SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " like " 9,019 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Reviewing Jacob Misiorowski’s stunning season
We are all witnesses, or something like that
Universe Entertainment And Culture Group (SEHK:1046) Stock Confronts Revenue Collapse And Rich P S Multiple
The market has been treating Universe Entertainment and Culture Group like a high‑beta punt, with the stock almost doubling over the past month. However, today’s full year release tells a tougher story. The business delivered only HK$120.096 million in trailing twelve month revenue while still posting a loss of HK$10.938 million from ongoing operations. Set that against a P/S ratio of 10.1x, well above the Hong Kong entertainment pack, and the headline is clear: rich sales multiples now meet...
Debt service and the Pentagon. Private equity and the politics of the US housing market. The return of black lung disease & the Franco-Prussian War in color.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. RALPH BALSON. 1890—1964. Oil and enamel, signed. Source: Gavekal This going to hurt - the two 7s in the US: diesel and mortgage rates Source: Gavekal In the US housing market, costs are soaring and the role of corporate, private equity-backed buyers is high on the mid-term election agenda. HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $60. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe It is striking how, since 2020, big banks have dropped out of the political spotlight in the US. For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Rates of the lung disease pneumoconiosis among working US coal miners have risen to levels not seen in nearly 40 years Source: Bloomberg Chinese Clean Technology Exports For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Ralph Balson (1939) Portrait of Grace Crowley Cole, G. O. & Haseman, S. M., (2023) “‘The Substance of Paint’: Class and Materiality in the Work of Ralph Balson”, Open Library of Humanities 9(2). Ralph Balson (1890–1964) was an English plumber and house painter who emigrated to Australia in 1913 and subsequently became a key member of Sydney’s artistic avant-garde. He is credited with having the first solo exhibition of purely abstract painting in Australia in 1941. Despite his role in developing Australian non-objective painting, Balson remained principally a house painter, working on his art practice at weekends. In 1955 he retired on a state pension and became a full-time artist. Balson’s artistic education and methods were critically shaped by his working-class background. He did not travel abroad until 1960 and was an avid auto-didact. His materials, palette, techniques and compositional strategies were likewise informed by his trade. Balson’s profession as a painter-decorator made him conspicuous within the predominantly middle-class Sydney art scene, though his painting partner Grace Crowley considered it an advantage in their pursuit of constructive painting. This paper explores the impact of Balson’s trade on his trajectory towards pure abstraction. While his art was at odds with the predominantly figurative mode of class-conscious art in Australian Modernism, we argue that it is embedded in the experience of class through its creative adaptation of labour into aesthetics. Source: OLH Svetlana Alexievich, The Art of Oral History No. 1 Paris Review Issue 257, Fall 2026 Interviewed by Elena Kostyuchenko INTERVIEWER How were you able to go to Chernobyl? Did you need special papers? ALEXIEVICH It was a time of chaos. They let me right into the zone. … More than anything, there was confusion. Adamovich [Ales Adamovich, the Soviet Belarusian writer], I remember, persuaded Gorbachev to send in the scientists, who showed up without even bringing their shaving kits. They were told that there had been an explosion at a nuclear power plant, but for some reason they thought that they’d be there for only a day or two. The first time I went was several months later, and people kept telling me about things they didn’t understand—how the fishermen couldn’t find worms, because they’d burrowed deep into the earth, how the milk wouldn’t curdle at the cheese factories. The honeybees wouldn’t come out of their hives. The evacuations started, I think, in the first month. The old women hid, they wouldn’t leave. I mentioned radiation to one of them and she said, “I’ve seen that radiation, all right! It’s yellow with green in it. I saw puddles of it in my garden, and I told the other women, and we ran and looked, and she had it in her garden, and the other one, too!” God, it was wild, the way the mind made sense of it. There was a story going around about Gorbachev telling the scientists to show him the radiation. “We can’t, it’s invisible.” “But I want to see it!” I also ran into the soldiers who’d been flown in on helicopters from Afghanistan. I asked them, “What are you doing here with your machine guns?” They said, “We’re collecting the radiation, that’s what.” So you had some of them running around with their guns, others out in the village washing off firewood or burying soil in the soil. These were the kinds of things that exploded our worldview. They made you realize that culture was just a chest filled with old manuscripts. There were no books in there that could help me. Our philosophers turned out to be useless when faced with the unprecedented. Derrida, Baudrillard—philosophy fell silent. What was happening? How would we live with it? That’s when I decided it simply needed to be witnessed. Which is what I did. INTERVIEWER I wanted to ask about how you talk to people. … ALEXIEVICH Yes, we sit and we talk—about what interests me and about life in general. About love, about everything in the world. That way, what comes out is three-dimensional. If you cut straight to the part you need, which is what journalists do, it won’t be interesting, and it won’t be the truth, either. Not the whole truth. INTERVIEWER Do people always open up when you ask questions, or can questions get in the way? ALEXIEVICH You have to ask questions, of course. Your job is to scour away the banality and return people to their true selves, to make them face what they rarely tap into. With every new person, you have to find a new way to do it. When you ask an interesting question or you share what happened to you, you help people really think about what they’re saying and not just repeat whatever they’ve picked up from the newspaper. But not everybody is capable of it, not everyone wants to put themselves through that. Either the chemistry starts to kick in or it doesn’t. A person might be wonderful, but you can tell that the conversation just isn’t going to happen. You can try to push it, but it will be a product of your own intellect, rather than of that mysterious connection. Life doesn’t come from the mind. Some people I can call two years after our last conversation, and they’ll say, “Oh, Svetochka! I think of you all the time,” and we’ll start talking again. With others, that won’t happen. That doesn’t mean they’re not extraordinary people, just that you can’t connect with them. They might have some insight, but you don’t have the right antenna to pick up their signal. Source: The Paris Review Colorized Franco-Prussian war … the ruins of Strasbourg with a French photographer and his mobile dark room. Ralph Balson (1961) Matter Painting If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe
Ohio State's defense searching for answers ahead of trip to Iowa
As for Iowa, the 14-ranked Hawkeyes are looking like themselves on paper.
'We won the trophies on the pitch'
Man City will rise from the ashes. Man City are a team to continue to believe in. A set of Premier League clubs don't like the idea of a new team breaking into their cartel, as it will affect the money they are making.
Xbox adds cloud gaming support to 47 more games in final September updates
Xbox Game Pass has added Xbox Cloud Gaming support to 47 games in its final wave of September 2026 updates, letting you stream titles like Control Resonant.
Anthony Gordon Takes Aim at English Football After Barcelona Start
Anthony Gordon fit Barcelona like a glove. Although his signing drew widespread criticism, especially over the cost, the forward has responded by helping the culé side secure victories. After a strong start in Spanish football, the English player has responded to his critics. The blaugrana side paid €80 million to Newcastle United to secure the […] The post Anthony Gordon Takes Aim at English Football After Barcelona Start appeared first on HEAVY.
When “DEI” research is cut, what happens to community health?
“I’m just going to run to the grocery store!” How many times have we said this without thinking about it? For most of us, it's usually an easy walk or a short drive to get the cheese we forgot. In reality, though, 13% of the U.S. population (about 39 million people) live in “food deserts,” which means living more than a mile from a grocery store in urban areas and more than 10 miles in rural areas. This was the case for people in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where a quick run to buy food wasn’t an option. In the 1930s, federal maps marked the Hill as "hazardous" for lending, a practice known as redlining that steered investment away from Black neighborhoods. Decades of disinvestment followed, and residents went about 30 years without a nearby grocery store. This made it hard to keep healthy eating habits and contributed to chronic disease. When a grocery store finally opened in the area in 2013, researchers saw the opportunity and launched the PHRESH study, which initially compared the health of participants from the Hill district to those in the Homewood district. Over time, the study expanded to other factors such as brain health and Alzheimer's risk. Residents like Roderick Blair overcame initial hesitation to share their health data, trusting it would benefit their neighborhood. Then, in August 2026, the NIH abruptly canceled the study’s grant, citing that it was “subjective” and fell outside their scientific scope—an effect of the administration’s interpretation of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Research like PHRESH can help determine what changes in a neighborhood actually improve health, so cutting it has left that question unanswered. Other canceled studies have examined health issues like maternal health, preterm birth rates, or sickle cell disease. Courts have reversed some of these grant cancellations, but not all of them. If we really want America to be healthier, research into why some communities get sicker than others is absolutely critical. The law that created the federal minority health research institute passed with bipartisan support in 2000. But these days, as evidenced by grant cancellations, the political shift in attitudes toward DEI means we often lose access to the health information we need to help all communities thrive. DEI vs. health equity vs. equality and the overlap (or lack thereof) The letters “DEI” evoke very different reactions depending on who you are in the U.S. DEI programs can address gender, disability, age, and other factors, but the fiercest debate centers on race. For some people, hearing DEI brings to mind policies that may have cost them a job or a college seat because they are white. Others see DEI as a matter of justice: a way to expand representation and opportunity for groups that have been historically marginalized. Both perspectives are rooted in lived experience, and both center on the same question: whether hiring and admissions practices are fair. Hiring and admission practices, though related, are not the same as health equity. Health equity is “the attainment of the highest level of health for all people.” It’s the recognition that some groups of people consistently experience worse health outcomes than others. For instance, black mothers die from pregnancy-related complications at three times the rate of white mothers, and rural Americans are more likely to die from issues such as heart disease and cancer. Equity is also often conflated with “equality,” which leads to misunderstanding of how to actually best support communities. Equality ignores the fact that we aren’t all starting life with the same resources or circumstances, whereas equity is about helping people get what they specifically need based on their situation so they have the chance to achieve the same outcome as anyone else. For example, if every household in Pittsburgh got a $30 grocery gift card, that would be equal. But during the decades the Hill District went without a grocery store, that card wouldn’t have helped much. Equity means making sure everyone can actually access a store in the first place. DEI policies can overlap with health equity in many ways. For example, they may help expand access to quality education and stable, well-paying jobs, which in turn can provide health insurance, safer housing, and improved finances—all of which can reduce health disparities. But to make that happen, we first need data to identify disparities in communities and to develop solutions that effectively address them. What we lose when the research stops Community data is important to health equity because: You can’t fix what you don’t see: Data show which communities are most affected by health factors such as infection, heart disease, and cancer. If we don’t know what is happening and where, then we can’t develop interventions to help. Poor health costs everyone: Chronic disease is expensive—both to the individual person and to the overall economy. Understanding what groups of people are most at risk allows us to develop interventions that can save everyone money. Disparities exist for many communities: Health equity includes disparities that exist due to a whole host of factors, such as family background, race and ethnicity, rural vs. suburban residence, gender and sexual orientation, veteran status, disability, and lower income. This means many Americans can benefit from research into differences in health outcomes and how to improve them. Trust is easy to lose: Some participants in the PHRESH study were initially vocal about their concerns about participating. But that trust was earned because the researchers kept their promises and centered their work on the community. When projects are canceled mid-cycle, researchers have no choice but to leave behind communities they had promised to help. This hurts trust in the long run. It’s also a very inefficient use of resources, and it will take significant time and effort to redo the work when the government realizes this work is important again. How should we talk about health equity? This is hard because the words “equity” and “DEI” are currently very politically charged. So whether you’re a public health professional, teacher, or friend, how we talk about this topic matters. The right framing can help people who might otherwise be skeptical see why health equity research is important and deserves funding. Here are some suggestions to help your conversations: Choose your words strategically: Who are you trying to reach with your message? Are they likely to be resistant to terms like “diversity” and “equity”? If so, find alternative words to use to still get the message across. It is frustrating to be in that position, but the goal of improving health is too important not to try to make inroads. Sometimes simply reframing can help the message reach those who need to hear it. Focus on the problem: The terms “health equity” and “DEI” are abstract. Make it more specific. For example, discuss differences in maternal death or ways to improve health outcomes in rural communities. These still have equity at their core but will likely be better understood by those you’re talking with. Focus on systems: Disparities exist, but if they are communicated poorly, people can mistakenly think the issue is the individual’s fault. Disparities are largely driven by failures of the system—such as lack of access to health care and a long legacy of racism. When discussing the disparities, frame them around these systemic issues to ensure blame isn’t placed on the individuals impacted. Tell stories: Personalize these policies by using stories from those impacted that connect to the data you’re trying to convey. This helps make the policies and outcomes more concrete and meaningful. Bottom line Some communities end up sicker than others. That’s just the facts. We can argue about the best way to do that research, but canceling it simply because it may be linked to DEI doesn’t make anyone healthier. It just leaves communities like the Hill district behind. And in the end, it causes us all to move backward in our efforts to improve health in this country. Love, EM Big thanks to MacKenzie Isaac & Legairre Radden, who reviewed this piece and generously shared their expertise and lived experience to help improve it. Dr. Liz Marnik, PhD, is Executive Director of The Evidence Collective and a science communicator and immunologist working at the intersection of public trust, science, and public health. To discuss communication training on topics like health equity and storytelling, email Liz at liz@yle.health or learn more on our website. Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) comprises a team of experts, ranging from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. The YLE suite of newsletters reaches over 475,000 people across more than 132 countries. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below: Your Local Epidemiologist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Can Great Drama Series Change the World, Iberseries 2026 Panel Asks
Creatives behind the likes of 'Borgen,' 'The Best Immigrant,' eco-thriller 'After Us,' sexual aggression drama 'Pubertat,' and historical HIV drama 'Henki' shared their motivations and goals at Iberseries.
Boxed into a corner?
The Premier League has opened a Pandora's box of problems which cannot be closed. This looks like a gigantic mess, but could also become a bit of a joke, especially if they attempt to rewrite history, and change the winners' names on the Premier League and cup trophies over these past 15 years.
Business leaders must think like sustainability professionals, whatever their title
Climate change, water access and human rights still shape what companies can make, where they can operate and what they can sell.
Incredible news, wonderkid likely to make Liverpool debut
One of Liverpool's best wonderkids - arguably their outright best - is expected to make his his debut this season. We cannot wait.Liverpool are busy snapping up some of the biggest young talents aroun...
Calls for vaping to be banned inside venues
An organisation says those with health conditions should avoid second-hand vapour "like the plague".
Kwak Jae-hyung Signs Exclusive Contract with Seobak Entertainment
Kwak Jae-hyung Signs Exclusive Contract with Seobak Entertainment Known for Squid Game and films like Concrete Utopia, Kwak joins Seobak Entertainment
Tom Brady headlines at the 2026 Eudēmonia wellness summit
For four days in November, West Palm Beach hosts the 2026 Eudēmonia Summit, blending wellness, science, fitness, and tech with experts like Tom Brady and Andrew Huberman sharing insights on living longer.
Trading cards: A hobby-turned business
“‘I shouldn’t be walking into a Target, [going] to the Pokémon section and [worrying] I’m about to get tackled by somebody because I just wanted to get a pack of cards. I feel like it drives people away from the community.’”
Antarctic winter sea ice falls to third-lowest level on record as scientists warn of ‘now problem’
Coverage falls a million square kilometres short of long-term average with global heating likely driving losses
Warhammer 40,000
Heretics and Loyalists alike are receiving a suite of updates in time for the release of Codex: Space Marines.
The Streamers Tried To Conquer Labor Day…and Whiffed
(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.) What? Another Streaming Ratings Report already? You betcha. Nielsen has moved up the release of their Streaming Ratings data by two weeks, which means I’ve got two extra issues to get out. But I love this change because it will make this report more timely and easier to publish regularly. This week—with the viewership data for the week of 31-Aug—we’ve got some huge, huge topics to discuss. On the film side, two theatrical films (The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+ and Scary Movie on Paramount+) contend with two non-Netflix straight-to-streaming films (Mayday on Apple TV and The Runner on Prime Video). The streamers went all in to win Labor Day weekend in America. And we have a bunch of TV shows to analyze, both new shows (Netflix’s The Gentleman, Hulu’s Chad Powers, and an Alix Earle reality show) and weekly shows like Reacher, Ted Lasso, House of the Dragon and Lioness. All that, plus nepotism in Hollywood, some eye-popping fantasy football stats, 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 August 31st to September 6th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - A Slew of Labor Day Disappointments? A lot of streamers released big new films this week, why? My theory is that the streamers know that four-day weekends can propel streaming films to glory. But if you’ve been reading more over the last two years, you know that big holiday weekends aren’t driving big viewership numbers the way they did post-Covid. And interestingly enough, Netflix didn’t put out a big new film this week. But four other streamers did, trying to take advantage of the holiday with some (not cheap) swings, including… The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+ (a Star Wars film that cost $165 million and made $177 million at the US domestic box office) Mayday on Apple TV (rumored $100 million budget, no theatrical release) The Runner on Prime Video (at least a $40 million budget, but likely $50 to $80 million, no theatrical release). Scary Movie on Paramount+ ($30 million budget, made $108 million domestically). (Paramount+ also released a made-for-streaming film based on the Thundermans IP, and I’ll discuss that later.) So…how’d they do? The Mandalorian and Grogu Leads The Way (But That Isn’t Enough) Let’s start with The Mandalorian and Grogu (which I’ll abbreviate to Mando for most of this article). 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 Mando, Mayday, The Runner and Scary Movie performed on streaming... How the powerhouse weekly released shows (Reacher, Ted Lasso and Lioness) have accumulate a LOT of viewership… How House of the Dragon finished its run… The latest Netflix show to have a sophomore slump… Whether top creators can drive viewers to their shows… Nepotism in Hollywood and the music business... All the flops, bombs and misses for the week… And more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! Since Nielsen has accelerated their streaming data release schedule, I’ve got a lot of Streaming Ratings Reports coming your way! Next issue, I’ll be looking at the second season of Peacock’s The Paper, the latest season of Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and a very, very expensive Daily Wire fantasy series that’s now on Prime Video. Plus Crew Girl and Dang! on Netflix, a new Tyler Perry film, and one of the biggest bombs of the summer, Supergirl. In the next two issues, I’ll take a look at the return of the NFL to streaming, Toy Story 5 on Disney+, Backrooms on HBO Max, and The Breadwinner on Netflix. On the TV side, we’ve got Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, Dancing with the Stars on Disney+, Apple TV’s Slow Horses, a Reacher spinoff on Prime Video, and Paramount+’s MobLand, a Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey comedy on Apple TV, a sequel to a Cosby Show spinoff on Netflix, The Great British Baking Show, and the Unabomber film. And while doing all that, I want to take a look at adult animated shows, Ride or Die’s cancellation, and Netflix’s summer films. So much great stuff! Long term, two bits of comic book news. The X-Men cast has been announced, and go ahead and color me bull-ish, if not very, very bull-ish on this bit of comic book IP. In weirder news, HBO Max ordered a “true crime” show by Jimmy Olsen about Gorilla Grodd being falsely convicted of murder. I mean, what? I don’t know, let’s see what happens.
Trump and major AI executives sign "morally binding" voluntary controls: "It's almost like a constitution"
OpenAI's latest features take direct aim at the app store model
OpenAI is building out the pieces of an alternative to the traditional app store model, turning ChatGPT into a place where software can be discovered and used by people and AI agents alike.
Board of Health wields unusual power, expert tells members
Marblehead’s Board of Health has powers unlike virtually any other local board or commission in Massachusetts, a public health attorney told members Monday night — including the authority to adopt regulations that carry the force of state law. Michael Hugo of the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards spent more than two hours walking the board
Senate passes college sports bill amid opposition from CT senators
Blumenthal’s measure could make it easier for schools like UConn to join a power conference. But he and Murphy didn't back the overall bill.
Homeland Security spending $20M in taxpayer funds for pro-Trump ads
The Department of Homeland Security has tapped $20 million to pay for the campaign-style ads glorifying President Donald Trump that have drawn widespread criticism from Republicans and Democrats as a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars that likely runs afoul of anti-propaganda law.
Alyson Hannigan’s 14-year-old daughter looks exactly like her in new selfie
Alyson Hannigan’s 14-year-old daughter Keeva looks exactly like her in a new selfie shared by the “Buffy” actress.
iOS 27.2: Three new features coming soon to your iPhone
iOS 27.2 is coming soon as a new iPhone update, with 27.1 likely iPhone Duo-only. Here are three new features coming with iOS 27.2.
Trump unveils new site to simplify access to government services
America.gov for now functions like a chatbot comparable to ChatGPT or Claude, pointing users to official gov't websites.
Case Keenum’s Family Moment Caps Bears’ Stunning Eagles Upset
Case Keenum hadn’t started an NFL game in 1,009 days. On Monday Night Football against the Philadelphia Eagles, he made it look like no time had passed at all. The 38-year-old threw for 247 yards and two touchdowns, ran in a third, and led the Chicago Bears to a 27-7 upset that handed a 2-0 […] The post Case Keenum’s Family Moment Caps Bears’ Stunning Eagles Upset appeared first on HEAVY.
Among the Academies: A Lifelong Fascination with Fish
For Peter Wainwright, the academic path was simple: he simply followed his fascination with fish."I dare say there wasn't a lot of deep thought about what direction I should go in my life," he said. "It was more, I like fish, let's see if I can do something with fish. It was all very organic."
Valley West Mall sold; site plan to be finalized
Brian Martin likes to do “impactful” developments that will help transform the communities where he works. That’s why the president and CEO of Threshold Capital and Threshold Development decided to invest in the redevelopment of Valley West Mall. The $11 million deal closed on Monday, and as the new owner, he is ready to begin…
Apple's $1,199 iPhone 18 Pro hits a problem software can't fix
Apple’s iOS 27.0.1 fixes iPhone 18 Pro Face ID freezes, but green and pink screen lines look like hardware.
OpenAI takes on Microsoft with the launch of what feels a whole lot like ChatGPT's own office suite
OpenAI's newly announced suite of office features puts it into mor direct competition with more traditional software companies.
OpenAI expands ChatGPT's plugins with app-like interfaces and automations
OpenAI is expanding ChatGPT plugins with dedicated sidebar homes, interactive panels, file viewers, improved discovery, and support for automations.
Christy Carlson Romano says relationship with “Even Stevens” costar Shia LaBeouf was ‘like oil and water’
It wasn’t just their characters who had personality clashes.
Christy Carlson Romano says relationship with ‘Even Stevens’ costar Shia LaBeouf was ‘like oil and water’
Christy Carlson Romano shared that she and Shia LaBeouf didn’t always get along while working on ‘Even Stevens,’ which she discusses in her forthcoming memoir ‘Once Upon a Trainwreck’ on Oct. 6.
Want To Know If Someone Likes You? Pay Attention To How They Sway
Oddly, it predicts interest in a long-term relationship, but not short-term relationships.
Sarah Paulson addresses criticism comparing her Aileen Wuornos portrayal to Charlize Theron’s in “Monster”
“It’s just the sort of weird thing where it’s like, I didn’t set out to do something better than Charlize Theron,” Paulson admitted.
Findings from the EHF Texas Health Tracking Poll 2025
The annual EHF Texas Health Tracking Poll 2025 also shows how health care affordability, food insecurity, and health are closely connected. Food-insecure Texans are more than 4.5 times as likely to have medical bill problems as those who are food secure, and health outcomes steadily worsen as food security decreases. Texans who regularly run short...
Xbox’s Mythic Achievements are here and they’re just like PlayStation Platinum trophies
Xbox testers can try out the new Mythic Achievements today.
GLM-5.3 and the Spread of Advanced Cyber Capabilities
GLM-5.3 can autonomously build end-to-end cyber exploits, but unlike other frontier models, it was released without meaningful safeguards to limit misuse.
Apple Watch Ultra 4 Review: Still the Best Health Buddy for Your Wrist
The fourth-gen Apple Watch Ultra doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it sure does pack plenty of upgrades, like more accurate health tracking and longer battery life.
Belmont’s Mini Market Makers get down to business
Already a seasoned entrepreneur at age 10, Merri Suzuki’s daughter Emi is eager to bring her slime business, Gummy Drops, back to the Belmont Farmers’ Market on Oct. 1, for the second-annual Mini Market Makers (MMM) Day. Suzuki, the food assistance manager at the Belmont Farmers’ Market, said that 10 kid vendors (including her daughter) ages 8 through 12, will be selling their goods for the second year in a row as part of MMM. The goal of the program “is to help children learn what it’s like to be in business. They’ll develop an idea, decide what to charge,
3 Reasons ‘Sleep on It’ Is Actually Pretty Good Advice, According to Science
After a long day or a stressful situation, you might hear the advice of “just sleep it off” or “you’ll feel better in the morning.” And while it might seem like an invalidating, oversimplified recommendation, it has some accuracy: often, our bodies and minds are better after a good night’s rest. According to Josef Newton, […]
V10 Entertainment Adds Ex-Paramount & Amazon MGM Studios Execs To Team
V10 Entertainment has added a trio of veteran sellers with histories at the likes of Paramount and Amazon MGM Studios to its ranks.
Mental Health Strategies for Youth Hockey Players
As the dates for tryouts and the start of the new season – among the most stressful points on the youth hockey calendar – creep closer and closer, it’s important for players, parents and coaches alike to remember the mental preparation required, while they work on sharpening their physical skills an
Sarkisian says Longhorns need to cut out unacceptable celebrations
Defensive end Colin Simmons was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct after he mimicked urinating on the field.
An Earth-like planet with two suns?
A nearby star system with two suns could potentially support an Earth-sized planet in a region where liquid water could exist, according to a new paper examining the dynamics of the system.
Unlikely playoff teams collide as Astros face White Sox in AL Wild Card Series
The Astros are the first team to reach the postseason without a winning record, and the White Sox are the only team in major league history to follow consecutive 100-loss seasons with a playoff berth.
Yemen health system at 'breaking point': WHO
The escalating fighting in Yemen is pushing the country's health system to "breaking point", the World Health Organization said Tuesday, warning that diseases like cholera were already circulating widely.
Rebels in the Pros: NFL Week 3
NFL for college football fans, particularly Ole Miss fans, isn’t all that fun when your best former players aren’t playing. Jaxson Dart is lost for the season while AJ Brown is likely over a month away from returning to a team that might need a new quarterback. Despite missing the two biggest producers in the […]
Meta laid me off in May, but here's why I felt prepared
Adekunle Ayodele shares his experience getting laid off from Meta in May, including what preparation helped it feel like less of a shock.
Kon Knueppel Opens Up About New Hornets Teammate Naz Reid
Kon Knueppel has barely worked with Naz Reid on the court since Charlotte's LaMelo Ball trade, but he likes what he has seen from his new teammate.
An Orthopedic Surgeon’s No. 1 Test of Balance and Mobility for Healthy Aging
In TODAY.com’s Expert Tip of the Day, Dr. Jocelyn Wittsein demonstrates the at-home test to see how likely you are to fall as you age.
How execs from Anduril to Zendesk are using personal agents
Top execs at companies like Anduril, Adobe, and KPMG are using personal AI agents for tasks like booking dog walkers and flu shots.
Magic in Store: This month, a witchy business will put you in the right spirit
Abby Minnich is a planetary scientist who puts complex concepts into plain language. “I like to connect with the earth,” she said. “Trying to figure out how things came to be. I would say that is my purpose, almost, trying to figure it out and sharing it.” Which leads her to visit metaphysical shops like […]
The Beclowning of Scott Bessent
One iron law of current politics is that nobody who associates themselves with Donald Trump emerges with a shred of credibility. For some, that’s not a big loss — it’s not as if anyone respected Pete Hegseth even before he decided that the key to military success in an age of drones and AI was more testosterone. For others, however, the costs are real. I’m old enough to remember when Marco Rubio was widely considered a reasonable, thoughtful politician. Right now, however, my candidate for the biggest loser is Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury. Bessent started out with significant reputation to lose: When Trump selected him, this was the headline in the Financial Times: Jason Furman, Barack Obama’s chief economist, described him as a “credible Treasury secretary who has a real understanding of the global economy”. But Bessent has now transformed himself into the Baghdad Bob of bonds. Three weeks ago, after intervening (for reasons that remain somewhat unclear) to support the Japanese yen, Bessent boasted about his ability to move markets and dared investors to bet against his, declaring “I am the house now.” He then tried to push long-term interest rates down, buying 30-year U.S. Treasuries in a move some have compared to paying down part of your mortgage by running up your credit card balance. Here’s how that’s going so far: To get some perspective on how high interest rates have gone, here’s a longer-term perspective: We haven’t seen interest rates this high since the fading days of the dotcom bubble. Why are interest rates hitting new records? The backdrop, as I argued in last Sunday’s primer, is the huge AI-driven investment boom; more on that next week. But the immediate cause of the latest interest rate spike was Trump’s rejection of an Iranian proposal to end the war. This rejection sent crude oil prices, which for a while had fallen considerably, shooting back up: It’s notable, by the way, that oil prices remain high even though a significant amount of oil is now being shuttled through the Strait of Hormuz by night, on smaller vessels. That’s an interesting story, which has a lot to do with the fact that oil from the Hormuz shuttle runs must be transferred to larger vessels before being shipped to markets in Europe and Asia; around 15 percent of the world’s large crude carriers are now parked off the coast of Oman, waiting to be tanked up. This is creating a shipping crunch: But that’s a topic for another day. For now, the point is that with oil still high and refined products, especially diesel, still close to record levels, inflation will remain elevated. And this in turn means that the Federal Reserve will keep short-term interest rates high, an expectation that is feeding into longer-term rates. Hence Bessent’s bond-market humiliation. The truth is that Bessent might not have been able to get interest rates down even in the best of circumstances. But he certainly won’t get anywhere as long as Trump keeps believing that he can somehow convert his Iran debacle into a triumphant victory. And Trump will keep believing that as long as he is surrounded by sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear. Sycophants like, for example, Scott Bessent, who is predicting the imminent collapse of the Iranian economy, possibly within two weeks. Bessent is right to say that the embargo on Iranian oil exports is placing the country under great economic strain. But his implicit prediction that this will quickly produce a deal that Trump can call victory looks no more plausible than his boasts about the bond market. The big question now is, why would anyone with a reputation to lose work for Donald Trump? As the beclowning of Bessent shows, joining the Trump team won’t just damage your reputation; it will utterly destroy it.
Iowa health regionalization could put county services in jeopardy
Polk County Health Department could lose an estimated $150,000 as Iowa looks to regionalize health departments for services like infectious disease.
Lesbian Bar Project Co-Founder: Purity Politics Could Destroy Our Remaining Spaces
Subscribe As a professional lesbian and Massachusetts native, I’ve recently been asked by a lot of folks what I think about the saga unfolding at Last Ditch. The now-viral story, first reported by The Boston Globe, centers on a Western Massachusetts lesbian bar that lifted its mask requirement for one night a week to help drum up business. The decision ignited an intra-queer controversy that has been feasted on by media outlets across the political spectrum—from the New York Post to LGBTQ Nation—and is even reportedly being eyed for a Hollywood adaptation. Apparently nothing is more entertaining than a bunch of lesbians and queers fighting with each other over KN-95s. What has been lost in all of the chatter and media coverage is the very real possibility that Last Ditch, which just opened in April 2025, will have to close its doors. The venue’s one remaining founder, Jackie Matellian, revealed in a community Zoom meeting that she’s working four jobs, is now solely responsible for the bar’s $50,000 business loan and is struggling to keep up with the bills. So as we laugh about the controversy’s similarity to a “Portlandia” skit and how one of the bar’s founders left to enroll in clown school, we forget that yet another lesbian bar is facing an existential crisis—and this time the call is coming from inside the house. In 2020, my friend Elina Street and I created The Lesbian Bar Project, an Emmy-, Webby- and GLAAD Media Award-winning docuseries and initiative that tells the stories of lesbian queer bars around the world. We were moved to act because at the time there were only an estimated 16 lesbian bars in the United States, and the pandemic threatened to bring that number down even further. There are now more sapphic bars than there were just before the pandemic—about 36 of them in total—but this is down from approximately 200 in 1980. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but for the millions of sapphics living in the U.S., this number is calamitous. As the world laughs at lesbians and sapphics, I want to take a second and tell you what I feel when I walk into one of these bars, which are all unique and irreplaceable in their own way: I feel seen. Sometimes I think Cubbyhole in New York City’s West Village neighborhood knew I was gay before I did. When I walked in there for the first time, before I was even out, I was transfixed by the colorful array of tchotchkes hanging from the ceiling and how the women standing next to me were completely unafraid to express their desire for one another. I knew the minute I was ready to come out, I had a home. I also felt the joy of a new couple falling in love at Seattle’s Wildrose, the quiet confidence of a short king lining up her shot at the pool table at Ginger’s in Brooklyn and the kick of cayenne pepper in Julie Mabry’s crawfish at Houston’s Pearl Bar. Subscribe Lesbian bars don’t just serve lesbians; they serve queer folks across the spectrum, including bisexual, pansexual and trans people. As Elina and I traveled across the U.S. and Europe and to parts of Latin America to document the bar owners, staff and patrons that make up the ecosystems of these spaces, we also became uniquely acquainted with the factors that threaten their existence: gentrification, wage gaps, sexism, environmental disasters, gun violence, rising insurance premiums and political administrations working to annihilate queer people and their families. Lesbian bar owners, like all leaders and entrepreneurs, are imperfect. There have been significant issues over the years at lesbian bars: employee harassment, racism, lack of accessibility, sexual assault and transphobia. All bar owners should be held accountable and should listen to their communities to evolve into safer and more equitable spaces. I also acknowledge my privilege: I am able-bodied, white, cis and from a family system that loves me for who I am. Not everyone has that. Queer people, especially trans and bisexual people, are suffering from disproportionately high levels of depression, and our mental health system isn’t equipped to support them. Immunocompromised people and long COVID are real, and many of my friends are suffering to this day. The people with the least safety net are often the ones for whom a bar closing costs the most. And yet, as we’re seeing with Last Ditch, the queer community often lashes out at each other. It’s also the mainstream media taking the internal conflict and making a mockery out of it, distracting from the real possibility that this bar could close due to financial pressures. A bar that many people loved and needed is facing extinction. Perhaps it’s safer to dissent with one another than with the larger forces trying to eradicate us, but in doing so, we risk destroying the few spaces we have left. Due to the constraints of purity politics—some in good faith, some not so much—lesbian bar owners, almost all of whom are queer women themselves, are forced to be everything for everyone, similarly to how women are forced to be everything for everyone. By asking these bars to uphold impossible standards—standards very few other third spaces are asked to consider—we all end up losing. I want to move as a community toward dialogue, compassionate dissent and collaboration to make our spaces better with the goal of keeping them OPEN and thriving, rather than destroying them from the inside with expectations that are arguably unattainable. Subscribe While I have your attention—for this fleeting second of the news cycle—may I urge us to spearhead a way to keep these small businesses afloat without attacking our own community along the way? Bar owners are left with an impasse: They want to be community-centered, but they also have to make money to keep their doors open. Sometimes they might make business decisions that don’t work for everyone—and that’s partly because different patrons have different priorities and want different things—but these owners deserve the opportunity for productive dialogue**.** We have to work with them and with each other to keep our spaces open, to keep them growing. Lesbian bars raised me into the queer woman I am today. One thing I think about as I reflect on the six years of work we’ve done to document these spaces is that shared, unspoken language I have with a stranger the moment we both walk into one of these bars: the nod, the ease, the not having to explain ourselves. I don’t want to lose that, and neither should you. If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button: Donate
From a martini bar to a spot from a consulting chef on ‘The Bear,’ here are 6 new Chicago restaurants
Also in the mix: A Queens-born soup dumpling spot and a market with a sprawling, European-like square for sipping spritzes.
Ex-Trump prosecutor Smith will tell senators he won't 'be silenced' by threats of prosecution
The former Justice Department special counsel who brought two federal indictments against President Donald Trump will tell lawmakers he “will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution” from the Trump administration and believes the rule of law is being threatened like never before
He Picked Up Trash For $4 An Hour. Now He Runs A $1 Billion Construction Business
How a 12-year-old’s door knock connected him with now billionaire mentor —and launched a fast-growing construction empire powering tech giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Ex-Trump prosecutor Smith will tell senators he won't 'be silenced' by threats of prosecution
The former Justice Department special counsel who brought two federal indictments against President Donald Trump will tell lawmakers he “will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution” from the Trump administration and believes the rule of law is being threatened like never before.
Raleigh’s Falls Village shopping center will get a new business next year
The new business will join retailers like T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods in the shopping center by January.
Primetime Review: That’s Entertainment?
If you decide to see Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, it’s important to remember the title as you watch. Yes, this is a biopic of sorts about Chris Hansen and his work on To Catch a Predator, but it is more accurately about the quest for fame and using people’s trauma to attract ratings. True crime entertainment continues to have a prominent place in many people’s television habits, and this film asks us to examine what that means both for those whose stories have become our viewing pleasure and those of us watching. Primetime starts as Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) is told that his show, To Catch a Predator, is moving to a 9 PM spot opposite LOST. Chris and his producer, Andie (Merritt Wever), see this as an opportunity to make the program even more sensational, looking for bigger, more horrific predators. As part of their plan, they hire a young actor, Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo), to play “Decoy Dan,” the person who greets the would-be predators who were catfished by Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher). Oppenheim, along with writers Ajon Singh and Luke Dittrich, is less concerned with an accurate retelling of the show as much as they are interested in interrogating the why of it all. That decision sometimes leaves Primetime feeling less like a biopic and more like a satirical look at the nature of programming like this. Visually, the movie is impressive. Oppenheim uses light and color effectively to cast Hansen as both villain and savior. Pattinson plays Hansen in an almost comical manner, as we see him wake his two young sons to watch a clip of the show, just to brag that he was moving into a prime spot on television. Even Andie struggles to accept a “nice” job when there is so much more fame to be found producing salacious true-crime content. Wever does an excellent job showing how the hunger for fame is not just in front of the camera, but in every aspect of the production. The heart of the movie, and the standout performance, belongs to Gisondo as Dan Plum. He is someone who just wants to get enough hours to be admitted into the Screen Actors Guild, and stumbles into this job without really knowing what it is. Throughout the film, we watch him suffer one trauma after another, ending with him witnessing the suicide of a District Attorney who is about to become the next unwitting star of Hansen’s show. If there is a sympathetic character in Primetime, it is Decoy Dan, and Gisondo plays him brilliantly. If you’re a fan of programming like To Catch a Predator, then Primetime will probably make you feel uncomfortable, and I think it’s worth sitting with that feeling and examining why we turn on shows that display the worst of humanity while we judge from our couches. Yes, it is correct to want to see people who would hurt children brought to justice, but perhaps it shouldn’t be something that we watch as entertainment. Rating: 3.5/5 This review originally appeared in The Dominion Post on September 25, 2026. MacGuffin or Meaning: Film & TV Reviews and Reflections is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Opinion | I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This.
A greatly underappreciated virtue of other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time.
What If A.D.H.D. Isn’t About Attention at All?
Evidence suggests that it really affects what psychiatrists like me call sustained engagement — an important difference in understanding how to think about the condition.
US-Iran talks continue, but ‘deal unlikely’ before midterm elections
How an obscure government code unlocks opportunity for businesses
What rhymes with "snakes" and helps the government classify economic activity? NAICS — or the North American Industry Classification System. These codes categorize every industry from artificial turf installation to zucchini farming. But they’re not exactly easy to get. Today we look at one business’ quest for a NAICS code and what makes them so valuable. Fact checking by Leyla Doss. Your Next Listen — How to take the temperature of the US consumer Connect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s weekly newsletter! — Buy the Planet Money book — Find our socials, YouTube and more! — For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+ Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
AI, outrage, walls and killing — a busy week
Like most older folks, I’m a tad nervous about the whole artificial intelligence trend. But don’t worry, everything will be OK because our current president, obsessed with gold-trimmed minutiae, gave a speech at the United Nations, of all places, to announce we should now stop using the term “AI” and start using “SI” for “super […]
Meet Jordic: The Unlikely Voice of a Heart-Health Warning Men Need to Hear
/PRNewswire/ -- What if an early warning sign of heart disease was not in your chest, but in your pants? That is the provocative question behind 'Listen to...
Senate passes college sports bill that would rein in athlete payments and transfers
The overwhelming 77-22 vote to pass the legislation is the strongest effort yet by Congress to set national regulations governing payments to college athletes for their name, image and likeness and how often they can transfer.
Rams could be without starting cornerback, tight end vs. Eagles
Jaylen Watson and Terrance Ferguson are likely to miss Sunday’s game against the Eagles, while the Rams remain hopeful Puka Nacua can return
Pirates Are Looking Brilliant After Major Trade
Pittsburgh has often been sellers at the trade deadline due to a lack of relevance once July arrives. In these kinds of situations, the goal is always to dump off talent that may not be part of the future. In return, teams prefer to acquire young talent with loads of potential. Cherington did something in 2025 that is already looking like a home run. The post Pirates Are Looking Brilliant After Major Trade appeared first on HEAVY.
Terrance Ferguson might miss Week 4 game
Los Angeles Rams tight end Terrance Ferguson appears likely to miss the Week 4 game due to an ankle injury
The Science Behind Greener, Healthier Lawns
A healthy, green lawn can be the envy of any neighborhood, but how does someone cultivate a yard like that? Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Science Amber Churchill has been getting her hands dirty and digging into the science behind it.
Health experts stress importance of newborn screening
Screenings look for rare but serious health conditions that may not present right away and detect concerns like metabolic, endocrine and blood disorders.
White House says Trump PSA that appears to look like 2024 campaign ad is 'not political'
The Trump administration published a new "PSA" that was paid for by the U.S. government that ran alongside football games, Sunday morning news shows and primetime broadcast shows. The White House defended the advertisements, saying that they were "not political." NBC News' Yamiche Alcindor reports.
Can we just like a Taylor Swift song in peace?
Taylor Swift's four new songs sparked instant debate, but "Patient Zero" makes a case for letting the music grow on you before joining the discourse.
MTA axes G train shutdowns planned for December after outcry from small businesses
The dreaded December G train shutdowns have been scrapped, to the relief of business owners and residents in North Brooklyn. Long-overdue repairs initially scheduled to stretch through the end of the year have been finished ahead of schedule, according to the MTA, and though the G still needs some work, it will run like…
Bobby Kotick’s lawyers sent me a bad email (and later apologized)
The message I had received was unsettling—for a moment. Then it was just really confusing. Back on January 20 of this year, at 5:15pm ET, I received an email with the subject line “Legal Correspondence re Bobby Kotick.” It was from the law firm Clare Locke, a firm I’d heard had been emailing reporters in recent years about their coverage of Kotick, the former, longtime CEO of Activision Blizzard. The letter was threatening. A lawyer from the firm introduced themselves as “defamation counsel to Bobby Kotick.” They issued a “demand” that I “correct” a Game File article I’d published a week prior. The article that had irked them had been a scoop of sorts. I’d written about a a 2022 lawsuit brought by a Swedish pension fund, AP7, over Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard. The suit wasn’t news, but I was first to review and report about Kotick’s extensive pushback to the fund’s claims. The pension fund’s core contention was that the sale had been rushed by Kotick to avoid the consequences of sexual misconduct scandals swirling around the company in 2021. (He’d not been accused of misconduct himself in those suits, to be clear.) As I wrote at the time, Kotick had denied the allegations of the rushed sale. Beyond that, Kotick used a December 2025 reply to the Swedish fund’s lawsuit to assign blame for those workplace scandals, the bad press and even for the AP7 lawsuit. I’d found Kotick’s arguments novel and newsworthy. Across nearly 3,000 words, I explained Kotick’s take: that a Swedish gaming company was behind the Swedish fund’s lawsuit (the Embracer group; they denied it); that the Microsoft-Activision deal was not rushed and was secured at what Kotick felt history had proven to be an optimal price for shareholders; that he believed a conspiracy of people at unions government agencies, PR firms and the media had spun up claims of widespread workplace misconduct at Activision Blizzard in 2021. The article gave context for all of this, letting readers assess the claims and weigh their credibility. As I’d later write to Kotick’s lawyers: I would be surprised if you could point to any news article about Bobby Kotick in the last five years that has spent more of its wordcount articulating his point of view. He is welcome to do an interview with Game File any time. Nonetheless, there they were in my inbox that Tuesday evening: Clare Locke, the law firm that secured a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News over false statements about voting machines. They were emailing me, threatening that failure to comply with their demand could support a claim of “actual malice,” a legal standard for libel. Unless… Unless, they said, I added a key paragraph to my article. This was a paragraph that I already knew Kotick’s lawyers had been emailing reporters about for at least a year, and it was a paragraph that was already in my article. The paragraph they wanted is from a 2023 settlement that California’s Civil Rights Department struck with Activision Blizzard. The settlement had closed a two-year-old lawsuit over alleged sexual discrimination at the game maker. The paragraph basically said that claims of systemic or widespread sexual harassment—or of execs like Kotick tolerating such behavior—had never been proven. I’d already seen proof that Kotick’s lawyers had pushed for the settlement’s language to be added to reports about 2021 sexual discrimination and misconduct lawsuits brought against Activision Blizzard by California and, separately, by the U.S. federal government (both suits were since settled). I knew that Kotick and his lawyers felt that the California settlement language should be mentioned in the same breath as references to an article he hated and denied, a November 2021 Wall Street Journal article claiming Kotick knew “for years” of sexual misconduct at Activision Blizzard. So, in the Game File article that Clare Locke emailed me about, in the interest of ensuring I was being fair and balanced regarding the person I was covering, I had already included the following excerpt from the California settlement [emphasis added in bold]: (Kotick has repeatedly pushed back against that November article in the Wall Street Journal, citing among other things, language from a court-approved consent decree as part of Activision’s 2023 $54 million settlement over the California suit. It states: “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that: there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard [or] that Activision Blizzard senior executives ignored, condoned, or tolerated a culture of systemic harassment, retaliation, or discrimination.”) On the evening of January 20, I was incredulous. How do you write a four page legal threat about a week-old article and miss this? While scrambling to also make my kids dinner, I wrote a lengthy reply to Clare Locke’s lawyers, basically asking them to cool it with the threats and to start making sense. In part, I wrote: I hope you can understand why I am having trouble understanding what you’re asking for, when the statement you’re demanding to see in Game File’s article already appears in Game File’s article. Actual malice, as you know, refers to a reckless disregard for the truth. I’m not sure what your argument is when my article already states your client’s position. Here is where I should remind you, the reader, that I am an independent journalist. I publish on Substack, and have availed myself of the Substack Defender program that provides writers on the platform with legal support. But I’m no Wall Street Journal or New York Times, nor even IGN or GameSpot when it comes to such things as, well, having a legal department. There are more fun things for me to do as an independent journalist than writing back to a powerful law firm representing a very rich person. On the evening of January 20th, I was just trying to cook some pasta, broccoli and chicken nuggets for hungry twins. Nevertheless, I wrote back to them. Two hours later, I got a reply. Summarizing: A lawyer for Clare Locke said they’d “reviewed an incomplete version” of my article and they “apologize for the confusion.” (My guess: Someone didn’t read past the piece’s paywall, even though they’d had a full week to scrounge up the funds to do so. What I’d published above the paywall was balanced, as was what came after.)1 That was almost that, but something about the situation bothered me. The letter had been marked “confidential.” I hadn’t agreed to that, and I disliked the idea that powerful people on the beat that I cover would act like they could unilaterally control what I might tell my readers about. On the morning of the 21st, having already gotten the powerful law firm to back off, I oh-so-wisely re-approached them with just one more thing. I thanked them for clearing things up the night before but noted that I’d never agreed to keep their letter confidential. I’m all for agreeing with a source to keep things off the record, but that’s the thing. We have to agree. You can’t just declare it. I’m not bound by that. I wrote to Clare Locke’s lawyer and said, in part: I trust the matter is resolved. It was disappointing to have to spend less time with my kids last night in order to address your legal letter. Family time’s precious. I will add, for clarity’s sake, that, while your letter stipulated that it was confidential, I did not agree to those terms. In the future, should you wish to communicate with me confidentially, I am happy to agree to classifying our communication as “off the record” prior to the actual communication—as is standard with any professional journalist. The firm’s lawyer replied, not directly addressing the confidentiality issue but asserting that the matter was resolved. Why I didn’t write about this until now In May, I told this story on an episode of Simon Parkin’s podcast My Perfect Console, but I held off on sharing it directly with Game File readers. I held off to avoid stepping on the toes of another reporter, the journalist Mikhail Klimentov. He’d interviewed me in the spring of 2025 about an investigation he was working on regarding Bobby Kotick lawyers pressing the media to add the California settlement language to stories referencing the 2021 lawsuits. And about how some outlets had changed their stories and how some simply deleted them. Initially, I was a third-party source for Klimentov’s reporting, providing on-the-record context about the state of the games media. I’d heard about the letters but hadn’t put the time into pursuing the story. I thought it was interesting, and I was glad he was covering it. When the outlet that Klimentov was going to run his reporting in dropped the story, I began talking to him about potentially publishing his reporting on Game File. This was tentative. Then, in January, when I got my own Clare Locke letter, I told Klimentov that I didn’t think it would make sense for me to publish him, not with me now being part of the story. I had my own version of this situation to tell. But I wished him well and said I’d refrain from telling my tale until he could get his reporting out there. Last Friday, Klimentov finally ran his investigation, in a nearly 48-minute video report for People Make Games. It covers various Clare Locke letters, how media outlets reacted to them and what to make of all this. His video weighs the merits of Kotick’s request and looks at some of the articles that were changed (one of which had a glaring error). I highly recommend watching it: (Note, I did some editorial consulting for a People Make Games video last year but nothing to do with this report.) While many outlets haven’t left any public evidence that they updated their Kotick coverage at Kotick’s counsel’s request, at least one has. Back in October 2025, the mainstream outlet Reuters applied the most transparent article update I’ve seen. On the 3rd of the month, they published an article about the state of the Swedish pension fund’s lawsuit. Days later, they added this: In an October 7 letter sent after publication of this article, Kotick’s defamation counsel disputed claims of widespread harassment at Activision. “Not a single investigation, court finding, verdict, or ruling ever concluded that there was any merit” to the allegations of widespread harassment at Activision, Tom Clare and Nick Brechbill of Clare Locke wrote. I’ve never added a statement to my article on Game File, because none was needed. Not for fairness’ sake, nor to meet any demands of Kotick’s lawyers. I’ve nevertheless wanted to be transparent with Game File readers. If someone powerful is questioning my reporting, is threatening a lawsuit over it… if that threat is part of a pattern involving other games media outlets and if, in my case, the whole thing ran into a ridiculous ditch, I want you to know about it. I also share this as a real example of how I handle threats to Game File. I stand up for my own reporting, even when it’s not comfortable to do so. (In that same category of standing up for the work I do, I’ll point to an incident in late August. Asocial media post I published to X/Twitter regarding reporting I did about Take Two and GTA VI was hit by bogus copyright claim by a firm working for the publisher. I pushed back and got it reversed; even while a bigger games media outlet let themselves be censored. This is the other reason I’m sharing this story: To emphasize that dealing with threats from powerful people is one of the costs of covering the video game industry independently and as fearlessly as possible. This is where you come in. Your support, through free and paid subscriptions (sign up here!), can help me keep doing that. It can ensure that I’ve got the back-up I need. And it can help make fiascoes like this even less of a worry, so I can spend my evenings dealing with more important things, such as making sure I steam the kids’ broccoli just right. 1 That pension fund lawsuit I wrote about in January has all but gone away. In May, the fund and Activision Blizzard owner Microsoft agreed to settle. Lawyers for the fund brokered a $250 million settlement for former Activision Blizzard shareholders. In the settlement, the fund’s lawyers changed their rhetoric. Where once they’d questioned the meaning of the California settlement language, they adopted a version of it for themselves. Several weeks ago, while seeking to get a court to sign off on the terms of the settlement, they proposed their fee for their work in the case: $60 million.
Last year, business surged in the Tenderloin. How’s this year going?
Business in the Tenderloin is off to a slow start but if it's anything like last year, the peaks are yet to come.
Analysis | The 9 Senate seats most likely to flip party control in November
Democrats need to flip several in red states to win back the Senate majority. Here are their best chances.
Matas Buzelis: "I feel like there’s gonna be more …
Matas Buzelis: "I feel like there’s gonna be more …
Rams’ Super Bowl hopes might already be in jeopardy
Three games in and LA has yet to play like the contender they were expected to be
‘Surprisingly sophisticated’: Experts discover a common houseplant can count
Can plants count? Maybe not exactly like humans do, but scientists agree that they're capable of some very clever things.
TCL’s new ‘Designer’ Google TVs are just like Samsung’s The Frame, starting at $899
TCL has launched a new “Designer Series” of TV sets running Google TV with a flush mount design and matte...
Florida cracks top 10 in Athlon Sports' rankings after Ole Miss win
Like many of the other standings, Florida football finds itself among the top 10 teams in Athlon Sports' latest rankings after Week 4.
Google is killing off Gemini's Gems in favor of 'skills'
As all-in-one AI agents like Meta's Muse and Instinct take off, Google is opting to end a feature which built task-specific agents.
Senate tees up college sports bill aimed at regulating NIL deals
The Senate is due to vote Monday on the bill, which would create a national framework for name, image and likeness deals in college athletics.
Apple Releases iOS 27.0.1 With Face ID Bug Fix
Apple today released iOS 27.0.1, the first update for the iOS 27 update that came out two weeks ago. iOS 27.0.1 can be downloaded over the air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. According to Apple's release notes, iOS 27.0.1 addresses an issue that could cause Face ID not to work properly on the iPhone 18 Pro. Some iPhone 18 Pro users have complained that authentication can fail to work for things like unlocking a locked app.
The 3 most disappointing college football teams this season
A month into the 2026 college football season, the preseason polls are already starting to look like works of fiction. For every team exceeding expectations, there’s another whose fan base is wondering what went wrong, and in some cases, whether the head coach will make it to November. Nearly every team entered the 2026 season…
12 moves that illustrate the brazenness of Trump’s second term
When the Trump administration began running taxpayer-funded “public service announcements” that looked suspiciously like campaign ads for President Donald Trump last week, the White House gamely maintained they were “very clearly not campaign ads.”
This Is College Football’s Surprise Team of the Year
Who saw Mississippi State coming? Through four weeks, the Bulldogs have gone from an afterthought in the SEC to 4-0, 2-0 in conference play and No. 16 in the country . After winning just five games last season, Jeff Lebby’s team suddenly looks like one of the most dangerous teams in the SEC. And the…
NH's Business: What do New Hampshire and New England economies look like this fall?
Brian Gottlob, director of the New Hampshire Economic and Labor Information Bureau, looks at employment trends, inflation, consumer spending and more.
Defensive concerns and possible transfers
Graeme: I wouldn't bet against the club bringing in a couple of additional players to freshen up the squad, but I would envisage that, before anyone else arrives, someone is likely to leave. Hayden asked: We seem to have some decent firepower this season, but can Ipswich get away with having pretty much a Championship defence? Graeme: I share concerns about Town in that part area of the pitch, but I think 'Championship defence' might be a tad harsh, Hayden.
Billy Ray Cyrus shares never-before-seen letter from Dolly Parton: ‘One of my most prized possessions’
The Country singer unveiled the note in honor of “9 to 5 Day,” a.k.a Dolly Parton Day, adding, “Today felt like the right day to share it.”
Mathematicians Harness Randomness To Crack a 55-Year-Old Conjecture
After a long hiatus, the problem, which was likely inspired by juggling, has finally been resolved by a group of young mathematicians.
'Healthy' food labels may not mean what shoppers think
Opting for low-fat foods and drinks may seem like the best option, but it may pay to look at the rest of the ingredients list.
R-Rated 80s Slasher Proves Nothing Can Stop Aerobics
An 80s slasher turns a fitness club into a bloodbath while somehow keeping the aerobics classes running like business as usual.
As Congress debates college sports, athletes-turned-senators like Eric Schmitt get in the game
The Protect College Sports Act is on the brink of passing in the Senate, where a handful of former college athletes who are now senators on both sides of the aisle have an extra say in the debate. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, is determined to get it passed.