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German officials call for tighter extremism laws after Berlin Pride attack

Alternative für Deutschland, topping polls ahead of state elections, accuses government of failing to tackle Islamist radicalism

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Jul 27 • 8:58 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
AI-Generated Mental Health Advice Misjudged Due To Differences In Stateless Versus Contextual Evaluations

Evaluations of AI dispensing mental health advice are often done in a manner that is radically different from real world usage. I showcase this. An AI Insider scoop.

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Jul 26 • 3:15 AM EDT • Health • forbes.com
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80 years strong: the WHO Constitution

Eighty years ago this week – in July 1946 – nations emerging from the devastation of the Second World War chose cooperation over division. They signed the Constitution of the WHO, founded on a bold and radical idea: that health is key to peace and security, and that health is a human right.

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Jul 23 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • who.int
Who is Miatta Fahnbulleh, the radical-thinking new UK energy secretary?

Selection of economist formerly at helm of green thinktank marks continuation of decarbonising Miliband era

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Jul 23 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
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US funding cuts deal blow to global HIV treatment: Report

UNAIDS chief calls for 'radical change' as aid cuts gut HIV clinics and treatment worldwide.

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Jul 21 • 4:44 PM EDT • Health • aljazeera.com
Smithsonian history museum chief rejects White House's radical leader claims

A White House report released on July Fourth criticized the museum as not telling history in an inspiring and unifying way

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Jul 21 • 3:59 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
Don’t believe Andy Burnham’s PR machine

As his empty Gaza apology clearly demonstrates, he will not bring the radical change Labour really needs.

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Jul 20 • 8:15 AM EDT • Politics • aljazeera.com
CDC nominee says she won't betray science

Dr. Erica Schwartz told the Senate health committee she "will never betray the science” and pledged to use “radical transparency” in a bid to rebuild public trust in the agency. But several senators questioned how she might handle pressure from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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Jul 15 • 5:32 PM EDT • Science • latimes.com
CDC nominee says she won't betray science — and also backs Kennedy's actions

Dr. Erica Schwartz told the Senate health committee she "will never betray the science” and pledged to use “radical transparency” in a bid to rebuild public trust in the Centers for Disease Control.

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Jul 15 • 3:32 PM EDT • Science • scrippsnews.com
See more images of unidentifiable Tom Cruise as his ‘Digger’ character

Tom Cruise graced the cover of TIME Magazine (kind of) to share a closer look at his radical transformation in ‘Digger.’

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Jul 15 • 3:01 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Sean Hannity: This is a political movement that has ‘lost their minds’

Fox News host Sean Hannity discusses former MSNBC host Joy Reid's criticism of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham and the 'radical' agenda pushed by far-left Democrats on 'Hannity.'

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Jul 14 • 9:49 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
The Quintessential Trump-era Politician

In 2020, I wrote an article about collaboration and collaborators. The title was History Will Judge the Complicit, and it started with the story of two famous East Germans, Markus Wolf and Wolfgang Leonhard, who both landed in East Berlin just after the end of the war. Although they came from very similar backgrounds, the former stuck with the regime, eventually becoming its spy boss; the latter, horrified by the brutal reality of Soviet-style communism, escaped. By way of juxtaposition, I also wrote about Lyndsey Graham and Mitt Romney. These two men also made very different decisions when confronted by Donald Trump’s assault on the ideals that they had both grown up believing: A glance at their biographies would not have led many to predict what happened next. On paper, Graham would have seemed, in 2016, like the man with deeper ties to the military, to the rule of law, and to an old-fashioned idea of American patriotism and American responsibility in the world. Romney, by contrast, with his shifts between the center and the right, with his multiple careers in business and politics, would have seemed less deeply attached to those same old-fashioned patriotic ideals. Most of us register soldiers as loyal patriots, and management consultants as self-interested. We assume people from small towns in South Carolina are more likely to resist political pressure than people who have lived in many places. Intuitively, we think that loyalty to a particular place implies loyalty to a set of values. But in this case the clichés were wrong. It was Graham who made excuses for Trump’s abuse of power. It was Graham—a JAG Corps lawyer—who downplayed the evidence that the president had attempted to manipulate foreign courts and blackmail a foreign leader into launching a phony investigation into a political rival. It was Graham who abandoned his own stated support for bipartisanship and instead pushed for a hyperpartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. It was Graham who played golf with Trump, who made excuses for him on television, who supported the president even as he slowly destroyed the American alliances—with Europeans, with the Kurds—that Graham had defended all his life. By contrast, it was Romney who, in February, became the only Republican senator to break ranks with his colleagues, voting to impeach the president. “Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office,” he said, is “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.” In the wake of Graham’s unexpected death on Saturday, I wrote about him again. He was, in many ways, the quintessential politician of Trump’s Washington, a man who shifted 180 degrees. Graham had been a fervent American patriot, proud reserve officer and military lawyer; he became one of the most important defenders of a president who believes soldiers are “suckers and losers” and shows no respect for law of any kind. As his politics changed, his language grew coarser and his behavior grew worse: He urged Israel to “level the place” in Gaza, and insulted the Danish prime minister in Munich, prompting a colleague, Senator Elissa Slotkin, to issue an apology. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which you can read in The Atlantic (gift link here) Like his close friend John McCain, Graham believed that America should stand at the center of a broad democratic alliance. The few times I met him were in that context, at the Munich Security Conference or at other European-American gatherings, which he once attended with great regularity. He also took seriously the practice of American democracy at home. In a 2014 conversation with The Atlantic, he described himself as a pragmatic politician who eschewed populist slogans. “I know Washington is broken, but what’s broken about it is everybody yelling and nobody trying to fix it,” he said. “I’m trying.” When Donald Trump first appeared in U.S. politics, Graham recognized him immediately for what he was: the spokesman for an alien ideology, one radically different from the idealistic patriotism that Graham had practiced and preached since childhood. Trump privately mocked the military that Graham loved as nothing but “suckers and losers.” He put falsehoods, cynicism, and personal greed at the center of his politics, while expressing disdain for transparency, accountability, and democracy itself. In 2015, Graham described Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who should “go to hell.” Also as a “nutjob.” When Trump won, Graham understood, as did so many others, that he would have to make some important choices. For a while, he went silent. In the spring of 2016, I saw him at one of those conferences in Europe. He seemed too depressed to speak. But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. As I wrote in 2020, it’s very hard to look in to anyone’s heart and to understand their motivations from the outside. But it does seem that Graham had a deep need to be relevant, to be in the game, to be a player, at any cost. And that, rather than any particular achievement, is what he will be remembered for. Continuing to monitor conflicts of interest, ostentatious emoluments, outright corruption and policy changes that will facilitate outright corruption. (Read my original article, Kleptocracy Inc and check out the SNF Agora Institute chart) June 27 Trump diverted funds from more than 900 projects nationwide—including safety upgrades at national parks—to finance beautification projects around Washington, including $700,000 used to fix a White House walkway. June 28 After a years-long Department of Justice investigation into Abbott Laboratories over its management of a baby formula facility where potentially deadly bacteria turned up enough evidence to criminally charge the firm, top department officials instead opted for a financial penalty—illustrating the department’s move away from strict corporate enforcement under the Trump administration. June 29 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stacked the Defense Policy Board—which is charged with providing independent national security recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense—with Trump allies, including tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, who has invested in defense contractors like OpenAI and SpaceX, after purging the panel last year. Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in Axon—which makes about 90% of US tasers—two weeks before ICE solicited bids for a $220 million taser contract. The White House unveiled limited-edition US passports for America’s 250th birthday, featuring a portrait of Trump overlaid on the Declaration of Independence. June 30 Trump made around $1.2 billion from his various crypto companies last year, including more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial and $600 million from sales of his meme coin. Trump is considering issuing 250 pardons to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. These are expected to be largely doled out through the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s informal network of intermediaries. White-collar defense attorneys say they can typically win pardons for clients for $2 million. Last year, Trump administration officials awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million to Clark Construction for the White House ballroom—negotiations in which the president was directly involved. July 1 The Amazon MGM Studios documentary about Melania Trump earned the First Lady more than $10 million. Trump made hundreds of individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million the day before his announcement pausing “Liberation Day” tariffs for 90 days sent the S&P 500 soaring nearly 10%—one of the largest single-day gains ever. Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Doral saw record surges in revenue during Trump’s first year in office, earning $77.5 million and $121.9 million respectively, compared to average annual revenues of $25 million and $75 million during Trump’s first term. Entities across the Persian Gulf paid more than $300 million to Trump’s businesses last year, including $263 million from the sale of half his stake in World Liberty Financial to a firm backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a top UAE royal and brother of the country’s president. Kash Patel failed to properly disclose his stock purchase of a Department of Justice contractor, MicroStrategy, worth up to $250,000 last year, despite laws requiring disclosure within 45 days of the trade. July 2 Trump has been directing administration officials to steer more government contracts—so far worth more than $2.4 billion—to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin aerospace firm, after Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, donated to the White House ballroom project, and reached a $40 million deal to license a Melania Trump documentary. Alongside the billions he made from cryptocurrency last year, Trump earned millions of dollars from real estate licensing fees, including $21 million from organizations in the UAE and $9.2 million in Saudi Arabia, along with smaller sums from merchandise sales, including $4.7 million from Trump Watches and $35,920 from 45 Guitar, a guitar brand endorsed by the president. House Democrats accused consultants tied to the Trump administration of financial fraud, alleging they gave prospective donors to America250—the bipartisan committee created by Congress to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial—the banking and routing numbers for Freedom 250, the White House’s fund for events like the UFC cage fight. Democrats also allege that Freedom 250’s CEO traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos to solicit donations from foreign government officials and business leaders. The Trump administration’s proposed rollback of gun regulations would lift the prohibition on mailing handguns to individuals, a significant win for GrabAGun—the direct-to-consumer firearm retailer on whose board Donald Trump Jr. sits and in which he holds a 1.1% ownership stake. GrabAGun currently must rely on a middleman to transfer firearms to customers. Trump’s financial disclosure revealed that he made more than 21,000 securities trades during his first year back in office, growing his investment account to at least $858 million across stakes in around 1,600 companies, compared to the 13 total trades Joe Biden made during his entire presidency. July 4 Nearly 1 million people who bought the president’s meme coin—Trump Coin—collectively lost $3.8 billion on the token, while he walked away with $636 million. July 6 Shares of Dell closed up 4.4% after Trump recommended people buy the firm’s computers during a speech announcing the launch of Trump investment accounts for children, boosting the more than $1 million worth of shares the president owns in the company. July 9 Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh named crypto investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen to a task force aimed at modernizing the Federal Reserve, including rethinking its approach to inflation—a key factor keeping interest rates elevated. Palm Beach International Airport has officially changed its name to Trump International Airport—a move that will require Florida to pay royalties to the president’s family for licensing his name. I was there a few months ago, during a trip to Barcelona. The sculptures were a revelation, I’d never seen so many together before. Each one has its own personality. Enjoy the good weather, if you are lucky enough to have it. History Will Judge the Complicit The Quintessential Politician Autocracy Inc Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

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Jul 13 • 4:19 PM EDT • Politics • anneapplebaum.substack.com
The new* Home Run Derby, plus Pulisic’s future

The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Watch your swings today. Coming up: ⚾ Vintage HR Derby 🎾 Sinner’s silky serve 🇺🇸 Pulisic’s future The Home Run Derby returns tonight from Philadelphia, where All-Star festivities are happening this week. It will be a radically different experience than what we’ve seen in recent memory. But that doesn’t mean it’s new. Quick catch-up before we get to opinions: Instead of outs, hitters will get a limited number...

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Jul 13 • 6:11 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
Socialists launch radical platform to abolish the US Senate in bid to fundamentally transform America

The Democratic Socialists of America plans to unveil a platform eliminating the Senate and replacing the president with an executive chosen by Congress.

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Jul 9 • 8:42 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
David I. Backer on the Hidden Politics of School Finance | Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.

The author of As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Public Schools talks about why we must begin to look at the dismantling of public education not just from a cultural and racial standpoint but from an economic standpoint to truly understand the innerworkings of school financing.

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Jul 9 • 5:23 AM EDT • Politics • nonprofitquarterly.org
The Geopolitical Significance of the Turkey-Azerbaijan Energy Alliance

The radical disruptions in Europe’s energy supply chains have elevated Turkey’s role in global energy security to an existential level.

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Jul 7 • 3:37 AM EDT • Politics • politicstoday.org
White House Blasts Smithsonian History Exhibits For 'Radical' Activism

A new Trump administration report singles out references to 'Hamilton,' drag queens and Mickey Mouse.

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Jul 6 • 11:21 AM EDT • Entertainment • deadline.com
White House report accuses Smithsonian leadership of radical ideology

The White House has accused Smithsonian Institution leadership of adopting a divisive ideological framework that erases American heritage.

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Jul 5 • 6:21 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
White House report brands Smithsonian leadership as radical activists who can't be trusted

The report released late on Independence Day by the White House Domestic Policy Council comes in the midst of Trump’s aggressive campaign to overhaul some of Washington's most sacred cultural and historic institutions.

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Jul 5 • 6:21 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
White House report brands Smithsonian leadership as radical activists who can’t be trusted

A White House report brands the leadership of the Smithsonian Institution, especially at the National Museum of American History, as radical activists who cannot be trusted.

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Jul 5 • 1:50 PM EDT • Entertainment • seattletimes.com
SBA administrator says small businesses are the American Dream

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler joins ‘Fox & Friends’ to discusses how small businesses embody the American Dream. She also highlights the transformative power of enterprise while warning against radical socialist agendas.

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Jul 4 • 10:33 AM EDT • Business • foxnews.com
SBA administrator says small businesses are the American Dream

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler joins ‘Fox & Friends’ to discusses how small businesses embody the American Dream. She also highlights the transformative power of enterprise while warning against radical socialist agendas.

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Jul 4 • 10:11 AM EDT • Business • foxnews.com
Social media erupts over socialist's 9/11 comments after House primary win: 'Radical lunatic'

Melat Kiros sparked backlash after her Democratic primary win over claims the U.S. made the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center inevitable.

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Jul 2 • 8:55 AM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
Communism isn't taking over the US, despite what GOP says

The idea that some overhyped radical left is about to take over the nation is laughably false.

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Jul 1 • 4:04 AM EDT • Politics • usatoday.com
Calls for Radical Reinvention of the Tour de France amid Concerns for Rider Health

New Tour race times and new dates are being argued for over fears of heat-related risks.

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Jun 27 • 7:21 PM EDT • Health • velo.outsideonline.com
Giant Fire Tornadoes Could Help Clean Oil Spills, Scientists Say

A radical solution.

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Jun 27 • 3:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com
J.D. Vance is heir to a more radical politics than Trumpism

…if, of course, he believes what he’s saying

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Jun 25 • 8:58 AM EDT • Politics • economist.com
The universe may be hiding conscious minds stranger than we can imagine

What if consciousness isn’t limited to brains like ours? Philosophers Eric Schwitzgebel and Jeremy Pober argue that consciousness could arise in many different forms of life, even in beings built from radically different materials than those found on Earth. Drawing on the vastness of the universe and the likely existence of countless alien civilizations, they suggest it would be surprisingly Earth-centric to assume that only Earth-like biology can support conscious experience.

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Jun 24 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
How menopause radically changes the brain

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

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Jun 22 • 11:00 AM EDT • Health • newscientist.com
Burnham's Britain: six days in the place that just changed our politics

Andy Burnham is closing in on Downing Street after a big win in the Makerfield byelection. John Harris and John Domokos take a deep dive into a place where people's lives back up Burnham's insistence that we're living in an economy and society that need radical change – but they also find an infectious spirit of optimism

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Jun 20 • 7:53 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
Readers react to Calla Walsh radical path

Plus, readers embrace the idea of letting their lawns go to help the birds and the bees.

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Jun 19 • 9:21 AM EDT • Politics • bostonglobe.com
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Amazon Bets APAC Future on Building the "Entertainment Hub"

At Asia's leading media conference, held this week in Bali, Amazon regional entertainment leaders touted its radical localization strategies, 600-plus distribution partners, and the new ad-supported tier in India built on Amazon MX Player.

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Jun 18 • 3:11 AM EDT • Entertainment • hollywoodreporter.com
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You won't be able to buy iPhone 19 as Apple reportedly plans jump to iPhone 20 next year

To celebrate 20 years of iPhone, Apple plans a radical design change for 2027.

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Jun 17 • 2:59 PM EDT • Technology • phonearena.com
Scientists just found a hidden weakness in forever chemicals

Researchers discovered that hydrogen radicals generated by intense UV light can break down stubborn PFAS “forever chemicals” without added chemicals. The breakthrough reveals a key mechanism that could lead to greener and more effective technologies for permanently destroying these pollutants.

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Jun 15 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
How Iran's 'Stolen Revolution' failed to live up to its promise

Many supporters of Iran's revolution believed some form of democracy should govern the country. But over the decades, the Islamic Republic's radical religious rulers have launched brutal crackdowns on social justice and political freedom. Compass Points moderator Nick Schifrin discusses how the 1979 revolution failed to live up to its promise with Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin.

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Jun 12 • 7:30 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
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Asking Eric: Why did my friend lie to me about her political beliefs?

A friendship is questioned after the letter writer finds out their friend follows thousands of radical organizations on Instagram.

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Jun 12 • 12:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
I'm 40 and looking forward to being 80

Megan Walton, 40, has been the CEO of a large senior services organization for seven years. The job has radically changed her attitude toward aging.

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Jun 11 • 8:27 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Xbox exploring ‘radically different’ console business models

Microsoft is re-evaluating its plans for Project Helix and considering new ways to lower Xbox console costs.

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Jun 10 • 7:04 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
Xbox exploring ‘radically different’ console business models

Microsoft is re-evaluating its plans for Project Helix and considering new ways to lower Xbox console costs.

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Jun 10 • 7:04 AM EDT • Business • theverge.com
Xbox Boss Says a Mass Audience Can't Afford 'Thousands of Dollars' to Spend on a Next-Gen Console, So Microsoft Must 'Look at New Business Models'

The spiralling cost of new and existing consoles will require "radically different business models" over the coming generation, Xbox boss Asha Sharma has said.

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Jun 10 • 6:37 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma teases "radically different business models", hints at potentially cheaper console to arrive this year

Xbox's newly-appointed CEO has hinted at what could be a major shakeup to the console model business that could help it navigate the RAM apocalypse

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Jun 10 • 6:12 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
'We'll Start To See Radically Different Business Models' - Xbox Boss Talks Future Of Consoles

She says mass audiences can't afford thousands on a console generation

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Jun 9 • 7:00 PM EDT • Technology • purexbox.com
Sen Collins slams Bernie-backed Graham Platner as too far-left for Maine voters

Sen. Susan Collins calls Democratic challenger Graham Platner too extreme for Maine voters, while Platner charges Collins is the "radical" candidate.

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Jun 9 • 10:56 AM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
The “Lobe Rangers” are fighting to make farming in Iowa more sustainable

“From my perspective, it’s not radical. It’s common sense.”

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Jun 9 • 7:30 AM EDT • Politics • motherjones.com
The commodification of identity politics

Opinions editor Jennifer Levine traces how radical ideas of selfhood evolve to deepen divisions and isolate consumers rather than effect meaningful change.

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Jun 8 • 12:56 AM EDT • Politics • stanforddaily.com
Huge Psilocybin Dose Has Incredible Effect on Elderly Dementia Patient

A radical new treatment may be emerging.

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Jun 7 • 2:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science

With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • iai.tv
Caesars Entertainment's Pomeranian Gives Guide to Causing Trouble on Las Vegas Strip

Little Black Book, Directed by Dave Meyers, the Fellow Kids campaign showcases Caesars Entertainment and Lisa Vanderpump's first-ever hotel, The Vanderpump Hotel

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Jun 1 • 8:22 AM EDT • Entertainment • lbbonline.com
With the Protect College Sports bill finally in hand, SEC leaders are discussing contingencies

As a bipartisan Senate bill to regulate college athletics gains traction, the SEC is already plotting its own radical roster-building workarounds

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May 27 • 10:21 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
The Texas Senate candidates have two radically different visions of Christianity

A religious fight is brewing in the Lone Star state.

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May 27 • 7:15 PM EDT • Politics • vox.com
Alleged iPhone XX renders reveal first look at all-screen iPhone X successor; major design changes tipped

Apple’s highly anticipated 2027 anniversary iPhone, referred to as the iPhone XX (or iPhone 20) is rumored to feature a radical quad-curved display and next-gen under-display Face ID technology. Emerging reports from the supply chain suggest a total design overhaul, including potential capacitive buttons and improved HDR image sensors, as Apple prepares to celebrate two decades of the iPhone.

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May 23 • 8:51 PM EDT • Technology • notebookcheck.net
Scientists “recharge” damaged nerves to ease chronic pain

For millions battling chronic nerve pain, even the softest touch can feel agonizing — but scientists may have uncovered a radically new way to stop it at the source. Researchers at Duke University found that damaged nerves can be revived by supplying them with healthy mitochondria, the tiny energy producers inside cells.

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May 23 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Next year’s iPhone Pro models to get radical new design, per leaker

New leaks corroborate a prior report that next year’s iPhone 19 Pro models will feature a radical new design for iPhone’s 20th anniversary.

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May 21 • 9:54 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
The NAACP Is Proposing a Radical Shift to College Sports. Will It Work?

A bold plan to stem the gerrymandering push will require collective sacrifice.

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May 21 • 8:30 AM EDT • Sports • theatlantic.com
Jeff Bezos Defends Melania Movie, Says It Was Good Business

The Amazon founder reiterated that he had nothing to do with the documentary film, but said that its performance justified the cost. He also defended the radical changes made at The Washington Post.

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May 20 • 11:14 AM EDT • Business • hollywoodreporter.com
UEFA announce new European Qualifiers and Nations League format

UEFA have announced radical changes to the format of the Nations League and qualifying for the European Championship, following the Champions League system.The final details have not yet been confirme...

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May 20 • 11:10 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Photoinduced radical emission from flexible organic crystals

Light: Science & Applications - Photoinduced radical doping strategy enables blue luminescence and elastic bending (>180°) in organic crystals. Confined oxygen radicals and dynamic...

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May 18 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • nature.com
Pomegranate vs. Grapefruit: Which Is Better for Antioxidants and Overall Health?

When it comes to antioxidant capacity, studies show that grapefruit has higher free radical-neutralizing power. However, pomegranate also provides powerful antioxidants.

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May 18 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • health.com
The radicalization of the left and the Democrats is 'the big political story': Michael Shellenberger

Public News founder Michael Shellenberger discusses the radicalization of the Democratic Party and more on 'One Nation.'

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May 17 • 11:10 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
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Chartbook 449: Voldemort on Threadneedle street. The Bank of England and the "haunted house" of English politics.

Imagine the scene: In some Harry Potter version of 21st-century London, a group of deathless UK Treasury officials gathered from across the last century huddle over warm pints and glasses of Chardonnay. Around the table there are officials from the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1970s, 2022 and today. Inevitably, in May 2026, the subject of conversation is the disintegration of the current Labour government. Despite its huge majority in parliament, it has been reduced to tatters by catastrophic local election result. These exposed the fact that rather than having a government with a clear popular majority, the UK is like most other modern societies divided into 5 segments each of which commands between 26 and 16 percent of the vote. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the leadership at Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street - where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (Treasury Secretary) work - seem paralyzed. They are caught between mounting discontent over unfairness and the cost of living, and tough fiscal strictures that push them into making unpopular spending decisions. In the London pub, the Treasury officials from across the ages, can barely hide their satisfaction at the latest display of democratic politics caught in the vice-grip of financial logic. “Remember the mur d’argent and the banker’s ramp?” “Just like yesterday!” There are smirks around the table. Then the representative of 2026 pipes up: “One thing you have to say about the current lot (referring to the latest hapless Labour government), you don’t have to teach them about the bond market!” There is a murmur of ascent from the Treasury Mandarins. The trauma of the fiscal crisis of September-October 2022 sits deep. Back then, in the final stages of Tory decay, a ‘mini budget’ that challenged fiscal orthodoxy led to a brief but fierce panic in one of the oldest government bond markets in the world (aka gilt market). Now all you have to do is to mention the “bond market” to hush debate. [ Paul Mason@paulmasonnews In the name of public service, and as ex-economics editor of BBC Newsnight, I offer to do a zoom call, tonight, with any Labour MP who wants to understand why bond markets do not "fall into line" with governments. 1/ 3:57 PM · May 12, 2026 · 466K Views 224 Replies · 674 Reposts · 3.93K Likes ](https://x.com/paulmasonnews/status/2054229532404519082?s=20) “And the funny thing is”, the young man in the huddle continues, “they don’t even want to talk about … ”. There is a sudden hush. Significant looks are exchanged around the table. About? One of the senior figures puts down his glass with a decisive “clink”. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has entered their thoughts. Meanwhile, a few miles away in a grubby pub in Bloomsbury, two conspirators from the camp of Critical Macrofinance huddle over cans of low-alcohol IPA. They look at each other and blurt out loud: “The Bank!” “Everyone in the bloody Labour party is talking about the bond market. But why aren’t they even mentioning … the Bank of England!?” “Why is no one talking about Voldemort?” In Paul Mason’s blogpost, after much chest-thumping about basic fiscal logic, the basic point about the Bank of England is buried in the fine print at #3 in his list of suggestions as to what a radical Labour government might actually be able to do! [ Conflict & Democracy Down with the bond market! Down with gravity! It may seem unfair to focus on Labour MP Paula Barker for her off-the-cuff assertion that the bond market would have to “fall in line” with Andy Burnham, should he replace Keir Starmer as prime minister. But Burnham himself told the New Statesman that Labour had to “get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets… Read more 2 days ago · 100 likes · 3 comments · Paul Mason ](https://htsf.substack.com/p/down-with-the-bond-market-down-with?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) Back in Bloomsbury they shake their heads and ask: “Didn’t we learn anything from the Eurozone crisis?” Meanwhile, as if summoned to the conversation by some higher force, the “pink pages” announce: “The days of ultra-cheap government borrowing have come to an end” and Martin “Whizzard” Wolf publishes the graph of the season Look at the UK in 2026, perilously positioned on the upper edge of the pack. No wonder no one in London needs any lessons about the “bond market”. But, look again. Imagine how they feel in Rome. What is London’s nightmare in 2026? The nightmare is that you end up like Italy in the early 2010s during the Eurozone crisis. Once comfortably situated in the middle of the pack, watching with horror as your ten-year yields explode to 7 percent and “spreads” become a national nightmare. One of the largest economies in Europe, a founding member of the euro, stigmatized. But the message of the Italian experience is ambiguous. After all, the stigma didn’t last. In 2026, Italy borrows at rates lower not only than the UK but the US. The US, which, as everyone knows, enjoys the “exorbitant privilege” of being the issuer of reserve, safe asets. What kind of magic is this? How did Italy, in the space of fifteen years, go from being good, to bad and back again? Which brings us back to our dissident friends in their Bloombury boozer and their memories of the Eurozone crisis. Italy never was Britain - with its ongoing fiscal deficits. Without interest payments, on primary balance, from 2000 to 2020 Italy ran a tight fiscal ship. Even in 2008 it barely went into deficit and when it was being put on the rack in the early 20210s its primary surplus matched that of austere Germany. So, what happened? How did it end up stigmatized? Of course Italian politics didn’t help. Berlusconi was at the helm and he had legal issues. But amongst friends in the Bloomsbury pub, Berlusconi is a sideshow, the name we whisper to each other is “Trichet”. From 2004 to 2011 the ECB was headed by Jean-Claude Trichet, ex of the French Treasury, more German than the Germans. After 2009 as the news of the Greek fiscal disaster broke, the European bond markets wento into panic mode and Trichet began a brutal game of cat and mouse. Between 2009 and 2011, Trichet intervened in the bond market to help, only when he thought he had compliance with austerity. When he thought they were uncooperative, he withdrew. In the summer of 2011, he even made direct suggestions to his Italian counterparts in Rome, as to how Italy should be governed. It was this cat and mouse game that drove the bond markets crazy and exposed Italy to a violent squeeze. When Mario Draghi took over the ECB at the end of 2011 and declared “whatever it takes”, the pressure on Italy, gradually eased. It is that starring role that has made Draghi into the towering figure in European politics that he remains today. So now you see why voices in London hush when it comes to the Bank of England. “The bond market” isn’t an irresistible objective force like the weather or an avalanche. It can appear like that. But that depends on the way it is being handled, or not handled by the central bank. Which is why the silence about the Bank of England in London right now is so significant. If you think this all sounds a bit fishy, coming from a left-liberal Keynesian like myself, well, let me introduce you to Robin Brooks, who, to put it mildly, plays on a different quidditch team to me. Here, from the position of a fiscal hawk is Robin’s celebratory account of the Bank of England’s role since 2022; In October 2022, at the height of the bond market blow-up in the UK, something incredible happened. Governor Andrew Bailey told British pension funds the Bank of England would end its support program for the country’s fragile gilt market, drawing a line under how much help the central bank was willing to give to exposed pension funds and - implicitly - the government. By the end of that week, Kwasi Kwarteng - the finance minister - had resigned. Prime Minister Liz Truss would soon follow. This episode is so incredible because it contrasts with what happened in the Euro zone earlier that year. Bond markets in Spain and Italy were under pressure amid high inflation and rising interest rates. In the middle of this, Mario Draghi - Italy’s Prime Minister - resigned, compounding pressure on bond markets of high-debt countries on the Euro periphery. Unlike the Bank of England, the ECB caved. It bought Italian and Spanish government bonds in an effort to cap yields and introduced a new tool that signaled to markets it might do such caps more frequently going forward. Faced with pressure on bond markets, the ECB capitulated to political pressure from high-debt countries like Italy and Spain. The Bank of England stood its ground and toppled the Truss government. This kind of thing has long-lasting consequences. It means markets price a higher probability of yield caps in the Euro zone, which keeps Italian and Spanish yields artificially low, while markets feel free to push up UK yields without fear of central bank intervention. As I flagged in yesterday’s post, this means you really can’t compare UK yields to those of other high-debt countries. The UK looks worse, but only because its central bank isn’t interfering with markets. There’s more to this than just that 2022 episode. The Bank of England has also been much more aggressive in its quantitative tightening (QT) than other central banks. If one motivation for quantitative easing (QE) is to lower bond yields - especially longer-dated ones - then it stands to reason QT pushes yields up. The left chart above shows a four-quarter moving average of UK government debt issuance (black line) in percent of GDP and which sectors absorb this issuance, including the Bank of England (blue bars). The right chart above compares the Bank of England’s accumulation or run-off of government bonds (blue line) with that of other central banks, where this blue line is the same as the blue bars in the left chart. The Bank of England was quicker and more aggressive than other central banks in downsizing its bond holdings, so UK yields will have risen more than elsewhere also for this reason, not just because of Governor Andrew Bailey’s remarks in October 2022. Back in October 2025, after a conversation in New York with friends in British politics, my sense of dysphoria was such that I raised the issue of the Bank of England openly in the FT Since 2008, the UK has slid into a deep economic and political predicament. Growth has stagnated to a degree far worse even than in the 1970s. The Tory leadership’s wager on the Brexit referendum spectacularly backfired, leaving the UK isolated from Europe and at the mercy of its special relationship with the US, many of whose political class regard the UK as a basket case. After years of austerity, the Labour party lurched to the left and then back to the centre. The Tory party has been eclipsed by the populist nationalism of Reform. Any British government should be worrying first and foremost about how to restart growth. Instead, Keir Starmer is beset by shades of the gilt market panic triggered by the Liz Truss government in 2022. The debt level is higher than in recent years, but there is no cause for panic. UK debt is at far from critical levels and of long duration. Whether you want to “take back control” or launch progressive economic policy, a democracy dogged by fear of bond market vigilantes is unhealthy. In a country that is a monetary sovereign, this climate points to one thing: a disconnect between the government and the central bank. Since 1997, the independence of the Bank of England has become a sacred cow. But independence is what you make of it. And in the wake of the gilt market crisis of September 2022, relations between the Bank of England and the UK government need a reset. In normal times, there is no doubt that an inflation-targeting independent central bank can serve a country well. But since 2008, the UK and other advanced economies have not had the luxury of such simple problems. To their credit, central bankers around the world have not stood on orthodoxy. After 2008, the US Federal Reserve rescued the global banking system and, through quantitative easing, it stabilised the Treasury market in the face of huge deficits. In Europe, things were trickier. Both the Bank of England under Mervyn King and Jean-Claude Trichet’s European Central Bank played cat and mouse with national governments. This was a high stakes wager that between 2010 and 2012 escalated bond market tension and triggered a disastrous turn to austerity. Shaken by the impact of those shocks, their successors, Mark Carney and Mario Draghi adopted a more protective stance (assuming you were not the government of Greece). Recall that Draghi’s legendary slogan, “Whatever it takes”, was uttered to face down the City of London’s bond vigilantes. In 2015, Draghi launched QE — financial repression by another name. In 2016, Carney used the authority of the Bank of England to stabilise markets following the vote for Brexit, an exemplary demonstration of how central banks can underpin democratic choice, even when those choices are wrong headed. All these were independent central bankers steeped in the best practice of the 1990s, who recognised that historic crises demanded radical action. It was the price surge of 2021-2023 that poisoned the atmosphere. Though the shock came mainly from the supply side, central banks ended up in the dock. Nowhere more so than in the UK. The Bank of England reacted with aggressive normalisation. Faced with a cost of living crisis, the governor called for workers to accept real wage cuts. In early 2022, as gas prices were at record levels and Russia’s army was poised to invade Ukraine, the Bank adopted a stringent programme of quantitative tightening, elevating interest rates. When the Truss government got itself in trouble, the Bank took almost a week to come to the rescue. Rather than enacting a charade of normality, it is time to recognise that in 2025 the UK faces a period of historic transition. To meet this challenge, what is needed is a new concordat with the Bank. This should not ignore inflationary pressures or the long-run trajectory of debt, but should affirm the priority of reviving investment-led growth. One could follow Donald Trump in demanding interest rate cuts. The Bank could shadow the ECB in its commitment to capping Eurozone yields. But the top priority should be to lay the ghost of September 2022. The Bank’s slowing of QT last month was a concession. An immediate and complete end would send the right signal. Such a concordat will not by itself restore sanity to politics, solve the housing problem or rebuild the NHS. But it would help to lift the fear of bond market crisis, which is paralysing the effort by democratic politicians to answer the fundamental questions facing the nation. Now, that call for a new concordat between government and Bank of Englands seems more urgent than ever. The problem is that in October 2025, Starmer still had some authority. Today the government is in tatters. And when you are the “under the harrow” - to echo a phrase of Montagu Norman’s from the 1920s - it is the worst possible time to consider institutional change. To make general arguments at a time of crisis can only seem like special pleading rather than a general argument for long-term change. The same, unfortunately, is also true for the other basic institutional reform that Britain urgently needs i.e. the abolition of the out-dated first past the post electoral system and its replacement by a moderated form of proportional representation. And thirdly - whilst we are saying the quiet parts out loud - Britain needs to reopen the question of EU membership. What the local election results of 2026 show is that this remains a key issue. And what they also show is that there is a clear majority that would favor a return. Until these basic features of Britain’s political economy are addressed the country will carry on its politics as though in a haunted house, governed by governments that lack actual majorities, conjuring up false constraints whilst ignoring the real ones. This one is for DG and MI. I love writing the newsletter. If you enjoy it too and fancy buying me a coffee once a month, you know what to do. Click below! Subscribe

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May 15 • 3:04 AM EDT • Politics • adamtooze.substack.com
Business Confidence Sinks in Peru as Radical Candidate Nears Runoff

Peru’s chaotic presidential election is taking a toll on business sentiment as a radical candidate edges closer to a runoff following a prolonged vote count.

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May 12 • 6:00 AM EDT • Business • bloomberg.com
A Decade After Brexit, British Politics Is Coming Apart

The rise of populism and increasingly radical leftism could be a foretaste of the American political future.

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May 11 • 11:25 AM EDT • Politics • wsj.com
What is a radical? It's the question of M.I.A.'s vexing career

Fans who danced to "Paper Planes" might hardly recognize the conspiracy-touting artist before them today — but in a certain way, she's the same button-pusher as ever.

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May 9 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • npr.org
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🗞️ Scandal in Munich and Parisian ecstasy, Thursday's front pages

The morning breaks over two radically opposing footballing Europes. While in Paris the heroic resistance of Luis Enrique’s men is being celebrated, in Bavaria the feeling is one of absolute outrage ...

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May 7 • 2:47 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Intuit Unveils QuickBooks Workforce, Radically Transforming Human Capital Management for Small and Mid-Market Businesses

All-in-One, AI-Native HCM System Expands on QuickBooks Payroll Services, Which Serves 18 Million U.S. Workers, to Deliver End-to-End…...

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May 6 • 4:30 AM EDT • Business • investors.intuit.com
Fox Business Features SOAR's Radical Affordability

From smartphone degrees to a two-year tuition freeze, Cornerstone University is making national headlines — and rethinking higher education.

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May 5 • 4:43 PM EDT • Business • cornerstone.edu
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Tony Awards 2026: 10 standout performances and shows

Moments that stand out from the 2025-2026 Broadway season include two performances by Laurie Metcalf, a radical reframing of 'Cats' and John Lithgow's towering performance in 'Giant.'

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May 5 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide: The "Passport" Design That Makes Other Folds Look Ancient

Forget everything you know about foldables. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide leaks reveal a radical 4.3mm ultra-thin frame and a 4:3 "Passport" ratio.

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May 3 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • geeky-gadgets.com
Political violence in the social media age

Authorities are trying to look for clues to what radicalized the suspected shooter

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May 1 • 5:27 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumnews1.com
Former FBI agent discusses political violence and radicalization
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Apr 28 • 1:00 PM EDT • Politics • cbsnews.com
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20th Anniversary iPhone's 'Liquid Glass' Display to Make Bezels Vanish

Apple's 20th-anniversary iPhone will use a new type of curved screen technology that more effectively hides the display bezels from the user's line of sight for a purer viewing experience, claims a Chinese leaker. Apple is reportedly planning a radical redesign for the 20th-anniversary iPhone that could feature a display that curves around all four edges of the device.

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Apr 28 • 6:39 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Trump administration fires all members of US National Science Board

Democrats blast latest move by the administration to radically restructure the federal government.

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Apr 28 • 2:56 AM EDT • Science • aljazeera.com
Google’s new gradient icons for Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and other apps are radical redesigns

9to5Google can now report on a complete gradient redesign for Gmail and other Google Workspace apps. So far...

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Apr 26 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
NASCAR’s First Outsider CEO Is Betting on Something Radical: Listening

Steve O’Donnell steps into the top job promising accessibility and collaboration in a sport that hasn’t always embraced either.

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Apr 26 • 7:17 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Leaker details next year’s ‘iPhone 20’ display features

Next year is rumored to bring a radical new 20th anniversary iPhone model. Here’s what the latest leaks say about the ‘iPhone 20’ display.

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Apr 24 • 10:02 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
20th Anniversary iPhone to Feature Custom 'Micro-Curved' OLED Panel

For its 20th-anniversary iPhone, Apple is tapping Samsung to produce a custom micro-curved OLED display that is brighter and thinner than existing panels, according to new supply chain information out of China. Apple is reportedly considering a radical redesign for the 20th-anniversary iPhone that could feature a completely bezel-less display that curves around all four edges of the device.

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Apr 24 • 6:34 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Analysis: Fans have turned on Rosenior

It marked radical new low point in a bleak run of five consecutive league defeats without a goal for Chelsea - their worst such sequence in more than a century and one that few supporters have witnessed in their lifetime. Given the club's success over the past 25 years, it is perhaps understandable that patience is thin for a head coach appointed just three months ago from Chelsea's partner club, Strasbourg. There were early signs that the night might not unfold as Rosenior had hoped.

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Apr 21 • 5:56 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Bone-Marrow Transplants: The Radical Cancer Science That Saved My Life

The research on bone-marrow transplantation mirrors the arc of many medical advancements. I was one of the early beneficiaries.

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Apr 19 • 12:00 PM EDT • Science • wsj.com
Allbirds shares surge over 430% as footwear firm trades shoes for AI business

In a radical strategic overhaul, Allbirds is divesting its footwear business while securing $50 million (€42.4 million) in new financing to acquire GPUs and rebrand as NewBird AI.View on euronews

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Apr 15 • 11:07 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com
In His Latest Deranged Rant, Trump Claims the Pope Is Catering to the “Radical Left”

The president is just inches from saying the conclave was rigged, isn’t he?

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Apr 14 • 9:27 AM EDT • Politics • esquire.com
Why college oversight could get more political

The Trump administration is forging ahead in its quest to rid higher education of “radical left” oversight organizations.

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Apr 13 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • politico.com
Radical Rob demonstrates fun science experiments on 'Fox & Friends Weekend'

Mad Science NYC & Westchester's chief mad scientist Rob Diaz demonstrates home experiments with the hosts of 'Fox & Friends Weekend.'

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Apr 11 • 10:56 AM EDT • Science • foxnews.com
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‘It’s solid gold’: Some Texas Republicans ramp up criticisms of Muslims to energize primary voters

Running in a contentious race to keep his seat, US Sen. John Cornyn put out an ad vowing to fight “radical Islam.”

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Apr 11 • 8:57 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
RFK Jr. is launching a podcast to expose ‘lies’ that have made Americans sick

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a new podcast that he says will begin “a new era of radical transparency in government,” according to a teaser video first obtained by The Associated Press.

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Apr 8 • 4:01 PM EDT • Health • cnn.com
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Leonard Leo Is Still Trying to Crush His (Imaginary) Enemies with Disgusting Amounts of Money

The conservative legal activist thinks “radically woke culture” is the problem with America right now—not the climate-destroying oil and gas industry he lavishly supports.

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Apr 7 • 4:08 PM EDT • Politics • esquire.com
Harry Haywood and the Radical Politics of Black Communism

For Haywood, a truly radical working-class politics in the United States also required a program of self-determination.

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Apr 7 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • thenation.com
Scientists Say: Technofossil

Experts predict that the durability of modern, human-made materials will give rise to a radical new form of fossil.

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Apr 6 • 6:30 AM EDT • Science • snexplores.org
AI breakthrough cuts energy use by 100x while boosting accuracy

AI is consuming staggering amounts of energy—already over 10% of U.S. electricity—and the demand is only accelerating. Now, researchers have unveiled a radically more efficient approach that could slash AI energy use by up to 100× while actually improving accuracy. By combining neural networks with human-like symbolic reasoning, their system helps robots think more logically instead of relying on brute-force trial and error.

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Apr 5 • 8:54 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Giants-Mets Series Preview: Good vs. Good enough

The Mets radically reinvented themselves in the offseason while the Giants tinkered. Which strategy will win?

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Apr 2 • 3:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Singapore denies Malaysian scholar entry over political activism

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri urged some in Singapore to "adopt her brand of radical advocacy", authorities say.

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Mar 27 • 2:42 AM EDT • Politics • bbc.com
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The Tacit Politics of Pixar’s Latest Hit, ‘Hoppers’

Hoppers offers a surprisingly radical message for a story about talking animals.

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Mar 26 • 7:05 PM EDT • Politics • theatlantic.com
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Lawmakers Say Political Fears Stand in Way of ICE Deal

Democrats pointed to President Trump’s sway, while Republicans decried Democrats’ ‘radical base.’

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Mar 25 • 5:01 PM EDT • Politics • wsj.com
Samsung reverses big S Pen change for Galaxy S27 Ultra after bold experiment fails

Samsung has backed away from one of its more ambitious S Pen experiments for next year’s Galaxy S27 Ultra, choosing to stick with its long-standing digitizer-based input system after testing a radically thinner alternative. According to ETNews, Samsung had been exploring a new pen technology that could eliminate the digitizer layer inside the display. The […]

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Mar 22 • 10:44 PM EDT • Technology • sammyfans.com
Scientists Propose a Radical New Way To Detect Gravitational Waves Using Atomic Light

A new theoretical study suggests that gravitational waves may leave subtle signatures not in giant detectors, but in the light emitted by atoms.

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Mar 21 • 8:23 PM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com
A private space company has a radical new plan to bag an asteroid

Company has previously tested its technology on the International Space Station.

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Mar 18 • 3:00 PM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com
Your Average Democratic Voter Isn’t a Left Winger

President Donald Trump has a habit of referring to Democrats as “radical-left lunatics.” The unfair pejorative aside, it turns out the typical Democratic voter isn’t even left wing. Let that sink in.

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Mar 17 • 5:30 AM EDT • Politics • bloomberg.com
The Politics of Teyana Taylor’s ‘One Battle After Another’ Character

Teyana Taylor’s character of Perfidia Beverly Hills is the most radical part of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning movie.

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Mar 16 • 11:13 AM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
A “ghost” great white shark just reignited a Mediterranean mystery

A rare encounter with a juvenile great white shark caught by fishermen in April 2023 has reignited scientific interest in the mysterious population of these apex predators in the Mediterranean Sea. By reviewing records spanning more than 160 years, researchers found that great whites still appear sporadically in Spanish Mediterranean waters, suggesting the population—though elusive and declining—has not vanished. The discovery of a young shark raises an intriguing possibility: these legendary predators may still be reproducing in the region.

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Mar 11 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
The next redistricting battle might be who is counted in state legislative districts

A Republican push to alter the census may lead to a radical shift in redistricting for state legislatures — drawing districts that don't take into account children and non-U.S. citizen adults.

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Mar 9 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • npr.org
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'THE STORY OF EVERYTHING' PRESENTS GROUNDBREAKING EVIDENCE THAT HAS REIGNITED THE DEBATE OVER SCIENCE, ORIGINS, AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IN THEATRES NATIONWIDE FROM FATHOM ENTERTAINMENT APRIL 30-MAY 6

A new feature documentary is about to challenge everything you thought science had settled about the origin of the universe—and the existence of God. The Story of Everything arrives in theatres nationwide April 30–May 6 from Fathom Entertainment, the leading specialty distributor of content to theatrical partners worldwide. The Story of Everything will bring to the big screen stunning new evidence from cosmology, physics, and molecular biology that its creators say demands a radical rethinking o

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Mar 4 • 11:00 AM EST • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com