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Cowboys acquiring Broderick Jones in trade with Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys have pulled off a trade involving offensive lineman Broderick Jones. The news comes from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Mike Garafolo. “The Steelers are trading OT Broderick Jones to the Cowboys, per me and…

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Aug 29 • 5:57 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Prediction Marketing Offer Based On Mahomes Start Pulled

The Denver Broncos will face the Kansas City Chiefs on Sept. 14, and they're likely expecting to face Patrick Mahomes.

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Aug 29 • 1:49 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
GTA 6's gameplay reveal pulled in 3.97 million peak viewers, overwhelming Twitch and Netflix in the process

GTA 6's first gameplay reveal drew more than 3.97 million peak viewers across platforms, according to new data from Streams Charts.

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Aug 29 • 10:25 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Madison police: Suspect pulls gun, threatens to ‘blow up’ business

A person allegedly pulled a gun out and threatened a business Thursday night in downtown Madison, police said.

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Aug 28 • 5:24 PM EDT • Business • wmtv15news.com
PENN Entertainment (PENN) Invests $195 Million In New Orleans As Undervalued View Faces A Fresh Test

PENN Entertainment (PENN) is committing about $195 million to shift its Boomtown Casino & Hotel New Orleans riverboat operations onto adjacent land, rebranding the complex as Hollywood Casino New Orleans, pending regulatory approval. For context, PENN Entertainment’s share price has pulled back in the short term, with a 30 day share price return of down 15.72% and a 90 day share price return of down 8.18%. The year to date share price return of 20.20% contrasts with a 1 year total shareholder...

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Aug 27 • 11:28 AM EDT • Entertainment • simplywall.st
Giants Starting Pitcher Adrian Houser Exits Reds Game With Injury

For the second night in a row, the San Francisco Giants lost a starting pitcher to injury. After striking out Matt McLain, Adrian Houser shook his arm. That prompted a visit from trainers and manager Tony Vitello, who pulled the veteran starter from the game. The Giants signed Houser as a veteran innings eater for […] The post Giants Starting Pitcher Adrian Houser Exits Reds Game With Injury appeared first on HEAVY.

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Aug 26 • 1:23 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (-1%)
Target apologizes for children’s clown Halloween costume after backlash

Target apologized on Monday and said it had pulled a Halloween costume from sale depicting a circus clown that critics said evoked Blackface and minstrel shows.

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Aug 24 • 10:06 PM EDT • Business • cnn.com
The #EndSARS Generation Comes of Age

Its operational base may be as ebullient as ever, but members of the #EndSARS generation have been pulled in different directions.

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Aug 24 • 12:22 PM EDT • Politics • cfr.org
Google wants $1,099 for the Pixel 11 Pro — here's how I paid only $399

At $1,099, the new Pixel 11 Pro can be a tough sell. Thankfully, I just bought one for only $399. Here's how I pulled it off.

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Aug 24 • 5:00 AM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com
49ers news: SF trades with NFC South team for linebacker

With just a few weeks left before the new season, the San Francisco 49ers continue to tinker with their roster. Recently, the 49ers added tight end Khalil Dinkins, offensive lineman Doug Kramer Jr., and wide receiver KhaDarel Hodge. On Sunday, they acquired a veteran presence to shore up their defense. The 49ers pulled off a trade , sending running […] The post 49ers news: SF trades with NFC South team for linebacker appeared first on ClutchPoints.

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Aug 23 • 10:41 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Bret Michaels cancels remaining 2026 tour dates hours after 'comeback' performance due to health scare

Bret Michaels' doctors pulled him off the road for months of recovery after recent surgeries, canceling all of his remaining 2026 tour dates.

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Aug 23 • 11:55 AM EDT • Health • foxnews.com
Four Patriots Whose Stock Rose in Saturday Night Win over Eagles

Haskins ran hard in his audition, Morton pulled double duty at QB and punter, and two Day 3 picks made a real case for a roster spot.

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Aug 23 • 8:51 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Chicago Cubs news — Bregman, Happ, Busch, PCA, Palencia, Boyd

Alex Bregman celebrates his ninth-inning, game-tying home run Friday night. However, Seattle pulled out the win in extras, 6-5.

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Aug 23 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
I burned out as a startup founder. My interns changed everything.

A startup cofounder says his unique connection with his summer interns pulled him out of burnout, boosted productivity, and made his startup better.

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Aug 23 • 7:07 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
🙂 Positive (50%)
Rock legend pulled off of tour by doctors, paramedics: ‘Slow recovery ahead’

The singer returned to the stage on Friday and announced on Saturday that he will be out of action for months.

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Aug 22 • 3:44 PM EDT • Entertainment • pennlive.com
San Antonio hemp business sues Texas over new regulations, says $300k in inventory pulled
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Aug 20 • 5:23 PM EDT • Business • ksat.com
JD Sports Trips Over the Sneaker Cycle

The sportswear retailer cut its profit outlook by £50 million (about $68 million) as young shoppers pulled back, North America weakened and sneaker demand lost its heat.

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Aug 20 • 11:35 AM EDT • Sports • finance.yahoo.com
Compulsion Games pulls off management buyout and separates from Xbox

Compulsion Games, the maker of compelling gamers like South of Midnight, has pulled off a management buyout and is now separated from Xbox.

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Aug 20 • 11:35 AM EDT • Technology • gamesbeat.com
Analyst does not hold back on ‘Gretzky-like’ Caitlin Clark

Caitlin Clark made her Canadian debut Tuesday, scoring 24 points and dishing out seven assists as the Indiana Fever pulled out a 101-95 win over the expansion Toronto Tempo. The game was also the first opportunity to see the Caitlin Clark phenomenon north of the border. Toronto Sun columnist Steve Simmons, who had previously written…

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Aug 19 • 12:07 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Taylor Sheridan says 'Yellowstone' ranch spinoff '6666' won't happen

Taylor Sheridan has drastically pulled back on the reins on the "Yellowstone" spinoff "6666." The creator of the Sheridan TV Universe kicked up dust with the Aug.

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Aug 19 • 11:29 AM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com
Apple pulls AI ‘nudify’ app promoted in Meta ads

Meta ran ads for a now-pulled App Store app that let users create AI-generated pornographic deepfakes of real people, including one featuring a woman resembling a prominent US politician.

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Aug 18 • 3:28 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
Indie developer of popular stock market game says Sony is blocking a PS5 release and delisting its previous games

STONKS-9800 is no longer coming to PS5 and all of Ternox’s previous games are being pulled…

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Aug 17 • 6:48 AM EDT • Technology • videogameschronicle.com
Scottie Scheffler walks away with dominant FedEx St. Jude win

Scottie Scheffler shot a final-round 66 and pulled away to extend his lead in the FedEx Cup playoffs.

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Aug 16 • 7:37 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
UFC 330 Bonuses Revealed Following Violent Card

UFC 330 took place tonight at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, and UFC president Dana White revealed the post-fight bonus award winners. Check out the UFC 330 post-fight winners below, following the event. Performance of the Night ($100,000 to the fighter): Jeremiah Wells Kicking off the card, Jeremiah Wells pulled off one of the biggest […] The post UFC 330 Bonuses Revealed Following Violent Card appeared first on HEAVY.

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Aug 16 • 3:46 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
AI needs science’s search history

“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.

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Aug 13 • 11:16 AM EDT • Science • press.airstreet.com
Cooper Flagg’s one-of-one is found as sports card market hits new highs

Cooper Flagg’s one-of-one was pulled just four days after release, underscoring a red-hot sports card market where rare collectibles are fetching millions.

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Aug 13 • 6:44 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Mock Crash Kicks off Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over Campaign on Health Science Campus

UToledo Health joined local law enforcement and health agencies to stage a realistic drunk driving crash simulation outside the Lloyd A. Jacobs Interprofessional Immersive Simulation Center.

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Aug 13 • 3:45 AM EDT • Health • news.utoledo.edu
How David Crowley pulled off the ‘unbelievable’: Winning in Wisconsin after dropping out

Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, entered the primary for governor with a polling lead. But several missteps — and a key phone call — pushed Crowley to the Democratic nomination.

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Aug 12 • 4:53 PM EDT • Politics • nbcnews.com
High-Signal Publisher
After 41 Years, Super Mario Bros. Players Are Close to Achieving a Perfect Playthrough

Speedrunners have nearly pulled off the impossible

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Aug 10 • 3:30 PM EDT • Technology • polygon.com
Steam reportedly refunds Battlefield 6 player with 470 hours logged after EA quietly pulled Rush mode from Quickplay

A Battlefield 6 player "upset" at the removal of the popular Rush mode claims to have secured a full refund from Steam despite having clocked up 470 hours.

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Aug 9 • 11:28 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Scientists Watched Carbon Dioxide Being Pulled Out of The Air to Form Graphite

This is some seriously high-tech upcycling.

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Aug 8 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com
I spent $30,000 on a facelift trip to Turkey at 42

Heather Emerson looked in the mirror and pulled up her skin, wondering how a facelift would look. She had surgery at 41, saying it was the right age.

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Aug 7 • 3:55 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
‘Jackass’ stars pulled stunts in Lehigh Valley for new series on painful side of sports

Sports stars, including former NFL quarterback Cam Newton and wrestler Kurt Angle, made appearances for the new series "Sports Hurts."

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Aug 7 • 6:30 AM EDT • Sports • lehighvalleylive.com
Were the primaries a preview for consequential general election?

Colorado’s political future will go the way of this election. Historically, the state has not had both chambers controlled by a supermajority. This election may change that. The primaries suggest how the general election may play out. Democrats had solid voter turnout and unaffiliated voters leaned toward Dems. The party pulled in 404,132 unaffiliateds to […]

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Aug 6 • 3:00 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com
Pirro Took Box of Reflecting Pool Evidence to Trump Meeting

Swaying the president with real evidence is no easy task, but maybe she pulled it off.

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Aug 4 • 4:16 PM EDT • Politics • nymag.com
MrBeast Sales Slow, Angel Stock Falls, MUBI and Neon Look for Hits, and Will an NBA Franchise Set a Sales Record?

(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) You probably remember egg prices spiking a few years ago. This led to a lot of debate between the pro-market/pro-competition/antitrust/Neo-Brandesian crowd and the center/center-right/center-left/abundance/libertarian crowd over the cause, whether it was the avian flu outbreak or whether industry consolidation led to price fixing, using avian flu as a convenient cover. Basel Musharbash wrote a whole investigation at BIG looking at it. Well, two years later, we have our answer: it was price fixing. The Justice Department found proof, via emails, of price fixing. Indeed, just the threat of an investigation brought prices down two years ago: I bring this up because at least half a dozen of my favorite political writers and pundits, who were skeptical about price fixing at the time, haven’t written any mea culpas on this issue. It’s really dispiriting and makes it much, much harder to trust their work on other issues. If you take a hard stand on an issue, then you get it wrong, you need to explain how and why you got it wrong. Or update your priors. This is how epistemological bubbles are formed! All of which is to say, it’s time for another installment of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. Last issue, I mostly focused on the “wrong” side of the equation, so today’s is a bit more balanced, but with one big mea culpa (though I still stand by my original concerns). Let’s dive right in! Subscribe CORRECTION: UFC Didn’t Release Subscriber Data (But Seems to Have Bragged About It Internally) In my analysis of the viewership of UFC Freedom 250, I wrote... “Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers.” Well, that datecdote did not come from a PR rep, but from great reporting from James Faris at Business Insider. The actual quote was this: “Paramount’s flagship streaming service generated about a million new subscribers on the day of its first-ever UFC event, Paramount product chief Dane Glasgow told employees in a town hall on Tuesday morning, three staffers who attended the meeting told Business Insider.“ This wasn’t the biggest goof in the world; even Faris emphasized to me that this is more a “clarification” than a correction. Still, it sounds like, internally, the folks at Paramount were very happy about this result—and I’m guessing they were happy with this news getting out—even though the gains didn’t last through the quarter, dropping to 700K adds. RIGHT: MrBeast’s Struggles Continue... I’m very skeptical about MrBeast’s burgeoning media “empire” and, in particular, its $5 billion valuation, as I wrote earlier this year and last year. Sure enough, according to Business Insider, regarding its “booming” consumer products division_:_ “US sales volume grew 13% year-over-year in 2025, following a 33% leap the previous year, according to a presentation deck dated May 2026....A February 2025 investor deck viewed by Business Insider showed Feastables’ net revenue more than doubled in 2024 from 2023, to $215 million, and was forecast to grow 74% in 2025, to $375 million.” [Emphasis mine.] If you told investors that you projected 74% growth but delivered 13%,1 that’s not ideal. But it’s not just MrBeast. Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime had sales drop in half for their energy drinks. It’s one thing to build a successful entertainment company and an entirely different thing to succeed in the heavily-consolidated-but-also-very-competitive consumer packaged goods space! CPGs are dominated by a few firms with very wide moats compared to YouTube, which has few barriers to entry. These businesses require different skill sets and have completely different business environments. WRONG: Does the NBA Have an $8 Billion Bidder? Almost as soon as I published my article about the NBA’s finances, casting skepticism on NBA expansion, I saw this Front Office Sports headline: One group “claims to have already raised $8 billion” for the Vegas expansion team. I mean, wow. That’s just $2 billion less than what the Los Angeles Lakers were valued at when they were sold just last year. And they’re arguably the most popular team in the NBA. (Side note: the new owner is now under an investigation for fraud in how he went about financing the Lakers and the Dodgers purchases.) So much for the “dried up” language I used in that article. (This is why I usually stick to my “Entertainment Nuance Guy” tone in articles...) I went off old information—from April, when I read/heard about the NBA downplaying expansion efforts—instead of doing a quick double-check for new news. That said...if you read the article, the market for Seattle is “slow”, with just one reported bidder. So I wasn’t entirely off. This goof has annoyed me since I first published it, mainly because it undercut that article’s real point, which I stand by: NBA franchises are really overvalued right now. Now, I get why NBA teams are overvalued. When it comes to owning sports teams, it’s basically never wrong to assume that some rich person somewhere will care more about owning a team (or just being part of a group since they’re so expensive) than the actual financials. There are only so many teams to own, and opportunities to buy in preferred markets don’t come along very often. This explains why the teams sell for such high multiples (usually above a 10 to 12.5 revenue multiple, which is very high). You only need one person to overpay! Beyond the ultra-wealthy luxury good explanation, I worry NBA teams are becoming speculative assets. More and more private equity investors are buying into NBA teams. But the value, in owning a team, comes from selling it later, not any meaningful relationship to revenue or profit growth. In other words, the newer NBA owners are increasingly expecting someone later to buy their inflated asset. That’s not sound economics; that’s the “greater fool” theory at work.2 At some point, actually making money has to matter. Especially since revenue growth is now below the growth of the stock market. (And this matters because the NBA doesn’t have easy levers to pull to drastically lower their costs—half of their revenue has to go to players and then you actually have to run a team, including coaching, training, travel, media expenses, and more—or raise revenues aside from one-off expansions in America and overseas.) I just don’t see how investors make their money back buying NBA teams, except for selling at a higher price later on down the line. But if revenue/profit growth continues to slow, at some point, someone will be left holding the bag. RIGHT: Baseball and Basketball are about equally popular. Related to the above, I wanted to cite two quick pieces of evidence for one of my other theories: that the NBA and MLB are about as popular as each other, but the NBA gets much, much better media coverage. One YouGov survey has that fans prefer basketball to baseball by 52% to 48%, which I’m guessing is within the margin of error for that poll. That’s virtually even, meaning they’re about the same popularity. Over on NBC, a recent Red Sox-Yankees game averaged 4 million viewers, higher than Sunday Night Basketball’s average of 3.4 million on the same network. A Yankees-Dodgers game averaged 3.9 million two weeks ago. Not every game averages this much, but it shows you that baseball isn’t far off from basketball, depending on the matchup. Altogether, the NBA is just slightly more popular than baseball, but NBC is paying MLB a fraction of what they pay the NBA, a point I’ve made before. RIGHT: Angel, MUBI and Neon Updates... I’ve long been skeptical about many of Hollywood’s buzziest startups/smaller indie studios. It’s not that they don’t make great movies—films like Anora and Everything Everywhere All at Once are amazing—or that they’re not (rightfully) pushing the majors to make better films, but...they get a ton of hype, and that hype often doesn’t live up to the reality or difficulty in scaling up. Starting with MUBI, well, The Wall Street Journal wrote a feature on MUBI’s struggles last April, best summarized by the subheader “After Sequoia valued Mubi at $1 billion, a left-wing revolt sent the indie film company into a tailspin”. MUBI lost $7.3 million on $200 million in revenue in Q4 2025, but reportedly hit a record 1.7 million subscribers at the end of Q1. As for Neon, Department M purchased a “significant stake” in the company earlier this year. How much is that “stake” worth? According to Deadline, “No financial figures for the Neon-Department M deal were disclosed.” So...that’s not great! If it was a big valuation, we’d hear about. Also, I found this curious: “Both Neon and Department M already have separate partnerships with Qatar. The Qatar Film Committee has a slate deal in place with the former, and a biopic production pact with the latter.” Color me skeptical about much Middle Eastern investment dollars. See: LIV Golf. Finally, as for Angel (formerly Angel Studios), their stock very, very slightly popped last month after Young Washington ($20 million budget) which made $45 million in the US, but their stock is still way down from its opening. Smaller Updates RIGHT: The WGA should focus on antitrust concerns! I’ve been on this for years. Post-WGA/AMTPT deal in 2023, I wrote an article for the Ankler calling on the WGA to focus and organize against industry consolidation. Sure enough, the WGA filed a lawsuit against the Paramount-WBD merger, and people are organizing around this issue now. I wish this energy had coalesced earlier (specifically to lobby Washington much earlier), but better late than never! WRONG: Actually, the chip shortage might be due to market manipulation. In my last “Long Reads for the Long Summer” article, I shared an article about how LLMs are causing memory chip prices to spike, which will make all electronics more expensive. Well, turns out, three RAM manufacturers control 90% of the market, and now a private lawsuit accuses them of price-fixing. So yeah. WRONG/UPDATE: The Odyssey will hold! Two weeks ago, I wrote, “As of this moment, we haven’t had a super-blockbuster, though The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday could all cross the $500 million mark. (At this point, The Odyssey would need a very strong hold to get there.)” Well, it’s safe to say it’s going to have that hold! It only dropped 30% in weekend two and IMAX screenings are sold out all month. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is also off to a great start. RIGHT: People are rushing to get shows out yearly. I’ve long been bullish on yearly, weekly-released shows, and Leslie Goldberg at The Ankler wrote about how many people in town are now listening. WRONG: Mark Carney reverses Canada’s stance on homegrown production. After writing about Canada installing domestic production quotas, Canada has backed off. WRONG: I don’t trust Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s online “views”. When I originally wrote about the latest Spider-Man film’s record-breaking trailer, I thought this was just YouTube views, but after watching this Corridor Crew video and doing more research, well, it’s all social views of the trailer globally. Really? That stat includes TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts views. Basically, I don’t trust it anymore. (This film will probably set record, but I trust the pre-sales data more.) RIGHT: Celebrity Production companies are still struggling. I’ve written about this for years, but the company that I didn’t track was Kevin Hart’s HartBeat, which was valued at $650 million but is struggling now and might just end soon, especially after Kevin Hart pulled his endorsement deals. And Bad Robot is moving to NYC. CORRECTION: SpongeBob is a “second run” title. In my 2025 recap article, I had _SpongeBob SquarePants_labelled as a “library” title, when it is still a “second run” show, with new episodes still coming out on Nickelodeon. CORRECTION: In my last “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong” update, I offered a correction from Doug Creutz and misspelled TD Cowen. Thanks, Grammarly! 1 Though he could have increased prices to make up for the gap, he couldn’t have increased them that much. 2 There’s a theory, which I think that Daryl Morey created and Bill Simmons popularized, that, to be successful building your team, you only need a handful of bad GMs in the league to take advantage of. To be clear, Daryl Morey’s theory was also for signing bad contracts, that you could always get out of bad contracts. Basically, there’s always someone who will make a bad trade. It’s not the same exact thing, but similar enough to the Greater Fool Theory that I really like it.

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Aug 4 • 11:55 AM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Telegram appears to have been pulled from the App Store worldwide

Telegram appears to have been removed from the App Store in multiple countries, although the reason for its apparent removal remains unclear.

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Aug 3 • 10:19 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
Ariana Grande withdraws from London musical, will take a break from the public

Ariana Grande has pulled out of an upcoming stage musical in London, producers said, and plans to withdraw from the public eye for a break from the intense scrutiny she faces.

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Aug 3 • 12:58 PM EDT • Entertainment • scrippsnews.com
Phillies add batting champ Arraez, reliever Raley in pair of deadline deals

The Phillies pulled off a couple of trades Monday morning as the 6 p.m. deadline for making deals approached.

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Aug 3 • 10:16 AM EDT • Sports • nbcsportsphiladelphia.com
Ariana Grande withdraws from London musical and will take a break from the public eye

Ariana Grande has pulled out of an upcoming stage musical in London. Grande was set to star alongside Jonathan Bailey in “Sunday in the Park With George” at the Barbican

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Aug 3 • 9:40 AM EDT • Entertainment • lancasteronline.com
Ariana Grande withdraws from a London musical and will take a break from the public eye

Ariana Grande has pulled out of an upcoming stage musical in London.

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Aug 3 • 6:17 AM EDT • Entertainment • click2houston.com
Ariana Grande withdraws from a London musical and will take a break from the public eye

Ariana Grande has pulled out of an upcoming stage musical in London.

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Aug 3 • 6:17 AM EDT • Entertainment • clickondetroit.com
For a Day, Google Made It Easy to Spoof Satellite Imagery

A new Google Earth tool allowed the creation of A.I. deepfake maps. The tech giant quickly pulled it back after a backlash and concerns about disinformation risks.

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Aug 2 • 3:25 PM EDT • Technology • nytimes.com
Tony Romo's CBS Contract Named 'Worst' In Sports Media History

Tony Romo will not begin the 2026 NFL season as CBS's No. 1 NFL analyst. CBS announced earlier this week that Romo is being put on indefinite leave at the company. Romo, 46, was arrested on suspicion of OWI in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last week. He was pulled over on a highway and taken in for a field ...

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Aug 2 • 9:22 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Nurses chase Cyclospora using grocery receipts, food apps and detailed interviews

Public health nurses have been pulled from other duties in Washtenaw County, MI, to call hundreds of people sick with cyclosporiasis, and try to help them remember everything they ate in recent days.

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Aug 1 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • npr.org
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Google Earth's AI image generation function pulled in less than a day

Google pulled its AI image-editing feature from Google Earth within 24 hours of its launch, after users created deepfakes depicting disasters.

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Jul 31 • 4:55 PM EDT • Technology • businessinsider.com
The Streaming Bubble Keeps Popping

(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) One of my rules is “never bet against PE [private equity]”. This isn’t to say that I agree with their methods or tactics or strategies or financial innovations (aka shenanigans). Just that in the long arc of financial history, they’ve tended to return very good returns to their shareholders. That said, their forays into entertainment have left me...skeptical. I’ve written before about PE’s production company/celebrity production company roll ups, and those haven’t really worked out. Some PE groups tried to “roll up” an industry that isn’t “roll-up-able” for lack of a better term—since the barrier to entry for starting a production company is very low—often paying top dollar for celebrity production companies at the height of streaming valuations. So yeah maybe we can bet against PE when they venture into filmed entertainment. I’ve also noted that studio lots seemed to be a bubble back in 2022. Sure enough… Yikes! That sure sounds like some private equity guys lost some money. The only caveat being that holding a lot of land in Los Angeles is always valuable. But that wasn’t the pitch and likely real estate investment companies overpaid for said land. I mean, Goldman Sachs had to repossess it after all. (Technically, I’m not sure these buyers were traditional private equity, but PE was buying LA studio lots earlier this decade.) All to say: I call out bubbles when I see them, and they often pop. Anywho, my most famous bubble call was the “streaming bubble”, specifically that the major streamers were making too many shows and films. And that it could all come crashing down. Notably, I made this call before the strikes of 2023, but those strikes potentially accelerated the popping. And now it has indeed popped. One of my most popular articles of last year made that exact case. A year later, it’s time to update that analysis. The bottom line is that the streaming contraction continues. Credit where credit is due, Luminate—an analytics company whose data I use weekly in my streaming ratings report—called this out in a recent report I saw highlighted in both Bloomberg and The Hollywood Reporter. But I’m adding my data to their look, including streaming films and kids TV shows. I’ll also provide some other data that all tells the same picture. Let’s dive in! Subscribe The Number of Streaming TV Shows, Films and Specials Is Declining AGAIN in 2026 Let’s get right to the data, starting with my dataset. Specifically, each week I track every “notable” title to come out on streaming. I try to grab every title on every major streamer, meaning if it’s a first run or original or exclusive, I track it. This helps me call out the “dogs not barking” and the misses/flops each week. So that will be our first series of charts, my weekly collection data. Let’s start with the raw TV show, film and special data, by week. Note: As the years have gone by, I have actually added more sources (going from just one source to five sources) to find new titles, meaning that this data collection is, likely, more accurate now than in the past. Which means my team and I are more likely to have undercounted titles in the past rather than today. I like to cut the data several different ways. Here’s that same look, by quarter, to more sharply show the trends: And here’s the data just looking at the first half of each year. That’s the same data, just cut three different ways with three different time periods. Note that films, TV shows, and specials are all down by 25%, 42% and 17%, respectively, from 2022. The good news is that the number of films and specials actually increased year-over-year from 2025 to 2026, but not enough to offset the 25% decline in TV shows. Now, I also look at kids shows, and here they are pulled out on their own: And here’s that by quarter: This really seems to be a notable area of pullback by the streamers. Kids shows are down 80% from 2022. This reflects some formerly Disney+ shows going to cable TV first, but also pullbacks from HBO Max, Prime Video and Netflix. I also categorize the TV shows by English language and non-English language, and that also reveals a lot of where the drop comes from: And here is by the half-year: In this look, the good news is the drop for English language shows seems to have stabilized in the last year. But the bad news is the long term decline from the 2022 peak. Other Data So I wasn’t the only person to notice this decline in the number of shows. I have a few other data sources for this, though most only go through the end of 2025. As I said, Luminate beat me to the punch, so let’s look at their data. We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… What TV loss streaming didn’t make up for... How Netflix has changed their programming slate over time… Ten more images charting the decline of production... What type of films aren’t being made anymore... The good news (for movie theaters)… And more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.

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Jul 31 • 2:43 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Florida collector pulls 1-of-1 Ohtani card, then sells for $10M+

A memorabilia collector in Florida pulled a 1-of-1 Shohei Ohtani Dual Gold Logoman Autograph card and proceeded to sell it for more than $10 million, according to the buyer.

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Jul 30 • 3:39 PM EDT • Sports • espn.com
Fed's favored inflation gauge showed prices pulled back in June

The Fed's favored inflation gauge eased but remained elevated in June, with PCE inflation remaining well above the Fed's 2% target.

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Jul 30 • 8:33 AM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com
2027 RB picks Tennessee over USC, Florida State

Tennessee football and coach Josh Heupel pulled off a new recruiting win involving the backfield on Wednesday.

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Jul 29 • 10:18 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Spines of saber-toothed cats tell a tale of the doomed species

Remains pulled from the La Brea Tar Pits revealed deformed vertebrae and rare tumors, possible signs of inbreeding among now-extinct saber-toothed cats.

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Jul 27 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencenews.org
UMaine’s Mark Brewer, the state’s go-to political voice, has never been this busy

Earlier this month, Mark Brewer was driving to pick up one of his kids when his phone started blowing up. Texts. Emails. Reporters he knew by name. He didn’t know why yet. So he pulled over. A quick search told him everything. The Graham Platner story had broken. Brewer, chair…

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Jul 24 • 10:32 AM EDT • Politics • umaine.edu
Entertainment: Bad Bunny Tour Results

Bad Bunny just pulled off something no artist has ever done before.

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Jul 23 • 12:49 PM EDT • Entertainment • hawaiinewsnow.com
The PlayStation game disc was dying long before Sony pulled the plug

Circana numbers show US gamers overwhelmingly voting with their wallets.

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Jul 23 • 12:25 PM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com
Health: Searching For The Source Of Cyclospora

You may have heard of a parasite that’s causing some gastrointestinal distress.Cyclospora has sickened thousands of people across 34 states this summer – more than six times the number reported at this point last year. The CDC has linked a major cluster to shredded iceberg lettuce at Taco Bell in some states. And Taylor Farms de Mexico has now pulled all of its iceberg lettuce from the U.S. market despite an FDA finding that reports that its product contained the parasite were a false positive.We answer your questions about what cyclosporiasis is, how you get it, and why investigators have had such a hard time finding the source.Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.

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Jul 21 • 4:14 PM EDT • Health • npr.org
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Mercedes reveals ultra-luxe SUV and U.S. studio for custom vehicles

The automaker pulled the wraps off a 2027 Mercedes-Maybach GLS and introduced American customers to its Manufaktur customization program.

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Jul 21 • 6:06 AM EDT • Technology • freep.com
Seattle Mariners Outfielder Exits Game Against Cincinnati Reds

Julio Rodriguez was pulled from Monday's game against the Reds after a throw hit him on the hamstring.

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Jul 20 • 11:38 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' debut breaks major box office record

Is Christopher Nolan the most reliable director working today? With his latest film, the Oscar winner has pulled off a feat that few filmmakers can.

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Jul 19 • 1:42 PM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com
What the regionality of Marx’s Republican primary win reveals about Colorado conservatives

Running for governor of Colorado, controversial outsider Victor Marx, 61, a self-proclaimed exorcist and a friendly ally to the late Charlie Kirk, pulled out a 39.9% Republican primary victory. State Sen. and Republican establishment candidate Barbara Kirkmeyer came in a close second with around 39.4% of the vote. Meanwhile, Scott Bottoms, a state legislator and […]

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Jul 19 • 2:45 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com
Lite Waite: How attending Boys State taught me that politics is a contact sport

by Bob Waite So how does one get pulled into politics? That was the gist of my recent Ipswich Museum talk. My earliest political memory comes from the old Shatswell School playground. This would have been in 1956. In those days, Ipswich tilted heavily Republican. John Dolan was our state rep, championing issues like wetland […]

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Jul 18 • 10:09 PM EDT • Politics • thelocalnews.news
Four-star safety chooses Georgia over Ole Miss, LSU

Georgia football pulled in a big, local recruiting win on Saturday by beating out Ole Miss and LSU for this safety.

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Jul 18 • 6:01 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Asked & Answered at PTTOW! Entertainment: The $3 Trillion Question Driving the Future of Entertainment

LOS ANGELES, July 16, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The entertainment business has always run on separation. On February 25, 2026, PTTOW! pulled that...

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Jul 16 • 1:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • markets.businessinsider.com
Packers Get New Micah Parsons Injury Prediction From NFL Exec

The Green Bay Packers have multiple question marks to answer ahead of the 2026 NFL season, but none of them are bigger than the one about superstar pass rusher Micah Parsons. Last offseason, the Packers pulled off a blockbuster trade with the Dallas Cowboys to acquire Parsons. Unfortunately, after a strong start to the season, […] The post Packers Get New Micah Parsons Injury Prediction From NFL Exec appeared first on HEAVY.

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Jul 12 • 3:31 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
FOX10 Investigates: Body-cam video shows shootout between Semmes PD and business owner

Just minutes before the gunfire, Semmes police officers Austin Collier and Brandon Murphy pulled up to the business on Moffett Road. Police say Collier’s body camera was not working. The footage is from Murphy’s body-worn camera.

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Jul 8 • 10:33 PM EDT • Business • fox10tv.com
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Changing tides: How gravity warps our oceans - Futura-Sciences

Why gravity makes water uneven Water at any point in the ocean is pulled straight down, perpendicular to what physicists call an equipotential surface. Along this surface, the pull of gravity is identical everywhere. The specific equipotential surface that aligns with global sea level is known as the geoid. On...

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Jul 6 • 8:30 AM EDT • Science • futura-sciences.com
WBUR's local politics newsletter returns next week

A lot happens in Boston every day. To help you keep up, WBUR, Boston's NPR News station, pulled these stories together just for you.

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Jul 6 • 3:03 AM EDT • Politics • wbur.org
CVS Health medicated wipes recalled over child safety concerns

Tens of thousands of medicated wipes sold in CVS stores were pulled over fears that children could get into them and possibly be poisoned.

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Jul 5 • 3:36 PM EDT • Health • fox5ny.com
CVS Health medicated wipes recalled over child safety concerns

Tens of thousands of medicated wipes sold in CVS stores were pulled over fears that children could get into them and possibly be poisoned.

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Jul 5 • 3:36 PM EDT • Health • fox5dc.com
CVS Health medicated wipes recalled over child safety concerns

Tens of thousands of medicated wipes sold in CVS stores were pulled over fears that children could get into them and possibly be poisoned.

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Jul 5 • 3:36 PM EDT • Health • fox13news.com
CVS Health medicated wipes recalled over child safety concerns

Tens of thousands of medicated wipes sold in CVS stores were pulled over fears that children could get into them and possibly be poisoned.

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Jul 5 • 3:36 PM EDT • Health • livenowfox.com
CVS Health medicated wipes recalled over child safety concerns

Tens of thousands of medicated wipes sold in CVS stores were pulled over fears that children could get into them and possibly be poisoned.

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Jul 5 • 3:36 PM EDT • Health • ktvu.com
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Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce's relationship timeline, from NFL games to wedding

Years before Travis Kelce knelt to the ground and pulled out a custom ring for Taylor Swift, the Kansas City Chiefs player was just a fan in the stands who

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Jul 2 • 6:35 PM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com
Ford reports Q2 sales down 10% as it transforms the business

Ford reported a decline in Q2 U.S. sales as commercial fleet sales pulled back and pickup production struggled to catch up after a fire at a supplier.

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Jul 2 • 10:03 AM EDT • Business • freep.com
A Strange Attempt To Revive The 3DO Is Already Dead

A long-defunct developer returned from the dead promising to revive the 3DO, but quickly pulled its pledge when it became apparent it didn't have the right to.

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Jul 2 • 7:12 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Wilton Manors business group steps up support for LGBTQ community

As Pride Month came to a close, many community leaders pointed to corporations, saying a growing number have pulled their sponsorships from Pride events amid the current political climate.

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Jul 1 • 6:29 PM EDT • Business • local10.com
Police chief issues statement after Dianna Russini mentioned NFL coach, avoided ticket

NFL reporter Dianna Russini mentioned texting with an NFL coach after getting pulled over for being on her phone.

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Jun 30 • 1:54 PM EDT • Sports • syracuse.com
Woman says popular oil change business left her engine in the backseat

“What they pulled out of my car looks like something from a sci-fi movie.”

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Jun 29 • 7:33 PM EDT • Business • wsbtv.com
Xbox reportedly pausing new third-party Game Pass deals, developers say

Developers in line for Game Pass deals ‘got the rug pulled from under them’ it’s claimed…

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Jun 29 • 5:21 AM EDT • Technology • videogameschronicle.com
📸 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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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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Trump kicks off the Great American State Fair after musicians pulled out

A number of musical acts backed out of the event on the National Mall last month, concerned about being part of something that appeared political.

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Jun 24 • 10:26 PM EDT • Politics • nbcnews.com
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California workers' compensation bill opposed by NFLPA has been pulled

A bill that would have revamped workers' compensation laws in California to the detriment of professional athletes has died.

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Jun 24 • 3:57 PM EDT • Sports • nbcsports.com
Former Disney CEO Bob Iger defends ABC pulling Jimmy Kimmel over Charlie Kirk remark

Bob Iger, who presided over ABC's parent company when Jimmy Kimmel was pulled from the air in 2025, denies that the decision was politically motivated, arguing that Kimmel's comments about Charlie Kirk's murder were 'in bad taste.'

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Jun 24 • 12:08 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Lake Placid and NYC form committee to study hosting future Winter Olympics

The announcement Monday suggested a dual-hosting format, the likes of which Milan and Cortina pulled off at this year’s Olympics.

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Jun 22 • 7:53 AM EDT • Sports • spectrumlocalnews.com
Netflix cancels 'The Boroughs' in surprise move, 1 month after debut

Netflix has pulled the plug on "The Boroughs" after one season, USA TODAY can confirm.

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Jun 17 • 8:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com
Georgia GOP drops redistricting plan that would hurt Black representation

Gov. Brian Kemp had called a special session so Republicans could secure one or more additional House seats in the 2028 elections. But lawmakers pulled the plug.

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Jun 17 • 5:15 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Yakuza Creator's New Game Seems To Have Lost Its Director After NetEase Reportedly Pulled Funding

Daisuke Sato is now describing himself as 'ex-Nagoshi Studio'

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Jun 17 • 2:25 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
Newark drops bid to give outgoing councilman health benefits for life

The Newark City Council today pulled a resolution that would give outgoing Councilman Carlos Gonzalez lifetime taxpayer-funded health benefits and

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Jun 17 • 2:13 PM EDT • Health • newjerseyglobe.com
How Texas Tech played itself, and the Big 12 commissioner rose to meet his tenure-defining moment

As we turn the page on the Brendan Sorsby we look back at how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's threat unified the Big 12, and commissioner Brett Yormark pulled all the right levers to advocate for his member schools

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Jun 17 • 12:43 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
Hugh Jackman almost 'pulled the plug' on ultra-violent 'Robin Hood'

Hugh Jackman has fought mutants, slayed vampires and gone toe-to-toe dancing with Zac Efron.

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Jun 17 • 10:37 AM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com
Health Science Institute hosts disaster drill on USI campus

First responders pulled out stretchers, performed triage, and administered aid on the students, who were acting in a disaster scenario.

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Jun 15 • 11:26 PM EDT • Science • 14news.com
Putting Cape Verde’s Historic Draw Against Spain In Historical Context

Cape Verde pulled off a stunning upset to shut out heavily favored Spain in a 0-0 draw. How shocking was the upset? Here are the numbers.

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Jun 15 • 4:11 PM EDT • Sports • foxsports.com
Colorado flips three-star offensive tackle from powerhouse SEC program

Colorado football pulled off an impressive recruiting flip Sunday evening, landing a three-star offensive tackle from a top SEC program.

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Jun 14 • 10:51 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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The #1 pop song from the year you graduated high school

Stacker pulled data from Billboard's year-end charts to compile a list of the #1 pop song for each year from 1946 to 2024.

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Jun 14 • 7:01 PM EDT • Entertainment • caledonianrecord.com
'I was really amazed': On the edge of the Milky Way, a dwarf galaxy is being ripped in half by its big sibling

A new study shows that the Small Magellanic Cloud is being pulled apart by its larger sibling on the Milky Way's periphery, upending our understanding of our cosmic neighbor.

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Jun 12 • 12:00 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Knicks fans at JFK Airport go wild as New York completes largest comeback in NBA Finals history

The Knicks pulled off the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, winning 107-106, and the best watch party happened at JFK Airport's Terminal 8.

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Jun 11 • 9:53 AM EDT • Sports • foxnews.com
Luna Ultra: Insta360 Finally Reveals Full Details of the Leica-Branded Gimbal Camera

Insta360 has finally pulled the curtain fully off the Leica-branded gimbal camera it calls the Luna Ultra.

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Jun 10 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • petapixel.com
Tigers 10, Twins 4: Tigers out-slug Twins

Four solo home runs weren’t enough as the Tigers pulled away late.

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Jun 9 • 11:58 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Apple Updates App Store Guidelines With Stricter Rules for Low-Quality Apps

Apple updated its App Store Review Guidelines this week, adding stricter language around low-quality apps. The 4.3 Spam rule already barred overly simple apps in saturated categories, but Apple now includes language saying low-effort apps could be pulled from the App Store. Apps in oversaturated categories that are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers may be removed, according to Apple.

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Jun 9 • 6:52 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
TST Best Bets: June 9, 2026

It’s been classic after classic through these Stanley Cup Finals, and if the Vegas Golden Knights come out of this series with their second ever world championship, then Game 3 will be immortalized forever as the night they survived the impossible. After squandering a 4-0 lead, Vegas pulled out a miraculous victory in double overtime to take a 2-1 lead in the series on their home ice. Now in Game 4, the Carolina Hurricanes face a do-or-die situation, as a loss would send them back home for Game

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Jun 9 • 4:14 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com