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Dr. Brianna Siegel Helps Her Patients, In Sickness and In Health
When she wanted to expand her leadership role at Stamford Health, she pursued an MBA from UConn
Amy Acton opens up about her painful childhood after an attack ad featuring her estranged mother
Amy Acton was talking school budgets, local hospitals and generational farming at a farm event in northwest Ohio when she called on an attendee and asked her if there was anything she wanted to share.
This Justice Department official hustles to the forefront of Trump’s legal agenda
President Donald Trump said on Friday he wanted an election-related lawsuit to be filed in Alaska. The man to do it for him was Stanley Woodward, the associate attorney general.
Protecting Public Health Nationwide: An Environmental Health Journey That Started at Old Dominion University
When Sarah Maynard (B.S. '11) graduated from Old Dominion University in 2011 with her degree in environmental health, she knew she wanted to make a tangible impact on public safety and health. Originally from Chesapeake, Virginia, her path from a curious student Monarch to a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) highlights the incredible versatility and real-world value of the University’s environmental health program.
Wanted: New Central Bank Chief. Expertise and Political Acumen Required.
The looming departure of the European Central Bank’s president, Christine Lagarde, has set in motion a high-stakes search for her successor.
What Everton believe about Tiago Gabriel as 'perfect' transfer wanted
Tiago Gabriel in an Everton kit
Can you sue over spam calls in Florida? One business owner says he got 649 unwanted calls in days
We wanted the facts and got endless entertainment - Knightly Views with Gavin Ellis
A subliminal utterance kept playing in my head as I watched hours of prediction and speculation on election night. It was the voice of Sergeant Joe Friday. Most of you would be too young to know Sergeant Friday. Dragnet, the series in which he featured, was broadcast on New Zealand radio in the 1950s. His … Continue reading We wanted the facts and got endless entertainment →
Knicks make unfortunate NBA Champion history not seen since 2012
The New York Knicks’ title defense is off to a rocky start, and the slow beginning has put them in some unwanted company. After falling 107-103 to the Boston Celtics on Friday night at TD Garden , the Knicks are 0-2. That makes them the first reigning NBA champion to drop its first two games of a season since the 2011-12 Dallas Mavericks, who went […] The post Knicks make unfortunate NBA Champion history not seen since 2012 appeared first on ClutchPoints.
The Real Story of the Polar Bear in a UVM Science Hall Starts With Two Montpelier Agents Undercover in the Arctic
A polar bear has been hanging out in a UVM science hall for decades. Subscribe He’s a full-grown male, standing behind glass on an artificial iceberg in the lobby of the University of Vermont’s Marsh Life Science Building in Burlington. Most Vermonters have no idea he’s there. Students who asked about him heard he came from Canada. A poacher killed him, the story went, federal officers seized the hide at the Vermont border, and the government gave him to UVM on “indefinite loan.” A UVM biology professor told it that way in 2012. The university’s own news office repeated it in 2021. That story was wrong. The bear was evidence. In 1972, two federal wildlife officers from Montpelier posed as trophy hunters, bought their way into an illegal hunt run by a poaching ring, and followed it all the way to the frozen Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. One of them shot this bear. Sonia DeYoung, who works with UVM’s natural history collections, pieced the real story together from a half-remembered campus rumor, a case file buried in Anchorage and one stripped claw. She told it Nov. 6 in UVM Magazine. The Undercover Buy Early in 1972, Paul Bagalio and Bruce Parker walked into a Seattle taxidermy shop. Both lived in Montpelier. The case file lists Parker as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent and Bagalio as a deputy game warden for the service. On paper, Bagalio was an unlikely undercover man. Born in Northfield and raised in Montpelier, he served in the Marines after high school, graduated from Norwich University in 1957, taught at Vermont Technical College and worked as an engineer at Rock of Ages, according to his obituary in the Times Argus. He founded Ramchem, a company that made epoxies for the Barre granite industry. He was also a hunter. His obituary passes along his advice: “Don’t ever miss an opportunity to hunt.” And it says he worked undercover for the U.S. Department of the Interior, helping expose what his family calls one of the largest poaching rings in U.S. history. In the Seattle shop, Bagalio and Parker posed as unscrupulous trophy hunters who wanted a polar bear and didn’t care how they got one. They came away with a scribbled note: a phone number and a hefty price. The Seattle Times later reported the number. In a May 1972 story, later reprinted in the Congressional Record, the paper said the two-man hunt cost $6,500, more than $50,000 in today’s money. The Times cited a federal search-warrant affidavit alleging that the ring paid two men who held valid Alaska permits so the hides and skulls could be shipped and processed under their names. Bagalio and Parker traveled to Barrow, on Alaska’s Arctic coast, with guides working with the taxidermist. These were not men to cross. The case file describes a man taking a 12-gauge automatic shotgun from his plane and telling Parker it was “the persuader.” One photo in the file shows a mustached accomplice peering out from beneath a heavy fur hood. On March 8, 1972, on the pack ice about 100 miles north of Point Barrow, the northernmost point in the United States, Bagalio shot a male polar bear. Parker shot a second. Bagalio had no legal permit to kill it, and that was the point. The bears were hard evidence of what the ring was selling. Back in Fairbanks, a Fish and Wildlife agent marked Bagalio’s bear so it could be identified later. He smeared fluorescent dye around its nose and ripped the dark outer sheath off one of its front claws. Bagalio and Parker went on to run several more undercover hunts against poachers in the West. The danger was real. Bagalio later told the Bennington Banner, according to DeYoung’s account, “My guide made it perfectly clear that he would leave me dead in the mountains if he thought I was an investigator.” Subscribe The Faded Rumor The bear came to UVM in 1975. How the government handed him over is still unknown. A rumor came with him. A student named in the UVM Magazine article simply as Carol helped catalog the university’s specimens in those years, and she heard it: an undercover federal agent had killed the bear in Alaska because he feared his cover would be blown and his life was in danger. Over the years the rumor faded. In the 1980s, the bear was put away in storage long enough for mice to chew the fur off his ankles, and several of his front claws went missing. He was later brought back out and set up on his iceberg in the Marsh Life Science lobby, where he has stood for decades since. Somewhere along the way, the Canada story took over. The Case File Decades later, DeYoung met Carol at an open house for UVM’s zoological collections. Carol told DeYoung’s research partner, Dave Moroney, what she remembered. They were delighted, and skeptical. At DeYoung’s request, David Rippeto, a UVM graduate who is now a Fish and Wildlife special agent in Anchorage, went through a mountain of old case files stashed in cardboard boxes and found the right one. It ran more than 80 pages: photographs, letters, permit records and a typewritten account of the case. Carol’s rumor had the core of it right. A federal officer had shot the bear in Alaska while undercover. But the file showed it wasn’t a desperate move to save his own skin. The shooting was part of the plan. The Stripped Claw One question remained. Was the bear in Burlington really Bagalio’s? DeYoung and Moroney shone a black light on the bear’s snout, looking for the dye. Nothing glowed. They already had the answer. The year before, a conservator repairing the mouse damage had found that one of the bear’s supposedly missing front claws was still there, minus its dark outer sheath, just as the agent in Fairbanks had left it in 1972. “Fifty years later, the marker originally meant for law enforcement told us we had our bear,” DeYoung wrote. Paul Bagalio didn’t live to see it. He spent the rest of his life in Vermont, most of it at Horn of the Moon in East Montpelier, and died Dec. 11, 2022, at 90, a few months before DeYoung first opened the case file. His family remembered the bear differently. The obituary says he took a record-class polar bear in Siberia, across the international date line. The federal case file puts the bear in this story about 100 miles north of Point Barrow. The obituary doesn’t say whether it’s the same animal. His bear is still on the iceberg. Go see him: The polar bear stands in the entrance to Benedict Auditorium, between the Marsh Life Science and Hills buildings on UVM’s Burlington campus. Compass Vermont is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
We went to NYC and my 2 young daughters weren't into my itinerary
Our family vacationed in NYC for a week. We didn't see everything I wanted us to, and that's OK.
Man arrested, dirt bike rider wanted after theft from Monroe County business leading to pursuit
Adams County Health Department participates in Drug Take Back Day 2026
Residents were encouraged to drop off expired or unwanted medicine and prescription at Adams County Health Department for Drug Take Back Day.
‘Mormon Wives’ star Jen Affleck explains why she decided to file for divorce from husband, Zac
‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ star Jen Affleck explained why she wanted to file for divorce before giving birth to her fourth child.
Miami Heat's Bam Adebayo: 'I Never Wanted to be Captain'
The three-time All-Star opens up about reluctance to lead, as the Miami Heat's winless start places a harsh spotlight on the defensive anchor’s transition into a vocal powerhouse.
Business owner, strangers clean out struggling widower’s home for free: ‘I wanted to help’
A 22-year-old helped a widower in a tough spot with free services.
Buffalo Council OK’s Counter-Offer for Business Park Real Estate Sale
Buffalo’s City Council considered the approval of an offer in Block 1, Lot 2 in the Buffalo Business Park. Councilman Scott Madsen made a motion to make a counter-offer on the sale of the property. City Attorney Zane Hengel said if the council wanted to reject the offer and make a counter-offer, he suggested some […]
Connor Hellebuyck’s Departure From Jets Nearly Got Much Uglier
Connor Hellebuyck’s divorce from the Winnipeg Jets was messy.But according to one NHL Insider, it nearly got much uglier.Hellebuyck is arguably the best player in the history of the Winnipeg Jets, leading the franchise with 125 point shares.After the star netminder made it clear he no longer wanted to play for Winnipeg, Hellebuyck sat on […] The post Connor Hellebuyck’s Departure From Jets Nearly Got Much Uglier appeared first on HEAVY.
New sporting director wanted! Ex-international linked with Hannover?
There is still no calm at Hannover 96 under head coach Sandro Wagner, despite their recent morale-boosting 2–1 win over Dynamo Dresden. Sitting 12th, the second-division club are falling short of th...
Business owner, strangers clean out struggling widower’s home for free: ‘I wanted to help’
A 22-year-old helped a widower in a tough spot with free services.
Coffee Conversation: Trina Swanson talks 8th District Congressional Campaign
In the lead-up to the Nov. 3 general election, FOX 21's morning show wanted to bring in candidates that Northland residents will be seeing on the ballot to speak live
11/10/2026: Supervisory Status and Health Care Rule Quirks
Union Electric Company D/B/a Ameren Missouri, 14-RM-394835 (Regional Election Decision) A Regional Director dismissed the Employer's petition after finding that Distribution System Operating Supervisors (DSOS) II are statutory supervisors under Section 2(11) of the NLRA, but not managerial employees. The Employer, an electric and gas utility, filed the petition after the Union demanded recognition for DSOS I and II positions. Because the DSOS II are supervisors excluded from the NLRA's protection, no election was ordered. The DSOS I position was not decided, since no one currently holds it, and ordering an election for a unit with zero employees would be contrary to Board policy. As a preliminary matter, the Union was precluded from litigating supervisory or managerial status because it filed its Statement of Position with the Region but did not serve it on the Employer by the deadline. The Regional Director still took evidence sufficient to decide unit appropriateness, as the Board's rules require. Supervisory status rested on the authority to assign. The DSOS prioritize work tickets, choose which Line Troubleman or Traveling Operator to send, pull employees off lower-priority jobs, hold employees past shift end, decide whether to call in crews and how large they should be, and handle sick call-outs, all without consulting anyone. Relying on Oakwood Healthcare and Entergy Mississippi, the Regional Director found this resembled utility dispatchers who used independent judgment in assigning employees to places. It did not matter that the record did not show who selects the specific employees who respond to a call-out. The Employer failed to prove responsible direction because nothing showed DSOS face adverse consequences for field employees' performance. The one Performance Improvement Plan involved a DSOS's own errors. The Employer also failed to prove discipline authority, since switching error forms merely report incidents and upper management decides whether discipline follows. The managerial claim failed because there was no evidence the DSOS formulate high-level employer policy. They exercise technical discretion, sit below Superintendents and a Manager, and are first-level supervisors. Significant Cases Cited Oakwood Healthcare, Inc., 348 NLRB 686 (2006): Defined "assign" and "responsibly direct" under Section 2(11) and placed the burden of proving supervisory status on the party asserting it. Entergy Mississippi, Inc., 367 NLRB No. 109 (2019): Held utility dispatchers were supervisors because they used independent judgment in prioritizing outages and assigning field employees. NLRB v. Kentucky River Community Care, Inc., 532 U.S. 706 (2001): Established the three-part test for supervisory status under Section 2(11). NLRB v. Yeshiva University, 444 U.S. 672 (1980): Described managerial employees as those who formulate and effectuate management policies and are aligned with management. Ikea Distribution Services, Inc., 370 NLRB No. 109 (2021): Affirmed preclusion of issues for a late-served Statement of Position while confirming the Regional Director must still determine unit appropriateness. NLRB Edge is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Prime Healthcare Services – St. Michael’s, LLC D/B/a Saint Michael’s Medical Center, 22-RC-392696 (Regional Election Decision) The Regional Director dismissed a petition seeking an Armour-Globe self-determination election for two full-time radiation therapists at a Newark hospital. The union wanted the therapists to vote on joining its existing nonconforming unit of registered nurses, nurse anesthetists, and technical employees. The Regional Director found the union had not shown the therapists could appropriately be added to that unit under the Board's Health Care Rule and the community-of-interest factors. The Regional Director first explained that the Health Care Rule does not categorically bar an Armour-Globe election in a partially organized hospital with existing nonconforming units. Under St. Vincent Charity Medical Center, such an election does not create a new unit and so does not offend the Rule's concern with unit proliferation. The petitioner still bears the burden of showing the group is identifiable and distinct and shares a community of interest with the existing unit. The therapists were an identifiable, distinct group because they do identical work in the same department under the same managers. On community of interest, the evidence was mostly unfavorable to the union. The therapists work in the Cancer Center alongside unit nurses but have separate supervision (apart from occasional coverage), separate break areas, and distinct equipment and functions. Their contact with nurses is limited to routine patient handoffs, and they do not interact with or fill in for technical employees such as radiology technicians. The Regional Director found some overlap in certifications and training, which might tip the scale on those factors, but the union did not establish common terms and conditions. The Regional Director added that shared benefits or work rules would not suffice given separate supervision, no interchange, and physical separation. The decisive problem was the Health Care Rule's classifications. The therapists are professionals who fall within the Rule's "all other professionals" category. The parties' contract expressly excludes "all other professionals," and the union's attempt at hearing to classify some respiratory therapists as professionals contradicted that contract. Adding the therapists would create yet another nonconforming grouping and leave other unrepresented professionals in that category. A separate therapist-only unit would also be inappropriate because the record shows other unrepresented professional employees. A unit of all unrepresented employees in that category may be appropriate. Significant Cases Cited St. Vincent Charity Medical Center, 357 NLRB 854 (2011): An Armour-Globe election in an acute care hospital does not violate the Health Care Rule because it adds employees to an existing unit rather than creating a new one. Rush University Medical Center v. NLRB, 833 F.3d 202 (D.C. Cir. 2016): Section 103.30(c) of the Health Care Rule applies only to petitions for additional units, not to Armour-Globe elections adding employees to an existing unit. Warner-Lambert Co., 298 NLRB 993 (1990): A self-determination election requires that the employees share a community of interest with the existing unit and form an identifiable, distinct segment constituting an appropriate voting group. United Operations, Inc., 338 NLRB 123 (2002): Sets out the community-of-interest factors, and common supervision alone does not require inclusion in one unit absent interchange, contact, or functional integration. Wheatland Electric Cooperative, Inc., 375 NLRB No. 16 (2026): Functional integration requires that positions depend on one another to accomplish their tasks, and minor differences between groups should not be given too much weight.
This founder built the RV he wanted for ski trips. It led to a $20 million business
Jim Ritchie felt that RVs looked like ‘1980s Vegas.’ His hybrid vehicle company, AEONrv, grew 4,231 percent in three years.
Dayton-area country singer Will Thiery wins first Josie Music Award
When Will Thiery stood on the Grand Ole Opry stage to accept his Josie Music Award, he wanted to kiss the floor.
‘The View’ dresses child as Trump’s algae-infested Lincoln Memorial pool for Halloween
‘The View’ dressed children for Halloween as Donald Trump’s algae-infested Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and the bird Kelly Clarkson wanted to buy at a Brooklyn store.
Prince William, wannabe DJ and film-lover, appears on UK chat show
LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Prince William talked about his love of Christopher Nolan films and how he once wanted to be a DJ as he appeared on a British
Dodgers announce decision on Shohei Ohtani after injuries
Shohei Ohtani’s first full season as a two-way player in three years didn’t end the way he or the Los Angeles Dodgers wanted, as injuries piled up and the Dodgers were swept out of the playoffs. But it sounds like the two-time defending champions are getting some good news on the health front, leading to…
Meet Seiji Iigaya, 14, from New Jersey, used Python to model 100 violin bow-string contact points and uncover the physics of expressive playing, winning a $3,500 national science award
Timbral Dynamics at the Instability Boundary.” It looked at the exact physical factors that let string players make a warm, expressive tone without pushing the string into a harsh, cracked sound. Seiji wanted to improve his own playing.
Want to fly to the moon? NASA is looking for new astronauts to help grow its Artemis program
Want to fly to the moon and help build a permanent lunar base.
More young people embrace entrepreneurship
Kayla Brookins, 30, wanted a career in maternity care. She held an unwavering passion to work with women and infants, alongside a growing interest in holistic healing. But after a
Arsenal still wants two Real Madrid superstars
Arsenal continues to scout the world’s best talent, and they are eyeing several players from Real Madrid, just as they did during the summer. In the last transfer window, the Gunners wanted to sign ...
The Last Disney+ Original?
(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.) Before we get going, I wanted to remind readers about how I plan to keep your trust while I add advertising to this newsletter. As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m running ads now, but the danger is that it could impact my analysis and writing. I have a list of sponsors on my About Page, so if you think I’m biased, you can check out who’s sponsored this newsletter! This is something that I’m not sure anyone else in digital media does (if you’re a writer or media outlet and you do this, let me know and I’ll shout you out!) but it’s something I’d love to see embraced by the entire industry. Sunlight, i.e. transparency, is often the best disinfectant. Okay, on to this week’s issue. We (finally) have another major Disney+ TV show to talk about, so that’s my main focus for today. Plus, we had a lot of new shows come out, including the fourth seasons of The Diplomat and Tulsa King! And Love is Blind! The Lowdown! Also, four (four!) straight-to-streaming films came out this week, featuring a lot of big names and celebrities, so I’m going to look at those. All that, mixed news for the WNBA, Reacher ends its run on the charts, Skydance does well in September viewership, NYU’s Sundance dominance, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right 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 October 12th to October 18th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Television - Disney+’s Porridge Problem Listen, per my headline, VisionQuest isn’t the last Disney+ Original. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not. They have other MCU shows in development. Well, maybe one: But it sure feels like the end of an era. I’d call it their “porridge too hot” era, to quote myself from The Ringer. I told Ben Lindbergh that Disney+ seemingly couldn’t figure out the right amount of content. In the heights of the Streaming Bubble Era (circa 2019 to 2022), they started releasing an insane amount of TV shows. After their growth slowed, they’re down to two or three shows a year, and that might be down to 1 by 2027. Here’s my TV shows by year chart: Even at the time, I thought Disney was making too many shows (that cost too much). Today? They’re definitely making too few shows (though the budgets are more in check, at least according to the reporting). Porridge too hot, porridge too cold; too many shows, now not enough. Which makes evaluating VisionQuest so interesting. This show didn’t have a great lead-in, whether it be a Marvel Cinematic Universe film (the last non-Sony-produced-Spider-Man flick came out The Fantastic Four from July of 2025) or Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show (the two this year were Wonder Man back in January and _Daredevil: Born Again_in May, both of which underwhelmed). And so far, VisionQuest hasn’t quite recaptured the MCU Originals glory, but it has some signs of sparks. First, it made Samba TV, though at a lowly ninth place. At least it made it, a feat some other Marvel shows didn’t accomplish. (Ironheart landed on the Samba TV charts one week at tenth place, but Wonder Man and Daredevil: Born Again both missed.) VisionQuest also made Luminate, though with only 3.0 and 7.6 million hours. But it missed Nielsen in its first week. The best news might be its 7.8 on IMDb, on 12K reviews so far, great numbers, even for a superhero show. Looking at those numbers, this show will really need to pick up in future weeks—and it may since it’s coming out weekly—or Disney will have another disappointment on its hands. Disney+ binge-released their last few shows to try to boost numbers, but that meant shows like Iron Heart and Wonder Man didn’t last long on the charts. _Daredevil: Born Again’s_last season missed entirely (though it came out weekly). Here’s the Disney+ Originals by totals: And for a fun new look, here are those same shows, rearranged by the years they came out: That really shows that, in addition to Disney+ releasing fewer shows, those shows just don’t hit like they once did. If I had to offer one main explanation, it’s that Marvel Studios moved away from characters who starred in the Avengersmovies (The Scarlett Witch, Vision, Hawkeye, Loki, Falcon, Winter Soldier) to characters who didn’t (Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Iron Heart, Wonder Man, Daredevil). It sounds trite, but more popular IP tends to do better than less popular IP. In Marvel’s case, beloved, decades-old characters trump newer ones. And yes, I think this is a problem for Disney. The failure of Marvel TV shows to linger for weeks on the charts, unlike in 2021 and 2022, explains why Disney’s share of the charts has plummeted: That’s a strategic issue. Yes, these shows are really expensive, but without them, Disney+ will struggle, especially if Disney+ keeps raising prices AND licenses out its shows non-exclusively. My recommendation? Return to the core value proposition, which is Disney+ as “genre HBO”. The goal is six shows a year, coming out weekly, spaced out throughout the year. When a show hits, keep it coming back. Make three to four of those shows Marvel or Star Wars, and fill out the rest with IP swings like Percy Jackson, Goosebumps or something like National Treasure. And make YA-skewing shows like Coven Academy to fill out the schedule. Disney, you can get this porridge just right, er, make the right number of shows. Quick Notes on TV Netflix’s sophomore, er, junior, er, senior season slump abated very, very slightly this week. I speak of The Diplomat, which returned for its fourth season on 15-Oct. Credit where credit is due, this show debuted in April of 2023, and has put out new seasons every year since. Has that helped the viewership? Not really. This season opened to 16.4 million hours, which is down significantly from the first season (21.7 million hours) and down somewhat from the second season (18.0 million hours), but it is up from last year’s 14.2 million hours opening. On Samba TV, it opened to third place; that’s also very good. On Luminate, it opened to 25.0 million hours, which is good, but over thirty million hours is a hit on that platform. Netflix wisely renewed it, since it’s steady and, frankly, Netflix needs hits.1 Paramount+ put out Tulsa King’s fourth season on a Friday. After putting out most of their big, usually-Taylor Sheridan-scripted shows out on Sundays last year, they’ve clearly moved to Fridays going forward. Was this a thought-out strategic change, Netflix mimicry, or a data-inspired move? Tough to say. Fridays are crowded with new movies, but so are Sundays with new shows. Anyways, this one is coming out weekly, and we haven’t seen it hit the Nielsen or Luminate charts yet. But it did make Samba TV at fifth place, which is a good opening. Still, if this doesn’t make Luminate or Nielsen next week, I’d call it a disappointment. Netflix had two unscripted shows hit the charts this week, one a docu-series and one a reality competition show. Tyson is a four-episode docu-series about one of boxing’s most popular fighters, and it made both the Samba TV and Luminate charts, but not Nielsen. That’s a solid run for only four episodes (assuming it didn’t cost an arm and a leg to produce). Netflix’s latest season of Love Is Blind also returned for its eleventh season, which opened to 10.0 million hours, down from previous seasons. It also had 11.0 million hours according to Luminate, roughly in line with the Nielsen numbers. Last issue, I analyzed the triple successes of Below, Carrie and Crystal Lake, noting that all three have done well. I mostly used Nielsen, but all three shows also made Samba TV (see above). Crystal Lake in particular did very well on Luminate, getting 35.0 million hours, top for Peacock among first seasons: The top “show” of the week would have been Thursday Night Football again, at 41.7 million hours. This is still above last year’s game, but it continues the season’s overall downward trend, which happens every year. (Though a big week is coming, based on the news stories I’ve seen.) As I said before, I’ll do a deeper dive on all the October games later this month, with comparisons to previous years. One company is quietly on a roll, when you consider the shows it makes and streams. I speak of Skydance—a point Variety made—noting that it produces Neagley and Reacher for Amazon, along with Paramount+’s Lioness, which means it produced three of the top four shows of September according to Nielsen. By the way, Neagley fell off the Nielsen charts after four weeks, which is a pinch short for how well it started, but it’s still a huge success. (Interestingly, it finished just 7.3 million hours ahead of the cancelled Ride or Die.) The point, though, which I’ve made before, is that Prime Video still has a problem with how many co-productions it buys, most notably _The Boys_from Sony and Reacher/Jack Ryan from Skydance. It’s not a critical flaw—everyone licenses shows—but Amazon still struggles to make its own hits. Reacher finally fell off the Nielsen charts, so here’s its final rank for season four: 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… ...An example of the algorithm NOT picking a film… …whether or not Netflix buys shows simply for the movie poster… ...if East of Eden is above the Obliterated Line... ...what four star-studded straight-to-streaming films didn’t chart... ...and a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue.
Jayson Tatum Reacts to Encouraging Celtics Development Against Knicks
The Boston Celtics beat the New York Knicks 107-103 on Friday night at TD Garden. Jayson Tatum scored 36 points and closed the game with a run that sealed the win. The stat line told the obvious story.But after the game, the moment Tatum wanted to talk about was not one of his own. It […] The post Jayson Tatum Reacts to Encouraging Celtics Development Against Knicks appeared first on HEAVY.
You can opt out of political texts, but campaign calls may keep coming
Political text messages filling up your phone? Here are ways to reduce unwanted campaign messages.
Adams County Health Department participates in Drug Take Back Day 2026
For Drug Take Back Day, people were encouraged to drop off expired or unwanted medicine and prescription at Adams County Health Department Saturday.
Medtronic’s Diabetes Split-Off Drew a Crowd. Now MiniMed Has to Deliver.
Medtronic officially split-off MiniMed to focus on its core businesses. Investors wanted more of the stock than they had to offer.
Spalletti pushing to work with Atletico Madrid star
Alexander Sorloth was one of the players Luciano Spalletti wanted Juventus to sign last summer, but the Norwegian striker started the season injured, and the Old Lady decided it would not make sense t...
The politics of war
Israel went to the polls last Tuesday and it is the turn of the United States next Tuesday. The differences in the two elections are self-evident. Compared with the US, which has favourable geography and does everything at scale, Israel is tiny and part of an unstable region. For its elections, it has adopted an almost pure form of proportional representation based on lists. This encourages multiple parties and can make it almost impossible to form a government, as we can now see. The US system is complex in its own way but discourages third parties. Yet for all the differences in size, geography, and political systems, the fates of the two countries are closely connected. Israel has come to depend on the US to sustain its military strength, and over the past few tumultuous years that dependence has created resentment in the United States. The Biden administration was punished for appearing to give Netanyahu a blank check after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, and not holding Israel back as it employed ruthless tactics in Gaza. Because of the treatment of Palestinians, American views of Israel have grown progressively more negative over the past few years. Only a third now support the Israeli government. While on the left, this is largely because of how Israeli forces have operated in Gaza and, more recently, how the settler movement has behaved in the West Bank, for the American right the issue has been about how Benjamin Netanyahu persuaded Donald Trump to forget his wariness about more Middle Eastern wars and agree to a joint attack on Iran, which has gone badly wrong. The Palestine question was not a big issue for the two large Jewish blocs in last Tuesday’s election. Both supported a tough response to Hamas after October 2023 and neither accepts a two-state solution. It was, however, the threat posed by the ethno-nationalist policies of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the two extreme members of Netanyahu’s coalition, and their tolerance, even encouragement, of settler violence, that brought out the Arab voters. (In principle this should strengthen their position though to turn into real power would require the ‘Change Bloc’ overcoming their opposition to involving Arab parties. The alternatives are a National Unity government, defection from the Change Bloc to Netanyahu, or deadlock and another round of elections in the new year.) There was also broad support for the war against Iran among the Jewish parties. The difficulty here is that the objectives behind the war have yet to be met, and that continuing with military operations depends on the United States. In this way the two elections have come together at a crucial moment. If Netanyahu hoped that a victory over Iran would help him retain his majority, cementing his legacy as an Israeli war leader, it did not work out that way. Trump also expected a great victory about which he could boast. He promised at most the end of a hateful and aggressive regime, with a record of hostility to both the United States and Israel, or at least the elimination of Iran’s military capabilities and the end of its nuclear programme. Eight months on, there is not much to boast about; vital objectives remain elusive: the Iranian regime is even more hardline than before; the international economy is barely coping with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz; and Saudi Arabia is struggling with an unwanted conflict with the Yemeni Houthis. For all these reasons, the Iran War has been a dark cloud hanging over both elections. Yet the issue has been approached in different ways. Netanyahu sought to push the issue before the election while Trump has been more cautious. Trump’s essential claim is that there is nothing to worry about and he’s still working out what final steps need to be taken to provide a definitive conclusion to the conflict. Netanyahu’s final pitch was that there was lots to worry about. He focused on Israel’s dire security situation, with the Iran War unfinished and the prospect of imminent economic isolation because of international sanctions. For him it is imperative to defeat Iran decisively, and without delay. Why this different response to the same war? Part of the answer lies in how public opinion in the two countries responded to the war. In this post, I show how this came about. We await the outcome of the US midterms but know the result, at least in terms of the share of the vote if not yet the shape of the new government, of the Israeli election. With the elections out of the way Netanyahu is pressing for another round in the war. Trump is less sure. I conclude with thoughts on the importance of how he decides.
Tennessee HS golf star owns a baking business, and she found the recipe to win a state title
Mathile Walker never wanted golf to consume her, she found baking as a secondary passion that recharges her mind and improves her golf game at the same time
Photo Essay: College of Science and Engineering Research Showcase
Fourth-year Mechanical Engineering major Jess Visaya and Fourth-year Mechanical Engineering major Dorette Pirie show off their soft robots. The robots are made to mimic worms, whose bodies bunch up before extending to propel themselves forward. The robots use pneumatic actuators to make linear movement outwards. Visaya and Pirie set up two of their worms with syringes attached to tubing which was then threaded through the end cap into the worms. Visitors to their station were encouraged to race the two worms by pumping the attached syringes. Third-year Biochemistry major Ira Evetts worked in Dr. Christopher Whidbey’s lab studying the vaginal microbiome, in an attempt to better understand the different microbes that build it up and how it affects health outcomes. Evetts’ research was specifically focused on lactobacillus iners, one of several bacteria naturally present in a healthy vaginal microbiome, and methylation systems. Fourth-year Mechanical Engineering major John Diesko Boehm and Fourth-Year Mechanical Engineering major Ian Agopsowicz hold up their “DAQMobile.” They built their project, a modified RC kit car, to help teach mechanical engineers about circuits and electrical design through real-world application. Fourth-year Mechanical Engineering major Ben Murphy holds up his mole crab and crawfish-inspired burrower. Murphy wanted to imitate the motion of a crab’s legs through robotics, with the primary goal to “turn the rotation of one motor into four alternating legs that would successfully displace soil.” Murphy was inspired by works that take inspiration from the natural world, and he found mole crabs particularly interesting. Although a mole crab is at an advantage with its burrowing being underwater, thus the sand being fluidized and easier to displace, Murphy’s machine is able to successfully burrow three centimeters into the ground. Second-year Mechanical Engineering major and Physics major Arabelle Miller shows off her rubber gripper, inspired by kirigami and origami. She took a piece of rubber and strategically cut slits into it to make it fold the way she needed, then glued googly eyes to the front. The gripper is able to hold up to 38 times its weight, or 226 grams. Third-year Mechanical Engineering major Joonseong Park talked about how his project took an unused and broken 3-D printer and transformed it into a testing platform for soft robotic grippers. The former-printer was reprogrammed and had its extruder part modified to be a mount for the grippers. Park shows off some of the other grippers that can be attached to the testing platform. Park classified grippers into two large categories. The first set of grippers is designed to deal with small delicate objects with great precision, and the second is made to lift heavy or large objects. Third-year Mechanical Engineering major Jiashuo Liu set out with a goal to deploy free open-source AI models to pre-existing robots to integrate object recognition and retrieval and command. The models are used to process the data received from the robots’ cameras in order to detect certain objects and their locations. Fourth-year Mechanical Engineering major Cole Purohit focused on agricultural automation of raspberry picking. His project utilizes kirigami to make grippers to close around a raspberry when the two ends are pulled. “Nobody wants to eat a squished raspberry,” Purohit said. Fourth-Year Biochemistry major Mariel Nolan’s project focused on bacteria and proteins within the bacteria whose functions are unknown. Nolan’s research is finding a way to isolate those proteins with the ultimate goal of determining their functions. Fourth-year Mechanical Engineering major Kai Boydon and Fourth-year Mechanical Engineering major Evan Nguyen show off their project, which uses custom extensors to help with the rehabilitation of stroke patients. They compared their project to a “party-popper” in the way it unfurls itself when placed under a patient’s fingers, helping the stroke patient rehabilitate finger movement. Boydon shows off the testing rig built for their project. It works as a mount for their extensor, as a way to test against resistance. Their program inflates the extensor through an air pump, which then makes the extensor push against the bed whilst an arduino calculates the force created and air pressure associated with the force. Navigate Left Navigate Right
‘You are more’: Former Mountain Home student leads mental health initiative
When Ava Johnson saw how an injury kept her sister from playing sports, she wanted to raise awareness for her entire town.
Wilmington Health facility sells for $9.4M
Wilmington Health’s main facility recently sold for more than $9 million. The 66,000-square-foot facility located at 1202 Medical Center Drive was purchased by Charlotte-based real estate investment firm Cedar Square in a $9.4 million sale-leaseback transaction, according to a deed recorded Oct. 21. Wilmington Health will continue leasing the facility, CEO Jeff James told the Business Journal in September. James said the lease term would likely be five years, with most services eventually transferring to a new medical office building under construction in the Midtown Park office area near The Pointe at Barclay. The Wilmington Health facility was originally listed earlier this year at $11.85 million. A Wilmington Health representative did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Steve Hall, vice president of BlueCoast Commercial, represented Wilmington Health in the transaction. “Wilmington Health wanted to unlock the value in its real estate without disrupting a single patient visit, and a sale-leaseback let them do exactly that,” said Hall in a text to the Business Journal Monday. “Cedar Square gets a long-term, absolute net investment anchored by one of the region’s leading physician groups, and Wilmington Health keeps its home on Medical Center Drive while redeploying that capital into care.” The sale marks Cedar Square’s first entry into the Wilmington market, according to Jon Dixon, the firm's managing partner and founder. “We are attracted to Wilmington's growth and what we see as strong long-term fundamentals,” said Dixon in an email Monday. “Population growth, relative affordability, and quality of life make it a compelling market for us. The climate and proximity to the coast are a big part of that appeal.” He added, “We hope to pursue additional opportunities across retail, industrial, medical office and multifamily in Wilmington. We will evaluate opportunities individually and remain disciplined about the properties we pursue. We would like this acquisition to be the beginning of a broader investment presence in Wilmington.” Given the facility’s age, Dixon said the site could eventually be redeveloped, potentially for medical office space or housing. Dixon said recent announcements from UNC Health and Atrium were among the factors behind the firm’s growing interest in Wilmington’s medical-office market. The announcements involve competing proposals for hospital expansion in New Hanover County, which are subject to the state’s Certificate of Need process. “Medical office remains one of the most sought-after asset classes in commercial real estate,” said Hall, “and well-located (medical office buildings) with strong operators are scarce in Southeastern North Carolina.” According to Dixon, Cedar Square describes itself as a boutique, hands-on real estate investment firm that values direct relationships with tenants and the communities where it owns property. “We’re very hands-on, and we like to be in direct contact with all of our tenants and the communities in which we own,” Dixon said. He added, “We’re definitely interested in building a presence with local owners, brokers and businesses or tenants.”
Police seek man wanted in burglary at SW DC business
D.C. police are asking for the public's help identifying an individual accused of burglarizing a business in Southwest.The burglary happened around 1:14 a.m. Su
I’m not Left or Right. I’m Up: Time to look beyond political labels
Whenever an election approached, everyone wanted to know: Who are you voting for? “I can’t vote,” I would answer. “I’m Canadian.” I loved being neutral.
AFGHS co-signatory countries ask health care users to help fill the financing gap
Hundreds of thousands of Ugandans living with HIV on antiretrovirals could be targeted for user fees or community health insurance schemes requiring modest premium payments, according to the April 2026 version of the country’s America First Global Health Strategy implementation narrative.1 As part of the “sustainable financing for the private not for profit sector” strategy, 491 facilities will be targeted for a phased introduction of user fees and scale up of community health insurance programs.2 In the Ugandan context, PNFP facilities include faith-based hospitals and other health facilities, US missionary organizations and centers of excellence—services that are often co-located at government facilities but run with additional financial and technical resources. 402,000 people—or about 28 percent of the total Ugandan adult PLHIV population on treatment—get ART from the private not for profit sector. The selected facilities provide the majority of ART and prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) services. The plan doesn’t give the total number of clients served by the 491 facilities, so it is not possible to give a precise number. But the majority of 402,000 is a figure in the hundreds of thousands—hence the estimate I’m using.3 The April draft of the Ugandan implementation plan narrative is the only one I’ve been able to review. But the government of Uganda is not alone in turning to health care users to help fill the financing gaps caused by the abrupt withdrawal of US funds. In July 2025, the Government of Liberia introduced user fees for previously free services including “registration, accommodation, patient feeding, hospitalization, and a wide range of surgical and diagnostic procedures.”4 Earlier that year, Liberia rolled out a revolving drug fund designed to stabilize drug supplies by “allowing patients to pay a small fee for standardized, quality medications,” according to a Ministry of Health press release.5 (Both of these approaches had been proposed in the National Health Policy 2022-2031; media coverage explicitly connects the launch with the US foreign aid cuts.) The health financing strategies proposed by Uganda and established in Liberia are qualitatively different from user fees officially adopted by specific health facilities to cover funding shortfalls caused by the new US approach.6 The latter is a stopgap, adhoc change. The former is a national governmental adoption of policies that pass costs on to health care users, despite evidence that such approaches can exacerbate inequities and leave deficits unfilled. Two countries does not make a pattern, but they do point to urgent questions: Have other countries, including Liberia, included user fees or community health insurance schemes in their implementation plans? If so, do any of these narratives have what Uganda’s lacks: a fall-back plan in place in case these strategies for sustainable health systems fail to deliver—as they have before? I wonder if you think about it Subscribe Predictable pitfalls Both community-based health insurance and user fees are as old as the hills. And after decades of people climbing up these hills, duking it out, climbing back down—neither strategy has shown the results the Ugandan implementation plan is counting on. This is, in fact, a hill some folks are willing to die on. (You knew I’d get there, right?) In November 2025, an African-led team of health system experts published a paper directed at low- and middle income country governments trying to figure out how to create self-sustaining health systems. The money wasn’t coming back. It had been more than nine months since the season of freezing, waivering and wood-chippering; two months since AFGHS tumbled into the world touting co-financing requirements and reductions in future US government health aid. Governments were looking for strategies for sustainable, self-financed health systems, the authors wrote. For countries considering user fees and community health insurance to fill the financing gaps, they had a simple message: Don’t. On user fees, the paper states: “Reliance on user fees is ultimately a regressive and inequitable approach. It places a disproportionate burden on the poor and undermines health system goals of equity and financial protection. […] There is overwhelming evidence that user fees mobilise very limited resources for the public health sector, making it an inefficient mechanism for revenue mobilisation.” On community health insurance: “Attempting to shift the burden of funding previously donor-funded services, such as HIV care and management, and TB treatment, onto contributory schemes would exacerbate their fragility and fail to protect the population.”7 The WHO says that community-based health insurance “cannot be expected to provide a major source of funding or coverage,” and noted that most schemes offer only moderate benefit to individuals paying into them, and exclude the poorest segment of the population.8 And yet, the US-Ugandan implementation plan says that community health insurance is “the central pillar of this [PNFP] sustainability strategy” and that this approach that will generate “pre-paid pooled funding at facility and community level [that] improves financial risk protection for households, reduces catastrophic out-of-pocket expenditure, and generates structured, transparent revenue streams that can progressively absorb recurrent costs including health worker salaries.” Unfortunately, Uganda’s own history suggests the pillar might not be able to bear this weight. Ugandans Have Been to this Rodeo Before—and Some Want Their Money Back Uganda introduced its first community health insurance scheme in 1996 with support from international donors.9 Thirty years later, somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 percent of the population is covered by CHI; just over 1 percent has any kind of health insurance.10 User fees were universally introduced in 1993 as a condition of a World Bank loan.11 They were abandoned in 2001, and in 2004—the year I moved to Uganda to watch the free HIV program get underway—a definitive study found that the fees did not improve health systems and outcomes.12 In 2004, most clinics and hospitals had ‘free’ and ‘fee for service’ options for getting care.13 The fee for service, or “cash and carry” programs had often been established in the years prior to PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. People who could afford to paid for the drugs, often at facilities in the private-not-for-profit (PNFP) sector. When free drugs arrived, some people who’d been paying kept on doing so, perhaps because of shorter wait times, greater confidentiality, convenience or other factors. But in the year that I spent visiting the same clinics around the country week after week—including a “center of excellence” that maintained separate days for cash and carry clients and those accessing free ARVs—lots of people who had been paying tried to switch to the free option. They’d paid because they had no other choice. They’d sold pieces of family land, begged family members for loans, bought pills by the week, and sometimes by the day. Or they were just cash-strapped, like most of us, and wanted the funds for other things. 14 Twenty-two years later, this hasn’t changed. Ugandans pay out of pocket for 30-40 percent of their health care costs, leading one paper to declare that “falling ill is more than a health crisis. It is a financial emergency.”15 One recent study found that up to 48.5 percent of households dealing with tuberculosis sold something, took out a loan or dug into savings to defray the costs of TB care—which is supposed to be universally free.16 The Ugandan implementation plan does anticipate challenges. It proposes a phased approach, with 187 facilities introducing user contribution systems in Year 1, 152 in Year 2, and 153 in Year 3. Willingness to pay and feasibility studies will precede roll out; fees will be tiered by region, and a waiver system is proposed to ensure that no one has to pay who is unable to. Moreover, the plan provides for quarterly reviews of epidemiological data to “ensure that user contributions do not compromise epidemic control gains, ART continuity for the client cohort, TB case management, or PMTCT services.” Alt text: A screenshot of a table included in the implementation plan narrative that is the subject of this stack. It’s got a fetching pink bar at the top. It uses the abbreviation “CHI” which is Community Health Insurance, and FBO which is Faith Based Organizations, and it details the number of facilities that will implement user fees with waivers and community health insurance schemes over the five years of the agreement. As I said in the footnote, this is a super interesting document with a lot of other rich material. Tell me what you see—and what you would have focused on. And if you’ve seen something like this, or anything else that strikes you, in another implementation plan, tell me that too. You can use the Substack message platform or try me on Signal at @endaplague_again.25 (because @mercoonfan was, weirdly, taken). But the plan doesn’t fully explain what will happen if this approach doesn’t work out. Yes, progress will be monitored, and corrective action triggered. However, there is no specified funding replacement if premium and fee revenue prove inadequate. Instead, the authors write, “Currently, COEs serve a total client cohort of over 180,000 across 28 facilities. In the initial years, the U.S. Government (USG) will provide financial support for clients; over time, user fees generated by COEs will become the primary source of funding for sustaining their services.” Failure does not really seem to be an option. Health insurance schemes are more acceptable to the Ugandan population than user fees. Members of Parliament and civil society traveled to Ethiopia to see how that country’s scheme worked. In a follow up report, a veteran civil society group recommended allowing the “health insurance ecosystem to grow organically and [to] keep reviewing the law and regulations as this growth takes root.”17 One study found that more than three-quarters of Ugandans were willing to join a health insurance program.18 However, coverage of community-based health insurance is minimal, as is coverage of any kind of insurance—including private plans.19 A national health insurance scheme bill has been stalled for several years and presently sits with President Yoweri Museveni.20 Community-based health insurance scheme that do exist are expanding in number, but losing enrollees. Between 2022 and 2026, the number of community-based health financing schemes across the country increased by 42 percent, while the number of people enrolled decreased by nearly 11 percent.21 None of this means that community-based health insurance should not happen in Uganda—or that people do not want insurance. It doesn’t even mean that user fees and waivers won’t ever work. But there is highly relevant evidence from Uganda and the surrounding region that it is quite optimistic to describe community health insurance and user fees as central supports for sustainable financing in any sector of the health system. And now for the best-case scenario In the best-case scenario22, the Ugandan approach does exactly what it sets out to do, and so does the Liberian fee structure and revolving pharmacy fund—though I’ve not confirmed that these are in the MoU. In one best-case scenario, Uganda is an outlier, and user fees and community health insurance are not recurrent pillars of self-sustaining financing in other countries’ implementation plans. In another best-case scenario, all countries that include these strategies enjoy success beyond anyone’s evidence-informed wildest dreams: reliable funding generated by health care users fees, great health care outcomes for everyone, no exacerbation of inequities, no crippling household debt. No sold land, repurposed school tuition or high-interest loans. In the best-case scenario, not one of the hundreds of thousands of Ugandans living with HIV receiving antiretrovirals from 491 PNFP facilities misses a refill or leaves care because of user fees or community health insurance premiums. This is the best-case scenario for these people for their own health, and for their families. It is also the best-case scenario if Uganda wants to stay on the path to eliminating HIV as a public health threat. According to the country’s most recent data, 96.5 percent of people living with HIV on antiretrovirals are virologically suppressed. Epidemic control depends ensuring that 95% of people living with HIV know their status, 95 percent of those individuals are on ART, and 95% of those individuals are virologically suppressed. Uganda is still struggling with the first “95"—a frankly abysmal 85.3 percent. If HIV epidemic control and the attendant prevention of new infections, avoidable suffering and premature death matter, the country cannot afford to lose any clients who are currently in care.23 As I write this a couple hours before the polls close for the US elections in the city I live in, I say with soul-deep sincerity: I am rooting for the best-case scenario. I think it’s safe to say that we all are.24 I think it’s also safe to say that if the US and co-signatory governments have inked plans that lead to successful expansion of community health insurance and strategic use of user fees, we all would like to know, now, so that we don’t miss the opportunity to celebrate when success happens. The implementation plan narratives have to enter the public domain. They are the fullest expression of a strategy co-created by two governments. There are assumptions and details that people living in the US and co-signatory countries need to understand that are not available in the MoUs or, to date, in the Congressional Notifications. Some of these details can help other countries that are, as I write this, still working on implementation plans. Others, like a solid count of how many other countries have plans for expanding user fees or health insurance, are important for regional and global health architecture reform initiatives. No matter how this election night turns out, there will be a slew of new Congressional member orientations, briefings and talking points papers in the next few months. Release of implementation narratives should be a bullet point in every context that AFGHS is discussed. These documents can be redacted so that procurement sensitive information isn’t disclosed. There is much more historical precedent for sharing such documents than there is for relying on user fees to fill health financing gaps. Let’s look at the information together so we can hope for the best and prepare for, you know, the other thing. Alt text: A substack first: a bicep selfie! It’s my arm - peachy-white skin, black shirt (flannel, notch neck, too hot for this appallingly balmy November weather, if you’re wondering) and a sticker that says I VOTED 2026. Beige letters on red for I voted. Beige on blue for 2026. You bet I did.25 In your wildest dreams. Subscribe 1 This is a really, really rich 95 page document. There are fascinating ideas and detailed plans in it. It is all worth reading AND I have, in this post, highlighted an instance of content that could pose challenges and certainly posits success of strategies that haven’t worked before. I would love to hear what readers’ see that’s interesting and should be lifted up as something to check for in other implementation plans. I will also shortly be adding a static page to the substack site where implementation plan documents will live. I will put the url into this footnote and it will also be there on emilybass.substack.com by the end of the week. Uganda Implementation Narrative Section 4 April 22 2026 Draft 1.51MB ∙ PDF file Download Download 2 User fees are costs charged for visits, labs, medicines or other health services, usually at the time they are provided. Community health insurance, or community-based health insurance, is what the World Health Organization calls “micro insurance,” which is health insurance targeted at low-income people. 3 As usual (by which I mean always), please prove me wrong. 4 https://smartnewsliberia.com/liberias-ministry-of-health-announces-2025-hospital-service-fees-for-public-facilities/?utm 5 https://moh.gov.lr/news/2025/grand-cape-mount-leaders-residents-embrace-new-community-pharmacy-program/?utm 6 https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/09/hiv-usaid-pepfar-africa-foreign-aid-cuts-mission-hospitals/?utm 7 https://gh.bmj.com/content/10/11/e021270 8 https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/community-based-health-insurance-CBHI 9 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2827475/ 10 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10861328/#b3-jpmph-23-110 11 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC527704/ 12 Same citation as the footnote 2 - the article is called “Learning from failed health care reform in Uganda.” To which I say: If only. If. Only. 13 There is a whole taxonomy of user fees to be aware of, if not commit to memory. Out of pocket costs are everything that someone pays for themselves. In this Stack, user fees are planned and policy-supported out of pocket costs. There are also out of pocket costs that people pay to buy drugs or receive tests or health care assessments that would be free if the drugs were on the shelves, or the machines or kits were available, or the staff were on site. A user fee is usually designed to be modest, pegged to willingness to pay, and may be waiveable at the point of care for anyone who is unable to do so. The costs for things that would otherwise be free are whatever the market will bear and people either have to pay them or go without. Out of pocket costs for services and stuff that aren’t available in public facilities are different again from bribes or unofficial fees that some health workers may impose, even though most are indefatigable, tireless and tired, and devoted to their clients. 14 For the record—which really is these footnotes—I would give a whole stack of fridge magnets for a systematic analysis of the economic and social impact of the Mass Unemployment Event in AFGHS countries among the very people who used to be able to afford and cover user fees, both for themselves and vast family networks. Locally employed USAID technical staff, house cleaners, caregivers, drivers and technicians were financial anchors for cousins, friends, friends’ children, friends’ childrens’ cousins, teachers, pastors, neighbors and so many other kinds of kin. Aid recipients lost direct funding; many other people who had not been aid recipients, but parts of the elaborate care webs that function as safety nets for so many people, lost crucial support too. And that’s even before we get to the people who worked at the hotels and restaurants and bars where people employed by the US and its implementing partners used to spend disposable income. Those businesses have lost revenue; those folks have lost jobs. It will be some time coming—and someone will have to fund this work—but I do hope it happens. And I hope, as usual, to be proven wrong. 15 https://eprcug.org/blog/how-out-of-pocket-healthcare-costs-keep-driving-ugandans-into-poverty/ 16 Another straight-to-the-point journal article title. Households experiencing catastrophic costs due to tuberculosis in Uganda: magnitude and cost drivers. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32938411 17 https://www.cehurd.org/download/technical-policy-brief-on-community-health-insurance-scheme/?wpdmdl=13661&refresh=6ae9122f5d4ed1793659439 18 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10125197/ 19 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10861328/#b3-jpmph-23-110 20 https://ugandapost.news/uganda-to-make-health-insurance-mandatory-by-2026/ 21 https://shu.org.ug/download/235 22 With a nod, tip of the stack hat, and wag of the Mercoon tail to a deeply valued reader who told me that I have a tendency to speculate about the worst-case scenarios a little too much of the time. 23 https://news.mak.ac.ug/2026/10/uphia-2025-shows-ugandas-hiv-status-awareness-gap-despite-strong-treatment-outcomes/ As you’ll see in the next footnote, I’ve already written a subSubstack on another topic, so I will be brief with regard to the study referenced in this article. The Uganda Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment, or UPHIA, will never happen in this way again. For more than a decade, PHIAs have been supported by the US government as a way to generate accurate estimates of country progress on key HIV indicators. They are a holdover from the PEPFAR program that was laser focused on ensuring US taxpayer dollars subsidized progress in pandemic control. There may be other population-level surveys and the data may even be publicly released, as the entire set of FY2026 MER data have not. But PHIAs will never happen again. If you’re wondering whether the estimates of HIV progress at country level might get less reliable….you’re not alone. 24 Ooh baby, I hate “we” in almost all forms. But sometimes I go there, when I am looking for company, which I am. Because this Stack moves into the somewhat-uncharted territory of assessing what the implementation plan narratives may suggest about co-signatory countries’ roles and responsibilities to the people living within their borders. The MoUs, specimen and data sharing agreements were templates. Countries’ answers fit into pre-specified questions that did not include, “how are you going to fill financing gaps and stabilize your health system as this plan unfolds?” In contrast, the implementation narratives are open form—the product of co-creation between the two governments. Co-creation can mean lots of things, but nothing leads me to believe that implementation plans are ghost-written by the US government, or that contents were imposed by the US counterparts. Instead, I think the parts of the plans that read like country government initiatives are endorsed, if not initiated by, those governments. For instance, the Ugandan implementation plan narrative describes plans for revenue-generation through fees charged for equipment calibration, repair and maintenance provided through Uganda’s National Equipment Calibration Laboratory, and laboratory accreditation through the Uganda National Accreditation Service (UGANAS), targeting private sector, PNFP, research and academic clients. That’s super specific and also quite ambitious. It doesn’t read like an American idea. There’s also a provision for solar panels, and other stuff that feels country owned and driven. This is where it gets interesting. If co-creation is the case, then both the US and co-signatory governments are accountable for the contents and the outcomes. Most discourse about AFGHS to date has focused on the decisions that America has made, or demanded that other countries make. The AFGHS architects have monopolized the hot seat. As they should, in so many ways. America absolutely created the conditions under which countries needed to come up with health financing strategies to fill unanticipated, catastrophic funding gaps. And with not-too-long a lens, we can look back and see that America is also on the hook for its role in the Bretton Woods institutions that made user fees and health system fiscal austerity conditions of loans during the era of structural adjustment. But in the here and now, it is not at all clear to me that the US is requiring Uganda or any other country to implement specific approaches to sustainable financing. Instead, it is as the authors of that paper up in footnote 6 suggest: African governments have agency. As implementation plans roll out—whether or not the narratives are shared—it will be important to understand what this agency looks like and what it means for people, including the poorest of the poor. And it will be important to figure out how to talk about it safely, respectfully and critically in places other than the literal and metaphorical footnotes. 25 This week’s song is “Once upon a time” by the Moody Blues. (I know, this is gonna be a weird, largely banger-free end of 2026 playlist. HMU with requests.) AND please do watch the video and appreciate the truly amazing opening sequence—a drum kit wasteland, a coupla plastic bags, a bit of sand. Sort of like the hill where fiscal austerity policies that put costs on health care users might go to perish. But then there’s a lady with amazing hair. It’s worth it.
2026-27 Horizon League Preview: Drew Gentile
Note: The 70-page preview, consisting of more than 26,000 words, individual previews for all 12 teams and an exclusive interview with Horizon League Assistant Commissioner for Competition & Sponsorship, is accessible in PDF form at the bottom of this page. When I joined the Mid-Major Madness team last offseason, I was asked whether I wanted […]
Top 2027 recruit Charis Rainey commits to USC
Top 2027 recruit Charis Rainey has committed to USC, she told Rivals. The 6-0 guard from Los Angeles (CA) chose the hometown Trojans over Oregon, Arkansas, Alabama and Illinois. “I really just wanted to stay home,” Rainey told Rivals. “I love how they’re a winning program and people are going there to win, not just […]
‘Wanted’ review: Gunslinging sisters take Broadway by storm in powerhouse musical
What ‘Wanted’ lacks in gunslinging, it makes up for in gravitas with powerhouse performances, a refreshing score, and a whole lot of heart. Read EW’s review of the new Broadway musical.
California ballots targeted by Trump can be counted for now under court ruling
The ruling is a blow to the Trump administration, which claimed the ballots might have gone to noncitizens and wanted to set them aside.
Xbox wanted $800 million from Netflix for 7 years of its biggest characters, it’s claimed
Xbox is now said to be pursuing smaller deals…
‘Arrival’ ending explained: Why did the aliens come to Earth?
Ten years after ‘Arrival’ hit theaters, Denis Villeneuve’s film still has us puzzling over its time-bending twists. EW breaks down what the aliens really wanted and the mystery of the little girl in Amy Adams’ visions.
Tony Hawk Kicked Out Of Park While Recreating Pro Skater 3
The legendary Birdman wanted to celebrate 25 years of the iconic third entry in his video game series, only to be escorted out by security
Rockstar Games Confirms GTA 6 Upgrade From GTA 5 and RDR2 That Every Fan Wanted
Rockstar Games has confirmed that GTA 6 is set to have an upgrade from Grand Theft Auto V and RDR2 that fans have been asking for.
As she debuts on Broadway, Kailey Boyle praises Madison theater scene
Boyle, a Middleton High School grad, makes her debut in “Wanted” on Broadway this fall. The show opens officially Nov. 8 in New York.
Scientists had people try a happiness trick—something unexpected happened
Professor Nicholas Coles wanted to investigate the impact of being forced to smile because of his experience in customer service.
Man wanted after theft from Madera business
A man is wanted after a theft from a bussines in Madera.
Possible free agent target for St. Louis Cardinals: Freddy Peralta
Last offseason, the Cardinals traded Sonny Gray, creating a hole in their rotation. Through trades, the Cardinals added pitching depth, but the Cardinals clearly wanted them to be pitching depth and not Plan A. So they signed Dustin May to take Gray’s spot. Dustin May didn’t really become an ace, but it was wildly successful […]
Penn State Women's Soccer Has 'Unfinished Business' Ahead Of Big Ten Tournament Matchup With Purdue
"If you ask this team who they wanted to play again, they would have said Purdue."
Coffee Conversation: WI Congressional Candidate Fred Clark speaks on campaign
In the lead-up to the Nov. 3 general election, FOX 21's morning show wanted to bring in candidates that Northland residents will be seeing on the ballot to speak live
Notre Dame and Washington schedule a home-and-home series
Notre Dame wanted to schedule more Big 10 opponents for the future, and what’s more Big 10 than the Washington Huskies?
Johnny Gaudreau Wanted to End His Career as a Flyer
Johnny “Hockey” Gaudreau was inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame Thursday evening. Gaudreau, 31, and his brother Matthew, 29, were tragically killed on August 29, 2024, after being struck by a drunk driver while they were cycling in New Jersey, just one day before their sister’s wedding. Born and raised in Salem, New […] The post Johnny Gaudreau Wanted to End His Career as a Flyer appeared first on HEAVY.
AI as the next political divide
We have a guest post today from our friends at Focaldata, with whom we have done polling before. They have been doing a lot of work on attitudes towards AI and how this is affecting politics on both sides of the Atlantic. In this post, they explore exclusive new polling – with a whole set of fascinating charts on how voters’ views are developing and why. In particular, the authors explore why the debate is currently so much more polarised by party in the US than in the UK, to the benefit of the Democrats. Subscribe Focaldata HQ is located in Shoreditch, east London. To access the office from the Shoreditch High Street Overground station, you have to walk under the bridge at Braithwaite Street. We mention this not as a navigational aid, but because the posters above caught our eye over the summer. Since June, the area has been the centre of a fiercely contested debate around the construction of a data centre on the Truman Brewery estate on Brick Lane, less than 200 metres from our office. It was one of the first ‘US-style’ protest movements around AI data centres the country has seen, and may not be the last. These protests served as the catalyst for our forthcoming report, examining whether AI could become the next political divide on both sides of the Atlantic. We wanted to understand what was driving the emerging politics of AI and whether the dynamics at play in the US offer clues as to how the British debate will evolve. Over the last month, we polled 3,851 people across the UK and US about their views on AI. Our research found striking similarities between the two countries: for instance, both electorates are evenly split on their views towards AI development, with just over a third in favour (37% in each country), a similar number opposed, and the remainder somewhere in the middle or unsure. Statistically speaking, there is no difference in overall sentiment towards AI between the UK and US. Under the hood, demographic patterns also look largely the same in the two countries, with millennials, degree holders, full-time workers and those who describe themselves as financially comfortable more pro-AI than the rest of the country. Despite this convergence in overall attitudes, there is a striking divergence in how much of a politicised issue AI has become. In the US, attitudes are increasingly split by political affiliation and the issue has become the latest front in the seemingly interminable culture war, playing a role in the upcoming midterms. This stark political polarisation of AI has not happened in the UK – at least not yet. In what follows, we test several hypotheses for why the two countries are so far apart on a political basis. Understanding which hypothesis is correct will give us an indication of where the British dynamics go next.
OpenAI: ChatGPT Search Is About 20% of Google’s, 250 Million People Speak With ChatGPT, and Chat Is Merging With Work
OpenAI says ChatGPT growth is accelerating. The company added 200 million users over just the past two months, jumping from 1 billion to 1.2 billion weekly active users in 60 days. Its search volume, it says, is approximately 20% of Google’s. Its users create 1.5 billion images with it per week. And its voice mode, between dictation and speaking with ChatGPT, now has 250 million combined weekly active users. ChatGPT consumer product lead Adam Fry told me this during a brief fireside chat at an OpenAI-hosted dinner in New York City on Monday night. “The growth is just going big,” he said. During our conversation, Fry also revealed plans to merge ChatGPT’s Chat and Work modes (so that confusing toggle up top will soon go away), agreed with feedback that ChatGPT-created restaurant signage looks too uniform, and addressed the cost to serve its personal assistant Dots. Here’s a look at our full conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length. We also cover image generation, interactive interfaces, advertising, education, and public unease about AI: Alex Kantrowitz: OpenAI has analyzed ChatGPT’s search volume and compared it with Google’s. What did you find? Adam Fry: ChatGPT has been growing quite quickly. ChatGPT’s volume of search-like queries is now roughly one-fifth the volume of queries of Google. It’s a pretty amazing statistic when you think about it, mainly because we started just about a year and a half ago. It’s hard to remember this, but ChatGPT at a time didn’t have any up-to-date information. You’d ask a question, it would say something like, “It’s past my training date,” and nobody had any idea what that meant. You’re saying ChatGPT’s search volume is one-fifth of Google’s. Bing’s share of the search market is around 5%. Does that make you multiple times larger than Bing? To say that more directly, ChatGPT has gone from one billion to 1.2 in just the last two months. That’s roughly 100 million users in 30 days, and another 100 million in another 30 days. The growth is just going big, and we’re staying very focused on how fast ChatGPT is growing. What counts as a search? I might have 20 prompts back and forth in a ChatGPT conversation. Does each one count as a query? Story continues below… A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR Move upmarket without a rebuild Moving upmarket means saying yes to what enterprise buyers ask for first: SSO, directory sync, and audit logs. WorkOS gives you all three, so your team keeps building the product instead of the checklist. Get enterprise-ready. Continued from above…. Adam Fry: What people came to ChatGPT for to start, if you go back about two years, is really writing help and coding help. Those wouldn’t be things that you really search for. What we’ve seen over the last year is people have grown into all these other topics. Things like you’re looking up a person or people or a place or a thing, and it requires up-to-date information. That’s a key element. Another big part is finance questions or health questions, where you really want to make sure it’s up-to-date information that’s quite factual, and we’ll do a web search for those questions. It’s basically anything that a user would have traditionally gone to a traditional search engine for, but is now deciding to go to ChatGPT for. Does each conversation with a search embedded count as one search, or does every question that requires a web search count? Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that’s a search. You used to work at Google. How would you say the nature of search is changing? One of the things that people really love about ChatGPT is this personalization and this understanding of the broader journey. If you look in the past, people would go for a Q&A box, and you’d ask a one-off question, like how tall is the Eiffel Tower. But there’s so much context in our lives around, “Maybe I’m taking a trip to Paris.” It’s actually helpful for ChatGPT to respond, “Here’s how tall the Eiffel Tower is, but I know you’re going on a trip to Paris.” It’s that ability for people to actually maintain context over time that has led them to start using ChatGPT in this way. You’ve also announced 250 million weekly active users of voice input, including dictation and conversations with voice mode. We are at 250 million weekly active users. What’s amazing about this is, if you look at those 250 million, what we’re seeing is it’s actually also incremental to the product. It’s no longer just a novelty. People aren’t just trying out voice. We’re seeing them use voice input day to day in their daily life, and it’s grown so quickly. Those 250 million users are using voice input, and that could just be a quick question or a long conversation. We’re seeing both behaviors. We’re seeing people just not want to type. You just hold it and start talking to it, or it turns into a longer conversation where people just sit with it. The big reason for this is the frontier capabilities of our models that we’ve shipped. We shipped what we call GPT Live 1, and then we shipped GPT Live 1.1. The big change with this is that it’s much more natural to speak with. It’s something we call backchanneling and interruptibility. Mhhhm… What you just did there is what the model does, because it’s really good at having a bidirectional conversation. That push to the frontier—we were the first to really release this at scale—has made it so much more natural for people to chat. That’s still only about 20% of the user base. From the outside, that looks small. Why is it exciting from the inside? It’s very exciting for a few reasons. We see from the data that when people start using voice, they stay around using voice. One of the things, transparently, we can do a better job of is bringing more people into discovering it. We see that the number of people who discover it could be a lot higher. But once they do, it’s a really new way for people to interact with AI. We’ve made a lot of improvements to it too, where we’re just going to see the number go up. You have background mode, so now by default, if you close the app, it’ll show, “Hey, the conversation’s still going.” If you want to walk around the house or you’re putting away the groceries, you can still have a chat. That kind of continuity has also changed how much people use it. Dots launched on September 29 and is about a month old. How’s it doing? It’s doing great. We talk to people about their Dot, and the first thing that everyone says is, “I love my Dot.” One of the reasons we’re seeing this is the proactivity, its ability to reach out to you and figure out things. The biggest use case I see all the time is, “Did I forget something today that I was supposed to do?” You can just say to your Dot, “Remind me of things at the end of the day that I may have forgotten. Somebody emailed me or messaged me,” and it’ll do that. This Dot changes the paradigm of the relationship with AI, where it’s actually helping you and giving you time back. You’re more conservative with permissions than some competitors. I tried to give my Dot my credit card, and it wouldn’t take it. With the creator of OpenClaw in-house, why are Dots’ permissions more limited? This is a space where we want to be very thoughtful and conservative because it’s a new space where you’re entrusting your Dot to take care of things on behalf of you that matter and are meaningful. We’ve just talked about how you go to this 1.2 billion user growth and asking questions. Now we’re asking people, “Can you ask ChatGPT or your Dot to help get things done?” But when you ask it to help get things done, it’s a whole new level of trust. We’ve built up a tremendous amount of trust in giving the right answers to your questions, and we want to make sure that when we build this new product, it has a high degree of trust. It’s a long game. We think this is going to be a new market for a very long time, and we want to make sure that we’re being this trusted player in the market to start. I initially thought Dots would be available on my $20 plan, then realized I had to spend $100 a month to get it. I upgraded, but I’d like to downgrade at some point…. We hope to keep earning your business and make the value good enough. It’s a really good point. ChatGPT’s goal more broadly, which I think is unique for us in the market, is we are focused on bringing intelligence to everyone safely across the entire world. For Dots in particular, there’s no difference. We don’t have anything to share tonight about the date of when Dots will go to a broader set of users. But you can rest assured we’re working very hard, and there are a couple things we have to get right. Over time we’re going to work on more efficient, agentic models that are able and capable of doing things for you. The first one is, right now we wanted to make sure that your Dot is actually really helpful. We started with some of our best models, but over time we’re going to work on more efficient, agentic models that are able and capable of doing things for you. The second thing is around proactivity. We’re still dialing in: How much do I message you to help you get things done? We can always play around with that to understand how much usage should a user use to have a successful Dot. We’re going to work on both, and our goal and ambition is to bring it out to all users. How much background computing does a Dot require? I’ve read estimates that serving a $100 subscriber might cost OpenAI $3,000 in compute, and mine seems to read every email that arrives. How often is it checking connected data sources? Right now, Dots are on the compute-heavier side, and this is one of the things we want to make sure that we can dial back over time. But the goal is to give you the best product. This is our premium, always-on personal assistant. Once we nail that, we’ll figure out how to dial back the compute needs. The thing we’re seeing also from our models, as we train frontier models, is just how—I can’t even keep up with how quickly we have a new model, and each new model is more efficient. If you looked at 6.1 Sol when it came out relative to Astra, much more efficient. I’m very excited about the next set of models we have coming too that’ll be even more efficient that we can use. Elon Musk said the cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue. Is efficiency the key to winning against competitors, or is there more to it? There are a couple of factors that go into it. One is the cost side, but the other is the revenue side. On ChatGPT and on our consumer business, we’ve been extremely proud of our ability to diversify different revenue streams in a way that’s growing really fast. To give you another stat, we announced several months back that we had passed 50 million subscriptions, and the number has grown considerably since then. On ads, within 200 days, we reached more than a billion in ARR, and that business is growing extremely quickly. We also have credits. Rather than paying for subscriptions, users can buy more credits. Between credits, subscriptions, and ads, I’m confident that the value of a Dot is going to be able to pay for itself. Elon has subscriptions too. This is clearly an expensive product to serve. One thing we continue to bet on at OpenAI and ChatGPT more broadly is that the models will continue to get much better and much cheaper, way faster than any of us think. If you look back at the historicals on it, it continues to be true. From what I’ve seen, I see no slowing down of that. What is Meta doing right with Muse? It has spent a lot of time atop the App Store charts. There are a couple of things they’ve done well. The first is people have been craving simplicity in their products. One of the things we have stated publicly as well is, at times AI products can be too complex. We’ve announced we’re merging ChatGPT’s Chat and Work. We’re making it much more simple in the products. You don’t have as many toggles or sliders between efforts and different model pickers. One of the things they’ve done well is this simplicity. You just go in and you can ask a question. You don’t have to think too much about what you’re doing. That’s one thing that seems to have resonated with users, which we also believe in. Second, there’s something really nice about being able to access your agent across many different channels. We just announced and launched Dots on iMessage. Whether you talk to your Dot on email or iMessage or within the ChatGPT app, the ubiquity in getting your assistant out there is going to be key. Those are two things that, if I had to be nice to our competitors, I would say were two big ones. So Alexandr Wang’s meme-tweeting strategy isn’t something you’re going to emulate? I have a different tweeting style. ChatGPT still asks me to choose between Chat and Work, even though some people call this technology AGI. Will that distinction go away? Couldn’t agree more. We have to solve this. Asking users to choose — we’ve heard repeatedly from all of our users it’s too much to understand. When should you go to Chat? When should you go to Work? It’s solvable. There’s real research to solve to make sure the models can understand what your intent is. Are you asking for a fast, quick reply? Are you asking me to go do a long agentic task? We’re going to solve it, and the plan is to bring Chat and Work together. So one interface will work out whether I’m asking for a conversation or a task. When? Coming soon. You told me the majority of ChatGPT’s 1.2 billion users are using image functionality. What are they doing? Today, 1.5 billion images are created per week. It’s hard to even wrap my head around that number. They’re doing a wide range of things. One of the most interesting things they’ve started to do is really use it for productivity use cases. The first thing it started with—I don’t know if you saw the ’80s trend, but it was quite fun. You could take a photo of yourself and say, “Put me and my family in ’80s outfits.” I did this for my family, and it was a really fun poster. But what we’re also seeing is businesses for their menus, or posters for birthdays. People are using it almost in a productivity-like fashion to create visual diagrams of what they would like to see. We’ve actually brought the latency down on images as well, so it’s gotten a lot faster. It went from a very high number of seconds to getting much faster. As it comes down even further, the number of images people are creating and the number of use cases is going to grow a lot. My feature request: When a restaurant makes a menu or sign, prompt it for more specificity so it doesn’t look like every other AI-generated restaurant sign. Or offer a shuffle button for a different style. I agree with the feedback, and we’ll take it to the team. I’m seeing ChatGPT generate little interactive interfaces within its answers. What’s the direction for Intelligent UI, and how are people using it? I am extremely excited about Intelligent UI. If you go back a couple years, these chat apps were all text, and now that’s changing. They’re going to be visuals. Intelligent UI and our first attempt at this with GPT-6 Intelligent UI is really just the beginning. As you go to the extreme, what you can imagine is, let’s say you’re using voice mode, and you just say, “Show me how offside works.” Immediately it should show you a visual diagram, and you say, “No, I don’t quite understand it.” It should just repopulate. That’s where the future of this technology goes. It’s almost like you’re talking to a canvas that will update and change. People are finding it helpful for a lot of things. My favorite one is—it’s hard to admit that I had no idea how hearts work. The last biology course I took was in high school. I just asked it, “How does the heart work?” and it instantly gave me a beautiful interactive diagram of where blood flows and how it goes through. I’m really, really bullish on this for learning in particular. You’ve described useful applications in finance, health, and learning, and ChatGPT has 1.2 billion users. If people are getting so much value, why is public polling on AI so negative? The reality with AI is it is going to change the nature of how work gets done. For a lot of people, that is something that can feel scary at times, and we’ve all felt that. But I remain confident that when people actually use the product and they use AI, it very quickly changes how they perceive it. We’re at 1.2 billion, but there are still a lot of people who haven’t used it. The more people use it, get familiar with it, how it can actually help you in your life, it’s going to feel a lot less scary. Big Technology is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thanks!! Subscribe
UFC chief takes White House podium, but turns down Trump
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) chief Dana White took the podium at the White House on Monday -- but said he wanted to stay out of politics after President Donald Trump apparently jokingly offered him the job of press secretary."Thank you for the offer, sir -- for the offer, I have no, no -- I do not want to be in politics," White replied.
Seahawks Hit Unwanted Milestone After Lopsided Loss to Bears
The Seattle Seahawks have suffered yet another setback in the 2026 NFL season. The team has suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Chicago Bears with a score of 17-34. The reigning Super Bowl champions now have a current record of four wins and four losses. The franchise had a dominant season in 2025, which led […] The post Seahawks Hit Unwanted Milestone After Lopsided Loss to Bears appeared first on Gridiron Heroics.
Rui Hachimura on leaving the Lakers: 'It was them'
Rui Hachimura wanted to stay with the Lakers this summer, but he left, and he feels like it was their fault.
Politics is medicine on a large scale
In February 1848, a 26-year-old doctor named Rudolf Virchow arrived in Upper Silesia, a poor, rural corner of Prussia that’s now part of Poland. A typhus epidemic was killing thousands, and the Berlin government wanted a doctor to assess how to contain this pathogen, advise local authorities, and propose a plan. Virchow spent a few weeks going from villa…
Man wanted for allegedly shoplifting from Sandy gun store
A man is wanted for allegedly shoplifting part of a gun from a firearm business in Sandy on Sunday, according to police.
Unwanted endorsement: Political ad causes uproar at Jerusalem's Lev Academic Center
Those who know the highly regarded college, which since 1969 has produced religious graduates with degrees in a variety of engineering fields and nursing, were likely surprised. Thousands of drivers a...
Greg Rousseau gives Vikings defense props for challenging Josh Allen
The Minnesota Vikings took on Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills on Monday Night Football. The Vikings wanted to regroup after a loss to the Detroit Lions in Week 8. Unfortunately for them, the Bills were up to the task . Buffalo defeated Minnesota on the road on Monday Night Football. Allen had a good game, passing for 234 yards, but had to work for […] The post Greg Rousseau gives Vikings defense props for challenging Josh Allen appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Rory McIlroy agrees with claim that LIV Golf 'wanted to destroy The European Tour'
Rory McIlroy supports claims that LIV Golf intended to destroy the DP World Tour to serve as its replacement.
Florida education chief defends science plan
Education Commissioner Henry Mack pushed back Tuesday against criticism that Florida is de-emphasizing evolution in its new plan for teaching science, insisting the state is still covering a subject he agreed was a bedrock of biological science.“Evolutionary biology and the theory of evolution is in the standards,” Mack said. But several parents and teachers who attended an evening forum on the state’s proposed science standards criticized the proposal by the Florida Department of Education, which Mack runs, specifically the handling of evolutionary science.Joshua Garrett, a teacher in Orange County Public Schools, said the state’s proposed standards “danced around” evolution.State standards are benchmarks for what students should learn in their classes kindergarten through 12th grade, guiding what lessons are taught, what subjects are in state-approved textbooks and what concepts are tested on state exams.Florida’s current science standards call evolution a “big idea” and “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology.”The proposed ones barely mention evolution — a scientific theory explaining change in living species over time from natural selection that has been a cornerstone of biology for more than a century. The term “evolution,” in fact, is never defined in the new high school life sciences standards, though the concepts are sprinkled across several units.The education department has made revisions to its proposal, officials said, but it was not immediately clear at the Tuesday forum, held at Lake Buena Vista High School in southwest Orange County, what those changes were.Mack interjected during Garrett’s comments asking him where specifically he wanted the state to mention evolution more prominently. Then he said, “Consider it done.”Mack also asked Garrett to join the state’s faculty committee on the standards.The state released the new standards in September, and several experts quickly criticized them, saying they lacked depth and skirted around both evolution and climate change, important topics for Florida students to learn.The state has since hosted a “listening tour,” including a virtual forum and two other in-person meetings in Walton and Hillsborough counties. Tuesday’s meeting drew a small crowd of about 30 people, six of whom spoke.Mack described the state’s public forums as a chance for “myth busting” and to make clear Florida’s position.He wants to students to learn “above ideology,” he said, and added that evolution isn’t settled science. TNCMS.AdManager.render({region: 'fixed-big-ad-middle-asset', slot: 1, fold: "span"}); “I want to cultivate skeptics in the healthy sense of that term. As a result of these standards, students should not be walking away convinced of anything other than the rigor of the scientific method,” Mack said.The new standards would replace the current set, adopted after a monthslong, statewide fight over the inclusion of evolution as a required subject of study. Those who opposed the 2008 standards argued creationism, or the biblical story that God created all living things, should be taught alongside evolution.Thomas Simon, a Winter Park parent, compared Florida adopting the new standards to Nazi Germany ignoring the findings of Jewish scientists — which in part lost them World War II.“If this board could explicitly name communism in the history standards last year — because words matter — you must explicitly name the foundations of modern medicine, agriculture, and energy,” Simon said.Florida last year adopted new standards that require students learn about the “dangers and evil of communism.”Teri O’Connor, an elementary science teacher in Orange County, urged Mack to curtail the total number of standards, as they list more than 1,000 benchmarks teachers are to cover during their classes.“It’s only 180 days of school. That right there is an issue, especially if you want to dive in. If we need to teach the rigor of it and to critically think about each one, that’s difficult,” she said.Kathleen Murray, who spoke on behalf of the conservative political group Citizens Defending Freedom, said she was in “strong support” of the proposed standards. Science should teach children how to think, not what to think, she said.“When teaching the origins of life and the universe, the curriculum owes it to the Florida students to be honest about the limits of what scientific models can actually prove,” Murray said.State education officials said they’d received about 1,800 comments on the benchmarks, and they have updated them based on that criticism.With Tuesday the state’s final scheduled public forum, Mack said his biggest takeaway was that the standards needed to be more explicit about teaching students how to evaluate scientific studies and evidence and how to understand the scientific method.“We might have to do a better job of helping students question more as a result of these standards,” he said.In his original statement when the standards were announced in September, Mack wrote in a social media post that “science begins in wonder, not in ideology,” and “the classical tradition taught that nature is intelligible because it is ordered — that the book of creation can be read by reason.”Some read that to mean he was trying to interject religion into public school education. 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I wanted a side-hustle. I started a business instead.
Jessica Redford started a cake pop business while homeschooling three kids. She now sells out weekly and has found a creative outlet.
Democrat Haley Stevens appears with Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers
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Business owner, strangers clean out struggling widower’s home for free: ‘I wanted to help’
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Ann Arbor foundation doubled its assets by trying something new
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What Drives Young Granite Staters to Get Involved in Politics?
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Fed up with political spam texts? Here's how to stop them
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Bengs speaks on data centers, money in politics ahead of elections
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If you wanted a Nobel Prize, you would do well to study neutrinos. To date, the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded five times to research related to neutrino detection and discovery. This year, Francis ...
Moana, The Invite and “What Customers Want”
(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.) Before we get going, I wanted to acknowledge that two of the most important figures in sports media (at least to me and my team) are stepping back from two of the best sports shows of all time. First off, Ernie Johnson will no longer host possibly the greatest studio show in the history of all sports, Inside the NBA. (Charles Barkley has said in the past that he’s retiring when Ernie does, which would be even worse!) EJ is one of the greatest to ever do it, and the NBA won’t be the same without him. Next, Michael Wilbon is taking a leave of absence from PTI, my favorite sports news show. I’ve been listening to the podcast for this show since the 2010s, if not earlier, treating it as my daily sports page. Wilbon, along with his co-host Tony Kornheiser, is also one of the greatest to ever do it. The sports media landscape will be worse without these two in it! Wishing all the best to Wilbon and EJ. Okay, on to this week’s issue. We’ve got two big shows—the second season of Prime Video’s The Terminal List and the third season of Netflix’s _Nobody Wants This—_but both were bested by an acquired title landing on Netflix. All that, plus an Original film from Mexico makes the charts but a formerly huge foreign TV show does not, a notable creator’s latest standup special flops, Ted Lasso finishes as a top season four series of all time, big numbers for the NBA’s new season (finally), the top animated shows on linear and streaming, movie budgets, and all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. But first, on the film side, I’m taking a look at Moana and A24’s buzzy film from last summer. Let’s dive right 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 October 19th to October 25th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - What Do Customers Want? If I could remove one phrase from entertainment journalism, it would be “what customers want”. It’s not that it’s not wrong per se, but I read a lot of articles that use that phrase, but then don’t provide evidence of what customers actually want.1 For example, look at the bar chart below. It shows customer interest as measured by how much customers actually spent at the American box office, comparing four films to four others. Which films would you say represent “interest” the most? The one on the left certainly seems bigger, right? So it seems like “customers” wanted to see those films more. So here’s that chart with names attached: That’s right, four very buzzy films—The Invite, You Can See Everything, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and Primetime—went up against four notable “flops” or underperformers—Moana, Disclosure Day, Minions and Monsters, and Supergirl—and the latter clearly had more interest. That doesn’t mean they’re more profitable2 or well-liked by critics, but if you’re asking what customers want to spend their money on, it’s those movies. I’d especially argue that You Can See Everything had about as much media coverage as a film can get—I saw/read about it constantly; whenever random NBA podcasts are talking about it, you know it’s everywhere—and yet Moana will likely best it. I bring this up, because this week features a showdown between a notable box office flop, Moana on Disney+, and a buzzy dramedy, The Invite on HBO Max. Moana was widely considered to be a flop, and it was a disappointment at the box office, only earning $126 million domestically (and $323 million globally). For the budget, that’s a big miss, down from Moana 2’s heights of $1 billion globally. But as I’ve written a few times this summer, we often confuse “this film is profitable” with “more customers want to watch this film”, which is not the same thing. But that’s the box office. Let’s look at the streaming numbers, starting with the Moana live-action reboot. Where, yes, Moana (2026) also disappointed. It made Nielsen, but under 10 million hours, which is low for kid-skewing Disney+ films: It did make Samba TV, but at tenth place for only one week: Those numbers stand in stark contrast to some of Moana’s previous superlatives on streaming. Moana (the original animated film) has made the Nielsen charts 130 times since 2021. Moana 2 opened to 33.3 million hours on Nielsen. Moana was the biggest film on streaming in 2023 and 2024, second in 2020 and 2021, and top six in 2022 and 2025. Moana 2 was second overall in 2025. To be clear, the Moana live-action reboot didn’t work, given how much it cost to make. It’s absolutely a disappointment. But more families paid to see it than people paid to see most of A24’s buzzy films this year, with one notable (horror film) exception. Okay, on to The Invite, A24’s buzzy summer release, which just came to HBO Max. Mainly, I’m curious: Who made money from this film? Or who lost money: the stars of The Invite or A24? No, seriously, read this Deadline article for the details. The Invite’s budget was allegedly “under $15 million” (so...$14 million?) then A24 bought it for “a sum north of $10 million”, which I saw elsewhere as over $12 million (so...$13 million?), but then it just made $26 million in the US. So basically, The Invite’s investors only made money after they sold foreign territories—it made $33 million overseas—but A24 might just make its money back in the US in the theatrical window, assuming it had $0 in marketing. I read one article analyzing this film’s marketing campaign which assumed no marketing spend, even though that article went on to detail how much marketing and PR and ads this film had. For what it’s worth, I saw a lot of marketing for it. A24 will likely just break even after factoring in other windows, but no matter what, this isn’t a hugely profitable juggernaut from Hollywood’s most-heralded film studio. (And, I’d note, most coverage of IP or superhero failures doesn’t account for profitability in future windows.) Really, I’m guessing that the stars—Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Ed Norton and Penelope Cruz—had or kept their backend, hence why they did so much press for this film, which brings me to my actual takeaway, which I just mentioned two weeks ago about Backrooms: I don’t trust A24’s reported film budgets anymore. Either A24 is strategically releasing low numbers to get good press or they’ve really cracked the code on how to make movies at prices no one else can approach. But I’m skeptical about that last point. You don’t keep elite talent happy by keeping budgets in check—see: Dan Lin getting fired—and by all accounts, A24 keeps talent very happy. There’s another option: not paying big name actors their actual quotes upfront by giving away back end/profit participation. Offering backend is one great way to keep the reported budget lower than it actually is, but it makes the film less profitable for A24. (By the way, I’m still running down the numbers on Backrooms’ budget. If you know its actual budget—not the reported $10 million number—reach out to me on my contact page. I’ve heard rumblings I’m on to something, but would love something more concrete.) Okay, enough asking questions about A24’s business model. To the streaming ratings! The Invite came to HBO Max on 23-Oct, so we could look at the streaming numbers now… …and I don’t have any for you since it didn’t make any of the charts I track. And that’s pretty much the moral of the streaming story. Even though it disappointed on streaming, Moana wins this round, too. Quick Notes on Film The only other notable new straight-to-streaming film was S_urviving Hurricane Otis_, a Mexican Original on Netflix. It made Nielsen with 3.4 million hours and Luminate with 4.8 million hours. Overall, I’d call that very solid for a foreign-language title, but still far from a hit. Overall, the Luminate and Nielsen charts felt very light this week. Gladiator II also came to Netflix non-exclusively (it’s still streaming on Paramount+) and had 5.0 million hours according to Nielsen. That’s up from the 3.7 million hours it had when it premiered on Paramount+ a year and a half ago. Netflix’s Animals fell to 4.9 million hours according to Nielsen and fell off the Samba TV charts. Peacock/Universal’s Disclosure Day actually made it for a third week, but only at 2.8 million hours. Apple TV’s Sacrifice was down to 2.7 million from 3.2 million. Still, for an Apple TV film to make two weeks is solid (for them). Toy Story 5 made a fifth week on the charts. 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… ...how The Terminal List did after a four-year break... ...what acquired surprising title topped the charts… …where Ted Lasso finished in the all-time charts… ...big NBA opening week ratings... …a controversial new reality show that missed the charts... ...what very notable foreign TV show flopped... ...all the flops, bombs and misses... ...and a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue.
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