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Highguard will shut down permanently next week because it doesn't have "enough revenue to keep anyone employed to work on it"
After less than six weeks, developer Wildlight has announced it is shutting down its free-to-play hero shooter Highguard.
I've visited Disney World in every season — winter is my favorite
I've visited Disney World more than 20 times, and winter is officially my favorite — fewer crowds, rare characters, and cozy nights.
China’s Economic Involution: State and Business Strategies
China’s economic involution, characterized by cutthroat, race-to-the-bottom competition, is a symptom rooted in its political and fiscal structure. During the recent economic downturn, the central government, local governments, and businesses entered a self-reinforcing cycle. The central growth targets and debt-reduction pressures pushed local governments to expand investment in state-favored industries, creating low-profit competition and oversupply. The declining revenues further reduced deman
Why Nintendo is expanding its business beyond gaming
Mario. Link. Pikachu. These aren't just video game characters — they’re some of the most recognizable figures on the planet. For nearly 50 years, Nintendo has been building loyalty to its worlds, and now it's turning that nostalgia into a global entertainment empire.
Stardew Valley Creator Unveils Two New Marriageable Characters Coming in 1.7
Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) has released a 10th anniversary video revealing, among other things, two brand new marriage candidates being added to the game in the upcoming patch 1.7.
Tales of Berseria Remastered Review
In Tales of Berseria, the story and the characters do almost all the lifting. It's a good thing it's so amazing, because there sure is a lot of weight on its
The business behind Nintendo: How the gaming giant makes billions
From humble beginnings making playing cards in 19th-century Japan, Nintendo has evolved into one of the world's most influential gaming companies. Powered by a catalogue of iconic characters and franchises — including Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon — the company has turned nostalgia and broad family appeal into a durable business advantage.
Populism is plain to see all around us
Letters: The characteristics include attachments to authoritarian regimes including the one based in the Kremlin, writes Kevin Lloyd; plus a letter from Peter Gray
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate DLC character Alopex now available alongside free update
Super Evil Megacorp has released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate downloadable content character Alopex for XXX, as well as a free update that adds new rooms, arcade challenges, and ga…
Gen Xers Like Me Love This Classic ’80s Film — But Its Profound Message Hits Even Harder Now
Andy Walsh was the first time I saw myself in a character.
Woody Sports a Bald Spot in New Trailer for 'Toy Story 5'
A new trailer is out for “Toy Story 5” which shows the iconic characters, including Woody, Buzz and Rex all back together, with Woody even sporting a bald spot. The movie hits theaters in June.
Commentary: The missing quality that defines the flaws in our business and government leadership
We used to expect our business and government leaders to have strength of character. Today that's been replaced by a moral vacuum
Mamdani to bring back homeless sweeps in amended policy
The change was characterized as a broken campaign promise by homeless advocates.
Scientists discover recent tectonic activity on the moon
Scientists have produced the first global map and analysis of small mare ridges (SMRs) on the moon, a characteristic geological feature of tectonic activity. Published in The Planetary Science Journal ...
How to Nurture A Healthy Relationship 365 Days a Year
By Carole Tanzer Miller HealthDay ReporterSATURDAY, Feb. 14, 2026 (HealthDay News) — The focus on Valentine’s Day is, as The Beatles famously crooned, "love is all you need." But staying in love and growing together requires work and commitment. "There are also some characteristics that most healthy ...
How HBO's "Industry" uses vests to signal status in banking
The costume designer of HBO's "Industry" broke down how the characters' clothing, like vests and ties, are used to convey status and power.
Resident Evil: Requiem Trailer Reveals Leon Is, Sadly, Once Again Infected — And Another Returning Character | Sony State of Play
Tonight's State of Play broadcast has given us one last look at Capcom's tantalizing Resident Evil: Requiem — and confirmed what many fans had previously deduced: Leon S. Kennedy is once again infected.
Two Hands Corporation Announces AI Business Update and Financial Update
Locust Valley, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - February 12, 2026) - Two Hands Corporation (CSE: TWOH) (OTCID: TWOH) ("Two Hands" or the "Company") is pleased to announce significant progress in its strategic transformation into an AI- and mobile app-focused technology platform, targeting high-growth markets in India and Southeast Asia. The Company has invested in ON GRAPH, a project to develop a n AI platform centered on character creation and companion experiences. This platform will integrate...
Four decades after we wrote Yes Minister, politics is still reduced to the pleasure of power
Our sitcom character Jim Hacker continues to cling on – as he takes to the West End stage, nothing has really changed
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' launch roster size revealed
It's been more than eight months since Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was first revealed, but there haven't been any more character reveals since then.While we haven't gotten to see any new fighters yet, it appears we ...
MARVEL Tokon: Fighting Souls to launch with 20 playable characters
MARVEL Tokon: Fighting Souls will feature a roster of 20 playable characters at launch, according to the game’s updated Steam page.
Sony's PS5 Fighter Marvel Tokon Confirms 20 Characters at Launch, Single Player 'Episode' Mode
12 to be revealed
‘Overwatch’ Actor Supports A Redesign Of Her Own Character, Anran
The voice actress of Anran, Overwatch's new hero, is going on the record supporting fans' idea that she should be redesigned.
Overwatch Actor Supports Fan Campaign To Redesign Her Character
Fans are begging Blizzard to change Anran’s face back to what it used to look like
Kids vote for fictional characters at Portugal’s presidential election
Super Mario and Roblox were among the candidates children could vote for in an exercise their parents hope will teach them about democracy.
How Accurate Was The Science In Breaking Bad?
Breaking Bad may have brought new meaning to the term on-screen chemistry, but were its characters' crystal meth-making exploits scientifically accurate?
Tier list that predicts how characters will be adjusted in the upcoming balance patch for Street Fighter 6 released by Broski
Alex will be joining Street Fighter 6 as the next character of the Season 3 Pass on March 17, 2025. A major balance patch featuring changes for every fighter will also be released on that date.The community's dissatisfaction ...
Remembering Catherine O’Hara and her iconic ‘Schitt’s Creek’ character
The actor died at the end of January at the age of 71. Moira Macdonald pays tribute to her and her unforgettable persona as Moira Rose on "Schitt's Creek."
Letter: 'Members Only Palm Beach' isn't real, just entertainment
The writer notes that "Members Only Palm Beach" on Netflix delivers a caricature of excess that misses the island's true character.
Controversial new Overwatch character design has fans seeing double
Some prefer the fan art and want Anran to be redesigned.
A Psychologist Shares The ‘Anti-Hero’ Test—A Science-Inspired Quiz That Matches Your Dark Side To A Fictional Character
Discover which iconic antagonist mirrors your hidden traits.
Volcano Watch: New ‘Is Tephra Falling?’ citizen science tool launched in Hawaiʻi
Like the “Did You Feel It?” earthquake reporting tool helps make maps of areas affected by shaking, the new tool helps scientists map areas affected by tephra fallout; observations will be used to assess the character and size of the eruption plumes from Kīlauea volcano on the Big Island, along with the dispersal pattern of tephra fall.
Perrysburg teenager makes a business out of home organization
Sixteen-year-old Ellie Grieger is neat by nature. That’s both a spot-on description of her character and the name of her business, an enterprise that ...
Keto and Schizophrenia Researcher Says Kennedy Mischaracterized His Work
Dr. Christopher M. Palmer said in an interview that the keto diet, while promising, did not “cure” the mental disorder as the health secretary had claimed.
Lindsey Graham Is, to No One’s Surprise, Still the Most Ridiculous Man in Congress
According to a new puff profile in Politico, the senator has “main character energy.” Of course, so did Gilligan and Mr. Ed.
Meow! Mass Effect's Commander Shepard actor Jennifer Hale is the mewling voice of Overwatch's ridiculous new hero Jetpack Cat
And there's a concept floating around for a character called "Oranga-tank".
Nintendo Partner Direct announced, so will we finally hear an Elden Ring Switch release date or more about The Duskbloods?
Nintendo has announced a Direct showcase for later this week.
MAHA has reshaped health policy. Now it’s working on environmental rules
On New Year’s Eve, Lee Zeldin did something out of character for an Environmental Protection Agency leader who has been hacking away at regulations intended to protect Americans’ air and water.
MAHA has reshaped health policy. Now it's working on environmental rules
WASHINGTON (AP) — On New Year's Eve, Lee Zeldin did something out of character for an Environmental Protection Agency leader who has been hacking away at regulations intended to protect Americans' air and water.
The New Science of Craving
We often view our cravings—whether for drugs, alcohol, food, or approval—as indictments of our character. Yet neuroscience and psychology say otherwise; here's why.
Scott Pilgrim EX Arrives In March, Two New Playable Characters Revealed
Two former enemies of Scott now rally by his side.
Investment and Statecraft: The International Politics of Sovereign Wealth Funds - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
In 1953, Kuwait established the world’s first sovereign wealth fund to invest the country’s oil revenues and generate returns that would reduce its reliance on a single resource. Since then, over 100 separate funds have been created to preserve national wealth and ensure long-term fiscal sustainability. Today, they manage over $10 trillion in global assets. In this discussion with GJIA, political economist Kathryn Lavelle explains the increasingly novel dynamics that surround fund behavior and what the world can come to expect from their growing presence in international financial markets. GJIA: When it comes to the roles sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) play in global markets and politics, what would you say makes them unique? Kathryn Lavelle: Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) operate on behalf of governments as investors. That in itself is a strange relationship. Within them, a core contest takes place between the state’s interests (or sovereign) part of the dynamic, and the money interests (or wealth) part of it, and these two aspects are frequently in contradiction, serving fundamentally different goals. SWFs are also quite fascinating because when you talk to the people who manage these funds, they have an interest in convincing you that the decisions are made almost exclusively on a financial basis—they really will go to great lengths to differentiate their government owners and those who make the management decisions. At the same time, these people ultimately answer to someone in power. Therefore, for most SWFs, it remains deeply unclear who is actually making the investment decisions and for what purposes. Of course, it is not always clear how other vehicles, such as hedge funds and private equity make the decisions they do, but I think what a lot of people find particularly disconcerting about SWFs is that they seem to act on behalf of people who have a different identity from their own. People who could be trying to manipulate politics and markets in a way that would have a long-term effect on their own populations. Regular investors come and go at will, and they only share an interest in profit as far as most of us understand. However, SWFs have that extra “sovereign” part right behind them that obscures their true interest. GJIA: These funds can be found in countries all across the globe, in both authoritarian states and democracies. Would you say SWFs differ in their goals and structures between regime-type? KL: It is not necessarily regime type that makes the goals and structures of SWFs different. It has to do with their economies. Let’s look at a country like China. There’s going to be a debate about exactly how to characterize the regime, but it is a country with many different kinds of sovereign wealth funds, and a particularly opaque state connection to each. At one time, some of the state-owned Chinese oil companies created specialized investment vehicles listed outside Chinese markets that excluded parts of the firms that were more associated with human rights violations. At the same time, the China Investment Corporation (CIC)—China’s largest SWF—draws a lot of concern, not necessarily because of its investment activities, but because of the dynamics of global politics. So, I wouldn’t really tie differences to regime types themselves in a wholesale way, but rather to how such funds are perceived and how they are structured. Saudi Arabia’s SWF is getting all kinds of attention for its involvement in Hollywood, and this takes me right back to when I was a student in the 1980s, when people were concerned about Japanese investment entities buying assets in Hollywood. They aren’t quite the same in financial terms, but it’s the same kind of concern about foreign investment that drives people to be suspicious, and the whole idea that “foreigners are influencing Hollywood.” This holds true across industries, and it reflects where politics are in places like the United States right now. One metric we can try to look at is transparency, where all the funds will tell you, “we are transparent.” The problem you’ll keep running into with this approach is how you value things. When trying to do comparative studies of equity markets, you’ll find that every country doesn’t use Generally Accepted Accounting Principles like we do in the United States. A fund may appear opaque politically and not want people to show what they’re invested in or what their intent with that investment is, but they could also just not be able to report it because of the way it was purchased, or the kinds of shares they purchased. There are some assets out there that really are difficult to put a monetary value on. GJIA: To what extent do domestic politics shape SWF behavior in both the investing “home” country and the recipient “host” country? KL: This depends on the type of fund present and also on the extent to which voters’ political views are able to influence the fund. For example, in a democratic home state like Norway, the SWF doesn’t invest in nuclear weapons or tobacco because of social concerns, but there is a continuing debate over whether it should invest in oil, even though that’s where most of the money comes from. The degree to which Norway will continue to make those investments, and whether they contradict the government’s overall climate goals, is an open question in Norwegian politics. Because of the way the fund’s governance is structured, it may not be easy to resolve. On the other hand, some people consider pension funds, like the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) in Ohio, to be quasi-SWF. They have a very strict separation between the people who make up the management division and the fund owners. No teacher or professor would want to invest in things that may harm the future of their students. At the same time, a fund manager might see an opportunity in a diversified multinational corporation that offers a good return, despite it deriving part of its revenue from e-cigarettes. These contests are very apparent. Domestic politics can work in host countries too. A good example is Singapore’s SWF, Temasek, investing in Thailand’s telecommunications sector. If you study political economy, you already know that countries everywhere are uncomfortable with foreign ownership of their telecom sectors because a foreign entity could monitor or manipulate our communications with each other. In the case of Temasek, there was significant pushback from Thai citizens surrounding the deal, which went on to influence national political sentiment toward Singapore as a whole, underscoring the risks some SWFs may face with their investment choices. In this case, fund behavior led to the dissolution of the entire Thai government in 2006 and a subsequent coup d’état. GJIA: To address some of this unease, the Santiago Principles were established in 2009 to ostensibly promote trust and transparency. From your perspective, have these mechanisms actually changed fund behavior? KL: In international relations theory, we always like to have a clear set of norms and best practices—the orientation we want the proverbial ship to be going in. In that regard, the Santiago Principles at least got the discussion going about which direction SWFs should take at a time when people were very skittish about the growing size of these funds. Nobody wanted them to be out there and potentially destabilizing economies, so talks about disclosure, conditions for withdrawal, and the independence of managers were helpful when initiated. The biggest stumbling block was that there wasn’t exactly a good way to measure compliance with the Principles, let alone how to hold funds to them. If you read the Principles, they’re overall quite vague. In general, a fund doesn’t want to reveal how and why they make certain investment decisions because that information is proprietary—a fund makes money off of how and why it makes decisions—so how do you reconcile that with loosely-defined ideas of openness? Some decisions might have a political purpose. The bottom line is that trying to figure out and assign a score to compliance is not easy, and it is therefore the reason why the Santiago Principles never really got off the ground to the point where they could truly direct fund behavior. GJIA: Many emerging markets are looking to build their own SWFs from mineral and oil revenues. Historically, have funds shaped development trajectories in these countries? KL: I think the big story in international emerging markets investment is that the investment is increasingly no longer unidirectional. In the past multinational corporations of primarily Western background were the main form of foreign direct investment in a country. That has changed dramatically, to the point where you have companies from so-called “developing countries” taking over companies in the United States. Therefore, the landscape of international investment has changed, and I think SWFs are certainly a possibility to be the next step in the game. Historically, you didn’t need an entire financial vehicle to reinvest commodity revenues in your country, but as emerging markets get more financially sophisticated, their capacity to operate such funds has increased. SWFs would allow treasuries to move from relying on holding foreign exchange assets like cash or government bonds to having broader financial markets and targeted growth areas, while easing pressure on welfare expenditures. GJIA: With their increasing financial weight, do you see the presence of SWFs being a factor in the political choices leaders will have to make with regard to domestic and foreign policy? KL: It will depend on just how big the funds get. One of the reasons people are already apprehensive is because of their scale, and if certain SWFs in certain countries achieve a large-enough size, the presence will absolutely be cause for concern. The other factor political leaders will have to consider are their objectives. It’s not always clear how to define a SWF, or even where its activity is concentrated, but it is certainly a worry from the perspective of national security of opaque external investment. More than that, I think one of the most interesting questions going forward is whether the United States, the home to the world’s largest financial markets, will develop its own fund, for which the Trump administration announced a plan. There have also been several proposals in Congress. Were it to come into being, it would have tremendous weight. At the same time, one of the hallmarks of U.S. capitalism is a lack of government ownership of shares, so it would not be clear how such a fund would be received in domestic politics, or which direction it would take. Given how politically fragmented the country is, a Democratic administration would likely be concerned about different sectors of the economy, such as healthcare, and want investment there, rather than a Republican administration, which might prefer defense industries. No investment vehicle could thrive under conditions of such instability. Moreover, it remains unclear where the money to fund a theoretical U.S. SWF would come from. It would be a fundamentally different entity depending on whether it is financed with debt, economic surplus, commodities, or the sale of state companies, as in the case of Singapore. If it is debt, or government borrowing of some form, then the fund would have to outperform whatever the cost of that debt is, which is not an easy thing to do. I think our political leaders have enough on their plate. Our system has worked well keeping political and investment functions generally separate. We have seen different forms of business rise and fall, and even the perception of different countries, all of which funds are tied to. Unless a major SWF either starts—like in the case of the United States—or collapses—an issue that concerns the Saudis, I don’t see any political tsunamis on the horizon. . . . Kathryn Lavelle is the Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research explores the exchange between domestic and international and political institutions with a particular emphasis on political economy and multilateralism. Dr. Lavelle’s first book, The Politics of Equity Finance in Emerging Markets, explored the political circumstances that surround large issues of stock in the developing world. After being granted tenure at Case Western, she was awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship and named the William A. Steiger fellow, a designation given to the most promising political scientist in her class of fellows. While in Washington during 2006-2007, she worked on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services on issues related to domestic and international monetary policy. Dr. Lavelle holds a PhD in political science from Northwestern University; an M.A. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia; and a bachelor’s degree in international economics from Georgetown University. She is a permanent member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Interview conducted by Sid Mehrotra. Image Credit: Jason Leung, Unsplash Content Licenses, via Unsplash
Yes, romance & fantasy novels are political. : It's Been a Minute
How do romantic tropes and fantasies impact how you understand politics?You might be a fan of Romantic Fantasy, or as the internet calls it: Romantasy. Even if you're not, you would recognize the tradwives or fascism. Romantasies combine supernatural characters and plotlines with the rush of a whirlwind romance novel, and, in this episode, we're exploring how the politics of some of these books have an effect on politics in the real world.Brittany is joined by Netta Baker, Advanced Instructor of English at Virginia Tech, and Princess Weekes, video essayist and online pop culture critic. They get into how this genre demolishes misogyny while reinforcing conservative politics.Support Public Media. Join NPR Plus.Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram: @bmluseFor handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.
Killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis scrambles Second Amendment politics for Trump and Republicans
Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration's characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed in January by ...
Innovative Artists Entertainment Signs Jim Cummings, Voice Actor Behind Winnie The Pooh, Tigger, Tasmanian Devil & Other Classic Characters
Veteran voice actor Jim Cummings has inked with Innovative Artists Entertainment for representation, Deadline can report exclusively.
Alexander Skarsgård says he's 'not really comfortable' playing a righteous character
Alexander Skarsgård questions his morals, saying he's 'not really comfortable' playing a righteous character
Nightin Cage dev responds to fan feedback for more immersive fanservice
The developer of the upcoming Action RPG Nightin Cage has responded quickly to fan feedback regarding fanservice and the character's animations. In a recent post, the developer showed off the main…
Letter: Hawaii lawmaker puts politics over women
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda’s revisionist history of Title IX suggests the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink intended it also apply to transgender groups. Title IX addressed sex and related immutable characteristics, not gender, a social construct.
I didn’t mean to keep my daughter’s Christmas gift, but here we are: Jan Risher
In the newsroom lately, Jan Risher has sounded a lot like an infomercial — which is both out of character and mildly alarming. Turns out, her column this week is not a product pitch. It's a story about a Christmas gift and discovering there’s an easier way to carry things.
Treasury chief unloads on Gavin Newsom’s Davos stunt, mocks governor’s ‘brain the size of a walnut’
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent escalates feud with California Gov. Gavin Newsom after comparing him to "American Psycho" character.
Four questions for the NFL’s final four as a Super Bowl berth is on the line
This weekend will determine who plays in the Super Bowl. Sure that’s the Big Game, but this decides the storylines and characters that will dominate the Big Game.
Techmarine: Dive Into Space Marine 2’s Upcoming New Class
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 deploys in the Xbox Game Pass next week, and a new playable character is set to follow soon after. How does it play? We’re here to find out!
Game Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Calgary Flames 1/21/26
Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (23-14-11, 57 points, 3rd place Metropolitan Division) @ Calgary Flames (21-23-5, 47 points, 7th place Pacific Division) When: 9:30 p.m. eastern How to Watch: Locally broadcast on Sportsnet Pittsburgh, SN1 and TVAS in Canada, streaming on ESPN+ Pens’ Path Ahead: The road trip continues tomorrow night in Edmonton, then an uncharacteristic two-day break gives […]
Donkey Kong Country Returns keeps on returning, as Nintendo adds Switch 2 upgrades, a new playable character and more
Nintendo has announced a free update for Donkey Kong Country Returns HD on Switch and Switch 2.
Here's the next batch of Xbox Game Pass games for January
Microsoft has revealed the next batch of games coming to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service this January.
Which dog breed stereotypes are true? Here’s the science
A large dataset shows some dog stereotypes are based in reality, and others might be unfair characterizations
Kate Hudson reveals letters Daniel Day-Lewis used to send to her dressing room
Kate Hudson is remembering the 'flattering' letters that Daniel Day-Lewis used to send to her dressing room that were written as his character Guido Contini when they filmed their movie musical, 'Nine.'
Heather McBreen’s new novel is a witty second-chance romance
Seattle author Heather McBreen chatted with us about her new book, "Sunk in Love," and its characters.
Ball X Pit’s First Free Update Adds New Characters, Balls, And More Next Week
The Regal update bolsters the award-winning game with a nice batch of new content.
Ketsu Battler adds Narmaya from Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
Ketsu Battler, the one-on-one butt shaking fighting game, has added Narmaya from Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising as a free guest character today alongside the previously announced Beelzebub via its…
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising DLC character Ilsa launches February 10
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising Character Pass Season 2 downloadable content character Ilsa will launch on February 10 for $7.99 / 880 yen alongside the game’s version 2.50 update, publisher …
No One’s Buying? Maybe Consumers Are Just ‘Choiceful,’ Executives Say.
A new way to characterize unenthusiastic consumers has overtaken earnings calls.
Christian McCaffrey Wins 2026 Bart Starr Award
Christian McCaffrey earns the Bart Starr Award, highlighting leadership and character as the 49ers prepare for the Seahawks.
Elden Ring: Nightreign Patch 1.03.2 Buffs All the Worst Nightfarers
Elden Ring: Nightreign just got a big balance patch, and even if you're not someone who's great at parsing patch notes, you might want to tune into this one, because basically every character that's been widely regarded as terrible for months now got a big buff.
House Speaker urges colleagues to fight Trump, who ‘would hold Colorado hostage’
A top Colorado Democrat on Wednesday characterized Colorado as under siege by the Trump administration, as she invoked Winston Churchill and urged colleagues to fight back. “In this moment, when the White House would hold Colorado hostage, I’m reminded of a Churchill saying: ‘You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, […]
Lithia neighbors push back against proposed sports complex in agricultural area: 'It's worth fighting for'
Residents living near Boyette Road in Lithia say what they call a sports complex operating on land zoned “agricultural rural” is changing the character of their community.
Hytale is Twitch's most-watched game as devs finally release Minecraft rival they've "waited ten years" for
Developers and fans celebrate the much-anticipated release of Minecraft rival Hytale, which has already topped the Twitch charts.
Amendment 34: A.6 Landslide Change Characterization Experiment Science Team Final Text and Due Dates
A.6 Earth Venture Suborbital-4 Landslide Change Characterization Experiment (LACCE) Science Team (ST) solicits proposals to build the full LACCE Science Team,
People put off giving CPR by unrealistic TV depictions, researchers say
Most dramas show characters searching for pulse and giving breaths but experts say chest compressions on their own can save lives
Federal Reserve Chair Powell under criminal investigation over HQ renovation, report
U.S. prosecutors investigate whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell allegedly mischaracterized renovation details during Senate Banking Committee appearances.
Oddball 'platypus galaxies' spotted by James Webb telescope may challenge our understanding of galaxy formation
Astronomers spotted nine galaxies with characteristics that have never been seen as a collection before. It's possible this is a newly found type of star-forming galaxy.
Bulls-Heat postponed because of condensation on United Center court during humid, rainy winter night in Chicago
On an uncharacteristically warm January day in the Windy City, a nearly two-hour delay was followed by a postponement.
List of all characters in Mario Tennis Fever
Check out the full list of characters in Mario Tennis Fever, which is the most ever in the series' history.
Google and Character.AI negotiate first major settlements in teen chatbot death cases
The settlements are among the first tied to lawsuits accusing AI companies of harming users.
Google, chatbot maker Character to settle suit alleging bot pushed teen to suicide
Google and Character Technologies have agreed to settle a lawsuit from a Florida mother who claimed a chatbot pushed her son to kill himself
‘Shōgun’ Creators Reveal Season 2’s New Main Character
Filming on Season 2 starts soon. Get the latest updates.
Character.AI and Google agree to settle lawsuits over teen mental health harms and suicides
Character.AI has agreed to settle multiple lawsuits alleging the artificial intelligence chatbot maker contributed to mental health crises and suicides among young people, including a case brought by Florida mother Megan Garcia.
Chris Hemsworth had to be told to stop defending his villainous character
Chris Hemsworth knows that a good actor has to empathize with his character — no matter how wicked. But one supervillain proved a bridge too far when he began to defend him during the press tour.
Stranger Things Returns To Dead by Daylight: Vecna, Dustin, & Eleven Enter The Fog
Stranger Things returns to Dead by Daylight with a brand-new Chapter, featuring iconic characters Vecna, Dustin Hendersen, and Eleven.
Code Vein II ‘Walkthrough’ trailer; ‘Character Creator Demo’ launches January 23
Bandai Namco has released an eight-minute “walkthrough” trailer for Code Vein II, as well as announced that a “Character Creator Demo” will be available starting January 23.
Alleged First Look at The Sims Project X Character Design
The rumors about The Sims Project X keep spreading like wildfire. First we got some talks spreading that The Sims 4 will be getting its last Expansion Pack
Embark CEO Confirms That If You Kill On Sight In Arc Raiders, You'll Get Matched With More Aggressive Players
Yep, as of a week ago, Arc Raiders has aggression-based matchmaking.
Scientists Find a Never-Before-Seen Animal Living in the Great Salt Lake
Utah biologists have characterized D. woaabi, the first of two nematode species recently discovered in the lake’s microbialites.
How the ‘Stranger Things’ series finale turned the Upside Down ‘Rightside Up’
With a giant evil spider monster, mysterious briefcase and a whole lot of teary characters bidding adieu, “Stranger Things” has now become a thing of the past.
Jan. 6 attack 'does not happen' without Trump, Jack Smith told Congress
In a closed-door interview, Smith characterized the Republican president as the “most culpable and most responsible person” in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
'Stranger Things' Couples, Ranked by How Much Chemistry They Actually Have
The grand finale arrives on Netflix December 31, so here's one last look back at the characters' most inconsistently important aspect: their love lives.
'The Last of Us' season 3 to recast Danny Ramirez's character
Danny Ramirez has seen the last of the post-apocalyptic landscape of 'The Last of Us' — the role of Manny will be recast in the upcoming third season.
Thousands in Kabul attend Afghanistan’s national buzkashi championship
Taliban authorities attend traditional sport characterised by limited formal rules and fierce physical competition.
Report: BioShock 4 Brief Glimpse Into the Characters and Setting
Meet the potential new villain and hero of BioShock 4. We break down the game's assets, the possible return of ADAM, and additional details.
Rainbow Six Siege Is Being Hacked, As Players Are Gifted 2 Billion Credits, While Ban Logs Are Spammed With Digs At Ubisoft
Content creators urge players to stay offline until the problem has been resolved, given the extent of the breach.
Guilty Gear Strive Producer offers details on big Version 2.0 update including new characters, rebalancing, new moves and more
Guilty Gear Strive closed out its fourth season of content earlier this year with the release of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners' Lucy, and things for the game are going to be apparently quite different going into 2026.Arc System Works has now ...
Code Vein II character trailer
Bandai Namco has released a new trailer for Code Vein II introducing character Valentin Voda.
Stranger Things Season 5's New Romance Highlights One Of The Show's Biggest Problems
A moment between two characters in Stranger Things season 5 volume 2 once again underscores the silliness of a status quo decision.
Timothée Chalamet's character in 'Marty Supreme' is based on a real hustling ping-pong icon from the 1950s
In "Marty Supreme," Timothée Chalamet plays the charismatic ping-pong playing hustler Marty Mauser. He's based on a real person.
New 'Community Playbook Academy' to revolutionize youth sports leagues in the U.S.
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The Year in Entertainment 2025: The TV that was top
The small screen took us everywhere from the shores of Cousins Beach to the emergency room at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center this year. Here's a look at the shows and limited series that defined 2025:It was the medical procedural drama The Pitt that scored the top prize at the Emmys this year. Led by Noah Wyle, who won the best actor in a drama Emmy for his portrayal of Dr. Robby in the new series, The Pitt's first season followed the challenges faced by health care workers on the front lines over the course of a single, 15-hour shift at the hospital. Other big winners at the ceremony included Seth Rogen's new comedy series The Studio, as well as the Netflix limited series Adolescence.Many prestige shows captured the cultural zeitgeist in 2025. Fans traveled to Thailand to check in for season 3 of The White Lotus, while the mystery at Lumon Industries continued to unfold as Severance season 2 rolled out. The Last of Us viewers mourned a fan-favorite character during its sophomore season, while Star Wars fans returned to a galaxy far, far away to bid farewell to Andor as it debuted its second and final season.Nobody could stop talking about The Summer I Turned Pretty. Whether you were team Conrad or team Jeremiah, fans couldn't keep their eyes off the dramatic third season of the teen romance series, which spanned from the U.S.'s East Coast all the way to Paris. While the series ended with Belly finally picking which brother she wanted to be with, the story isn't quite over. A feature film that will end the romantic saga has been greenlit by Prime Video.Finally, the year ended with the release of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things. It turned Netflix's streaming records upside down, accumulating 59.6 million views in its first five days and becoming the best-ever premiere week viewing numbers for an English-language series on the streaming platform.Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
'Palace fight will have delighted Glasner'
Former Crystal Palace forward Glen Murray says Oliver Glasner will be "delighted" with the spirit shown by his side despite their Carabao Cup quarter-final exit on Tuesday evening. The Eagles fought back after Maxence Lacroix's late own goal to equalise deep into stoppage time and force penalties away at Arsenal, before the Gunners eventually progressed by winning the shootout. "When you take into consideration the way they lost the game at the weekend against Leeds, coming away to the Emirates in the quarter-final of a cup competition and digging in in the manner that they did showed character," Murray told BBC Radio 5 Live's Football Daily podcast.
See photos of sports fans dressed as the Grinch ahead of Christmas
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'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' reveals casting for Sulu and Bones
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The disunity of science is a feature, not a bug
Mathematical models wield miraculous power, but mistaking them for reality has trapped science in a destructive quest for a “Theory of Everything.” Physicist and philosopher Ragner Fjelland argues that this leads to bloated, Frankenstein theories kept alive by clumsy, ad-hoc amendments, which reduce rather than boost science’s power. Fjelland calls for a radical shift in our attitude: we must reorientate towards creating entirely new theories, celebrating rather than lamenting disunity and diversity in science. Science, from the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century to the present day, has more or less developed in a “reductionist” way. The fundamental assumption is that all sciences may be ordered in a hierarchy that can be represented as an upside-down pyramid. At the top we find the human sciences, and at the bottom physics. Strong (or “ontological”) reductionism maintains that all theories at one level can be completely reduced to the lower level, all the way down to theories of atoms and elementary particles, or whatever is “at the bottom.” In the end, all diversity in the world can be unified in one fundamental theory. Hence it is called a final theory, or a Theory of Everything.One of the central figures in developing the idea of a Theory of Everything is the Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft, who received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1999 for his work. He emphasizes the non-empirical status of the theory:There exists no closely resembling alternative theory. This means that any slight change brought about in the rules would make the theory unlikely or inelegant. The theory will be a "package deal": take it, or leave it. This should hold both for the local laws and for the boundary conditions.This endeavor is not new. On the contrary, it goes all the way back to the birth of Western philosophy 2,500 years ago. The Babylonians made regular astronomical observations during a period of 600 years, from 747 BCE until 150 ACE. They developed mathematical techniques to predict astronomical phenomena, but they made no attempts at explaining them. However, the Greeks developed models, both material and theoretical, to explain the observed phenomena.The best example is Plato’s late dialogue Timaeus. Here he introduces a divine craftsman, the Demiurge, who has constructed the universe according to an original plan. Plato seems to have thought that the original plan is what is actually real, while the material world is merely an imperfect realization of it. He therefore does not, in the Timaeus, reconstruct the material universe, but the original plan, which can then be used to explain the material universe.Plato’s aim in producing a theoretical model is to reconstruct the original plan. That is what he carries out in Timaeus—and some modern physicists have embarked on the same project. For example, Einstein’s basic attitude is reflected in the title of Abraham Pais’ biography: “Subtle is the Lord...,” echoing Einstein’s comment, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” In an interview Einstein compared our situation to a child who enters a huge library. The child knows that someone has written the books, but he does not know the languages in which they are written. He suspects that there is a mysterious order, but he does not know what it is.___“We have all been working in what Husserl called the Galilean style; that is, we have all been making abstract mathematical models of the universe to which at least the physicists give a higher degree of reality than they accord the ordinary world of sensation.”Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)___This Platonist view is contrary to a widespread impression of science, symbolized by the picture of the “father” of modern science, Galileo Galilei, with his telescope. According to this impression, Galileo liberated himself from the dominating metaphysics of his day—basically Aristotelian philosophy—and constructed a telescope that he directed towards the sky, showing that Jupiter has four moons. He also performed experiments with bronze balls rolling down inclined planes and found the law of freely falling bodies.However, in other cases Galileo emphasized the unreliability of our senses. It is easy to see why. He defended Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, we are not at rest at the center of the universe, but moving at a tremendous speed through space. Why don’t we observe this motion? Galileo praises Copernicus because “with reason as his guide he resolutely continued to affirm what sensible experience seemed to contradict.” In other places he directly refers to Plato. SUGGESTED VIEWING The quest for a final theory With Michio Kaku Galileo’s Platonism goes back to his early writings. In The Assayer, published as early as 1623, Galileo compared the universe to a grand book that is written in the language of mathematics, and “its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.” Therefore, things that cannot be described by mathematics—for example, colors, smells and odors—are not real. They are merely subjective.This division into subjective and objective, advocated by Galileo and his younger contemporary René Descartes, is normally associated with a mechanistic world view, which is regarded as the opposite of Platonism. When we reduce something to, for example, molecules and atoms, we move “downwards.” In contrast, the Platonist moves “upwards,” to abstract entities. However, it only shows that when we address fundamental questions, we should be careful in applying everyday spatial metaphors like “up” and “down.”___Nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world.___The endeavor of finding a Theory of Everything has been heavily criticized. In 2006, the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin published “The Crisis in Fundamental Physics.” He argued that one of the most fundamental principles of science is that we should only regard theories as scientific if we have the possibility to show that they are false by experiments. Although he did not refer to Karl Popper, other critics have referred to Popper and argued that a theory is not scientific if it cannot be falsified (see for example Ellis & Silk 2014).These were not the first physicists to be anti-reductionists. In 1972, the journal Science published an article by the physicist Philip Anderson with the title “More Is Different.” This is the kind of article a scientist would normally write only after he has won a Nobel Prize. However, Anderson won the Nobel Prize for physics five years later, in 1977. The article is amazing, not primarily because it argues in favor of anti-reductionism in general, but because it argues for anti-reductionism within physics itself. Anderson’s conclusion was:At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.We may say that Plato started the “unity of science movement,” based on Euclidean geometry as the model of all knowledge. A distinguishing mark of geometry is that all possible constructions can be reduced to a few fundamental principles. We have to acknowledge that this approach has limitations. In general, we can easily model technological systems. In addition, we may construct simplified and idealized models that capture important aspects of systems, from various perspectives and for various purposes. But nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world. In a complex system, each level has its distinct, emergent, properties that are characteristic of this level. Therefore, a complex system should be investigated at different levels and from different perspectives. Instead of exclusively pursuing a scientific ideal based on the unity of science, we should acknowledge the diversity—or even the disunity—of science.