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UNK invites high school students to explore space science this summer
KEARNEY - The University of Nebraska at Kearney will launch students into the exciting science of space travel...
The Q-word and the angry, divisive state of SC politics
Commentary from Paul Hyde on the unfortunate escalation of incivility in political rhetoric, even in a state known for its friendliness.
Trump’s absurd choice for the ‘the most violent thing’ he’s ever seen in politics
When the president chooses to use the word “violence,” he often means it as a synonym for stuff he doesn’t like.
Echoes of Aincrad: Sword Art Online ‘System’ trailer
Publisher Bandai Namco and developer Game Studio have released a seven-minute trailer for action RPG Echoes of Aincrad: Sword Art Online introducing the gameplay systems.
Far Cry 7 Used To Test Gen AI, Says Insider
Ubisoft admits it's exploring gen AI, and an insider claims that Far Cry 7 is being used for these experiments.
It's not just PS Plus Essential getting a price hike: Premium and Extra tiers are now more expensive too
Following its carefully worded PS Plus price increase announcement, Sony has confirmed what everybody already expected what it hadn't yet said out loud.
US National Science Foundation pledges $1.5bn for innovative labs
Independent NSF X-Labs will tackle scientific challenges using non-traditional methods
ARC Raiders Is Getting New Massive Enemy Types, Including “Completely New” ARCs
Following the Turbine and Vaporizer, Embark is already working on the next generation of giant ARC threats.
McCourt School Hosts 2026 DC Democratic Mayoral Primary Debate - McCourt School of Public Policy
The McCourt School's Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University hosted the 2026 DC democratic mayoral debate.
‘Whimsy,’ a New Trend, May Be a Life Raft for Gen-Z and Millennials
To a younger generation, the word describes a playful response to a difficult world — even if it might strike some as a precious form of capitalism.
T. rex’s tiny arms may have evolved for a surprisingly brutal reason
Why did T. rex have such tiny arms? Scientists now think it’s because its giant head became the ultimate hunting tool. Across multiple dinosaur groups, stronger skulls and crushing jaws evolved alongside shrinking forelimbs, especially in predators hunting enormous prey. In other words, once the bite became deadly enough, the arms may have stopped mattering.
Taylor Bishop soars toward political career thanks to MSU internships
When Taylor Bishop (Class of 2026) came to Morehead State University from nearly three hours away in Greensburg, he found two things that put him on a clear path to college graduation and his future career. The first was his interest in history growing up, which expanded into political science after he started taking classes at MSU. "I really got interested in politics when I got to Morehead State," Bishop said. "It was like learning a language that I'd never known, and I fell in love with it instantly." The second key factor that shaped much of Bishop's college experience was taking his First-Year Seminar with instructor Rebecca Wright. Wright is also the coordinator of internships for MSU's Center for Career Development & Experiential Education and gave Bishop some important advice. For more information on gaining real-world experience like education abroad and internships at Morehead State University, contact the Center for Career Development & Experiential Education at careerservices@moreheadstate.edu or 606-783-2233. To learn more about MSU's Department of History, Philosophy, Politics, Global Studies and Legal Studies programs, contact hgpl@moreheadstate.edu or 606-783-2655. "You need to get internships wherever you can so it can get you wherever you want." Bishop took those words to heart and for much of his undergraduate career, he benefited from several meaningful experiences outside of the classroom that expanded both his knowledge and his confidence to succeed.
From The Sports Desk: Victor Wembanyama opens West finals with historic performance
Wembanyama had a otherwordly game, leading San Antonio to a double-overtime win over Oklahoma City. Plus, Brazil’s Vinícius Júnior is the subject of today’s World Cup spotlight.
Fortnite Returns to the App Store Worldwide as Epic Signals 'Final Battle' With Apple
Fortnite is back on the App Store in every country except Australia, Epic Games announced today, as the company declared it is entering the "final battle" of its long-running legal dispute with Apple. Epic said the decision to push Fortnite back onto iOS globally was prompted by Apple's own words to the U.S.
Whoa! Netflix is Sending Narnia Heading to Theaters...What This Means for the Future of Film
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) Here’s a funny thing about the debate over whether streamers should release their movies in theaters first: Both sides think the other side represents the “conventional wisdom”. If you’ve been reading me for any amount of time, or even just scanned my front page, you know I think movies make more money by having a robust theatrical window compared to going straight-to-streaming. I’ve published thousands of words on this topic. And for years, I felt like I was standing up to a wave of opposition. See, while the “put your films in theaters to make money” take was obvious at any point before 2019, post-streaming revolution, most of the trendy thinkers took the opposite point of view. Big names argued that Netflix putting their film straight-to-streaming (“S-to-S” from here on out) actually made more money. Netflix was “disrupting” theaters, just as they disrupted Blockbuster Video, and since innovation is always good, this too was a great idea. This thinking then leaked into the mainstream business outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. I read many articles whose take boiled down to “Netflix makes tons of money from S-to-S releases” and “theaters were in structural decline” anyways. Covid-19 shutting down theaters and the 2023 strikes shutting down film production seemingly justified this point of view, as the box office struggled to return to 2017-2019 heights. Yet I’ve also read folks arguing the opposite point: the conventional wisdom says to put films in theaters! From some writers’ points of view, “everyone” actually agrees/agreed with my “send your films to theaters” take—especially the stodgy traditional studios—and folks still didn’t understand Netflix’s genius. I feel like, for the last two years, many people have argued this point as if it’s conventional wisdom. You know what? I may have been wrong. At this point, the “S-to-S strategy makes money” might be the minority viewpoint. Especially with the news this month that Netflix will put at least one film—Greta Gerwig’s Narnia film The Magician’s Nephew—in theaters in 2027 for a full 49-day run is big news. So that’s the story of the week, but I’ll also explain why they’re making this move now and why Netflix may not completely embrace theaters, along with other topics, like how I don’t buy Disney’s “super app” strategy, the latest good news out of the unions, my take on the latest attacks against free speech, and a whole lot more. Let’s get started. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Netflix Goes to Theaters! Listen, I promise not to victory lap too hard today. As I just wrote, I’ve argued against sending films straight-to-streaming for—checks calendar—eight years now. Since 2018. Yikes. That’s a long time. And for years, others painted my thinking as “conventional” in that I was standing up for the status quo against trendy, cool disruption. And that’s not cool! But math is math, and I never could make the S-to-S numbers work. The only thing that ever enabled that model was Wall Street’s brief exuberance for it. It seems like the heads of Netflix now agree with me. (There were always rumors that former head of film for Netflix Scott Stuber argued internally for theatrical releases as well.) As they announced: “The Magician’s Nephew_—the first film in a Narnia series of films—will open on 12-Feb-2027, with a 49 day theatrical exclusive run.”_ I’m a little surprised at how little coverage this big change actually got. Credit to Bloomberg for leading with it and Matt Belloni’s The Town for highlighting it with the provocatively titled podcast “Hell Hath Frozen Over”. But after that? Instead of getting as much coverage as, say, the FCC’s latest egregious crackdown on free speech, this news story got crickets. But it’s massively more important for the future business of entertainment. So let’s start with the obvious question… Why Put Your Movies in Theaters? So…why should Netflix put (some!) of their movies in theaters? Well, I’ve already written that in a very, very, very long article from 2022: [ ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) [ The Data Is In: Theatrical Films Massively Outperform Straight-To-Streaming Films ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) Entertainment Strategy Guy · April 5, 2023 [ Read full story ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) To summarize, theatrical runs make much more money, especially blockbusters, because they earn more money per viewing,1 and that helps boost home entertainment sales. Theatrical films also perform as well or better than the streaming-only films. Now, partially this is driven by increased marketing for said films, but said marketing ultimately boosts the awareness of the movies and drives improved streaming and library performance as well. Again, I’ve made this case after reviewing the economic models and streaming data for years. Just last week, Emily Horgan also made the case for kids films! Yes, it is probably conventional wisdom, but that’s also because it’s true! I’d also argue we’ve seen a lot of data in the various studios’ behavior. As I’ve noted before, the more a studio needs to make money, the likelier they are to put films in theaters. As such, Disney, Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount and Sony all send their major films to theaters. Even if they once made a big S-to-S push (*cough* Disney *cough*), they’ve since relented and returned to theaters. The tech companies don’t need to make money, per se, so it took them years to embrace theaters. Apple doesn’t need to make money because it doesn’t disclose their (likely) Quibi-sized losses each year. (They fear bad press more than losing money.) Amazon announced two years ago that they planned to make Amazon-MGM Studios/Prime Video profitable on its own, and guess what? Now they’re putting films in theaters. That leaves Netflix. They’re in between the “no need to make money at all” and the “desperately need to make money to offset linear TV declines”, so they had less pressure to put some films in theaters. Plus, for years, they were the sexy disruptor, and Wall Street rewarded them for that. (Honestly, they still do.) Yet, even Netflix likely saw the money they were leaving on the table (I’ve estimated it at an easy billion dollars before) so they changed their course. I heard one pundit argue that, because Netflix already makes so much money, they don’t need to make more money, which sort of goes against everything I’ve ever learned about business and economics. Again, to be super-nuanced, sending “films to theaters” does not mean EVERY film. TV movies have been a thing for decades. Lifetime films, Hallmark holiday films, Disney Channel Original Movies, and so on, don’t need theatrical runs. But films above a certain budget level (say $25 to 50 million) almost certainly need theaters to maximize their revenue. The Scenarios (with a Dose of Skepticism) Now time for some skepticism: it won’t surprise me at all if Netflix re-changes course. Specifically, Netflix announced that their Narnia film will go to theaters. And I’d bet anything we see KPop Demon Hunters 2: The Huntering2 also goes to theaters, cause it’s the surest hit outside of a Disney animated sequel right now. But how much does Netflix truly commit to theaters? They’ve already tried to emphasize that this is a one-off move. I see three broad scenarios:
Lululemon calls founder’s ideas ‘misguided’ in public letter
Lululemon has publicly rejected founder Chip Wilson’s ideas to fix the struggling athleisure brand with some strongly worded criticisms of its former leader.
Sophie Cunningham has 3-word response to backlash
The Fever star fired back after the win on Sunday.
This music streaming app nobody talks about actually beats the giants
I'm never going back to Spotify or Tidal
I almost gave up on Google Calendar until this Gemini hack fixed my main gripe
Google Calendar gets better when I don't have to open it
God, The Science, The Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution
In effect, therefore, this book is a call for a return to the medieval vision of a rational God who created rational creatures equipped to discover the verities of nature. In other words…
I connected Gemini with Spotify and elevated my music experience in no time
A match made in playlist heaven
I removed Samsung's unremovable apps, and now my phone zips along
Half an hour with ADB and my Samsung finally runs clean
Now What? With Carbon Pricing Eroded and Pipeline Politics Advancing, Here Are the Pathways for Climate Success
At the end of a whirlwind week of news on carbon pricing and electricity strategy, capping a madcap year of pretty much non-stop, dramatic change, the word across much of Canada’s climate and energy transition community is that climate policy in this country has been shredded. Eviscerated. Hit with a sledgehammer by policy rollbacks that have pushed the country’s 2050 net zero target “well out of reach”. That means it’s never been more important to look for the rays of hope and glimmers of possibility. To glimpse the seeds of the next set of strategies to get Canada’s climate pollution under control and the country into the accelerating global dash away from fossil fuels. And then, once we’ve spotted those possibilities, get on with the hard, day-to-day slog of trying to make them a reality. Nothing takes away from the frustration and the deep disappointment so many climate and energy hawks are expressing, the sense of betrayal by the author of Value(s) and the former UN special envoy for climate action and finance. But we knew two things as the week drew to a close. We’re looking at the world as it most definitely is. And we don’t get to give up finding the pathways to confront climate change and deliver faster, deeper carbon cuts that leave no one else behind. So really, the first question we all have to ask ourselves is: What’s next? Subscribe All the Oxygen in the Room The outpouring of anger and grief over the carbon pricing deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been absolutely understandable. So much of the climate community poured years, more than a decade, into dragging the current federal pricing regime across the finish line, then defending it from a deluge of three-syllable rhymes after the Trudeau government proved utterly incapable of delivering its own message. The policy foisted on us by neo-classical economists took up all the oxygen in the room, burned through years of climate response time that we won’t get back, while cornering climate hawks into the position that the best response to the crisis of our lifetimes is a new tax…in an era of historic anti-tax sentiment. I mean, really—what could possibly have gone wrong? Against that history, let’s appreciate columnist Max Fawcett’s point that even a modest carbon pricing agreement with a government as off-the-wall libertarian/conspiracist as Danielle Smith’s—those adjectives are mine, not Max’s—is a win worth savouring (as long as Smith keeps her promises for a change). But part of living in the world as it is (no, I’m not letting that go) is to be clear-headed about what we can and can’t control. And one thing we get to decide, after seeing this week’s carbon price festivities take up all the oxygen yet again, is whether we want to keep letting that happen. Particularly when success down that road depends on a factor that no one with a climate agenda can control or influence—a provincial carbon pricing mechanism that has been manipulated and eroded beyond its lowest possible denominator. Thankfully, that’s not the way it has to go. Not when we have so many other powerful, practical tools at our disposal, including the ones still available to us through this abominable Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. Tools In Our Toolbox When I started roughing out this list, I didn’t expect it to grow to nearly a dozen bullet points. It’s probably still incomplete. Some of the greatest hits in today’s climate solutions toolbox include: • No Carbon Capture, No Pipeline: On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly stated that there’s been no change to the MOU provision that there will be no West Coast pipeline without an industry commitment to build its massive, $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage (CCUS) hub in Northern Alberta, and vice versa. The two megaprojects were joined at the hip when the MOU was signed Nov. 27, and the implementation agreement this week affirmed that they still are. A parade of independent analysts have spent years pointing to the economic and technical flaws in CCUS, while the industry kept postponing its investment decision until it could arm-twist the government for more “clarity” (by which it meant even more lavish taxpayer subsidies) on the project. Now the industry itself is running away from the CCUS hub and insisting the pipeline should proceed without it, but Carney doesn’t seem to be budging from a central tenet of the MOU to which Smith has signed on. • No Subsidies, No Investors: Climate analysts and advocates have quite rightly been hammering away at Carney and his team, insisting that any new capacity the industry wants to build must proceed without new subsidies. The government has responded with a growing collection of funding and financing mechanisms for the very wide menu of industrial development and nation-building projects they say they want to take on, and that menu always includes fossil fuel infrastructure. But it’s hard to see how even the combined fiscal clout of the federal and supportive provincial governments will deliver the financial backing private investors would need when the business case for new fossil fuel development is evaporating before their eyes. Particularly when… • No Market, No Demand, No Investors: As our friend Markham Hislop at Energi Media (our apparently sleepless friend, given the massive volume of great material he’s been churning out) points out this morning, the biggest vulnerability in any pipeline deal is the assumption that Asian buyers will want the oil or liquefied natural ga that our fossil industry is so keen to send them. Hislop writes in part: Ottawa and Alberta are effectively betting that countries like China and India will continue increasing oil imports for decades as their economies grow and energy consumption rises. That assumption underpins the entire economic rationale for expanding oil sands production and building billions of dollars in new export infrastructure. But Asian energy systems are changing rapidly… China, India, South Korea, and other major hydrocarbon importers are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into electricity systems built around wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, hydro, and expanded transmission infrastructure. Domestic “energy sovereignty” is increasingly replacing the old energy-security model based on stable oil and gas imports. Those investments are expected to sharply slow oil demand growth and eventually reverse it, even as overall energy consumption continues rising. There are also refining constraints. Many Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes are already optimized to process discounted heavy crude from the Middle East and Latin America. That raises serious questions about how much additional Canadian bitumen Asian markets can absorb at profitable prices. Small wonder that there’s still no private sector investor for the project, despite Smith’s government desperately beating the bushes to put together a deal. For now, Alberta is acting as proponent and covering early start-up costs for a pitch to the federal Major Projects Office, which could actually turn into the next tough hurdle for Smith and her pipeline to jump. • Canada Day Looms: How ironic that Canada’s birthday this year could become a major chokepoint for the provincial premier who’s been working so diligently to tear the country apart! The July 1 target date for Alberta’s pipeline proposal is baked into the MOU, was reaffirmed by the implementation plan, but it hadn’t dawned on me that it cuts both ways. As one very smart colleague wrote in an email yesterday, “they’ve thrown the ball into Alberta’s court to get the project proposal on the table really quickly and to have to do a whole pile of work to put together a massive, complicated project that would typically take years to assemble, and they’ve given them weeks to do it.” That makes July 1 a looming deadline that Smith won’t be able to run away from politically, especially with the separatists in her party and her caucus breathing down her neck. (See previous ref to off-the-wall.) But if Alberta comes in with a sloppy, incomplete submission, even after Carney bent over backwards to simplify the application process and the rules that govern it, it may be harder for the province or the industry to blame Ottawa and insist on the faster process they claim their investors are demanding. (Oh, wait—which investors would those be??) • We’ll See You In Court (Then We’ll See You Again): If Carney did cave, that would be just one more reason for Indigenous and other affected communities to take the government and the process to court—Just as Alberta First Nations did, successfully, in response to Smith’s half-baked separation referendum. Veterans of the Harper era have been warning that a shoddy process around fossil fuel infrastructure or other major projects will be a recipe for the very delays that process seeks to avoid. And now more than ever, with renewable energy and energy storage eating fossil fuels’ lunch in import markets around the world, a delayed pipeline or LNG terminal may be as good as a cancelled one. • Charged Up, Ready to Go: With its goal of doubling Canada’s electricity supply to meet a doubling of demand by 2050, the national electricity strategy that Carney unveiled Thursday has a lot to like. With its explicit language about speeding the shift from fuels to more efficient and affordable electricity, global investment and deployment patterns that already favour that shift, an emerging bidirectional power grid, the role of front-line options like rooftop solar and heat pumps, the emergence of electric vehicles as behind-the-meter energy storage, and the domestic jobs and manufacturing to make it all happen, the document doubles down on the essential cornerstone of a faster shift off fossil fuels. The strategy envisions a more prominent role for gas and nuclear power. But some of those provisions were already in the Clean Electricity Regulations that climate hawks are now fighting so hard to defend, inserted as a compromise in a futile attempt to mollify the industry and its political representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But once again, gas will be a tougher sell when it’s more expensive and now so much more unpredictable than the clean alternatives. The new nuclear technologies are still speculative and deeply vulnerable to cost overruns. Increasingly, utilities, developers, and investors know it. Carney declared Thursday that “it doesn’t do us good to be sitting in court all the time with provinces. It doesn’t do us good to be talking past each other. What does do us good is to come together with specific projects.” There are no guarantees, but so much of the language and narrative-building in the electricity strategy suggests the lion’s share of those projects will be renewable. • The Party Has Already Started: The electricity strategy only rarely digs down to specific projects, but provinces representing three-quarters of Canada’s population are already embracing a faster transition. Hydro-Québec is working on a 10-year, $185-billion renewable energy and grid buildout by 2035. Ontario recently brought 10 provinces and territories together in a National Energy Corridor Agreement to boost interprovincial and -territorial transmission infrastructure. And the MOU implementation agreement commits Alberta to facilitate investment in renewable energy projects, a big step back from its continuing, punitive restrictions on renewables development. The electricity strategy envisions much of the financing and infrastructure that will be needed to pull those advances together into an integrated whole. • Delivering on Affordability: The MOU implementation plan has little or nothing to say about affordability (are you surprised?), but the electricity strategy does, with a top-line pledge to reduce home energy costs for seven out of 10 Canadian households by 2050, a total saving of $15 billion across the board. It’s just a start, but it puts affordability on the government’s narrative map. If they’re serious and deliberate about patching together a least-cost energy strategy, it’ll have little if any room for oil, gas, or nuclear—not with powerful evidence, for example, that electricity prices are higher when those prices are set by gas. • Smith Proves that Canada Works: By signing a deal that makes it harder to claim the federal government is blocking a new pipeline, Smith has helped prove Carney’s constant anti-separatist refrain that “Canada works”—incurring the rage, no doubt, of her own political base. Canada also needs to work for anyone who depends on a clean environment, healthy and thriving ecosystems, and safe, stable climate. But with Smith and her separatist constituents setting up as a fifth column for annexation by Donald Trump’s United States, let’s set aside any notion that 51st state status for Canada is a recipe for anything other than climate disaster (and so much else). Resisting and withstanding Trump (just 170 more sleeps until mid-term elections, which is a damn sight better than the 730 we started with) doesn’t mean a free pass for a pipeline, but we can still appreciate it that keeping Canada whole and sovereign is still Carney’s Job One. • The Words Not Spoken: Apart from a commitment to export a million barrels of “low-emission” Alberta bitumen per day (memo to Smith and Carney: You realize that that’s less than the industry is already exporting??), the MOU implementation plan says nothing about the international trade and economic sovereignty deals that Carney has been travelling the world to negotiate. It didn’t have to. Carney doesn’t need permission from Danielle Smith, her American enablers, or her separatist allies to continue building the alliances that will ratchet down our economic dependency on our unstable, unreliable neighbour to the south. But every connection he builds with countries outside North America helps align our economy and our future with a faster shift off fossil fuels. Little if any of this was on our bingo cards a year or two ago. But it’s the pathway that has opened up to us. And if it gives Canada any climate or energy gains at all in an era still dominated by Trump and his increasingly ridiculous tariffs, his loutish trade negotiations and his continuing annexation threats, we have to take the wins. Not least because they’ll be the point of departure for what we can achieve in 2027, 2029, and beyond, as Trump’s grip and this era begin to loosen and then fade. What is Carney Doing? If this line of thought is right—and it’s a possibility, not a prediction—it means that Carney’s actions and decisions are largely about buying time. Time for Trump’s power to wane. Time for Alberta’s separatist/conspiracist virus to spread, mutate, die out, or at least die back, with help from a vaccine of federal steadiness and calm (appropriate enough, for a movement populated largely by vaccine deniers) that no conspiracy theory can dismiss. And time for the government’s trade and investment agenda to deliver results—even knowing that some of those results will bring impacts that front-line communities will not and should not accept. In the immediate moment, none of this changes the way the wider climate community has to respond, from campaigners to investors to front-line practitioners. All of our voices are still essential. But those voices will be stronger and more confident if we have a clearer sense of the brutal game we’ve been pulled into, and a plausible path (or two it three) for playing it to the win we need. This conversation also underscores our biggest task for the remaining years of what was supposed to be the “decisive” decade for climate response: if we can shift the energy narrative in Canada, make it a mainstream view that the country’s preoccupation with oil and gas has us falling farther behind a changing world, we’ll see far better results in the 2030s and beyond. For many veteran climate advocates, taking on that part of the fight will begin with recognizing that most of our friends and family, neighbours and colleagues already understand that climate change is real and right in front of us: they’re looking away and staying silent because they don’t have what climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “efficacy”. As Hayhoe recently pointed out in a feature interview with The Energy Mix, it amounts to science denial to keep hammering away at the dire news about global warming without also helping audiences understand what they can do about it, with multiple studies telling us why that won’t work. Far better to open those conversations with the dominant crises like energy security, food security, emergency preparedness and business continuity, affordability, and financial security that have knocked climate change far lower on the list of public priorities, and will likely keep it there. We Knew This Would Happen Climate hawks have always known this day would come. For decades, we warned that everyone had to pay attention to climate change right now, because it would be much tougher to respond once the crisis itself started affecting our daily lives. We were right, and here we are. But now, thanks to decades of hard work, communities and countries have an alternative to doubling down on fossil fuels. “In 10 years everyone will have ‘always known’ that solar and batteries were going to win,” Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade writes on LinkedIn. With the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy priorities around the world, Canada and the United States are among the shrinking number of countries that are still very keen on fossil fuel development. Understanding that gap is a first, essential step in spotting the opportunities ahead, and averting the deep economic as well as environmental and social risk we face if we don’t seize them. Thanks for reading The Energy Mix Weekender! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender. Chart of the Week BYD Eyes 20 Dealership Locations After Canada Greenlights Chinese EV Imports ‘Sledgehammer’ Carbon Price Deal Boosts Emissions by 230Mt, Aims for Fall 2027 Pipeline Approval ‘Worse Than Harper’: Regulatory Rollback Would Stop Canada from Assessing Project Impacts, Critics Warn Electricity Strategy Aims for Doubling by 2050, Allows ‘Flexibility’ for Gas Power Plants Opposition Mounts as O’Leary’s Data Centre Approved in Drought-Stricken Utah Diluted Carbon Price Misses ‘Reality of the World We’re In’, Could Impede Diversified Trade: Climate Institute $200B in Clean Energy Investment Will Need On-Time Delivery, Reliable Policies, Trade Association Says ‘Sovereign Pipeline’: CEO Pitches to Keep Trans Mountain in Government Hands What a Supercharged El Niño Could Mean for Canada Canada’s future is electric, and here’s how a power grid superhighway would get us there (Toronto Star) The Perilous Waters of Hecate Strait (Globe and Mail) Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East (The Guardian) Farmers confront rising cost of fertilizer and fuel as spring seeding under way (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Clarkson forecasts 24% decline in offshore oil, gas capital expenditures (Oil & Gas Journal) Pipe Dreams: How Oil and Gas Fail to Deliver Economic Development in Africa (Oil Change International) Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition (Climate Home News) Iran war threatens the dream of a post-oil economy in the Gulf (Washington Post) U.S. Oil, Gas Work Force Hits Lowest Level Since 2022 (Rigzone) Why Polestar Is Doubling Down on Net Zero as Rivals Pull Back on EVs (Bloomberg) Why this Michigan utility plans to sell its hydro dams for $13 (E&E News/Politico) Levees can no longer save New Orleans (Vox)
Winter Sports Wrap: See Belmont’s League All-Stars
In Mackenzie Clarke’s own words, she felt FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). After missing her sophomore season of ice hockey to focus on year-round field hockey in the most important year for her college recruiting, she yearned to return to her first sport at the high school level. Two years later, she’s graduating as the lone Belmont High School All-Scholastic honoree across all Marauders winter athletes. “It’s always been a part of me,” Clarke said. “I started to miss it, and a bunch of people who I played field hockey with were on the team that year.” The senior forward
These Android Auto and CarPlay features are built in, but most drivers never find them
A split-screen view and home screen customization are available on both Android Auto and CarPlay, but most drivers never discover these features.
I used to email myself everything — these 5 Google Drive features fixed that
Drive features that fixed my messy workflow
I used Gemini to restart a hobby I abandoned 20 years ago — and I found something unsettling
AI is very helpful, so why does it feel so wrong?
Subnautica 2 Xbox players could eventually test new features early like Steam players
Unknown Worlds would love for Xbox players to test Subnautica 2 updates before they launch
Real Madrid managerial appointment almost done; confirmation later this month
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A hotel check-in system left a million passports and driver's licenses open for anyone to see
The tech company that maintains the hotel check-in system set its cloud storage to public, allowing anyone to access customers' data without a password.
Ferrari Celebrates Twin-Turbo V8s With A Car Only One Person Can Own
The latest one-off, called HC25, is based on the F8 and is presented as a "bridge" between Ferrari's past and future.
Microsoft Edge to stop loading cleartext passwords in memory on startup
Microsoft is updating the Edge web browser to ensure it no longer loads saved passwords into process memory in clear text at startup.
Better brain health linked to resilience against early Alzheimer's in adults 65 to 80
A healthy brain may help protect thinking and memory skills from the early effects of Alzheimer's disease, a new study has found. Dementia is currently the leading cause of death in Australia and Alzheimer's ...
Andrew Abbott leaned into some science to get his season back on track
Andrew Abbott locked in on the stick-figure graphic of himself. The world of biomechanics is very advanced. But with Abbott going through the worst rut of his big league career, he opened up to some new ideas to get himself back on track. He asked for some help, and he leaned into some sports science. He said the stick figures made it clear, and he credits biomechanics for helping him get his season back on track. Over his last three starts, he has allowed two total runs in 17 ⅔ innings. “There’s a photo of (me) last year and the year before on a graph, and this year is in a different color,” Abbott said. “You see where you are in comparison to that. Where the hands are at this moment, where your feet are, where the knee is, where your head is at, where your shoulders are at, it breaks it all down if you want it.” When Abbott saw his mechanics in this objective way, he recognized exactly what had been going wrong. “When my tempo, my feet and my hands are aligned, then normally my mechanics are sound,” Abbott said. “And when my mechanics are sound, my stuff behaves normally. The fastball is jumpy. I’m up in velo. My extension is better.” Abbott said that he started diving more into his biomechanics in the middle of April. The Reds have a biomechanics team, which works closely with pitching coach Derek Johnson and hitting coach Chris Valaika. Leading the group is biomecahnics manager Franky Mulloy. “I laugh every day,” Francona said. “When Franky starts talking, I start laughing. I remind him to know his audience.” Francona isn’t a scientist. The Reds’ manager jokes about his own comprehension of the data. But it’s easy for him to recognize the value that the biomechanics team is providing. “That’s why we got them,” Francona said. Abbott said that he had his first big biomechanics-oriented meeting in the middle of April. Behind the scenes, there was already a lot of communication going on within the Reds’ staff. “Franky calculates all the things, builds it into these graphs, and DJ gets them,” Abbott said. “They have their internal communication. Then, we go to them and ask what about this or that. The main thing for me is arm angle.” The data shows Abbott how his arm angle evolves from start to start. He hasn’t meant to change it. But just like all of us, our posture might be different from one day to the next. Pitchers’ arm angles can make minor shifts without the pitcher or even coaches noticing. But the data can’t miss a change like that. Abbott recognized that his arm angle had been moving around without him noticing. Now, he checks in with the data to make sure that his mechanics are in sync. “They get into these cool looking graphs,” Abbott said. “I can’t really describe them. I don’t know what they are. But for me, it’s a photo of a stick figure of myself.” The stick figure of his current positioning is superimposed over previous versions of himself. With that format, Abbott can compare his mechanics on any given day to what they were when he was pitching at his very best. “It was very noticeable from the moment I saw this year as black compared to two years ago and last year, it was very, very different,” Abbott said. “I could see with my eyes without having to ask any questions about the difference in the photos.” For any pitcher, there are a lot of moving pieces in your delivery. For Abbott to be the best version of himself, he needs his head, his arm, his hand, his knee and his feet to be on the right “tempo.” “Tempo is a word I’ve used a lot,” Abbott said. “Getting everything in certain areas working together.” He has been much better at that recently. The data backs that up, and so does Abbott’s ERA. The biomechanics data has also given the Reds’ staff and Abbott some better ideas for some training that he can do between starts. He has added drills to shore up areas of his body that Abbott needed to make stronger. “They make a plan based off what they see,” Abbott said. “If things start changing, we know what to revert back to.” Overall, Abbott says that he’s not a very analytical guy. There’s so much information out there, and he says that it’s important for him to not get too analytical when he breaks down his specific pitches. He has learned the value of being “analytical about mechanics.” And the way that the Reds presented that information to him made it easier for him to make the right adjustments without being overloaded by information. “It was a very simple fix,” Abbott said. “It took a long time to finally get there, feel the results and see it. But for the most part, it was very simple to apply it.”
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The Crossword, May 11: She's A Rainbow
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In the Play Store now
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OpenAI's Codex Now Works in Chrome With New Extension
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Path of Exile 2's 'Return of the Ancients' update puts an end to the endgame
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The farthest probe from Earth faces its most dangerous mission yet - Futura-Sciences
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Entertainment this week: Mother’s Day events, Words to Water and more!
Friday, May 8 Everyday Outlaw Album Release Party – 7-11 p.m., Alibi Ale Works – Truckee Public House, 10069 Bridge St. FREE SHOW ALERT!! Come join Everyday Outlaw to celebrate the release of their LP...
Is the FDA Really Suppressing Science? Plus. . .
It’s Thursday, May 7. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Aaron MacLean says Trump is poised to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the Iran war. Joe Klein on the life of CNN founder Ted Turner. Jillian Lederman on why cruise ships are here to stay. And much more. But first: Is the FDA suppressing science? On Tuesday, The New York Times published a story with an alarming takeaway. “FDA Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe,” read the headline. It is the latest in a string of stories that all have the same message: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other agencies, are engaged in a cover-up—and silencing scientists trying to get the word out about the Covid vaccine. What all these stories suggest—some more subtly than others—is that the outsiders now running the public health establishment, officials such as Marty Makary at the FDA and Jay Bhattacharya at the National Institutes of Health, are on a revenge tour. That they are doing harm to the country to get back at the scientists and bureaucrats who ostracized them for deviating from the public-health consensus during the pandemic. It’s a seductive narrative. But is it true? That’s the question we address in our latest editorial. —The Editors Read [ Marty Makary's FDA Has All the Right Enemies ](https://www.thefp.com/p/marty-makary-vaccine-study-fda) [ Trump Blinks First ](https://www.thefp.com/p/iran-peace-deal-pakistan-trump-strait-of-hormuz) Aaron MacLean In return for no detectable concessions, President Trump this week gave up on forcing open the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the Trump administration looks desperate for a deal to end the war with Iran. It’s easy to understand the desire to end the war, but are they blowing the chance at victory? Aaron MacLean makes sense of the administration’s latest moves—and Iran’s response—in his column today. Read full story Aaron MacLean and Niall Ferguson: Live in New York City Join Aaron MacLean and Niall Ferguson on May 19 for a live recording of School of War at the iconic New York Historical. In a conversation as timely as it is wide-ranging, Aaron and Niall will explore the strategic stakes of the moment, including the Middle East, China, and the future of American leadership on the global stage. Get Tickets Now [ Ted Turner, the Optimist Who Built CNN ](https://www.thefp.com/p/ted-turner-cnn-tribute) Joe Klein The man who gave us CNN and the 24-hour news cycle, Ted Turner, died Wednesday at the age of 87. Today, political writer Joe Klein—who almost ghostwrote Turner’s autobiography—remembers his friend, the American media mogul who stood out for his idealism and lack of a filter—something that got Turner in trouble more than once. “His was not a traditional intelligence, but one of horizon: Ted saw things before other people did,” Joe writes. Read full story [ Nothing Can Sink the Cruise Ship ](https://www.thefp.com/p/cruise-ship-hantavirus) Jillian Lederman A viral outbreak on a cruise ship that left three passengers dead has left some people wondering: Are cruise ships on the way out? Not so fast, says Jillian Lederman, who has been on many a cruise herself. Read her piece on why 38 million people a year take a cruise—and aren’t about to stop. Read full story [ The Great Writers Who Were Terrible People ](https://www.thefp.com/p/the-great-writers-who-were-terrible) Shilo Brooks Throughout history, some of the greatest literary geniuses have also been immoral bigots. In the latest episode of Old School, Shilo Brooks is joined by Eli Lake for a conversation about those geniuses, from Voltaire to Norman Mailer and Roald Dahl—and why we should read their work despite their odious prejudices. Listen on MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS [ Inside the Digital Intifada ](https://www.thefp.com/p/digital-intifada-social-media-hamas-terror) Warren Kinsella Read full story [ This Week in American History: Trump’s Over-Arching Problem ](https://www.thefp.com/p/this-week-in-american-history-trumps-over-arching-problem) Jonathan Horn Read full story [ Humanity Is Still Evolving—and Fast ](https://www.thefp.com/p/humanity-is-still-evolvingand-fast) Razib Khan Read full story THE NEWS Thirteen D.C. Metropolitan Police officers have been placed on administrative leave and could face termination after an internal investigation found evidence that crime statistics were manipulated to make the city look safer. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee previously alleged that former D.C. police chief Pamela Smith pressured officers to skew data. Tennessee Republicans unveiled a redrawn U.S. House map yesterday that would split up Memphis’s black-majority Democratic district, the latest move in a nationwide push to redraw congressional boundaries ahead of the midterms. The effort follows a Supreme Court ruling last week on Louisiana’s districts, which Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton said gave states the green light to redraw maps along partisan lines. Israel struck Beirut for the first time since a ceasefire with Hezbollah took effect last month, saying it targeted a commander of the militant group’s elite Radwan force in the city’s southern suburbs. The strikes risk destabilizing that truce at a delicate moment, as Iran and the U.S. report progress toward a deal to resolve their own standoff. The U.S. Air Force is aiming for a Fourth of July delivery of a Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar, hoping to add it to the Air Force One fleet in time for the U.S.’s 250th anniversary, Reuters reported. (For more on the controversy surrounding the aircraft, read Jed Rubenfeld’s piece “It’s a Terrible Idea, but Trump Probably Can Accept a Free Jet from Qatar.”) Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick testified privately before Congress that he has no memory of why he and his family dined on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012, according to Reuters. The admission contradicts Lutnick’s earlier claim that he had cut ties with the convicted sex offender well before that visit. Weeks before a former JPMorgan investment banker filed a lawsuit packed with explosive allegations, the bank reportedly offered him $1 million to settle his sexual assault and harassment claims, according to The Wall Street Journal. The suit, filed by Chirayu Rana, alleges he was sexually assaulted by a female colleague, subjected to racial discrimination, and forced into a degrading dynamic at work. JPMorgan says the claims lack merit, and the female colleague’s lawyers call the accusations fabricated. A new report from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research shows that, for the first time in roughly 20 years, church attendance is trending upward, with more people volunteering and clergy expressing renewed optimism. The study’s authors described the findings, based on a survey of more than 7,400 congregations, as showing signs of widespread recovery from low attendance numbers.
The smartglasses privacy situation just keeps getting worse
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Kenyan politicians trade accusations of 'goonism' as political violence rises ahead of 2027 election
Kenya's political word of the moment is “goonism," used to describe gang-related political violence | WBBM Newsradio 780 AM & 105.9 FM
Kenyan politicians trade accusations of 'goonism' as political violence rises ahead of 2027 election
Kenya's political word of the moment is “goonism," used to describe gang-related political violence | WWJ Newsradio 950
Kenyan politicians trade accusations of ‘goonism’ as political violence rises ahead of 2027 election
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya’s political word of the moment is “goonism,” frequently uttered by national leaders to convey annoyance at the gangs that intimidate those whose political activiti…
Kenyan politicians trade accusations of 'goonism' as political violence rises ahead of 2027 election
Kenya’s political word of the moment is “goonism,” used to describe gang-related political violence
Opinion - Bill Bishop: ‘Grievance politics’ thrives on chaos and confusion. That’s our system now
Columnist Chris Clayton noticed something odd in the Trump Administration’s budget for the Department of Agriculture. Since the USDA is the federal government’s primary contact with rural America, Clayton expected to see the word “rural” in the document. And it was there – 12 times in 92 pages. But there were other words that seemed...
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BioShock, game prices, GTA, the disappearing NFL deal and more: An interview with Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick
In 20 years of covering the video game beat, I’d probably not spoken more than 20 words with Take Two chairman Strauss Zelnick, who’s been running the company behind NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto, BioShock and Red Dead Redemption for, you guessed it, nearly 20 years. Last week, though, ahead of a panel I was hosting at the iicon event in Las Vegas, I had about 20 minutes to interview Zelnick. I could ask one question for each year, I joked, as we settled into our seats on opposite sides of a conference table. Take Two’s longtime head of corporate communications, Alan Lewis, was seated at Zelnick’s side. I didn’t quite conduct our chat that way, but we wound up going through a lot, including… The state of BioShock The ramifications of the rising costs of game development The fate of Take Two’s recent multi-game deal with the NFL Some hints about Take Two’s mobile plans Whether Zelnick’s answer to me about Civ VII was a good one The do’s and don’t’s of NBA 2K microtransactions Take Two’s take on the Switch 2 Oh, and GTA VI (Spoiler: if Zelnick had spilled the beans on the price of the game or a release date for a PC version or whether there will be a polka radio station, that would have been this article’s headline). Before all of that, I would learn what it’s like to interview Strauss Zelnick, who is confident, calm and focused on delivering precise answers. To wit, I thought I’d start our chat with something fun, a bit insidery but maybe safe for him to share. The team at Take Two’s Rockstar label delays their games a lot, I noted. Of course, those delays, however painful, tend to be worth it. So, I was wondering how Zelnick finds out about them. Take the most recent postponement back in November 2025, when Rockstar said that GTA VI would not hit its May 26, 2026 release date (just 20 days from now!) and would instead come out on November 19, 2026. Was that news delivered via a call? An email? How does it work? “I work super closely with my team,” Zelnick said. “It's a very thin team at Take Two. The entire senior management team is six executives who sit in one hallway and share two assistants. And then, basically, there are two people who head up each of our labels.” They meet weekly to discuss their business, he said. So no one emails him about a delay? Nothing like that? Zelnick craned his neck to look at my left hand. He asked if I was married. I am, I said. “Does your partner email you to give you information?” he asked. Fair enough. I didn’t get the sense Zelnick was going to read me the minutes of the management meeting where the GTA VI delay was discussed. Slight pivot, maybe I could get some personality insights about one of the most successful gaming execs of the last 20 years, before getting to my big list of questions about specific Take Two games, franchises and policies. I asked: How do you deal with delay news like that? Go for a run? Meditate? “I tend to default to being very calm,” he said. “I’m not a person who freaks out easily.” He noted that he has a daughter with special needs due to an illness, and he shared that that situation had gotten him worked up. It was a personal, family emergency. “But, you know, business is not that,” he said. “I have no trouble distinguishing between, like, a business challenge and an emergency.” He turned to his left to ask Lewis, his colleague of 17 years, a question. “Have you ever seen me freak out?” “Never,” Lewis replied. “You’ve seen me upset,” Zelnick told Lewis. “Have you seen me raise my voice? Maybe how many times? Be honest, because we might as well be.”
CEA Retail + Hospitality Winner: Biggers blends produce, entertainment
Biggers Market’s roots run deep, tracing back to the 1940s when founder and partner Sven Wallin’s grandfather, alongside his brothers, opened Biggers Brothers, a family-run produce business in Charlotte. Decades later, the family’s reputation for farm-fresh fruits and vegetables lives on. In 2010, Wallin opened Biggers Market, building on a reputation that endured for the past 16 years. “I learned a lot about my grandfather, who passed away when my mother was young, through my uncle. The one thing that is ingrained in me is my grandfather’s willingness to go the extra mile for a better product, not settling for what’s easy, but finding what is better,” said Wallin. “He taught me the importance of name and reputation. If your name was on it, it had better be right. Word-of-mouth was always very important to gain a good reputation.” So was hard work. Entrepreneurialism has always been central to Biggers Market’s identity, Wallin said. In high school, Wallin worked at a produce stand in Charlotte, an experience that shaped how he thought about food. “I realized all produce was not created equal, and we could focus on freshness, seasonality and flavor. Grocery stores were convenient, but the produce often didn’t have the same taste or quality,” he said. As a college graduate without a paying job, Wallin took a leap and opened a 20-by-30-foot roadside stand with just three employees. “It was so small we had to put tables with umbrellas out in the yard to accommodate everything. We didn’t have pallet jacks or forklifts to unload the trucks. We would form a line and toss watermelons to get them to where they needed to go,” he recalled. In year two, Wallin opened a market on Carolina Beach Road, still in operation today but larger, and later on Market Street, setting up tents for extra space. In 2019, the sale of the land forced a hunt for a new property, and Wallin landed on his current location at 6250 Market St. “We had ambitions beyond produce,” he said. “We wanted this market to be a place that felt different from a typical grocery store.” In 2024, Wallin added his kitchen to the Biggers brand. “I’ve blurred the lines of a market and a grocery store,” Wallin said. “It’s a place where you can shop, eat, have a drink and listen to live music with friends and family. It’s a mix of retail and social experiences cultivated over time.” What hasn’t changed, however, is Wallin’s Southern hospitality, a strong sense of pride, purpose and responsibility and a commitment to seasonality. Spring brings the garden center to life with herbs, veggie plants and jumbo ferns. Summer leans heavily into produce. Fall brings the pumpkin patch, and winter hosts a Christmas market. “It means a lot to have what we’ve built recognized, especially in Wilmington. There’s a lot that goes into the business from our team. And that’s something we’re genuinely grateful for,” Wallin said. With plans underway for a new larger Carolina Beach Road location, Wallin continues to look ahead. “It’s an opportunity to build another market from the ground up and continue growing what we’ve been doing,” he said. “We’ve been through development before, so we understand what it takes.”
Microsoft Says Edge Password Security Vulnerability Is ‘By Design’—Is It Time To Switch To Chrome?
Microsoft Edge loads all your saved passwords, decrypted and in plaintext, into memory at startup. Google Chrome doesn’t—is it time to switch browser?