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Would Troy Aikman actually walk away from ESPN?
This originally appeared in Tuesday morning’s edition of The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter with the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis. Sign up here and be the first to know everything going on in the sports media world. Something is off when the analyst half of the longest-running broadcast marriage in NFL history…
Scientists identify 'sweet spot' for early stage of life on Earth that preceded LUCA, the ancestor of all living things
New research has pinned down the onset of the "RNA World," a hypothetical time in Earth's very early history when RNA was the primary replicating substance.
Bryson’s story: Penn State Health delivers coordinated care for Lancaster family
After newborn Bryson Geiss was transferred to Penn State Health Golisano Children’s Hospital for specialized NICU care, he recovered quickly and went home with his family just two days later.
Lunch Break Lecture: Keith Hebert to discuss the history of sports entertainment
BY ANN CIPPERLYFOR THE OBSERVER OPELIKA— Keith Hebert, the Draughon Professor of Southern History at Auburn University, will speak at the Lunch Break Lecture Series at noon on Sept. 30 at the Museum of East Alabama.He has published several award-winning books on the history of the Civil War, including “Cornerstone of the Confederacy,” which won […]
Earth Science Tech (ETST) Uplists to OTCQB Venture Market
Earth Science Tech uplisted to the OTCQB Venture Market effective Sept. 17, 2026, meeting OTCQB financial, reporting, verification and management certification standards.Material DetailsContext by AI AnalystThis is an early-step validation move aimed at improving market access and governance signal…
Earth Science Tech’s (ETST) Uplist to OTCQB Venture Market Continues Series of Milestones in Fiscal 2027
Austin, Texas, September 22nd, 2026, FinanceWireEarth Science Tech (OTCQB: ETST), a strategic holding company in the healthcare, pharmacy, and telemedicine sector, successfully uplisted to the OTCQB Venture Market effective September 17, 2026. The listing on OTCQB, an established public market for…
Jessica Lange gave strict condition to Ryan Murphy for returning to “American Horror Story” — and it’s not a ‘musical number’
The star revealed the one stipulation she had before agreeing to come back, and revealed she plays a secret fifth character on “AHS” season 13.
Light pollution’s ‘transformation of night’ requires prompt action
Science historian Sara B. Pritchard describes a massive spike in the amount of artificial light in the 21st century, with light pollution increasing by nearly 10% annually between 2011 and 2022.
Will Muschamp's career coaching history at Tennessee
Will Muschamp will return to Neyland Stadium in Week 4 with No. 1 Texas.
Find your inspiration at the 50th Annual Women & Business Conference and ATHENA Awards Luncheon
Whether you're an established executive, a rising professional or someone simply looking for a spark of motivation to move forward in your career, the conference offers opportunities to learn, connect and grow.
Q2 Data & Business Process Services Earnings: EXL (NASDAQ:EXLS) Earns Top Marks
The end of an earnings season can be a great time to discover new stocks and assess how companies are handling the current business environment. Let’s take a look at how EXL (NASDAQ:EXLS) and the rest of the data & business process services stocks fared in Q2.
Caesars Entertainment supplements proxy over counsel conflict disclosure amid merger
Caesars Entertainment voluntarily supplements its definitive proxy to disclose Latham & Watkins’ separate representations of Fertitta affiliates while denying any required additional disclosure.Key Highlights:Original SEC Filing: Caesars Entertainment, Inc. [ CZR ] - 8-K - Sep. 22, 2026This is an A…
Beijing Sys Science & Technology's Shareholder Plans To Cut Stake
Beijing Sys Science & Technology Co Ltd SZSE:301372:
“Politics Are Desperately Important at the Moment”: Bill McKibben on Midterms, Trump & Climate Crisis
Ahead of the midterm elections, activist and writer Bill McKibben says he has been traveling across the United States with Third Act, the environmental group he founded to harness the power of seniors who care about the climate and democracy. “These elections are also starting to set the groundwork for 2028,” says McKibben, who calls the next U.S. presidential vote “maybe the last election that happens in a timeframe when we still really have an opportunity to affect some of the outcomes of these things.”
Is 50 the new 60?
Subscribe TL;DR: Younger generations are showing signs of worse health compared to earlier-born cohorts at the same age This backward “drift” is showing up both in mortality risk and chronic disease Worsening trends in obesity and diabetes are the most consistent signals Taking the long view, we’ve made astonishing gains in health and life expectancy in the last century. Global average life expectancy has more than doubled from 32 years in 1900 to 73 years in 2024. (But don’t forget, there were still old people when life expectancy was 32). As people lived longer, they also generally lived healthier along the way. It turns out that avoiding things that can kill you early, like malnutrition and lots of childhood infections, also keeps you healthier later in life. In a classic 2004 paper, Finch and Crimmins proposed that cohorts of children who benefited from fewer early life infections had less lifetime exposure to inflammation and cardiovascular disease later in life, accelerating mortality improvements at older ages. Poor nutrition in the womb has also been linked to a higher risk of later chronic disease. The upshot is that improvements in childhood health can pay dividends many decades later. The combination of better living conditions (nutrition, sanitation) and medical advances (antibiotics, vaccines, blood pressure meds, etc) meant that people’s healthy lifespan generally expanded, even as they lived longer. Aging researchers call this best-case scenario “compression of morbidity”—meaning we delay the onset of disease and disability even faster than the years of life we are adding. During my 20+ year research career, we could generally bank on the idea that younger generations would not only live longer but also keep getting healthier along the way. “60 is the new 50” as they say… Enter “Generational Health Drift” Sadly, this expectation of steady progress may be changing. You’ve probably heard that US life expectancy gains have slowed to a crawl in the past couple of decades. Mortality improvements are also slowing (though less dramatically) in many other high-income countries (you can read more about that in a review paper I wrote here). Mortality is a very blunt health measure, but it is often a good barometer for the broader population health trends happening underneath. And we are now seeing that younger generations may be in worse health at similar ages compared to earlier born cohorts. My collaborator Prof. George Ploubidis at University College London coined this worsening health in more recently born cohorts “generational health drift.” “Generational health drift” is bad news on multiple fronts. Most obviously, we don’t want our health progress to go backward. But the timing is also bad, since our populations are aging. In demographic terms, “population aging” means that the proportion of the population at older ages (i.e >65 years) is increasing. Fun demography fact: Current population aging is not due to the recent declines in the birth rates making the news, but declines in fertility decades ago, after the “baby boom.” As baby boomers reach older ages, the smaller cohorts behind them mean the percentage of older adults will increase. For example, the share of the population age 65 and older in the US increased from 12.4% in 2004 to 18.0% in 2024. This story of population aging was written long ago. Many worry that population aging will put pressure on health care and pension systems. But if people reach older ages in better health than in years past, those fiscal pressures would be less dire than projected. Healthy older people can also continue to contribute to society in many valuable ways, including paid work, caregiving, community service….even high political office 🤷. On the flip side, if younger generations reach retirement age in worse health and with more disabling conditions, this could magnify the societal challenge of population aging. Evidence for worsening generational health A recent paper that I LOVED in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Leah Abrams and colleagues examined which birth cohorts (aka generations) were behind worsening US mortality. Behold the Lexis diagram (cue swooning demographers). Calendar time is on the x-axis, age on the y-axis. Birth cohorts can be followed over time as they age on the diagonal lines moving up and to the right. This figure plots the year-on-year % change in all-cause mortality at a given age. Green shading indicates mortality improvements over time, white is stagnation, and gray shading indicates worsening mortality. Following the diagonal line for those born in 1950, you can see a noticeable shift from green to gray that follows this cohort for most of their lives. This gray shading shows generally worsening mortality for the 1950 to 1959 birth cohorts compared to their predecessors across all ages. Concerningly for my GenX and elder millennial peeps, there was also a deterioration in mortality for birth cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, visible as dark gray areas at ages 30 to 45 during the 2010s. While some of these mortality changes reflect specific shocks such as the opioid epidemic, most deaths still occur from major causes of death such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. For cancer, the gray in the top left corner of the figure below reflects the legacies of smoking for older cohorts, followed by a period of green with improvements in cancer mortality as smoking rates declined. But the white/gray shading in the bottom right corner highlights a stagnation and reversal of the cancer trends, with cohorts born around 1970 to 1985 experiencing worsening cancer mortality. This deterioration was most noticeable for colon cancer mortality, possibly linked to obesity or dietary factors. Not just dying more, but less healthy along the way. A recent paper by Dr. Laura Gimeno of University College London (of which I am a co-author), found evidence that more recently born cohorts in Great Britain have stagnating or worsening health. A stylized picture of what“generational health drift” might look like: The review paper found: Rates of childhood overweight and obesity were highest among Gen Z. Rates of diabetes in the 40s almost doubled from 3.1% among the Baby Boomers to 5.9% in Generation X. Gen Z reported higher rates of poor mental health in adolescence compared to earlier-born groups. These UK results are consistent with studies showing worsening health across generations in the US as well. A 2021 US study found that more recently born cohorts had worse biological markers (like blood pressure and blood sugar) than earlier generations at the same age. A separate 2022 study of Americans aged 50 and over found that more recently born generations had a higher number of chronic diseases, with younger age of disease onset. A 2024 Lancet paper found that in the US, women born in 1945 had 33% obesity prevalence at age 50, rising to 48.2% for women born in 1970 turning 50. So what’s going on, and can we turn it around? We don’t have a definitive answer for what’s causing the deteriorating health of younger cohorts, but circumstantial evidence points to worsening trends in obesity and diabetes in both the US and UK. Remember that cohort trends reflect lagged effects of early environments, and younger generations have faced both earlier onset and more severe obesity across their lifetimes. Despite these very concerning trends, the future is not set in stone. We’ve reversed poor generational health trends before: drops in smoking are a major reason cancer and heart disease deaths fell so dramatically in recent decades. GLP-1 drugs may finally turn the tide against rising rates of obesity and diabetes, though it is still early days. But things could also get worse…for example from a return to higher levels of childhood infectious diseases that can have a lasting impact on health. See for example: [ ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) [ Don’t You Forget About Me(asles): The Virus That Erases Immune Memory ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) Jenn Dowd, PhD · March 24, 2025 [ Read full story ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) Even as an optimist, emerging data on the “generational health drift” has my full attention. For most of my research career, we took it for granted that each generation would be healthier than the last. But if present trends continue, **50 could be the new 60….**and Gen Z celebrities will soon look older than Paul Rudd :). Stay well, Jenn Share the Health! If you found this post useful, please share it with a friend. Share
List of DVD release dates for Sept. 22 and beyond
Following is a partial schedule of coming movies on DVD. Release dates are subject to change: SEPTEMBER 22: Toy Story 5 22: Scary Movie 22: Young Washington 22: Evil Dead
Who has scored against the most Premier League teams?
BBC Sport's Ask Me Anything team looks at which players have scored against the most teams in Premier League history
How lip-syncing to AI let Forced Entertainment ‘play the game of theatre’
Today we have a fascinating piece by long-time Forced Entertainment fan Ben Kulvichit, speaking to Tim Etchells about their latest show Cold Sweat, how they are integrating lip-sync and AI voices into their work, the question of ‘authenticity’ on stage, and how lip-sync has even opened the door for them to make “something a little bit like drama”. This piece is a paid partnership with the Southbank Centre, where you can see Cold Sweat next month – we’re very grateful to the Southbank Centre for their ongoing support for Exeunt. Holly Williams ‘It was immediately interesting and uncanny’ **By Ben Kulvichit** “Is the microphone on?” So goes one of the opening lines of Signal to Noise, delivered by a human performer lip-syncing to an AI-generated voice. The voice is American, cheery but sluggish, slowed down into a gelatinous drawl. It repeats ad infinitum in a farce of stuckness; an answer never materialises. I find myself asking the same question as I hop on a Google Meet call with Tim Etchells, the artistic director of Forced Entertainment. We spend five or ten minutes frowning at each other, muting and unmuting, me gesticulating in semaphore into my webcam, checking if I am coming through now, restarting the laptop. To Etchells, I appear exaggeratedly mouthing words, my voice missing. In this gloopy purgatory of broken communication, life imitates art imitates life imitates art. We try a Zoom instead. Forced Entertainment, the pioneering British theatre company who have been at the avant-garde of performance since the 1980s, turned an interesting artistic corner with Signal to Noise, created on the occasion of their 40th anniversary. The whole performance employed this lip-sync technique to AI voices; on the face of it a left-field move from a company whose identity has long been grounded in the earthy, immediate presences of its performers and its unassuming, low-tech approach to theatricality. The technique, however, turned out to provide the company with a “rich new seam” of artistic enquiry, and has now spawned a trilogy of works. The second instalment, Cold Sweat, plays at Sheffield Theatres, Southbank Centre, and Lancaster Arts in October, while the third part, Everything Must Go, has been touring in Europe and is slated to come to the UK in 2027. As is often the case with Forced Entertainment shows, the main conceit for this work didn’t arrive until quite late. They were “four or five weeks into rehearsals for Signal to Noise,” Etchells recalls, and getting nowhere. Away from rehearsals, he had been playing around with feeding “weird texts” to AI voices to see how they would cope with them – “basically for my own amusement” – and was compelled by the uniformly “serviceable, benign, good-natured” tone they would read in, no matter how poetic, fractured or experimental the writing. On a hunch, he brought some examples into rehearsals and the performers gave lip-syncing a go. “It was immediately interesting and uncanny,” he recalls, with the performers having to deal in the moment with the problem of mapping themselves onto another artificial ‘performer,’ which itself was dealing with the problem of a very human text. “Almost all the writing for these projects would be useless to us unless it was done in this way,” says Etchells. “We wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s too poetic. It’s too fictional. It’s too tangled.” But exploring lip-syncing along to the text has opened “an enormous reservoir of ways of thinking about writing and performing.” Subscribe to Exeunt, and get two in-depth pieces on theatre a week, direct to your inbox Subscribe Forced Entertainment have long been sifting through the detritus of popular culture, from daytime TV to end-of-the-pier vaudeville, magic acts and clown shows, to find frameworks for their own unusual entertainments. Lip-syncing, then, makes sense for them to experiment with. As a mode of performance, it’s wired into popular consciousness through pop stars trying to convince stadium audiences of their liveness, or those same voices as channeled through the made-up lips of contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, or movie dialogue spreading virally through the host bodies of TikTok users. For Etchells, lip-syncing is often about “approaching real voices and trying to take on their aura,” subsuming that original human presence into yours. “There’s a very basic, elemental sort of theatre magic to it, produced in this very easy way.” This broad approach resonates with instances of lip-syncing within contemporary performance, too. In works like Re-Member Me and Showmanism, performance artist Dickie Beau acts as a kind of spirit medium for archival recordings (this process of re-membering – as in, giving corporeal form to voices – relies on his masterfully precise actor’s technique), while Frankie Thompson is similarly possessed by a host of characters ranging from a nine-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg to Cliff Richards, all of whom she finds compellingly nauseating, in the exorcism ritual that is her latest show, Horrible Things. What’s different about Forced Entertainment’s use of lip-syncing is that here, there is no original presence to be channeled. The performers are instead taking on what Etchells describes as “the voices of nobody,” or rather the “phantasmic, aggregated echoes” of the many many voices on whose data the AI has been trained, and which are now conjuring into existence words they never actually said. There is a sort of mournful, empty quality to these voices, having “washed up” far away from the people they originally belonged to, to find themselves in stranger’s mouths listing objects, wondering if anyone can hear them and glitching in interminable loops. There is a cold, sad anonymity to it all. Etchells remarks that occasionally the software company he used has notified him that particular people are withdrawing their voices from the platform, instructing him to cease use of those voices. Using these technologies in performance certainly brings up ethical questions around digital rights, consent, identity and ownership, although in the grand scheme of things, Etchells is fairly blasé about it: of all the purposes someone’s voice might be put to without their knowledge, “an avant-garde performance is probably the least of their worries.” [ ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) [ Frankie Thompson: How I manage my own ‘horrible things’ at the Edinburgh Fringe ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) Exeunt · Aug 25 [ Read full story ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) For the performers, though, lip-syncing to these strange, artificial voices is an odd task, requiring them to bend their live, human presence into the shapes produced by machines. Politically, it mirrors processes that are already at play in the continued computational automation of human life. Etchells brings up James Bridle’s writings on new technologies as a reference point: one example Bridle gives is of “chaotic storage”, a logistics technique employed by Amazon fulfilment centres whereby items are stored not according to traditional methods of categorisation or alphabetisation, but in a way that an algorithm determines to produce the most efficient routes for ‘picking’ based on customer purchase patterns. This appears completely random and incomprehensible to humans, with paddling pools sitting next to USB sticks sitting next to blowtorches, and so for the warehouse workers, the process of picking items becomes completely reliant on technology which tells them where to go. Our world is increasingly being designed not with humans in mind, but rather machines. As Etchells puts it, “technology malforms the space, and then you end up having to live in it.” Initially, Forced Entertainment tried their best to live in the world of machines: “I was in the it’s-got-to-be-perfect school of lip-sync,” says Etchells. But with their aesthetic being so tied to the failing act, the slipping mask, the shoddy costume, “it’s no surprise really that that didn’t last.” Instead, the performers got to enjoy being late for a line, or playing games with each other, “stealing” each other’s voices. Etchells compares it to the principles of ventriloquism, in which a free-floating voice unattached to a body is fundamentally discomforting and “sort of traumatic”. That discomfort is equally as alluring to Forced Entertainment as the satisfaction of precision, the pretence of authenticity only interesting if shown to be a pretence. Lip-sync has also opened up new avenues for the company. Having been allergic all their lives to Plays-with-a-capital-P, with Cold Sweat Forced Entertainment find themselves approaching something a little bit like drama. Rather than the presentational arena of Signal to Noise’s open white stage, Cold Sweat places us more decisively in a “fictional locale”: what appears to be “the aftermath of some disastrous party or backyard drinking binge” where three figures – family members, or neighbours, perhaps – are the last ones standing. “It’s all quite acrimonious and accusatory, everyone’s talking over each other.” For Etchells, this more fictional mode is “a door that we’ve never been able to open. We’ve just never really gone there.” Perhaps it is the technique of lip-syncing, an extra buffer of mediation, that allows them to venture away from the here-and-now without feeling that they have to commit to the “psychological claptrap” that comes along with acting; to be able to “play the game of theatre, without getting one’s hands too dirty.” As I wonder how else the impulses behind Forced Entertainment’s work have changed over time, it occurs to me that over the last ten years of new creations, with the exception of If All Else Fails, the company’s performers haven’t ever spoken on stage: there were two shows without any language at all, Out of Order and Under Bright Light, and then this trilogy of lip-sync works. Etchells agrees it’s a shift away from earlier productions, that were so often about “the actual voices of the performers and their actual presences. We had a lot of money, in some ways, on an authentic approach to what it might mean to speak on the stage.” But this sense of authentic presence itself had a fakeness to it; these days, Etchells can’t stand that mode of being onstage where performers “are here to be cheeky and witty versions of themselves. I don’t want to be charmed.” Pulling back into a more anonymous space has resulted in works that feel slightly sharper-edged, more brutal in a way. “All of these shows are post-Brexit, post-Trump, post-truth, post-everything,” Etchells notes. Speech, charisma, authenticity – these things feel politically loaded, and perhaps warmth and openness just don’t feel like the right tools to reflect the world we’re living in. “It feels like the space is closing down, and we’re trying to deal with the fact that the system, the structure that you’re in, is more oppressive and more powerful. It probably always was, but I think we’re just more tuned to it now.” Yet even without their voices, the performers’ distinctive presences – ones that many audiences have followed around for years, if not decades – still, inevitably, shine through as they physically navigate whatever unending task the system of the piece has set for them. They’re still trying to keep up with the onslaught of text, still running about, changing costumes, moving stuff around. The human is always stuck in the teeth of the machine, jamming the smooth, frictionless cheeriness of the not-real, gesticulating silently, trying desperately to communicate. Cold Sweat is at Sheffield Theatres, 2 to 3 October; Southbank Centre, London, 9 to 10 October; Lancaster Arts, 14 October [ ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) [ Exeunt recommends... the best autumn theatre ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) Exeunt · Sep 16 [ Read full story ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) This piece was paid for by the Southbank Centre. Such support helps Exeunt to keep publishing the most interesting writing, about the most exciting theatre. Interested in partnering with Exeunt? Visit our Advertise with Exeunt page, where you can get more information, download an advertising pack, and find our contact details.
Nimesh Patel on stand-up, Palestine and politics: ‘The way that religion’s been weaponized is ugly’
The comedian went from being discovered by Chris Rock to making Saturday Night Live history. Now his new Netflix special, Buy the Dip, tackles timely topics with optimism
Mixed martial arts -- without the wire cage and the blood -- bids to make the Olympics
Mixed martial arts could be coming to the Olympics — but it's a long shot
Jiang Feng: The Unravelling of German & European Politics
A state election in eastern Germany has become a revealing test of the changing political landscapes of Germany and Europe, writes Jiang Feng, Professor and Chairman of the Council of the Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies (SAGGAS) at Shanghai International Studies University. His analysis follows the decisive victory of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) (which has been classified as right-wing extremist by German authorities)in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September, in which it finished far ahead of its mainstream rivals. Jiang previously served as Minister-Counsellor at the Chinese Embassy in Berlin. The following article was published on 8 September 2026 on huanqiu.com, the online platform of the Global Times. On 6 September, the results of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, were announced. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), classified as far-right by German authorities, made history by becoming the largest party in the state parliament, winning 43.8 per cent of the vote — twice its share in the previous election. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which had governed the state continuously for 24 years, won just 17.2 per cent, its worst result ever in Saxony-Anhalt. On the night the results were announced, the atmosphere at the CDU gathering was unusually calm. There was neither shock nor argument, as if the defeat had long been expected. Several veteran party members who had spent years working in the state government said: “Defeat is not a bad thing. It is time to make changes.” This state election has not only upended Saxony-Anhalt’s political landscape, but also laid bare the deep tensions between Germany’s traditional party structure and model of governance, on the one hand, and an increasingly polarised society on the other. Its repercussions are already being felt at the federal level, making Saxony-Anhalt a useful case study of the broader trend towards political polarisation and realignment in Europe. Governing Difficulties after Electoral Victory The most immediate consequence of the election is a historic setback for the mainstream party order that took shape in post-war Germany. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has leapt from a peripheral party to the largest political force in the state. Its electoral base has expanded beyond the traditional category of “marginal protest voters” to take on the characteristics of a cross-class coalition. The party has not only consolidated its support in rural areas, but also attracted many middle-class voters and even members of the social elite with stable jobs, their own homes, and substantial incomes. It has thus evolved from a “protest party” into one with the potential to govern. Despite its commanding lead in the vote, however, the AfD faces an institutional obstacle to governing the state: the mainstream parties’ long-standing “firewall” against it. Neither of the two potential routes to forming a government appears likely to break the current political deadlock. The first would be a coalition of establishment parties, led by the CDU and bringing together the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, the Left Party (Die Linke) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in a cross-camp government. In terms of parliamentary arithmetic, such a coalition could prevent the AfD from forming a government and preserve the outward stability of the traditional political order. Yet these parties are fundamentally divided over key issues including immigration, the energy transition, economic management, and cultural and education policy. Coalition negotiations would therefore be extremely difficult, and even if a government could be formed, it would most likely prove short-lived. More importantly, an alliance of establishment parties aimed at keeping the largest party out of government would play directly into the AfD’s narrative that “political elites are suppressing public opinion”. It could deepen perceptions of political unfairness, further strengthening the AfD’s political capital, and creating a dynamic in which “the more it is suppressed, the more people vote for it”. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate for state premier, has said that if efforts to form a government fail because other parties refuse to cooperate, the AfD will push for a fresh election, which he believes could deliver the party an absolute majority of seats. This points to more intense political battles ahead. The second option would be a coalition between the AfD and the BSW. Together, the two parties would command a simple majority in parliament, making this, on paper, the quickest route to forming a government. The BSW is the only elected party that has not ruled out cooperation with the AfD, and the two parties share some common ground, including on policy towards Russia. There is therefore a degree of political basis for cooperation. Were such a coalition to materialise, Germany would see its first state government jointly formed by a party defined as far-right and one with a far-left background, creating what might be called a “bipolar anti-establishment alliance”. Such an outcome would fundamentally break with the ideological boundaries of post-war German party politics. It is worth noting that even if the AfD ultimately fails to enter the state government, its roughly 47 per cent share of parliamentary seats would give it a powerful blocking minority. Without its consent, major decisions requiring a two-thirds majority — including constitutional amendments, significant budgetary adjustments, and state-level institutional reforms — would be extremely difficult to pass. Therefore, whoever ultimately forms the government, the AfD will be an unavoidable force in Saxony-Anhalt politics, with a direct influence on the state’s legislative process. Systemic Failures in Germany’s Governance Model The Saxony-Anhalt election result reflects a systemic failure of Germany’s post-war mainstream-party model of governance to adapt to rapidly changing socioeconomic conditions. It stems from multiple, mutually reinforcing structural tensions and highlights the existing political system’s difficulty in adapting to “an increasingly polarised society First, collective anxiety has replaced individual material hardship as a central driver of political mobilisation. The rise of the AfD can no longer be explained simply by poverty or social marginalisation. Its increasingly cross-class electoral base suggests that what is driving voters towards the party is, above all, concern about the broader direction of society. This anxiety about the future of the political community goes beyond individual gains and losses. In political discourse, economic anxiety has become closely intertwined with immigration, while immigration and refugee issues are, in essence, questions of social fairness. This perception turns conflicts over the distribution of social resources into negative assessments of governing parties, providing a broad social basis for far-right political narratives. Second, regional disparities and East German identity have undermined the strategy of addressing eastern Germany’s structural challenges at the regional level. More than three decades after German reunification, eastern states such as Saxony-Anhalt have experienced periods of economic growth, but their underlying economic structures remain weak, and household incomes and wealth remain significantly below those in western Germany. At the same time, they continue to face population outflow, an ageing population, labour shortages, and other structural challenges. At a deeper level, historical experiences — including the collapse of the former East German economic system, mass unemployment during the transition, and the westward shift of decision-making power over major issues — have left some residents with a sense of being “second-class citizens” and of being excluded. For years, the German government treated the “syndrome” of reunification as a regional problem to be gradually addressed at the local level. That approach is becoming increasingly unsustainable, as regional development disparities emerge as a core structural factor shaping national politics. Third, the erosion of institutional trust is perhaps the most decisive factor. AfD supporters tend to distrust establishment institutions, including parliament, government, and the mainstream media. Their concerns about economic security, pensions, and social fairness are significantly greater than the social average. Increasingly, their support for the AfD reflects not an expectation that the existing system can be improved, but a search for an alternative to the current political order. Such a systemic deficit of trust will be extremely difficult for the traditional parties to repair in the short term. Fourth, a generational shift in political mobilisation has amplified political polarisation. Unlike traditional parties, which rely heavily on offline rallies and mainstream media coverage, the AfD has developed a social-media mobilisation strategy built around “raising an issue — identifying who is responsible — offering a simplified solution — building a shared identity”. It turns complex social tensions into concise political narratives, rapidly channelling public sentiment into political support. The contrast on the eve of the election was particularly telling. The establishment parties, together with trade unions and churches, organised an offline march attended by more than 10,000 people, but its reach was largely confined to those present and to traditional media coverage. The AfD held a much smaller indoor event, yet livestreaming on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms, combined with the involvement of online influencers, gave it a reach and mobilising capacity far beyond that of the march. The contrast illustrates how the traditional parties’ methods of political mobilisation are increasingly struggling to keep pace with a political environment transformed by changes in media technology. A Microcosm of Structural Political Change in Europe The shockwaves from the Saxony-Anhalt election quickly travelled beyond the state to the federal level. Calls for political accountability followed immediately after the results were announced. The governing CDU and SPD are now under enormous pressure, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil face an unprecedented test. Political polarisation in Germany is no longer simply a regional phenomenon. The post-war model of multiparty government by establishment parties is breaking down and being reshaped. Viewed in a broader European context, the Saxony-Anhalt election is part of a continent-wide wave of party polarisation, mainstream-party decline, and rising right-wing forces. Far from an isolated phenomenon, it is a microcosm of the structural political changes unfolding across Europe. Weak economic growth, cultural tensions over immigration, and declining trust in institutions are fuelling the rise of right-wing forces in several countries, challenging the liberal internationalist order established in post-war Europe. As a core member state of the European Union, Germany’s ability to adapt its political system and the direction of its politics will have profound implications for both European integration and the evolution of the international order. Subscribe [ Pekingnology China’s Germany watchers take stock of Berlin’s uneasy turn On 7 December 2025, nearly 50 Chinese scholars and policy researchers gathered in Beijing for the 2025年德国形势年终研讨会 “2025 Year-End Seminar on the Situation in Germany… Read more 9 months ago · 31 likes · 1 comment · YIRUI LI and Yuxuan JIA ](https://www.pekingnology.com/p/chinas-germany-watchers-take-stock?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=1151841) [ Jiang Feng on Germany's 2025 and beyond: no easy exit ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/jiang-feng-on-germanys-2025-and-beyond) Yirui LI and Yuxuan JIA · Jan 24 The following is an op-ed by Jiang Feng, published on 29 December 2025 at Shanghai Observer 上观新闻, the digital platform of Jiefang Daily, the official newspaper of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). [ Read full story ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/jiang-feng-on-germanys-2025-and-beyond)
Backyard Biodiversity: Recent Soil Science Insights Enlarge Understanding Of Why Plant Diversity Delivers Benefits
Plant diversity. Courtesy photo BY OWEN HABLUTZELFor Chama Peak Land Alliance’s Backyard Biodiversity series Plant diversity has a very long, widespread history of human use as a strategy for…
Bipartisan bill aims to expand health protections for wildland firefighters
A bipartisan bill backed by Utah Sen. John Curtis promises to expand health and safety protections for wildland firefighters.
Jon Jones Reveals Decision to Take Gable Steveson Backstage
UFC legend Jon Jones revealed it was his decision to take Gable Steveson backstage instead of waiting for Sean Sharaf’s hand to be raised. In the biggest upset in UFC history, according to the betting odds, Steveson was brutally knocked out as a -2500 betting favorite in just 12 seconds by Sharaf on the UFC […] The post Jon Jones Reveals Decision to Take Gable Steveson Backstage appeared first on HEAVY.
Brewers' Chourio's Third Straight 20/20 Season Makes MLB History
The 22-year-old phenom shatters records with unprecedented power and speed, fueling the Milwaukee Brewers World Series dreams.
PUBLIC COMMENT — Medicaid Program; Amending the Indirect Hold Harmless Threshold of Health Care-Related Taxes
This proposed rule represents one of the most economically significant and socially beneficial deregulatory actions in HHS’s history.
Steelers Afternoon Drive: Does Tape Tell Different Story About Offense?
Welcome to the Steelers Afternoon Drive, our new daily podcast featuring all the latest Steelers news and analysis. Alan Saunders […]
Kosair for Kids Awards $2.5M grant to Med Center Health’s newborn safety program
What This Story Is About: Kosair for Kids awarded a $2.5 million grant to Med Center Health to fund its new "Womb to World" infant and child safety program.
Today in sports history, November 19
Today in sports history, November 19
Can the Chicago White Sox Make the World Series?
On Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, the Chicago White Sox lost their 21st straight game. That brought their record to 27-88, 41.5 games out of first place days into August. 53 days later, the 2024 White Sox became the worst team in modern MLB history, losing its 121st game. “There are no excuses,” wrote chairman and […] The post Can the Chicago White Sox Make the World Series? appeared first on The Lead.
The latest on MLB postseason clinches, Ohtani and Judge health updates, awards races and more
Major League Baseball’s postseason is rapidly approaching, with the Los Angeles Dodgers seeking a third-straight World Series title
Five Things I learned about UTEP this week.
This is a guest post from Tanner Castora, who was at the UTEP/Michigan game this weekend. There had never been a more important moment in the school’s history. In fact, the occasion was so grand, Disney turned it into a movie (Glory Road). In 1966, using the first all-black starting lineup in NCAA basketball history, […]
UNO's Chun-Hua Tsai Earns Prestigious NSF CAREER Award
UNO Faculty, recognized by the National Science Foundation for developing AI systems that help people understand nutrition and make healthier dietary choices
‘So much family history tied to it’: Evansville business owner repairs broken flagpoles
Broken equipment, not lack of pride, often keeps flags grounded
What to stream: ‘A Different World,’ ‘Toy Story 5’ and Kenny Chesney
The Disney+ debut of “Toy Story 5” and a new album from Kenny Chesney are some of the new television shows, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
WAMU's Week Ahead: Postpartum mental health, week two of the Trayon White trial, National Museum of African American History's 10-year anniversary
This week WAMU will be checking in on what resources there are for mothers experiencing postpartum mental illness, the second week of D.C. Councilmember Trayon White's federal bribery trial and what the National Museum of African American History and Culture is cooking up for its 10th anniversary celebrations.
Scientists Extracted DNA From Medieval Parchment—and Found a Hidden Disease
The 3,500-year history of sheeppox was written into the books—quite literally.
Invesco Leisure and Entertainment ETF declares quarterly distribution of $0.0561
Content provided by Seeking Alpha is intended for information purposes only, and that Seeking Alpha does not offer any personalist investment advice and is not a licensed securities dealer, broker, US investment adviser or investment bank.
University of Tennessee breaks ground on 865 Neyland project
865 Neyland will feature about 100,000 square feet of entertainment space, restaurants, shops, event space, fan experiences and a 24-story condo-hotel.
This Week: Phone Bank for Transit, SF Politics, Transit Tales
Here is a list of events this week. Monday/today! Phone bank with SFBike to Save Transit. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is phone banking and connecting with voters, explaining how vital it is to pass the Regional Transit Measure this November. Join them to help make sure our regional transit survives and thrives. Monday/today, September 21, 5-7 p.m. San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Office, 1720 Market Street, S.F. Tuesday Historic Photo Exhibit Tour. Moving San Francisco is a collaboration between the SFMTA and San Francisco Arts Commission and is on view at City Hall through November 25. During this informal tour, they will take an in-depth look at selected photos from San Francisco transit history and learn more about the stories and people behind them. Tuesday, September 22, 5-7:45 p.m. North Light Court inside City Hall, One Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, S.F. Tuesday San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Board Meeting. SF Bicycle Coalition members are invited to attend all board meetings. Tuesday, September 22, 6-8 p.m. Register for Zoom link. Tuesday SF Politics 101 with Joel Engardio. SF Politics 101 is a look at how local politics work and the history that shaped San Francisco—brought to life with visuals and narrative storytelling. Tuesday, September 22, 6-7:15 p.m. SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission Street, S.F. Register to attend. Wednesday Transit Tales: A Storytelling Night. Join SPUR and Muni Diaries at Local Economy for an evening of true stories inspired by riding transit. From unexpected encounters and meet-cutes to funny mishaps and heartfelt moments, Transit Tales celebrates the experiences that make public transportation unforgettable. Wednesday, 5:30-7 p.m. Local Economy, 6028 College Ave, Oakland. Saturday Group Ride: Richmond BART to Point Pinole. Join Bike East Bay for a family-friendly, no-drop group ride to Point Pinole Regional Shoreline. Saturday, September 26, 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Starts at Richmond BART Plaza, 1600 Nevin Plaza, Richmond. Saturday Shipwreck Cove Opening. Come see Sunset Dunes’s newest playground. Saturday, September 26, 3 p.m., Sunset Dunes and Kirkham, S.F. Saturday 55 Wine Line Progressive. Ride between Horsies Market & Saloon, Bar Part Time and Ruby Wine on the 55 Dogpatch bus. Saturday, September 26. Three locations in Dogpatch. See SFMTA site for more details on locations and times. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.
Adidas to release final Germany kit on November 3
In a promotional video featuring prominent football figures, Germany's equipment supplier Adidas announced that they will release one more football kit on November 3 to mark the end of its partnership with the German Football Federation (DFB). In the video published on social media on Monday, Joachim Löw, Jürgen Klinsmann, Philipp Lahm, Manuel Neuer and Florian Wirtz, among others, debate on which Germany jersey is the most beautiful one in history.
Halo 3, Mass Effect, BioShock, Rock Band, and More: Fall 2007 Was the Greatest Season in Xbox – and Also Gaming
The fact that you can slice up the Fall of 2007 in so many different ways – best Xbox season ever, best PC season ever, best November ever – and the argument for its unmatched brilliance still holds up is iron-clad proof that it is, indisputably, the best season in video game history.
AMC Entertainment starts $3.97B debt plan to refinance notes, term loans
Content provided by Seeking Alpha is intended for information purposes only, and that Seeking Alpha does not offer any personalist investment advice and is not a licensed securities dealer, broker, US investment adviser or investment bank.
MSG Entertainment names new president
Content provided by Seeking Alpha is intended for information purposes only, and that Seeking Alpha does not offer any personalist investment advice and is not a licensed securities dealer, broker, US investment adviser or investment bank.
2026 midterm elections on track for record political ad spending, report finds
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Microsoft: September updates break File History backup feature
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Final Fantasy Revelation will let players automatically raise their character’s level to skip grinding
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Marseille and Bruno Genesio make unwanted history
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Hanx Biopharmaceuticals (Wuhan) Enters Agreement To Explore AI For Science In Drug Research
Hanx Biopharmaceuticals (Wuhan) Co Ltd HKEX:3378:
The Political Earthquake From Germany’s China Shock
For decades, Germany’s stability rested on an implicit bargain: high-value manufacturing would provide good jobs, strong export revenues, and broad-based prosperity, which political institutions would translate into social cohesion. Competition from China shakes that bargain to its foundations. MUNICH—September 6, 2026, could mark a turning point in Germany’s postwar political history. In the Saxony-Anhalt state […]
Silent Hill: Townfall Can't Match the Stellar Reviews of 2025's Silent Hill f
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Washington's Grant Veto Sets a Warning for British Science
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One Week Remaining: Where the Postseason Race Stands
We are almost there, 155-156 games in the history books, "six-seven" to go in the marathon that is the Major League Baseball Season. But plenty is still up for grabs in the MLB postseason race. All three National League divisions are officially clinched by the 98-58 Milwaukee Brewers, 96-60 Los Angeles Dodgers, and the 92-64 …
Whether you like it or not, celebrities have an impact on politics
The global groundswell of support for Macklemore’s pro-Palestinian advocacy serves to remind us that maybe celebrity activism really is that deep after all, writes Cheek’s Varsha Yajman. Subscribe In the last week, publications, podcasts, and influencers that have either rarely or never spoken about Israel’s genocide in Palestine have flooded my social feed. And it was all because singer Ed Sheeran and his team dropped Macklemore as his opener for saying “Free Palestine” on stage. Millions raised, millions speaking up in support of Palestine - all of this confirming my view that, whether I like it or not, celebrities do have an impact on political outcomes. And this is interesting when much of the time celebrity activism can induce an eye roll - I love to see Charli XCX pointing out a Palestinian flag in the crowd, but it’s hardly the bold symbol of allyship that some fans would make it out to be. But there’s a line between healthy scepticism and outright dismissal - and I’d argue that the latter lets the rich and powerful off far too easily. For instance, actress Jennifer Lawrence, once outspoken about her political views, last year told The Times she no longer believes celebrities have a role to play: “Celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.” While it’s a narrative she might find comfort in, it simply is not true. Grassroots movements often garner worldwide attention when celebrities and other high-profile spokespeople bring a mainstream platform to their causes. And this frustrates me. We have had three years of a live-streamed genocide. Macklemore himself has been calling for a Free Palestine long before he booked the Sheeran concert. Yet it’s the high-profile fallout of the last week that finally seems to have made saying “Free Palestine” socially acceptable in the mainstream. It feels like the collective mood has shifted, where calling out censorship is now the obvious response - not just the business of ‘radical’ activists. To recap, Sheeran’s decision followed an ultimatum from billionaire Robert Kraft, owner of Gillette Stadium, one of the venues Sheeran was scheduled to perform at: either drop Macklemore as your opener after only two of the eight scheduled shows, or you do not play at any stadiums. Sheeran’s disappointing decision to stand on the side of billionaire-led censorship has ultimately seen a surge in support for Free Palestine. It began when all his openers and his backing band pulled out of Sheeran’s tour, in solidarity with Macklemore and with the Palestinian cause. It was met with an uproar of support from those who had never or barely touched politics before: influencers lip-syncing to Macklemore’s music, singers like Jack Antonoff singing “Free Palestine,” and publications and podcasts standing with Macklemore. And finally, we saw material support: Macklemore donated $1 million in profits from his two nights opening for Sheeran’s tour to several Palestinian aid groups and called for Sheeran and Kraft to match it, which they have since promised to do. We’ve also seen children’s entertainer Ms Rachel follow suit with a $1 million donation to Palestinian aid, and publication PopBase has donated $10,000. Anera, a humanitarian aid group working in Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan, said donations since Macklemore’s announcement were more than triple this month’s daily average. The group’s Instagram page has also gained 8,000 followers. Macklemore far from the first celebrity to speak and participate in politics in the Western World. In 1924, singer Al Jolson supported Republican candidate Warren G. Harding for president, and decades later, celebrities such as Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, and Aretha Franklin voiced their public support for the Civil Rights movement. More recently, in the lead-up to the 2024 US election, ‘The Daily Show with Trevor Noah partnered with the organisation Power the Polls to recruit poll workers to address shortages- a problem disproportionately affecting voters of colour. The campaign saw 170,000 new sign-ups - 35,000 of which came directly through the TV show’s link - resulting in the recruitment of 713,000 total poll workers that year, an almost three-fold increase on the organisation’s goal. Alongside recruiting workers, celebrities in the US (where voting in elections is not compulsory) have made a huge difference by calling for people to register to vote. Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024 saw over 400,000 visitors on the voter registration site within 24 hours of her Instagram post. In 2023, Swift had urged her fans to register, resulting in 35,000 new voter registrations. Similarly, Ariana Grande promoted voter registration in 2019 by setting up booths at concerts on the American leg of her tour, resulting in over 33,000 voters registering. And the same thing is happening closer to home. This year, musician Jack River successfully called for government action to ensure creatives in Australia do not have their work scraped by generative AI companies. Celebrity as the mediator between the punter and the politician Celebrity activism isn’t just a feel-good news story - research tells us it actually makes a difference. By directing attention to issues affecting the average person, like voting inaccessibility or a lack of action on a genocide, researchers Alfred Archer and Amanda Cawston state that “celebrities can play a useful bridging role between political elites and the people they represent”. Alternatively, in a world where talking about politics is “not cool,” or where people lack exposure or knowledge to engage with politics, celebrities can act as an educational resource or an entry point into the political world - when they speak up about an issue, their audience gets exposed to it. Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields festival is a perfect example. Rodrigo partnered with twelve organisations focused on women’s issues, such as reproductive rights. These organisations had stalls at the festival for people to meet them and were also featured heavily on social media, giving their issues global attention and raising $20 million for the organisations. We have also seen celebrities at award shows such as the Emmys wearing F*CK ICE pins, referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s treatment and detainment of people - generally people of colour. When celebrities speak up about political issues in public forums, they put the issue at the forefront of mainstream media, rally their supporters, and make it clear that, however much they disagree, the government cannot simply ignore it. Our over-reliance on celebrities versus our politicians As much as I love seeing my favourite celebrity use their platform for a good cause, there is an important question to ask: not whether celebrity activism is good or bad, but whether we should have to rely on celebrities. And the answer would, in an ideal world, be no. In an ideal world, or merely a just world, action on Palestine would’ve happened decades ago, climate change would be taken seriously, and most importantly, people would understand their democratic rights. However, that is not our reality. Only around 28 per cent of Australian Year 10 students reach proficiency in civics and citizenship. In the US, almost two-thirds of people under 30 say high school civics education didn’t prepare them to understand voting deadlines, how to research candidates, or how to vote by mail. When civics education is weak, our trust in these institutions and our understanding of change-making processes also decline. This is where celebrity steps in and becomes our main source of reliance. As Mary R. Connelly notes in _The Tartan, “_Celebrities will always be involved in campaigns in one form or another, but their presence is not what causes people to vote blindly. The lack of political engagement and literacy is what allows celebrities to wield their influence on the political sphere so impactfully.” About the author Varsha Yajman is the Digital Content Producer at Cheek Media. She is a youth advocate and lawyer with a background in climate litigation and is passionate about looking at the intersection between race, climate justice, and mental health. Thanks for reading Cheek Media Co. ! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share
John Oliver Takes Jab at “Soon-to-Be Business Daddy” David Ellison on ‘Last Week Tonight’
During a segment on UnitedHealthCare's history of denying claims, Oliver said: "Having access to wealthy parents just cannot be the system to get badly needed healthcare, even if it is apparently the ...
John Oliver Takes Jab at David Ellison on 'Last Week Tonight'
During a segment on UnitedHealthCare's history of denying claims, Oliver said: "Having access to wealthy parents just cannot be the system to get badly needed healthcare, even if it is apparently the system that lets you be in charge of HBO."
Baan Holding Group Updates On Commencement Of Execution Works For "Playocity" Entertainment Project
BAAN HOLDING GROUP COMPANY TADAWUL:1820:
Sound of Music museum opens where the von Trapp story met Hollywood
SALZBURG, Austria (AP) — An Austrian museum is alive with “The Sound of Music,” a first-ever venue devoted to the classic 1965 singalong movie starring Julie Andrews. The Sound of Music Salzburg museum, situated in an Austrian city famed for music and perhaps best known as the home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, opened Sunday. The
Sound of Music museum opens where the von Trapp story met Hollywood
An Austrian museum is now alive with “The Sound of Music.”.
Mixed mycorrhizal forests foster a richer diversity of understory herbs
In temperate forests, canopy trees shape understory herb diversity through the fungal partnerships they make
Alan Ritchson’s 2nd 2026 Box Office Flop Continues To Crash Amid Reacher Success
Alan Ritchson is riding high on streaming, but the big screen is telling a different story. His action-thriller has managed just $13.1 million worldwide since opening on September 11. It is the second...
What to stream: 'A Different World,' 'Toy Story 5' and Kenny Chesney
The Disney+ debut of “Toy Story 5” and a new album from Kenny Chesney are some of the new television shows, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
What to stream: 'A Different World,' 'Toy Story 5' and Kenny Chesney
Disney+ is adding “Toy Story 5" to its lineup this week. The film about toys battling tech for Bonnie's attention arrives on the service on Wednesday. HBO Max is offering
7 biggest new shows to stream this week,including a Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson team-up
This week’s new TV lineup is packed with drama, thrills and laughs that you can stream, including "Best Medicine" season 2, "Brothers," "American Horror Story: 13" and "A Different World" revival.
Jets Make Embarrassing History in Brutal Loss to Packers
The New York Jets made history in all of the wrong ways during their brutal Week 2 loss to the Green Bay Packers. The post Jets Make Embarrassing History in Brutal Loss to Packers appeared first on HEAVY.
Drake's Mother Sandi & Friends Joke About Wanting to Give Him Another Name
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‘Resident Evil’ scares up franchise-best $60 million premiere, pushing horror to new box office record
This year’s slate of horror films have put 2026 in contention for the highest grossing box office year in the genre’s history following the $60 million franchise-best open for Zach Cregger’s ‘Resident Evil.’
‘Youth’ Creator Sharon Horgan Explains the Premiere’s Emotional Rug-Pull Ending
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Jalen Hurts Makes History In Eagles’ Win vs Titans
The Philadelphia Eagles landed another impressive hero effort from the star quarterback Jalen Hurts on Sunday afternoon in Week 2. Amid the tight victory, which included another clutch showing from Hurts, the veteran passed the former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz on a historic Eagles list. Jalen Hurts Makes History In Eagles’ Win vs Titans […] The post Jalen Hurts Makes History In Eagles’ Win vs Titans appeared first on HEAVY.
Netflix’s ‘Best Of The Best’ Brings A Niche World Into The Spotlight
Netflix's dive into the world of South Asian dance competitions carves out a story many young South Asians might recognize, but also one that anyone can connect with..
Patriots quietly make NFL history in blowout win over Steelers
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Alan Ritchson says “Reacher” planned a white supremacist storyline until ‘someone got re-elected’
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Griffin Wilde’s 1,000-Yard Mark Puts Him in Northwestern History
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Alan Ritchson says ‘Reacher’ planned a white supremacist storyline until ‘someone got re-elected’
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Panthers’ Wild Change Makes Huge Statement
The Carolina Panthers were on the wrong side of NFL history in Week 1. They allowed a whopping 59 points to the Chicago Bears. Combined with the Panthers’ encouraging 37 points of their own, they had scored the most points in an NFL season opener ever — and being on the losing side of such […] The post Panthers’ Wild Change Makes Huge Statement appeared first on HEAVY.
49ers RB Christian McCaffrey joins Randy Moss in NFL history
San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey made NFL history during Week 2.
Health collaborative working to improve care, dignity for elderly Utahns
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Fill your diary with October’s must-catch entertainment
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What is the AI singularity? Some experts say it’s closer than ever
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Lucy Graham Turns Down Syndrome Into a Thriving Business
When Lucy Graham was born with Down syndrome, her family vowed to help her shine. Today, her determination and creativity helped her find success! Here, she shares her story with Woman’s World. When she was in high school, Lucy Graham gave her class a PowerPoint presentation on living with Down syndrome, describing its physical effects,
Lucy Graham Turns Down Syndrome Into a Thriving Business
When Lucy Graham was born with Down syndrome, her family vowed to help her shine. Today, her determination and creativity helped her find success! Here, she shares her story with Woman’s World. When she was in high school, Lucy Graham gave her class a PowerPoint presentation on living with Down syndrome, describing its physical effects,
Why politicians should pay more attention to the polls (reprise)
Welcome to the 231st edition of The Week in Polls (TWIP), a polling newsletter that always welcomes new readers. So please don’t keep TWIP a secret; share it with your friends and colleagues: Share The Week in Polls With all the stories swirling around Reform, JL Partners and political polling, I am finally tearing myself away from talking about the regulation of polling this week - and instead re-running a previous piece reminding us why the solution to problems with polls isn’t simply to ban or ignore them. Rather, we need them to play a vital role in making our politics - and politicians - better. This is followed by summaries of the latest national voting intention polls, seat projections from MRPs and the most recent party leader ratings. Subscribers who pay for the full edition can also read ten insights from the latest polls and analyses, including: A trio of organisations and a pair of professors have been casting their eyes over the Liberal Democrats ahead of the party’s autumn conference; What impact did the summer heatwave have on views on climate change? and Which wins out between chocolate and cheese? If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can read all ten by starting a free trial now: Get FREE 7-day trial For more polling news as it comes in ahead of next week’s edition, you can also follow The Week in Polls on Bluesky. Picking up on my doubt last week about whether or not 35% of British train travellers have tried to order a takeaway for delivery to a railway station or carriage, thank you to reader Iain, who has been in touch to say he has done just that… in India. Another quick pair of updates, this time on the controversies around Reform and polling. Politico has a further scoop - “Farage aide caught in donor sting attended Egypt retreat with JL Partners” - and Ian Dunt has written about the problems with polling too: “Seeing the response of many polling experts in the last few weeks suggests that they are nervous about what is happening and keen to mitigate against it. Seeing the response of journalists, which has been basically non-existent, suggests the precise opposite.” My usual reminder as well: please do hit reply if you’ve spotted a poll, focus group or new piece of poll-based research that you think should be in contention for coverage in a future edition. Thank you! And with that, on with the show. How politicians get public opinion wrong I have written before about the benefits that come from widespread availability of high-quality political polling. We need more polls and more good coverage of polls. However, what I’ve not dug into before is the research into how accurately politicians estimate public opinion on issues. Thankfully we have academic research to tell us. First, the bad news: We present results from a study of 866 politicians in four countries.1 Politicians were asked to estimate the percentage of public support for various policy proposals. Comparing more than 10,000 estimations with actual levels of public support, we conclude that politicians are quite inaccurate estimators of people’s preferences. They make large errors and even regularly misperceive what a majority of the voters wants. Politicians are hardly better at estimating public preferences than ordinary citizens. Walgrave, S., Jansen, A., Sevenans, J., Soontjens, K., Pilet, J.B., Brack, N., Varone, F., Helfer, L., Vliegenthart, R., van der Meer, T., Breunig, C., Bailer, S., Sheffer, L. & Loewen, P.J. (2023a), “Inaccurate Politicians: Elected Representatives’ Estimations of Public Opinion in Four Countries”, The Journal of Politics, 85(1): 209-222. The bad news is not quite as bad as that makes it sound because, when asked whether the majority of public opinion was for or against various policies, politicians picked the wrong option ‘only’ 29% of the time. However, this included getting it wrong even when public opinion is far from evenly split on an issue: They do not only get it wrong when the public is divided and hard to read (e.g., when there is a 51%:49% distribution). Seventy percent of the misplacements occur for policies with a relatively clear distribution of at least 60% (dis)agreeing citizens. Moreover, the public scored only slightly worse than politicians, picking the wrong option 2.7 out of 8 times on average, compared with 2.3 times for politicians. Turning to the other measure of accuracy (not which side is in the lead but what the percentage support is for each side), politicians on average were 18 percentage points out in their guesses. Again, this was only slightly better than the public, whose error came in at 21 percentage points.2 Further research, using the same mix of countries, gives a little more comfort about how (in)accurate perceptions are: We show that politicians have a better understanding of public opinion when they think the issue matters to voters. Further, when an issue is personally important to politicians they more accurately estimate their party supporters’ opinions. The results confirm that politicians hold more accurate perceptions of voters’ preferences when they think it is important to do so but not necessarily when the issues actually are important to voters. Butler, C., Walgrave, S., Soontjens, K. & Loewen, P.J. (2024), “Politicians are better at estimating public opinion when they think it is more salient”, Party Politics: 1–13. Even so, it’s not a good picture. The remedy for this? Politicians should spend more time reading the polls. So forward this newsletter to someone you know… Share For a more general argument against banning polls, see my 2024 piece. Is “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” good advice or not? The latest episode of my Political Fictions podcast heads across the Atlantic for a dip into one of the political TV classics: Mark and Cory talk about a giant of American political drama for the first time this week, as they tackle The West Wing. They talk about Let Bartlet Be Bartlet, the nineteenth episode of series one. In it, Mark wonders if The West Wing is actually the epitome of the “Boris Johnson school of politics”, Cory outmanoeuvres Mark into confirming we will record a Christmas Special about Love, Actually and they debate whether the central message of this episode has been misunderstood. Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters. Subscribe to our newsletter for some additional bonus content and to get alerted whenever a new episode comes out. Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod/incompetech.com and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. You can also listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web or YouTube. Elsewhere from me… [ A Lord's Eye View How to fix the problem of money in our politics Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords. This time I am taking a look at how our political system is regulated, and the protections we need to keep democracy safe from becoming simply a contest to see who has the biggest bank account… Read more 5 days ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Mark Pack ](https://lordseyeview.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-the-problem-of-money-in?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=1269283) If you spot a factual error… Borrowing an idea from Stuart Ritchie and others, if you spot a factual error in an edition of this newsletter, I will give you a free 12-month subscription to the paid-for version (or an extra 12 months on your existing one). Factual errors qualify, but grammatical errors or disagreements over interpretation do not, and my decision is final. Messages about both of those are always welcome, though. Voting intention and leadership ratings Here are the latest voting intention polls from different pollsters. It is all pretty static at the moment, with a small and consistent Labour lead in nearly all the polls. The table is also online here, along with explanations about what is included. It is updated regularly throughout the week as new polls are released. Next are the seat projections from MRPs, also sorted by fieldwork dates, listing those which are based on dedicated fieldwork (rather than models based on averages of other polls). Because such MRPs are published infrequently, some of the entries below are quite old. Finally, here is a summary of leadership ratings, with a graph from PollCheck: Detailed numbers from the latest polls are online here, and both that and the graph are updated regularly throughout the week as new data comes out. For historical figures on both voting intention and leader approval stretching back to the 1930s, including Parliamentary by-election polls, see PollBase. Catch up on the previous two editions [ ](https://theweekinpolls.substack.com/p/a-crisis-point-for-political-polling) [ A crisis point for political polling Sep 13 ](https://theweekinpolls.substack.com/p/a-crisis-point-for-political-polling) [ Read full story ](https://theweekinpolls.substack.com/p/a-crisis-point-for-political-polling) [ ](https://theweekinpolls.substack.com/p/extra-questions-about-the-polls-in) [ Extra questions about the polls in Reform’s funding scandal Sep 6 ](https://theweekinpolls.substack.com/p/extra-questions-about-the-polls-in) [ Read full story ](https://theweekinpolls.substack.com/p/extra-questions-about-the-polls-in) My privacy policy and other legal information are available here. Links to purchase books or other items are usually affiliate links which pay a commission for each sale. Quotes from social media messages are occasionally lightly edited for punctuation and clarity. If you are subscribed to other email lists of mine, please note that unsubscribing from this one will not automatically remove you from the others. If you wish to be removed from all my lists, simply reply to this email to let me know. A quintet of Lib Dem polling analyses, and 9 other polling insights you shouldn’t miss The following ten findings from the most recent polls and analyses are only for subscribers who pay for the full edition, but you can sign up for a free trial to read them straight away. Ahead of the start of Liberal Democrat conference, we have a trio of organisations and a pair of professors with pieces out about Ed Davey’s party:
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