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Predicting Suns' Team Awards for 2026–27 Season
Devin Booker cements his legacy as a franchise icon while rookie sensation Khaman Maluach transforms the frontcourt in this visionary look at the Valley’s future hardware.
Soccer Coach Avoids Eye Contact With Reporter During Awkward Interview: He Was ‘Fighting for His Life’
A soccer coach’s awkward postgame interview has become an unexpected internet sensation. David Oulehla — head coach of Czech soccer team FK Viagem Ústí nad Labem — is getting a lot of attention over his exchange with a female reporter. In a video shared on the team’s Instagram account, Oulehla, 43, appeared determined to avoid […]
Mourinho impressed by Wesley: “I knew he was strong.”
There’s no shortage of talent at Real Madrid. From Mbappé to Diomandé, there’s plenty of quality players. Mourinho’s squad is sensational, including the bench. It was evident against Roma: a t...
K-POP SENSATION LE SSERAFIM HEADLINES NEW BRAND CAMPAIGN FOR ASIAN ENTERTAINMENT STREAMER, RAKUTEN VIKI
/PRNewswire/ -- Rakuten Viki, the leading destination for Asian entertainment, has launched a new brand campaign starring global K-pop group LE SSERAFIM. "Viki...
Apple Watch Series 12, Ultra 4 Owners Report Skin Irritation
Some Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 owners have experienced unexpected skin irritation with the new models, according to reports on the MacRumors forums and Reddit. Affected users complain of a burning sensation and redness under the sensor area. The Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 measure heart rate every five seconds, and some people have wondered if that's the cause of the skin irritation.
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
That Creepy Feeling You’re Being Watched in the Dark? It Has a Scientific Name.
On a late-night drive to Zion, an unexplainable sensation of unseen eyes took over. It turns out that eerie backcountry feeling has a name—and a deep evolutionary purpose.
Liverpool want to make move for 'special' sensation soon
Liverpool are still getting linked with a lot of new players even though the transfer window is shut. The club spent over £150 million on new players in the summer but, it still feels like there are ...
After Sickle Cell Crisis, Brooklyn Mother is Back on Her Feet Following Care from NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County
New York, NY – While working as an office assistant in Brooklyn, Grace Carter felt her body grow weak and lose all sensation. Fearing she would collapse,
Primetime Review: That’s Entertainment?
If you decide to see Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, it’s important to remember the title as you watch. Yes, this is a biopic of sorts about Chris Hansen and his work on To Catch a Predator, but it is more accurately about the quest for fame and using people’s trauma to attract ratings. True crime entertainment continues to have a prominent place in many people’s television habits, and this film asks us to examine what that means both for those whose stories have become our viewing pleasure and those of us watching. Primetime starts as Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) is told that his show, To Catch a Predator, is moving to a 9 PM spot opposite LOST. Chris and his producer, Andie (Merritt Wever), see this as an opportunity to make the program even more sensational, looking for bigger, more horrific predators. As part of their plan, they hire a young actor, Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo), to play “Decoy Dan,” the person who greets the would-be predators who were catfished by Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher). Oppenheim, along with writers Ajon Singh and Luke Dittrich, is less concerned with an accurate retelling of the show as much as they are interested in interrogating the why of it all. That decision sometimes leaves Primetime feeling less like a biopic and more like a satirical look at the nature of programming like this. Visually, the movie is impressive. Oppenheim uses light and color effectively to cast Hansen as both villain and savior. Pattinson plays Hansen in an almost comical manner, as we see him wake his two young sons to watch a clip of the show, just to brag that he was moving into a prime spot on television. Even Andie struggles to accept a “nice” job when there is so much more fame to be found producing salacious true-crime content. Wever does an excellent job showing how the hunger for fame is not just in front of the camera, but in every aspect of the production. The heart of the movie, and the standout performance, belongs to Gisondo as Dan Plum. He is someone who just wants to get enough hours to be admitted into the Screen Actors Guild, and stumbles into this job without really knowing what it is. Throughout the film, we watch him suffer one trauma after another, ending with him witnessing the suicide of a District Attorney who is about to become the next unwitting star of Hansen’s show. If there is a sympathetic character in Primetime, it is Decoy Dan, and Gisondo plays him brilliantly. If you’re a fan of programming like To Catch a Predator, then Primetime will probably make you feel uncomfortable, and I think it’s worth sitting with that feeling and examining why we turn on shows that display the worst of humanity while we judge from our couches. Yes, it is correct to want to see people who would hurt children brought to justice, but perhaps it shouldn’t be something that we watch as entertainment. Rating: 3.5/5 This review originally appeared in The Dominion Post on September 25, 2026. MacGuffin or Meaning: Film & TV Reviews and Reflections is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Liverpool linked with sensational return of 27-goal star
Over the last couple of years, Liverpool have had a massive clear out. The Anfield outfit underwent a fair few changes during Arne Slot's final season in charge and, even though they spent over £450 ...
Tuchel Contemplates Senior England Training For Young Gunner Star
Thomas Tuchel could fast-track Arsenal’s record-breaking prodigy into senior sessions as injuries deplete the Three Lions’ squad, offering the teenage sensation a chance to test himself alongside some of the world's best.
How ‘One Piece’ became sports’ biggest crossover sensation: MoneyCall
This week's free sports business newsletter from The Athletic name-checks everyone from Monkey D. Luffy to Howard Schultz.
Miguel Gutiérrez Wants To Join The World Cup Winners
A sensational debut for Bayer Leverkusen has the Spanish left-back eyeing a senior international call-up, aiming to fill Alejandro Grimaldo’s shoes for both club and country.
Totti in Serie A at 48: incredible revelation 😱
Troll or real news?As he is about to celebrate his 50th birthday in a few days, Francesco Totti could have made a sensational return to Serie A two years ago, at the age of 48.Yes, you read that right...
‘Backrooms’ Surpasses $400 Million at Global Box Office
“Backrooms” has hit $400 million at the global box office, a remarkable benchmark for the low-budget indie sensation. After nearly four months on the big screen, “Backrooms” has generated $197.5 milli...
Liverpool sends warning to Arsenal over their teenage sensation
Arsenal have been linked with a move for Liverpool starlet Rio Ngumoha, but the Gunners have reportedly been warned by the Reds to stay away from the teenager.During the summer, Bayern Munich targeted...
Max Dowman: Mikel Arteta admits 16-year-old Arsenal wonderkid could go out on loan in the future
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has not ruled out loaning out Max Dowman in the future and says the club evaluates the 16-year-old sensations progress every six months.
Details: Real Madrid’s plan for Man United sensation JJ Gabriel
An insight into the plans of those behind the scenes at La Liga giants Real Madrid to integrate JJ Gabriel into the club’s setup has come to the fore online.This of course comes amid an ongoing purs...
Liverpool contact agents of £100m sensation
Liverpool still have many areas among their ranks that could do with an upgrade or two. The Reds did manage to spend over £150 million on new players this summer but, there are still a few issues tha...
Wow, attacker confirms Liverpool have signed a sensational player
Liverpool have signed a phenomenal attacker, he just confirmed it. It's been a roller coaster of the transfer window throughout the summer. Looking back on it, two weeks later most supporters will be ...
Barcelona star continues red-hot scoring streak 📈
Raphinha has provided a serious threat for Barcelona early in the new campaign. The Brazilian attacker came into Wednesday's LaLiga clash against Racing Santander in sensational form.In his opening si...
Two nations fighting for commitment for Juventus sensation
Adin Licina is enjoying a brilliant season on loan at Cremonese, and his performances have now attracted interest from two nations competing for his international allegiance. The youngster is also hop...
Liverpool handed major boost in transfer chase for £60m sensation
Liverpool were linked with a whole host of players throughout the summer transfer window. This was mainly because of how badly the Reds performed during Arne Slot's last season in charge.In fact, the ...
Liverpool readying themselves to move for 41-goal sensation soon
Liverpool still have a fair few areas among their ranks that could do with upgrading. Indeed, they did welcome four new players through the Anfield doors over the summer but, even with these additions...
Liverpool now lining up sensational double transfer
Andoni Iraola could pull off a double transfer with a Spanish giants. It’s certainly not the start Liverpool would have wanted under Andoni Iraola. The Reds are at least not losing games like they w...
Benzema to Leverkusen: What’s Really Behind the Story?
Direct contact with the French icon and social media activity fuel speculation of a sensational Bundesliga arrival, despite firm pushback from the German club’s sporting leadership.
Liverpool ready to sign next Ronald Araujo in sensational move
Liverpool are already making plans for the next transfer window. But before that, let's talk about the signings the Reds made in the last one. It proved to be perhaps a little frustrating of a window ...
Jayden Savoury Second in the Big Ten in Receiving Yards
Sophomore sensation Jayden Savoury has emerged as a dynamic weapon for Michigan State, leveraging explosive cross-field plays to climb the conference leaderboards and ignite the Spartans' passing attack.
Liverpool want deal for £30m Italian midfield sensation
Liverpool are eyeing potential midfield upgrades.The Reds declined to add a new midfield option in the summer transfer window. Money was instead spent elsewhere - leaving Andoni Iraola relying on the ...
How Wyoming Border Patrol Turned Coloradan Jokes Into A Viral Business Sensation
Wyoming Border Patrol is a hit on social media. Viral videos with millions of views lampooning Colorado have turned the Laramie apparel company into a…
Thomas Gore scandal shows sex and politics have long collided
A 1914 assault allegation became a sensational trial and a defining test for Oklahoma’s blind senator.
Liverpool eye move for their next South American sensation
At the moment, Alexis Mac Allister's future is completely up in the air. The Argentinian hasn't been offered a new deal by Liverpool despite both Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai both being han...
Cardinals get massive Jeremiyah Love update ahead of Week 1
The Cardinals are eager to get rookie sensation Jeremiyah Love on the field to start the season, and the latest news on that front is positive.
Odegaard gives Arsenal winning Champions League start at Napoli
Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard's sensational late strike broke stern Napoli resistance as the English champions began their bid for Champions League glory with a hard-fought 1-0 win in Naples on Wednesday.It continued a perfect start to the campaign for Arsenal, who began their Premier League title defence with three wins in a row before condemning Massimiliano Allegri's team to a third consecutive defeat.
Seminole Roundup: Soccer Draws While Volleyball Hosts SEC Foe
Wrianna Hudson nets a late goal as soccer battles Rice, while volleyball preps for an Auburn clash and golf sensations Shawn Coultoff and Sophia Fullbrook ignite strong starts.
Liverpool will activate magnificent £47m clause for sensational star
Liverpool are going to be buying another defender in the near future. Everything is gearing up for the departure of Virgil van Dijk. He is entering the final year of his contract at Anfield. Liverpool...
Liverpool beat Borussia Dortmund to sensational transfer
Liverpool beat Borussia Dortmund to an exciting signing that could prove sensational. A new era is beginning at Anfield. Richard Hughes' two-year reign of horror is over. In what has been the most con...
Bodø/Glimt: The system behind the sensation
In Bodø, just under 80 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, where winters are harsh and dark and the weather is never quite predictable, the people have adopted a motto: You have to celebrate whene...
Louisville comes up just short against No. 9 Ole Miss
Too many self-inflicted mistakes and a sensational second half from arguably the best quarterback in college football were the stories as Louisville opened its 2026 season with a last-second, 41-38 loss to No. 9 Ole Miss Sunday night in Nashville. New U of L quarterback Lincoln Kienholz rallied the Cards from a 38-24 fourth quarter […]
🚨 BREAKINIG: Jamie Vardy signs for Championship club
Veteran striker Jamie Vardy has completed a sensational return to English football as a free agent.The former Leicester forward has signed for Championship outfit Burnley on a one-year deal.Vardy was ...
Is Rayan's Form Becoming A Concern For AFC Bournemouth?
The Brazilian sensation’s early-season struggles leave Marco Rose weighing rotation options, as the Cherries may look to reignite the youngster's spark through a fresh role in the Europa League.
Brewers' Pratt Rides Six-Game RBI Streak
Fresh off a career-high four-RBI performance, the surging rookie infielder ignites the Milwaukee Brewers offense with elite hitting and sensational speed.
Can Giants Sweep Mets to Win Season Series?
Rookie sensation Matt Wilkinson faces a daunting pitching duel against Nolan McLean as the struggling San Francisco Giants face the New York Mets.
North Carolina: Rabid baby goats at a mobile petting zoo prompts health warning
On Friday, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported confirmed multiple rabies cases in baby goats at a mobile petting zoo located in Iredell County. They were first notified of a potential rabies exposure among four baby goats at Farm Adventures in Harmony, North Carolina on August 27. The goats were most likely exposed to rabies by a skunk that had entered the pen where they were kept in late July. The NC State Laboratory of Public Health confirmed rabies viruses in three of the baby goats on August 28; a fourth goat was not tested but is also assumed to have been infected. Based on information gathered on August 28, it was determined that no other animals on the farm pose a risk of rabies exposure to people. Learn about rabies Anyone who had contact with baby goats from the Farm Adventures mobile petting zoo either at their location in Harmony, North Carolina, or at an off-site event, between July 28 and Aug. 27, 2026, may have been exposed while the animals were infectious. Impacted individuals should contact their local health department to determine whether medications are needed to prevent infection. Individuals are encouraged to call before visiting an emergency department or urgent care clinic to determine if treatment is needed and where it can be accessed. Known potential exposure dates and locations include: July 28: Jurney’s Assisted Living, 1942 Van Haven Drive, Statesville in Iredell County July 30: Private event in Mecklenburg County Aug. 1: Community Connections Back-to-School Bash, Breeden Amphitheater, 333 S. Main St., Lexington in Davidson County Aug. 6: Brookdale Peachtree, 2806 Peachtree Road, Statesville in Iredell County Aug. 8: Private event in Watauga County Aug. 9: Private event in Burke County Aug. 15: Masonic Picnic Grounds, 201 Poplar St., Mocksville in Davie County Aug. 16: Private event in Durham County Aug. 22: Private event in Iredell County Aug. 23: Private event in Durham County Rabies is a deadly disease that can spread from wild animals to pets and people, primarily through a bite, scratch or when infected saliva touches broken skin or mucous membranes. Human rabies infections are extremely rare in the United States. No human cases have been reported in North Carolina since 2011. Rabies is almost always fatal in mammals, including people, unless medications to prevent infections are given before symptoms develop. Symptoms can begin weeks to months after someone is exposed. Early symptoms are flu-like illness including weakness, fever or headache as well as a prickling or itching sensation where someone was bitten or exposed. In 2025, over 4,000 animals were submitted to the NC State Laboratory of Public Health for rabies testing, and of these, approximately 6% tested positive. In North Carolina the disease most often occurs in wild animals especially skunks, raccoons, bats and foxes. Outbreak News Today is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
The Literacy Crisis Reaches Dog-Bear Science
“New analysis of more than 300 bear encounters suggests our canine companions often increase odds of conflict and rarely serve as early warning systems many recreationists assume,” reads a subhead in Mountain Journal. The thing is, that study reaches no such conclusion. But you have to read beyond the abstract to understand that. Mountain Journal is not alone. Let’s look at a brief list of takeaways published elsewhere just to establish that none of them seem to know how to read science. Wes Siler’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Here’s CBC: “A new peer-reviewed study, The Canine Conundrum: Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country?, dug into conflicts similar to what the video depicts, by analyzing 326 reported human-bear conflicts from 1901 to 2023 involving dogs.” “The study found 54 per cent of conflicts were started by dogs. In the encounters researchers included in the study, five people and 56 dogs were killed, and 170 people were injured.” “Lana Ciarniello, an independent researcher who co-authored the study, said researchers found when a person goes hiking with at least one other person, the odds of a negative bear encounter decrease by 50 per cent.” “However, when a dog is involved, the chances of a negative bear encounter increase because ‘a dog really adds a chaotic factor into the mix of recreation,’ said Ciarniello.” Again, the study finds no data supporting that conclusion. “Hiking with your pet dog may make you feel safer in bear country—but a hiker’s recent encounter and a new study prove that the numbers don’t add up,” writes Backpacker, which is now part of Outside. The numbers don’t add up to support this take. There’s plenty more examples, but all are equally dumb, so I’ll stop there. How did so many people get this so wrong? Three reasons: 1) the study is published behind a paywall, with only the abstract freely available. 2) the methodology sets out to create work relevant to a hyper-specific audience, not the public. And 3) the dataset studied is almost absurdly limited and doesn’t bear (get it?!) comparison to wider information. Let’s work through all three. The Problem is Money I understand the irony, since I’m writing about this on a subscription-model newsletter, but information wants to be free. The study is published by The Wildlife Society and costs $16 to access. Reprinting it is specifically prohibited by the terms of use, so I can only share snippets and my conclusions with you here. Having worked as a journalist for 24 years, I can report with some authority that journalists are both lazy and cheap. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that much of the material you’re seeing written about this study is drawn from the freely-available abstract (above) only, and not a deep dive into its methodology or data. And that’s a problem, because abstracts are where researchers are able to break from their numbers and editorialize their opinions about conclusions. So what’s getting reported isn’t based on numbers, it’s based on an opinion designed for a specific audience, not the general public. Hell yeah ladies, kick that bear’s ass. The Methodology is Designed to Support a Predetermined Conclusion One of the biggest issues with the science that everyone likes to cite about bear spray’s efficacy is that no one understands that study was designed for a specific audience, looking for a specific answer. And since that audience is not the public, and our safety was not the question being asked, its conclusion is rendered irrelevant to our needs. Yes, I’m talking about Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska, which was created by Tom Smith and Stephen Herrero, two of the same scientists who put together this dog-bear conflict analysis. In the spray study, the purpose was to present relevant agencies with the information they needed to issue their field workers with bear spray. As such, incidents where people were unable to access the spray or similarly failed to get it deployed in time were excluded from the results, and only incidents they deemed successful were included. Could a ranger roll down their vehicle’s window and scare a bear away from a dumpster by spraying it? Turns out the answer was yes, and that was good enough for the purposes of that study. The sample size of actual bear attacks—the thing you and I would want bear spray to provide a solution to, was too small to draw conclusions from, and didn’t indicate success in that role. Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country? has similar limitations. “Insights provided here are intended to help wildlife managers create effective guidelines regarding the presence of domestic dogs in bear habitat,” is explained clearly by the study’s text. To conduct the study, Smith and Herrero went looking for publicly available reports of dog-bear conflicts: “All incidents included in our analysis involved at least one bear, one dog, and one person who was at immediate risk of injury (e.g., not in a protective structure such as a cabin or vehicle), injured, or killed,” explains the report’s methodology. Why is that a problem? “We recognize that data used in this study are biased in that people generally only report adverse interactions with bears, not benign ones. Consequently, we assume that for the most part, people and their dogs pass through bear country without incident.” As was the problem with the bear spray study, people are drawing conclusions here from a study that was never intended to be relevant to the general public. The Smith-Herrero database famously excludes Alaska’s Defense of Life and Property records, which are elsewhere considered the largest and most authoritative source on human-bear conflict. The Dataset is Absurdly Limited A 2009 study conducted by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife estimates that each year there are at least 43,000 documented complaints of human-bear conflict across North America. Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country? Examined those reports for years ranging from 1901 to 2023, and only managed to find 326 such incidents that met the criteria explained above. Let’s do some quick math, poorly. 43,000 incidents x 122 years = 5,246,000 total incidents of documented human-bear conflict. Smith and Herrero were only able to find 326 incidents that met their criteria for dog+human+bear+risk or occurrence of injury. That means there’s a 0.006 percent chance that the study’s conclusion—that dogs make bear encounters more dangerous—even gets a chance of occurring. And remember, that’s only in documented conflicts. There’s no way to know how many people across North America run into a bear in any given year without any conflict, but it’s probably safe to assume that the total number is well in excess of 43,000. And, dig deeper into the study and you can find further restrictions that skew its conclusions even more. “While the people involved in these incidents did not report the level of training their dogs had received, it is our assumption that most were untrained companion dogs as opposed to well-trained bear dogs, such as Karelians and livestock guardian breeds that have proven to be significant aids in bear country,” the study’s methodology explains. And that’s a problem, because an ongoing study here in Montana is finding that the simple presence of a Kangal like our youngest dog Teddy can reduce visits to private property from grizzly bears by 87.8 percent. In addition to being a badass, Teddy is also a companion animal. And in my admittedly limited sample size of the three dogs currently present in our living room, she’s no more effective than her mutt brothers. Plenty of people own a dog capable of deterring bears, even if they didn’t set out to own a bear dog. The real purpose of this study appears to be a recommendation that leashes are mandated and recreationists pursue training in their deterrent of choice. But that doesn’t make for sensational headlines. Are There Any Real Takeaways Here? Let’s throw some numbers around, just to try and get our hands around what the larger picture might look like for bears and dogs here. The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that 42.6 percent of American households own a dog. The Canadian Animal Health Institute says roughly 35 percent of households in Canuckistan own a dog. In an attempt to create the worst possible result for dogs, let’s run with that 35 percent number. And given that outdoorsy and rural people are more likely to both own a dog, and have bear encounters, let’s just make a giant assumption and apply that number to those 43,000 conflicts documented annually. If 35 percent of 43,000 human-bear encounters involve a dog, then we can assume that at least 15,050 dog-bear conflicts are occurring annually in North America. 15,050 x 122 = 1,836,100. Smith and Herrero were only able to find 326 incidents that met their human, dog, chance or occurrence of injury criteria across 122 years. And only 170 documented human injuries. So, with all the obvious caveats about these numbers in no way describing reality beyond narrow study parameters, what they actually found is that your risk of injury if your dog tangles with a bear is only 0.009 percent. I’ll take those odds next time I’m hiking my dogs in bear country. Top photo: “Superintendent Horace Albright, eating pancakes with bears, at Lake Lodge, Yellowstone National Park.” NPS. A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, plan outdoor adventures, and prepare for real life, and who promises he’s less salty in real life than he sometimes comes across as on the Internet. Wes Siler’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Could Brooks be Crusaders' next Scottish sensation?
BBC Sport NI considers whether Adam Brooks can be Crusaders' next top Scottish striker after his hat-trick against Portadown on Saturday.
Top Weekly Entertainment Picks
Summer may be nearing its end, but you still have plenty of time to check out these sensational celebrations. Dance the night away with Diana Ross, feel the
Hayden Panettiere, actress in ‘Heroes’ and ‘Nashville,’ dies at 36
(CNN) — Actress Hayden Panettiere, known for portraying an indestructible cheerleader in the series “Heroes” and a country music sensation in the show “Nashville,” is dead after being found unresponsive
‘The Magicians Table’ brings immersive magic experience to Playhouse Square
The London sensation transforms Cibréo Privato into a cabaret-style world of close-up magic, live music and audience participation from Aug. 26-Oct. 18.
YouTube sensation Ms. Rachel announces debut album with Mr. Aron, 'I'm So Happy'
YouTube sensation Ms. Rachel and her husband, Aron Accurso, are releasing their debut album, “I'm So Happy,” on Sept. 25. Known for her educational YouTube channel, Ms. Rachel, whose real
Candy business inside Dayton Mall prepares to close after 15 years
Sweet Sensations, located inside the Dayton Mall next to Chick-fil-A, will close in mid-August after 15 years in business.
Big Walk simulates the strange, childlike sensation of being unexpectedly separated from your friends, and the joy and relief of finding your way back
It might be disconcerting to wander out of voice range in Big Walk, but half the fun is working out ways to regain contact.
Double PSG sale to Liverpool is now on, could be incredible business
A double sale from Paris Saint-Germain to Liverpool could well be on. It would be sensational business.It's hardly a secret at this point that Liverpool want to sign Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-G...
The country pop sensation you might not have heard of
(CNN) — “Choosin’ Texas,” Ella Langley’s languid heartbreak anthem about losing her cowboy sweetheart to a girl from Texas, which Rolling Stone has declared the song of the summer, is
The Science Behind the AI Panic Is Shakier Than You Think
A column by Sascha Lobo Is AI making us dumb? So asked DER SPIEGEL on its cover a while ago. After a few weeks of recovery and a therapeutic intervention with the help of my AI, I feel able to respond. That’s a bit unfair, of course; the article itself is more nuanced than the loud cover, the image of a schoolkid with dull prompt questions, or the subtitle: “AI is conquering the schools, and educators fear a disaster.” The short answer to “Is AI making us dumb?” is: no. The long answer is more interesting, and even carries a preliminary glimmer of the spectacular. Unfortunately, it requires a detour into the sphere of artificial intelligence, into the mogul-field terrain of technology assessment, the attention economy, and the destructive virus of cultural pessimism. Along with narrowing the scope to AI’s effects on education and work rather than on intelligence. Because the honest version of the question would be: Does AI help us learn and work, or not? Generative AI, which set off the still-ongoing hype with ChatGPT, has only existed in relevant distribution since late 2022, early 2023. For a technology-driven transformation of people and society, that is extremely short. For that reason alone, research is still in its infancy. And technology assessment is not a fast discipline anyway. Prominent voices from Elizabeth Eisenstein to RAND to Tom Wheeler say we still cannot conclusively judge the consequences of the printing press. Its invention is a mere 580 years back, and some scholars would rather not circulate assessments that might have to be retracted in two or three hundred years. We’re Going Through Growing Pains A phenomenon that already caused upheaval in social media research makes serious assessment of AI’s consequences even harder: the “moving target” problem of LLM-ology, as the linguist Sean Trott called it in 2025. AI develops so quickly and so unpredictably that researchers often end up studying snapshots of the past. There are concepts, from morphological analysis to anticipatory governance, for keeping research, planning, and regulation halfway meaningful anyway. But even with those, universally valid statements are rare. DER SPIEGEL - The German View is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe We should therefore treat findings about the interplay between humans and AI as far more procedural and situational. Unfortunately, this challenge comes at the worst possible time. We are going through growing pains: AI’s everyday impact has grown very large very fast, and with it the longing for guidance. Annoyingly, the body of solid knowledge has not exploded along with it. Experts cannot be moved to broad consensus on even banal statements about AI. Sascha Lobo, born in 1975, is an author and strategy consultant focusing on the internet and digital technologies. Together with Jule Lobo, he explores the debates of the day in the podcast “Feel the News – Was Deutschland bewegt” (”What Moves Germany”). Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says software developers are dying out. Bill Gates considers coders one of only three professions that will survive the AI tsunami. Top tech economists find virtually irrefutable arguments both for and against an AI bubble. The same naturally applies to the structurally youth-hostile debate over whether AI is good or bad for young people. The gap between the demand for insight and the supply of solid knowledge creates an orientation vacuum. This vacuum of AI cluelessness is filled, as the attention economy described by Georg Franck in 1998 would have it, with half-knowledge (funnily enough, often AI-generated), marketing, and self-marketing. After all, infinite money is at stake, along with academia’s best current shot at global fame. But this iridescent froth of interpretation operates more by the algorithmic principles of the digital public sphere than by seriously earned insight. That is why dramatized, fear-feeding claims about AI are so promising. It tempts parts of academia into distorted drivel, and parts of the media then sensationalize the published drivel once more. Was the Research Aimed at a Desired Result? How badly this can influence academia and public perception is demonstrated by one of the most-discussed studies on AI’s effects: “Your Brain on ChatGPT.” The MIT study by Nataliya Kosmyna also gets plenty of space in the SPIEGEL cover story. What was measured and interpreted: lower brain activity in people who write with AI assistance, compared to people who only google or write without any tools. As is common with preprints, the study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and it contains substantial weaknesses that experts have sharply criticized. The first round had 54 participants in three groups, the second only 18, who reportedly also came from MIT’s own orbit. There was no preregistration (committing in advance to what you want to find out with which data). In their analysis, Stanković et al. even discovered an opposite effect that the study does not further explain. Some measurement data has not (yet) been published. And the EEG analysis method used is considered too imprecise to support such far-reaching conclusions. The biggest criticism, though, is the suspicion of an activism-driven study. In an interview with Time, lead author Kosmyna said she published the study immediately, rather than after full peer review, because she feared politicians might otherwise decide to put ChatGPT in kindergartens. She considers that absolutely harmful. It is legitimate to hold such a view. It just seems unscientific to approach a study with it, and then to design the setup so that the chance of a fitting desired result remains as high as possible. Ideologies Collide It is not easy to separate genuine AI insights from studies that trivialize and weaken well-founded AI criticism. The same goes for the opposing, AI-enthusiastic narratives, because the pro-AI side works against it with billions in resources. Ideologies collide, fed by egos, PR strategies, moral posturing, and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Doomsday marketing makes the search even harder: AI companies can profit from warnings about the dangers of AI, whether through the notoriety of apocalypse narratives or because, in some target groups, danger translates into power. Some seemingly negative findings are therefore quite welcome in the AI industry. If you try to get at the findings presumably less influenced by interest groups, the picture in education seems relatively clear: AI can improve educational outcomes when the right AI is used the right way, namely pedagogically. Simply dumping an AI chatbot into a classroom, by contrast, accomplishes little. Huge surprise. But something else is also obvious: whether they are allowed to or not, kids use AI for school, which is why the controlled integration of AI tools into education is, in the medium term, entirely without alternative. In the world of work, the landscape of findings is more complex and requires more differentiation. A series of serious studies points to an AI effect that suits neither the alarmists, regulation fetishists, and AI opponents, nor the trillion-dollar corporations with their armada of paid scientists, PR professionals, and ecosystems: working with AI helps the inexperienced (at least for now) considerably more than it helps the pros, in certain fields of work, and provided they know how to use it correctly. Missing Domain Knowledge Among the experienced, the professionals, and the high flyers, by contrast, despite frequent time savings, partially negative effects and new problems are emerging. Take the jagged frontier problem: AI solves task A brilliantly and fails completely at task B, even though both look similar even to professionals. Or the verification-cost problem, in which AI’s greater productivity gets eaten up by the enormous effort of checking its output. Or the illusion of competence, because AI makes new domains seem easily penetrable, until you painfully discover that deep domain knowledge is missing. Taken as a whole, the effects of working with AI do lean positive. But the promise that AI works as a turbocharger for everyone and boosts practically everything simply refuses to materialize. The AI magic the world has been feeling since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022 has so far barely shown up in most companies’ numbers. The consulting firm McKinsey has coined a term for this, the “gen AI paradox,” and believes that work processes and corporate structures would have to be rebuilt quite fundamentally to realize AI’s benefits at scale. Reuters just reported that only 3.3 percent of Microsoft’s customers have subscribed to the AI package Copilot. That may be down to the product; in other areas we continue to see soaring successes and new AI triumphs. But after the first quarter of 2026, disillusionment is the word for all too many AI projects at traditional companies: because the promised revolution of AI agents has so far failed to arrive or been postponed, and because of the leveling effect that many of the studies cited here suggest. Against Inequality The societal effects, on the other hand, appear rather encouraging. Many previous technologies operated on the Matthew principle, named for the Gospel verse about giving to those who already have: they tended to reward the more competent and more privileged. AI, however, seems more often to have an equalizing effect once a threshold of access and education is crossed. Some anecdotal insights point in this direction, for example, how an unemployed man in Leipzig successfully defended himself in court in 2025 against fraud accusations from Germany’s federal employment agency — without a lawyer, armed only with ChatGPT. The AI made mistakes and cited invented court rulings, but in the end the man walked away unpunished. And a key capability of artificial intelligence is its capacity to learn: set up correctly and fed with data, it can keep getting better. It is a question of time, or more precisely of AI innovations and training data, until even free AI chatbots write better legal briefs than law graduates with perfect exam scores. Whether that will make anyone dumb is something the world’s press will surely inform us of in due time. Subscribe Leave a comment
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The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!
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"This is a research field in its infancy, while the general public is being fed with sensational scraps of information."
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The highly anticipated high-fashion sequel has already left the original in the dust with a stupendous opening, and 'Michael' still has legs in week 2.
The creepy feeling in old buildings might have a surprising cause
A hidden force may be quietly shaping how you feel—and you’d never even know it. Infrasound, an ultra-low-frequency vibration below the range of human hearing, is everywhere from traffic to old buildings. In a small experiment, people exposed to it became more irritable, less engaged, and even showed higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol—despite having no idea it was present. The findings suggest our bodies can “sense” these vibrations without conscious awareness, potentially explaining eerie sensations in places like basements or supposedly haunted buildings.
An Instagram DM changed everything for Rachel Reid, Jacob Tierney and 'Heated Rivalry'
Rachel Reid and Jacob Tierney were sensations at BookCon, thanks to the success of “Heated Rivalry.” | Talk 1370
He's the one! Meet Liverpool's next midfield sensation
Liverpool might be on the verge of uncovering their next midfield star - and it will be sensational. With Richard Hughes expected to dip into the market this summer, it’s becoming increasingly clear...
Super Niño 2026: Between science and sensationalism
Amid headlines warning about a possible “super El Niño” in 2026, the scientific community is urging caution.
Super Niño 2026: Between science and sensationalism
Beyond the inherent uncertainty in forecasts, current oceanic and atmospheric conditions are already showing meaningful signals.