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Matches To Make After UFC 330
UFC 330 went down last night (Sat., Aug. 15, 2026) inside Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, Pa., which saw Islam Makhachev defend his Welterweight title for the first tim ever by defeating Ian Machado Garry via unanimous decision (highlights here). In the co-main event of the evening, Mackenzie Dern defended her women’s Strawweight title — […]
Meet & Greet For County’s Economic Development Administrator Max Khudiakov Draws Few Businesses
Los Alamos Commerce & Development Corporation executive director Lauren McDaniel, far left, chats with Ellyn Felton, Los Alamos County Tourism & Marketing Program Manager, . Anita Barela, C…
These investors and CEOs left California and New York for Dallas
Finance and tech CEOs from California and New York are making their mark on Dallas' business community. Here's why they moved.
Rangers to face Celtic in Premier Sports Cup quarterfinals after Derek McInnes gets off the mark
Rangers were handed a home tie against Old Firm rivals Celtic in the Premier Sports Cup quarterfinal draw after getting their first win under new boss Derek McInnes at the fifth time of asking when they beat St Mirren 5-1 at Ibrox.
Velocity Micro Raptor Z55i (2026) Review: A Low-Key Little Gaming Leviathan
Don’t let Velocity Micro's sensible, workstation-style chassis fool you—the Raptor Z55i delivers raw muscle for serious gamers in understated style, and at a surprisingly aggressive price for the parts. It shines brightest when everything is pushed to the max.
Republicans won the redistricting competition. Don't tell that to this California congressman
President Donald Trump last year told GOP-controlled states to redraw their maps before this year's midterm elections to increase the number of winnable seats for Republicans in order to help the party hold onto the U.S. House.
Canadian business braced for 50% US tariffs
US-Canada trade talks go down to the wire, plus Japanese growth figures and a UK inflation update
San Antonio study sheds new light on dementia in Hispanics
UT Health San Antonio researchers found that a rare type of dementia that affects younger people is more common among Hispanics than was previously realized.
Kaia Gerber details childhood exorcism mom Cindy Crawford had performed on her
‘The Shards’ actress Kaia Gerber revealed that her mother, supermodel Cindy Crawford, had an exorcism performed on her when she was a child.
Cherry Bowl Drive-In to host free Faith and Family Night
There is no charge for admission or any of the evening’s activities.
Bay Area Eataly restaurant closed after visit from health inspector
A restaurant inside the Silicon Valley Eataly has been shut down by health inspectors.
Review | Sprawling ‘The Winter’s Tale’ still casts a spell
A review says Public Theater’s new Shakespeare in the Park production of “The Winter’s Tale” is almost as sprawling as the play itself.
Which Nvidia GPU Is Equivalent To The PlayStation 5?
Sony's video game console most closely matches an Nvidia RTX 3070, the equivalent of a mid-range card. But there's more to it than raw specs.
Watch Inside the Business of Ultra Luxury Travel
Luxury Travel and Event Expert Olivia Ferney sits down with Lisa Mateo, Joe Mathieu and Carol Massar on Bloomberg This Weekend and shares how she has built a business catering to ultrawealthy clients whose requests can range from six-figure vacations to elaborate celebrations, while creating a social media following of more than 1 million.
Oakland Catholic school navigates thorny politics of Pride flag
As students return to class, an Oakland Catholic high school has come up with a compromise on how to navigate the thorny politics of the Pride flag.
Banana Ball Pairs Entertainment with Baseball in Front of Sold Out Frawley Stadium
The Texas Tailgaters and Loco Beach Coconuts of the Banana Ball Championship League played the first ever Banana Ball game in Delaware in front of a sold out crowd Thursday, August 13.
Mackenzie Dern Defends Women’s Strawweight Title at UFC 330
UFC women’s strawweight champion Mackenzie Dern defended her title with a unanimous decision win over Gillian Robertson at UFC 330. Making her first title defense since winning 115 lbs gold last fall, Dern defeated Robertson via UD with all three judges scoring the bout in her favor. Mackenzie Dern Defeats Gillian Robertson In the first […] The post Mackenzie Dern Defends Women’s Strawweight Title at UFC 330 appeared first on HEAVY.
Politics: With no end in sight, Iran war draws mixed opinions from tri-state congresspeople
After Vice President J.D. Vance said on Friday that lowering oil prices has become the new goal for the United States in its ongoing war with Iran, oil prices rose
Can’t Live If Living Is Without You, Nilson!
Angulo’s physical presence may prove a useful attribute, if we draw some cloggers in the Europa League group stages.
Despite health risks, raw milk is having a moment
Unlike the stuff sold in most grocery stores, raw milk isn’t heated to kill harmful pathogens in a process known as pasteurization.
Another Night, Another One-Run Loss: Rays 3, Orioles 4
It’s not often you see the losing team have more base hits, draw more walks, and strike out 10 fewer times than the victor, but that is exactly what happened tonight in a 4-3 Rays defeat. Simply put, the Rays had plenty of chances in this game, but left 12 men on base while going […]
Bruin to Bruin: Internationally renowned health economist, global health reform leader and UCLA Associate of the Chancellor Dr. Felicia Marie Knaul
Listen to health economist and global health leader Dr. Felicia Marie Knaul sit down with Editorial Board member and Podcasts Editor Megan Vahdat to discuss her work advancing health equity, shaping health systems around the world and drawing on personal experience to drive meaningful change.
BVB held to a draw by Roma after a blistering first half
Black and Yellow struggled to get a grip on both the opposition and the game in the opening minutes, lost plenty of challenges and lacked organization at the back. A ball deflected unfortunately by Nm...
Ethicists: Clinicians aren’t wrong to expect more from certain patients’ families—but they wouldn’t be right to request it, either
Many nurses have spent untold hours at the bedsides of frail and fading inpatients who, despite having blood relatives in the vicinity, rarely receive visitors. In these scenarios, it’s only human for a healthcare worker to feel some measure of resentment toward the absentee family.
Yankees’ Aaron Judge begins baseball activities as return draws closer
Aaron Judge is making progress toward his highly anticipated Yankees return, taking another key step in his recovery from a broken right rib as New York awaits its superstar’s comeback.
Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon kill 11 people, Health Ministry says
Israel and the Lebanese government announced a “framework agreement” on June 26, laying out a plan for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon, in exchange for the disarmament of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.
6 NBA teams screwed over by the schedule release
The idea of playing a balanced schedule is a rarity in American professional sports. An NFL team that finishes in first place in their division one year draws other first-place teams on the schedule the next year. NHL calendars lean heavily on divisional matchups and regional rivalries. MLB moved to a more balanced schedule in […]
What the Lakers’ $12.5bn sale says about sports ownership
Also in today’s newsletter: what Liverpool’s new shareholders bring and more
Oakland restaurateur 'happy' to close business after 23 years
Earlier this year, the restaurateur called Jack London Square "a ghost town."
Six Flags Entertainment (FUN) Following Wider Losses Is The Fair Value Case Still Intact
Six Flags Entertainment (FUN) has drawn fresh attention after reporting second quarter 2026 results that showed lower revenue and larger net losses compared with the same period a year earlier. See our latest analysis for Six Flags Entertainment. Following the results, Six Flags Entertainment’s share price has moved to $16.68, with a 1-day share price return of 1.46% and a 7-day share price return of 5.90%. However, the 90-day share price return is down 21.76% and the 1-year total shareholder...
💸 Y! Sports Biz: Cross the drawbridge
Why investors covet the undeniable moat around sports.
Review: In ‘Lanterns,’ the superheroes soar through a grounded detective story
For all their vaunted power, superheroes are at the mercy of the people who write them, draw them, play them on the screen, and by extension the producers and executives
Unearthed El-Sayed essay draws explosive Trump-bin Laden parallel: ‘recruited, radicalized and reassured’
Abdul El-Sayed's now-private 2021 blog post argued Trump should be treated like Osama bin Laden, calling the Capitol riot comparable to 9/11.
Classroom Learning Meets Community Impact | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
MHS student Mark Poisler helped expand access to safe drinking water and learned how environmental health complements a career in medicine.
Big Ten Football Team Win Totals and Predictions for 2026
As the 2026 college football season draws near, Athlon Sports’ writers break down the betting landscape and share their picks for the Big Ten.
California's political map is more complicated than red versus blue
New research challenges assumptions about California voters.
Opinion: Include San Antonio FC in sports and entertainment district
A reader says not to forget San Antonio FC. The soccer club should be included in the city’s plans for a sports and entertainment district.
Dan Campbell Provides Clarity on Ennis Rakestraw’s Injury
One of the biggest concerns coming from the Detroit Lions preseason opener was the injury to third-year cornerback Ennis Rakestraw. Rakestraw has a track record of injuries, and it did not look good in the initial review.Rakestraw immediately went to the locker room, and his night was done from there. However, Campbell noted that the […] The post Dan Campbell Provides Clarity on Ennis Rakestraw’s Injury appeared first on HEAVY.
Birmingham businesses happy to see more police patrols following weekend brawl
Birmingham police are increasing patrols and fire inspections downtown ahead of the Woodward Dream Cruise following a weekend brawl.
At FAMU & Crawfordville, Gwen Graham, Byron Donalds preview campaigns
Gwen Graham voted at FAMU to honor FAMU's legacy of activism, while Byron Donalds campaigned in Crawfordville ahead of Florida's governor race.
AP report: Kennedy Center board moves forward with a two-year closure to allow for renovations
The Kennedy Center will move forward with a two-year closure of the sprawling performing arts venue to allow for substantial renovation work, while some outdoor programming may continue.
Entertainment: Irish Fest and State Fair Bookend Busy Weekend
Plus: Center Street Daze will draw crowds to Riverwest.
He once defended Trump in Congress. Now he runs a California wine bar.
Devin Nunes made headlines constantly in the first Trump administration.
Devin Nunes, former Trump confidant, opens Pismo Beach wine bar
Devin Nunes made headlines constantly in the first Trump administration.
Fresno ranks among top cities for entrepreneurs as California business climate draws scrutiny
Fresno ranks sixth nationally for entrepreneurship as California small businesses face new rankings and the failure of an ADA lawsuit reform bill.
AI needs science’s search history
“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.
A fantastic hyperlocal restaurant hides on this Calif. college campus
It might be one of California's most special farm-to-table experiences.
DeSarno: Keep politics out of counterterrorism strategy
The 2026 U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy politicizes national security, abandoning operational clarity and institutional discipline.
In redrawn FL-23, incumbent Rep. Lois Frankel battles political outsider Victoria Doyle
The 78-year-old from West Palm Beach — who has been in elected office since the mid-1980s and in Congress since 2013 — is facing a progressive challenger, Victoria Doyle, 60, a retired intellectual property attorney and local activist.
Delaware Online High School Sports Media Days draw record 103 teams
A record 103 football, field hockey and girls volleyball teams have fun at Delaware Online Fall High School Sports Media Days.
Vast majority of sports parents feel the benefits of youth sports outweigh the drawbacks
Findings from a new Associated Press/Ipsos poll of parents of K-12 children enrolled in organized sports
Single Powerball ticket sold in Illinois wins $1.04 billion jackpot, eighth-largest in US history
Wednesday's Powerball drawing produced a single Illinois winner who matched all six numbers to claim the $1.040 billion jackpot, eighth-largest ever.
Rueben Bain Dominates Bucs’ Joint Practice With Jets
Tampa's prized rookie terrorized the New York Jets, blowing past first-round picks and drawing penalties as the favorite for Defensive Rookie of the Year dominated joint practice.
Rueben Bain Dominates Bucs’ Joint Practice With Jets
Tampa's prized rookie terrorized the New York Jets, blowing past first-round picks and drawing penalties as the favorite for Defensive Rookie of the Year dominated joint practice.
Study finds structural weaknesses in N.Y.'s sprawling ethics system
Those problems, the report says, can leave watchdog agencies vulnerable to the political officials they oversee.
T-Mobile to layoff 113 virtual business sales employees in Irving
“Changing business needs” are leading to the layoffs of 113 employees at T-Mobile’s Irving location, the network announced via a WARN notice.
How Bronin's 'political earthquake' defeated Larson in CT: Dan Haar
The former Hartford mayor is calling for a movement with fresh energy for Democrats to fight back against Trump.
The surprising health benefits – and one drawback
Despite their small size, sesame seeds are remarkably nutrient-dense.
Golden Knights’ Stanley Cup Final Decision Named Among NHL’s Worst
The Vegas Golden Knights came within two victories of another Stanley Cup championship last season.One decision from that run is drawing considerably less praise.Bleacher Report’s Adam Gretz included former coach John Tortorella’s playoff choices on his list of the eight worst decisions from the 2025-26 NHL season, with his handling of the goaltending situation during […] The post Golden Knights’ Stanley Cup Final Decision Named Among NHL’s Worst appeared first on HEAVY.
Knicks championship opener vs LeBron's 76ers draws huge ticket prices
Ticket prices are expected to skyrocket when the world champion New York Knicks open their season against the new-look Philadelphia 76ers.
Alabama Republicans to pick nominee to challenge Democratic Rep. Figures in redrawn district
Six Republicans are competing in a special primary election Tuesday to challenge Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures in November. the district's Black voting age population dropped from 48% to 40%, making it more favorable for Republicans.
Why GameStop’s bold $56-billion play for eBay is suddenly in doubt
(Bloomberg) -- GameStop Corp., led by Chief Executive Officer Ryan Cohen, is considering withdrawing its $56 billion bid for eBay Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized
Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4968-4974: Rock Climbing Towards the Discontinuity
Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Saber's newest game trailer takes a shot at Gearbox's CEO, if you look closely
The first hint that something might be up with the recent debut trailer for Saber Interactive’s Rideshare Stimulator is an unusual choice of words—aside from that second one in the game’s title. “Don’t take your passengers too seriously,” the trailer’s narrator says, as he describes this upcoming game. It a car game about the gig work of driving eccentric people to their destinations, a riff on Crazy Taxi. And then, he says: “When I think I’ve met the randiest of passengers, someone even stranger gets in.” “Randiest”? That suggests “randy,” which usually means having strong sexual desire. Yet none of the oddball backseat occupants featured in the trailer seem particularly lustful. One is an old man who considers his grandson a failure, another shares the theory that birds might control traffic lights, another says he’s banned from an aquarium. A little later, there’s a license plate, shown 63 seconds into the trailer, on the front of an SUV: USB DRV It’s a Texas plate. The symbol between those letters is a cog wheel. If you know, you know. That’s a reference to Texas-based Borderlands game development studio Gearbox Software (their logo features a cog wheel). More specifically, it’s a reference to Gearbox’s CEO Randy Pitchford, who in 2018 found himself explaining the nature of video he’d saved on a USB drive that was found at a Medieval Times restaurant before being returned to the studio: “It was ‘barely legal’ porn. This girl’s handle was ‘Only 18.’” The “girl” in the video had committed a solo sex act that Pitchford, an avid practitioner of magic, found remarkable. “I realized, this is not a sex worker…This is a fucking magician.” Back then, the USB drive was central to competing lawsuits against Gearbox by the studio’s former lawyer and by Gearbox against him. A settlement in late 2019 “exonerated” Pitchford, per the Hollywood Reporter. The USB story has resurfaced at times, now in a trailer from a company that not long ago was corporate brethren with Gearbox. Saber vs. Gearbox The head of Saber told Game File that the reference is payback. “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4,” Saber CEO Matt Karch told me when I asked him about the license plate. “Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.” Having interviewed Karch during a cross-country flight in late 2024, I can confirm that Karch was unimpressed with Pitchford during their time both working in the Embracer group. I’d approached him not out of surprise that there was animosity but that it was manifesting publicly now. Gearbox was founded in 1999, worked on a port of Halo early on, and developed hit series such as the loot-based sci-fi shooter Borderlands before it was purchased by The Embracer Group in early 2021 for $363 million (with a possible earn-out of over $1 billion, if certain targets were hit by 2027). Saber was founded in 2001, worked on a remaster of Halo early on, had a big hit with zombie shooter World War Z and was purchased by Embracer in early 2020 for $150 million, with a potential earn-out of up to $375 million. For a few years, the Embracer group was a voracious acquirer of game studios. Then, as investment dried up, it choked. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber to an investment company controlled by Saber CEO Matt Karch, and it sold Gearbox in an all-stock deal to long-time Borderlands publisher Take Two Interactive. Other studios were shut down. Hundreds of developers were laid off. Gearbox didn’t say much about their Embracer experience, nothing too direct, at least. In the summer 2024, Pitchford told reporter and occasional Game File contributor Nicole Carpenter that Borderlands 4’s story was in some way thematically connected to Gearbox’s experience at Embracer: “There’s this cultural and emotional shift in me, personally, and at the studio. What does it mean to trade some autonomy for organization?” When Borderlands 4 came out, there was something stranger: the matter of “Embracer’s Bluff,” a location in the game featuring an AI-powered toilet and a large trash dump, according to a detailed Kotaku account of the place. Gearbox never commented on it; Take Two never got back to me about it when I asked them last year. By contrast, since Saber exited Embracer, Karch has been one of Embracer’s biggest defenders, casting their management as well-meaning and supportive despite the layoffs and studio closures that resulted from their excessive expansion. Like others, Saber’s Karch saw Embracer’s as a shot. With Rideshare Stimulator’s trailer, he’s returned fire. “It’s amazing to me how fast people forget those who went above and beyond for them,” Karch told Game File. A rep for Gearbox did not comment by press time. Game File is a reader-supported publication. Your backing makes my reporting—including any coverage of trailer-based beefs—possible. Good news! I’m currently running Game File’s first big sale of 2026. You can get a one-year subscription for 23% off. Click here to take advantage of the limited-time offer. And thank you for your support! Item 2: In brief… 🚫 Wal-Mart has laid off the staff of Restart, a games media outlet launched in 2024, Aftermath reports. 🟥 A GTA VI preview is on the way, at last, via an “extended look” that will premiere, unusually, on Netflix at 3pm ET on August 27, then officially go live elsewhere six hours later. Last week, Game File noted that Take Two label Rockstar Games is overdue for showing off GTA VI, based on the timing of the initial hands-off previews of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. During a call with investors, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders for GTA VI were “unprecedented and astonishing,” but added the company can’t predict how many of those pre-orders represent bonus sales vs. sales that otherwise would have been made at launch. During the same call, Zelnick was noticeably bullish on the future of playing games over streaming cloud connections (predicting wider adoption in three or so years). He sounded unbothered by Sony’s plans to stop making discs for new games (he said the business is 90% digital already and predicted that there could still be limited edition physical editions of games “in the same way there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business.”) 👀 Take Two wrote off $43 million in their spring quarter after deciding “not to proceed with further development of an unannounced title in its pipeline from a third-party developer.” 🤔 Some rare age-demographics from a big publisher: Capcom recently told investors that “users in their 20s account for approximately half of the users of both Pragamata and Resident Evil Requiem.” Item 3: The week ahead Tuesday, August 11 Game releases: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (Switch 2; already out for PC, PS5, Xbox) continues the Bethesda strategy of putting Elder Scrolls games on everything; Royalty Free-For-All is a Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose brawling with Oliver Twist in a stage based on the original Little Shop of Horrors movie. Wednesday, August 12 Game release: Pro Jank Footy (PC, console) is an arcade-style Australian Rules Football game with increasingly ridiculous rules, the more you play (I enjoyed the Steam demo) Thursday, August 13 Game release: Super Mario Sunshine (Switch 2, originally released in 2002 on the GameCube) is released for Switch 2’s Nintendo Switch Online service. This game is the black sheep of 3D Mario games. It’s the successor to the breakthrough Super Mario 64 and the rare Mario game built around a single (vacation resort) theme. Mario’s got a water-spraying backpack, a Yoshi pal and a lot of blue coins to collect.
SF politician apologizes over AI attack website, takes chatbot down
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi called the chatbot a "gross misuse" of AI.
Dallas-Fort Worth Business Datebook: CIOs gather and discounted lunch
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PHOTOS : Science Stroll Draws Crowd To Woods Hole
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Ticket prices kept climbing through both stars’ Cincinnati withdrawals.
Israel rejects Trump’s new Gaza peace plan
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Louisiana health officials warn of vibrio case rise
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A man accused of orchestrating Tupac Shakur's 1996 killing is on trial. Here's what to know
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Former Duke Star's Rookie Card Draws Bounty
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CCTV+: Int'l Congress of Basic Science opens in Beijing
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HD 10 candidate has yearslong history with White nationalist secessionist group
Marshall Rawson appeared alongside League leaders at a conference the local Republican Party had publicly repudiated.
West Nile virus found in mosquitoes in West Haven, officials say
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Boys & Girls Clubs of Maui Back-to-School Health Fair draws more than 450 families
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Sinner Joins Alcaraz in Withdrawing From Cincinnati, Clouding US Open
Carlos Alcaraz previously withdrew from Cincinnati with a wrist injury.
Northwood students explore Midland in Go MAD March
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'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' keeps record pace, ‘The Odyssey’ sets new high for Nolan
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Max Miller locked in as Republican nominee after Ohio ballot deadline passes without withdrawal
Ohio Republicans now have no path to replace Max Miller after the ballot deadline passed despite domestic abuse allegations from his ex-wife.
How one Louisiana woman found joy in low-stakes, creative self-portrait fun
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How one Louisiana woman found joy in low-stakes, creative self-portrait fun
Jan Risher says she's never been able to draw well. Lately, though, she's been putting paper over her face and drawing self-portraits blind. It’s weird, it’s fun and she believes she's learning something with every attempt. This week’s column is about the unexpected joy of making something without worrying about whether it’s good.
Texas restaurant claims DoorDash scammer hurt business
The owner alleged multiple strikes every two weeks.
Oak Cliff nonprofit blends science and arts for back-to-school fest
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D-FW business datebook for the week of Aug. 9
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How the Middle East became an issue in East Bay House race
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CCTV+: Int'l Congress of Basic Science opens in Beijing
The 2026 International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS) opened in Beijing on Sunday, drawing more than 1,000 participants, including scientists, researchers and young scholars from both China and abroad.
CCTV+: Int'l Congress of Basic Science opens in Beijing
/PRNewswire/ -- The 2026 International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS) opened in Beijing on Sunday, drawing more than 1,000 participants, including...
CCTV+: Int'l Congress of Basic Science opens in Beijing
The 2026 International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS) opened in Beijing on Sunday, drawing more than 1,000 participants, including scientists, researchers and young scholars from both China and abroad.
Liverpool Starlet Abe On the Mark in U-21 Draw
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Vintage shoppers support local businesses at New Haven Flea
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How Troy Jackson went from Maine logger to Democratic nominee for Senate against Susan Collins
Jackson’s campaign has focused on his ties to Aroostook County, a sprawling, wooded region known as “The County” to Mainers.
The U.S. Is Burning Through Weapons in Iran. Russia and China Are Taking Note.
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