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Apple’s iPhone Duo Sold Out In Minutes. The Last Time Apple Reinvented The Phone, One Apple Supplier’s Stock Soared About 1,200% In A Decade
Apple's first foldable iPhone sold out in minutes and sent investors scrambling to find the supplier that could pull off what one obscure chipmaker did after the original iPhone launched in 2007.
The plan to end the Ukraine war
Trump's diesel-deal feud with Zelensky obscures a more important effort
IP Saves the Day On Streaming
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Before we get started, I wanted to highlight a new idea I saw from Real Good AI, proposing a ratings system for AI use. (H/T to Anthony Kaufman’s article highlighting this.) It would look something like this: In general, I think that this is a solid, middle-ground solution that should appease both the pro-AI camp (who love AI) and the anti-AI camp (who wants to know if what they’re watching didn’t come from humans). Regardless of your feelings on AI/LLMs—I’ll never use it for my writing—transparency is often the best solution to many problems. In general, I think way more media outlets need to be using way more AI disclosures. My quick “Yes and...” to this idea: what about ads? In particular, I hate it when I see or hear ads that are obviously AI-generated, but a person or voice says, “I used this product”. AI doesn’t use products! Just today, I watched a YouTube ad where a “person” said they use some sort of rain wind chime...but that’s not a real person! They didn’t use this product. (Especially since the video of the wind chime itself also appeared to be AI-generated...) I believe most traditional advertising already has standards like this anyway.1 Okay, on to this week’s issue. We’re covering the week of 14-Sep, and then next issue, I’ll be fully caught up with Nielsen’s new release schedule. In the future, I plan to put out Streaming Ratings Reports each Monday after Nielsen’s Thursday releases. Overall, we had some big new shows this week, like Prime Video’s Reacher spinoff_, Neagley_, which is off to a big, big start, and Netflix’s latest in its Monster anthology, which is their largest opening since June and the second-largest since One Piece came out in March. All that, plus Slow Horses returns, the trio of returning shows (Lioness, Reacher and Ted Lasso) continue to dominate the top tens, Paramount+’s latest crime drama, a big whiff for a Netflix original film and a precipitous drop for Netflix film charts, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of September 14th to September 20th 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Television - IP For the TV Win Can I use the dirty word of entertainment journalism right now? IP. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone I said it. But IP works at the box office, and we’ve seen some evidence it works in TV too. Not as well, and not all the time—no absolutes here!—but often enough. And glancing at the Nielsen top ten…it worked this week! Take Prime Video, who has a monster hit in the crime drama Reacher. Would a spinoff work for that show? Yep! They binge-released Neagley, about a detective from the original Reacher series, and its eight episodes debuted to 29.6 million hours. Here’s how it stacks up to Reacher, one of Prime Video’s biggest shows: That’s great. Nearly as strong as Reacher’s opening! (Both shows started with eight, binge-released episodes, so this comparison is apples-to-apples.) Notably, Prime Video scheduled the debut of Neagley to overlap with Reacher’s most recent season, to help drive tune-in. Obviously, I love smart release strategies like that. And even though I wrote “obviously”, it’s not really that obvious, since streamers don’t often take advantage of natural overlaps like this_._2 Other data backs how well Neagley performed. It opened at second place on Samba TV for two weeks and got 51.7 million hours on Luminate. That’s the eleventh biggest opening on Luminate since May of 2024 and tied with Bridgerton’s third season opening. That’s a huge opening! Its IMDb is solid too, a 7.7 on 24K reviews. Netflix’s latest edition in the “Monster” series—which started with Jeffrey Dahmer and comes from Ryan Murphy—did well too, opening to 24.7 million hours. That’s the biggest opening for Netflix since I Will Find You in June, and second biggest since March. Unlike the Reacher series, this franchise is trending downward, though. The first Monster show—Dahmer - Monster—was giant. More than anything, I think this reflects that Netflix running out of extremely popular—if that’s the right word?—serial killers to feature. Still, the data says this is a very good opening. It made it to third place on Samba TV for two weeks. It also opened to 40.0 million hours on Luminate. That’s not quite as elite as Neagley, but still very, very strong. I’ll be honest: my priors coming into any given week are that IP works to help drive buzz for new shows, but TV shows need to stand on their own even more than movies, so they will succeed or fail based on their quality. But these two spinoffs definitely worked. Quick Notes on TV The top show, film or special this week? Football, again. Specifically, Prime Video’s season opener of Thursday Night Football. The games run long (three hours) but mainly a lot of people watch each game. That adds up to a lot of viewership. Paramount released the second season of MobLand on an unusual day for that service, a Friday! Often, they put their new shows out on a Sunday, as they did last year with a run of shows (Lioness, Tulsa King and Landman). MobLand didn’t make Nielsen in its first week, but on Samba TV it got to eighth and seventh place. Luminate had a smaller opening too, only 5.3 million hours. MobLand missed the Nielsen charts for its first eight weeks, so this season is off to a stronger start. (Bonus note: the first season streams on both Prime Video and The Roku Channel, but I only have it as Paramount+ on those charts.) I’ve mentioned a few times that foreign-language originals do lower numbers than English-language originals on Netflix most of the time. But I don’t usually emphasize what country those originals come from, and observationally, they tend to be from Western or Northern European countries, in general. So credit to Not a Stranger, a Turkish Netflix original, for breaking through on Luminate, getting to 7.9 million hours in its first full week on those charts. As I mentioned last issue, Crew Girl ended up making the Nielsen charts in its second week. That’s still a soft performance compared to many shows, but again this, one looks affordable. And if you’re curious, here’s how it stacks up to some other sports romance shows: 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… …about a new data source and how it drives streaming viewership… ...what reality show is struggling in its latest season…. ...what Netflix film bombed…. ...How Reacher, Ted Lasso, and Lioness are doing on the charts… ...what obscure sport put up great viewership numbers… …how far streaming films are falling… …all the flops, bombs and misses for the last week… …and more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue. Coming Soon! Next week, we’ve got a double issue, then we’ll be all caught up with Nielsen’s data. Yes! The goal is to have my report out on the Monday after I get Nielsen’s data. So next issue, I’m looking at East of Eden, The Great British Baking Show, a Willy Wonka game show (that people are upset uses AI, but viewers might not care), and a Cosby show spinoff reboot on Netflix, and Brothers on Apple TV (starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey). That’s about it for TV, but who’s going to win the streaming week, The Breadwinner or Backrooms on streaming? Answer: Toy Story 5. Plus Netflix has a Unabomber film and a new Tyler Perry film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma tries to repeat The Substance’s run on MUBI, and Paramount+ has Jackass: Best and Last. Long term, Netflix is remaking Lonesome Dove. I love this choice, but man, there are a lot of westerns on TV right now. And they’re making Sega TV shows, including a Crazy Taxi TV show and Sonic show with an “edge”.
GTA 6 squeaks into eligibility for The Game Awards 2026 by the smallest of margins - but can it break Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's record number of wins?
Grand Theft Auto 6 releases 19th November and The Game Awards cut-off is 20th November. It's a close call. But will GTA 6 win?
Charlie Cox Reveals He's Already Recorded 40 Hours Of Lines For A Surprise Sega Game
The Daredevil and Clair Obscur actor confirmed the new voice acting work during his appearance at NYCC
OpenAI claims we've entered the AGI era — has GPT-6 Astra really demonstrated general intelligence?
OpenAI says its newly launched GPT-6 Astra model brings humanity to the threshold of AGI, but external evaluators argue that inflated lab metrics and opaque testing obscure its true reliability.
Game Pass Is About To Lose Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 And Some Other Incredible Games
The RPG sensation and more gems are leaving in October
Federal Agencies Lack Data to Track Small Business Research Awards
Federal agencies awarded $4.4 billion in SBIR and STTR grants, but missing commercialization data obscure results. See what GAO says needs to improve.
Ken Paxton’s Christian identity politics obscure a history of scandal
The Texas Senate candidate rose to power as a culture warrior. His record is a marriage of hypocrisy and cynicism
The Value Of Basic Science Celebrated With The 2026 “Golden Goose” Awards
The 2026 Golden Goose Awards, an honor spotlighting obscure, often trivial sounding basic research that ultimately yields significant social benefits have been announced.
How an obscure government code unlocks opportunity for businesses
What rhymes with "snakes" and helps the government classify economic activity? NAICS — or the North American Industry Classification System. These codes categorize every industry from artificial turf installation to zucchini farming. But they’re not exactly easy to get. Today we look at one business’ quest for a NAICS code and what makes them so valuable. Fact checking by Leyla Doss. Your Next Listen — How to take the temperature of the US consumer Connect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s weekly newsletter! — Buy the Planet Money book — Find our socials, YouTube and more! — For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+ Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
Seedy K’s Pigskin Palaver: Mediocrity, Bon Mots & Bad Woofs +++
Culling the landscape of college football. How Many Syllables Kamario? Couldn’t help myself. It’s an obscure reference to a line in the cult movie classic, “Putney Swope.” I could have titled this “More Cowbell” but I wanted to be subtler than that. Anyhow the Mississippi State Flavor of the Month QB — last name Taylor — […]
Transgender kids are being used as political props
The politics obscures a basic fact: Schools do not put children in foster care. No child is removed by DCF because they disagree with their parents about being transgender, or anything else.
13 Cool Tractor Supply Gadgets You Might Not Realize Exist
As one of the biggest suppliers around for equipment useful for those living in more rural settings, Tractor Supply sells a lot of obscure stuff.
From near oblivion to Europe
From obscurity and near oblivion to Premier League and Europe - Brighton celebrate their 125th anniversary.
Taiwan's political institutions 'failing' under divided government: U.S. scholar
Taiwan's current political deadlock reflects institutional weaknesses that were largely obscured during years of unified government, a U.S. scholar said Wednesday at a symposium in Taipei.
Gender politics obscure tragedy in Clancy trial
Too many on both sides of this toxic debate show minimal awareness of the facts.
The obscure documentary fueling Islamophobia in Texas
A documentary warns about a coming cultural conflict with Muslims in the US. It’s had surprising political influence.
Discerning film fans flock to The Beacon’s tiny Seattle theater
A Columbia City cinema's offerings range from heady art-house pieces to obscure cult favorites to independent gems. You can even rent the theater for a screening.
How Angine de Poitrine, KEXP BBQ performer, went viral this year
The masked art rockers went from obscurity to indie stardom when their must-see KEXP performance hit 18 million views.
Trump’s Kennedy Center Board Votes to Put His Name Back on the Building
The proposed inscription tests Judge Christopher Cooper's ruling that only Congress can rename the national memorial.
Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and the risky business of second acts
The Patriots’ former QB and coach have mutated in ways that are starting to obscure — maybe even tarnish — their twin legacies as the greatest of all time at their respective positions.
'The Ocho' returns as the world's most obscure sports take center stage
Phil Murphy and Cristina Alexander have more.
Today’s Best Deals: AirPods Pro 3, MTG x Marvel Booster Box, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for PC
Plus, save on LEGO, a JBL portable speaker, and more.
The House Ethics Committee steps into the spotlight
Obscure for years, what woke up the House Ethics Committee?
Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.
There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. I am particularly pleased that it goes out for free to thousands of subscribers around the world. But, writing this newsletter takes a lot of work. If you are enjoying it and would like to support the project, sign up for one of the subscription options here. It is the equivalent of a fancy cup of coffee per month! Subscribe
Which Microsoft businesses are growing and shrinking, according to obscure table in regulatory filing
Overall, for the fiscal year ended June 30, Microsoft's revenue increased 18%, or $50.1 billion, to $331.8 billion. Here is what a table buried in the 10-K shows about the real drivers of the business.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 devs are working on a Nintendo Switch 2 version, but note the "big technical challenge" of getting it up and running
Sandfall Interactive knows there is demand for a Switch 2 version of the breakout RPG, and the studio is working on it.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 devs talk about the challenges of a Nintendo Switch 2 port
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 may still end up on Nintendo Switch 2 at some point on the future, but it would be a “big technical challenge”. The RPG originally released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S. Sandfall Interactive co-founder Tom Guillermin said in a recent interview that a Nintendo Switch 2 version would be tough “because we...
Clair Obscur Isn't The Only Great RPG That's Cheaper Right Now
These are the current role-playing game deals I'd recommend
Soil carbon effectively measured by new, efficient AI model
A new model offers a proof-of-principle for how AI might be used to shed light on obscure biological processes.
5 British Car Brands You've Probably Never Seen On American Highways
Ever seen a wooden chassis? Here are the most fascinating and obscure British car brands you won't see every day on U.S. highways.
Trump’s Trade Wars Are Back—Despite the Supreme Court
The president’s proposed use of an obscure Depression-era law shows courts and Congress haven’t curbed Trump’s ambition to impose tariffs at will.
Trump threatens National Academies with debarment. Here's what it is.
The president invoked an obscure process to review the institution's federal grants over what he says is "climate fraud."
‘Social media bans are likely to make things worse’: psychologist Candice Odgers on kids, tech and mental health
She has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years and fears the debate obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers – from the impact of Covid to the health of their adult caregivers
You Don’t Need to Vote for Socialists to Get Universal Health Care
Critics on the left and the right are, for different reasons, obscuring the Democratic Party’s long commitment to this cause.
‘Moana’: It’s déjà vu all over again ...
Impressive cultural authenticity can’t obscure an uneven storyline
NASA Webb Uncovers Unusual Galaxy Shaped by Cosmic Collision
Webb uncovers unusual galaxy shaped by cosmic collision: Webb's unprecedented sensitivity across near- and mid-infrared wavelengths cuts through the thick lanes of dust that obscure Centaurus A’s center in visible light, showing a densely packed tapestry of individual stars and an active, everchanging galaxy. These images mark four years of better-than-anticipated performance and successful science operations for the most powerful space telescope in history. Centaurus A is 11 million light-years away from Earth, relatively close in cosmic terms. Yet, unlike most nearby galaxies, it is very active, making it a powerful laboratory for understanding how galaxies and black holes grow and evolve together.
NYC axes new rule on roll-down gates for businesses – after retailers already spent thousands
City lawmakers rolled back an obscure, decades-old law about storefront roll-down gates ahead of a looming enforcement deadline – but not before some retailers shelled out thousands of dollars in...
2026 L.A. County voter guide: Judges, healthcare tax, sheriff
Here are obscure but very important L.A. County races in the 2026 election. What you need to know about Superior Court judges, the County Sheriff race and healthcare tax measure.
SRAM vs the UCI: How a dispute over gear ratios could change global sport forever
Why the outcome of a relatively obscure legal battle could have far-reaching consequences
SRAM vs the UCI: How a dispute over gear ratios could change global sport forever
Why the outcome of a relatively obscure legal battle could have far-reaching consequences
How an obscure EV tax cost Ukraine thousands of battle bots this year
Ukrainian lawmakers are racing to undo a tax measure that came into effect in January, saying that it's stifled supply of the drones for the military.
India’s loudest political fight obscures a more urgent one
The country’s collapsing cities could benefit from plans to redraw the electoral map
Scientists Say They’ve Invented a Serum That Activates a Dormant Ability to Regrow Lost Limbs in Mammals
"The capacity is not absent — it's just obscured."
Champions League would make Villa's breakthrough 'sustainable'
The long, lumpy third act of Aston Villa's season, encapsulated in the past week by two entirely contrasting games, has been crawling towards this point. It is understandable that any nerves at Villa's failure to nail down Champions League qualification already have obscured just what an achievement it would be, especially after they were stuck in the starting blocks for a month. The past two games illustrate the junction Villa have now reached.
John Cornyn’s Inexplicably Deep-Lore Campaign Against Ken Paxton
Are there enough persuadable Texas-politics junkies for the U.S. senator’s obscure posts to matter?
MARY BRUNKOW
A chance discovery made around 80 years ago paved the way for Mary Brunkow’s painstaking work, which contributed to redefining how the immune system functions. From investigating an obscure gene dismissed as ‘junk’ by other scientists, to choosing to opt out of academia and conduct her research at a biotech startup, Brunkow has embraced the unexpected throughout her career.
‘People should be talking about it’: moves to curtail vaccine information obscures important science, doctors say
Quashed studies, halted publications and canceled research threaten damage to public health, critics say
All Of The Best Cosplay From Lvl Up Expo 2026
With fantastic cosplay from Clair Obscur, Dispatch and The Amazing Digital Circus
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the most-awarded Game of the Year recipient of all time, celebrates its one-year anniversary with... new haircuts?
As Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 celebrates its first anniversary and 8m sales, Sandfall Interactive has released a brand-new update for the acclaimed RPG.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Gets Free Anniversary Update That Adds Fresh Haircuts for the Whole Party
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is celebrating the first anniversary of its release with a free update that adds new cosmetic options for the game's full party.
Letter to the Editor: We can’t let politics obscure the promise or the peril of psychedelic therapy
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled, “ACCELERATING MEDICAL TREATMENTS FOR SERIOUS MENTAL ILLNESS,” intended to hasten access to psychedelic treatments. The signing was certainly a spectacle, as it often is, but so was the heterogenous group in attendance: President Trump was joined in the oval office by MMA-commentator, podcaster, and...
Databank secures $2 billion of debt for Dallas data center
Data center development has focused on massive projects for AI training in obscure locations. AI inference is pushing construction closer to cities.
Pragmata’s Steam User Score Is Beating ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’
Pragmata is one of the best-scored games on Steam in ages, even beating out Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at this present moment.
What the Muppets can teach us about Maine politics
For dreamers like me, the Rainbow Connection seems distant. Our political climate has abandoned what I consider the Muppet spirit: a celebration of wistfulness, a collective made strong by diversity and humble and transparent leadership. Contemporary politics has been like shadow puppets: projections designed to obscure the causes of our dysfunctional society. The Muppets offer […]
What the Muppets can teach us about Maine politics
For dreamers like me, the Rainbow Connection seems distant. Our political climate has abandoned what I consider the Muppet spirit: a celebration of wistfulness, a collective made strong by diversity and humble and transparent leadership. Contemporary politics has been like shadow puppets: projections designed to obscure the causes of our dysfunctional society. The Muppets offer […]
How Democrats Are Embracing Dark Money
The left is creating new, obscure nonprofits to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into politics and advocacy.
Super PAC spending passes $200M, with some groups hiding their cause
Groups that include pro-Israel organizations obscured their spending in some midterm races to try to defeat candidates that oppose their cause.
Keaton Wagler earns All-American honors and jersey banner
Greenville, S.C. — The preseason hype surrounding a kid named Keaton Wagler felt rather obscure back then. Today, Keaton Wagler is considered one of the recent great Illini to grace the wooden State Farm Center court. On Tuesday, Illinois freshman Keaton Wagler was named to the All-American Second Team, the first Illini Freshman ever to […]
This is your brain on pleasure (even the guilty kind)
It’s likely you have at least one “guilty pleasure.” Maybe it’s romance novels. Or reality TV… Playing video games… or getting swept into obscure corners of TikTok. Neuroscientists say the pleasure response helps us survive as a species. So why do we feel embarrassed by some of the things we love the most? Even if you don't have these negative emotions, experiencing – and studying – pleasure is not as straightforward as it might seem. For a long time, neuroscientists thought the concept of "pleasure" referred to a singular system in the brain. But as research into the subject grew, scientists realized that pleasure is really a cycle of "wanting" and "liking" – each with separate neural mechanisms. Today on the show, producer Rachel Carlson explores this cycle with researchers, who weigh in on the science of pleasure. Even the kind that makes us feel guilty. Read more of Rachel’s story on guilty pleasures. Interested in more brain science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.
Stop ignoring the mental health of trans violent offenders
Scott Newgent, a transgender man, argues media and institutions obscure transgender violent offenders, calls for honest reporting, questions rapid medical...
These Men Want to Know Their ‘Sexual Market Value’
The idea of putting a dollar figure on attractiveness has bubbled up from obscure corners of the internet.
An AI startup floats FDA deregulation, using an obscure backdoor
In this edition of STAT's Health Tech: An AI startup pushes for some AI-powered medical devices to be exempt from pre-market review, and other health tech news.
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
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 leads resist calls to "scale up," insist they "love making games more than managing"
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive is resisting calls to "scale up now [it has] a lot more mone…
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 beats out Elden Ring's GOTY award count, and it still isn't finished
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has garnered more GOTY awards than any other game ever, and there is still time to go for it to extend its lead.
The obscure physics theory that helped Chinese science emerge from the shadows
Robert P Crease reveals the curious twist in the development of Chinese physics in the 1960s
Did a Supreme Court Loss Embolden Trump on the Insurrection Act?
In refusing to let the president deploy National Guard troops in Illinois under an obscure law, the justices may have made him more apt to invoke greater powers.
Asad Haider, Leftist Critic of Identity Politics, Dies at 38
In “Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump,” he argued that focusing on identity obscured a more fundamental injustice: economic inequality.
New PS5 and PS4 jailbreak exploits trigger a 1,000% surge in prices for an obscure remaster of the 24-year-old Star Wars Racer Revenge, with copies reaching $300
Now this is jailbreaking
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Fan Wins Ridiculous 8-Hour Boss Battle With 10,545 Successful Parries and No Dodges
Eight hours and more than 10,000 parries later, a Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 superfan is being praised for beating one of the game's toughest bosses in frankly ridiculous conditions.
New Chinese RPG Called Clair Obscur Clone Despite Long History
A new Sword and Fairy 4: Remake trailer is turning heads
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We've Got Our First Clair Obscur-like, And It's A Chinese Game Called Sword And Fairy 4: Remake
Some shots almost looks like a Clair Obscur DLC.
The Indie Game Awards snatches back two trophies from Clair Obscur over its use of generative AI
The Indie Game Awards has stripped Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 of two awards over its use of generative AI. The awards ceremony doesn't allow the use of generative AI in any capacity.
'Clair Obscur: Expedition 33' stripped of Indie Game Awards due to generative AI use
It had previously been announced Game of the Year.
Indie Game Awards disqualifies Game of the Year winner Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for using AI
The Indie Game Awards has withdrawn two awards previously given to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, not because of the deba…
GOTY Winner Clair Obscur Disqualified From Awards Show
One of the most critically adored games of 2025 has just been disqualified from an awards show due to its use of generative AI.
Indie Game Awards disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 after generative AI controversy
According to a statement issued by the Indie Game Awards, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been stripped of both awards it won. This decision came after producer François Meurisse confirmed the use of generative AI in the game’s development.
Clair Obscur Is Having Its Indie Game Game Of The Year Award Stripped Away Due To AI Use
The Indie Game Awards presented the award last night, only to strip it hours later.
Steam Winter Sale discounts Clair Obscur, Silent Hill f and more
Valve is running a Steam Winter Sale from December 18, 2025, through January 5, 2026, with discounts on hit games.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 gets sales and player boost after historic The Game Awards win
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been going from strength to strength this year.
The Game Awards Gave Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 A Massive Boost
Winning Game of the Year and eight additional Game Awards really paid off for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Expedition 33's Game Awards sweep fuels online drama and conspiracy theories
No amount of snarky posts or memes can undo the sincerity that helped Clair Obscur sweep in the first place.
Clair Obscur's new Endless Tower bosses are providing quite the challenge for returning players
Whether it's rust or because the bosses are just artificially hard, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 players are reeling at the free DLC's difficulty.
French President Emmanuel Macron Is Back on Instagram Celebrating Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, This Time for Winning Game of the Year
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's record-breaking performance at last week's The Game Awards has caught the eye of French president Emmanuel Macron, who celebrated the news of its Game of the Year award on Instagram over the weekend.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fans can't get over just how difficult the Update's new bosses and challenges are now
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's new patch shadow-dropped earlier this week, and Sandfall Interactive sure wasn't kidding …
French President publicly congratulates Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, calling the Game of The Year win "a historic first"
French President Emmanuel Macron has once again publicly congratulated Sandfall Interactive for Clair Obscur: Expeditio…
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Gets "Thank You" Update That Makes It Steam Deck Verified
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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 devs dropped a big update after sweeping The Game Awards
The game hauled in a record-breaking nine wins at The Game Awards.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sweeps The Game Awards — analysis and full winners list
Independent video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 swept the Game Awards last night. The L.A. ceremony draws millions of views for its industry honors and exclusive previews of upcoming games.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Storms The Game Awards 2025, Wins Coveted Game of the Year
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 stormed The Game Awards 2025, winning all but one category it was nominated in, including the main prize: Game of the Year.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's expansion is available right now, adding a photo mode and vibrant new world
The previously revealed expansion to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has finally been properly unveiled, plus the game is heading to Switch 2.
Game Awards Declares ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’ Game Of The Year
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong, No Man's Sky take home wins from 2026 Game Awards. Amazon Games announces new Tomb Raider games
Clair Obscur Wasn’t Just Good, It Was Also Cheap To Develop
Sandfall Interactive made a GOTY contender for a fraction of what most companies spend
Gym tied to outbreak of obscure disease that spreads through mist
The outbreak blamed on "gym exposure" is relatively small, but it has helped push cases tied to the Legionella bacteria to a 10-year high in Florida.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is Xbox Game Pass's biggest third-party success in 2025
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the biggest third-party launch on Xbox Game Pass this year.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Is the Biggest New Third-Party Game Launch on Xbox Game Pass of 2025
Sandfall Interactive’s phenomenal debut RPG is one of the most buzzed-about releases of the year, so it should surprise no one when we announce that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the biggest new third-party game launch on Xbox Game Pass of 2025.