Search headlines

Brandon Lowe plays hero for the Pirates with a walk-off single against the Diamondbacks in extra innings

Maybe it was all about the walk-up song. Brandon Lowe changed his tune for Sunday’s game against the Chicago Cubs, and he went 3 for 4 in the win. And...

Jul 27 • 9:54 PM EDT • Sports • post-gazette.com

A single sauna session sends immune cells surging

A single 30-minute sauna session may briefly put the immune system on higher alert. Finnish researchers found that sauna heat, paired with a short cold shower, increased every type of white blood cell circulating in the bloodstream, including key infection fighters such as neutrophils and lymphocytes.

Jul 27 • 8:52 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

$90 Million All-Pro Called Weakest Link for Cowboys

Bleacher Report's Kristopher Knox singled out the Dallas Cowboys cornerbacks as team's "Biggest Weakness" before training camp. The post $90 Million All-Pro Called Weakest Link for Cowboys appeared first on HEAVY.

Jul 27 • 3:42 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Single mom: I pay other parents to make my children's school lunches

I loved making school lunches for my kids, but now that I'm divorced, I don't have the time with my busy career. I turn to other moms for help.

Jul 26 • 7:57 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) Survived One AI Scare in February. This One Might Be Different.

International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)‘s stock dropped 25% on July 14. That’s the worst single day for the stock since records began in 1968, even worse than its previous record drop on October 19, 1987. By the end of the week, IBM’s total value was just under $200 billion. The drop happened because IBM warned […]

Jul 26 • 4:46 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

A single dose reversed autism-like symptoms in adult mice within hours

Even mild inflammation during pregnancy led mouse offspring to develop persistent brain overactivity, sensory sensitivity, repetitive behaviors, and increased seizure risk. Remarkably, one dose of rapamycin improved nearly all of these problems within about two hours. The benefits were temporary, but they suggest that adult brain circuits may remain far more adaptable than previously believed.

Jul 25 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

‘Unsingle’ book breaks down the science of healthy dating

Relationship expert Amy Chan’s new book “Unsingle: How to Date Smarter and Create Love That Lasts” is available nationwide.

Jul 24 • 12:13 PM EDT • Science • wfla.com

Did L.A. businesses get the promised World Cup bump?

World Cup economic impact on L.A., beer sales soar

Jul 24 • 11:37 AM EDT • Business • latimes.com

HOMETOWN ENTERTAINMENT: FloydFest, Vince Gill, Mary Draper Ingles Festival and more happening this weekend

BUSY WEEKEND: Multi-day outdoor music festival is happening now in Floyd, along with the Vince Gill concert in Roanoke and a comedy show in Lynchburg.

Jul 23 • 5:30 PM EDT • Entertainment • wdbj7.com

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.

Jul 23 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • newscenter.lbl.gov

Alvarez and Paredes hit back-to-back homers in Astros' 5-2 win over Marlins

After Jeremy Peña's leadoff single in the eighth, Alvarez hit his major league-leading 34th homer to give Houston a 4-2 lead.

Jul 23 • 9:15 AM EDT • Sports • spectrumlocalnews.com

NASCAR Makes Major Cup Series Practice Change Beginning Next Weekend

NASCAR has announced a major change to Cup Series practice beginning next weekend, replacing the divided-group format with a single 50-minute session.

Jul 22 • 8:12 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Breathalyser can tell if you are burning fat from a single exhale

Nature - The compact device can measure when the body is in ketosis and could help people to manage weight loss.

Jul 22 • 8:00 PM EDT • Technology • nature.com

Splatoon Raiders review – Nintendo’s inky shooter fades to grey

The single-player offshoot of the quirky and colourful multiplayer series is disappointingly run-of-the-mill

Jul 21 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • theguardian.com

Portland council passes downtown entertainment license work-around

The change exempts single-day permits from a rule that limits the number of businesses that can hold entertainment licenses downtown.

Jul 20 • 7:17 PM EDT • Entertainment • pressherald.com

UFC Freedom 250 Fails to Knock Out The Ratings

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) If UFC fans wanted one image to say, “Hey, Paramount+ is crushing it with their UFC rights deal,” I could provide that image. Here it is: (Reminder: this is my creation of the Nielsen Top 30, since Nielsen doesn’t combine the lists or include sports. I take all three lists and combine them. Some streaming TV shows probably have higher ratings than many of the films on this list.) Look at that! UFC Freedom 250 is number one! It topped the Nielsen “Top 30” list for shows and films that made the top ten the week of 15-June. So if you’re a UFC fan or supporter of Paramount+, that’s the good news for you this week. This program topped the ratings charts for one week. Everything else is bad news, or at least a huge caveat to that story, which I’ll explain today in the first part of this week’s Streaming Ratings Report—for the weeks of 8-June and 15-June—which is a double issue since I’ve been writing on a bunch of topics recently. UFC Freedom 250 is one of the biggest streaming events of the year, and super relevant to Paramount+’s strategy, so it merited its own article. Let’s dive in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of June 8th to June 21st 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Check Out My Interview on UFC 250 at MMA Draw After you read this article, if you want even more thoughts on UFC and Paramount-Skydance/Paramount+, I did a written interview with MMA Draw. They asked me to answer some questions about UFC Freedom 250, and I was happy to chat with them. Find it here: [ The MMA Draw Newsletter Did Paramount really overpay for the UFC? What the data tells us so far If you know the history of American television, you also know that combat sports is often a leading indicator of the future… Read more a day ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Nate Wilcox and Zach Arnold ](https://www.themmadraw.com/p/did-paramount-really-overpay-for?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) I never thought I’d need a combat sports newsletter in my life, but the good folks at MMA Draw publish an excellent one on UFC, MMA, pro wrestling, boxing and more, analyzing both the sports themselves and the politics, economics and antitrust issues that impact them. Check the article and their newsletter out! Paramount+ Has Its Best Sporting Event of All Time…But Was It Worth It? Before we look at the UFC Freedom 250 data in particular, let’s talk about what we can’t say. Namely, let’s start with the lack of comparisons. First off, I’d love to put a chart out comparing this fight to past UFC fights on Paramount+…but we don’t have the data. This is the first time we’ve gotten Nielsen data about a Paramount+ UFC fight. As far as I can tell, Paramount provided data for the first fight, but it was a proprietary datecdote (saying it had “an average minute audience” of 5 million “views”) and then, for two fights, we got the linear viewership numbers when they aired on CBS, but no streaming data. Everything else was crickets. We also can’t compare this fight to other fights/combat sports on streaming, in particular the MMA and boxing, because Netflix also didn’t use Nielsen to track those events, opting for TVision and VideoAmp, respectively. (This isn’t Paramount’s fault, but does still suck.) We also can’t compare to UFC’s fights that used to be on ESPN+, since we don’t have any data for that, plus Disney+ didn’t have marquee fights. The comparisons would not be apples-to-apples. Can we compare to past Pay-Per-View fights? Absolutely not. The comparisons would absolutely NOT be apples-to-apples. That didn’t stop Paramount+, though, who bragged that their UFC events have reached drastically more people than past PPV fights. Duh. Sorry, but I gotta make this point again. A basic tenet of economics is that the cheaper something becomes, the more people consume or buy it. That’s Econ 101. (Sometimes pundits call things “Econ 101” that are actually like Econ 210 or even PhD-level economics, but no, this is really like first or second class basic economics.) Yet I still see one analytics firm consistently say that more people watch films on streaming than PVOD proves streaming which means that the streaming window is more valuable than the PVOD window. No, it’s not! Same thing here. Pay-Per-View events back in the day could be really, really, really expensive! So whole groups of people pitched in to buy them. That increased the perceived value of, say, the Mike Tyson fight. Or a UFC numbered event. So yes, the fact that Paramount+ makes numbered UFC fights essentially “free” if you’re already a Paramount+ member means consumption will go up. Obviously. Same for Netflix and their boxing matches. They’re talking about fights that used to cost consumers, in some cases, $50 in 1996…which is over $100 in today’s dollars. Over 1.6 million people paid that to watch the Tyson-Holyfield fight! Again, streaming is essentially “free”. Or $10 to $20, depending on what streamer we’re talking about and what tier you’re on. No wonder more people are “watching”. (Plus, Nielsen’s out-of-home viewing also helps these numbers.) UFC Freedom 250 Did Well…But I Have A Lot of Worries So what can we compare the fights to? Well, the good news is Nielsen put out that the fight averaged 7.0 million viewers for UFC Freedom 250, which is a solid number for a fight. We also know the length, at roughly 4 and a half hours. (I saw different run times, but this seems to be the consensus considering it started at 8 pm, had a delay and then finished after midnight on the East Coast. If you assume a shorter run time, then yes, the total hours viewed would go down.) That means I have the two numbers needed to add this to my Nielsen database. And then…I can compare this viewership to the NFL: And, uh, not great. But also within striking distance, mainly because the runtime for this event was so long. I’d also add that this event had viewership equal to a regular season NFL game on streaming, but if anything, it was more comparable to an NFL playoff or Super Bowl-esque event. And you can compare viewership to the top football games on broadcast, cable and streaming, and it’s not impressive at all: We can also compare it to other sports that week, including the NBA Finals and start of the World Cup: Again, not great. The NBA generated roughly four times as many average viewers each game for its NBA Finals. The World Cup has similarly big numbers. Also, that’s just a tiny fraction of the 25 most watched sporting events each week. The NBA, NHL and FIFA World Cup had many, many more games racking up hours. We could also compare this to other streaming programs to get an idea of “is this a good investment?” and here is how it ranks compared to other top Paramount+ programs: The worry here? Well, unlike scripted programming, which has rewatchability, older fights/sporting events have very little library value. Very, very few people are rewatching these fights, especially years from now. 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. Then, in their quarterly earnings report, they only ended up with 700K subs. Not great! They claimed they dropped lower-value international subscribers, but that’s why I tend to discount subscriber additions when they’re leaked to the press.1 I expect we may see a bump again for UFC Freedom 250, but I’d caution using subscriber growth so soon after these events to judge the success, since new subs with high churn (see Peacock) aren’t great either. Also, analysts often want to attribute all subscriber growth to their favorite/pet show, and that just doesn’t make sense. The biggest caveat for UFC Freedom 250 and Paramount’s very first UFC marquee event is that these could be high watermarks for the sport. UFC Freedom 250 had an incredible amount of earned media coverage compared to most UFC fights. I mean, it had wall-to-wall national news coverage in the lead up to the event. (The first fight also had a lot of promotion from Paramount since it was first.) Other fights could reach this bar—say the Conor McGregor return to the Octagon—but they’ll be fewer and far between. Was This Deal Worth It? All to ask: is this Paramount deal worth it? In this case, I think the UFC Freedom 250 numbers are more distracting than helpful. This fight did well and compares well to other top sporting events. But we know that the first marquee event was at least a third smaller, if Paramount’s own data is to be believed. And it’s likely the other fights are much, much, much smaller. And then you get to the paycheck that Paramount-Skydance paid. FIFA’s World Cup cost about the same for Fox, but clearly generated multiples more total viewership. (Though it’s only every four years.) The NBA is much more expensive, but until the playoffs, they likely didn’t pay for itself. Even still, Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video likely overpaid. So, in that context, the NBA may be an overpay that makes the UFC look not so bad. But two overpays don’t make an underpay, to paraphrase the old cliché about wrongs and rights. And looking at UFC Freedom 250 as the likely ceiling of MMA on Paramount+, Paramount-Skydance likely paid too much. Share 1 I would love regular reports on subscriber additions by programs, but as is, it’s mostly leaked or rumored in haphazard ways.

Jul 20 • 6:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com

Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process

[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe

Jul 20 • 9:29 AM EDT • Science • democracysos.substack.com

Connecting Monsoon Science and Services

In July 2022, Pakistan experienced one of the most devastating monsoon seasons in its history. A single weather station in Sindh province recorded more than 1 600 millimetres of rain in a single day. By the end of the season, the country had received 175% of its normal annual rainfall, severely disrupting the lives of around 12 million people.

Jul 20 • 6:02 AM EDT • Science • wmo.int

Water First, Coffee in Moderation: What to Drink for Better Cognitive Health

The single best beverage for cognitive health is surprisingly simple: water. While coffee has attracted growing scientific interest for its potential brain benefits, hydration remains the foundation of healthy brain function.

Jul 19 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • baptisthealth.net

Digital Safeguards: How To Safely Vet Virtual Entertainment Platforms In The Modern Era

Virtual entertainment used to be easier to separate. Streaming was streaming. Gaming was gaming. Betting and casino content sat somewhere else. Now the lines are messier. A single platform can

Jul 19 • 7:45 PM EDT • Entertainment • yesweekly.com

Xbox Says More Exclusives Are Coming But Tells Players Not to 'Overly Fixate on Single-Player' Games

Executives at Xbox have once again attempted to clarify the company's approach to exclusives, promising that "Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution are not the only titles" it's planning.

Jul 19 • 3:15 PM EDT • Technology • ign.com

Bucs Called Out Over $30 Million ‘Biggest Roster Issue”

NFL.com's Matt Okada singled out tight end as the "Biggest Remaining Roster Issue" for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers headed into the season. The post Bucs Called Out Over $30 Million ‘Biggest Roster Issue” appeared first on HEAVY.

Jul 19 • 2:13 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Voyager 1 is still crossing interstellar space with six computers holding about 68 kilobytes of memory between them — less storage than a single compressed photograph on a modern phone

Voyager 1 carries six flight-computer units designed in the early 1970s, and NASA’s own accounting puts their combined memory at about 68 kilobytes. That is

Jul 19 • 11:30 AM EDT • Technology • spacedaily.com

Rangers edge Braves 7-6

Brandon Nimmo’s two-run single in the sixth inning gave Texas the lead as the Rangers rallied from an early deficit to beat the Atlanta Braves 7-6 on Saturday in a matchup of first-place teams.

Jul 19 • 11:12 AM EDT • Sports • spectrumlocalnews.com

Fantasy Analyst Assesses Malik Nabers' Viability in 2026

Malik Nabers is on his way back from an injury, which could affect the New York Giants and fantasy football managers. Nabers was an elite wideout in his rookie season, setting a Giants single-season franchise record for catches (109).

Jul 19 • 9:31 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

'It Isn't Something Carved in Stone': Xbox Still Unclear on Future PS5 Ports

Single player games could still come to Sony's console

Jul 19 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • pushsquare.com

Scientists just discovered a lost branch of Australia’s marsupials

Fossils from Queensland suggest a newly recognized marsupial order may have survived in Australia for around 35 million years, rewriting part of the story of how the continent's unique mammals evolved. The discovery challenges the idea that Australia's marsupials all came from a single straightforward ancestral lineage.

Jul 18 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

'AppleCare One' is Now Even More Valuable

While the monthly and annual prices of AppleCare+ plans for Macs and iPads received a slight increase this week, AppleCare One continues to start at $19.99 per month in the U.S., making the multi-device plan even more valuable. Launched in July 2025, AppleCare One allows you to cover up to three devices as part of a single subscription for $19.99 per month, and additional devices can be added for $5.99 each.

Jul 18 • 9:25 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

These 7 Android shortcuts changed how I use my phone every single day

Make every tap count

Jul 18 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • androidpolice.com

North Carolina scientists find airborne microplastics warm Earth as much as 200 coal plants

"We really need every single thing at our disposal."

Jul 17 • 6:14 PM EDT • Science • yahoo.com

Scientists Built a Working Computer Out of Springs That Doesn't Use a Single Watt of Electricity

This bizarre mechanical computer has no wires or chips.

Jul 17 • 11:59 AM EDT • Science • zmescience.com

The Directors: Two leaders in data science have a warp speed vision for AI, with cancer clinical trials leading the way Knudsen and Thoelke: “It’s actually solving for bottlenecks and challenges that we’ve been unable to overcome for so long”

The United States has a translation problem. Scientific breakthroughs in oncology are accelerating, but clinical trial infrastructure hasn’t kept pace. The solution: Speed up clinical trial enrollment by using AI to reduce costs and eliminate bureaucratic red tape. Tasks that ordinarily require hours of manual work for each patient in a single study can now […]

Jul 17 • 10:58 AM EDT • Science • cancerletter.com

John and Ann Tickle donate $25M to Ballad Health

John and Ann Tickle have donated $25 million to Ballad Health - the largestsingle philanthropic gift in system history.The announcement was made on Friday.Ball

Jul 17 • 9:20 AM EDT • Health • wcyb.com

Meet Keyveatz, AOMG’s first girl crew redefining Korean Hip-Hop

“All you gotta know is that I rock the show,” raps Keyveatz on their debut single, “Key Beats,” a bold statement from the five-member crew carving their own

Jul 17 • 9:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • amny.com

Whole Hog Politics: Trump’s election obsession is a midterm loser

It isn’t that Republicans couldn’t pass a single major piece of immigration legislation in the 18 months that their party has had unified control of Washington. It’s that they wouldn’t. None other than the late Sen. Lindsey...

Jul 17 • 8:40 AM EDT • Politics • aei.org

Sports without politics is a fantasy and the World Cup proves it

From ancient Greece to Nazi Germany, sport and politics have long been intertwined. Nevertheless, we still imagine that international sport can be kept above the fray and serve as a neutral arena where nations compete on merit alone. In this article, diplomacy scholar Geoffrey Allen Pigman argues the 2026 FIFA World Cup shows this is a dangerous illusion. When international sport is left entirely to revenue-maximizing private bodies like FIFA, it doesn't escape politics, but rather surrenders to its worst expressions. With the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics fast approaching, the IOC must decide whether to learn that lesson or repeat the same mistakes. The largest and most lucrative FIFA World Cup ever draws toward its climactic conclusion amidst a swirl of controversy. Team members, staff, fans, and spectators have been denied their right to enter the United States to participate, and US President Donald Trump intervened with FIFA boss Gianni Infantino to overturn a referee’s call that Trump believed disadvantaged the US national team. It is a moment to step back and reflect on what the purposes of international sport mega-events like the World Cup, and international sport more broadly, are, and what they should be. Does international sport serve public purposes? Is there a public interest? Or is it primarily a private endeavor organized by commercial enterprises to entertain the global public (and generate profit in the process), which is occasionally used by governments and leaders for raisons d’etat? Central to the idea of sport is the principle of fair play, which in the international context demands that games be free from political interference. However, it is impossible to separate sport from politics, all claims to the contrary notwithstanding. The most positive political use of international sport through the millennia has been to facilitate diplomacy. The use of international sport for diplomatic objectives has existed since at least the time of the ancient Olympic Games, around which was instituted the custom of the Ekecheiria, or Olympic Truce, between participating states to facilitate fair competition and diplomatic achievements by ensuring that participants could travel safely to the Olympiad. In his seminal work On Diplomacy (1987), diplomacy scholar James Der Derian characterized the objectives of diplomacy as overcoming alienation and mediating estrangement between governments and between peoples. One increasingly important diplomatic tool in the technology-infused media environment over the past century has been public diplomacy, under which governments and non-state diplomatic actors (e.g. transnational corporations) communicate to global publics about their international policy objectives and to shape their global brand image. Political scientist Michał Kobierecki, in his important book Sports Diplomacy (2020), views sports diplomacy as falling broadly within the ambit of public diplomacy, as international sport intimately involves the participation of global publics as spectators and consumers of global media. Diplomacy scholar Stuart Murray and this author, in a 2013 article, distinguish between international sport used for diplomatic purposes and international sport-as-diplomacy, which encompasses the range of diplomacy that occurs as teams and competitors, spectators and fans, and government officials all converge for international sporting events like the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup. Diplomacy scholar H.E. Chehabi, in a 2001 article on US-Iran sports diplomacy, describes the interaction between spectators and fans at international sporting events as “people-to-people diplomacy,” in which relationships develop independently of governments and their objectives. Diplomacy by the aforementioned definitions is often unsuccessful. Moreover, all too often the tools of diplomacy may be employed by governments and other actors to thwart or oppose the objectives of diplomacy as characterized by Der Derian. Governments routinely use the tools of public diplomacy to disseminate propaganda, spreading misinformation in the attempt to deceive global publics about their objectives and to create misleading impressions about their brand identity. Within sports diplomacy, the term “sportswashing” has been coined recently to describe how governments invest in and promote international sport to create positive global public impressions of their nations and, in doing so, to distract the global public from their deficient records in areas such as human rights and democratic governance. Murray, in his 2018 book Sports Diplomacy: Origins, Theory and Practice, introduces the concept of sports anti-diplomacy, wherein governments intentionally use international sport to advance aggressive and nationalistic objectives. Obvious historical examples include Hitler’s use of the 1936 Berlin Olympics to glorify his Third Reich and the 1969 El Salvador-Honduras football “war.” SUGGESTED READING The beautiful game made ugly By Emily Ryall FIFA argues that it is and seeks to be apolitical in its stewardship of international Association Football (soccer). FIFA policies governing bids to host the World Cup require uninhibited and non-discriminatory access for players, team staff, and spectators of all participating countries to host nations and venues. It became clear soon after Trump returned to power in the United States in January 2025 that Trump’s political intentions and objectives to limit non-US citizens from living and working in the United States and, in numerous cases, even visiting the country, would collide with FIFA’s host nation policies. Beginning soon after the start of the second Trump administration, US federal authorities imposed restrictions on entry to the United States of citizens of between 20 and 40 countries for any purpose, with only limited exceptions. Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began arresting non-US citizens in the United States, including persons with and without legal status, holding them in jails, concentration camps, and other detention facilities until they were deported to their home or third countries, where they faced substantive risks to their personal safety. FIFA boss Gianni Infantino, in an effort to ensure the most successful and lucrative World Cup in history, engaged diplomatically with President Trump in an attempt to facilitate entry to the US for World Cup participants. Infantino did all in his power to ingratiate himself with Trump, to the extent of creating a FIFA “Peace Prize,” which he awarded to Trump in December 2025 at a ceremony in the then Trump-controlled John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, on the occasion of the World Cup draw. The prize was an ersatz consolation for someone who aspired in vain to win the rather more prestigious and well-known Nobel Peace Prize. And in the run-up to the World Cup, conditions became worse. In February 2026, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a war of aggression against Iran, illegal under international law, under the false pretence that Iran’s government was preparing to attack the United States and Israel. During the US aerial bombardment of Iran, US planes bombed Azadi Stadium, the facility where Iran’s national football team trained. As the 2026 FIFA World Cup began, it was clear that Infantino’s efforts had been for naught: the Trump administration would not adhere to FIFA policies governing access to World Cup host nations. World Cup referee Omar Artan, a citizen of Somalia, was denied a US visa to enter the United States to participate in the World Cup. Trump’s government only granted US visas to Iran’s football team ten days before they were scheduled to arrive for the tournament. Numerous members of the support staff for Iran’s team were denied US visas. Iran’s team, which had been scheduled to train in Arizona, was directed to shift its training site to Tijuana, Mexico, notwithstanding that all three of their group stage matches took place at US venues. The US Department of Homeland Security only permitted the Iranian team to enter the US on the day before each scheduled match and then to return to Mexico immediately after playing. Members of Iraq’s and Switzerland’s football teams were delayed for hours by US officials at the US border, and an Iraqi team photographer was refused entry. Spectators and fans from Haïti and Iran were denied entry to the United States altogether. A large number of fans from a range of countries had their applications for US visas rejected. There were multiple off-ramps through which participants could have avoided the negative consequences of Trump’s decisions for the 2026 World Cup. Once it was clear that the Trump government intended to violate the established expectations for World Cup hosts, FIFA could have shifted the matches scheduled to take place in the United States to Mexico and Canada. The three nations were already designated as co-hosts, and host cities and venues had been selected. Once it was clear that FIFA, governed by FIFA boss Gianni Infantino’s dependent and dysfunctional relationship with Trump, would never consider this option on its own, it fell to the national football federations to act. The national federations, particularly some combination of federations of the leading contenders (France, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Morocco, England, Germany, etc.), could have refused to participate under the US-imposed conditions or, at the least, demanded an ironclad agreement with the Trump government that FIFA policies on access would be respected. ___ International sport is inextricably entangled with diplomacy of different sorts, for good or ill, it cannot be considered to be in the purely private realm and left to revenue-maximizing private actors. ___ Why did neither FIFA nor the national football federations act to protect the interests of players, team staff, referees, fans, and spectators? In essence, the relentless engines of capitalism prevailed over norm observance, ethics, and fair play. The revenue interests of FIFA, sponsors, global media, and host cities won out. FIFA’s managers viewed hosting another World Cup principally in the United States as a veritable pot of gold for FIFA and its collaborators. FIFA has estimated its own revenue over the 2023-26 budget cycle, which includes the 2026 World Cup, at $13 billion, revised up from an initial projection of $11 billion, and 72% higher than the previous revenue cycle. Of that total, FIFA is estimated to have generated $8.9 billion from the Cup itself in revenue from TV rights ($3.92 billion), sponsorships ($2.69 billion), ticket sales ($3.1 billion), licensing rights, and other sources. A joint study by FIFA and the World Trade Organization estimates that the World Cup will contribute over $40 billion to global GDP, including nearly $14 billion in direct visitor spending in the three host countries (but principally in the United States, which hosted the lion’s share of the matches). The FIFA World Cup is now reportedly “the single most lucrative recurring commercial property in global sport.” And yet, notwithstanding the Trump government’s uses of the World Cup for sports anti-diplomacy, and the climate of anxiety that this created for participants and spectators, diplomacy that did not depend upon governments was able to thrive at the World Cup. Examples of successful people-to-people diplomacy were legion, as citizens of towns and cities across the States, as well as in Mexico and Canada, welcomed team members, their families and supporters, to training sites across North America. Fans of different teams joined together in person in stadiums for matches, at watch parties and bars, and at welcome events sponsored by host cities. The joy and camaraderie shared between the citizenry of Boston and Scotland’s “Tartan Army” of fans is but one example of how the “Beautiful Game” brings people together. Friendships forged across continents are likely to endure well beyond the Cup final. Even those achievements cannot be seen as unalloyed, however. As South African football fan Byron Pillay commented to Al Jazeera, “Football is called the Beautiful Game for a reason, for its ability to unite people. But it’s hard to believe in that magic with the politics and war rhetoric off the field of play, especially when one of the tournament hosts is central to that.” Ultimately, the experience of the 2026 FIFA World Cup illustrates that, as international sport is inextricably entangled with diplomacy of different sorts, for good or ill, it cannot be considered to be in the purely private realm and left to revenue-maximizing private actors. As long as there is the possibility of diplomatic progress in mediating estrangement between governments or between peoples, there is a broad and overarching public interest in international sport. Likewise, as it would be difficult to put on an international sport mega-event without international sporting organizations like FIFA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), global media firms, and companies purchasing sponsorships, public and private interests in international sport must coexist, most likely somewhere on a shifting spectrum between partnership and rivalry or cross purposes. As the World Cup wraps up, the IOC needs to consider its lessons before the scheduled 2028 Los Angeles Olympics if they want to avoid a media-hyped Trump version of the 1936 Berlin Olympiad. The IOC and the National Olympic Committees need to set conditions on and make demands of Trump’s government with clearly articulated consequences for non-compliance, up to and including cancellation of the Games. Time is running out for the IOC, as unlike with the FIFA World Cup, there is no at-the-ready alternate venue for Los Angeles.

Jul 16 • 8:00 PM EDT • Politics • iai.tv

Doctors in Royal Oak perform world’s first single-port robotic heart surgery

Surgeons at Corewell Health in Metro Detroit have performed what the health system says is the world’s first documented single-port robotic mitral valve repair, a breakthrough they believe could help make heart surgery less invasive for some patients.

Jul 16 • 5:31 PM EDT • Health • clickondetroit.com

The ‘high-T military’ proposal misreads the basic science of testosterone

For starters, there is no single “right” amount of testosterone.

Jul 16 • 5:16 PM EDT • Science • ms.now

Uber Announces Acquisition Offer for Delivery Hero

Cash consideration of €41.50 per share offered to all Delivery Hero shareholders, representing an Equity Value of $14.8 billion, or $13.7 billion adjusted for Uber’s prior stake purchases The transaction is expected to be accretive to Non-GAAP EPS upon close; high-single-digit percentage accretion by year three Delivery Hero has separately agreed to sell part of its business covering 14 markets to SSW Partners Management Board and Supervisory Board of Delivery Hero unanimously welcome and support the Takeover Offer and intend to recommend Delivery Hero shareholders to tender into the offer, subject to their review of the Offer Document Prosus has irrevocably committed to tender their shares, which would bring Uber’s total economic interest to ~53% Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER) has entered into a business combination agreement with Delivery Hero, extending the world’s largest mobility and delivery platform to a total of 99 markets, with combined pro-forma Gross Bookings of $236

Jul 15 • 8:00 PM EDT • Business • investor.uber.com

Todd Blanche, Trump’s Attorney General Pick, Faces Crucial Hurdle After Rocky Hearing

Even a single Republican “no” vote would block Mr. Blanche’s nomination from consideration by the full Senate, which could sink his confirmation.

Jul 15 • 3:55 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

Trump’s Section 122 Tariffs Have Delivered Nothing for American Businesses, Workers, or Communities

The Trump administration’s short-term Section 122 tariffs, which are due to expire next week, have not delivered a single policy win.

Jul 15 • 9:01 AM EDT • Business • americanprogress.org

Litera Relaunches to Unite the Practice and Business of Law on a Single AI Agent

CHICAGO, July 15, 2026--After 30 years serving 99% of the Am Law 100, Litera relaunches around one platform, one agent, and one dataset spanning every corner of the firm

Jul 15 • 8:01 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

BTS paints New York purple ahead of historic MetLife return

It’s a single word, but for BTS fans, it carries years of memories, comfort, and unwavering devotion. In the coming weeks, New York City will once again glow

Jul 15 • 8:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • amny.com

Rhayuela’s Next Gen Takes Over

Prominent Colombian shingle Rhayuela, known for such memorable pics as Cannes 2015 Un Certain Regard title “Alias María,” “El Páramo” and “Rebellion,” is shuffling its leadership although its six orig...

Jul 15 • 2:52 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

NVIDIA is giving away a custom Gears of War: E-Day GeForce RTX 5080

NVIDIA is giving away a custom Gears of War: E-Day GeForce RTX 5080. The one-off Founders Edition card will go to a single winner.

Jul 15 • 2:46 AM EDT • Technology • videocardz.com

Fixing America’s polarization with proportional representation

Presidentialism plus single-member districts is a bad combination that incentivizes leaders to consolidate power by fueling division.

Jul 14 • 9:12 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Heart surgeon makes history, performs first robotic procedure of its kind

A surgeon in Michigan has performed the world’s first single-port robotic mitral valve repair.

Jul 14 • 5:24 PM EDT • Business • cardiovascularbusiness.com

“Meaningless without the Hope of Jesus”: Willie and Korie Robertson on the Uplifting Entertainment Hub of eKKL

We recently sat down with Stan Jantz to chat about The Chosen, the Come and See foundation, and an ambitious mission to translate the series into 600 languages and share the authentic Jesus with 1 billion people around the globe.

Jul 14 • 12:28 PM EDT • Entertainment • thecollision.org

How the 20th anniversary iPhone will provide a 'single slab of glass' look

Former Apple design chief Jony Ive always described his long-term vision for the iPhone design as “a single slab of...

Jul 14 • 9:39 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com

Corewell Health performs world's first documented single-port robotic mitral valve repair

Corewell Health™ has successfully performed the world’s first documented single-port robotic mitral valve repair, marking a major milestone in the evolution...

Jul 14 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • newsroom.corewellhealth.org

11 Actors You Probably Forgot Had Hit Songs

Many actors have tried their hand at music, but only a few have landed genuine hits. From chart-topping singles to unexpected fan favorites, these stars proved they could succeed in more than one corn...

Jul 14 • 6:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

US small-business sentiment rebounds in June, inflation a major worry for many

WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. small-business sentiment increased in June, but the share of owners reporting that inflation was their "single most important" problem was the highest in nearly two years, and more said they had raised average selli...

Jul 14 • 6:08 AM EDT • Business • kfgo.com

US small-business sentiment rebounds in June, inflation a major worry for many

U.S. small-business sentiment increased in June, but the share of owners reporting that inflation ​was their "single most important" problem was the highest in nearly two years, and more said they had raised ‌average selling prices.

Jul 14 • 6:06 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com

The Quintessential Trump-era Politician

In 2020, I wrote an article about collaboration and collaborators. The title was History Will Judge the Complicit, and it started with the story of two famous East Germans, Markus Wolf and Wolfgang Leonhard, who both landed in East Berlin just after the end of the war. Although they came from very similar backgrounds, the former stuck with the regime, eventually becoming its spy boss; the latter, horrified by the brutal reality of Soviet-style communism, escaped. By way of juxtaposition, I also wrote about Lyndsey Graham and Mitt Romney. These two men also made very different decisions when confronted by Donald Trump’s assault on the ideals that they had both grown up believing: A glance at their biographies would not have led many to predict what happened next. On paper, Graham would have seemed, in 2016, like the man with deeper ties to the military, to the rule of law, and to an old-fashioned idea of American patriotism and American responsibility in the world. Romney, by contrast, with his shifts between the center and the right, with his multiple careers in business and politics, would have seemed less deeply attached to those same old-fashioned patriotic ideals. Most of us register soldiers as loyal patriots, and management consultants as self-interested. We assume people from small towns in South Carolina are more likely to resist political pressure than people who have lived in many places. Intuitively, we think that loyalty to a particular place implies loyalty to a set of values. But in this case the clichés were wrong. It was Graham who made excuses for Trump’s abuse of power. It was Graham—a JAG Corps lawyer—who downplayed the evidence that the president had attempted to manipulate foreign courts and blackmail a foreign leader into launching a phony investigation into a political rival. It was Graham who abandoned his own stated support for bipartisanship and instead pushed for a hyperpartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. It was Graham who played golf with Trump, who made excuses for him on television, who supported the president even as he slowly destroyed the American alliances—with Europeans, with the Kurds—that Graham had defended all his life. By contrast, it was Romney who, in February, became the only Republican senator to break ranks with his colleagues, voting to impeach the president. “Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office,” he said, is “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.” In the wake of Graham’s unexpected death on Saturday, I wrote about him again. He was, in many ways, the quintessential politician of Trump’s Washington, a man who shifted 180 degrees. Graham had been a fervent American patriot, proud reserve officer and military lawyer; he became one of the most important defenders of a president who believes soldiers are “suckers and losers” and shows no respect for law of any kind. As his politics changed, his language grew coarser and his behavior grew worse: He urged Israel to “level the place” in Gaza, and insulted the Danish prime minister in Munich, prompting a colleague, Senator Elissa Slotkin, to issue an apology. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which you can read in The Atlantic (gift link here) Like his close friend John McCain, Graham believed that America should stand at the center of a broad democratic alliance. The few times I met him were in that context, at the Munich Security Conference or at other European-American gatherings, which he once attended with great regularity. He also took seriously the practice of American democracy at home. In a 2014 conversation with The Atlantic, he described himself as a pragmatic politician who eschewed populist slogans. “I know Washington is broken, but what’s broken about it is everybody yelling and nobody trying to fix it,” he said. “I’m trying.” When Donald Trump first appeared in U.S. politics, Graham recognized him immediately for what he was: the spokesman for an alien ideology, one radically different from the idealistic patriotism that Graham had practiced and preached since childhood. Trump privately mocked the military that Graham loved as nothing but “suckers and losers.” He put falsehoods, cynicism, and personal greed at the center of his politics, while expressing disdain for transparency, accountability, and democracy itself. In 2015, Graham described Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who should “go to hell.” Also as a “nutjob.” When Trump won, Graham understood, as did so many others, that he would have to make some important choices. For a while, he went silent. In the spring of 2016, I saw him at one of those conferences in Europe. He seemed too depressed to speak. But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. As I wrote in 2020, it’s very hard to look in to anyone’s heart and to understand their motivations from the outside. But it does seem that Graham had a deep need to be relevant, to be in the game, to be a player, at any cost. And that, rather than any particular achievement, is what he will be remembered for. Continuing to monitor conflicts of interest, ostentatious emoluments, outright corruption and policy changes that will facilitate outright corruption. (Read my original article, Kleptocracy Inc and check out the SNF Agora Institute chart) June 27 Trump diverted funds from more than 900 projects nationwide—including safety upgrades at national parks—to finance beautification projects around Washington, including $700,000 used to fix a White House walkway. June 28 After a years-long Department of Justice investigation into Abbott Laboratories over its management of a baby formula facility where potentially deadly bacteria turned up enough evidence to criminally charge the firm, top department officials instead opted for a financial penalty—illustrating the department’s move away from strict corporate enforcement under the Trump administration. June 29 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stacked the Defense Policy Board—which is charged with providing independent national security recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense—with Trump allies, including tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, who has invested in defense contractors like OpenAI and SpaceX, after purging the panel last year. Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in Axon—which makes about 90% of US tasers—two weeks before ICE solicited bids for a $220 million taser contract. The White House unveiled limited-edition US passports for America’s 250th birthday, featuring a portrait of Trump overlaid on the Declaration of Independence. June 30 Trump made around $1.2 billion from his various crypto companies last year, including more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial and $600 million from sales of his meme coin. Trump is considering issuing 250 pardons to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. These are expected to be largely doled out through the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s informal network of intermediaries. White-collar defense attorneys say they can typically win pardons for clients for $2 million. Last year, Trump administration officials awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million to Clark Construction for the White House ballroom—negotiations in which the president was directly involved. July 1 The Amazon MGM Studios documentary about Melania Trump earned the First Lady more than $10 million. Trump made hundreds of individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million the day before his announcement pausing “Liberation Day” tariffs for 90 days sent the S&P 500 soaring nearly 10%—one of the largest single-day gains ever. Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Doral saw record surges in revenue during Trump’s first year in office, earning $77.5 million and $121.9 million respectively, compared to average annual revenues of $25 million and $75 million during Trump’s first term. Entities across the Persian Gulf paid more than $300 million to Trump’s businesses last year, including $263 million from the sale of half his stake in World Liberty Financial to a firm backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a top UAE royal and brother of the country’s president. Kash Patel failed to properly disclose his stock purchase of a Department of Justice contractor, MicroStrategy, worth up to $250,000 last year, despite laws requiring disclosure within 45 days of the trade. July 2 Trump has been directing administration officials to steer more government contracts—so far worth more than $2.4 billion—to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin aerospace firm, after Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, donated to the White House ballroom project, and reached a $40 million deal to license a Melania Trump documentary. Alongside the billions he made from cryptocurrency last year, Trump earned millions of dollars from real estate licensing fees, including $21 million from organizations in the UAE and $9.2 million in Saudi Arabia, along with smaller sums from merchandise sales, including $4.7 million from Trump Watches and $35,920 from 45 Guitar, a guitar brand endorsed by the president. House Democrats accused consultants tied to the Trump administration of financial fraud, alleging they gave prospective donors to America250—the bipartisan committee created by Congress to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial—the banking and routing numbers for Freedom 250, the White House’s fund for events like the UFC cage fight. Democrats also allege that Freedom 250’s CEO traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos to solicit donations from foreign government officials and business leaders. The Trump administration’s proposed rollback of gun regulations would lift the prohibition on mailing handguns to individuals, a significant win for GrabAGun—the direct-to-consumer firearm retailer on whose board Donald Trump Jr. sits and in which he holds a 1.1% ownership stake. GrabAGun currently must rely on a middleman to transfer firearms to customers. Trump’s financial disclosure revealed that he made more than 21,000 securities trades during his first year back in office, growing his investment account to at least $858 million across stakes in around 1,600 companies, compared to the 13 total trades Joe Biden made during his entire presidency. July 4 Nearly 1 million people who bought the president’s meme coin—Trump Coin—collectively lost $3.8 billion on the token, while he walked away with $636 million. July 6 Shares of Dell closed up 4.4% after Trump recommended people buy the firm’s computers during a speech announcing the launch of Trump investment accounts for children, boosting the more than $1 million worth of shares the president owns in the company. July 9 Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh named crypto investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen to a task force aimed at modernizing the Federal Reserve, including rethinking its approach to inflation—a key factor keeping interest rates elevated. Palm Beach International Airport has officially changed its name to Trump International Airport—a move that will require Florida to pay royalties to the president’s family for licensing his name. I was there a few months ago, during a trip to Barcelona. The sculptures were a revelation, I’d never seen so many together before. Each one has its own personality. Enjoy the good weather, if you are lucky enough to have it. History Will Judge the Complicit The Quintessential Politician Autocracy Inc Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

Jul 13 • 4:19 PM EDT • Politics • anneapplebaum.substack.com

New MemGhost Attack Plants Persistent False Memories in AI Agents Through One Email

A single crafted email can plant a false, lasting memory in AI agents like OpenClaw, hide it from the user, and slip past the defenses built to catch

Jul 13 • 9:49 AM EDT • Technology • thehackernews.com

Nimmo's walk-off single gives Rangers 6-5 win over Astros

Nimmo had his first walk-off plate appearance for Texas and his seventh in the big leagues.

Jul 13 • 9:47 AM EDT • Sports • spectrumlocalnews.com

Fall Sports Single Game Tickets Are Now Live!

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The fall sports season is gearing up for action and the Roos are bringing the action to the city as Kansas City's College Team! Single gam...

Jul 13 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • kcroos.com

Single-Atom Catalysis research earns science award

As the invisible engines of modern chemistry, catalysts help produce the gasoline that powers cars, the fertilizers that promote food cultivation and the polymers used to make clothing, making them indispensable to modern life.

Jul 12 • 9:40 PM EDT • Science • chinadaily.com.cn

Vikings Mailbag: QB Battle, Harrison Smith, Free-Agent Targets

After a break, VikingsTerritory has reopened the mailbag, answering questions from the masses and posting them weekly in a single […]

Jul 12 • 8:42 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Phoebe Bridgers Launches Itch.io Page With An Infinite Runner

The indie superstar breaks her hiatus with a RuneScape inspired single and a Subway Surfers style micro game

Jul 12 • 6:22 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com

Opinion: The ‘billionaire tax’ dominates this year’s ballot measure politics

The wealth tax is destined to be not only the single most controversial ballot measure this year but probably have the most expensive dueling campaigns.

Jul 12 • 1:00 PM EDT • Politics • timesofsandiego.com

Pam Shriver Criticizes ESPN For Its Lack Of Female Announcers

Longtime women's tennis star and sports media figure Pam Shriver hasn't been thrilled with ESPN's coverage of Wimbledon this year. ESPN aired the women's singles final on Saturday afternoon. Linda Noskova topped Karolina Muchova in the women's final, 6-2, 5-7, 6-3. On Sunday morning, the men's ...

Jul 12 • 9:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Wimbledon Fans Are Fed Up With Behavior At 2026 Tournament

The final day of the 2026 Wimbledon tennis tournament is set for Sunday, July 12. The men's singles final will be taking place on Sunday morning. World No. 1 Jannik Sinner will be taking on Alexander Zverev in the men's singles final. Sinner is looking to continue his era of dominance, while Zverev ...

Jul 12 • 8:47 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

A Terrifying Food Label Is Spooking Even the Government. Just One Problem: It’s Almost Meaningless.

It’s all about the vibes.

Jul 12 • 5:40 AM EDT • Health • slate.com

Dear Abby: Struggling daughter seems uninterested in helping herself

DEAR ABBY: I am the single mom of a 19-year-old daughter who copes with bipolar 2, ADHD, anxiety and depression. She has a mental age that's younger than her adult

Jul 12 • 4:15 AM EDT • Entertainment • herald-dispatch.com

A single rare meteorite has revealed the chemical fingerprint of a Moon-sized world that once orbited the young Sun before being destroyed in a catastrophic collision — a lost planet science never knew existed until it landed as a rock

A one-pound rock found in the Sahara in 2019 has become evidence for something much larger than itself: a vanished planetary body from the first years of the

Jul 11 • 9:30 PM EDT • Science • spacedaily.com

Derek Stingley Jr. Receives Honest Admission on Texans Impact

Jul 11 • 3:20 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Scientists discover new blood group, resolving a 50 year medical mystery - Futura-Sciences

Decades of searching for a single molecule Scientists named the missing molecule from the 1972 sample the AnWj antigen. For fifty years, hematologists tried and failed to find the genetic blueprint responsible for it. A research team at NHS Blood and Transplant and the University of Bristol finally found the...

Jul 11 • 1:00 PM EDT • Science • futura-sciences.com

Woman, 45, Underwent the First Robotic Single-Port Nipple-Sparing Mastectomy Performed in the U.S by a Robot Named Carol

Vicky Pan, a mom of two, was diagnosed with aggressive, fast-growing triple-negative breast cancer that had already spread to her lymph nodes

Jul 11 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • yahoo.com

Former Bucs Draft Pick Called ‘Biggest Bust’ for AFC Team

Bleacher Report's Moe Moton singled out former Bucs DT Logan Hall as the NFL's "Biggest Bust" in 2026 with the Houston Texans. The post Former Bucs Draft Pick Called ‘Biggest Bust’ for AFC Team appeared first on HEAVY.

Jul 10 • 4:47 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Songwriters sue South Korean entertainment giant Hybe, say BTS song 'Swim' copied their demo

Three songwriters filed a copyright lawsuit against South Korean entertainment giant Hybe, saying the K-pop supergroup BTS' chart-topping single "Swim" was lifted from their unpublished

Jul 10 • 1:40 PM EDT • Entertainment • washingtontimes.com

Building a Better CB Stat

Welcome to Steelers Morning Rush, our new daily short-form podcast with Alan Saunders, giving a longer perspective on a single […] This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Building a Better CB Stat | Steelers Morning Rush

Jul 10 • 12:14 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

"No thanks!" Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake Resynced being review bombed on Steam for single-player microtransactions

The issue of cosmetic microtransactions in single-player games has arisen once again for Ubisoft.

Jul 10 • 5:26 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net

Integrated photonic polarization synthesizer and analyzer

Light: Science & Applications - A single photonic integrated circuit enables both generation and analysis of arbitrary optical polarization states using a polarization-splitting grating coupler...

Jul 9 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • nature.com

Spatial transcriptome for cell segmentation

Nature Computational Science - A diffusion-based multimodal framework called DISSECT leverages transcriptomic gradients to refine segmentation boundaries, enabling high-precision single-cell...

Jul 9 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • nature.com

Nicolas Johnson, Son of Entertainment Attorney Matt Johnson, Dies at 28

The Morehouse College graduate was killed in a single-vehicle crash in Sherman Oaks on July 1.

Jul 9 • 6:10 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Nicolas Johnson Dead: Son of Hollywood Attorney Matt Johnson Was 28

The Morehouse College graduate was killed in a single-vehicle crash in Sherman Oaks on July 1.

Jul 9 • 6:10 PM EDT • Entertainment • hollywoodreporter.com

Avondale's single grocery store shutting down after 1 year in business

After opening in early 2025, Avondale's single full-service grocery store announced July 9 that it will be closing its doors.

Jul 9 • 5:58 PM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

Fort Bend County Fair Announces 2026 Entertainment Lineup Featuring Sawyer Brown, Pat Green

ROSENBERG, Texas (Covering Katy News) — The Fort Bend County Fair has announced its entertainment lineup for its 90th annual celebration, featuring a mix of Texas country stars, Tejano favorites and nationally recognized performers during Championship BBQ Weekend and the fair's 10-day run. The 2026 Fort Bend County Fair begins with Championship BBQ Weekend on Sept. 18-19, followed by the fair Sept. 25 through Oct. 4. The entertainment schedule opens Friday, Sept. 18, with Tejano group Los Morales, followed by Texas country artist Cole Phillips on Saturday, Sept. 19. Phillips has gained attention for his traditional country sound influenced by classic honky-tonk music. The fair officially opens Friday, Sept. 25, with Tyce Delk, a New Mexico native whose touring schedule has expanded across the country. Country music veterans Sawyer Brown will headline Saturday, Sept. 26. The band, whose career spans more than four decades, remains known for hits including "Some Girls Do," "The Race Is On" and "Thank God for You." Go Tejano Day on Sunday, Sept. 27, will feature Prófugos de Nuevo León, along with performances by Los Rinches and Grupo Zenio. The second week of the fair begins Wednesday, Sept. 30, with Bellville singer-songwriter David Lewis, a recent Texas Country Music Association Male Artist of the Year nominee. Oklahoma Red Dirt artist Josh Meloy will perform Thursday, Oct. 1. Texas country star Pat Green returns to the Fort Bend County Fair stage Friday, Oct. 2. Green, whose career includes three Grammy Award nominations, has sold more than 2 million albums and amassed more than 200 million career streams. He is best known for songs including "Wave on Wave" and "Carry On." Country newcomer Vincent Mason will perform Saturday, Oct. 3. Mason has accumulated more than 500 million career streams and was recently nominated for Academy of Country Music New Male Artist of the Year. The fair concludes Sunday, Oct. 4, with Texas music legend Gary P. Nunn, whose "London Homesick Blues" remains one of the state's most recognizable songs. Weekend visitors also can enjoy performances on Music Row by J Paul Jr. & the Zydeco Nubreeds, Southern County Line, Los Rangerz and Horizon. The Fort Bend County Fair Association, a nonprofit organization, supports youth, agriculture and education. According to the association, it has awarded more than $2 million in scholarships during the past decade and generated $1.4 million through its 2025 youth auctions. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, July 10. Guests are encouraged to purchase tickets in advance and select the specific day they plan to attend, as tickets are valid only for the date purchased. Admission includes entry to the fairgrounds, access to the carnival, shopping, exhibits, food vendors and, when scheduled, admission to the rodeo and that day's concert. Season passes and single-day tickets will be available. For tickets and additional information, visit fortbendcountyfair.com or call the Fair Office at 281-342-6171. The address of the Fairgrounds is 4310 Texas 36 S in Rosenberg. 2026 Fort Bend County Fair Entertainment Schedule Championship BBQ Weekend Friday, Sept. 18: Los Morales Saturday, Sept. 19: Cole Phillips Fair Entertainment Friday, Sept. 25: Tyce Delk Saturday, Sept. 26: Sawyer Brown Sunday, Sept. 27 (Go Tejano Day): Prófugos de Nuevo León, Los Rinches and Grupo Zenio Wednesday, Sept. 30: David Lewis Thursday, Oct. 1: Josh Meloy Friday, Oct. 2: Pat Green Saturday, Oct. 3: Vincent Mason Sunday, Oct. 4: Gary P. Nunn × Expand FBCF Fort Bend County Fair 2026 Artist Lineup

Jul 9 • 12:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • coveringkaty.com

World’s largest paper airplane has a 65-foot wingspan

The new Guinness World Record holder flew nearly 200 feet on a single glide.

Jul 9 • 10:49 AM EDT • Science • popsci.com

This one number measures your athletic performance

Sanford SCORE combines an athlete's overall strengths and weaknesses into a single number based on four physical tests.

Jul 9 • 9:00 AM EDT • Sports • news.sanfordhealth.org

Mookie Betts' go-ahead single lifts Dodgers past Rockies

LOS ANGELES — Mookie Betts looked like the hitter the Dodgers have been waiting to see all season.

Jul 9 • 3:07 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Yankees suffer sixth shutout loss of the season

The Yankees reined in the strikeouts at the expense of scoring even a single run.

Jul 8 • 9:21 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

John Stamos says he told “DWTS” producers to stop asking him to join show: ‘I’m never gonna do that’

Stamos insists he’s been asked “every single season” to compete on the reality series.

Jul 8 • 5:01 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

John Stamos says he told ‘DWTS’ producers to stop asking him to join show: ‘I’m never gonna do that’

John Stamos says ‘Dancing With the Stars’ producers try to get him on the show ‘every single season,’ but he insists he never will: ‘Don’t ever ask me again.’

Jul 8 • 5:01 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Scientists discovered that some invasive tropical plants evolved to reproduce without partners after spreading to new countries, allowing a single plant to start an entire takeover

Just one plant species can be enough to trigger an ecological invasion. Studies have shown that some tropical plants have evolved to reproduce without a mate, allowing a single individual to start a new colony.

Jul 8 • 11:16 AM EDT • Science • timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Explaining The Comcast and NBCUniversal Divorce

(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) I hope everyone had a happy Fourth of July in America, celebrating the country’s 250th birthday. Frankly, I am bummed the 250th wasn’t a bigger celebration, but that’s a different topic for a different Substack. While it was generally a quiet week on the entertainment/streaming/media business fronts, we still had some interesting news stories. Actually, that kinda undersells one of the stories, a huge, huge, huge divestment that could upend the entertainment landscape... So let’s get right to it. In today’s column, I’ll cover Comcast spinning off the rest of NBCUniversal, an entertainment company investing in an LLM company and an LLM-owner investing in a movie studio, the latest round of threats of digital tariffs, and more. Let’s dive in. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Most: Comcast/NBCU Breakup!!!! If I had to describe my reaction to Comcast spinning out NBCUniversal, it feels like a relationship ending, either breaking up or divorcing. Comcast’s decision to spin off the rest of NBCUniversal, after spinning off some of its cable assets into Versant last year, really does feel like a family breaking up under “irreconcilable differences”. Of my stereotypes of the entertainment moguls, my go-to for Comcast CEO Brian Roberts—heir to the Comcast fortune, but a man who’s been at the helm for 24 years now, and president for twelve years before that—is that he likes building empires. He cut his teeth acquiring cable rivals in the 1990s and tried to buy Disney repeatedly, then settled for NBCUniversal after a long court battle. (Contrast this with Rupert Murdoch, a man who also loved to buy, but would also sell when the price is right. Murdoch made Fox out of nothing, but then sold 20th Century Fox to Disney, arguably at the top of the market. So I understood why he sold.) But I don’t understand Roberts’ motivation to sell now. I have some explanations but no single, super-satisfying explanation. Strategically, it would just make more sense to have kept NBCUniversal in-house, especially for a one-time empire builder like Comcast. Yet one powerful force—arguably the decider in modern capitalism—likely overwhelmed all other considerations. At first, I thought I’d arrange my thoughts as a “Five Why” analysis, digging through each layer of the puzzle. But instead, I found myself asking, “But…why?” (And I only ended up with four sections.) So let’s look at Comcast from that angle. Then, at the end, I’ll give my biggest strategic recommendation for every company in Hollywood. It’s obvious, but sometimes, the obvious strategy is the most ignored. But…Why? The Stock Market, Conglomerations, and Sum of the Parts Analysis We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… Why Comcast could never get a “tech company” valuation The not-so-secret motivation for Comcast What Versant has to do with all of this The key strategic advice I think every entertainment exec should follow (though it’s really obvious) Some big AI investment news… Whether we’ll see digital tariffs… And more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.

Jul 7 • 3:53 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com

Sports World Reacts To Argentina Comeback: Tom Brady Makes 28-3 Comparison

Tom Brady might be ready to crown a new greatest single-game comeback in sports history.

Jul 7 • 2:36 PM EDT • Sports • foxsports.com

Lawmakers end multi-million-dollar hospital tax “loophole”

By Michelle Crouch Co-published with The Charlotte Ledger A little-noticed provision in the state budget that was approved last week aims to shut down a tax strategy used by at least one hospital system to exceed the state’s sales tax refund cap. The change would require nonprofit and public hospital systems to file a single […]

Jul 7 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • northcarolinahealthnews.org

White House Blasts Smithsonian History Exhibits For 'Radical' Activism

A new Trump administration report singles out references to 'Hamilton,' drag queens and Mickey Mouse.

Jul 6 • 11:21 AM EDT • Entertainment • deadline.com

Detroit Tigers Land Three American League All-Stars

Dillon Dingler, Kevin McGonigle and Riley Greene have been selected to represent the Detroit Tigers in the 2026 MLB All-Star Game.

Jul 5 • 8:48 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

‘Changing the space’: New St. Clair business hopes to become a community hub

If you’ve noticed a change in energy while passing through St. Clair, you’re not imagining things. A mystical, explorative new shop has hit the zero block of South Second Street, and welcomes folks to mingle with the esoteric…

Jul 5 • 8:15 AM EDT • Business • republicanherald.com

I am switching from OneNote to Google Keep on Android because of this single feature

Gemini changed the game

Jul 5 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • androidpolice.com