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New Steelers coaches see Jalen Ramsey as their version of do-it-all Charles Woodson

Mike McCarthy and his coaching staff see Jalen Ramsey as the ultimate chess piece in their secondary, a defender who can move around and be a true threat...

Jun 4 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • post-gazette.com

Short-sighted: John Ternus behind Apple Vision project refocuses

Apple's head-mounted hardware plans are slowly being cut, reportedly by new CEO John Ternus himself, with Vision Air said to be killed off alongside Display glasses.

Jun 3 • 2:05 PM EDT • Technology • appleinsider.com

Get to Know Your Orange: #90 DL, Kordae Houston

Houston, this guy has a lot of potential.

Jun 3 • 9:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science

With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!

Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • iai.tv

A Psychedelics Revival Is Overdue

R. Gordon Wasson was a Manhattan banker who fancied himself a mycologist. In 1955, after decades studying the mushrooms of ancient cultures, he traveled to the remote mountains of southern Mexico to partake of what locals called the “flesh of the gods.” Wasson chronicled the experience in Life magazine — the first widely published account of psychedelic mushrooms since Spanish friars condemned their use in the early 17th century.

Jun 3 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • bloomberg.com

Nationals' James Wood is putting together an MVP-level season

Washington Nationals outfielder James Wood is doing everything he can to put himself in contention and possibly win the National League MVP award. Still, he'll likely lose out to Los Angeles Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani.

Jun 3 • 5:24 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Drake London reportedly agrees to 4-year, $141 million contract extension with Falcons

Drake London has played himself into becoming the Atlanta Falcons' No. 1 option at WR over the past couple of seasons. Now, he's been rewarded for it.

Jun 2 • 6:26 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Cantwell-Cruz bipartisan college sports reform bill gets major Senate hearing on Wednesday

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and Sen. Ted Cruz rarely find themselves on the same side of major policy debates.

Jun 2 • 5:00 PM EDT • Sports • komonews.com

Longtime Tandem staffer leaves to tend to coffee cart business

Kenny Peterson will devote himself full time to Side by Side Coffee.

Jun 2 • 4:41 PM EDT • Business • pressherald.com

How Science Works

The 2nd Weather and Climate Livestream is now underway. It is organized by a group of early-career researchers concerned about declining funding for the field and eager to demonstrate how weather and climate research makes a difference in our lives. Last year’s event was a great success, drawing terrific press coverage including a piece in the NY Times. This year features a strong lineup of talks aimed at a general audience — I highly recommend tuning in. Share I gave a talk yesterday about How Science Works in Three Steps. You can see the short presentation here (I’ve appended a transcript below): And please tune into the livestream here. It runs through tomorrow at 6 pm ET. Thanks for reading The Climate Brink! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Cleaned up transcript: Thank you, and thanks to everyone tuning in. I want to talk about something I think a lot of people don’t really understand: how science actually works. Arguments over any scientific topic — climate change, vaccines, you name it — revolve around competing claims. For climate change, the claims are: Is the Earth warming? Are humans to blame? What will the impacts be? Over the last 150 years, the scientific community has developed a remarkably robust method for sorting out which claims are true and which aren’t. That method is what I want to walk through. So how does science generate knowledge? If you ask a high schooler, they’ll give you the version they learned in ninth grade: an individual scientist forms a hypothesis, runs an experiment, and draws a conclusion. That’s more or less what happens at the individual level, though in practice it’s more iterative — you design, test, and refine all at once, landing on a slightly different idea each time until you reach a conclusion about whatever hypothesis you’ve ended up with. But this isn’t science. It’s only step one. Any individual scientist can make mistakes — scientists are human. Maybe there’s a bug in the code, maybe there’s an error in the experiment. Just because someone ran an experiment and reached a conclusion doesn’t mean it’s right, and scientists don’t treat a single result as settled truth. Step two is peer review, the first layer of quality control. The scientist writes up what they did and submits it to a journal, which sends the paper to other experts in the field. Those experts judge whether the methods are sound, whether it properly references prior work, and whether the conclusions actually follow from the data. Ask any scientist and they’ll tell you peer review is miserable — the comments come back brutal, often harsh, and you have to revise and resubmit, sometimes multiple times, before an editor finally accepts the paper. Peer review catches an immense amount of bad science, but it can’t catch all of it. Reviewers get sloppy or overworked, they miss obvious mistakes, and they can’t catch hidden errors — a bug in the code, a misread instrument. So a peer-reviewed paper making it into a journal doesn’t mean the paper is right. Nobody treats a single paper as the final word. That’s where step three comes in: the crucible of science. Important results get retested by the broader community. If you publish something interesting, it gets dissected. Sometimes people try to reproduce your work directly but more often they test its implications. If someone claims X is true, and that implies that Y is also true, then scientists will go check Y. If a claim survives this gauntlet long enough, it becomes accepted. That’s how we generate knowledge. Let me give an example: the ozone hole. In 1985 — and I doubt many people watching were around then, but I remember it well — Joe Farman and his colleagues published observations from Antarctica showing that a huge chunk of ozone was disappearing every year. This was shocking because most atmospheric chemists had expected ozone loss to occur at mid-latitudes and high altitudes, not over the South Pole. When scientists see something they don’t understand, they rush to explain it, and several competing hypotheses quickly appeared in the peer-reviewed literature. One pointed to chlorine chemistry from chlorofluorocarbons. A second blamed nitrogen chemistry, possibly driven by solar proton events — meaning the sun was responsible. A third argued it wasn’t chemistry at all but dynamics: winds were carrying naturally low-ozone air from the lower atmosphere up into the stratosphere. Then the community went to work testing which theory could survive the crucible. Aircraft flew into the ozone hole and found no nitrogen, ruling out the nitrogen theory. Measurements showed the air in the polar vortex was descending, not rising — which would bring high-ozone air down, eliminating the dynamics theory. Meanwhile, those same flights measured enormous amounts of chlorine, strongly correlated with exactly the regions where ozone was being destroyed. That became known as the “smoking gun” paper, and it established that chlorine chemistry was the cause. Through this process, a consensus emerged. And it’s worth being clear that this consensus is organic. There’s no vote, no poll, no meeting where it gets decided. Scientists go to conferences, talk to one another, and independently arrived at the same answer. It’s the ultimate free market of ideas. After the consensus was established, the peer-reviewed literature doesn’t even mention the rival theories — it simply takes chlorine chemistry as given. That’s what a consensus looks like. It doesn’t mean every single scientist agrees, but it does mean there’s no longer any legitimate debate. So where can you see what scientists actually think? It’s all in the peer-reviewed literature, which contains the entire historical record of the argument: the discovery, the competing theories, the debate, the testing, and finally the community coalescing around one answer. But there’s a lot of room for misrepresentation. You can dig up an old paper claiming the ozone hole was caused by dynamics and wave it around as if there still was a debate about the cause of the ozone hole — without mentioning that the idea was disproven long ago and that even its own authors no longer believe it. There’s a bigger problem, though: the peer-reviewed literature is written in a language I call “nerd.” It’s extremely hard to read — honestly, some of it is hard for me to follow. It takes graduate students years to work through the literature in a single field, so we can’t expect policymakers or ordinary people to do it. This is where scientific assessments come in. The most famous is the IPCC — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The job of an assessment is to read and summarize the peer-reviewed literature, synthesizing what’s settled, what’s been disproven, and what remains genuinely debated. To ensure the assessments accurately summarize the peer-reviewed literature, assessments are written by large teams, which are far less prone to bias than individuals and which dilute the influence of any one scientist with an axe to grind. The teams are deliberately assembled to avoid stacking the deck, and the reports themselves go through multiple rounds of peer review. That rigorous process is exactly why you can trust them and why people consider the IPCC to be the gold standard of what we know about the climate system. An assessment produced through a different process may well not be credible. You can even watch the consensus evolve across assessments. Take the attribution of warming. The 1990 IPCC report said the observed warming was broadly consistent with model predictions but also comparable to natural variability — in other words, we don’t know whether humans are responsible. By 1995, it concluded that the balance of evidence suggested a discernible human influence — a sentence only a committee could write, and one that barely commits to anything. By 2001, most of the warming over the previous 50 years was judged “likely” due to greenhouse gases; by 2007, “very likely”; by 2013, “extremely likely.” The 2023 report says essentially the same as 2013 — there’s not much stronger language available. So, to wrap up: science is our ultimate tool for deciphering the universe — the most successful method we’ve ever developed for determining what’s true and what isn’t. Our understanding is written into the peer-reviewed literature, so if you want to know what scientists think, that’s where to look. And for those of us who don’t speak nerd, scientific assessments are the Rosetta Stone — they translate nerd into English. Let me open the floor to questions. Thank you.

Jun 2 • 10:35 AM EDT • Science • theclimatebrink.com

How Trump has used the presidency to benefit himself and his allies

President Donald Trump has found multiple ways to harness the presidency to benefit himself.

Jun 2 • 5:01 AM EDT • Politics • wsls.com

The Wyoming Department of Health Reminds People to Prevent Mosquito Bites This Summer. - Wyoming Department of Health

The Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) is reminding residents to protect themselves from mosquito bites as we move into warmer months to prevent West Nile Virus (WNV) infection. “Even if you don’t get bitten by mosquitoes often, one bite can still put you at risk of WNV infection,” said Courtney Tillman, Epidemiologist at the […]

Jun 1 • 5:11 PM EDT • Health • health.wyo.gov

Business News June 2026

• The Cornell School celebrates 10th anniversary! • “School’s Out for Summer “ market at Bethany Village • Cedar Mill Farmers Market • End of School Block Party • Speech & Debate summer camp • BodElite Introduces Emsella for pelvic health • Buying a Home? What to Know Before You Remodel • How CWS sets rates for your community • Sunset Credit Union news • New Bottle Drop at Target store

Jun 1 • 3:02 PM EDT • Business • cedarmillnews.com

PSG set to move for three Liverpool linked targets

PSG Eye Liverpool Target Éli Junior Kroupi as Transfer Strategy EvolvesKroupi Emerges as Rare Market OpportunityThere are transfers that announce themselves with fireworks, and others that begin as w...

Jun 1 • 2:55 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Sheinbaum accuses U.S. of interfering in Mexico’s politics

"Or are we perhaps seeing sectors of the US far right positioning themselves ahead of their 2026 elections?”

May 31 • 4:37 PM EDT • Politics • fortune.com

Raiders TE Brock Bowers enjoys his new nickname

Las Vegas Raiders TE Brock Bowers got a cool nickname and he finds it pretty funny himself

May 31 • 10:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

GOP’s Bill Cassidy faces new decisions on bucking Trump

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) finds himself in a unique position: scorned by President Trump and out of the running for reelection, but still in charge of the highly influential Senate health committee…

May 31 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • thehill.com

Champions League final 2026 in pictures as PSG beat Arsenal

The Champions League trophy will remain in Paris after PSG retained their crown by beating Arsenal in a penalty shootout in the 2026 final. The Gunners put themselves in a great position to win the c...

May 31 • 5:55 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Rahe continues to come through for KU in regional play

Even before Kansas kicked off the first-ever Lawrence Regional, pitcher Boede Rahe promised that KU was going to play the exact same way it had all season — which would in turn mean that Rahe himself would bring the same level of fire to his closer role. Through two days of the regional, Rahe’s emotions […]

May 30 • 8:00 PM EDT • Sports • www2.ljworld.com

Trump Names Himself Headliner for 250th Birthday Kickoff

After several musicians dropped out of the festivities on the National Mall, the president has put himself forward as the alternative act.

May 30 • 7:21 PM EDT • Politics • wsj.com

St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office responds to two separate mental health crises

The St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office shared that it responded to two mental health crises on the St. Croix River Crossing last week.

May 30 • 3:49 PM EDT • Health • weau.com

Artists are bailing on a Trump-backed concert for America’s 250th

The Commodores, Martina McBride, Morris Day & the Time and Bret Michaels are among the performers who have publicly distanced themselves from the concert series.

May 29 • 3:19 PM EDT • Entertainment • cnn.com

These Producers Built a Business Working With First-Time Directors. It Paid Off Big With ‘Obsession’

Tea Shop's James Harris and Mark Lane are the prime movers behind Curry Barker's hit movie, and they pride themselves on taking a chance on newcomers.

May 29 • 3:00 PM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

Science Museum Oklahoma brings Barbie experience to kids

KOKH Fox 25 provides, news, sports, weather and local event coverage in Oklahoma City and surrounding areas, including McLoud, Shawnee, Tecumseh, Seminole, Wewoka, Maud, Asher, Wanetted, Goldsby, Norman, Blanchard, Chickasha, Pauls Valley, Purcell, Andarko, Bridgeport, Lawton, Duncan, Okarche, Kingfisher, Guthrie Stillwater and Cushing, Oklahoma.

May 29 • 12:24 PM EDT • Science • okcfox.com

Arsenal aiming to dethrone dynasty-chasing PSG

Arsenal seek to finally conquer Europe by wresting the Champions League crown from holders Paris Saint-Germain, who are themselves targeting back-to-back titles in Budapest on Saturday."Paris Saint-Germain have the experience of knowing what it is to win it."

May 29 • 2:15 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Columbus Business Beat: Bogey Inn site planning, new restaurant openings

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – This week on Columbus Business Beat, Digital Anchor Rachel Ramsey talks to Doug Buchanan, Editor in Chief of Columbus Business First, about business news across central Ohio…

May 28 • 6:30 PM EDT • Business • nbc4i.com

MLB two-month grades for every NL team: Mets among two F's, top three separate themselves

The Dodgers, Braves and Brewers have all earned A's one-third of the way into the season, but some should-be contenders have struggled

May 28 • 9:07 AM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com

Americans are dropping out of Obamacare, especially in Kentucky

More Americans are dropping out or being kicked off Obamacare health insurance for non-payment than in past years, according to data through April from half a dozen states ​that sell the plans themselves.

May 28 • 6:04 AM EDT • Health • reuters.com

How Donald Trump is insulating himself from future investigations

The deal that President Donald Trump reached with his own administration to set-up an “anti-weaponization fund” for his allies is the latest example of how his second stint in the White House has focused on undermining checks on presidential power and insulating himself from future investigations.

May 27 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Packers' Josh Jacobs arrested on domestic violence charges, denies allegations

Jacobs faces five charges after turning himself into police

May 26 • 6:55 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com

Bob Horner, College Baseball Hall of Famer who starred for Braves, dies at 68

Horner made a name for himself at Arizona State and then instantly translated that success to the majors in Atlanta.

May 26 • 5:19 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Cavendish man turns himself in after anti-Israeli graffiti at business

A suspect in a vandalism incident at a Cavendish business has turned himself in, according to police.

May 26 • 4:52 PM EDT • Business • wcax.com

Jimmy Kimmel rips into RFK Jr. after he says comedian 'made himself a priest': 'Get back to spreading polio'

Jimmel Kimmel called out RFK Jr. after the latter shared a social media post mocking Stephen Colbert's final 'Late Show' broadcast.

May 26 • 11:39 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Federal court blocks redistricting map created to help GOP in Alabama

A federal court put a hold on a congressional map that Alabama Republicans want to use this fall to give themselves an edge in every district in the state.

May 26 • 10:17 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Trump to undergo annual physical after year of public attention to health issues

US president, who turns 80 next month, frequently casts himself as fit but recent photos have added to questions about his health

May 26 • 7:53 AM EDT • Health • theguardian.com

Country star steps away from music to focus on himself after fame took a toll

Country star Jake Worthington announces hiatus from music, saying he needs to work on himself for his family. Famous friends rally in support.

May 25 • 2:17 PM EDT • Entertainment • foxnews.com

Early dose of Kansas political ads sheds light on tactics, promises, demeanor of candidates

Kansas candidates for governor, attorney general and U.S. Senate introduce themselves and share political insights in campaign online videos and commercials.

May 25 • 10:00 AM EDT • Politics • kansasreflector.com

Early dose of Kansas political ads shed light on tactics, promises, demeanor of candidates

Kansas candidates for governor, attorney general and U.S. Senate introduce themselves and share political insights in campaign online videos and commercials.

May 25 • 10:00 AM EDT • Politics • kansasreflector.com

Toby Fox says creating DELTARUNE by himself "wouldn't be possible" due to the work required and his "physical condition"

Determined nonetheless

May 25 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • gonintendo.com

Health Officials Are Perplexed By Hawaiʻi Snorkeling Deaths

Snorkeling claims the lives of dozens of tourists each year. Some who lost loved ones or nearly drowned themselves say not enough is done to warn people of the risks.

May 25 • 6:01 AM EDT • Health • civilbeat.org

'Arsenal rolled their sleeves up'

Everyone now wants to play like how Pep Guardiola's teams play but Mikel Arteta has tried that for the last three years and he hasn't won the league. When you look at the job that Mikel has done, he mentions the noise and doubting himself, I think he deserves great credit for sticking with it.

May 25 • 3:29 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Why Trump Lost to Iran

The president failed to deliver on his Iran bluster, and in the end fooled only himself.

May 24 • 10:45 AM EDT • Politics • theatlantic.com

Jason Voorhees Is Coming to ‘Dead by Daylight’! [Trailer]

The wish for the addition of Jason Voorhees to Behaviour Interactive’s asymmetrical horror hit Dead by Daylight is finally being granted. With Dead by Daylight celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year, what better way to celebrate than to finally land the big guy himself?! Jason’s impending arrival in The Fog was revealed as part of […]

May 23 • 11:00 AM EDT • Technology • bloody-disgusting.com

Black Women, Beauty Politics and the Power of Rage in 'Is God Is'

In one of the film’s most surreal scenes, the twins at the center of *Is God Is*—Racine, “the Rough One,” and Anaia, “the Quiet One”—pretend to be strippers for a room full of men. But while Racine is welcomed, Anaia is rejected because her scarred face disrupts the men’s fantasies. That moment crystallizes one of the film’s central questions: What happens when Black women refuse to shrink themselves for the comfort of others? In Aleshea Harris’ Gothic revenge thriller, ugliness becomes both a burden and a source of power, as the film transforms into a stereotype-busting meditation on misogynoir, beauty politics and righteous rage. As the twins travel cross-country seeking vengeance against the father who burned their mother alive, Harris layers the conventions of the revenge genre with distinctly Black feminist aesthetics. The film moves between absurd comedy, trap music, intimate sisterhood and brutal violence while interrogating the ways Black women are expected to manage their pain, suppress their anger and perform acceptability. Anaia’s scarred face and Racine’s consuming rage become mirrors of the same misogynoir that shapes Black women’s lives—whether through beauty standards, domestic violence or the demand to remain silent. What makes *Is God Is* so striking is its refusal to look away from the “ugly.” Harris insists that Black women marked by violence, scars and fury still deserve visibility, complexity and even divinity. The film embraces the “angry Black woman” and the “ugly” Black woman as figures worthy of space, power and humanity. In doing so, it expands the tradition of Black feminist filmmaking by asking viewers to confront the realities dominant culture would rather ignore—and to recognize the beauty, dignity and selfhood that exist beyond respectability.

May 23 • 7:57 AM EDT • Politics • msmagazine.com

WATCH: House Dems unload on Texas Democrat over ‘demented’ antisemitic comments

House Democrats distance themselves from Maureen Galindo after her remarks about turning ICE detention centers into prisons drew antisemitism claims.

May 22 • 5:52 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com

Memphis business owner seeks support after food truck set ablaze

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Memphis business owner is looking for ways to support himself after he lost his food truck to a fire, which police say was purposefully set. “Not able to feed the com…

May 22 • 3:37 PM EDT • Business • wreg.com

Memphis business owner seeks support after food truck set ablaze

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Memphis business owner is looking for ways to support himself after he lost his food truck to a fire, which police say was purposefully set. “Not able to feed the community, that’s ...

May 22 • 3:37 PM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

Jacksonville community honors fallen hero with fundraiser for first responder mental health

He ran toward danger for a living. As a Marine, a firefighter and a lifeguard, Garrett Opper spent his life in service to others. But like so many who dedicate themselves to protecting their communities, the battles he fought on the inside were the hardest ones of all

May 22 • 1:33 PM EDT • Health • news4jax.com

How crime is forcing this Washington business owner to bathe himself with a bucket

May 22 • 10:28 AM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

In second debate, 2nd District Democrats work to distinguish themselves

The four Democratic candidates hoping to replace outgoing U.S. Rep. Jared Golden met for a second debate Thursday.

May 22 • 7:42 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Stowaway Fox Gets Clean Bill of Health and a Name: Basil (Like ‘Dazzle’)

He made his way to New York on a ship from England and then found himself stuck in quarantine at the Bronx Zoo for months.

May 22 • 1:40 AM EDT • Health • nytimes.com

Learning to teach, learning to discover

Nik Sandu, an MIT materials science and engineering major and student teacher, combines research in earth sciences and magnetic materials with classroom teaching and community involvement as she prepares for a PhD.

May 22 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • news.mit.edu

Is Cam Ward set up to fail? Can Jaxson Dart protect himself? Biggest Year 2 questions for top 2025 draft picks

From Ward's supporting cast to Dart's style of play, these second-year players could shape the NFL landscape in 2026

May 21 • 11:34 AM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com

Breaking T drops new Taking Care of Mizness Shirt

The Miz puns write themselves

May 21 • 10:16 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

What Customer Workarounds Can Reveal About Your Business Model

Customer workarounds (such as customers sharing accounts, or teams stitching together third-party tools) are not merely signs of product friction but early evidence that a company’s business model no longer matches how customers want to access, use, and pay for value. If firms fail to respond to customer workarounds, they leave themselves open to new competitors or to customers simply leaving. Companies should detect workaround patterns early, map them to distinct customer needs, build a portfolio of complementary business models, and monitor these signals continuously to capture demand before competitors do.

May 21 • 8:05 AM EDT • Business • hbr.org

Bonus 228: The $1.776B Political Question

Every so often a story comes along that is so brazen, so cleanly emblematic of the moment we are living through, that staying quiet about it feels like a kind of complicity unto itself. Monday’s announcement by the Department of Justice that the Acting Attorney General has unilaterally created a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate so-called “victims of lawfare” is one of those stories. And the reason I want to write about it here, in a newsletter ostensibly devoted to the Supreme Court and the law and politics surrounding it, is that I’m increasingly worried that we’re asking the wrong institution to save us from one of the most offensive, alarming, and anti-constitutional things we’ve seen from any president in American history. As I explain below the fold, the Anti-Weaponization Fund is not principally a legal problem awaiting a judicial fix. It is a shockingly egregious political abuse—the President suing his own government, purporting to settle with himself, and routing nearly $2 billion from the Treasury to his own supporters as a not-so-subtle (and not-so-formal) reward, if not an incentive, for political violence. And the Constitution’s answer to political abuses of this kind and magnitude is a political remedy, not a legal one. In his majority opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius (the Affordable Care Act case from 2012), Chief Justice Roberts defended the Court’s endorsement of Congress’s power to adopt the individual mandate by noting that it is “not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” As much of a judicial supremacist as I am, that sentiment is, for better or worse, an entirely correct (and, in the long term, normatively desirable) institutional assessment. One can believe in substantial judicial power without believing that literally every political dispute in our country can and should be resolved by unelected judges. The real upshot of this latest headline (among so, so many other similar headlines) is that it is past time to reinvigorate impeachment—not because conviction is realistic in this Senate, or even because impeachment itself is feasible in this House, but because forcing every member of Congress to vote on the record whether this brazen, corrosive, and affirmatively dangerous corruption is impeachable is itself a point worth fighting for (and fighting with our friends over). Assuming the courts will save us absolves our political leaders of both responsibility and accountability for allowing this kind of mischief to continue, and it absolves all of us of our responsibility to refuse to tolerate those who would just as quickly shrug their shoulders and move on. For those who aren’t paid subscribers, we’ll be back (no later than) Monday with our continuing coverage of the Supreme Court. For those who are, please read on.

May 21 • 7:17 AM EDT • Politics • stevevladeck.com

YOLO for GOP members? What unencumbered Republicans could mean for Trump's agenda

In a Republican-led Congress defined by deference to President Donald Trump, there's a small but steadily growing cohort who have found themselves more willing to break with the White House.

May 20 • 2:25 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

Physicists confirm 'negative time' is real by asking the atoms themselves

A new experiment confirms that photons passing through a cloud of atoms can spend a negative amount of time there, and the atoms themselves are the ones saying so.

May 20 • 12:52 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com

MSE Department Holds 43rd Annual Hilliard Symposium

The event honors the memory of Professor John E. Hilliard and included a keynote address from alum Muratahan Aykol.

May 20 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • mccormick.northwestern.edu

Steelers Predicted to Cut Ties With Recently Drafted QB For Aaron Rodgers Reason

The Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves in some quarterback controversy, despite re-signing Aaron Rodgers over the weekend. The hope is that Rodgers will stay healthy throughout the entire 2026-27 season, giving the Steelers an opportunity to not only make the playoffs but possibly win a Super Bowl.

May 19 • 11:26 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

YouTube Worldwide Users Can Use AI To Insert Themselves Into Videos

The Google-owned video platform also now has more three billion users, the company revealed Tuesday.

May 19 • 3:00 PM EDT • Technology • hollywoodreporter.com

Trump endorses Paxton in Texas Republican primary, boosting effort to oust Sen. Cornyn

Although the four-term Cornyn has backed Trump’s agenda in Washington, Paxton pitched himself as a political warrior for the MAGA movement.

May 19 • 1:12 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

Oronde Gadsden II is the Chargers’ best-kept secret

I think I can, without a doubt, say that second-year tight end Oronde Gadsden II is one of the most exciting Chargers fans are looking forward to watching in 2026 after a great rookie season. He became a dangerous weapon for Justin Herbert once he cemented himself in the team’s starting lineup and will once […]

May 19 • 12:13 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Elon Musk vows to appeal after losing his lawsuit against OpenAI

Elon Musk wrote on X that there was "no question" that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman "did in fact enrich themselves."

May 18 • 5:29 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

DraftKings to close sportsbook at Wrigley Field: report

DraftKings will stop taking in-person bets at Wrigley Field on May 31, blaming rising city and state sports wagering taxes.

May 18 • 12:28 PM EDT • Sports • chicagobusiness.com

Georgia Republicans scramble to pick a candidate to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff

Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins is positioning himself as a strong supporter of Donald Trump in his bid to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff | 97.3 The Sky

May 18 • 10:10 AM EDT • Politics • audacy.com

Georgia Republicans scramble to pick a candidate to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff

Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins is positioning himself as a strong supporter of Donald Trump in his bid to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff | WWJ Newsradio 950

May 18 • 10:10 AM EDT • Politics • audacy.com

Georgia Republicans scramble to pick a candidate to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff

Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins is positioning himself as a strong supporter of Donald Trump in his bid to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff | News-Talk 1380 WAOK

May 18 • 10:10 AM EDT • Politics • audacy.com

Brian Kemp passed on a Georgia Senate run. Then he threw himself in the middle of the GOP primary

Brian Kemp may not be running for US Senate — but the Georgia governor is campaigning like his name is on the ballot.

May 18 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Power Families of Chicago: Velasquez

With second-generation leaders in Azteca Foods and a history of philanthropy and civic activism in Pilsen, the Velasquez family is among Chicago's most powerful.

May 18 • 6:30 AM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com

Carrick made himself the 'only candidate'

BBC Senior football correspondent Sami Mokbel says Michael Carrick's impact and record as interim Manchester United boss made him the "only candidate" to be given the permanent role. United secured their 11th victory in 16 games under Carrick against Nottingham Forest on Sunday and his appointment on a two-year deal, with a one-year extension, is expected from the club imminently. "Carrick has taken that job in his stride so impressively," Mokbel told BBC Radio 5 Live's Football Daily podcast.

May 18 • 5:03 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Need faucets, PT, eyelash extensions? Try these new NJ businesses

Porcelanosa sells kitchen flooring and faucets in Ramsey. JAG Physical Therapy has a new location in Belleville. Bonded Lash Bar is in Fair Lawn.

May 18 • 4:16 AM EDT • Business • northjersey.com

Yankees’ Aaron Judge-Ben Rice Duo off to Historic Start

Aaron Judge and Ben Rice have put themselves alongside some legendary New York Yankees duos with their early-season home run surge.

May 17 • 5:35 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

🚨 Lewandowski's farewell; Barça and Betis starting XIs

Barcelona and Betis go into today’s game with their homework already done: one are champions, the others have secured Champions League football, so today they only have to enjoy themselves.And bid f...

May 17 • 2:02 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

My 8-year-old calls his friends to make playdates himself

My son arranges his own playdates by phone, and watching him do it has changed how I think about independence.

May 17 • 10:10 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Tomoyuki Sugano notches his 150th career win

The Japanese ace finds himself adjusting to pitching at elevation.

May 17 • 9:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Walmart Introduces Two New High-End ONN Android Tablets Blending Premium Features with Affordable Pricing

In a move that continues its strategy of delivering strong value in consumer electronics, Walmart has rolled out two fresh additions to its popular ONN lineup of Android tablets. The new 8.1-inch Core Tablet in Silver and the larger 13-inch Pro Tablet in Black position themselves as high-end options accessible to everyday consumers, combining modern […]

May 17 • 8:45 AM EDT • Technology • cordcuttersnews.com

It's Your Business | Perspire Sauna Studio hopes for mid-June opening

Franchise owner Angie Brocato: “We’re not just opening a business; we’re creating a sanctuary for people to take 40 minutes for themselves."

May 17 • 5:15 AM EDT • Business • news-gazette.com

'Top Gun' creators say Tom Cruise 'barfed on himself' during jet ride that sold him on doing the movie

'Top Gun' co-writer Jack Epps says Tom Cruise 'barfed on himself' when the Blue Angels took him on a gnarly jet ride to convince him to do the movie: 'They shook him around.'

May 16 • 4:28 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Kyle Schwarber joins Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire in MLB history

The Phillies' slugger continues to etch his place in the history books as he finds himself in the company of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire.

May 16 • 1:57 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Scientists catalog the ‘fractal dimensions’ of more than 130,000 islands

The “coastline paradox” helped to define fractals, but coastlines themselves turn out to be less fractal than thought

May 16 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • scientificamerican.com

A North Carolina farmer is testing whether Democrats can still win rural America

In North Carolina, Jamie Ager is distancing himself from his national party to win a congressional seat.

May 16 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

General Catalyst posted VC rage bait and it worked, especially on a16z

Compulsive X user Andreessen himself couldn't resist responding, many, many times.

May 15 • 4:25 PM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com

Apple Card Promo to Offer Free AirPods Pro 3

Starting as early as next week, customers who sign up for an Apple Card at Apple's retail stores in the U.S. will receive $249 cash back when they purchase AirPods Pro 3, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The promotion has yet to be officially announced by Apple, so exact terms and conditions are not available at this time. AirPods Pro 3 are priced at $249 in the U.S., so customers who sign up for an Apple Card will effectively get free AirPods Pro through this promotion.

May 15 • 11:59 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

Self-funding and special interests: How money shapes California’s political campaigns

The 2026 governor’s race has been marked by major financial backing, either from candidates themselves or a variety of special interests.

May 15 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • capradio.org

Chartbook 449: Voldemort on Threadneedle street. The Bank of England and the "haunted house" of English politics.

Imagine the scene: In some Harry Potter version of 21st-century London, a group of deathless UK Treasury officials gathered from across the last century huddle over warm pints and glasses of Chardonnay. Around the table there are officials from the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1970s, 2022 and today. Inevitably, in May 2026, the subject of conversation is the disintegration of the current Labour government. Despite its huge majority in parliament, it has been reduced to tatters by catastrophic local election result. These exposed the fact that rather than having a government with a clear popular majority, the UK is like most other modern societies divided into 5 segments each of which commands between 26 and 16 percent of the vote. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the leadership at Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street - where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (Treasury Secretary) work - seem paralyzed. They are caught between mounting discontent over unfairness and the cost of living, and tough fiscal strictures that push them into making unpopular spending decisions. In the London pub, the Treasury officials from across the ages, can barely hide their satisfaction at the latest display of democratic politics caught in the vice-grip of financial logic. “Remember the mur d’argent and the banker’s ramp?” “Just like yesterday!” There are smirks around the table. Then the representative of 2026 pipes up: “One thing you have to say about the current lot (referring to the latest hapless Labour government), you don’t have to teach them about the bond market!” There is a murmur of ascent from the Treasury Mandarins. The trauma of the fiscal crisis of September-October 2022 sits deep. Back then, in the final stages of Tory decay, a ‘mini budget’ that challenged fiscal orthodoxy led to a brief but fierce panic in one of the oldest government bond markets in the world (aka gilt market). Now all you have to do is to mention the “bond market” to hush debate. [ Paul Mason@paulmasonnews In the name of public service, and as ex-economics editor of BBC Newsnight, I offer to do a zoom call, tonight, with any Labour MP who wants to understand why bond markets do not "fall into line" with governments. 1/ 3:57 PM · May 12, 2026 · 466K Views 224 Replies · 674 Reposts · 3.93K Likes ](https://x.com/paulmasonnews/status/2054229532404519082?s=20) “And the funny thing is”, the young man in the huddle continues, “they don’t even want to talk about … ”. There is a sudden hush. Significant looks are exchanged around the table. About? One of the senior figures puts down his glass with a decisive “clink”. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has entered their thoughts. Meanwhile, a few miles away in a grubby pub in Bloomsbury, two conspirators from the camp of Critical Macrofinance huddle over cans of low-alcohol IPA. They look at each other and blurt out loud: “The Bank!” “Everyone in the bloody Labour party is talking about the bond market. But why aren’t they even mentioning … the Bank of England!?” “Why is no one talking about Voldemort?” In Paul Mason’s blogpost, after much chest-thumping about basic fiscal logic, the basic point about the Bank of England is buried in the fine print at #3 in his list of suggestions as to what a radical Labour government might actually be able to do! [ Conflict & Democracy Down with the bond market! Down with gravity! It may seem unfair to focus on Labour MP Paula Barker for her off-the-cuff assertion that the bond market would have to “fall in line” with Andy Burnham, should he replace Keir Starmer as prime minister. But Burnham himself told the New Statesman that Labour had to “get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets… Read more 2 days ago · 100 likes · 3 comments · Paul Mason ](https://htsf.substack.com/p/down-with-the-bond-market-down-with?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) Back in Bloomsbury they shake their heads and ask: “Didn’t we learn anything from the Eurozone crisis?” Meanwhile, as if summoned to the conversation by some higher force, the “pink pages” announce: “The days of ultra-cheap government borrowing have come to an end” and Martin “Whizzard” Wolf publishes the graph of the season Look at the UK in 2026, perilously positioned on the upper edge of the pack. No wonder no one in London needs any lessons about the “bond market”. But, look again. Imagine how they feel in Rome. What is London’s nightmare in 2026? The nightmare is that you end up like Italy in the early 2010s during the Eurozone crisis. Once comfortably situated in the middle of the pack, watching with horror as your ten-year yields explode to 7 percent and “spreads” become a national nightmare. One of the largest economies in Europe, a founding member of the euro, stigmatized. But the message of the Italian experience is ambiguous. After all, the stigma didn’t last. In 2026, Italy borrows at rates lower not only than the UK but the US. The US, which, as everyone knows, enjoys the “exorbitant privilege” of being the issuer of reserve, safe asets. What kind of magic is this? How did Italy, in the space of fifteen years, go from being good, to bad and back again? Which brings us back to our dissident friends in their Bloombury boozer and their memories of the Eurozone crisis. Italy never was Britain - with its ongoing fiscal deficits. Without interest payments, on primary balance, from 2000 to 2020 Italy ran a tight fiscal ship. Even in 2008 it barely went into deficit and when it was being put on the rack in the early 20210s its primary surplus matched that of austere Germany. So, what happened? How did it end up stigmatized? Of course Italian politics didn’t help. Berlusconi was at the helm and he had legal issues. But amongst friends in the Bloomsbury pub, Berlusconi is a sideshow, the name we whisper to each other is “Trichet”. From 2004 to 2011 the ECB was headed by Jean-Claude Trichet, ex of the French Treasury, more German than the Germans. After 2009 as the news of the Greek fiscal disaster broke, the European bond markets wento into panic mode and Trichet began a brutal game of cat and mouse. Between 2009 and 2011, Trichet intervened in the bond market to help, only when he thought he had compliance with austerity. When he thought they were uncooperative, he withdrew. In the summer of 2011, he even made direct suggestions to his Italian counterparts in Rome, as to how Italy should be governed. It was this cat and mouse game that drove the bond markets crazy and exposed Italy to a violent squeeze. When Mario Draghi took over the ECB at the end of 2011 and declared “whatever it takes”, the pressure on Italy, gradually eased. It is that starring role that has made Draghi into the towering figure in European politics that he remains today. So now you see why voices in London hush when it comes to the Bank of England. “The bond market” isn’t an irresistible objective force like the weather or an avalanche. It can appear like that. But that depends on the way it is being handled, or not handled by the central bank. Which is why the silence about the Bank of England in London right now is so significant. If you think this all sounds a bit fishy, coming from a left-liberal Keynesian like myself, well, let me introduce you to Robin Brooks, who, to put it mildly, plays on a different quidditch team to me. Here, from the position of a fiscal hawk is Robin’s celebratory account of the Bank of England’s role since 2022; In October 2022, at the height of the bond market blow-up in the UK, something incredible happened. Governor Andrew Bailey told British pension funds the Bank of England would end its support program for the country’s fragile gilt market, drawing a line under how much help the central bank was willing to give to exposed pension funds and - implicitly - the government. By the end of that week, Kwasi Kwarteng - the finance minister - had resigned. Prime Minister Liz Truss would soon follow. This episode is so incredible because it contrasts with what happened in the Euro zone earlier that year. Bond markets in Spain and Italy were under pressure amid high inflation and rising interest rates. In the middle of this, Mario Draghi - Italy’s Prime Minister - resigned, compounding pressure on bond markets of high-debt countries on the Euro periphery. Unlike the Bank of England, the ECB caved. It bought Italian and Spanish government bonds in an effort to cap yields and introduced a new tool that signaled to markets it might do such caps more frequently going forward. Faced with pressure on bond markets, the ECB capitulated to political pressure from high-debt countries like Italy and Spain. The Bank of England stood its ground and toppled the Truss government. This kind of thing has long-lasting consequences. It means markets price a higher probability of yield caps in the Euro zone, which keeps Italian and Spanish yields artificially low, while markets feel free to push up UK yields without fear of central bank intervention. As I flagged in yesterday’s post, this means you really can’t compare UK yields to those of other high-debt countries. The UK looks worse, but only because its central bank isn’t interfering with markets. There’s more to this than just that 2022 episode. The Bank of England has also been much more aggressive in its quantitative tightening (QT) than other central banks. If one motivation for quantitative easing (QE) is to lower bond yields - especially longer-dated ones - then it stands to reason QT pushes yields up. The left chart above shows a four-quarter moving average of UK government debt issuance (black line) in percent of GDP and which sectors absorb this issuance, including the Bank of England (blue bars). The right chart above compares the Bank of England’s accumulation or run-off of government bonds (blue line) with that of other central banks, where this blue line is the same as the blue bars in the left chart. The Bank of England was quicker and more aggressive than other central banks in downsizing its bond holdings, so UK yields will have risen more than elsewhere also for this reason, not just because of Governor Andrew Bailey’s remarks in October 2022. Back in October 2025, after a conversation in New York with friends in British politics, my sense of dysphoria was such that I raised the issue of the Bank of England openly in the FT Since 2008, the UK has slid into a deep economic and political predicament. Growth has stagnated to a degree far worse even than in the 1970s. The Tory leadership’s wager on the Brexit referendum spectacularly backfired, leaving the UK isolated from Europe and at the mercy of its special relationship with the US, many of whose political class regard the UK as a basket case. After years of austerity, the Labour party lurched to the left and then back to the centre. The Tory party has been eclipsed by the populist nationalism of Reform. Any British government should be worrying first and foremost about how to restart growth. Instead, Keir Starmer is beset by shades of the gilt market panic triggered by the Liz Truss government in 2022. The debt level is higher than in recent years, but there is no cause for panic. UK debt is at far from critical levels and of long duration. Whether you want to “take back control” or launch progressive economic policy, a democracy dogged by fear of bond market vigilantes is unhealthy. In a country that is a monetary sovereign, this climate points to one thing: a disconnect between the government and the central bank. Since 1997, the independence of the Bank of England has become a sacred cow. But independence is what you make of it. And in the wake of the gilt market crisis of September 2022, relations between the Bank of England and the UK government need a reset. In normal times, there is no doubt that an inflation-targeting independent central bank can serve a country well. But since 2008, the UK and other advanced economies have not had the luxury of such simple problems. To their credit, central bankers around the world have not stood on orthodoxy. After 2008, the US Federal Reserve rescued the global banking system and, through quantitative easing, it stabilised the Treasury market in the face of huge deficits. In Europe, things were trickier. Both the Bank of England under Mervyn King and Jean-Claude Trichet’s European Central Bank played cat and mouse with national governments. This was a high stakes wager that between 2010 and 2012 escalated bond market tension and triggered a disastrous turn to austerity. Shaken by the impact of those shocks, their successors, Mark Carney and Mario Draghi adopted a more protective stance (assuming you were not the government of Greece). Recall that Draghi’s legendary slogan, “Whatever it takes”, was uttered to face down the City of London’s bond vigilantes. In 2015, Draghi launched QE — financial repression by another name. In 2016, Carney used the authority of the Bank of England to stabilise markets following the vote for Brexit, an exemplary demonstration of how central banks can underpin democratic choice, even when those choices are wrong headed. All these were independent central bankers steeped in the best practice of the 1990s, who recognised that historic crises demanded radical action. It was the price surge of 2021-2023 that poisoned the atmosphere. Though the shock came mainly from the supply side, central banks ended up in the dock. Nowhere more so than in the UK. The Bank of England reacted with aggressive normalisation. Faced with a cost of living crisis, the governor called for workers to accept real wage cuts. In early 2022, as gas prices were at record levels and Russia’s army was poised to invade Ukraine, the Bank adopted a stringent programme of quantitative tightening, elevating interest rates. When the Truss government got itself in trouble, the Bank took almost a week to come to the rescue. Rather than enacting a charade of normality, it is time to recognise that in 2025 the UK faces a period of historic transition. To meet this challenge, what is needed is a new concordat with the Bank. This should not ignore inflationary pressures or the long-run trajectory of debt, but should affirm the priority of reviving investment-led growth. One could follow Donald Trump in demanding interest rate cuts. The Bank could shadow the ECB in its commitment to capping Eurozone yields. But the top priority should be to lay the ghost of September 2022. The Bank’s slowing of QT last month was a concession. An immediate and complete end would send the right signal. Such a concordat will not by itself restore sanity to politics, solve the housing problem or rebuild the NHS. But it would help to lift the fear of bond market crisis, which is paralysing the effort by democratic politicians to answer the fundamental questions facing the nation. Now, that call for a new concordat between government and Bank of Englands seems more urgent than ever. The problem is that in October 2025, Starmer still had some authority. Today the government is in tatters. And when you are the “under the harrow” - to echo a phrase of Montagu Norman’s from the 1920s - it is the worst possible time to consider institutional change. To make general arguments at a time of crisis can only seem like special pleading rather than a general argument for long-term change. The same, unfortunately, is also true for the other basic institutional reform that Britain urgently needs i.e. the abolition of the out-dated first past the post electoral system and its replacement by a moderated form of proportional representation. And thirdly - whilst we are saying the quiet parts out loud - Britain needs to reopen the question of EU membership. What the local election results of 2026 show is that this remains a key issue. And what they also show is that there is a clear majority that would favor a return. Until these basic features of Britain’s political economy are addressed the country will carry on its politics as though in a haunted house, governed by governments that lack actual majorities, conjuring up false constraints whilst ignoring the real ones. This one is for DG and MI. I love writing the newsletter. If you enjoy it too and fancy buying me a coffee once a month, you know what to do. Click below! Subscribe

May 15 • 3:04 AM EDT • Politics • adamtooze.substack.com

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