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Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.
There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. I am particularly pleased that it goes out for free to thousands of subscribers around the world. But, writing this newsletter takes a lot of work. If you are enjoying it and would like to support the project, sign up for one of the subscription options here. It is the equivalent of a fancy cup of coffee per month! Subscribe
Delaware Keeps Business Filing Edge as Texas Starts Fast Service
Although the creation of the Texas Express service is an improvement for Texas entities, the Delaware Division of Corporations still provides a superior level of speed, responsiveness, efficiency, and cost, write Francis G.X. Pileggi and Aimee Czachorowski.
Disney Consumer Products Division Moves Under Company's Studios Umbrella
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Disney Moves Consumer Products to Studios
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Yair Rodríguez Headlines Noche UFC for the First Time
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MrBeast Sales Slow, Angel Stock Falls, MUBI and Neon Look for Hits, and Will an NBA Franchise Set a Sales Record?
(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) You probably remember egg prices spiking a few years ago. This led to a lot of debate between the pro-market/pro-competition/antitrust/Neo-Brandesian crowd and the center/center-right/center-left/abundance/libertarian crowd over the cause, whether it was the avian flu outbreak or whether industry consolidation led to price fixing, using avian flu as a convenient cover. Basel Musharbash wrote a whole investigation at BIG looking at it. Well, two years later, we have our answer: it was price fixing. The Justice Department found proof, via emails, of price fixing. Indeed, just the threat of an investigation brought prices down two years ago: I bring this up because at least half a dozen of my favorite political writers and pundits, who were skeptical about price fixing at the time, haven’t written any mea culpas on this issue. It’s really dispiriting and makes it much, much harder to trust their work on other issues. If you take a hard stand on an issue, then you get it wrong, you need to explain how and why you got it wrong. Or update your priors. This is how epistemological bubbles are formed! All of which is to say, it’s time for another installment of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. Last issue, I mostly focused on the “wrong” side of the equation, so today’s is a bit more balanced, but with one big mea culpa (though I still stand by my original concerns). Let’s dive right in! Subscribe CORRECTION: UFC Didn’t Release Subscriber Data (But Seems to Have Bragged About It Internally) In my analysis of the viewership of UFC Freedom 250, I wrote... “Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers.” Well, that datecdote did not come from a PR rep, but from great reporting from James Faris at Business Insider. The actual quote was this: “Paramount’s flagship streaming service generated about a million new subscribers on the day of its first-ever UFC event, Paramount product chief Dane Glasgow told employees in a town hall on Tuesday morning, three staffers who attended the meeting told Business Insider.“ This wasn’t the biggest goof in the world; even Faris emphasized to me that this is more a “clarification” than a correction. Still, it sounds like, internally, the folks at Paramount were very happy about this result—and I’m guessing they were happy with this news getting out—even though the gains didn’t last through the quarter, dropping to 700K adds. RIGHT: MrBeast’s Struggles Continue... I’m very skeptical about MrBeast’s burgeoning media “empire” and, in particular, its $5 billion valuation, as I wrote earlier this year and last year. Sure enough, according to Business Insider, regarding its “booming” consumer products division_:_ “US sales volume grew 13% year-over-year in 2025, following a 33% leap the previous year, according to a presentation deck dated May 2026....A February 2025 investor deck viewed by Business Insider showed Feastables’ net revenue more than doubled in 2024 from 2023, to $215 million, and was forecast to grow 74% in 2025, to $375 million.” [Emphasis mine.] If you told investors that you projected 74% growth but delivered 13%,1 that’s not ideal. But it’s not just MrBeast. Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime had sales drop in half for their energy drinks. It’s one thing to build a successful entertainment company and an entirely different thing to succeed in the heavily-consolidated-but-also-very-competitive consumer packaged goods space! CPGs are dominated by a few firms with very wide moats compared to YouTube, which has few barriers to entry. These businesses require different skill sets and have completely different business environments. WRONG: Does the NBA Have an $8 Billion Bidder? Almost as soon as I published my article about the NBA’s finances, casting skepticism on NBA expansion, I saw this Front Office Sports headline: One group “claims to have already raised $8 billion” for the Vegas expansion team. I mean, wow. That’s just $2 billion less than what the Los Angeles Lakers were valued at when they were sold just last year. And they’re arguably the most popular team in the NBA. (Side note: the new owner is now under an investigation for fraud in how he went about financing the Lakers and the Dodgers purchases.) So much for the “dried up” language I used in that article. (This is why I usually stick to my “Entertainment Nuance Guy” tone in articles...) I went off old information—from April, when I read/heard about the NBA downplaying expansion efforts—instead of doing a quick double-check for new news. That said...if you read the article, the market for Seattle is “slow”, with just one reported bidder. So I wasn’t entirely off. This goof has annoyed me since I first published it, mainly because it undercut that article’s real point, which I stand by: NBA franchises are really overvalued right now. Now, I get why NBA teams are overvalued. When it comes to owning sports teams, it’s basically never wrong to assume that some rich person somewhere will care more about owning a team (or just being part of a group since they’re so expensive) than the actual financials. There are only so many teams to own, and opportunities to buy in preferred markets don’t come along very often. This explains why the teams sell for such high multiples (usually above a 10 to 12.5 revenue multiple, which is very high). You only need one person to overpay! Beyond the ultra-wealthy luxury good explanation, I worry NBA teams are becoming speculative assets. More and more private equity investors are buying into NBA teams. But the value, in owning a team, comes from selling it later, not any meaningful relationship to revenue or profit growth. In other words, the newer NBA owners are increasingly expecting someone later to buy their inflated asset. That’s not sound economics; that’s the “greater fool” theory at work.2 At some point, actually making money has to matter. Especially since revenue growth is now below the growth of the stock market. (And this matters because the NBA doesn’t have easy levers to pull to drastically lower their costs—half of their revenue has to go to players and then you actually have to run a team, including coaching, training, travel, media expenses, and more—or raise revenues aside from one-off expansions in America and overseas.) I just don’t see how investors make their money back buying NBA teams, except for selling at a higher price later on down the line. But if revenue/profit growth continues to slow, at some point, someone will be left holding the bag. RIGHT: Baseball and Basketball are about equally popular. Related to the above, I wanted to cite two quick pieces of evidence for one of my other theories: that the NBA and MLB are about as popular as each other, but the NBA gets much, much better media coverage. One YouGov survey has that fans prefer basketball to baseball by 52% to 48%, which I’m guessing is within the margin of error for that poll. That’s virtually even, meaning they’re about the same popularity. Over on NBC, a recent Red Sox-Yankees game averaged 4 million viewers, higher than Sunday Night Basketball’s average of 3.4 million on the same network. A Yankees-Dodgers game averaged 3.9 million two weeks ago. Not every game averages this much, but it shows you that baseball isn’t far off from basketball, depending on the matchup. Altogether, the NBA is just slightly more popular than baseball, but NBC is paying MLB a fraction of what they pay the NBA, a point I’ve made before. RIGHT: Angel, MUBI and Neon Updates... I’ve long been skeptical about many of Hollywood’s buzziest startups/smaller indie studios. It’s not that they don’t make great movies—films like Anora and Everything Everywhere All at Once are amazing—or that they’re not (rightfully) pushing the majors to make better films, but...they get a ton of hype, and that hype often doesn’t live up to the reality or difficulty in scaling up. Starting with MUBI, well, The Wall Street Journal wrote a feature on MUBI’s struggles last April, best summarized by the subheader “After Sequoia valued Mubi at $1 billion, a left-wing revolt sent the indie film company into a tailspin”. MUBI lost $7.3 million on $200 million in revenue in Q4 2025, but reportedly hit a record 1.7 million subscribers at the end of Q1. As for Neon, Department M purchased a “significant stake” in the company earlier this year. How much is that “stake” worth? According to Deadline, “No financial figures for the Neon-Department M deal were disclosed.” So...that’s not great! If it was a big valuation, we’d hear about. Also, I found this curious: “Both Neon and Department M already have separate partnerships with Qatar. The Qatar Film Committee has a slate deal in place with the former, and a biopic production pact with the latter.” Color me skeptical about much Middle Eastern investment dollars. See: LIV Golf. Finally, as for Angel (formerly Angel Studios), their stock very, very slightly popped last month after Young Washington ($20 million budget) which made $45 million in the US, but their stock is still way down from its opening. Smaller Updates RIGHT: The WGA should focus on antitrust concerns! I’ve been on this for years. Post-WGA/AMTPT deal in 2023, I wrote an article for the Ankler calling on the WGA to focus and organize against industry consolidation. Sure enough, the WGA filed a lawsuit against the Paramount-WBD merger, and people are organizing around this issue now. I wish this energy had coalesced earlier (specifically to lobby Washington much earlier), but better late than never! WRONG: Actually, the chip shortage might be due to market manipulation. In my last “Long Reads for the Long Summer” article, I shared an article about how LLMs are causing memory chip prices to spike, which will make all electronics more expensive. Well, turns out, three RAM manufacturers control 90% of the market, and now a private lawsuit accuses them of price-fixing. So yeah. WRONG/UPDATE: The Odyssey will hold! Two weeks ago, I wrote, “As of this moment, we haven’t had a super-blockbuster, though The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday could all cross the $500 million mark. (At this point, The Odyssey would need a very strong hold to get there.)” Well, it’s safe to say it’s going to have that hold! It only dropped 30% in weekend two and IMAX screenings are sold out all month. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is also off to a great start. RIGHT: People are rushing to get shows out yearly. I’ve long been bullish on yearly, weekly-released shows, and Leslie Goldberg at The Ankler wrote about how many people in town are now listening. WRONG: Mark Carney reverses Canada’s stance on homegrown production. After writing about Canada installing domestic production quotas, Canada has backed off. WRONG: I don’t trust Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s online “views”. When I originally wrote about the latest Spider-Man film’s record-breaking trailer, I thought this was just YouTube views, but after watching this Corridor Crew video and doing more research, well, it’s all social views of the trailer globally. Really? That stat includes TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts views. Basically, I don’t trust it anymore. (This film will probably set record, but I trust the pre-sales data more.) RIGHT: Celebrity Production companies are still struggling. I’ve written about this for years, but the company that I didn’t track was Kevin Hart’s HartBeat, which was valued at $650 million but is struggling now and might just end soon, especially after Kevin Hart pulled his endorsement deals. And Bad Robot is moving to NYC. CORRECTION: SpongeBob is a “second run” title. In my 2025 recap article, I had _SpongeBob SquarePants_labelled as a “library” title, when it is still a “second run” show, with new episodes still coming out on Nickelodeon. CORRECTION: In my last “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong” update, I offered a correction from Doug Creutz and misspelled TD Cowen. Thanks, Grammarly! 1 Though he could have increased prices to make up for the gap, he couldn’t have increased them that much. 2 There’s a theory, which I think that Daryl Morey created and Bill Simmons popularized, that, to be successful building your team, you only need a handful of bad GMs in the league to take advantage of. To be clear, Daryl Morey’s theory was also for signing bad contracts, that you could always get out of bad contracts. Basically, there’s always someone who will make a bad trade. It’s not the same exact thing, but similar enough to the Greater Fool Theory that I really like it.
The Purple-State Problem
Most close readers of this column know that I see our nation’s political divisions as so great as to make the last line in the Pledge of Allegiance, that we are “one nation” and “indivisible,” hardly descriptive.While some states or congressional districts are characterized as red for Republicans or blue for Democrats, purple states or districts are thought of as fair fights where neither party has a distinct advantage. In those purple regions, it’s often thought that to win, a candidate must do well with voters near the ideological center.
Let’s stop overrating politics and take our power back
We are living in a culture that rewards division, ego, and individual gain at any cost. The fallout is everywhere, and we all pay the price.
GPA Global Invests in Entertainment Talent with Launch of Dedicated Packaging and Production Division
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Allied Services partners with businesses to offer employment to disabled
For more than 60 years, Allied Services has collaborated with local businesses to give their clients hands-on workforce experience through its Vocational Services Division’s Work Services Program.
Bruins Could Lose Forward Who Hit Career Highs Last Season
The Boston Bruins managed to return to the Stanley Cup Playoffs earlier this spring, marking a return to the annual tournament for the first time since 2024 after having failed to qualify last spring.However, their stay in the postseason was short, as they were eliminated in the Eastern Conference Quarterfinal by the divisional rival Buffalo […] The post Bruins Could Lose Forward Who Hit Career Highs Last Season appeared first on HEAVY.
Hyper Valuation Services Hires Evans as Managing Director of Business Development
Hyper Valuation Services (HVS), a division of HYPERAMS, hired Adam Evans as managing director of business development. In his new role, Evans will focus on
WA’s 2026 primary election tests Trump’s grip on both parties
Key Washington primaries offer an early look at President Donald Trump's GOP influence, Democratic divisions and the battle for Congress in 2026.
Patriots legend Rob Gronkowski reveals the impact politics has on locker room dynamics
Rob Gronkowski said political awareness grew during his NFL career but insists the New England Patriots locker room always stayed unified to win.
How Spain's migrant crisis created a political storm - whipped up by social media
The Ceuta crossings have shaken Europe politically, exposing divisions over the sensitive issue of migration, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford writes.
Atlante win again in Liga MX, beat Cruz Azul
After many years away from Liga MX, Atlante won again in the top division. Los Potros went up 2-0 on the scoreboard and seemed to have everything under control, but La Máquina pushed forward and scor...
White Sox acquire Luis Castillo in deadline deal
The South Siders aren't waiting around, as they traded for Luis Castillo to gear up for a division title push
Luis Castillo traded to White Sox: Mariners starter to bolster Chicago rotation hanging on to division lead
Reliever Seranthony Dominguez, outfielder Nolan Jones and catcher prospect Boston Smith are headed back to Seattle
Xbox Series Prices Surge up to €200 in Europe as Microsoft Refuses to Bankroll the Troubled Division
Microsoft has raised Xbox Series S|X prices by up to €200 in Europe and £170 in the United Kingdom, making its sales prospect even more dire.
The primary political reform and precondition for all others
In its current state, the American political system has no end of ailments. Far too many factors accelerate polarization and work against moderation and narrowing the differences. Media, and the way so many citizens limit themselves to agreeable, reinforcing sources, only dials up the division. Congress has become performative and is essentially crippled in carrying […]
UFC Belgrade Start Time, Full Fight Card Details
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is headed to Belgrade, Serbia, for the first time ever TODAY (Sat., Aug. 1, 2026), staging UFC Belgrade from inside Belgrade Arena, streaming live on Paramount+. Headlining the event will be a Welterweight fight between Uros Medic vs. Daniel Rodriguez. In the Light Heavyweight co-main event, former division champion, Jan Błachowicz, […]
The DSA has had unprecedented success. It also has serious internal divisions.
Elections vs. revolution, pragmatism vs. purity, pro-AOC vs. anti — a journalist who knows DSA well walks us through them.
Fox News Poll: GOP divisions shape Texas Senate race
Ken Paxton trails James Talarico by 3 points in the Texas Senate race as character concerns and a GOP unity gap reshape the 2026 midterm battle.
A.14 Atmosphere Several Corrections
The Earth Science Division recently released A.14 Atmosphere, soliciting proposals for data analysis and modeling of NASA supported airborne campaign data.
Hamilton County families urged to get school vaccines before classes begin
With the first day of school approaching, the Hamilton County Health and Social Services Division is encouraging parents to schedule their children's required v
Microsoft’s Anthropic Gain Beat an Entire Business Segment
Microsoft's $3.2 billion Anthropic gain topped the operating income of its Windows, Xbox and search division in the latest quarter.
After Hobbes vs Rousseau: Politics must move beyond human nature
Since the great debate between Hobbes and Rousseau, our political theory has been organised around a single question: is human nature essentially good or essentially corrupt? Graham Harman, the philosopher behind object-oriented ontology, argues that this is simply the wrong question to be asking. The real forces governing our collective fate - climate change, artificial intelligence, geography, and pandemics - are non-human; therefore, questions about human nature are not the central ones. Instead, Harman proposes a politics reorganised around our relationship to non-human objects and environments, in which quasi-government institutions incentivise and deter actions with the aim of extending the survival of the human race. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This has become one of the most popular phrases among twenty-first-century intellectuals. Often misattributed to Fredric Jameson, it has been warmly embraced by such influential authors as Slavoj Žižek and the tragically departed Mark Fisher, and has fueled the notion that the major problem with the political Left is that it simply needs to become more speculative and creative. Naturally, this is never a bad idea in any human pursuit. But what if the political distinction between Left, Right, and Center itself results from a failure of imagination? SUGGESTED READING Hobbes vs Rousseau: are we inherently evil? By Robin Douglass This particular division has been with us only since the summer of 1789. During the simmering prelude to the French Revolution, it referred originally to the physical position in the National Assembly of radical figures on one side and loyal monarchists on the other. These positions are linked with two entirely different camps of modern political theory. On the Left we find a series of authors ranging from the moderate (Locke) to the supercharged (Rousseau) to the truly radical (Marx), all of them contending that exploitation of the many by the few justifies revolutionary overthrow of the existing order. On the Right they are countered by the likes of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Schmitt, a group of thinkers convinced that corrupt human nature can be tamed only by force. In the words of the Nazi supporter Schmitt: “One could test all theories of nature and state and political ideas according to their anthropology and classify these as to whether they consciously or unconsciously presuppose [humans] to be by nature evil or by nature good.” This is the division we continue to face today, even in the daily retail politics of Western democracies.___Our species has regularly proven itself capable of both the noblest gestures and the most scathing cruelties, making it hard to define us as essentially either emancipatory or brutal in our aims.___The most refreshing feature of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s 2021 book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was their awareness that the forced choice between Rousseau and Hobbes (as they put it) is no longer sufficient. Our species has regularly proven itself capable of both the noblest gestures and the most scathing cruelties, making it hard to define us as essentially either emancipatory or brutal in our aims. Far from being stationed “beyond good and evil,” we seem to be fully entangled with both. We are not naturally good or evil, Graeber and Wengrow contend, but naturally experimental and imaginative. They rest their case on the archaeological record, which seems to bear witness to numerous episodes of seasonally shifting governments and festivals, which vacillate in the same society (even in the same year) between the egalitarian and the dictatorial. Such praise of political experiment makes a good fit with the generally anarchist position defended by these authors. Yet it is also what I find most disappointing in their position. Although they are right that the forced choice between Hobbes and Rousseau falls short of what our new situation requires, the authors simply replace it with praise for the human being as a political tinkerer and performer. In other words, they give us just another theory of human nature, one that would not have been out of place in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. What other options might we have?___The time is ripe for a retheorization of politics on the basis of something other than human nature… We are not just alienated and limited by objects, but also empowered and unleashed by them___One fresh approach would be to treat politics within a broader framework than human nature, given that the polis does not exist in a vacuum filled exclusively with people. When Bruno Latour went to observe the baboons of Kenya with the San Diego anthropologist Shirley Strum, they jointly concluded that these primates were more socially interdependent than our own species. Each baboon is so reliant on the dynamics of the group that they find themselves locked into constant surveillance of their potentially dangerous peers. The group structure turns out to be inherently volatile. Humans, by contrast, are able to stabilize their societies to a large degree through the mediation of inanimate objects. Although one’s position in society may seem to fluctuate over time, considerable stability is produced through such items as apartment keys, wedding rings, and identification cards, all of them serving to secure us a place distinct from that of our fellows. The Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris has written at length about the crucial role of documents in establishing social relations, making him a hero among notaries in his country. Proper names and license plates cement our position amidst other humans, as do symbolic achievements such as graduation from a top university or distinguished wartime service with its various medals and ribbons. None of this is found among baboons, despite their closeness to us on the evolutionary tree: after all, we did share a common ancestor just 25 to 30 million years ago. SUGGESTED VIEWING The goodness paradox With Richard Wrangham The time is ripe for a retheorization of politics on the basis of something other than human nature, whether understood in the manner of the Left or of the Right. We are not just alienated and limited by objects, but also empowered and unleashed by them. But initially, it is true, we face non-human things primarily in the form of constraints. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to form a human civilization underwater, deep underground, atop Mount Everest, or in outer space. Human dependence on the non-social background takes on subtler form in discussions of political geography, especially unloved on the more idealistic Left. Consider the luckless position of Poland during World War II, sandwiched between Hitler on one side and Stalin on the other. By contrast, note the good fortune of the United States in not having a military peer positioned on any land border. Anglo-American geopolitics, since the writings of the American naval commander Alfred Thayer Mahan and the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder, has been wedded to the notion that one or more liberal offshore naval powers should prevent any authoritarian “heartland” regime from gaining effective control of Eurasia. That remains the case whether the opponent is the impatient Napoleon, the swashbuckling German Kaiser, the villainous Hitler, the murderous Stalin, or the industrial juggernaut Chinese. In their current Foreign Affairs article “Heartland vs. Rimland,” Michael Beckley and Hal Brands analyze the current and coming state of the world on the basis of these same rather durable principles. In recent years a similar outlook has been embraced, in inverted form, by the Putin-loving Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, an icon of the Rightist intellectual underworld. For Dugin, the Anglo-Saxons are an evil force bent on destroying the spiritually superior people of the land: much like Athens in its failed war with Sparta, or Carthage in its eventual collapse against Rome. But the shared notion on both sides is that any strategy that fails to take geography into account is likely to end up as a defeated form of excessive optimism.___When dealing with environmental degradation, then, we are doing business with forces that promise dire effects on our species as a whole.___More striking for us today than geography is the non-human object called climate, which threatens rimland and heartland equally. Even if we contend that humans are one hundred percent responsible for triggering the climate crisis, it remains non-human in the sense of being an independent force beyond our effective control. In a major work published just before his death in 2002, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould noted the tendency of evolutionary theorists to focus too closely on the fate of individuals in view of their successful or failed adaptation to circumstances. With climate change, however, we confront a force that goes well beyond the scope of any individual life. Whereas Richard Dawkins extended evolutionary questions downward from individuals to the sub-individual gene, Gould pushed it upward, speaking of entire species or clades as impacted by environmental change. The asteroid that struck the Yucatán 66 million years ago is only the most famous example of this sort. In the wake of that catastrophe, large animals needing abundant supplies of food were at a fatal disadvantage by contrast with the smaller birds and mammals of the planet. When dealing with environmental degradation, then, we are doing business with forces that promise dire effects on our species as a whole. The effect is to shift our attention away from individual beings towards the survival of the group.In the United States in particular, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked considerable backlash among those who asserted a nearly absolute degree of individual freedom. In California I encountered those who demanded that their businesses be allowed to reopen, that it was enough to cover their mouths but not their noses, or that they should have the right to enter any public area despite refusing vaccination. Yet public health is probably the clearest argument against libertarianism, which often merely asserts the autonomy of individuals against any claims of the commons. In normal times the individual is worth defending; under conditions that threaten the survival of part or all of our species, compulsion may be our only resort, as with perfectly reasonable blackouts and rations in wartime. To rebuild human society under the constraints of climate change will be one of the great challenges of the century to come, as will our improvised grappling with artificial intelligence. Such phenomena pose existential risks for humanity, and leave far less room for tolerance of individual brattiness. Cases are mounting of devastating wildfires caused by arson. Recently it was reported that there is even a website where one can bet on the location of coming wildfires, raising the specter of deliberate blazes set to collect on wagers. The death penalty has steadily lost support in a world where many stress the infinite value of human life. But if we focus instead on entire ecosystems, those who purposely burn the forests may begin to look worse than serial murderers.___The politics of the future may be splintered by disagreement over such topics as how to manage our environing background and how to permit or restrict the entry of new objects into the political sphere.___So far I have spoken of force, authority, and punishment: measures sure to have greater appeal to those who identify with what we know as the Right. But other implications of the post-anthropocentric world are likely to have different backers. If non-human objects are seen as structuring political space, it stands to reason that they can no longer be introduced solely by the pace of technical breakthrough. Fields ranging from cybernetics to energy will demand increased politicization once they are reconceived not just as products of individual human investment, but as renovations of collective political geography. This need not involve world government, with its inherent risk of tyranny, but may involve quasi-governmental enforcers of prestige along the lines of a less corrupt FIFA or International Olympic Committee, punishing deviant states not with violence but with less tangible incentives.Politics will never lose its historic links with conflict and faction. But rather than factions aligned by differing theories of human nature, the politics of the future may be splintered by disagreement over such topics as how to manage our environing background and how to permit or restrict the entry of new objects into the political sphere. This will prove just as incommensurable with the modern Left/Right spectrum as a globe is with a two-dimensional map.
Samsung Electronics posted a record profit on AI chip demand — but its mobile business swung to a loss
The South Korean tech giant's memory chip division hit all-time highs on AI server demand, while elevated component costs pushed its mobile unit into the red
German top two divisions record attendance record of 21.4 million
Germany's Bundesliga and second division sold a record 21,404,258 tickets in the past season for an average of 34,974, the league said on Thursday. The Bundesliga said that top flight ticket sales rose by 9.
Samsung Stock Jumps Over 6% In Seoul as AI Memory Business Delivers Record Profit: 'Supply Constraints' Expected to Continue
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.‘s (OTC:SSNLF) shares rose on Thursday after the chipmaker posted a record second-quarter operating profit as surging artificial intelligence memory demand boosted its semiconductor business, though higher component costs weighed on earnings in its mobile division. Operating Profit Beat Estimates Operating profit climbed to a record 89.5 trillion KRW ($61.93 billion) for the second-quarter, beating the 88.13 trillion KRW ($60.98 billion) analysts’ forecast compiled by
Microsoft Reports $1.7 Billion Drop In Xbox Revenue For The Year
Microsoft's gaming division had a very bad quarter
Abbott Reappoints Ten Judges To Texas Business Court
Governor Greg Abbott reappointed all ten judges of the Texas Business Court Divisions to new two-year terms beginning September 1, 2026.
Did Griswold play politics on Marx complaint?
Victor Marx won the Republican gubernatorial nomination last month by fewer than 2,500 votes. Thirty-nine days earlier, Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s Elections Division found campaign finance complaints against Marx legally sufficient to pursue. Marx, it now alleges, accepted at least $78,000 above Colorado’s donation limits. But it didn’t investigate until weeks after he’d won. […]
Former Lions Defender Lands With NFC North Rival
When the Detroit Lions released veteran safety Jamal Adams near the end of the 2024 season it looked like his career was nearly over. However, Adams not only played the entire 2025 season, but he is also now signing for the 2026 season. The division rival Minnesota Vikings will now be seeing if Adams can […] The post Former Lions Defender Lands With NFC North Rival appeared first on HEAVY.
Bleecker Street’s Crosswalk and LD Entertainment’s HADESTOWN: THE MUSICAL Surpasses HAMILTON as the Number One Opening Weekend for Live Theater Capture of All Time
Bleecker Street’s event cinema division Crosswalk and collaborator LD Entertainment have announced that the live theater capture of Tony Award-winning hit musical Hadestown, titled Hadestown: The Musical, has officially nabbed the number one grossing opening weekend for a live theater capture at the North American box office, surpassing Hamilton. Hadestown: The Musical grossed $10.2M in […]
Where Do The Sabres Atlantic Division Rivals Stand?
Investigating the Roots of Political Polarization
The 2026 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows will conduct research into the causes of division in America
BREAKING: Borchetta Entertainment Group Taps Kevin Spellman & Henley Halem As Co-Vice Presidents
Borchetta Entertainment Group, the full-service management division launched by Scott Borchetta [...]
Kustom Entertainment Extends Cycurion Asset Sale, Gets $250,000 Cash and $600,000 Preferred
Kustom Entertainment entered into an amendment and forbearance/extension to its Asset Purchase Agreement with Cycurion for the sale of its video-solutions division. The amended terms provide an immediate, non-refundable $250,000 cash payment and replace 2,000,000 warrants with $600,000 of 12% Serie…
SpaceX Is $15 Away From A ‘Worthless’ AI Business Says Morgan Stanley
Some analysts at the bank looked at the falling price of the stock and said it implies investors assign to SpaceXAI, the Grok chatbot division.
Panthers Star Named Public Enemy No. 1 For Maple Leafs
The Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers not only play in the heavily competitive Atlantic Division, but they’ve also had two run-ins during the Stanley Cup Playoffs in recent years, both of which went the way of the Panthers.And during each of those series, multiple Panthers players became the bane of Toronto’s existence, including Matthew […] The post Panthers Star Named Public Enemy No. 1 For Maple Leafs appeared first on HEAVY.
Chicago White Sox Release Brother of Braves’ Player Jurickson Profar
The Chicago White Sox currently sit atop the AL Central with a 54-48 record. They lead the Guardians by 1.5 games in the division. An Atlanta Braves player who is a little bit forgotten is Jurickson Profar. Profar signed a three-year, $42 million deal with the Braves a couple of seasons ago, but he is […] The post Chicago White Sox Release Brother of Braves’ Player Jurickson Profar appeared first on HEAVY.
Atlanta Braves Reveal Austin Riley Change Before Orioles Game
The Atlanta Braves picked up a big come-from-behind win against the Baltimore Orioles on Friday evening, and the Braves won 7-6 thanks to a huge 3-run home run by Matt Olson in the 10th inning, which pushed Atlanta’s division lead to 5+ games over the Philadelphia Phillies. On Saturday, the series rolls right along, and […] The post Atlanta Braves Reveal Austin Riley Change Before Orioles Game appeared first on HEAVY.
Takumu Kawamura returns to Japan
Midfielder heading to homeland after two years in SalzburgTakumu Kawamura is returning to his native Japan and will once again play for first-division club Sanfrecce Hiroshima.The 26-year-old Japanese...
Good Sports: Basketball twins draw Division I attention before starting high school
Fraternal twins Iman and Jihan Qamhiyeh have their sights set on playing basketball at the highest level, and their talent is already attracting attention from college programs before they begin high school.
Division of Small Business Launches Office of Small Business Access, Announces Listening Tours in July and August
The Division of Small Business has launched the new Office of Small Business Access. Business owners can now report regulatory, licensing, and permitting challenges at business.delaware.gov/osba.
Google confirms Pixel 11 price increase, reveals ‘dedicated’ effort to make Android more RAM-efficient
Ahead of the Pixel 11 launch, the Google hardware division detailed how it's impacted by the “severe, supplier-driven RAM memory crisis.”
'The game in Nashville has changed:' Why this Realtor is catering to sports and entertainment buyers
"In any industry, the game in Nashville has changed," according to affiliate broker Kortney Wilson. That's why Wilson launched, under The Kortney Wilson Group, her new sports and entertainment division group — a specialized advisory service catering to athletes, entertainers, executives and public figures.
Reckitt to take £175mn hit from sale of Russian hygiene business
Consumer goods group began process to dispose of division more than four years ago
Jamall Emmers Books Fight for UFC Sacramento
Jamall Emmers is back in action. The featherweight fighter returns on August 22 in Sacramento, California. He takes on knockout artist Lerryan Douglas in a 3-round fight in the featherweight division. Multiple sources have confirmed the fight to Heavy.com. Both fighters are currently on a winning streak. Emmers won his last two fights while Douglas […] The post Jamall Emmers Books Fight for UFC Sacramento appeared first on HEAVY.
80 years strong: the WHO Constitution
Eighty years ago this week – in July 1946 – nations emerging from the devastation of the Second World War chose cooperation over division. They signed the Constitution of the WHO, founded on a bold and radical idea: that health is key to peace and security, and that health is a human right.
2026 AFC North Positional Rankings: Cornerback
During this year’s free agency cycle and 2026 NFL draft, all four AFC North teams made significant moves to add talent to their rosters. While more additions are still possible over the next few months, everyone’s core players are mostly set ahead of the 2026 season. How do the different positional groups in the division […]
Secret Service agent on JD Vance's detail investigated for allegedly leaking operational security info
A Secret Service agent on JD Vance's protective division faces an administrative and potential criminal inquiry over compromising operational security.
Protect College Sports Act unlikely to be voted on before summer recess
The bill has drawn support from the NCAA and many Division I conferences, but not the Big Ten and SEC, which are recommending changes.
Lucia S. Tsaoussi, Ph.D.
Dr. Tsaoussi serves as the Program Manager for NASA’s Space Geodesy program
When It Comes to Fusion, Materials Matter
Fusion at high temperatures powers the sun and, if harnessed, could provide a potential source of energy here on Earth. But controlling fusion reactions has other benefits. The process also generates subatomic particles called neutrons that are used in a range of applications spanning medicine, research, and national security. Now, scientists at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that the materials surrounding a fusion reaction can dramatically increase how often it occurs, particularly at low energies where fusion is rare. The study was published July 18 in Nature Communications. Their approach sets up a way to study and engineer nuclear reactions within solid materials, opening a new field of “materials-driven fusion.” Instead of designing materials just to survive the harsh conditions of fusion, researchers might be able to design materials that boost the reaction in specific conditions, similar to the way catalysts speed up chemical processes. “It gives you a new knob to turn that you didn’t have before,” said Arun Persaud, head of the Fusion Science & Ion Beam Technology group in Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division. “If we understand this effect better, it opens the door to engineering new materials that would affect the fusion rate under certain conditions. Someday future progress might enable more compact and efficient neutron generators, which have all kinds of applications, like cargo screening, planetary science, and medical therapy and imaging.” In the experiment, researchers used two different methods to pack deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen atoms that is often used in fusion, into thin foils of palladium and titanium. They then fired a beam of deuterium ions at the foils at different energies and measured how often fusion happened. Then they compared the rates from the different materials and methods with the “bare” fusion reaction (not in a material). The team found that fusion rates depended on how the deuterium was loaded into the metal foils. The biggest effect was at the lowest energies, below 2.5 kiloelectronvolts (keV), where theory predicts fusion rates drop off sharply. Instead, researchers found a surprising plateau: Some samples showed elevated fusion rates roughly a quintillion times higher than bare fusion reactions. (A quintillion is a 1 followed by 18 zeroes.) Researchers are not exactly sure why that’s happening, though they have some ideas and ways to test them. The electrons and defects within the material might partially shield repulsive electrostatic forces between deuterium nuclei, making it easier for them to get close together and fuse. Tuning the electronic structure, defects, and composition of materials could help make nuclear reactions happen more readily. “It comes down to better understanding the mechanism so that we can try to enhance it,” said corresponding author Jeremy Munday, a professor at UC Davis. “We’ve seen that we can increase fusion rates, but what is the limit? Can we bring it to lower temperatures or energies? There’s obviously a lot of interest and excitement about fusion, so if there’s something we can learn about the physics at these lower energy scales, maybe there’s something we can translate to other areas of nuclear science.” The team plans to explore a wider range of materials and continue probing the unexpected fusion plateau at lower energies. Their work establishes a reproducible experimental platform to study how solid materials influence nuclear reactions, creating a new area of research that links fusion science with materials science and chemistry. “The work shows conclusively that the material environment where fusion occurs at low temperatures is an active participant rather than a passive container,” said Cameron Geddes, director of ATAP. “That adds a new dimension to fusion research.” This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Microsoft 2.5: New security business chief Hayete Gallot on the company’s push into the agentic era
Hayete Gallot, who rejoined Microsoft in February to lead its security business, is pushing the company toward "agentic security" — systems that spot threats and act on them without waiting for a human. She's doing it while building a new leadership team in a division where several VPs have exited in recent months.
Isanti County Fair teems with entertainment
Monica Jobert, from Lakeville, and Jessica O’Neill, from Coon Rapids, compete in the “Whiskerina” division of the Blue Ribbon Beard Bonanza held during the Isanti County Fair. Jobert to first
Politics in the Park: Property taxes, data centers and maternal care dominate House candidate forum
CASPER, Wyo. — Divisions emerged Wednesday as eight Republican candidates vying for four Wyoming House seats sparred over how deeply to cut property
ESPN connecting Mariners to Astros' star trade chips is pure escapist entertainment
The Mariners need a quality reliever and right-handed bat, but it's tough to see the Astros being willing to do business with their main divisional rivals.
Police: Search warrant at Greenwood business leads to prostitution arrest
Police said the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division assisted in this investigation.
DIII Management Council approves amendment to guidelines on reinstating student-athletes who commit sports-betting violations
At its meeting this week, the Division III Management Council approved an amendment to the Division III Committee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement sports-betting guidelines. The council’s action would allow for penalty reductions for a student-athlete who commits a sports-betting violation, provided it is the student-athlete’s first violation, the violation does not involve integrity concerns and the student-athlete engages in appropriate clinical evaluation or support.
Governor Healey announces $72 million in health care savings for 2027
Gov. Maura Healey announced today that the Massachusetts Division of Insurance has secured a projected $72 million in health care premium savings for residents and businesses in 2027.
Chicago Bears youth movement faces training camp test
The Chicago Bears are a team on the rise. The Monsters of the Midway put the league on notice in 2025 by winning the NFC North, which is possibly the toughest division in football, winning a Wild Card game against their hated rivals, and pushing the Los Angeles Rams to the absolute brink in the ...
Dynasty Financial Partners's Latest Innovations
Houston-based registered investment advisor Americana Partners has stepped into a new avenue, having established a division catering to wealthy clients in the sports and entertainment industries. The new unit will serve athletes, entertainers, creators, agents, and coaches with support from former athletes, entertainment executives, and financial professionals. The division will offer wealth management services and other offerings, including income diversification, brand protection, intellectual property strategies, tax planning, and investment management. For clients in the entertainment sector, ...
Saint Joseph’s Athletics and Main Line Health Announce New Affiliation
Saint Joseph's Athletics and Main Line Health have announced a landmark affiliation establishing the System as the exclusive medical provider for the Hawks. Along with serving as a title sponsor for the Hawks' Division I programs, Main Line Health will become the first-ever jersey-patch partner in St. Joe's history.
DEA agents conduct operation at West Knoxville business
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Federal drug investigators were spotted at a business in West Knoxville on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the Louisville Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration…
Disney cuts several hundred jobs across entertainment divisions
The Walt Disney Company is eliminating several hundred positions across its entertainment businesses in its ... Read More
Xbox VP Leaves Just 3 Months After Joining Asha Sharma's Team
Jared Palmer had joined Xbox from Microsoft's CoreAI division
2026 NFL Odds: Which Division Loser Can Go Worst To First?
Which last-place division finisher has a chance to reverse course next season? See the odds for if a team can go worst to first.
Americana Partners Launches Sports & Entertainment Division
HOUSTON, July 21, 2026--Houston-based Americana Partners, an independent wealth management firm with over $11.5* billion in total client assets, today announced a new division focused on the sports and entertainment industries, tapping Associate Vice President Ben Davidson to lead the wealth management venture.
Americana Partners Launches Sports & Entertainment Division
HOUSTON, July 21, 2026--Houston-based Americana Partners, an independent wealth management firm with over $11.5* billion in total client assets, today announced a new division focused on the sports and entertainment industries, tapping Associate Vice President Ben Davidson to lead the wealth management venture.
Radiology Partners names new head of clinical services
The country’s largest imaging group, with over 4,000 radiologists on its payroll, is tapping a former Universal Health Services exec to serve as president of its patient care division.
Fan Favorite Takes on TUF Winner at UFC Paris
Nathaniel Wood is back in action on September 5 in Paris, France. The Englishman puts his four-fight winning streak on the line against The Ultimate Fighter season 32 winner Mairon Santos. Both fighters will meet in the featherweight division.Multiple sources have confirmed the booking to Heavy.com. While both Wood and Santos remain unranked in the […] The post Fan Favorite Takes on TUF Winner at UFC Paris appeared first on HEAVY.
WHO marks 25 years of Research4Life, advancing access to scientific knowledge in more than 120 countries
The World Health Organization (WHO) today marks the 25th anniversary of Research4Life, a public-private partnership that provides researchers, educators, health professionals and policy-makers in low- and middle-income countries with affordable or free access to scientific knowledge.
'Entertainment center' with bowling, arcade, restaurant, bar planned for southeast Mahomet
A 17,000-square-foot entertainment center, planned for Tabeling Development's Prairieview Commons subdivision, will include bowling, arcade games, a sports bar and a full-service restaurant.
'Entertainment center' with bowling, arcade, restaurant and bar planned for southeast Mahomet
A 17,000-square-foot entertainment center, planned for lots B and C of Tabeling Development's Prairieview subdivision, will include bowling, arcade games, a sports bar and a full-service restaurant.
Amendment 63: New Opportunity: A.14 Atmosphere
The Atmosphere research program is soliciting proposals for data analysis and modeling of NASA supported airborne campaign data. NASA’s Earth Science Division
NFL fans predict the NFC division winners
NFL fans pick the winners of each division in the NFC
City Council Business Meeting on Tuesday, July 21, 2026, at 9:00 a.m.
The Palm Coast City Council meets regularly to discuss and vote on official City business. These meetings are open to the public, and Palm Coast residents are strongly encouraged to attend. An increase in public engagement helps to build a stronger sense of community, increase valuable discussions, and decrease division.
Kaneka pitches “mitoceuticals” as mechanism-led mitochondrial health supplements
Cellular health is becoming increasingly important as industry and science reveal that health systems are interconnected. The mitochondria are especially central in this understanding, as it addresses healthy aging, healthspan, and lifestage demands. Nutrition Insight speaks with Kaneka Corporation and Kaneka Ubiquinol’s consultant to learn about how nutrition is evolving on an industry and consumer level. “Over the past decade, we’ve seen nutrition evolve from addressing nutrient deficiencies to supporting specific conditions and now toward supporting healthspan — the health and well-being across life stages,” says Tsuyoshi Takakuwa, head of Marketing and Sales Team (APAC), Supplemental Nutrition Business Division at Kaneka Corporation.
Let’s Fight About Art So We Can Talk About Politics
Philosopher Hannah Arendt Saw Cultural Disagreement as a Path to Bridging Deeper Divisions
Pirate Problems: Buccaneers 1st Divisional Matchup is a big One
After surrendering the NFC South crown to Carolina, Todd Bowles and the Buccaneers head to Charlotte seeking revenge and job security against a revamped, high-spending Panthers defense.
Where Do The Sabres Atlantic Division Rivals Stand?
How soccer eclipsed separatist politics in Spain
Their regions were once known for terror and division. Now Basques and Catalans have come to dominate the Spanish squad, while influencing the game all around the world.
'Complete 180': How the DOJ has redefined its civil rights mission and targeted California
California has been the target of more civil rights actions than any other state. The civil rights division is led by California-native Harmeet Dhillon.
Can Buccaneers Top Saints as NFC South Division Kings?
After injuries derailed their dominance, Tampa Bay looks to Baker Mayfield and a new offensive scheme to reclaim divisional glory from surging rivals in a wide-open race.
Canadiens Former 20-Goal Scorer Could Find Home in Central
A former Montreal Canadiens 20-goal scorer might find a new home in the Central Division, despite potential headwinds. The post Canadiens Former 20-Goal Scorer Could Find Home in Central appeared first on HEAVY.
Canucks May Have Trade Partner in Division Rival
The Vancouver Canucks may have found a trade partner for a former 100-point scorer with a division rival this offseason. The post Canucks May Have Trade Partner in Division Rival appeared first on HEAVY.
Nix’s Numbers Stack Up Well Against Rest Of AFC West
Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix does surprisingly well when you compare his numbers to the rest of the division.
Less sleep = less health; Led Zeppelin in the OR; dangers of people-pleasing; plus other stories with Vanderbilt Health sources
Prevention interviewed Beth Malow, MD, Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics in the Vanderbilt Sleep Division, for a story about two randomized trials published in Annals of Internal Medicinethat found decreasing sleep by just 1.5 hours each night was linked with increases in body weight, waist circumference, and sedentary time in adults with elevated cardiometabolic risk. Yahoo Healthalso picked up the story. WTVF News Channel 5 reporter Nikki Hauser interviewed Ashish Shah, MD, Professor and Chair of Cardiac Surgery, for a new video podcast series called “Why Nashville” where she interviews interesting people doing interesting work about why they came to Nashville and how it is going. Among the revelations: his go-to OR music includes Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. Everyday Health interviewed Aaron Brinen, PsyD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, for a story about the TikTok trend that encourages women to speak up about their concerns or they’ll develop an autoimmune disease. Overall, people suggest that suppressing feelings of anger, minimizing your own needs, or people-pleasing raises your risk. Telemundo Nashville broadcast a story on cyclosporiasis that quotes both William Schaffner, MD, professor of Preventive Medicine, and Juan C. Salazar, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Pediatrics and system Pediatrician-in-Chief for Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. Schaffner also spoke to WKRN News 2 about measles and The Cutabout shingles and long distance running. WREG (Memphis) and others picked up the measles story as well. CNN reporter Deidre McPhillips interviewed John Trahanas, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiac Surgery, and Director of Thoracic Aortic Surgery, for a story about aortic dissection in last week’s death of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. The Nashville Post published a story by freelance reporter Leah Hunter on robotic surgery, including a patient story and numerous quotes from Sekhar Padmanabhan, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology.
Walmart names Kinnard to replace departing US COO Shanahan, memo shows
Kieran Shanahan, chief operating officer of Walmart's U.S. operations, is leaving the retailer and will be replaced by the company's international division COO, Kyle Kinnard, an internal memo showed on Friday, amid a major management rejig under CEO John Furner.
Bethesda teases Fallout 5 soon after Xbox’s mass layoffs
Microsoft’s gaming division attempts to share some good news amid the fallout of its large-scale ‘reset.’
Americana Partners expands into sports and entertainment wealth management
The $11.5 billion Houston-based RIA has tapped a JPMorgan alum and former Division I soccer player to lead the buildout of its specialized services.
Helium Comedy Gets Into Original Content With New Division Led By Maureen Taran
EXCLUSIVE: Helium Comedy, one of the United States’ premier independent comedy club operators, is getting into original content with the launch of a new division overseen by Maureen Taran. Conceived a...
Amid political division, Alaska lawmakers close in on final compromise gasline bill
Legislative leaders say they will introduce a final compromise tax bill for the proposed AKLNG gasline on Thursday, which is then scheduled to be taken up for a vote by the full House and Senate.
Democrats’ deepening Israel divisions: From the Politics Desk
Plus, a critical period for Ukraine.
Over 100 Democrats vote to block billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, reflecting growing schism in party
More than 100 Democrats voted to block billions of dollars in military aid to Israel — an ultimately unsuccessful effort that highlighted the growing division in their party on the issue.