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Our ancient ‘hobbit’ cousins ate dragon leftovers

Researchers fed a Komodo dragon a goat to figure out if Homo floresiensis truly were the hunters they were originally thought to be.

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Jul 2 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • nationalgeographic.com
The real cause of a common stroke may have been missed for decades

Scientists have discovered that a common type of stroke may have a very different cause than doctors once thought. Instead of fatty plaque clogging arteries, the strongest link was found with enlarged and damaged blood vessels deep within the brain. The finding helps explain why standard treatments like aspirin are often less effective and is driving the search for new therapies that target the brain’s tiny blood vessels directly.

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Jul 2 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Malik Willis Has 6 Career Starts and CBS Sports Just Ranked Him Among the NFL's Most Intriguing QBs

The NFL is a pass-heavy league, and teams rely on aerial attacks and high-scoring offenses not just to win games, but to contend for a Super Bowl championship. "After rejuvenating his career in Green Bay, Willis will get his first legitimate chance to be an NFL starting quarterback," DeArdo wrote. "It'll be a challenge, though, as Willis is joining a Dolphins team that is starting anew."

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Jul 2 • 5:39 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
You Can Dream While You’re Still Awake and Scientists Finally Saw It Happen

The boundary between waking thought and dreaming may be far blurrier than we thought.

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Jul 2 • 4:25 PM EDT • Science • zmescience.com
Scientists Thought Ravens Followed Wolves for Food. They Were Wrong. Ravens Predict Them

New GPS tracking suggests ravens navigate Yellowstone using a mental map of wolf kills.

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Jul 2 • 2:22 PM EDT • Science • zmescience.com
Scientists Sound the Alarm: Antarctic Discovery Is More Disturbing Than Anyone Feared - Futura-Sciences

The Frozen Continent Is Changing Faster Than We Thought Antarctica has always been a tough nut to crack for scientists. Its complex and sometimes baffling phenomena have long made it mysterious, and recent findings suggest its influence on our planet’s climate could be much greater than we thought. In September...

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Jul 2 • 1:00 PM EDT • Science • futura-sciences.com
Business Confidence Improves Modestly Ahead of Q3 2026

Colorado business leaders entered the third quarter of 2026 with modestly improved confidence, though expectations remain below neutral as inflation, political and policy instability, and geopolitical uncertainty continue to shape the business outlook.

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Jul 2 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • newswise.com
Bonus 236: A Term of Self-Inflicted Wounds

Within minutes of the Supreme Court handing down the birthright citizenship ruling on Tuesday and rising for its summer recess, its defenders were pointing to that decision (alongside the late-arriving mail-in ballots ruling on Monday and the tariffs ruling from February) as decisive proof that the Court really is “above politics,” and that criticisms of the justices for behaving more like politicians in robes than like judges are thus unfair. For a particularly thoughtful version of this claim, see Professor Will Baude’s opening response to the latest New York Times written roundtable about the Court with Baude, Professor Kate Shaw, and me. In that roundtable, I already offered one of the two major arguments against this thesis—that it’s an assessment of the numerator without regard to the denominator, and that a full account of the Court’s behavior throughout OT2025 suggests that the Court behaved even more politically during the current term than during even the previous (highly politicized) one. Just to take one of many data points, last term (OT2024), there were six rulings in argued cases in which all six Republican-appointed justices were in the majority and all three of the Democratic appointees were in dissent (along with a slew of such rulings on the emergency docket). This term, there were … 13. (Along with two 6-3 summary reversals and 10 rulings on the emergency docket from which the three Democratic appointees all dissented.) Today’s bonus issue addresses the flip side of that coin. In particular, below the fold, I identify four different moments in which the justices could have acted in ways to specifically defuse charges of political behavior—and opted instead to lean all the way in. As much as end-of-term narratives focus on what the Court did, and on the takeaways from individual rulings, consider today’s post an attempt to identify opportunities that the Court missed, as well. At least in the examples discussed below, by opting for the outcome that made the Court look more transparently political, the Court inflicted a series of (unnecessary) credibility wounds on itself. For those who aren’t paid subscribers, we’ll be back Monday with our regular coverage of the Court. For those who are, please read on.

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Jul 2 • 7:15 AM EDT • Politics • stevevladeck.com
Capcom pushes forward Onimusha: Way of the Sword release date just days after devs stated they're not afraid of September's busy schedule

We'll be playing Onimusha: Way of the Sword earlier than we thought, after all.

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Jul 2 • 6:56 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Tariff refunds landing for Colorado importers, though not without a cost for small business

At least $23.7B in refunds from unlawful tariffs have been refunded to U.S. importers out of an estimated $166B owed, according to court testimony

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Jul 2 • 6:00 AM EDT • Business • coloradosun.com
Is America celebrating the wrong anniversary? John Adams thought so.

The Founding Father anticipated “Pomp and Parade” to mark America’s birthday. But he didn’t think it would happen July 4.

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Jul 2 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Will Ferrell says dad gave him the 'best showbiz advice ever'

Even though it wasn't a "rah-rah speech," Will Ferrell said his father's words "took the pressure off succeeding."

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Jul 2 • 12:16 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Thoughts on a 9-4 Rangers loss

Guardians 9, Rangers 4

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Jul 1 • 11:23 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Jadarian Price Will Own the Seahawks' Backfield Sooner Than Later

Despite any early info to the contrary, the Seattle Seahawks didn't spend a first-round pick on running back Jadarian Price just to make him an afterthought in their offensive attack.

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Jul 1 • 8:12 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Federal Reserve Chair Warsh emphasizes political independence, signals focus on inflation

In remarks at a central bank conference in Sintra, Portugal, Warsh said that if businesses or households thought the Fed would accept inflation above 2%, “I guess they'd be disappointed. We're going to deliver price stability.”

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Jul 1 • 12:20 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
From Business Idea to Launch: Inside Babson’s New Online MSBC Degree · Babson Thought & Action

Professor Richard Hanna explains how Babson’s new online Master of Science in Management in Business Creation helps aspiring entrepreneurs build launch-ready businesses.

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Jul 1 • 10:22 AM EDT • Business • entrepreneurship.babson.edu
If we lose our coverage, we lose our lives

By Thomas Buckley My oncologist asked: “Polycythemia Vera. Do you know what that means?” Earlier, I lived in blissful ignorance, unaware I potentially carried a myeloproliferative neoplasm encoded within my DNA. “Yes,” I answered, “A rare form of blood cancer, incurable, not necessarily fatal, provided it’s treated.” At 31, I thought I had life figured […]

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Jul 1 • 10:19 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com
Sony will cease production of discs for new PlayStation games in 2028

New games sold for PlayStation consoles will only be available digitally and won’t be sold on discs effective January 2028, Sony has announced. The move applies to all PlayStation games released from that point on, including those made by Sony and those released by third parties. The PlayStation group calls the change “a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” according to a PlayStation blog post reviewed by Game File in advance of its publication. As movies, TV and music have shifted from physical media to an age of downloads and streaming, Sony’s move could speed the demise of physical media in a gaming. The industry has offered consumers games via cartridges, cassettes, floppy discs, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays across a 50-year stretch. Sony has been reporting to investors in recent years that PlayStation games have been increasingly purchased as downloads, not as discs. The most recent figures show nearly four in five purchases of full games for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 were purchased digitally in the past year. Stats like that may cause today’s news to carry an air of the inevitable. But Sony’s declaration for 2028 is still likely to produce a shock, as the biggest gaming platform on the planet that uses game discs leaves them behind. Discs going away, but the fate of game boxes is unknown Sony is committing to still selling games in physical retailers even after they drop discs in 2028. Just how those games will be sold—in boxes with codes inside, as cards marked with digital redemption codes—is unclear. Digital games will also continue to be sold in the online PlayStation Store. New games released for PlayStation consoles prior to January 2028 will be unaffected by the policy change, Sony says. That means the PS5 games of 2027, be they a new Madden, a new God of War, a new Call of Duty, a new Sly Cooper (one can dream?), would still potentially be offered on disc. PlayStation 6 implications Sony’s timeline for a transition to a no-disc era will also spin up more speculation about the timing and configuration of Sony’s next-generation console, the probable PlayStation 6. “This pretty much guarantees that PS6 won’t arrive until 2028 at the earliest,” Piers Harding-Rolls, senior games research analyst at Ampere Analysis tells Game File. Harding-Rolls also concludes from today’s news that “the base version of a PS6 will not include a physical media drive,” as Sony looks to keep costs down on the device. Sony itself is saying nothing about the PS6 today: not its timing, nor how it might or might not support internal or external disc drives in order to run disc-based PS4 and PS5 games, should the console be backwards compatible. The many signs this was coming Industry support for games being released on physical media has been waning. As has consumer interest in them. PC games effectively went all-digital years ago, thanks to the popularity of playing games through Steam and other digital storefronts. The Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that kept much of the global population home helped shift shopping patterns toward downloads. Sony’s own data shows PlayStation game downloads being an uncommon consumer choice a decade ago and now becoming the norm. On consoles, physical media has been in such decline that Sony and Microsoft both launched their current gen Xbox Series and PS5 consoles in 2020 with cheaper versions that lacked disc drives. In early 2024, Phil Spencer, then head of Xbox, told me that ““[w]e ship games physically and digitally, and we’re really just following what the customers are doing.” He added that the game industry had become an outlier in still supporting disc-based entertainment, even as movies and TV have bailed on discs in favor of downloads and steaming: “Gaming consoles themselves have kind of become the last consumer electronic device that has a drive. And this is a real issue, just in terms of the number of manufacturers that are actually building drives and the cost associated with those. And when you think about cogs that we’re going to go put in a console—and as you have fewer suppliers and fewer buyers—the cost of the drive does have an impact.” Last year, the Nintendo’s Switch 2, which uses cartridges rather than discs, introduced the concept of game-key cards, which are physical media that contain no game, just a prompt for a download. Even disc-based games aren’t what they once were, now frequently containing just stubs of games rather than the whole thing. The website Does It Play has tested over 3000 games and found that, for example, that the disc version of this year’s hit 007: First Light, only contained the game’s first mission, with the rest needing to be downloaded. Beyond all that, last week brought the news that Grand Theft Auto VI, likely the biggest game launch this decade, will debut for PS5 and Xbox Series without a disc-based version. Today’s big news comes to you for free. Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and ensure more of my work is possible, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Discs helped define PlayStation However the trends in entertainment may be going, it is still remarkable to see PlayStation ditch discs given their importance in PlayStation history: In the late 1990s, the first PlayStation’s support for games on relatively cheap CD-ROMs instead of traditional game cartridges allowed the upstart console to outmaneuver cartridge-based systems from Nintendo and Sega, as it drove down game prices down in the process. (The cheaper disc format even prompted Final Fantasy VII maker Square to taunt Nintendo in a magazine ad, saying that if the game was “available on cartridge, it’d retail for around $1200.”) PlayStation devices often doubled as machines for watching movies and TV on the latest disc-based formats. In the late 2000s, for example, Sony’s pricy PS3 gained traction as a go-to device for playing then-novel Blu-Ray discs. In 2013, Sony effectively roasted the digital game-sharing restrictions proposed by rival Microsoft for its upcoming Xbox One console by showing how games could be shared for the then-upcoming PS4. In a 21-second clip that has over 20 million views on YouTube, one PlayStation executive simply handed a game box—presumably with disc inside—to another, who said “thanks.” Sony’s possible motivations The PlayStation announcement today cites “consumer preferences” and a shift away from discs among “the broader entertainment industry,” but does not delve into the decision-making process that brought Sony to this point. Sony is not discussing the economics of this move (I asked!), but there are a number of potential factors: Abandoning discs will spare Sony the cost of manufacturing and shipping them, which analysts and industry veterans I spoke to said could account for $1 or so of a game’s retail price. For first-party games, that’s direct savings for Sony, though the amount is limited by the winnowing percentage of people who were even buying the disc-based versions. For third-party games, Sony could pass the savings on to partners or just retain the better profit margin for themselves. As the 2024 comments from Phil Spencer alluded to, leaving discs behind could mean leaving disc-drives behind, allowing Sony to produce consoles more cheaply. Switching to digital-only for games could diminish the risks of copies of new games leaking. It would also seemingly make second-hand sales of used games impossible, pushing more people to buy their own copies of games. These economic benefits for Sony could be boons for the games industry overall, Ampere analyst Piers Harding-Rolls tells Game File. Among other things, it could free publishers and retailers from having to worry about securing an inventory of game discs when trying to sell games, he noted. “If there is a way to streamline the business of games retail, I generally think it’s a good thing for the industry as it removes unnecessary costs,” Harding-Rolls said. “This will help offset pressure on margins from other directions – development and staffing costs for example.” Should the industry shift from game boxes that contain discs to smaller, cheaper game cards, Harding-Rolls said, that reduces pressure on publishers and retailers. “The advantage of everything going digital for the industry is that sales can be tracked much more easily and there is less commercial risk for publishers wanting to continue selling via retail,” he said. The shift to no discs will also likely impact game development timelines, as developers will no longer face the same urgency to have a build ready to submit to PlayStation for the production of a disc, as industry experts noted around GTA VI’s no-disc news last week. Instead, projects may gain weeks of development time, in the event delivery deadlines for platform approval move closer to release date. Preservationists’ likely worries While millions of gamers have shifted to digital, there are still people who associate game discs—and only game discs—with actual ownership of PlayStation games. That portion of the gaming community spoke up last week about wanting to buy a version of GTA VI that they could hold in their hands, could lend to a friend and could potentially pop into a well-preserved PS5 console three decades from now and still see it run. Such gamers didn’t want to worry that they’d merely purchased a digital copy that could lose access to the game if, say, the company behind the game someday turns of the servers that transmit downloadable copies. Digital copies of games are inherently less long-lasting, because consumers aren’t actually buying a game (on a disc), just buying access to the game. The fine print in online gaming shops notes this, as does a recent law that went on the books in California in 2025. That lasw requires game publishers doing business in the state to refrain from words like “sell” when offering digital copies of games, unless they explicitly tell consumers that what’s being sold isn’t the game itself but a potentially revocable license to access it. A Sony spokesperson noted to Game File that “[w]ith all digital content, including games, movies, and music, players are purchasing a personal license for non-commercial use.” Regarding the fears of PlayStation games being lost to time in an all-digital era, the rep also noted that Sony remains “committed to delivering experiences from past generations to the new platforms our players are using.” They noted that PlayStation has used emulation and remasters to keep offering its classic games to modern gamers. It’s true that many consumers have become accustomed to not having physical copies of new music albums or movies, but the relative precariousness of digital copies of games is in fact being highlighted today by…. Sony’s other big announcement: the upcoming closure of the PS3 and PS Vita online stores Sony said today that it will be closing the online marketplaces for its PlayStation 3 console and PS Vita handheld in most countries in July 2027 (sooner elsewhere: August 2026 for the PS3 store Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua; late 2026 for PS3 in other Latin American countries and the Middle East). “We know this news may be disappointing to PS3 and PS Vita players who hold a special place in their hearts for this generation of gaming,” Sony said in its announcement, saying the move “was not an easy decision for us to make.” Sony said that PS3 and Vita marketplaces “are no longer able” to support modern commerce systems, prompting a “need” to close the shops and focus on more modern PlayStation platform stores. The news may spark some deja vu. Sony announced back in March 2021 that it planned to take the PS3, Vita and PlayStation Portable marketplaces offline that summer. The move would have caused some 2,000 digital-only games to become unavailable for new purchasers, according to a VGC analysis at the time. Fans complained loudly. By April 2021, Sony walked back the PS3 and Vita shop closures, with then PlayStation boss Jim Ryan saying “it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here.” This time around, Sony is giving a longer notice period in most regions. The closure of those stores is still likely to cut off access to new purchases of digital-only PS3 and Vita games. The current PlayStation 5 marketplace sells PS5 and PS4 games, as well as a selection of PS1 and PS2 games. It does not sell PS3 games, because games for that platform can’t run on the system (some are offered via a PlayStation Plus streaming option). Vita games also aren’t sold via PS5. Sony says digitally purchased PS3 and Vita games will be downloadable after the stores’ shutdowns “for the foreseeable future.” Sony’s move contrasts with Microsoft’s Xbox platform, which continues to sell and support games from all four Xbox console generations. But it puts it in line with Nintendo, which disabled purchases in the marketplace for its Wii console (a contemporary of the PS3) in 2019. Nintendo discontinued purchases in the online shop for its 3DS portable (a contemporary of the Vita) in 2023. The big questions about Sony’s 2028 post-disc era Will Microsoft follow suit, ending support for new disc-based games on Xbox platforms and therefore all game consoles, too? Whether Microsoft does or not, will third-parties that can no longer release games on discs for PlayStation, simply ditch the disc options across the board? Given the GTA VI no-disc experiment launching this November, will more game publishers decide to forgo disc-based offerings even in 2027? How will no-disc PS5/6 games be packaged and sold in brick-and-mortar retail stores? What becomes of game sharing in an all-digital era? Will Sony modify its current set-up, which currently allows some sharing of digital games across a pair of consoles, to allow more casual lending? (See for example, Nintendo’s year-old system of letting players lend a digital game to another player in a “family group” for up to 14 days.) Will there be a version of a PS6 with a disc drive? Or will a drive be offered as an add-on? And how will gamers who want to retain access to PS4/PS5 disc-based games react to whichever configurations Sony chooses to offer? What will the final disc-based PlayStation game be?

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Jul 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news
I thought I was raising a confident girl. Then her words surprised me.

My young daughter doesn't think she can become a doctor because she's a girl. I don't know how this got into her head.

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Jul 1 • 6:26 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Can the New Orleans office market rebound? New report says suburbs remain strong, city struggling

More than five years after the pandemic, New Orleans' office market remains fragile, though it is performing better than some other cities.

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Jun 30 • 12:00 PM EDT • Business • nola.com
How 'Bad Santa' brought naughty Billy Bob Thornton onto 'Landman'

If you've ever thought that you'd seen Billy Bob Thornton's Tommy Norris before, you're jolly right. The "Landman" central character is the spiritual cousin to Thornton's infamous role as Willie

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Jun 30 • 11:23 AM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com
Babson Launches Online Master’s Program in Business Creation   · Babson Thought & Action

Babson’s new master’s program focuses on venture creation, as founders graduate with a master’s degree and a launch-ready business plan.

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Jun 30 • 8:58 AM EDT • Business • entrepreneurship.babson.edu
EDITORIAL: Bennet, Hick play politics with the judiciary

Facing spirited challenges from the left — in the final hours of races each thought would be a walk in the park — Colorado’s two Democratic U.S. senators are doing what comes naturally to politicians. Pandering. How else to explain their opposition, reported Sunday, to the pending nomination of respected and rock-solid U.S. District Judge […]

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Jun 30 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • gazette.com
Floodwaters, oil and health fears in South Sudan

Flooding has submerged oil wells in Unity State since 2021, fueling contamination fears among war-displaced communities, though scientific evidence remains limited.

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Jun 30 • 6:54 AM EDT • Health • dw.com
GTA 6 Could Skip 60 FPS Entirely, as Rockstar’s Insane Detail Forces a 30 FPS Lock Even on PS5 Pro

With GTA 6, Rockstar Games is set to raise the bar for what is possible to achieve on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S much like the studio did with Red Dead Redemption 2, but this is likely coming at a price. Although the highly anticipated next entry in the series is rumored to feature a performance mode running at 60 FPS, it is extremely unlikely this is real, as, according to the tech experts at Digital Foundry, the level of detail shown in the latest footage would make it very difficult to scale everything down to allow for 60 […]

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Jun 30 • 6:01 AM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
Simon Leis's daughter reflects on her father's legacy, youth mental health advocacy

"We definitely knew there was a love-hate relationship with my father," says Julie Raleigh, on her father, Simon Leis's legacy. Although behind the headlines, Raleigh says that Leis was simply "Dad" to her, remembering him as a man who protected his family in the same way that he tried to keep Hamilton County safe throughout his time in law enforcement.

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Jun 30 • 12:08 AM EDT • Health • wlwt.com
ESPN Analyst Chiney Ogwumike Defends Alyssa Thomas' Behavior

ESPN WNBA analyst Chiney Ogwumike is coming to the defense of Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas. Thomas was suspended for one game and fined for her hits on Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark last week. Thomas was caught hitting Clark in the groin and the neck, though she wasn't called for a ...

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Jun 29 • 11:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Not many ‘Iron Men’ are left in Major League Baseball

Pete Alonso played his 500th consecutive game this week, although if he wanted that to seem impressive to local fans, he probably picked the wrong city to play in. Alonso, of course, joined the Baltimore Orioles this past offseason. Their franchise record for consecutive games is also the big league record of 2,632 by true […]

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Jun 29 • 8:00 PM EDT • Sports • altoonamirror.com
Sony Spurs $1,000 PlayStation 6 Rumors

Rumors of sky-high next-gen consoles have been floating around for about as long as the next-gen consoles have been confirmed as in development, but it seems as though Sony CEO, Hideaki Nishino has all but confirmed $900+ pricing for the PS6 in a recent Q&A session following an official Gaming & Net...

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Jun 29 • 6:30 PM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com
Netflix and Superheroes Are Having a Rough Stretch on Streaming....

(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.) I have a quick prediction before we start today’s article: You might see this data in future news articles. Not my specific charts or analysis, but the core trend I’ve been monitoring—Netflix is having a lackluster Q2—will become inescapable. Often, folks want to know “What does the data say?” Well, that’s what it says. I haven’t seen this analysis hit the trades really yet, but I have a feeling some other outlets are going to start making this case soon. Remember, you read it here first. You probably have read about the problems facing superhero films at the box office this weekend. Well, this week, I explore whether superheroes are dying on TV as well! And the data says: definitely maybe! We have a lot to cover in today’s Streaming Ratings Report, which covers the two weeks of 18-May and 25-May. Today, I’m just looking at TV, like Netflix’s disappointing Q2, superhero shows underwhelming, a few TV shows dropping off the charts, The Pitt finally ending its epic run on the viewership charts (and whether “view counts” change its status as one of the biggest shows of all time), all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Tomorrow, I’ve got a great rundown of the film side of things. 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, Showlabs, TV Time trend 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 May 18th to May 31st, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Television - Netflix’s Q2 Slump Continues Having analyzed streaming ratings for going on half a decade, I have learned to trust my gut, but I’m always relieved when I can find actual data to back it up. For example, after a string of very popular shows like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, The Lincoln Lawyer and The Night Agent came out, week after week, in January and February, my gut wondered if Netflix had enough new and returning TV shows to sustain them throughout the year. Since then, Netflix’s post-March slate of shows has not impressed me. This week seemed to feature a potential new hit, but then, like a classic Duffer Bros. TV show, there was a twist. I speak of The Boroughs, Netflix’s latest (and last) Duffer Bros. produced show. The pitch is “Stranger Things with older actors”. And it topped the Nielsen charts: With just two weeks of viewership, The Boroughs would have been a top 25 debut show last year: But here’s the twist: Netflix has already cancelled The Boroughs! What happened? Likely a few things. First, the show didn’t do as well globally as it did in the US. As What’s on Netflix showed, it lagged behind several other shows that got cancelled. Second, its completion rate was likely low; after an initial burst of interest, it quickly dropped off on the Samba TV and Luminate charts. Third, the Duffer Bros. left Netflix for Paramount, and that may have factored into Netflix’s decision here. (Though I tend to believe that if a show is doing well, Netflix would have kept greenlighting seasons.) Still, just because I can explain why Netflix may have cancelled this show doesn’t mean I’m justifying it. In particular, as I’ve noted before, Netflix is losing a lot of their bigger shows as they reach their natural ends, and they need to replace those shows. This show had the hallmarks of a big new genre show, and it’s their biggest hit of the last few months (in the US at least), but now it’s done. Netflix’s other show this week—The Four Seasons, the second season of the “hit” show from last year—definitely disappointed. Its sophomore season had about half the viewership of the first, only 12.7 million hours. It also only had a two week run on Samba TV, and its numbers were all down on Luminate too. In other words, even with two successes, the Q2 slump for Netflix looks real: I could add to the list of disappointments: Both Lord of the Files and Man on Fire had short runs on the Nielsen charts. Running Point’s sophomore season also opened to about half its viewership, similar to The Four Seasons. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’s second season—see below—didn’t even make any of the three viewership charts I track, unlike the first season. Netflix is absolutely having a dismal second three months of 2026. If this Nielsen data is any indication, and I think it is, I think this will show up in Netflix’s engagement report, and maybe even their financial outcomes. And the rest of June doesn’t look much better. We have two hit shows coming back—Sweet Magnolias, one of their quietest big shows, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, a big hit for them in 2024—but the other big swings are limited series crime thrillers i.e. no future season potential. Like I said above, sometimes when I uncover a juicy nugget like this, other outlets end up writing very similar articles mimicking the data without credit. We’ll see if that happens this time! Share Television - The State of Superhero Shows on Streaming When I first heard the pitch for Spider-Noir—a Sony TV show on Prime Video that binge-released eight episodes first on MGM+ then on Prime Video two days later—I had my doubts. It’s a live-action Spider-Man show set in the 1930s, starring Nicholas Cage, based on a cameo of a character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. No, seriously, that’s the pitch. That could either go terrifically well or horribly wrong. Great because, Spider-Man. He’s the biggest superhero we have. I’ve seen tracking numbers that put the new _Spider-Man: Brand New Da_y as the blockbuster of the year and initial pre-sales back that up. And yet this Spider-Noir pitch feels very esoteric. (Also, the eight-episode binge release feels very “Amazon copying Netflix” again.) So what’s the data say? And what does this say about the future of superhero shows?

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Jun 29 • 5:43 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
UNC sports give you the chance to be a part of something bigger

"The more I thought about it, the more I realized how deeply sports are woven into the culture of this university. Being a UNC student means inheriting a lifetime of 'we get to’s' through sports."

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Jun 29 • 5:13 PM EDT • Sports • dailytarheel.com
New estimate: Earth has 14 to 20 million insect species

For 40 years, we thought Earth was home to six million insect species. Turns out, it could be three times that.

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Jun 29 • 3:00 PM EDT • Science • popsci.com
LeBron Reportedly Issues 'Ultimatum' To Warriors Amid Free Agency Rumors

LeBron James has reportedly issued an "ultimatum" to the Golden State Warriors amid the ongoing free agency rumors. The four-time NBA champion forward is set to hit free agency this summer. LeBron is most likely to return to the Lakers, though another team could be inching closer and closer. The ...

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Jun 29 • 2:27 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Doctors thought man had brain cancer — they found live tapeworms instead

Doctors suspected metastatic brain cancer in a 60-year-old man, but scans revealed pork tapeworm larvae causing neurocysticercosis.

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Jun 29 • 1:45 PM EDT • Health • foxnews.com
College Football Analyst Calls Historic Program No Longer 'Relevant'

College football analyst Paul Finebaum didn't hold back on his thoughts on the University of Michigan and its football program. Michigan won the national championship for the 2023 season, but after the win, Jim Harbaugh went to the NFL, and the program was accused of stealing signs. The program ...

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Jun 29 • 12:33 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
New data shows consumers dropped health coverage after Republicans let subsidies expire

Republican officials don’t deny the accuracy of the data, though they’ve repeatedly tried to argue that the reduction is a positive development. It’s not.

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Jun 29 • 10:23 AM EDT • Health • ms.now
Phi Beta Kappa inducts new members

Thirty-eight graduates were inducted as lifelong members into the WVU Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, a national honor society that recognizes outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences, and champions freedom of thought.

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Jun 29 • 8:03 AM EDT • Science • enews.wvu.edu
Full Court Orlando Magic Short Thoughts: Jonathan Isaac is Waived

The Orlando Magic have moved off longtime defensive specialist Jonathan Isaac.

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Jun 29 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Bears Great Brian Urlacher’s 3-Word Description of Caleb Williams

Chicago Bears great Brian Urlacher gives his honest thoughts and description of quarterback Caleb Williams. The post Bears Great Brian Urlacher’s 3-Word Description of Caleb Williams appeared first on HEAVY.

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Jun 29 • 12:48 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Jodie Sweetin praises 'Better Call Saul' actor first cast as 'Full House' dad, but Bob Saget was No. 1 choice

Bob Saget nearly missed the chance to play Danny Tanner on 'Full House,' and though he was casting's 'first choice,' Jodie Sweetin says this 'Better Call Saul' star was 'very sweet' in the original pilot.

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Jun 28 • 9:45 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
VSP Vision Announces Winner of Propel Student Business Challenge Scholarship

RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif.—VSP Vision, in collaboration with the Student Optometric Leadership Network (SOLN), today announced that Mason Martin, a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Optometry, is the winner of the 2026 Propel Student Business Challenge Scholarship, powered by PECAA. Martin, who was awarded the $10,000 scholarship and a travel grant to attend the SOLN conference in Denver, is the first first-year student at the school to receive this honor, the announcement said. VSP said his standout submission featured a thoughtful, patient-centered private practice business plan.

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Jun 28 • 8:21 PM EDT • Business • visionmonday.com
Thoughts on a 3-2 Rangers win

Rangers 3, Blue Jays 2

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Jun 28 • 7:59 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Day After the Draft: Where the Devils Pipeline Got Stronger

Pretty good, I thought.

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Jun 28 • 1:30 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
US Oilfield Business Activity Strengthens, Though Oil Price Uncertainty Remains

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ second-quarter energy survey reports improved business conditions, despite a mixed outlook on oil prices and input costs.

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Jun 28 • 1:01 AM EDT • Business • jpt.spe.org
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📸 Where’s he pulled that from?!?!? Uzbekistan score a stunner

Although progressing is almost impossible for the Uzbeks purely because of their poor goal difference after the heavy defeat to Portugal, the Central Asians have by no means given up here. Eldor Shom...

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Jun 27 • 7:53 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Scientists Challenge a Fundamental Assumption About Consciousness

A new philosophical study challenges the idea that consciousness requires human-like biology.

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Jun 27 • 6:46 PM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com
Arizona health officials investigate suspected pneumonic plague case

Yavapai County Community Health Services said Friday that a county resident is thought to have contracted the infection.

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Jun 27 • 5:22 PM EDT • Health • azfamily.com
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Madonna makes rare reveal of 1 major pop diva she was 'jealous' of

Madonna recently revealed why she was 'jealous' of Kylie Minogue, even though she wore a T-shirt bearing the 'Can't Get You Out of My Head' singer's name to the MTV Music Awards in 2000.

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Jun 27 • 1:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
An Unexpected Vocation: Jaibir Nihal Singh’s Journey from Film Student to Business Executive

Though trained as a filmmaker at Pepperdine University’s Seaver College, Jaibir Nihal Singh found a way to leverage his creative skills into a career as a successful innovator. Now, as a member of Forbes 30 under 30, Singh credits his education as the launchpad for his vocation, even if he never saw it coming.

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Jun 26 • 1:30 PM EDT • Business • pepperdine.edu
Apple’s Touch MacBook to Use M5 Pro and Max Chips, With M7 Models to Follow

Apple Inc.’s first-ever touch-screen laptop will rely on the company’s current high-end M5 chips, rather than next-generation silicon, though the company is working on a follow-up model with future M7 processors.

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Jun 26 • 11:08 AM EDT • Technology • bloomberg.com
MOMENT OF SCIENCE: How music can be interpreted differently

Music is a universal language, although how we perceive it can change from person to person.

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Jun 26 • 9:49 AM EDT • Science • wistv.com
Scientists stunned by signs of ancient life in a place no one expected

Scientists exploring ancient seafloor rocks in Morocco discovered mysterious wrinkle patterns where they were never expected to occur. These structures are normally linked to microbial mats in shallow, sunlit waters, yet the rocks formed hundreds of feet below the surface in darkness. Evidence indicates that chemosynthetic microbes created the wrinkles, revealing that deep-ocean microbial ecosystems may have been more widespread than previously thought.

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Jun 26 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Valve Quietly Walks Back Steam Machine 4K 60 FPS Performance Claims

Valve's Steam Machine has earned more than its fair share of skeptics, thanks to performance claims and more recently its unfortunate pricing. More recently, though, Valve has seemingly taken some of this criticism to heart and silently changed some of those performance claims on the Steam Machine p...

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Jun 25 • 5:25 PM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com
Making Our Own Luck

We are cross-posting a piece that former NIH official Kris Willis wrote for Macroscience. Kris is now the President and Founder of the Woodley Park Institute, for which I’m a board member. Picking winners or hedging bets? Federal science agencies have long wrestled with the question of how to ensure their billions of dollars of grants and contracts result in maximum benefits for Americans. On the surface, it might seem that a goal-oriented, interventionist style of management would be the best policy: prioritize our most pressing problems and distribute funding accordingly.This top-down strategy creates a unique hazard, though: bad choices can send resources in the wrong direction, resulting in slow progress that impedes the delivery of tangible benefits to citizens. Moreover, if decision makers pursue an applied advance when the underlying scientific principles remain poorly understood, they risk costly failures and a loss of support for the research enterprise at large. Examples include Nixon’s 1971 War on Cancer, undertaken on the premise that a cure could be achieved in less than a decade, the drive to build an operational commercial fusion plant by the mid-1990s, and the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, which failed to produce the effective treatments and prevention strategies promised by 2025. The contrasting laissez-faire approach is to hedge your bets. If the path to an advance is impossible to predict, then the wisest choice might be to distribute funding to as widely as possible. The main risk of this strategy is that spreading funding thinly may limit the resources available to the most promising research, resulting in the same negative outcomes as the interventionist approach: limited support for the most promising topics, slow progress, and delayed returns. In reality, at science agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, program managers navigate between these two extremes, setting some funds aside to target high-priority areas and using the rest to cover the widest possible range of meritorious proposals. This middle path seems like the most rational way to proceed, but it still requires making choices. How much should be set aside for high priority topics? What should those topics be? How should we define merit? Expert opinion can provide a helpful guide, but leading experts can have remarkably different opinions about what matters and what should be prioritized. Moreover, experts and administrators alike can be risk averse, giving an edge to high-profile, well-established concepts. What’s really needed is a data-driven framework to help guide decision-making, one that doesn’t simply repackage prestige or incumbency. Recognizing breakthroughs years in advance Many breakthroughs fail to attract funding or recognition at the earliest stages of development. Katalin Karikó, for example, spent years struggling to win grants for work on mRNA that would eventually win her and Drew Weissman a Nobel Prize. Similar stories can be told about Jim Allison’s groundbreaking studies leading to the development of cancer immunotherapy, Stan Pruisner’s demonstration that prions can self-replicate without DNA, or Robin Warren and Barry Marshall’s proof that Helicobacter pylori, not stress, causes ulcers. Yet at some point, the scientific community recognizes and responds to transformative breakthroughs like these. How does that change happen? And what if science funders could identify the areas that are on the cusp of a breakthrough? Those questions led my collaborators and me to study how scientists responded to past breakthroughs. Based on patterns in that data, we developed a means of predicting future breakthroughs, using biomedicine as a proof of concept. It’s worth taking a moment to describe how our approach works. Briefly, our prediction process begins by grouping the 18 million or so peer-reviewed papers in PubMed, the authoritative database of biomedical research, into roughly 50,000 unique topics. A small subset of these topics are so widely acclaimed as breakthroughs that they have been recognized with a major prize like a Nobel or a Lasker Award. We theorized that studying the development of these outliers over time, especially before they gained acclaim, was the key to identifying future instances of them. After defining topics, we chose 21 representative breakthroughs and asked what they looked like before they won prestigious prizes. To answer that question, we re-ran our topic-mapping algorithm repeatedly, winding back the clock one year each time, stringing together the years to follow the progress of each field as it grew and advanced. We found that in each case, the years leading up to a discovery followed a pattern: a burst of papers on a new, rapidly evolving topic, many of which quickly became influential. These characteristics—the percent of papers that are new, the percentage of papers that are brought in from other topics, and the influence of each individual paper—can all be measured separately for any given topic. Together, they act as a predictive signal that is detectable an average of five years before a transformative discovery is made, and up to thirty years before the discovery receives a major prize. Scanning the current research landscape for topics that display this signal allows us to predict what work will likely produce a future breakthrough. Each year we analyzed includes four or five signals, a number that appears to have remained constant across a twenty year time frame. In their classic work on the sociology of science, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar established that the desire to participate in a major discovery is an important motivator for scientists as they consider whether they should take up (or abandon) a research problem. Although further work is needed, the simplest explanation for our results is that this behavior is widespread enough to detect at scale. A foundational advance, or something like it, draws the attention of scientists and causes them to change the direction of their research. They vote with their feet, staking their own reputation and careers by publishing on and citing the new idea. That upswell of interest is the foundation of our breakthrough signal. What kind of research does our model identify as a breakthrough? After building a model based on the patterns in our 21 preselected breakthroughs, we tested it by identifying all early signals of discovery from 1994 through 1997. Of the 18 signals we found in that time period, 17 can be traced forward in time to a breakthrough. Examples include super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (see the image above), the directed evolution of proteins and enzymes (Chemistry Nobel, 2018), and sequencing the human genome (National Medal of Science, 2008). The discovery of the role of leptin signaling in obesity is a particularly interesting case study. Around 1950, scientists noticed the existence of a type of lab mouse that suffered from a unique inherited form of obesity. When given the freedom to choose their own diet, these mice ate more than normal and preferred food that was high in fat. Researchers had few clues as to why the animals overate; early experiments pointed to the existence of a soluble ob factor found circulating in the bloodstream that regulated appetite, but its identity was unknown. In 1994, Jeffrey Friedman and colleagues identified and sequenced the ob gene, noting that the protein it encoded appeared to fit the profile of a circulating factor. A year later, a trio of high-profile publications demonstrated that ob was a hormone that regulated body weight and fat deposition by regulating appetite. One of these was co-authored by Friedman, who christened it leptin from the ancient Greek word for thin. Using our model, the data from 1996 make it clear this advance would become a breakthrough. Scientists had flocked to study the biology of the new hormone, generating the flurry of new papers and citations required to produce a signal. One of these demonstrated that serum leptin concentrations reflected the amount of adipose tissue in the human body, providing clinical validation of the earlier mouse studies. Before the identification of leptin, scientists were unable to point to a specific molecule that controlled appetite and adiposity, so that it was impossible to rule out non-physiological causes of obesity; its characterization fundamentally changed our concept of weight gain. In 2010, Friedman and fellow pioneer Douglas Coleman were awarded a Lasker for the discovery. Our work also identifies breakthroughs in clinical practice and behavioral and social sciences, even though these areas are less likely to draw the attention of major prize committees. One example that falls into this category is the introduction of endovascular aneurysm repair, a minimally invasive surgical procedure for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm, a leading cause of death among Americans over the age of 65. Relative to the previous standard of care, it reduces in-hospital mortality by almost four-fold. In 2017, Timothy Chuter received the American College of Surgeons’ prestigious Jacobsen Innovation award for his multiple refinements to the technique. Another under-recognized breakthrough identified by our model is the development of standardized survey instruments to assess the quality of life for HIV+ patients. The antiretroviral cocktails introduced in the mid-1990s reduced AIDS mortality, but treatment came with serious side effects. The new evaluations showed that patients whose disease progressed had worse physical functioning than Americans with other chronic diseases, while those who were asymptomatic maintained a health-related quality of life on par with the overall US population. This evidence made it possible for patients and activists to argue that even in the absence of a total cure, and in spite of the side effects, alleviation of symptoms was a worthwhile priority for clinicians. My colleagues and I have failed to identify any significant recognition for the physicians and health policy experts who pioneered this advance, although in 2016, researchers called for the World Health Organization to set targets for good health-related quality of life as part of its framework to end the AIDS pandemic. From forecasting to funding How should science funders use our predictions? Any serious discussion of what we should do with this new capability needs to begin with an understanding of its limitations. We can’t (and shouldn’t) invest all of our resources in the small number of topics predicted to produce breakthroughs. Innovative new fields are born from existing ones; they rarely arise de novo. If funders don’t maintain a diverse portfolio, the breakthroughs of tomorrow will have no antecedents. Think of this as eating the seed corn, or killing the goose that lays the golden egg. There are also multiple goals of funding beyond basic scientific discovery, including translating discoveries into clinical practice, developing new technologies, supporting economic development, and training new scientists. The investments needed to accomplish these goals are likely different from those required to support emerging breakthroughs. Finally, we must be aware that we may not capture every instance of a breakthrough. The concept is fuzzy, and not every significant discovery is recognized with a major award. Further, breakthroughs are rare, meaning that our dataset is, by necessity, small. This makes formal estimates of accuracy challenging. Although our overall success rate appears to be high, any one signal may turn out to be a false positive. We found one apparent example: the development of the third generation COX-2 inhibitors, Vioxx and Celebrex, which were much celebrated in the early 2000s as effective but non-addictive pain relievers, meets all the algorithmic criteria of a breakthrough. Five years after it received FDA approval, researchers demonstrated that Vioxx was associated with serious cardiovascular complications, and the manufacturer voluntarily pulled the drug from the market. Celebrex remains available, although like other NSAIDs, it carries an FDA warning for increased cardiovascular risk. Decision makers who were overly focused on the breakthrough potential of this research might have wasted substantial resources nurturing an area that ultimately proved to be a failure—but so would those who relied on expert opinion at the time. That said, the potential benefits of funding the next mRNA vaccine or cancer immunotherapy years earlier than we might have are large. When we can’t assume the outcome of an action, it’s worth conducting an experiment. Can targeted support for areas that are poised to produce a breakthrough increase the return on scientific investment without cannibalizing future advances? With the necessary administrative infrastructure in place, conducting this experiment would be straightforward. First, identify all the breakthrough signals between 2018 and 2023, select half at random, and commit to a decade of investment. For biomedicine, a six year window should yield about 30 topics with the potential to produce a breakthrough. Providing strong support to half of these might be accomplished for $300 million a year. That’s roughly half of the recent annual budget of the NIH Common Fund or around 20% of the fiscal year 2025 budget for ARPA-H. After five years, then again at ten, compare to see which group — the one that was actively managed, or the control — produced more breakthroughs, and on what timescale. Although we used biomedicine as an example, the same experiment could just as well be run for physics, materials science, or any other discipline. Any attempt to undertake such an experiment should keep three points top of mind. First, we can predict the topic of future breakthroughs, but the people and vision for how to move the work forward are still important. In practice, this means success requires active program managers with the expertise to develop the science and the authority to do so, including by recruiting investigators. Second, we would be wise to learn from the failures of past attempts to fund transformative research. High among these are funding modestly repackaged work, confusing the genuinely novel with the merely unfamiliar, and relying too much on incumbent investigators. All of these risks can be mitigated by thoroughly and intelligently integrating high quality data into portfolio management. Finally, we need to have patience. Even with strong funding support, producing a breakthrough takes time. If supporting breakthroughs is the best way to nurture the birth of new fields, we also need to accurately describe and properly manage the other two stages, so that we invest wisely throughout the productive lifetime of ideas and divest once they reach the point of diminishing returns. We would benefit from more study of all of these phases, especially the transition from one to another. More research could answer questions like: When does a breakthrough become an established field? How do the availability of funding, the size and characteristics of the available workforce, and the accumulation of evidence that disagrees with prevailing models affect a field’s decline? Exactly how do old ideas give birth to new ones, and can we speed up the process? The more we understand about the dynamics of scientific progress, the better we can maximize the odds that our curiosity leads to results. I’d call that finding a way to make our own luck.

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Jun 25 • 4:48 PM EDT • Science • goodscience.substack.com
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Romeo Doubs' Exit Could Raise the Stakes for Jordan Love in Green Bay

Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers are eyeing a bounce-back campaign in 2026. The Packers opened the 2025 season with a strong start, posting a 9-3-1 record through their first 13 games, before a flurry of injuries derailed Green Bay's Super Bowl hopes. Since taking over as Green Bay's starter under center, the Utah State product has shown flashes of a top-five signal-caller, though the team hasn't yet made it past the divisional round under his leadership.

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Jun 25 • 2:44 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
LaMelo Ball trade grades: The Hornets' logic makes sense, but what is Minnesota's thought process?
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Jun 25 • 10:32 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Fox Sports renews Gold Cup rights, adds Nations League

Fox Sports is going to remain a player in the international soccer game for several more years to come. Although the rights for the 2030 World Cup are up for grabs, Fox made the announcement on Wednesday night that the Gold Cup, the CONCACAF championship tournament, will remain with the company. In addition, Fox is…

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Jun 25 • 10:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
How should European scientists respond to the US AI kill switch?

Earlier in June, Europe’s worst fears of technological dependence were confirmed when the White House ordered the AI firm Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using its leading models. This kill-switch moment crystalised anxieties in Brussels that the continent, lagging the US on the creation of leading-edge AI models, is now a technological of vassal of Washington. The shock has specific implications for European scientists and universities. Some governments are now worried that with AI being integrated into labs, Donald Trump now has his finger hovering over an off switch for European science. “Having restrictions on this tool, it can have an impact on our own research,” said France’s research minister, Philippe Baptiste, at the VivaTech conference in Paris on June 18.Baptiste, himself a former academic, said that colleagues in mathematics had recently warned him they were now cut off from leading-edge US models, risking their work. “This model is not available anymore now because of the US restriction, and for the first time this had an impact on mathematics,” a field where large language models (LLMs) are making a significant contribution, said Baptiste. So, should European scientists avoid relying on US models in the future? Or would this be a self-harming overreaction? And how is AI being used in science, anyway? What happened?On June 12, it emerged that Washington, citing cybersecurity concerns, had ordered Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using two models: Claude Mythos 5, and Claude Fable 5, a version of Mythos but with guardrails to prevent abuse. Anthropic said Washington’s concerns were overblown. But forced to follow the order, yet with no way to check who was using the models, the company suddenly shut down access for everyone, US citizens included. There’s still no agreement on how to restore broad access. But last week, Bloomberg reported that select US companies, and the US government, still had access to Mythos despite the ban, but the EU’s cybersecurity agency Enisa had been shut out. Class division of researchersIn the longer term, access outside the US should be restored, said Marcel Salathé, co-director of the AI centre at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), because a permanent restriction would be financially ruinous to US AI firms. “Even Trump will eventually budge to economic pressure,” he said.However, US AI firms might end up operating rather like banks, doing due diligence on users of their leading-edge AI models, he went on.European scientists are unlikely to fall foul of such checks, he said. But having a Chinese postgraduate in their lab, or doing a type of research the US disapproved of, could potentially result in access being denied. “It will create a sort of class division of researchers,” he said. More than frontier modelsHowever, successfully deploying AI in science is about far more than just having access to leading LLMs such as Mythos.Instead, many science-specific tools, most famously Alphafold, which predicts protein folding structures, require “far less” computing power to train than frontier models, well within the capabilities of European supercomputers, according to a recent analysis by the Arq Foundation, a Brussel-based AI think tank. Instead, tools such as Alphafold are possible because certain fields, like protein folding, weather prediction or astronomy, have large, clean, standardised datasets that can be used to train predictive models. Rather than compute, “data is the central constraint for AI for science,” the report says. For example, a less powerful physics model trained on CERN’s data “will be more valuable than the best model without certain data,” said Bengüsu Özcan, author of the report. European advantage?Europe could therefore steal a march by using its scientific data and infrastructure to create models US digital giants cannot. “They might actually match or go even beyond what these big [US] companies are doing,” said Özcan.Indeed, some European start-ups hope to create automated testing labs to create the kind of standardised data that could speed up the discovery of new materials. Materials scientists say there’s currently too little data to train models. AI scientistsHowever, even if the bottleneck for AI in science is often data, rather than compute, being at the mercy of the US for LLM access could still become a problem for European scientists. A new class of “AI scientists” based on leading LLMs is also emerging, Özcan’s report says.Unlike domain-specific tools like Alphafold, these try to automate day-to-day scientific work, by providing an overarching tool that coordinates specific models to synthesise existing literature, generate hypotheses or run analysis of data. The problem for Europe, however, is that these tools are sometimes based on US leading models. Google Deepmind’s AI Co-Scientist, for example, is built on Google’s Gemini LLM. Systematic failureThese scientific automation tools are still in their early stages, and still exhibit “systematic failures on scientific tasks,” Özcan’s report says. One of the problems is that the messy, day-to-day process of scientific discovery is largely not documented, meaning LLMs don’t have a good source of data to learn how scientists actually work. Meanwhile, some tasks, such as literature synthesis, don’t typically require access to leading edge models.However, the performance of AI scientific assistants could improve as companies such as Google pour resources into developing them. Rely on US“Unfortunately, for scientific assistants, there is not much we can do right now except rely on US frontier AI,” said Antoine Bosselut, a natural language processing expert based at EPFL. Chinese-built open models, which can run on local computers, lessening the risk of a shutdown, are touted as one alternative to US dependence. There’s also Mistral, once seen as Europe’s main AI hope, but the Paris-based company has seen its recent models fall behind in performance. But the Chinese alternatives are generally not as capable as US frontier AI models, said Bosselut, unless paired with fiddly, custom tools that allows them to act as independent agents. “Most scientists do not have the time,” he said. Don’t jump ship yetAlthough the kill switch moment is seen a warning shot for European scientists, it doesn’t mean labs should abandon US AI tools immediately. “I do not think the right response is simply to abandon US-based models and systems under the banner of sovereignty or independence,” said Mattias Björnmalm, secretary general of the Cesaer university association. “That would be an overreaction.”Related articlesEuropean sovereignty in AI requires ‘ugly trade-offs,’ say experts Robotic lab start-up makes case for €500M EU-funded materials testing facilityAI in science: is it useful? Instead, European researchers need to ask themselves whether they’re becoming dependent on technology that could be turned off in Washington, said Özcan. “They might not see this today, but they should really start asking this question,” she said. European researchers need a plan B, said Salathé. “I would recommend to every researcher, very proactively explore alternatives.”Own toolsIn addition, Björnmalm and others want European research institutions to develop their own scientific AI tools.Instead of signing AI deals with US digital giants, European universities should be using this money to create their own models, which may end up being superior for research, said Sabine Leonelli, an expert on the use of AI in science at the Technical University of Munich. “Universities in Europe seem to be happy to sign commercial contracts with US companies on the assumption [their AI tools] are better,” she said. But US frontier LLMs are typically opaque, and have been developed without independent scientific input, she said. “This is not good enough for science.”Last year, Swiss researchers released Apertus, an LLM designed to be completely transparent, from its development methods to its training data. The idea is that this makes scientific tools built on top of the model far more reproducible than with closed, commercial alternatives.“Europe needs more of this: serious capacity-building that gives researchers, universities and companies credible options,” said Björnmalm.

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Jun 25 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
World Cup: can big sports events bring us together? Recent history says yes

Although fleeting, sporting events have the enduring power to crumble divisions and highlight the beauty of kinship

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Jun 25 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • theguardian.com
Zohran Mamdani Tightened His Grip on New York Politics

His opponents thought Tuesday night might offer an opening. It very much did not.

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Jun 25 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • nymag.com
Yankees news: Ryan McMahon to IL with throat infection

Ryan McMahon to IL, Oswaldo Cabrera recalled; a primer for the trade deadline; thoughts on the ABS system, CBA proposal

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Jun 25 • 5:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
New Media Event Jupiter Festival Planned from Art Basel Company

MCH Group, in which the Fox scion is the largest shareholder, is launching an event titled the Jupiter Festival with an eye toward becoming a stop on the thought leader circuit.

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Jun 25 • 5:00 AM EDT • Business • hollywoodreporter.com
Marvin Mims Jr. shares honest thoughts about future with Broncos

Denver Broncos wide receiver/return specialist Marvin Mims Jr. seems to understand his time with the team could be nearing an end.

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Jun 24 • 8:32 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Grand Theft Auto VI will cost $80 without a physical disc

GTA6 might be an outlier, though—at least for now.

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Jun 24 • 6:47 PM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com
Babson Earns LGBT Corporate Ally Award at Business of Pride · Babson Thought & Action

President Stephen Spinelli Jr. accepted the award at Boston Business Journals 10th annual event honoring Boston’s LGBT community.

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Jun 24 • 4:14 PM EDT • Business • entrepreneurship.babson.edu
Trump abruptly cancels signing housing bill, blindsiding Republicans

Trump is pressuring senators to focus on his proof-of-citizenship voting bill even though it doesn't have the votes to pass

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Jun 24 • 3:48 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
Mercy Helps Position St. Louis as Global Gateway for Healthcare Innovation

Mercy continues to bring innovative thought leadership to the communities it serves and beyond. Dr. Damon Broyles, Mercy vice president of clinical innovation, informatics and precision medicine, recently shared insights and helped attract new companies to St. Louis’ nationally recognized healthcare industry as part of BioSTL.

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Jun 24 • 3:43 PM EDT • Health • mercy.net
Julian Edelman's blunt advice for Patriots with Christian Gonzalez

Julian Edelman shared his thoughts on the ongoing contract situation between the Patriots and star cornerback Christian Gonzalez.

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Jun 24 • 1:16 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Trump abruptly cancels signing housing bill, blindsiding Republicans

Trump is pressuring senators to focus on his proof-of-citizenship voting bill even though it doesn't have the votes to pass

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Jun 24 • 11:18 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
Trump abruptly cancels signing housing bill, blindsiding Republicans

Trump is pressuring senators to focus on his proof-of-citizenship voting bill even though it doesn't have the votes to pass

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Jun 24 • 11:18 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
Moved to Minneapolis for work; why I love living here

I moved from the Bay Area to Minneapolis for work. Although I didn't know anyone in the city, I've quickly grown to love the vibrant community.

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Jun 24 • 10:03 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Foldable iPhone 'Ultra' Set for Production in July Despite Hinge Issues

Apple's rumored foldable iPhone "Ultra" is expected to begin mass production at the end of July, according to a new report by The Elec. Although some recent reports suggested the book-style device could be delayed due to hinge-related issues, the Korean outlet's sources indicate that Apple is still targeting a September launch as planned.

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Jun 24 • 9:56 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
This is the real reason your cat purrs—and it’s not what you think - Futura-Sciences

The Genetic Mystery Behind the Purr If you thought your cat’s purr was just an automatic sound of happiness—like you sighing with satisfaction after a good meal—science begs to differ. Researchers from Kyoto University’s Wildlife Research Center in Japan have identified, for the first time, genetic underpinnings to this ancient...

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Jun 24 • 9:00 AM EDT • Science • futura-sciences.com
Jaguars coach explains what makes Liam Coen special

Who would have thought Liam Coen could ascend to this position so quickly? At least one coach wasn't surprised at all.

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Jun 24 • 5:05 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
The new power broker: How Zohran Mamdani muscled NYC’s Democratic establishment

New York politics and the Democratic Party have a new power broker after Zohran Mamdani’s picks swept three US House primaries. Hakeem Jeffries, the Brooklyn-based House Democratic leader, is losing two incumbent members and facing an ascendant band of agitators. And the people long in charge in Democratic politics, including the ones who for decades thought of themselves as the insurgents, aren’t happy about it.

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Jun 24 • 2:58 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
The Steam Machine's Companion Cube case is big, expensive, and based on a 19-year-old joke, so I hate how well-made it is

The Steam Machine provides a chance to get reacquainted with the Companion Cube, courtesy of Dbrand's pricey (though admittedly finely designed) case.

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Jun 23 • 3:44 PM EDT • Technology • rockpapershotgun.com
Christian Gonzalez Could Force Patriots Into Awkward Training Camp Standoff

There are no official deadlines in late June or early July in the National Football League. In New England, though, all eyes remain on the Christian Gonzalez contract situation and whether or not he becomes the next young, budding defensive superstar to be rewarded with a mega-deal. Gonzalez, the team’s first-round pick in 2023, has one Pro Bowl and one monster playoff run that has people talking about him like he's an elite corner.

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Jun 23 • 12:30 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
NASA’s Webb Pinpoints Millions of Stars Within Cigar Galaxy

M82's intense star formation, thought to be the result of a galaxy merger, will be a short-lived event in astronomical terms, which makes this a one-of-a-kind environment to study. M82 is also known as the Cigar galaxy, Messier 82, NGC 3034.

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Jun 23 • 10:00 AM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
Appendix B: Classifying European political parties

Classifying parties as populist Although experts generally agree that populist political leaders or parties display high levels of anti-elitism, definitions of populism vary. We use three measures to classify parties as populist: anti-elite ratings from the 2024 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES), the 2023 Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) and the 2023 PopuList. […]

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Jun 23 • 9:41 AM EDT • Politics • pewresearch.org
Meta launches cheaper smart glasses without Ray-Ban

There is a version designed by Kylie Jenner, though.

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Jun 23 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
Hidden bird species discovered in Japan after DNA reveals a stunning secret

A bird long thought to be a single rare species in Japan has turned out to be two. Scientists discovered that the elusive Ijima’s Leaf Warbler and a newly identified Tokara Leaf Warbler look almost identical, but their DNA and songs reveal they are distinct species. The finding marks Japan’s first new bird species discovery in more than 40 years and highlights how modern genetic tools are uncovering hidden biodiversity that would otherwise go unnoticed.

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Jun 23 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
"This is going to be a niche device" – Analysts react to the $1,000+ Steam Machine price reveal

Mat Piscatella, Joost van Dreunen, Manu Rosier, and Piers Harding-Rolls offer their thoughts on the price implications for Project Helix and PS6

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Jun 23 • 7:01 AM EDT • Technology • gamesindustry.biz
Why prediction markets’ election picks are useful, even when they seem wrong

A Post analysis found that primary candidates ended up winning about as often as bettors thought they would.

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Jun 23 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Two marsupial species once known to science only from fossils, and thought lost for more than 6,000 years, have been confirmed alive in the rainforests of New Guinea’s Vogelkop Peninsula — a discovery made possible by old museum specimens, rare field photographs, fossil fragments and the knowledge of Indigenous Tambrauw and Maybrat elders.

Two marsupials known to science only from fossils, and presumed gone for more than 6,000 years, have turned out to be alive in the rainforests of the Vogelkop Peninsula in Indonesian Papua. The finding was published in March in the Records of the Australian Museum, and it leaned less on a lucky expedition than on […]

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Jun 22 • 11:47 PM EDT • Science • spacedaily.com
There’s a disturbance in the force of South Dakota politics

Traditions and norms we thought we could count on are being shattered. Political party members are turning against each other.

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Jun 22 • 6:43 PM EDT • Politics • southdakotasearchlight.com
Golden Knights unveil preseason schedule ahead of 2026-27 season

Although the next three months are sure to bring plenty of changes to the Vegas Golden Knights, fans now know the first opportunity they will get to see these changes on the ice firsthand.

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Jun 22 • 5:46 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Columbus Partnership CEO out after creating 'bullying' culture, insiders say

Though the Partnership says Hall resigned for family reasons, former employees say the CEO was pressured to leave after cultivating an “untenable” culture.

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Jun 22 • 5:13 PM EDT • Business • dispatch.com
Doctors Thought It Was Asthma. A.I. Flagged a Serious Heart Problem.

Artificial intelligence programs can spot patterns in electrocardiograms that humans miss. Now, one program is going to be widely available — for free — to doctors.

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Jun 22 • 5:00 PM EDT • Health • nytimes.com
“Voicemails for Isabelle ”writer-director Leah McKendrick reveals the true story that inspired the romcom

A stand-up comedy set, a long-distance separation from her sister, and morbid thoughts of death all poured into the film currently taking off on Netflix.

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Jun 22 • 4:33 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
How menopause radically changes the brain

The brain undergoes a full renovation during menopause. Although these changes are profound, we’re learning that the long-term impact needn’t be all bad

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Jun 22 • 11:00 AM EDT • Health • newscientist.com
China’s rare earth dominance highlights global supply chain vulnerabilities

China’s dominance in rare earth processing and magnet manufacturing has given it significant influence over global supply chains for products ranging from electric vehicles and wind turbines to consumer electronics and advanced defense systems, The New York Times reports. Although rare earth minerals are mined in several countries, China controls much of the refining and […]

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Jun 22 • 10:18 AM EDT • Business • businessreport.com
The Jacob Engels attacks don't worry me. This does

I never thought he warranted the attention.

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Jun 22 • 9:19 AM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
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Politician behind 'top two' primary has second thoughts

The man who brought California the top-two open primary now thinks it needs a drastic overhaul.

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Jun 22 • 9:00 AM EDT • Politics • latimes.com
I went on a blind date at Hyrox. It was fun, sweaty, and challenging.

I never thought I'd have a blind date at Hyrox, but I met a guy and did a good workout. It's part of a trend that focuses on lifestyle compatibility.

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Jun 22 • 8:13 AM EDT • Technology • businessinsider.com
I went on a blind date at Hyrox. It was fun, sweaty, and challenging.

I never thought I'd have a blind date at Hyrox, but I met a guy and did a good workout. It's part of a trend that focuses on lifestyle compatibility.

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Jun 22 • 8:13 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
U.S. Bank Survey Finds Gen Z Small Business Owners Are Making Bigger Bets to Drive Growth

Gen Z Momentum: Gen Z owners are nearly twice as likely as Gen X and Baby Boomer owners to make bigger bets on growth, while also reporting stronger business performance Growth Continues, But Less Widespread: Many small businesses are still expanding, though fewer are doing so as economic pressures persist AI Adoption Gap: Businesses adopting generative AI and digital tools are more likely to be in a growth phase U.S. Bank released its fourth annual Small Business Perspective survey report today, highlighting how small business owners are navigating a more constrained environment, and how a new generation is building businesses differently. The nationwide survey of 1,000 small business owners, including an oversample of 200 Gen Z owners, shows that while many small businesses are still expanding, fewer are growing than a year ago amid ongoing economic pressures and rising costs. U.S. small businesses are still seeking to grow, despite economic concerns. “Growth may not be as

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Jun 22 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • ir.usbank.com
Scientists thought they knew what's lurking at the centre of our Galaxy. But they may have been completely wrong this whole time | BBC Sky at Night Magazine

Could the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy be dark matter instead? Exploring the science behind the theory.

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Jun 22 • 5:08 AM EDT • Science • skyatnightmagazine.com
Thoughts on a 4-3 Rangers win

Rangers 4, Padres 3

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Jun 21 • 8:31 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
I took 30-year-old son on a vacation to Hawaii; these were the rules

My 30-year-old son is independent and lives across the county, so I rarely get to connect with him. I thought a trip to Hawaii would be perfect.

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Jun 21 • 9:07 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
I Thought My Swiffer Wasn’t Working Properly—Turns Out I Was Using It Wrong the Whole Time

I thought mopping was a hassle—until I learned how to actually use my Swiffer. Now my floors are cleaner in 15 minutes, no bucket required.

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Jun 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • thespruce.com