the new government. In terms of concrete goals, Horváth and his team already have plans. He wants to create a new science fund in Hungary, based on the best practices of other European countries. The fund would not be tied to annual government budgets and would provide long-term, stable financing. “If we were to succeed in creating this fund, then I think it would be one of the biggest achievements for me in this period of government,” Horváth said. On the innovation side, he is looking into how best to bring in the private sector. “We want to make sure that we are working with the private sector to support innovation,” Horváth said. One of his big aims is to introduce entrepreneurship teaching into high schools. Hungary already has a reputable national academy offering research and innovation training in the field of natural sciences, and Horváth wants to expand this to all disciplines and across the whole country. “One of the main ways to elevate our innovative businesses is to teach our children to be innovative,” he said. “This will probably need ten years to pay off, but this is what we should do. Our aim is to make Hungary strong in our region, and this is what is needed.” Related articlesHungary’s Horizon Europe performance in numbersCommission unlocks Erasmus+ cash for Hungary, Horizon could be next‘Academic Huxit.’ Hungarian researchers speak out on impact of EU ban A more difficult task will be funding. The new government is aiming to increase research spending to 2% of the GDP by 2030, and then increase it to 3% in line with EU objectives. Currently, spending sits around 1.3%. But according to Horváth, the current budget, inherited from the previous government, is “heavily in the negative,” so any plans to increase research spending will have to start next year. Achieving 2% by 2030 already needs a big push, almost doubling the research budget. “This is something we’d definitely like to reach, and something I can see us achieving,” he said. “From the 2030s, I’d like to see an innovative generation growing up that can help us reach the 3% target.” Positivity in the new governmentDespite the many challenges facing Horváth and his team, the mood is positive. “It feels a bit like a start-up right now. Everyone is working 24/7, day and night, trying to do as much as they can. There is a lot of energy,” he said. It is a big change for the state secretary who, like many in his cabinet, is coming from a background in research or business, and not in politics. “Six weeks ago, I was sitting with my microscope and my research PhDs, so it’s been a big change for me,” said the computer scientist, who was previously the director of the Institute of Biochemistry at the Hun-Ren Biological Research Centre in Hungary and worked at the Institute for AI for Health at Helmholtz Munich. But he is relishing the task to transform the country’s R&D landscape. “We feel enormous support from the Hungarian people, but also from Europe,” he said. “We’ve received a lot of letters of support from around Europe. There is big trust there, and huge responsibility on our side. We want to get everything back on track, and there’s a lot to do.”
Explaining The Comcast and NBCUniversal Divorce
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) I hope everyone had a happy Fourth of July in America, celebrating the country’s 250th birthday. Frankly, I am bummed the 250th wasn’t a bigger celebration, but that’s a different topic for a different Substack. While it was generally a quiet week on the entertainment/streaming/media business fronts, we still had some interesting news stories. Actually, that kinda undersells one of the stories, a huge, huge, huge divestment that could upend the entertainment landscape... So let’s get right to it. In today’s column, I’ll cover Comcast spinning off the rest of NBCUniversal, an entertainment company investing in an LLM company and an LLM-owner investing in a movie studio, the latest round of threats of digital tariffs, and more. Let’s dive in. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Most: Comcast/NBCU Breakup!!!! If I had to describe my reaction to Comcast spinning out NBCUniversal, it feels like a relationship ending, either breaking up or divorcing. Comcast’s decision to spin off the rest of NBCUniversal, after spinning off some of its cable assets into Versant last year, really does feel like a family breaking up under “irreconcilable differences”. Of my stereotypes of the entertainment moguls, my go-to for Comcast CEO Brian Roberts—heir to the Comcast fortune, but a man who’s been at the helm for 24 years now, and president for twelve years before that—is that he likes building empires. He cut his teeth acquiring cable rivals in the 1990s and tried to buy Disney repeatedly, then settled for NBCUniversal after a long court battle. (Contrast this with Rupert Murdoch, a man who also loved to buy, but would also sell when the price is right. Murdoch made Fox out of nothing, but then sold 20th Century Fox to Disney, arguably at the top of the market. So I understood why he sold.) But I don’t understand Roberts’ motivation to sell now. I have some explanations but no single, super-satisfying explanation. Strategically, it would just make more sense to have kept NBCUniversal in-house, especially for a one-time empire builder like Comcast. Yet one powerful force—arguably the decider in modern capitalism—likely overwhelmed all other considerations. At first, I thought I’d arrange my thoughts as a “Five Why” analysis, digging through each layer of the puzzle. But instead, I found myself asking, “But…why?” (And I only ended up with four sections.) So let’s look at Comcast from that angle. Then, at the end, I’ll give my biggest strategic recommendation for every company in Hollywood. It’s obvious, but sometimes, the obvious strategy is the most ignored. But…Why? The Stock Market, Conglomerations, and Sum of the Parts Analysis We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… Why Comcast could never get a “tech company” valuation The not-so-secret motivation for Comcast What Versant has to do with all of this The key strategic advice I think every entertainment exec should follow (though it’s really obvious) Some big AI investment news… Whether we’ll see digital tariffs… And more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.
Why women should be at the helm of health emergency leadership
Women comprise 70% of the health workforce but hold only 25% of emergency leadership positions.
UMass Lowell business students help an endangered species: Duckpin bowling
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Areta Crowell: Behavioral Health Leader
In 1967, the California Legislature overwhelmingly approved the Lanterman Petris Short Act, which sped the emptying of state hospitals. Areta Crowell lived the origin story of that landmark law. Her job was to implement the law in Los
Grand View goalkeeper channels love for sports into podcast
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Guardians Lose 3-1 To White Sox
This was a pretty underwhelming game from the offense. They faced a good pitcher in Burke, but boy did they make him look great. A solo HR from Hedgey in the 5th is the only thing that kept this one from being a shutout. Hedges is now hitting .281 with a .756 OPS on the […]
Aroldis Chapman breaks MLall-time strikeout record among relievers
The Red Sox closer broke a tie with Hoyt Wilhelm for the top of the career leaderboard.
Aroldis Chapman breaks MLB all-time strikeout record among relievers
The Red Sox closer broke a tie with Hoyt Wilhelm for the top of the career leaderboard.
Mariners OF Julio Rodríguez goes on 7-day concussion injured list after taking throw to back of helmet
Long Reads for the Long Weekend
(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) Happy Fourth of July weekend! As has been a tradition of mine going back to the beginning of the EntStrategyGuy website, I’m sharing my favorite long reads of the last year, like I did in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024, and 2025. Let’s dive right in! Subscribe “Different Prices for the Same Ride: How Uber and Lyft Use AI to Get More Money Out of You“ by Derek Kravitz in Consumer Reports I don’t think surveillance pricing, like the kind described in this brilliant Consumer Reports article, is long for the world—it’s toxically unpopular—but we’ll see if either party takes on this issue. If I ran a political party focused on affordability, I would focus on a few pro-consumer and pro-market policies: Banning non-compete agreements. Ending surveillance pricing Eliminating junk fees (read more here...) Ensuring “right to repair” for consumer (and military!) products Capping excessive app store fees Stopping digital/algorithmic price-fixing tools. Preventing automatic subscription price increases. And more. If you want to fight inflation, there are a lot of great ways to do it quickly. Speaking of higher prices... “Secret Documents Show Pepsi and Walmart Colluded to Raise Food Prices Across the Economy“ by Matt Stoller in BIG Again, I think a political party should focus on lowering prices for consumers. And deals like this—Walmart making a deal/forcing Pepsi to offer the lowest prices at its stores and nowhere else—hypothetically lower prices at Walmart...but raise them everywhere else. “15 DUIs, still driving: California’s failure to take repeat drunk drivers off the road“ by Robert Lewis and Lauren Hepler in CalMatters CalMatters does terrific reporting in California, something the Golden State desperately needs more of, and this article is a great example of that. “PugLips: The next insanely popular thing you’ve never heard of…” by Simon Carless in Game Discover Co I thought that this parody article (and yes, it’s a parody, but I was definitely unsure at first) was hilarious and totally nailed how much tech/business journalism feels these days. Actually, three of my favorite articles this year were on hype in the video game industry, including Georg Zoller’s “The Video Game Industries Very Dark Night”—which I linked to recently and wrote a follow-up here—and Owen Mahoney’s “Derek Zoolander, Videogame Exec”. In particular, I like Mahoney’s focus on user experience as a guide to what trends will actually grab hold of customers. “The Matrix Lies“ by Evan Shapiro in Media War & Peace Evan Shapiro’s first person account of his experience with AI was hilarious. I think LLMs capabilities have significantly grown from last summer, and yet...my editor/researcher just had an abysmal experience using an LLM to do a quite basic task (which our LLM normally does each week) and the LLM made a mistake on every single data entry...along with seven different mistakes affecting twelve of the twenty or so entries, including mistakes that are explicitly spelled out in the prompt. That’s a brutal failure rate. Again, if you use AI/LLM for data collection, you need to take a lot of extra steps to verify and check the data. “Ghosts in the Balcony: A Cross-Country Trip to 58 Theaters Fighting to Survive“ by Matthew Frank in The Ankler I thought Matthew Frank’s pitch to head across America to visit theaters sounded insane aggressive at the time—at least it felt that way to someone a decade older than him; man, to be in your twenties again, am I right?—but I knew the result would be great. And it was, a terrific feature by a great young writer. Also, I loved Matthew’s recent article on who’s getting the precious few entry level jobs in Hollywood. (Hint: nepotism.) “Disney erased FiveThirtyEight“ and “Did Las Vegas get too greedy?” by Nate Silver in Silver Bulletin I love media history and analysis, and there’s no one better to get the history of FiveThirtyEight than from Nate Silver, who wrote about his personal experience in one of my favorite pieces from this year. I also loved Nate’s breakdown of what’s causing Vegas’ woes, but I’ll offer one criticism, summarized as “Might I suggest antitrust?” Many centrists/center-right/libertarian thinkers (Nate is self-described as the latter) often don’t consider consolidation or antitrust as factors in policy issues like housing, America’s military readiness, or, in this case, Las Vegas. Even if libertarians want to debunk antitrust/consolidation concerns, I’d love to read that debunking. In this case, Vegas is incredibly consolidated (though it also has been for a long time) and I’d have loved to read Nate at least contending with this factor, since he addresses almost every other potential factor for Vegas’ decline. “Why Microsoft’s Carbon Removal Pullback Is Such a Big Deal“ by Robinson Meyer in Heatmap News I’m a big supporter of carbon removal efforts, but this nascent industry faces a lot of headwinds, including this big move most recently. I think it’s clear that solar panels and batteries should be able to get the world to its carbon footprint goals, but effective carbon renewal remains necessary to prevent the worst impacts of global warming. “AI is killing the cheap smartphone“ by David Oks LLMs and AI will impact the world in ways we’re not ready for, and already, third world countries are seeing the prices of cheap cellphones skyrocket due to the cost of chips skyrocketing. This article by David Oks is a terrific breakdown. “100 Days of Madness: Netflix, Paramount, Warner and the Future of Hollywood“ by Wade Major at Hollywood Heretic Wade Major dove deep into Hollywood/streaming’s financials in this must read piece. Not that I agree with everything in this article (read my take on Warner Bros./Paramount here) but the analysis is top notch. I think many people discount how quality thinking, regardless of the argument/conclusion, will make you a better thinker. “Erased by the UFC: Frank Shamrock, The MMA GOAT of the 20th Century“ by Nate Wilcox in The MMA Draw Newsletter Growing up playing the UFC fighting game on the Dreamcast, Frank Shamrock was my favorite MMA fighter, and this history/tribute to him was great. Other Fun Reads “The Hardest Part Of History To Tell Is How It Felt“ by Craig Fehrman at Defector “Unmasking the Sea Star Killer“ by Craig Welch at bioGraphic “What Could Save the Industry? Fin-Syn“ by Richard Rushfield in The Ankler Alex Rollins Berg in Underexposed on movie bumpers, pillow shots, Disney trash cinema, cult films, and Casablanca. David H. Montgomery in YouGov’s The Surveyor on punctuation marks, condiments, dinosaurs, and comic strips and kids media. “How Medium finally pivoted its way to profitability“ and “Why the best journalists on YouTube are all former Vox employees“ by Simon Owens in Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter “It’s Not Just You, Netflix Shows Have Gotten Slightly Shorter: Here’s What the Data Says“ by Kasey Moore at What’s on Netflix “Numlock Awards: How Diane Warren became the biggest loser in Oscar history“ by Nathaniel Rakich and “Numlock Awards: The Oscar Bait era is over. The Oscar Chum era is here.” by Walt Hickey & Michael Domanico at Numlock Awards
Clarksdale Native Ben Frazer
Young entrepreneur at the helm of Stovall Capital and Chinook Fire Protection It’s a long way from Clarksdale to Anchorage, Alaska, but Ben Frazer is moving forward with his business career there. That’s where he is the CEO of Chinook Fire Protection, which was acquired by his SEC-registered company, Stovall Capital. He is still […]
Thousands need medical attention from ‘already overwhelmed’ Venezuelan healthcare system: Aid worker
Claudia Manresa, Venezuela Regional Manager at Project HOPE joins Meet the Press NOW to discuss the urgent humanitarian situation following last week’s twin earthquakes and the strain the disaster is putting on the country's already struggling systems.
Texans given underwhelming grade by ESPN for offseason moves
How did ESPN view the Houston Texans' offseason moves that included fixing the run game and offensive line? Overall, underwhelming.
Boleslaw Wyslouch steps down as director of Laboratory for Nuclear Science
After more than 10 years at the helm of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS), Boleslaw “Bolek” Wyslouch will step down to continue research in nuclear physics as director of the Bates Research and Engineering Center, a subgroup of LNS. “LNS scientists, including Bolek himself, are world leaders in particle and nuclear physics,” says Nergis […]
Quakes strain Venezuela’s health system
LA GUAIRA, Venezuela -- Aid groups warned Tuesday that Venezuela's fragile healthcare system is being pushed to its limits nearly a week after two powerful earthquakes, with damaged and understaffed hospitals getting overwhelmed by the injured and infectious diseases flaring in the disaster zone.
Benches clear in Red Sox vs. Nationals game as Willson Contreras charges mound, throws helmet at Cade Cavalli
Contreras was heated after Cavalli yelled toward him after a fourth-inning strikeout
Dems join Republicans to crush Tlaib's war powers resolution in lopsided House vote
Rep. Rashida Tlaib's resolution to bar U.S. military hostilities in Lebanon failed overwhelmingly as Republicans questioned why the measure was needed.
A New Way to Uncover How Science Is Under Attack
Science is being threatened at a pace and scale we’ve never seen before in the federal government. It’s nearly overwhelming—but we’ve built a new system to help us monitor and explain what’s happening, looking both incident by incident and at the larger pattern. Last week, the Union of Concerned
DR Congo health workers battle Ebola despite scant protection
In Ituri, DR Congo's Ebola epicenter, overwhelmed clinics and a lack of protective gear leave health workers exposed as the outbreak spreads beyond control.
Netflix and Superheroes Are Having a Rough Stretch on Streaming....
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) I have a quick prediction before we start today’s article: You might see this data in future news articles. Not my specific charts or analysis, but the core trend I’ve been monitoring—Netflix is having a lackluster Q2—will become inescapable. Often, folks want to know “What does the data say?” Well, that’s what it says. I haven’t seen this analysis hit the trades really yet, but I have a feeling some other outlets are going to start making this case soon. Remember, you read it here first. You probably have read about the problems facing superhero films at the box office this weekend. Well, this week, I explore whether superheroes are dying on TV as well! And the data says: definitely maybe! We have a lot to cover in today’s Streaming Ratings Report, which covers the two weeks of 18-May and 25-May. Today, I’m just looking at TV, like Netflix’s disappointing Q2, superhero shows underwhelming, a few TV shows dropping off the charts, The Pitt finally ending its epic run on the viewership charts (and whether “view counts” change its status as one of the biggest shows of all time), all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Tomorrow, I’ve got a great rundown of the film side of things. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, Showlabs, TV Time trend data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of May 18th to May 31st, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Television - Netflix’s Q2 Slump Continues Having analyzed streaming ratings for going on half a decade, I have learned to trust my gut, but I’m always relieved when I can find actual data to back it up. For example, after a string of very popular shows like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, The Lincoln Lawyer and The Night Agent came out, week after week, in January and February, my gut wondered if Netflix had enough new and returning TV shows to sustain them throughout the year. Since then, Netflix’s post-March slate of shows has not impressed me. This week seemed to feature a potential new hit, but then, like a classic Duffer Bros. TV show, there was a twist. I speak of The Boroughs, Netflix’s latest (and last) Duffer Bros. produced show. The pitch is “Stranger Things with older actors”. And it topped the Nielsen charts: With just two weeks of viewership, The Boroughs would have been a top 25 debut show last year: But here’s the twist: Netflix has already cancelled The Boroughs! What happened? Likely a few things. First, the show didn’t do as well globally as it did in the US. As What’s on Netflix showed, it lagged behind several other shows that got cancelled. Second, its completion rate was likely low; after an initial burst of interest, it quickly dropped off on the Samba TV and Luminate charts. Third, the Duffer Bros. left Netflix for Paramount, and that may have factored into Netflix’s decision here. (Though I tend to believe that if a show is doing well, Netflix would have kept greenlighting seasons.) Still, just because I can explain why Netflix may have cancelled this show doesn’t mean I’m justifying it. In particular, as I’ve noted before, Netflix is losing a lot of their bigger shows as they reach their natural ends, and they need to replace those shows. This show had the hallmarks of a big new genre show, and it’s their biggest hit of the last few months (in the US at least), but now it’s done. Netflix’s other show this week—The Four Seasons, the second season of the “hit” show from last year—definitely disappointed. Its sophomore season had about half the viewership of the first, only 12.7 million hours. It also only had a two week run on Samba TV, and its numbers were all down on Luminate too. In other words, even with two successes, the Q2 slump for Netflix looks real: I could add to the list of disappointments: Both Lord of the Files and Man on Fire had short runs on the Nielsen charts. Running Point’s sophomore season also opened to about half its viewership, similar to The Four Seasons. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’s second season—see below—didn’t even make any of the three viewership charts I track, unlike the first season. Netflix is absolutely having a dismal second three months of 2026. If this Nielsen data is any indication, and I think it is, I think this will show up in Netflix’s engagement report, and maybe even their financial outcomes. And the rest of June doesn’t look much better. We have two hit shows coming back—Sweet Magnolias, one of their quietest big shows, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, a big hit for them in 2024—but the other big swings are limited series crime thrillers i.e. no future season potential. Like I said above, sometimes when I uncover a juicy nugget like this, other outlets end up writing very similar articles mimicking the data without credit. We’ll see if that happens this time! Share Television - The State of Superhero Shows on Streaming When I first heard the pitch for Spider-Noir—a Sony TV show on Prime Video that binge-released eight episodes first on MGM+ then on Prime Video two days later—I had my doubts. It’s a live-action Spider-Man show set in the 1930s, starring Nicholas Cage, based on a cameo of a character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. No, seriously, that’s the pitch. That could either go terrifically well or horribly wrong. Great because, Spider-Man. He’s the biggest superhero we have. I’ve seen tracking numbers that put the new _Spider-Man: Brand New Da_y as the blockbuster of the year and initial pre-sales back that up. And yet this Spider-Noir pitch feels very esoteric. (Also, the eight-episode binge release feels very “Amazon copying Netflix” again.) So what’s the data say? And what does this say about the future of superhero shows?
Julia Letlow defeats John Fleming in GOP Senate runoff. Jamie Davis wins Democratic nod.
Letlow staved off a tough challenge from Treasurer John Fleming, while Davis overwhelmingly one his party’s nomination.
Hawaii is turning ocean plastic and fishing nets into roads
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Venezuela Quakes Push Fragile Health System to the Brink
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Dell shareholders approve legal move from Delaware to Texas
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The Venezuela Earthquakes Hit a Health System Already in Crisis
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Davis just perfected NIMBY politics. Why the rest of the region should care
The neighbors surrounding the 1,800-home Village Farms project voted against Measure V in overwhelming numbers, quashing support elsewhere.
ADUSA tapped a former Amazon exec to helm its business. What does this mean?
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Trump berates Senate Republicans over Iran war vote, calls off bill signing
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The AI coding boom is creating workplace paralysis
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Hahn can lead Boise State University, Idaho business into the future
To ensure continued success, we must have effective education institutions with strong leadership at the helm. | Opinion
AI could breach government and business defenses in months, US and its intelligence partners warn
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Dalton Rushing Replaced After Being Hit With Foul Tip
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Quentin Tarantino, Kylie Minogue to Star in New Jamie Adams Film From Yale Entertainment (EXCLUSIVE)
Quentin Tarantino has reunited with Welsh helmer Jamie Adams, known for his Nouvelle Vague-inspired improvised filmmaking style, on a new feature project in which the iconic “Kill Bill” director will ...
At Atlanta church, Ossoff casts Senate race as test of faith, character and democracy: "Georgia's spirit of tolerance will overwhelm and defeat bigotry"
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Why Great Businesses Can Be Terrible Investments
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Trump administration still trying to cancel school-based mental health programs
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Belgium projected lineup vs. Iran in 2026 World Cup
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Janeese Lewis George wins the Democratic primary for mayor of Washington, D.C.
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Curing Mental Illness and Eradicating Loneliness Through the Science of Safety
More than one in five adults in the United States are living with a mental illness (NIMH, 2022) and approximately half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness (HHS, 2023). Drawing from more than two decades of clinical practice and neuroscience research, Dr. David Rabin, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist and translational neuroscientist, addresses these issues in A Simple Guide to Being Alive (Merack Publishing, hardcover; June 16, 2026). The book examines why so many people feel overwhelmed, lonely