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The 70/20/10 Rule That Keeps Your Marketing Budget From Going Stale

Most marketing budgets go stale because they fund last year's winners forever — here's the 70/20/10 split that keeps yours sharp.

Aug 6 • 4:00 PM EDT • Business • entrepreneur.com

Sony’s new PS5 Pro beta update automatically enables PSSR 2.0 for every game

Sony’s latest PS5 system software beta enables PSSR 2.0 by default across all PS5 Pro games, promising sharper visuals and fewer frame-rate drops without requiring manual setup.

Aug 6 • 10:55 AM EDT • Technology • notebookcheck.net

Sony Forces PSSR 2.0 On Every PS5 Pro Game, As New Beta Update Flips The Upscaler Toggle On By Default

Sony's new PS5 Pro beta update enables "Enhance PSSR Image Quality" by default to sharpen unpatched games

Aug 6 • 7:38 AM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com

Business Uncertainty Drives Changes in C-Suite Strategy: Sentry

Economic uncertainty—fueled by shifting trade policies, geopolitical instability, and operational disruptions—is driving leaders to rethink planning, risk management, and long-term strategy, according to new research from Sentry Insurance. New data from a survey of more than 600 executives reveals that C-suite confidence has fallen sharply since the start of 2026, with 82% of U.S. executives … Continued

Aug 5 • 11:29 AM EDT • Business • carriermanagement.com

US move to overhaul science funding prompts some agreement and much doubt

Although researchers agree with the some of the critiques in a new report about the US research system, they are wary of the proposed changes

Aug 4 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • cen.acs.org

Business uncertainty up sharply as economic headwinds reshape C-suite decision-making

/PRNewswire/ -- C-suite confidence has fallen sharply since the start of 2026. New research from Sentry finds 82% of U.S. executives are more concerned about...

Aug 4 • 11:08 AM EDT • Business • prnewswire.com

Gusto Small Business Jobs Report: Small Businesses Add 38,200 Jobs in July, Marking Sixth Straight Month of Growth

America's small businesses added an estimated 38,200 net new jobs in July on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest Gusto Small Business Jobs Report — the sixth consecutive month of positive hiring following January's dip. July's gain held roughly in line with June's 40,800 net new jobs, extending a small business labor market that has remained remarkably steady through the summer even as growth normalizes from the sharper gains seen earlier this spring.

Aug 4 • 9:00 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Educator and business expert gives tips to young and emerging entrepreneurs in Milwaukee

In honor of National Black Business Month and World Entrepreneurs’ Day on Aug. 21, Angelique Sharpe shares how emerging entrepreneurs in Milwaukee can develop a successful business.

Aug 3 • 6:00 PM EDT • Business • milwaukeenns.org

If Not AOC, Then Who?

What do we do if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decides not to run for president in 2028? It makes sense that many leftists are currently focused on calling on her to take the plunge. But the absence of a Plan B, or even much discussion about one, is worrisome. The US Left can’t afford to sit out the 2028 Democratic primary. Doing so in 2024 was a disaster: our abstention self-marginalized anti-billionaire politics from the national conversation and thereby gave space for Harris to pivot to the “center” (i.e. the policy preferences of corporate donors, establishment hacks, and AIPAC). Abstaining again in 2028 would be especially counterproductive since democratic socialists now have so much wind in our sails after our big electoral wins in NYC and across the country. It’s time to deepen our momentum, organization, and profile — not to retreat to the margins during America’s single most important political battle. Even more urgently, keeping Trump’s heir out of the White House may depend on whether leftists and the party’s unprecedentedly disenchanted base can force the Democrats in 2028 to take meaningful steps towards a very angry electorate and away from the corporate-consultant blob that has helped get us into this mess. If AOC (or Abdul El-Sayed) decides to run, we should enthusiastically go all in — DSA, fighting unions, progressive organizations, anybody who wants to see a better country and world. But, as far as I can tell from the outside, there’s a real chance that she doesn’t run. And we can’t just wait and see where she lands before discussing alternatives, since AOC’s decision might not come for quite a while, giving us little time to scramble at the last minute for an alternative. So we should start working now on getting a Plan B into motion, and recruiting a good candidate for the role. Here’s one idea. A Worker Candidate — Healthcare Not Warfare 2028 Run a union worker Leftists don’t need to always run experienced, well-known socialist politicians for high-profile contests. Lula, the current president of Brazil, began his political career as a metalworker militant who ran for governor of São Paulo in 1982. Especially in an era of institutional distrust, it’s possible to lean hard into making a virtue out of a working-class comrade’s distance from traditional politics. Experience abroad shows this clearly. Rachel Kéké — an immigrant hotel housekeeper — ran as the candidate of the leftist La France Insoumise for the National Assembly in 2022, defeating a former minister in the Macron government. The Belgian Workers’ Party in 2024 won its first Flemish seat in the European Parliament by running Rudi Kennes, a three-decade veteran of the Opel Antwerp auto factory. And the South Korean left in 2024 elected auto factory militant Yoon Jong-oh to the National Assembly. If a tiny French Trotskyist organization could make such a big splash in 2002 and 2007 by running a well-spoken postal worker cadre for office — the LCR’s Olivier Besancenot received about 1.5 million first-round votes — it’s not far-fetched to expect that a much larger organization like DSA, together with a broader coalition of the willing, could run this playbook to much greater effect. This is especially the case now that almost everything DSA does immediately becomes a national news story. We don’t need someone famous. We just need a charismatic, well-vetted comrade who works in a relatable working-class occupation — e.g. a nurse, or a worker in auto or construction, or at Amazon. Ideally, they have a compelling personal story or have been part of a significant strike or organizing campaign, but even those criteria don’t necessarily have to be deal-breakers. The main lesson of the Graham Platner fiasco isn’t that we should never run outsiders for office (the momentum he generated proves the exact opposite), but that they need proper vetting and roots in democratic membership organizations like DSA or a union. In any case, there are plenty of ways to signal working-class authenticity without resorting to Platner’s or Fetterman’s performative macho white dude affect. Better to have someone of any gender or race who is actually working class, with firm socialist politics, who can speak from experience about the day-to-day realities of trying to make it in America. There are surely at least a dozen such worker leaders in our movement nationwide; we just need to sit down and convince one that their personal sacrifice for the greater good (i.e. running for president) will be worth it. If we don’t have a frontrunner with a clear path to victory like AOC (or El-Sayed, were he to win Michigan), it’s better to embrace someone whose decision to run in itself tells an important story about US politics: workers have been iced out of our political system and are now fighting hard to break back in. The novelty factor, in itself, would generate press. And it would help democratic socialists signal to the American public that our movement’s defining characteristic is that we represent workers vs. bosses, not that we’re “the furthest left” force in American politics — a framework that suggests we’re extremists and that helps our opponents isolate us from non-college-educated voters by highlighting extremely minoritarian (and misguided) stances included in DSA’s platform like prison abolition. We don’t get many opportunities to speak to tens of millions of Americans; we need to use these opportunities to broaden our appeal beyond those already in our orbit. Run to polarize the 2028 primary and general election around “Medicare for All” and “End All Aid to Israel” Why should democratic socialists use our scarce time and volunteer energy to run in a race we’re unlikely to win? Running in the 2028 primary will not only recruit us scores of members (imagine having a DSA member intervening in eleven nationally televised primary debates!), but — more importantly — it has the potential to be a decisive leap forward towards an America that finally starts meeting the needs of working people instead of HMO and AIPAC billionaire donors. Polarizing litmus tests are good, actually — as long as they’re fought for around popular demands in a thoughtful and strategic way. Democratic socialists have an opportunity and responsibility to make the 2028 primary about two of the most widely and deeply felt issues of our moment: domestically, America’s unaffordable, family-breaking private healthcare system; internationally, America’s bankrolling of the genocidal Israeli government. A candidacy relentlessly demanding Medicare for All and No Aid to Israel would pose a sharp question to the American public, the Democratic Party, and other 2028 contenders: Why can’t working-class Americans afford their healthcare bills at the same time that our government is spending at least $3.8 billion yearly to fund an Israeli regime eager to keep dragging us and the world into more forever wars? Our candidate can agitate around a clear message: I’m running to give voice to all those working-class Americans who are struggling to get by. No matter what state you live in, who you voted for in 2024, or your background, it’s just plain common sense that we should make healthcare more affordable instead of spending billions to enable the Israeli government’s crimes against humanity. Every American who agrees with me when I say ‘Medicare for All — Not a Dime for Israel’ should make their voice heard through our campaign. Racking up a high number of votes for this agenda is a crucial way to show the Democratic Party and the country as a whole that we can’t keep supporting a life-destroying status quo in our healthcare system and in the Middle East. If we want to defeat Trump’s handpicked crony this coming November, we need to speak to ordinary people’s frustrations with the status quo — we can’t keep running the same tired establishment playbook and expecting a different result. For those highly engaged voters (or skeptical media pundits) who raise concerns about wasting votes, the candidate can take the time to explain why this isn’t the case: It's true I'm a long shot. But Zohran showed anything can happen — and voting for me is a pragmatic decision, not a wasted vote. In a heavily divided primary with a large number of candidates and a very discredited establishment, my campaign and the democratic socialist movement I’m part of are positioned to be the balance of power if we can get a large enough number of voters to loudly demand Healthcare Not Warfare. Since there’s a high chance no candidate will get to 50% in the 2028 primaries, the Democrats could very well be heading towards a brokered convention, where a disciplined, principled current committed to breaking from corporate donors can play an outsized role in making sure whoever ends up with the nomination raises the banner of single-payer healthcare and cutting aid to Israel. How exactly could running this sort of primary campaign be translated into actual leverage? The candidate replies: I’m aiming to win the nomination, but if I don’t achieve that goal, my delegates and I will pledge our support in the primary only for a candidate who agrees in the general election to call for ending US aid to Israel and establishing Medicare for All at home. These are both winning planks for November against the Republicans, and the only reason I can see that other candidates haven’t yet raised these is that they’re still more scared of the donor class than they are of the people. That needs to change. If Democratic leaders want young people, workers, and those sick of the status quo to show up in big numbers this November, they need to meet us halfway. In this way, whether or not we win the nomination, democratic socialists could still play a decisive role in 2028. The approach outlined here is similar to what radical left parties periodically do in parliamentary democracies like Denmark or Sweden when they find themselves as a junior partner electorally: they dictate to center-left allies what their terms would be for enabling, from the outside, the formation of a new government. Running a Healthcare Not Warfare candidate will make it significantly more likely that the 2028 Democratic candidate stands with ordinary people instead of donors on these two pivotal planks — a shift that will, in turn, make it easier to achieve the existentially important task of defeating MAGA’s heir in November. Look at how much popular traction the Uncommitted movement got with a similar strategy in 2024 with so little on-the-ground organization — surely we can go much further with a working-class candidate, a much bigger DSA, and a Democratic Party base that has turned against Israel, billionaires, and the hacks in the party who prop them up. Objections and Responses There are quite a few objections to this proposal, many of which are very reasonable. Let me briefly address each here. Socialists shouldn’t waste their scarce time and resources on a candidate unlikely to win. This is a good rule in general, but there are important exceptions, and presidential elections are the main one. There’s no other political contest that gets anything like this level of attention and engagement in the US, so if you want to be a serious force in nationwide politics, you basically can’t afford not to have a candidate. Far from being an overall drain on our resources, running a dynamic 2028 campaign would likely result in a major net increase in members and capacity. In that spirit, the very pragmatic Milwaukee sewer socialists — who mostly ran to win at home in Wisconsin — supported Eugene Debs’s propagandistic presidential campaigns, which they correctly saw as a crucial means of recruiting to the Socialist Party. And now that the (post-1972) Democratic Party gives more weight to voters than party operatives in determining its presidential nomination, it’s become feasible to run as a socialist in primaries without risking a split in the vote against the Republicans in November. We should just support Ro Khanna, who also supports M4A and ending aid to Israel. I like Ro Khanna and would enthusiastically vote and canvass for him for president were he to get the nomination. But there’s a real chance that Khanna’s bid for office doesn’t catch on; he lacks the grassroots organizational apparatus of DSA, and, because he’s not really of the Left or labor (despite his current very good positions), he’s unlikely to generate the type of buy-in and enthusiasm that a DSA candidate would. Moreover, Khanna would be running as an individual, not as someone emerging from and building an organized movement — his campaign would not likely focus on building sustained power from below, nor would it likely polarize the 2028 primary around M4A and Israel aid. Also, and not inconsequentially, the poor electoral results for Tom Steyer and Saikat Chakrabarti this spring suggest that there’s perhaps not much of a popular appetite in the Democrats’ base to support multi-millionaire class traitors. Much better, then, to run a democratic socialist worker. If by Super Tuesday it’s clear that our campaign has captured the main left lane in the primary, Khanna should drop out and endorse us; conversely, if he’s managed to capture this lane, DSA could at that point transform its Healthcare Not Warfare campaign into an independent campaign to elect Ro Khanna focused on winning (and holding him accountable to) those two critical planks. An openness to consolidating an anti-corporate candidate by Super Tuesday is a necessary component of the strategy I’m proposing, because otherwise we risk splitting the primary votes (per DNC rules, you need at least 15% to get any delegates to convention). We should convince Shawn Fain or Sara Nelson to run for president instead. I agree it’d be great if either ran for president, but my impression is that there’s basically no chance that will happen in 2028, because both are firmly focused on their union leadership duties (and, in the case of Fain, beating back a federal witch-hunt). This plan could have DSA end up endorsing a non-socialist, non-DSAer for president. That’s against our principles. It’s a myth, and bad politics, that socialists can’t ever support candidates who aren’t members of their organization and/or who don’t call themselves socialists. Bernie, after all, was not a DSAer. And socialists abroad regularly make tactical decisions about if and when supporting a non-socialist candidate makes sense from the standpoint of promoting working-class interests, defending democracy, and building a socialist current in the process. If your “principles” prevent you and DSA from helping achieve the momentous stride forward of having a Democratic candidate in 2028 run on Medicare for All and ending aid to Israel, those “principles” are not very good. In fact, they actively undermine the causes they’re aiming to support. We shouldn’t confuse principles (working-class independence) with tactics (the best way to advance this in a given context). In my recent article in Catalyst on Milwaukee sewer socialism (I’ve uploaded the full text here), I have a section showing how similarly rigid rules about endorsements had to be eventually discarded in the old Socialist Party nationwide after WWI because they tended to lead socialists towards a sectarian abstention from broader anti-corporate electoral insurgencies beyond their party’s control. For what it’s worth, Lenin’s current under Tsarism frequently backed bourgeois candidates in the second round of elections and Lenin himself advocated that British Communists support Labour Party candidates; for his part, Kautsky in 1912 defended the German Social Democracy’s electoral pact with the Progressives in the runoffs. If our predecessors could be that tactically flexible in an era before the limits of their underlying strategic assumptions about intransigent class politics in capitalist democracies were made clear, then there’s no need to insist on being more tactically rigid today, after a century’s worth of accumulated experience. As long as you maintain your own political profile and organization while engaging in broader coalitional efforts, there’s zero inherent contradiction with the principle of political independence. More specifically: DSA and allied organizations should enthusiastically back Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed if AOC declines to run and he throws his hat in the presidential ring. (I have no idea whether he’s even considering this path, but there’ll surely be chatter about it if he wins his Senate race this November.) Though he doesn’t call himself a socialist, El-Sayed is a principled Berniecrat, a consistent fighter for Palestine, and would have a clear path to victory. Using the “s” word is far less important than whether a campaign fights for the interests of working people at home and abroad — and whether actively participating in it can grow the organized working class and the Left. And the same holds true if a less anti-corporate candidate were, under pressure, to adopt our two Healthcare Not Warfare planks. Why focus only on M4A and ending US aid to Israel? There are so many other important issues to fight for! Obviously there are many pivotal issues beyond healthcare and Israel, and our candidate — and especially our organizations involved in the campaign — should be prepared to speak on all of these. But one of the crucial lessons of the Zohran campaign is that you have to relentlessly stay on message if you want to cut through the noise. CNN and Fox News will want to talk about DSA’s views on Venezuela and abolishing the police; we need to polarize the debate on the widely and deeply felt issues that are most favorable for growing the Left, isolating our opponents, and winning urgently needed changes. One recent poll found 63% of Americans support M4A, even after respondents were told it would raise taxes and eliminate most private insurance. Another found that 74% of Democrats opposed “providing additional economic and military support to Israel.” And focusing on two demands sets the campaign up to be able to leverage its mandate to make clear demands upon other candidates (which we can’t do if we run with a laundry list of demands). Talking about a Plan B is a distraction from the more urgent work of building a groundswell of calls on AOC to run. It’s good for DSAers, fightback unionists, and progressive organizations to try to convince AOC to run. This proposal is meant as an addendum to pushes to get AOC to run and to line DSA up for that eventuality, not as a substitute for those efforts. But I’m worried that, like in 2024, we might eventually find ourselves with no time to find a viable alternative unless we start now. DSA, with its abundant deliberative processes, moves slowly. The approach you’re suggesting seems risky. If a DSA candidate runs but doesn’t receive a lot of votes, it’ll undercut our current national momentum. This is a reasonable worry. All big initiatives always carry risks, and the path I’m advocating is certainly not free of these. That said, if a Healthcare Not Warfare campaign doesn’t catch on like we envisioned, it’s a pretty simple pivot in March 2028 to explain that in the future we really need our standard-bearers like AOC, or our growing bench of national electeds, to step up in presidential primaries. Moreover, it’s worth noting that the risk of my Plan B proposal is on the whole significantly less than the risk entailed by an AOC run. We should all back her if she runs, since she’d fire up the base, provide huge openings for organizing, have a real shot at defeating a Republican (especially given MAGA’s unpopularity), be a great standard-bearer for our issues, particularly M4A and ending aid to Israel, and be less willing than mainstream candidates to capitulate to any anti-democratic machinations from Trump and co. But it’s also true that AOC could lose, which would be a devastating setback to the country and the Left. Or she could win and find herself unable to pass much, if any, of her (and our) program, a demoralizing prospect. So if we’re willing to take these risks with AOC (and we should), it follows that we should be able to take lower-level risks if she doesn’t throw her hat in the ring. What’s Your Plan B? The US Left is facing its biggest opening for growth and influence since the 1930s. Initiatives that would have been impossible a few months ago are now potentially feasible. A President AOC is now easier to imagine, but if she ultimately assesses that the risks aren’t worth the potential reward in 2028, we can’t be left flat-footed. So even if you’re not convinced by the specifics of my Plan B, I hope you can at least agree that it’d be a disaster for us not to have one — and not to start getting a Plan B into motion. Hopefully other organizers and political currents will put forward their responses and alternative ideas ASAP. The stakes are too high to just wait and see. More As always, please share this article widely. This newsletter depends on all you lovely people to get the word out. Thank you! I uploaded the full text of my Catalyst article on Milwaukee sewer socialism here (it’s updated and 3x as long as the version published earlier on this substack). If you haven’t yet, please make sure to subscribe to Catalyst here; I read every issue front to back, highly recommend. 🌹🎵 Ivan Lins (arranged by Arthur Verocai) — “General da Banda” 🌹🎵

Aug 3 • 12:50 PM EDT • Politics • laborpolitics.com

Updated Vikings' 53-Man Roster Projection After First Four Practices

The first week of Vikings training camp is now in the books, and week 1 was eventful, with the QBs entering camp amid a dramatic battle, as well as a few front office moves that have already helped shake up the roster a bit. Notice that three of the players below have asterisks next to their names indicating that they are not currently on the roster, but that I feel strongly that the Vikings could sign them in the next couple of weeks. Kyler Murray is the odds-on favorite and has looked sharp getting the ball down the field in camp so far.

Aug 2 • 8:38 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Domestic-Abuse Allegations Shake Ohio Congressman’s Re-Election Bid

Rep. Max Miller draws a sharp rebuke from Sen. Bernie Moreno, who says his former son-in-law shouldn’t serve in Congress.

Aug 2 • 3:02 PM EDT • Politics • wsj.com

Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate touts his rural appeal. His hometown has mixed feelings.

In Allagash, a hamlet of some 200 people near Canada, residents are sharply divided over Troy Jackson.

Aug 2 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Ayaneo’s new handheld revives the Game Boy Advance. Nintendo probably wishes it had done it first

Ayaneo has unveiled the Konkr Pocket Advance, a modern Game Boy Advance-inspired handheld with a sharper display, USB-C, wireless connectivity and updated controls.

Aug 2 • 12:07 AM EDT • Technology • digitaltrends.com

Andy Reid: Patrick Mahomes sure looks sharp out there

Aug 1 • 6:23 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Scientists detect a sharp acceleration in global warming

Global warming appears to have shifted into a faster gear. After removing the effects of El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles, researchers found that the planet has warmed at roughly 0.35°C per decade over the past ten years, compared with just under 0.2°C per decade from 1970 to 2015. The acceleration, which becomes visible around 2013 to 2015, appeared across five major global temperature datasets with more than 98% statistical certainty.

Aug 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Where have all the bugs gone? Scientists are finding sharp declines

Many people remember road trips back in the day that left windshields splattered with insects – and may get the uncomfortable feeling that things have changed. Here's what researchers are finding.

Aug 1 • 4:00 AM EDT • Science • cbc.ca

The Streaming Bubble Keeps Popping

(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.) One of my rules is “never bet against PE [private equity]”. This isn’t to say that I agree with their methods or tactics or strategies or financial innovations (aka shenanigans). Just that in the long arc of financial history, they’ve tended to return very good returns to their shareholders. That said, their forays into entertainment have left me...skeptical. I’ve written before about PE’s production company/celebrity production company roll ups, and those haven’t really worked out. Some PE groups tried to “roll up” an industry that isn’t “roll-up-able” for lack of a better term—since the barrier to entry for starting a production company is very low—often paying top dollar for celebrity production companies at the height of streaming valuations. So yeah maybe we can bet against PE when they venture into filmed entertainment. I’ve also noted that studio lots seemed to be a bubble back in 2022. Sure enough… Yikes! That sure sounds like some private equity guys lost some money. The only caveat being that holding a lot of land in Los Angeles is always valuable. But that wasn’t the pitch and likely real estate investment companies overpaid for said land. I mean, Goldman Sachs had to repossess it after all. (Technically, I’m not sure these buyers were traditional private equity, but PE was buying LA studio lots earlier this decade.) All to say: I call out bubbles when I see them, and they often pop. Anywho, my most famous bubble call was the “streaming bubble”, specifically that the major streamers were making too many shows and films. And that it could all come crashing down. Notably, I made this call before the strikes of 2023, but those strikes potentially accelerated the popping. And now it has indeed popped. One of my most popular articles of last year made that exact case. A year later, it’s time to update that analysis. The bottom line is that the streaming contraction continues. Credit where credit is due, Luminate—an analytics company whose data I use weekly in my streaming ratings report—called this out in a recent report I saw highlighted in both Bloomberg and The Hollywood Reporter. But I’m adding my data to their look, including streaming films and kids TV shows. I’ll also provide some other data that all tells the same picture. Let’s dive in! Subscribe The Number of Streaming TV Shows, Films and Specials Is Declining AGAIN in 2026 Let’s get right to the data, starting with my dataset. Specifically, each week I track every “notable” title to come out on streaming. I try to grab every title on every major streamer, meaning if it’s a first run or original or exclusive, I track it. This helps me call out the “dogs not barking” and the misses/flops each week. So that will be our first series of charts, my weekly collection data. Let’s start with the raw TV show, film and special data, by week. Note: As the years have gone by, I have actually added more sources (going from just one source to five sources) to find new titles, meaning that this data collection is, likely, more accurate now than in the past. Which means my team and I are more likely to have undercounted titles in the past rather than today. I like to cut the data several different ways. Here’s that same look, by quarter, to more sharply show the trends: And here’s the data just looking at the first half of each year. That’s the same data, just cut three different ways with three different time periods. Note that films, TV shows, and specials are all down by 25%, 42% and 17%, respectively, from 2022. The good news is that the number of films and specials actually increased year-over-year from 2025 to 2026, but not enough to offset the 25% decline in TV shows. Now, I also look at kids shows, and here they are pulled out on their own: And here’s that by quarter: This really seems to be a notable area of pullback by the streamers. Kids shows are down 80% from 2022. This reflects some formerly Disney+ shows going to cable TV first, but also pullbacks from HBO Max, Prime Video and Netflix. I also categorize the TV shows by English language and non-English language, and that also reveals a lot of where the drop comes from: And here is by the half-year: In this look, the good news is the drop for English language shows seems to have stabilized in the last year. But the bad news is the long term decline from the 2022 peak. Other Data So I wasn’t the only person to notice this decline in the number of shows. I have a few other data sources for this, though most only go through the end of 2025. As I said, Luminate beat me to the punch, so let’s look at their data. 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… What TV loss streaming didn’t make up for... How Netflix has changed their programming slate over time… Ten more images charting the decline of production... What type of films aren’t being made anymore... The good news (for movie theaters)… And more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.

Jul 31 • 2:43 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com

Mistfall Hunter's Best Class Just Got Even Better

The Withered Knight's second weapon, the polearm and shield, got a bit sharper to do more damage in the July 30 update.

Jul 31 • 11:59 AM EDT • Technology • gamespot.com

KY Gov. Andy Beshear & Pete Buttigieg Discuss Politics at Nat'l Urban League Conference

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D), former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (Biden administration), Rev. Al Sharpton, and Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin are among the speakers at the National Urban League Conference in Nashville.

Jul 31 • 9:35 AM EDT • Politics • c-span.org

The No. 1 Habit That Slowly Dulls Your Sharp Mind, By A Psychologist

New research reveals the surprising habit that quietly dulls a sharp mind — and it's not neglect, it's the competence you've already built up over the years.

Jul 30 • 8:30 AM EDT • Technology • forbes.com

Agent Business Models May Be Shifting: What I Fear Will Happen

When the new AALA Canon of Ethics goes into effect, authors must be more diligent and sharp in evaluating who they partner with.

Jul 29 • 12:00 PM EDT • Business • janefriedman.com

Business journalism studies took her to the White House | UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media

The story by UNC Hussman alumni Brennan Doherty ’19 and video by John Roberts ’16 (M.A.) was originally published on unc.edu. This story is part of a four-part series on Carolina alumni working in Washington, D.C. Soon after her 2015 graduation from UNC-Chapel Hill, Megan Cassella was an intern for the Reuters news agency, eagerly awaiting and prepping for a special assignment. “Every now and then they needed an intern to run over to the White House last minute,” Cassella said. “You have to send your information the night before, so I started proactively sending my information to the White House every single night to be able to go the next day if they ever needed an intern.” Since then, she’s made many return trips to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in a career that’s included roles at Reuters, Politico, Barron’s and now CNBC, where she works as an on-air Washington correspondent. A longtime newswriter, Cassella made the move to TV in 2024, appearing on broadcasts multiple times daily to report on the biggest political and business stories. But the keys to doing a good job — knowing how to research, asking insightful questions, building relationships and explaining complex topics to a broad audience — remain the same. Did you know: Outside of the state of North Carolina, the Washington region is home to the largest concentration of Tar Heel alumni in the country. Cassella’s time as a Tar Heel was crucial in sharpening those skills, both in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and through roles at student-run publications like The Daily Tar Heel. She excelled in Carolina’s business journalism program with former professor Chris Roush, which led to an internship at The Charlotte Observer and helped Cassella find her journalistic niche. A data journalism course with Associate Professor Ryan Thornburg taught her how to find stories in numbers, and former professor Paul O’Connor’s reporting class took Cassella to the North Carolina Capitol weekly, where she gained invaluable experience interviewing politicians. “Those hands-on experiences that Carolina gave me really kept my interest and have really benefited me since I’ve been up here in D.C.,” said Cassella. “I have UNC to thank for the fact that I even went into business journalism in the first place.” Megan Cassella ’15 “You’ve got to thrive on adrenaline in this job. You’ve got to do well with last-minute changes, with running by the seat of your pants.” Megan Cassella ’15 ‘There’s nothing else like it’ In recent months, Cassella has reported live from the G7 Summit in Geneva, covered the latest developments in the U.S.-Iran war and followed changes to trade policy, including tariffs. “Anything in this realm that influences Wall Street, I’ll be covering,” Cassella said. Her working hours are long and variable. After waking up, Cassella immediately checks her phone to see what news broke overnight. By 8:15 a.m., she usually learns which newscasts she’ll be on, and then she heads to the newsroom, White House or wherever her assignment is. “We want you in the 9 a.m. show and the 11, and then the 3 o’clock show wants you, too,” Cassella said, referring to a hypothetical day. If Cassella gets an exclusive or major news breaks, she might be told, “We want that on TV right now.” Within five minutes, she’d be expected to get to the camera, figure out what to say and deliver the news to a live audience. “It’s exciting. It’s nerve-wracking,” Cassella said. “But there’s nothing else like it.” A well-rounded education Cassella grew up in Maryland, the youngest of four kids. Her oldest brother, Brian Cassella ’05, attended Carolina, became a photojournalist and recently won a Pulitzer Prize. She remembers visiting campus as a young child and loving it. “I just always wanted to go,” she said, and that desire grew when she, like her brother, gravitated toward journalism. But it wasn’t just the journalism school that drew Cassella to Carolina. “It was also the whole liberal arts curriculum,” she said. “Even though I always wanted to be a journalist, I got to college, and I sort of felt I had to think about other things. I had to explore my options and see if that’s what I really wanted.” Did you know: In April UNC-Chapel Hill opened its Carolina in the Capital office in Washington. She combined her journalism schooling with a global studies major and a history minor. That broad range of academic experiences in Chapel Hill molded her, preparing Cassella for a career that’s taken her to the highest levels of political journalism and inside the Oval Office. “When you sit back and remember you’re actually sitting inside the White House and asking questions of the president, it’s a cool feeling,” Cassella said. “No matter who is in office, no matter what administration or party, it’s a privilege to be there.” Megan Cassella on… Being a Tar Heel in Washington: I run into Tar Heels all the time. My husband’s a Tar Heel. We actually met here in Washington, not at Carolina, even though we were the same class. Probably most of our friends are still Tar Heels. Even up here in D.C., we all get together for games and March Madness. And through work, there’s Tar Heels all over the place. It’s often used as a connection. Favorite Franklin Street spot: When we go back, our first stop is always IP3. That’s more my husband’s doing than mine. In college, I was a huge Spanky’s fan. Felt like it was a classic spot. May it rest in peace. Advice to journalism students: Reps, reps, reps! Nothing beats the experience you’ll gain by simply starting to do the work — asking the questions, reporting and writing the stories, doing the TV hits. When you can, go places in person. Talk to more people than you think you’ll need. Read as much as you can, from different sources and on different topics. If you’re not sure how to start your story, that usually means you need more reporting. When you’re not sure, ask.

Jul 29 • 10:39 AM EDT • Business • hussman.unc.edu

OpenAI's First Devices: Speaker, Smartphone, and More

OpenAI's hardware roadmap has sharpened considerably in recent months, with its first device now identified, a smartphone said to be arriving as soon as next year, and a wider lineup taking shape behind them. AI Smart Speaker OpenAI's first product is a portable, screenless smart speaker developed with former Apple design chief Jony Ive, designed to act as a personal companion in the home rather than a conventional voice assistant.

Jul 28 • 9:00 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC) After Record IMAX Demand Is Fair Value Still Lower

AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC) is back in focus after reporting record IMAX revenue tied to strong demand for THE ODYSSEY. The surge in premium-format attendance comes alongside fresh second quarter 2026 earnings figures. See our latest analysis for AMC Entertainment Holdings. The recent excitement around THE ODYSSEY and AMC Entertainment Holdings' Q2 2026 earnings has coincided with a sharp shift in sentiment, with the share price at $2.51 and a 90 day share price return of 53.05%, but a 1...

Jul 28 • 4:23 PM EDT • Entertainment • simplywall.st

Amazon winds down most flagship AI models in strategy overhaul, Business Insider reports

Amazon.com is revamping its AI strategy, winding down many of its in-house AI models and sharpening focus on a new frontier-model effort, ​Business Insider reported on Tuesday citing people familiar with the ‌matter.

Jul 28 • 6:34 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com

Stellantis sells car-sharing business as CEO Filosa focuses on core auto-making

Stellantis has agreed to sell its Free2move car-sharing unit to German investment company Mutares , ​the automaker said on Tuesday, as CEO Antonio ‌Filosa continues efforts to sharpen the group's focus on its core vehicle production.

Jul 28 • 3:19 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com

Can we stop AI from flooding scientific journals?

AI detectors may never beat fraud. Changing how science rewards its researchers might be the only fix that does

Jul 27 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • cen.acs.org

Kustom Entertainment Amends Divestiture Terms with Cycurion into Upgraded $6.1M Deal Featuring Immediate Cash Injection and 12% Yielding Preferred Equity

Captures $250,000 in immediate non-refundable capital, eliminates warrants in favor of preferred equity, and sharpens execution on its $100B live...

Jul 27 • 8:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • globenewswire.com

Kustom Entertainment Amends Divestiture Terms with Cycurion into Upgraded $6.1M Deal Featuring Immediate Cash Injection and 12% Yielding Preferred Equity

Captures $250,000 in immediate non-refundable capital, eliminates warrants in favor of preferred equity, and sharpens execution on its $100B live entertainment and ticketing expansion. OVERLAND PARK, KS, July 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kustom Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq: KUST) (“Kustom” or the “Company”), an emerging force in live music festival production and proprietary ticketing operations, today announced a major upgrade to its divestiture strategy. On July 23, 2026, the Company executed t

Jul 27 • 8:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com

500,000-year-old elephant bone hammer shows ancient humans were master toolmakers

Early humans in England crafted a rare piece of elephant bone into a reusable hammer for sharpening stone tools nearly 500,000 years ago. The extraordinary find reveals that ancient toolmakers were resourceful, skilled, and capable of surprisingly advanced planning.

Jul 27 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Biotech is ‘leading innovative science, not universities’

Sharper mission and team ethos of pharma companies make them more effective than university labs, says Nobelist Fred Ramsdell

Jul 26 • 7:01 PM EDT • Science • timeshighereducation.com

Universal Health Services (UHS) Stock Looks Undervalued As Shares Fell 29% YTD

Universal Health Services stock has slipped around 29.2% year to date, yet the valuation checks still lean toward the shares looking inexpensive on several fronts. This raises a clear question about whether the recent weakness lines up with the fundamentals. The roughly 29.2% decline year to date suggests sentiment has cooled sharply, even though longer term returns are less weak. For a healthcare operator like Universal Health Services, expectations around patient volumes and pricing can...

Jul 26 • 6:07 PM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com

Cuban president accuses US of 'political genocide' on anniversary of revolution

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel issued a sharp condemnation of Washington's oil embargo and hardened sanctions in a speech on Sunday, calling the policy of U.S. President Donald ​Trump's administration "political genocide."

Jul 26 • 11:26 AM EDT • Politics • reuters.com

The shrinking world of former president Joe Biden

Cancer treatment has sharply limited Biden’s post-White House life even as his upcoming memoir threatens to reopen debates over his health and presidency.

Jul 26 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • washingtonpost.com

The shrinking world of former president Joe Biden

Cancer treatment has sharply limited Biden’s post-White House life even as his upcoming memoir threatens to reopen debates over his health and presidency.

Jul 26 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Trump swings back toward diplomacy in escalating war with Iran

After threatening a “massive attack,” the president said his envoys were talking with Tehran but left open the possibility of a sharp military escalation.

Jul 24 • 6:35 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Mamdani warning to wealthy New Yorkers about 'fair share' sparks online firestorm: 'Full blown communist'

Zohran Mamdani's viral post celebrating New York City's new pied-à-terre tax on $5M+ second homes drew sharp backlash from conservative critics.

Jul 24 • 10:30 AM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com

Nearly 150,000 mail ballots rejected in California' primary despite efforts to count every vote

Nearly 150,000 voters have had their mail-in ballots rejected for California’s June primary election, a sharp spike from previous primaries

Jul 23 • 7:12 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

When It Comes to Fusion, Materials Matter

Fusion at high temperatures powers the sun and, if harnessed, could provide a potential source of energy here on Earth. But controlling fusion reactions has other benefits. The process also generates subatomic particles called neutrons that are used in a range of applications spanning medicine, research, and national security. Now, scientists at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that the materials surrounding a fusion reaction can dramatically increase how often it occurs, particularly at low energies where fusion is rare. The study was published July 18 in Nature Communications. Their approach sets up a way to study and engineer nuclear reactions within solid materials, opening a new field of “materials-driven fusion.” Instead of designing materials just to survive the harsh conditions of fusion, researchers might be able to design materials that boost the reaction in specific conditions, similar to the way catalysts speed up chemical processes. “It gives you a new knob to turn that you didn’t have before,” said Arun Persaud, head of the Fusion Science & Ion Beam Technology group in Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division. “If we understand this effect better, it opens the door to engineering new materials that would affect the fusion rate under certain conditions. Someday future progress might enable more compact and efficient neutron generators, which have all kinds of applications, like cargo screening, planetary science, and medical therapy and imaging.” In the experiment, researchers used two different methods to pack deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen atoms that is often used in fusion, into thin foils of palladium and titanium. They then fired a beam of deuterium ions at the foils at different energies and measured how often fusion happened. Then they compared the rates from the different materials and methods with the “bare” fusion reaction (not in a material). The team found that fusion rates depended on how the deuterium was loaded into the metal foils. The biggest effect was at the lowest energies, below 2.5 kiloelectronvolts (keV), where theory predicts fusion rates drop off sharply. Instead, researchers found a surprising plateau: Some samples showed elevated fusion rates roughly a quintillion times higher than bare fusion reactions. (A quintillion is a 1 followed by 18 zeroes.) Researchers are not exactly sure why that’s happening, though they have some ideas and ways to test them. The electrons and defects within the material might partially shield repulsive electrostatic forces between deuterium nuclei, making it easier for them to get close together and fuse. Tuning the electronic structure, defects, and composition of materials could help make nuclear reactions happen more readily. “It comes down to better understanding the mechanism so that we can try to enhance it,” said corresponding author Jeremy Munday, a professor at UC Davis. “We’ve seen that we can increase fusion rates, but what is the limit? Can we bring it to lower temperatures or energies? There’s obviously a lot of interest and excitement about fusion, so if there’s something we can learn about the physics at these lower energy scales, maybe there’s something we can translate to other areas of nuclear science.” The team plans to explore a wider range of materials and continue probing the unexpected fusion plateau at lower energies. Their work establishes a reproducible experimental platform to study how solid materials influence nuclear reactions, creating a new area of research that links fusion science with materials science and chemistry. “The work shows conclusively that the material environment where fusion occurs at low temperatures is an active participant rather than a passive container,” said Cameron Geddes, director of ATAP. “That adds a new dimension to fusion research.” This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Jul 23 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • newscenter.lbl.gov

German industry group says AfD is 'no pro-business party'

Germany's leading industry association has sharply criticized the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), saying the party's policies would create uncertainty for businesses and discourage investment...

Jul 23 • 2:48 AM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

AOC Blames Trump Science Cuts for Rise in “Explosive Diarrhea” Cases

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez linked budget reductions in federal science departments during the presidency of Donald Trump to a sharp growth in the number of Americans suffering from explosive diarrh...

Jul 22 • 10:34 AM EDT • Science • yahoo.com

Will surge in German business bankruptcies hit growth?

Company insolvencies in Germany are rising sharply. Is this a sign of deeper economic weakness, or just a market correction that could ultimately benefit future growth?

Jul 22 • 6:50 AM EDT • Business • dw.com

Is AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC) Fairly Valued After Its Q2 2026 Results?

AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC) just posted its second quarter 2026 results, giving investors fresh detail on how the cinema operator is performing on both revenue and profitability after a busy movie slate. See our latest analysis for AMC Entertainment Holdings. At a share price of US$2.20, AMC Entertainment Holdings has swung sharply in recent sessions, with a 7 day share price return of 12.24% after Q2 headlines, yet a 1 month share price return down 22.26% and a 1 year total shareholder...

Jul 21 • 11:21 PM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com

Coffee may protect your heart but energy drinks could harm it

For most adults, a daily caffeine habit may be safer for the heart than many people assume. A new American Heart Association review found that up to 400 milligrams of caffeine a day, roughly three to five cups of regular black coffee, is generally safe and may even be linked to lower risks of heart disease, stroke, heart failure, and Type 2 diabetes. But the source matters: highly concentrated energy drinks and shots can sharply raise blood pressure and trigger irregular heart rhythms.

Jul 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Why Trump and Mamdani might both welcome a fight over Netanyahu

President Donald Trump’s approval ratings may be sliding, but one political super sense is as sharp as ever: picking a fight with an adversary he casts as the entire Democratic Party.

Jul 21 • 12:01 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

AMC Entertainment Q2 Earnings Call Highlights

AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) reported what executives described as the strongest quarterly results in the company’s 106-year history, with record revenue, record adjusted EBITDA and sharply improved free cash flow in the second quarter of 2026. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron said mo

Jul 20 • 10:02 AM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com

Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process

[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe

Jul 20 • 9:29 AM EDT • Science • democracysos.substack.com

George Deek’s Story Offers a Rebuttal to Politics of Blame and Hatred

In a sharply argued opinion piece, Felice Friedson […]

Jul 20 • 4:25 AM EDT • Politics • themedialine.org

Braves' AJ Smith-Shawver: Looks sharp in rehab start

Braves' AJ Smith-Shawver: Looks sharp in rehab start

Jul 18 • 8:11 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com

Orlando Magic Summer League Guard Ready to Take Major Leap

After transforming his physique and sharpening his perimeter shooting, Alex Morales is embracing a defensive-first mindset to transition from G League standout to a permanent NBA roster spot.

Jul 17 • 1:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Every Hit Counts: The new science behind football and dementia

After decades of debate fueled by courtroom battles, documentaries, and heartbreaking personal stories, the scientific picture linking repetitive head impacts to neurodegenerative disease is becoming sharper. A landmark study of nearly 20,000 NFL players replaces speculation with one of the strongest population-level analyses yet of how football, career length, and playing position influence the long-term risk of brain disease.

Jul 16 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • acsh.org

As US AI costs soar, global firms pivot to China’s cheap, open-weight models

A sharp narrowing of the performance gap is prompting some developers to shift from costly American giants to budget-friendly Chinese alternatives.

Jul 15 • 9:25 PM EDT • Business • scmp.com

XGIMI Elfin Flip 4K review: An ultra-portable laser projector with sharp video quality

XGIMI’s Eflin Flip 4K is a portable, stylish projector that provides outstanding image quality at a great price.

Jul 15 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com

Cattle futures sharply lower ahead of direct business

At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, live and feeder cattle were sharply lower on technical weakness. August live cattle closed $3.30 lower at $231.42 and October live cattle closed $2.97 lower at $227.65. August feeder cattle closed $5.55 higher at $348.80 and September feeder cattle closed $5.97 lower at $344.85. Direct cash cattle trade was quiet […]

Jul 14 • 4:28 PM EDT • Business • brownfieldagnews.com

Flutter Entertainment (FLUT) Stock Trades Below Fair Value Following Its 62% Slump

Flutter Entertainment has had a tough run over the past year, with the stock down 61.9%, yet current valuation checks still flag it as looking cheap against its fundamentals. High profile interest from investors such as Michael Burry has sharpened the focus on whether the market has pushed Flutter too far to the downside or is correctly pricing in regulatory and competitive risks. Over the last 12 months, Flutter Entertainment's share price has fallen 61.9%, which puts recent interest from...

Jul 14 • 4:20 PM EDT • Entertainment • simplywall.st

House to vote Tuesday on bill to enact year-round Daylight Saving Time

The US House will vote Tuesday on a measure to enact year-round Daylight Saving Time across the country, springing Congress forward into an issue that has long stumped lawmakers and spurred impassioned pleas by parents, farmers and others with sharply divergent views.

Jul 14 • 2:40 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

At a health clinic built ‘for women,’ patients say their pregnancies went undetected

Tia, the $100 million venture-backed healthcare company, faces sharp criticism from dozens of patients for failing to deliver on its promise of comprehensive and compassionate care.

Jul 14 • 2:33 PM EDT • Health • 19thnews.org

D-topia review – cosy sci-fi mystery takes aim at AI

A soft puzzle game makes a sharp point about the over-optimised future ahead

Jul 14 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • theguardian.com

CNN duped by fake Calif. politician during Mitch McConnell coverage

The fake politician said McConnell is "so sharp."

Jul 13 • 5:10 PM EDT • Politics • sfgate.com

Man, 45, diagnosed with colorectal cancer shares his first symptom

Randy League was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer at 45 after feeling a sudden, sharp pain in his rectum.

Jul 13 • 3:59 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Tariff refunds accelerated sharply in June as the US paid out almost $50 billion to businesses

The US sent out $49.1 billion in tariff refunds in June as the checks to businesses accelerated in the second full month of payouts after the US Supreme Court invalidated President Trump's blanket tariffs.

Jul 13 • 2:58 PM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Roundup: Cocoa demand / ‘Funflation’ / Data center utility demand

Market instability: Cocoa demand is showing signs of recovery after a period of weakness, but the market remains unstable as prices continue to swing sharply amid uncertainty over supply and consumption. Chocolate makers are still adjusting to elevated cocoa costs, while traders are watching factors such as crop conditions, weather risks and shifting consumer behavior. […]

Jul 13 • 11:01 AM EDT • Business • businessreport.com

Science is pushing back on the hype over cold plunges

Can an ice bath really help you lose weight, keep you mentally sharp, and speed up your post-workout recovery? Mounting research is throwing water on those claims.

Jul 12 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • nationalgeographic.com

Lindsey Graham, key ally of Donald Trump, has died after sudden illness, his office says

Republican senator had served in the Senate since 2003 and was a sharp critic of Trump before becoming one of his most loyal backers

Jul 12 • 2:27 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com

Bucs' ‘Biggest Bust’ Predicted for 2026

Facing a defensive overhaul and new competition, linebacker SirVocea Dennis must sharpen his coverage skills or risk losing his roster spot to high-profile free agents and rising rookies.

Jul 12 • 2:03 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Missouri homebuilders report dwindling business amid national housing slump

The housing industry saw a sharp drop in construction starts nationwide in May, both compared with the previous month and with the same period a year earlier. The broader Midwest region showed resilience, but Missouri builders still reported weaker business activity during this time. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, privately owned housing starts across […]

Jul 10 • 1:00 PM EDT • Business • missouriindependent.com

Two Days of U.S. Strikes in Iran Signal a Sharp Escalation

U.S. forces hit more than 170 targets, including air defense systems, drone and missile storage sites, and military speedboats.

Jul 10 • 11:05 AM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

This Is A Drill: Scenario Planning That Drives Business Agility

CFOs can use scenario planning, AI-enabled data and "break-glass-in-case" playbooks to sharpen strategy, manage risk and build agility for uncertain futures.

Jul 10 • 10:32 AM EDT • Business • forbes.com

Mental health agency in Lansing out of brief lockdown after stabbing

A mental health agency in Lansing was briefly on lockdown Thursday after a person was stabbed with a plastic sharp object, its CEO says.

Jul 9 • 3:41 PM EDT • Health • wlns.com

Cedarville Student Helps Broadcast FIFA World Cup for FOX Sports

Cedarville University junior Tayler Sharp is interning with FOX Sports during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, gaining hands-on experience in international sports...

Jul 9 • 2:03 PM EDT • Sports • cedarville.edu

China bets on AI to speed up science despite chip limits

Driven by aggressive state policies and a national supercomputing network, Chinese labs are rapidly embedding AI into daily research

Jul 8 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • cen.acs.org

A vitamin A discovery is changing what scientists know about vision

A surprising discovery is reshaping scientists' understanding of how humans develop sharp central vision before birth. Instead of blue cone cells migrating away from the retina's center, the study found they transform into red and green cones under the influence of vitamin A-related signals and thyroid hormones. The findings could improve lab-grown retinal tissue and lay the groundwork for future cell therapies to restore vision lost to age-related eye diseases.

Jul 8 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Oregon data centers face sharp electricity rate hike under new law

Oregon's PUC approved a 29% rate hike on data centers under the POWER Act, while residential customers will see bills drop by an average of 1.3%.

Jul 8 • 2:37 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com

How Trump has misjudged Iran

President Donald Trump offered a sharply revised review of Iran’s leaders as the tenuous ceasefire between the US and Tehran looks to be more endangered than ever.

Jul 8 • 1:23 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

International Business Machines (IBM) Unveils New AI Infrastructure, Is The Stock Fully Priced?

International Business Machines (IBM) stock has been in focus after a cluster of technology announcements, including quantum computing work on fusion energy, new z17 and LinuxONE 5 rack mount systems, and expanded cybersecurity partnerships. See our latest analysis for International Business Machines. Against this backdrop of quantum computing progress, new z17 and LinuxONE systems, and expanded cybersecurity partnerships, International Business Machines’ share price has moved sharply, with a...

Jul 8 • 1:10 PM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Kansas Citian behind exclusive cigar lounge pops up with mobile cocktail bar

KC Pours is Nayeli Sharp’s mobile cocktail concept that she plans to bring to events as a pop-up or as catering for private functions.

Jul 8 • 9:42 AM EDT • Business • kansascity.com

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.”

Jul 8 • 5:47 AM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net

ResMed to sell software business MatrixCare for $490 million

ResMed said on Tuesday it would sell its software business MatrixCare to private equity firm Frazier Healthcare Partners for $490 ​million in cash, as the health technology company ‌sharpens its focus on sleep, breathing and home-based care.

Jul 7 • 6:07 PM EDT • Business • reuters.com

Should you be taking creatine? Here's what the science says

The sport supplement is popular among health influencers and athletes, who say creatine can help build stronger muscles and sharper brains—but is it legit?

Jul 7 • 9:41 AM EDT • Science • scientificamerican.com

‘Profoundly corrupt’: The EU’s leading FIFA critic sharpens his attack - Live Updates

European lawmaker Barry Andrews savages the world football governing body after U-turn on American star's suspension.

Jul 6 • 7:30 PM EDT • Politics • politico.com

Obamacare rolls sharply declined in many states over past year, data shows

New federal data reveals the first 50-state look at a steep drop in Affordable Care Act enrollment after enhanced subsidies expired in January

Jul 6 • 5:09 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Affordable Care Act enrollment shrank dramatically in many states over the past year, new federal data shows

Ohio and Oklahoma each lost nearly one-third of enrollees, according to new federal data that provides the first complete 50-state breakdown of sharp enrollment declines following the expiration of enhanced subsidies.

Jul 6 • 3:51 PM EDT • Health • pbs.org

Trump looking 'very strongly' at Australia-style retirement system: 'Taking that, making it sharper'

President Donald Trump says his administration is studying superannuation, a mandatory program requiring employers to contribute 12% into retirement accounts.

Jul 6 • 2:02 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com

Courts, citizenship and Alabama’s political test

This week’s "The Voice of Alabama Politics" examines citizenship, constitutional enforcement, death penalty clemency and voter turnout as Alabama’s political stakes sharpen in 2026.

Jul 6 • 8:54 AM EDT • Politics • alreporter.com

Kings Improve to 2-0, Late-Game Defense Stifles Warriors

Viktor Lahkin’s dominant interior presence and Emanuel Sharp’s clutch scoring erased a double-digit deficit, keeping Sacramento undefeated following a gritty defensive stand in the California Classic.

Jul 5 • 8:05 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Business Sense

“There are sharp, brave people everywhere waking up with a sparkle of inspiration to do a good thing, support a local group, or start a business.”

Jul 5 • 9:39 AM EDT • Business • times-standard.com

Universal Health Services (UHS) Stock May Trade At A Discount On Medicare Payment News

Universal Health Services stock has rebounded in the short term but is still down sharply year to date, which sits alongside valuation checks that currently paint the shares as looking cheap rather than stretched. After falling 28% year to date, Universal Health Services now raises the question of whether the recent bounce is simply a recovery from depressed levels or a sign that value investors are stepping back in. Expectations for solid earnings and ongoing support from Medicare payments...

Jul 4 • 4:08 PM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com

Sharp targets ¥300 billion new business sales by fiscal 2030

Sharp also plans to expand its satellite communications equipment business, including compact antennas.

Jul 4 • 4:39 AM EDT • Business • japantimes.co.jp

Top general fired by Trump administration criticizes use of military for political missions

The former top US general whom Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired last year offered a sharp criticism of the Trump administration in an op-ed published Friday, pointing to its political use of the military, such as deploying troops to clamp down on crime in major cities.

Jul 3 • 10:45 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Chicago mental health response teams see 911 calls plummet

A sharp decline in dispatches, staffing shortages and the loss of police dispatch technology have hampered Chicago's non-police mental health crisis response program

Jul 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • ems1.com