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How employers are offsetting soaring medical costs
Employers are raising premiums and deductibles while resisting broader GLP-1 coverage, reflecting ongoing pressure from high healthcare costs.
SpaceX’s Musk Lauds Its Soaring Cloud Business and Possible Tesla Merger
SpaceX put on a bit of a show for shareholders today—and I’m not referring to the sizzle reel of rocket and space videos it showed on its earnings call. No, the big attention grabber was the update from CEO Elon Musk on the progress of SpaceX’s contemplated merger with Tesla and just how ...
United misses estimates, squeezed by soaring jet fuel costs
High fuel costs threaten to overwhelm the benefits for U.S. airlines of higher fares and robust spending by wealthier travelers.
3 tips to manage soaring health costs
Marsh McLennan Senior VP Marybeth Gray shared ideas to keep employees healthy and costs down.
PS6 Price Tag Facing $1,000+ Nightmare as AI Data Centres Send Component Costs Soaring
And it could get worse yet
Wholesale inflation jumped in September by most in four years
US wholesale inflation shot higher in September, soaring to its highest level in more than four years, Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed Thursday.
Recycling e-vapes, smartwatches could reduce Europe's dependence on foreign powers for critical minerals
Sales of fast tech like mini fans and disposable e-vapes, as well as wearable health tech such as heart monitors and smart watches are soaring. They're creating a new e-waste problem but are full of hidden treasure.
The surprising Chicago businesses getting burned by pricey diesel
Chicago's hidden diesel economy is feeling the squeeze as soaring fuel costs eat into profits for tour boat operators, shredding companies and film crews.
Nashville business owner sells building over rising property tax bill, warns others could face the same
Nashville business owner Christian Paro sold a building to pay a soaring property tax bill and warns other businesses could be next.
Iran’s Economy in Deep Recession as Businesses Face Empty Malls and Soaring Costs
A new wave of citizen and business-owner videos circulating on social media highlights severe market stagnation across Iran. Merchan ...
Democrat Hickenlooper takes aim at Iran war in 1st general election ad
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper ties soaring fertilizer and fuel costs to what the Colorado Democrat calls President Donald Trump’s “illegal war” with Iran in the first general election TV ad, released on Tuesday by his campaign. In the 30-second spot, made available first to Colorado Politics, Hickenlooper links costs stemming from of the 31-week-old conflict […]
Stock up/stock down for Kentucky after beating South Carolina
The Kentucky football team got a comeback win over South Carolina this week. Here's whose stock is soaring, and whose isn't afterwards.
Amid Soaring Costs, Health Benefits Brokers Seek New Strategies
Affordability challenges are transforming the health benefits market, requiring brokers, carriers, and employers to make difficult decisions. In 2000,
Mark Cuban offers to help Sherrill fix state health benefits program
Gov. Mikie Sherrill is noncommittal on an offer from billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban to help New Jersey rein in the soaring cost of its troubled
Healey asks Trump administration to speed up review of planned gas expansion in latest sign of shifting energy politics
As Healey hunts for ways to bring down soaring costs and campaigns for reelection in a race defined by the affordability crisis gripping the state, the governor sees an opportunity to appeal to the Trump administration to bring more gas into the state.
Democrats want a blue wave. New Hampshire is Exhibit A for why that may not happen
Five weeks before Election Day, Democratic optimism is soaring. But glaring vulnerabilities threaten to undermine the unstoppable blue wave that Democrats believe is coming. Look no further than New Hampshire, where Democratic leaders are sounding the alarm about political challenges that could jeopardize the party’s ability to win in November.
Debt service and the Pentagon. Private equity and the politics of the US housing market. The return of black lung disease & the Franco-Prussian War in color.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. RALPH BALSON. 1890—1964. Oil and enamel, signed. Source: Gavekal This going to hurt - the two 7s in the US: diesel and mortgage rates Source: Gavekal In the US housing market, costs are soaring and the role of corporate, private equity-backed buyers is high on the mid-term election agenda. HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $60. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe It is striking how, since 2020, big banks have dropped out of the political spotlight in the US. For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Rates of the lung disease pneumoconiosis among working US coal miners have risen to levels not seen in nearly 40 years Source: Bloomberg Chinese Clean Technology Exports For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Ralph Balson (1939) Portrait of Grace Crowley Cole, G. O. & Haseman, S. M., (2023) “‘The Substance of Paint’: Class and Materiality in the Work of Ralph Balson”, Open Library of Humanities 9(2). Ralph Balson (1890–1964) was an English plumber and house painter who emigrated to Australia in 1913 and subsequently became a key member of Sydney’s artistic avant-garde. He is credited with having the first solo exhibition of purely abstract painting in Australia in 1941. Despite his role in developing Australian non-objective painting, Balson remained principally a house painter, working on his art practice at weekends. In 1955 he retired on a state pension and became a full-time artist. Balson’s artistic education and methods were critically shaped by his working-class background. He did not travel abroad until 1960 and was an avid auto-didact. His materials, palette, techniques and compositional strategies were likewise informed by his trade. Balson’s profession as a painter-decorator made him conspicuous within the predominantly middle-class Sydney art scene, though his painting partner Grace Crowley considered it an advantage in their pursuit of constructive painting. This paper explores the impact of Balson’s trade on his trajectory towards pure abstraction. While his art was at odds with the predominantly figurative mode of class-conscious art in Australian Modernism, we argue that it is embedded in the experience of class through its creative adaptation of labour into aesthetics. Source: OLH Svetlana Alexievich, The Art of Oral History No. 1 Paris Review Issue 257, Fall 2026 Interviewed by Elena Kostyuchenko INTERVIEWER How were you able to go to Chernobyl? Did you need special papers? ALEXIEVICH It was a time of chaos. They let me right into the zone. … More than anything, there was confusion. Adamovich [Ales Adamovich, the Soviet Belarusian writer], I remember, persuaded Gorbachev to send in the scientists, who showed up without even bringing their shaving kits. They were told that there had been an explosion at a nuclear power plant, but for some reason they thought that they’d be there for only a day or two. The first time I went was several months later, and people kept telling me about things they didn’t understand—how the fishermen couldn’t find worms, because they’d burrowed deep into the earth, how the milk wouldn’t curdle at the cheese factories. The honeybees wouldn’t come out of their hives. The evacuations started, I think, in the first month. The old women hid, they wouldn’t leave. I mentioned radiation to one of them and she said, “I’ve seen that radiation, all right! It’s yellow with green in it. I saw puddles of it in my garden, and I told the other women, and we ran and looked, and she had it in her garden, and the other one, too!” God, it was wild, the way the mind made sense of it. There was a story going around about Gorbachev telling the scientists to show him the radiation. “We can’t, it’s invisible.” “But I want to see it!” I also ran into the soldiers who’d been flown in on helicopters from Afghanistan. I asked them, “What are you doing here with your machine guns?” They said, “We’re collecting the radiation, that’s what.” So you had some of them running around with their guns, others out in the village washing off firewood or burying soil in the soil. These were the kinds of things that exploded our worldview. They made you realize that culture was just a chest filled with old manuscripts. There were no books in there that could help me. Our philosophers turned out to be useless when faced with the unprecedented. Derrida, Baudrillard—philosophy fell silent. What was happening? How would we live with it? That’s when I decided it simply needed to be witnessed. Which is what I did. INTERVIEWER I wanted to ask about how you talk to people. … ALEXIEVICH Yes, we sit and we talk—about what interests me and about life in general. About love, about everything in the world. That way, what comes out is three-dimensional. If you cut straight to the part you need, which is what journalists do, it won’t be interesting, and it won’t be the truth, either. Not the whole truth. INTERVIEWER Do people always open up when you ask questions, or can questions get in the way? ALEXIEVICH You have to ask questions, of course. Your job is to scour away the banality and return people to their true selves, to make them face what they rarely tap into. With every new person, you have to find a new way to do it. When you ask an interesting question or you share what happened to you, you help people really think about what they’re saying and not just repeat whatever they’ve picked up from the newspaper. But not everybody is capable of it, not everyone wants to put themselves through that. Either the chemistry starts to kick in or it doesn’t. A person might be wonderful, but you can tell that the conversation just isn’t going to happen. You can try to push it, but it will be a product of your own intellect, rather than of that mysterious connection. Life doesn’t come from the mind. Some people I can call two years after our last conversation, and they’ll say, “Oh, Svetochka! I think of you all the time,” and we’ll start talking again. With others, that won’t happen. That doesn’t mean they’re not extraordinary people, just that you can’t connect with them. They might have some insight, but you don’t have the right antenna to pick up their signal. Source: The Paris Review Colorized Franco-Prussian war … the ruins of Strasbourg with a French photographer and his mobile dark room. Ralph Balson (1961) Matter Painting If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe
Trump administration lowers fuel economy standards, critics say at a significant environmental cost
The new rules were released shortly after President Donald Trump rejected an Iranian proposal to open the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring.
As soaring energy prices crush businesses, France rolls out a new $500 million aid package, including help with commuting and heating costs
Fuel prices that have spiked since the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28 are dealing a hard blow to small businesses across Europe.
Soaring diesel prices are clobbering Trump’s MAGA faithful, exposing rifts
Pain at the pump for rural Republicans is shifting the political map.
Hardwood Hardship: Kentucky's lumber industry looks for relief
Shrinking exports, man-made wood alternatives and soaring diesel fuel costs are taking a toll on the hardwood lumber industry.
At NH winery hit by tariffs, Pappas calls for small business exemptions
Soaring diesel prices, higher costs for imported goods, and fewer visitors from Canada are hitting a winery in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region.
Donald Trump Receives Stark Warning from Businesses After Diesel Export Ban
President Donald Trump is weighing a diesel export ban to calm soaring fuel costs. Still, America’s most influential business lobbies say the idea would backfire badly and leave consumers paying more ...
YouTube is leaning into the micro-drama craze with new features
YouTube rolled out a few features to promote micro-drama watching and shared data showing their consumption is soaring on the platform.
Trump's diesel export dilemma
Soaring fuel costs are increasing pressure on US President Donald Trump to curb diesel exports ahead of November's midterm elections. But what may seem like an easy fix could unleash a chain reaction that ultimately leaves American consumers and the global economy worse off.
Surging diesel prices threaten North Country trucking businesses
With diesel prices inching closer to $7 a gallon, independent truckers say soaring fuel costs are threatening to put them out of business.
Starbucks baristas reel from surges in health insurance costs: ‘I’m considering a second job’
Several workers say they’re opting to go without health coverage due to premium costs soaring this year
‘It's awful’: How tariffs, soaring fuel costs and higher interest rates are squeezing American companies
Tariffs, soaring fuel prices and higher interest rates are squeezing American companies, particularly manufacturers, auto suppliers, retailers and transportation businesses.
Serious collectors unpack how they're investing in Pokémon cards
A new frenzy for Pokémon cards has sent prices soaring. Here's what collectors say they look for when investing in the collectible card game.
Markets digest fed rate hike, oil prices
The 'Barron's Roundtable' panel analyzes the market impact of the Fed's rate hike and soaring diesel prices.
Study links soaring health care spending to higher insurance premiums
Since 2011, health insurance premiums in the United States have increased at twice the rate of inflation. A new Yale study shows that rising health care spending is to blame.
Wanted: Oil tankers at any cost as tensions in the Gulf trigger a global scramble
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and soaring freight rates have intensified competition among countries and shipowners to secure their own tanker fleets. A second-hand vessel can now cost up to 40% more than a newly built one
Moderna, 10x Genomics, Oscar Health, and Novavax Shares Are Soaring, What You Need To Know
A number of stocks jumped in the morning session after Morningstar reported that challenging macroeconomic conditions across broader equity markets drove a rotation into healthcare, lifting the sector index by approximately 7% quarter-to-date to reach a 5% valuation premium.
Moderna, 10x Genomics, Oscar Health, and Novavax Shares Are Soaring, What You Need To Know
What Happened? A number of stocks jumped in the morning session after Morningstar reported that challenging macroeconomic conditions across broader equity ma...
Diesel prices near $6 push timber industry to brink
American Loggers Council Executive Director Scott Dane discusses how soaring diesel prices are impacting the timber industry, raising operating costs to unsustainable levels.
Here is what to do if healthcare costs are eating into your raises
An insurance executive explains how soaring healthcare costs eat into raises, and how workers should discuss alternative options with their company.
Gas Prices Make Substantial Jump
Gas prices in Wilmington took a sharp turn upward last week, soaring over 22 cents to hit an average of $4.15 per gallon.
Bardella’s soaring star hits turbulence
National Rally's rentrée is not going quite to plan
Why the iPhone is about to get more expensive
Soaring RAM costs are driving up prices across the tech industry. It may take years to settle down.
The U.S. isn’t alone in racking up big debt
Climbing borrowing costs have become a headache for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. But the United States is not the only country grappling with the potentially destabilizing consequences of soaring government debt.
The GLP-1 Squeeze: How Soaring Healthcare Costs Are Forcing Employers to Act
New survey results from the consultancy firm Marsh released last week show that employers expect per-employee health benefit costs to increase 8.2% on average in 2027—which would be the highest jump since 2003.
How soaring diesel prices squeeze American farmers
High fuel and fertilizer costs are a result of the Iran war.
NBC CT Investigates: Why did a century old business shut down?
A Connecticut manufacturing company that has operated for more than a century has closed its doors, with its longtime owner citing soaring business expenses and tariffs as key reasons for the decision. Leed-Himmel Industries, a custom aluminum manufacturing company based in Hamden, has been winding down operations after decades of serving customers. The closure did not come as a surprise…
As Health Insurers Gain Handle On Costs, Stocks Are Soaring Again
Following a parade of health insurance company earnings reports this summer, stocks are rising and costs appear to be under control — for now.
Another major Android phone maker caves to soaring RAM costs with price hikes
Xiaomi has announced that it will start hiking smartphone prices across various models and configurations starting September.
Expectations soaring high for Lane Kiffin’s first season at LSU
It could be a big year for Lane Kiffin and LSU, especially if the program can get through the Ole Miss game.
How equestrian sport is adapting to extreme weather: cool-down areas, fans and ice bag
Soaring temperatures has made keeping horses safe in extreme heat a top priority for both riders and equestrian event organizers.
States pour taxpayer dollars into college sports as athlete pay, soaring costs squeeze budgets
A growing number of states are providing tax dollars to university athletics.
States pour taxpayer dollars into college sports as athlete pay, soaring costs squeeze budgets
A growing number of states are providing tax dollars to university athletics.
States pour taxpayer dollars into college sports as athlete pay, soaring costs squeeze budgets
A growing number of states are providing tax dollars to university athletics. The move comes as major college sports programs now are paying millions of dollars to athletes. The financial battle for the best athletes has strained many athletic departments, which are now running deficits. North Ca...
States pour taxpayer dollars into college sports as athlete pay, soaring costs squeeze budgets
A growing number of states are providing tax dollars to university athletics.
How to fix U.S. healthcare? ‘Radical action,’ says John McDonough.
Chan School expert links soaring costs to broader policy shifts in ‘America’s Wrong Turn’
Astronomy and space sciences are soaring right now with kids. Keeping them engaged is much harder.
Science, pop-culture are converging at a crucial time for STEM recruitment. But some methods work better than others.
‘Broadway Comes to Stonington’ for two nights
Four Broadway entertainers will bring their soaring voices to the Stonington Opera House stage for a pair of performances of “Broadway Comes to Stonington.”
iPhone 18 Pro Costing Apple 38% More to Make, TrendForce Estimates
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro will cost nearly 40 percent more to build than its predecessor because of soaring memory prices, according to new data analyzed TrendForce. The research firm's latest smartphone analysis puts the bill of materials for the 256GB iPhone 18 Pro roughly 38 percent above the equivalent iPhone 17 Pro, and says higher retail prices will be unavoidable as a result.
Powerball jackpot soars to $856 million, next drawing Saturday night
Over a million tickets were sold as hopeful players tried their luck, but no one scored in Wednesday’s Powerball jackpot, sending the prize soaring to an estimated $856 million.
BP profits more than double as Iran war sends oil prices soaring
Energy company’s $5.73bn quarterly profits come after Shell posted second highest quarterly earnings on record
Oil profits spike as Middle East war fuels energy prices and Trump blasts soaring earnings
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
Marinelli Brothers Circus returns to Victorville in August
Marinelli Brothers Circus returns to Victorville in August with jaw-dropping stunts, soaring aerialists, magic acts, and world-class performers.
Trump frequently announces he's halting strikes in Iran. But they keep happening
The abrupt shifts have been a defining feature of the five-month conflict that has sent prices of oil and basic goods soaring — and the announcements to date have been upended by renewed attacks days or even hours afterward.
Healthcare costs have more than doubled for many farmers this year, on top of soaring expenses
When Congress allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to lapse, healthcare premiums spiked for millions of Americans — especially self-employed farmers and ranchers. That added cost is multiplying the stress on their already stretched balance sheets.
Amazon CEO: AWS could be a ‘trillion-dollar’ business
Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy explained on the company's earnings call that while the company expects to spend approximately '$220 billion in cash capex in 2026' to meet soaring demand, he believes AWS could "very possibly be a trillion-dollar annual revenue business for us in time.'
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
Healthcare costs have more than doubled for many farmers this year, on top of soaring expenses
When Congress allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to lapse, healthcare premiums spiked for millions of Americans — especially self-employed farmers and ranchers. That added cost is multiplying the stress on their already stretched balance sheets.
The politics of the last barrel
As conflict in the Middle East sends shockwaves through global energy markets, governments are rushing to deploy strategic oil reserves to prevent economic turmoil, soaring inflation and supply collapse. Emergency stockpiles have become the world’s last line of defence against a new era of energy insecurity. John Muchira reports
Rhode Island energy costs are soaring. So are political tensions.
Governor Dan McKee directs $28M to offset winter electric rate hikes while taking aim at lawmakers, environmentalists who opposed his broader relief package.
Alphabet's cash burn raises alarm for Big Tech as AI spending climbs
Alphabet's first cash burn on record has jolted investors awaiting more Big Tech results next week as soaring AI spending strains one of the world's most profitable companies, and the pain is only expected to increase.
Summer safety: Heat and your heart health
In eastern North Carolina, soaring temperatures and humidity put residents at risk of heat-related illnesses, especially for people with a heart condition.
AMC Entertainment (AMC) Stock Trades Up, Here Is Why
Shares of theater company AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) jumped 17.3% in the morning session after the company reported impressive Q2 2026 earnings results with revenue and Adjusted EBITDA crushing expectations.The cinema chain delivered a blowout second quarter, posting total revenues of $1.60 billion—representing 14.2% year-over-year growth and easily surpassing analyst estimates of $1.47 billion. Profitability metrics were particularly strong, with Adjusted EBITDA soaring to $321.4 million comp
Is Big Tech spending more just to stand still in the AI race?
Big Tech's AI spending is soaring, but higher capex may reflect inflation as much as expansion this earnings season.
The science of wildfire smoke: How it traveled hundreds of miles and dimmed Northeast Ohio’s sun
Smoke from fires hundreds of miles away rode prevailing winds into Northeast Ohio, where it descended to ground level, blotted out the sun and sent fine-particle pollution soaring. Here’s how it reached the region.
IBM shares plunge as AI spending boom disrupts business
Shares in IBM plunged 24 percent on Tuesday after the US tech giant released disappointing preliminary second-quarter results, blaming a shift in spending by customers due to expected higher prices for memory chips and other AI-related infrastructure.A global rush by tech companies to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure has sent demand for servers, memory chips and storage soaring, driving up prices and creating supply shortages across the industry.
The Quintessential Trump-era Politician
In 2020, I wrote an article about collaboration and collaborators. The title was History Will Judge the Complicit, and it started with the story of two famous East Germans, Markus Wolf and Wolfgang Leonhard, who both landed in East Berlin just after the end of the war. Although they came from very similar backgrounds, the former stuck with the regime, eventually becoming its spy boss; the latter, horrified by the brutal reality of Soviet-style communism, escaped. By way of juxtaposition, I also wrote about Lyndsey Graham and Mitt Romney. These two men also made very different decisions when confronted by Donald Trump’s assault on the ideals that they had both grown up believing: A glance at their biographies would not have led many to predict what happened next. On paper, Graham would have seemed, in 2016, like the man with deeper ties to the military, to the rule of law, and to an old-fashioned idea of American patriotism and American responsibility in the world. Romney, by contrast, with his shifts between the center and the right, with his multiple careers in business and politics, would have seemed less deeply attached to those same old-fashioned patriotic ideals. Most of us register soldiers as loyal patriots, and management consultants as self-interested. We assume people from small towns in South Carolina are more likely to resist political pressure than people who have lived in many places. Intuitively, we think that loyalty to a particular place implies loyalty to a set of values. But in this case the clichés were wrong. It was Graham who made excuses for Trump’s abuse of power. It was Graham—a JAG Corps lawyer—who downplayed the evidence that the president had attempted to manipulate foreign courts and blackmail a foreign leader into launching a phony investigation into a political rival. It was Graham who abandoned his own stated support for bipartisanship and instead pushed for a hyperpartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. It was Graham who played golf with Trump, who made excuses for him on television, who supported the president even as he slowly destroyed the American alliances—with Europeans, with the Kurds—that Graham had defended all his life. By contrast, it was Romney who, in February, became the only Republican senator to break ranks with his colleagues, voting to impeach the president. “Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office,” he said, is “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.” In the wake of Graham’s unexpected death on Saturday, I wrote about him again. He was, in many ways, the quintessential politician of Trump’s Washington, a man who shifted 180 degrees. Graham had been a fervent American patriot, proud reserve officer and military lawyer; he became one of the most important defenders of a president who believes soldiers are “suckers and losers” and shows no respect for law of any kind. As his politics changed, his language grew coarser and his behavior grew worse: He urged Israel to “level the place” in Gaza, and insulted the Danish prime minister in Munich, prompting a colleague, Senator Elissa Slotkin, to issue an apology. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which you can read in The Atlantic (gift link here) Like his close friend John McCain, Graham believed that America should stand at the center of a broad democratic alliance. The few times I met him were in that context, at the Munich Security Conference or at other European-American gatherings, which he once attended with great regularity. He also took seriously the practice of American democracy at home. In a 2014 conversation with The Atlantic, he described himself as a pragmatic politician who eschewed populist slogans. “I know Washington is broken, but what’s broken about it is everybody yelling and nobody trying to fix it,” he said. “I’m trying.” When Donald Trump first appeared in U.S. politics, Graham recognized him immediately for what he was: the spokesman for an alien ideology, one radically different from the idealistic patriotism that Graham had practiced and preached since childhood. Trump privately mocked the military that Graham loved as nothing but “suckers and losers.” He put falsehoods, cynicism, and personal greed at the center of his politics, while expressing disdain for transparency, accountability, and democracy itself. In 2015, Graham described Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who should “go to hell.” Also as a “nutjob.” When Trump won, Graham understood, as did so many others, that he would have to make some important choices. For a while, he went silent. In the spring of 2016, I saw him at one of those conferences in Europe. He seemed too depressed to speak. But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. As I wrote in 2020, it’s very hard to look in to anyone’s heart and to understand their motivations from the outside. But it does seem that Graham had a deep need to be relevant, to be in the game, to be a player, at any cost. And that, rather than any particular achievement, is what he will be remembered for. Continuing to monitor conflicts of interest, ostentatious emoluments, outright corruption and policy changes that will facilitate outright corruption. (Read my original article, Kleptocracy Inc and check out the SNF Agora Institute chart) June 27 Trump diverted funds from more than 900 projects nationwide—including safety upgrades at national parks—to finance beautification projects around Washington, including $700,000 used to fix a White House walkway. June 28 After a years-long Department of Justice investigation into Abbott Laboratories over its management of a baby formula facility where potentially deadly bacteria turned up enough evidence to criminally charge the firm, top department officials instead opted for a financial penalty—illustrating the department’s move away from strict corporate enforcement under the Trump administration. June 29 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stacked the Defense Policy Board—which is charged with providing independent national security recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense—with Trump allies, including tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, who has invested in defense contractors like OpenAI and SpaceX, after purging the panel last year. Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in Axon—which makes about 90% of US tasers—two weeks before ICE solicited bids for a $220 million taser contract. The White House unveiled limited-edition US passports for America’s 250th birthday, featuring a portrait of Trump overlaid on the Declaration of Independence. June 30 Trump made around $1.2 billion from his various crypto companies last year, including more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial and $600 million from sales of his meme coin. Trump is considering issuing 250 pardons to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. These are expected to be largely doled out through the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s informal network of intermediaries. White-collar defense attorneys say they can typically win pardons for clients for $2 million. Last year, Trump administration officials awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million to Clark Construction for the White House ballroom—negotiations in which the president was directly involved. July 1 The Amazon MGM Studios documentary about Melania Trump earned the First Lady more than $10 million. Trump made hundreds of individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million the day before his announcement pausing “Liberation Day” tariffs for 90 days sent the S&P 500 soaring nearly 10%—one of the largest single-day gains ever. Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Doral saw record surges in revenue during Trump’s first year in office, earning $77.5 million and $121.9 million respectively, compared to average annual revenues of $25 million and $75 million during Trump’s first term. Entities across the Persian Gulf paid more than $300 million to Trump’s businesses last year, including $263 million from the sale of half his stake in World Liberty Financial to a firm backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a top UAE royal and brother of the country’s president. Kash Patel failed to properly disclose his stock purchase of a Department of Justice contractor, MicroStrategy, worth up to $250,000 last year, despite laws requiring disclosure within 45 days of the trade. July 2 Trump has been directing administration officials to steer more government contracts—so far worth more than $2.4 billion—to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin aerospace firm, after Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, donated to the White House ballroom project, and reached a $40 million deal to license a Melania Trump documentary. Alongside the billions he made from cryptocurrency last year, Trump earned millions of dollars from real estate licensing fees, including $21 million from organizations in the UAE and $9.2 million in Saudi Arabia, along with smaller sums from merchandise sales, including $4.7 million from Trump Watches and $35,920 from 45 Guitar, a guitar brand endorsed by the president. House Democrats accused consultants tied to the Trump administration of financial fraud, alleging they gave prospective donors to America250—the bipartisan committee created by Congress to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial—the banking and routing numbers for Freedom 250, the White House’s fund for events like the UFC cage fight. Democrats also allege that Freedom 250’s CEO traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos to solicit donations from foreign government officials and business leaders. The Trump administration’s proposed rollback of gun regulations would lift the prohibition on mailing handguns to individuals, a significant win for GrabAGun—the direct-to-consumer firearm retailer on whose board Donald Trump Jr. sits and in which he holds a 1.1% ownership stake. GrabAGun currently must rely on a middleman to transfer firearms to customers. Trump’s financial disclosure revealed that he made more than 21,000 securities trades during his first year back in office, growing his investment account to at least $858 million across stakes in around 1,600 companies, compared to the 13 total trades Joe Biden made during his entire presidency. July 4 Nearly 1 million people who bought the president’s meme coin—Trump Coin—collectively lost $3.8 billion on the token, while he walked away with $636 million. July 6 Shares of Dell closed up 4.4% after Trump recommended people buy the firm’s computers during a speech announcing the launch of Trump investment accounts for children, boosting the more than $1 million worth of shares the president owns in the company. July 9 Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh named crypto investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen to a task force aimed at modernizing the Federal Reserve, including rethinking its approach to inflation—a key factor keeping interest rates elevated. Palm Beach International Airport has officially changed its name to Trump International Airport—a move that will require Florida to pay royalties to the president’s family for licensing his name. I was there a few months ago, during a trip to Barcelona. The sculptures were a revelation, I’d never seen so many together before. Each one has its own personality. Enjoy the good weather, if you are lucky enough to have it. History Will Judge the Complicit The Quintessential Politician Autocracy Inc Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
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