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‘Play On!’ hits all the right notes

The English Renaissance meets the Harlem Renaissance in “Play On!,” a sparkling show that marries a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's “Twelfth Night” with the music of Duke Ellington. Conceived by Sheldon Epps, who also directed the original 1996-97 production (first in San Diego, then on Broadway), the show is getting a marvelous revival under his direction to open Chicago Shakespeare Theater's 40th anniversary season.While the title “Play On!” refers to the famous quote about music being the food of love and thus to the dozens of Ellington songs—among them “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good),” “Solitude” and “I’m Beginning to See the Light”—incorporated into the plot, one of the highlights for me is the clever way Cheryl L. West's book reworks the story. Apparently, it's also been updated for this outing, among other things to give the women more agency. In the big opening number (there's a six-piece, horn-heavy onstage band), aspiring songwriter Vy (Hailee Kaleem Wright) is the one to “Take the 'A' Train” to “Drop Me Off in Harlem.” She wants to meet the famous Duke (Edred Utomi) — Ellington, not Orsino, that is — and she seeks the help of Jester (an engaging James Harkness) to find out how. When Jester tells her in no uncertain terms that the music industry is a man's world, she disguises herself as Vy-Man and persuades the Duke to listen to one of her songs. He's suffering from a creative block because he's pining for Lady Liv (Krystal Joy Brown), queen of the Cotton Club, and convinces Vy-Man to bring the Lady the song as if the Duke had written it, promising to reward her with employment. Vy reluctantly complies, and the predictable complications ensue. Lady Liv is attracted to Vy-Man, while Vy is attracted to the Duke and he to Vy, though it disturbs him because he thinks she's a man. The fallout when the deception comes to light bodes ill—at least for a while.Here's where West's book cannily diverges from Shakespeare. Vy's twin brother Sebastian really is dead, so West devises another love interest for Lady Liv basically by rehabilitating the Malvolio character, here named Rev (Alan H. Green), the Lady's uptight, self-important manager. His unrequited love for her is magically transformed after he gets his comeuppance (minus the torture) from Miss Mary (Alanna Lovely), her honey Sweets (James Earl Jones II) and Jester, the stand-in for Sir Toby, who has romantic problems of his own with a woman named CC (Kaylah Janssen). In other words, Rev gets the girl — and also a show-stopping yellow zoot suit from costume designer An-Lin Dauber. All the costumes are dandy, though those for the men have more pizzazz than the women's day dresses. The bilevel, slanted scenic design by Beowulf Boritt brings 1930s Harlem to life in a slightly expressionistic way with the help of Adam Honoré's lighting and Ray Nardelli's sound design. Edgar Godineaux's choreography adds to the period feel, though there could be even more of it.Most of all, the leads have splendid voices, and the performances are terrific. Green's Rev and Harkness's Jester get my vote for comedy chops, and Brown's Lady Liv probably will stay with me the longest for her complexity and big blues number, “I Ain't Got Nothin' But the Blues.”

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Oct 12 • 3:30 PM EDT • Entertainment • hpherald.com
‘VisionQuest’ review: ‘WandaVision’ sequel an excellent examination of humanity

“VisionQuest,” the final part of the MCU’s “WandaVision” trilogy premiering Wednesday, is the best MCU show since “WandaVision,” writes our reviewer.

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Oct 12 • 3:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
Nivea shares health update, announces new music on ‘The Tamron Hall Show’

Singer and songwriter Nivea shared an update on her health during a recent appearance on The Tamron Hall Show. Earlier this year, she revealed on the YouTube series The Cadillac Chronicles that she had been diagnosed with leukemia and is now in remission. During her Oct. 7 interview with Hall, Nivea announced she is preparing […]

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Oct 12 • 2:15 PM EDT • Entertainment • stlamerican.com
Name-calling politics birthed ‘Oxford County bear’ symbol

A writer tried to insult Maine farmers, and Democrats in the 19th century took the symbol for their own.

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Oct 12 • 12:11 PM EDT • Politics • sunjournal.com
Lyndonville Songwriter Benjii Plays St. Johnsbury Athenaeum

ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. — Benjii will bring his music to the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum at 1 p.m. Friday, Oct. 16, as part of its Music in the Gallery series, performing

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Oct 12 • 10:14 AM EDT • Entertainment • northstarmonthly.com
Study Rewrites Cattle Pregnancy Science

A new LMU study found cattle embryos can establish pregnancy without interferon tau, opening new research paths to improve livestock fertility.

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Oct 12 • 8:06 AM EDT • Science • m.farms.com
'Charlton's lack of penetration holds them back'

Fan writer Paul Sullivan assesses Charlton's need to improve in attack after their winless run stretches to six games.

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Oct 12 • 7:53 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
The Case for Shifting Mental Health Care From Institutions to Communities

Institutionalized mental health care is “outdated” and “a human rights issue hiding in plain sight,” write Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

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Oct 12 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • time.com
AsiaOne

Holly Madison has thrown her support behind the controversial Playmates movie.The 46-year-old beauty — who was the late Hugh Hefner's 'number one girlfriend' when they were together for seven years in the early 2000s — has shared her support for the film and its writer, Lorraine Nicholson, after the Playboy founder's third wife Crystal Harris recently called on Jessica Biel...

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Oct 12 • 5:04 AM EDT • Entertainment • asiaone.com
OAK Global launches multi-class MGA capacity unit at Lloyd’s

OAK Partnerships will write property, specialty, credit and casualty portfolios through Syndicate 1440 from 2027

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Oct 11 • 11:15 PM EDT • Business • insurancebusinessmag.com
Bickley: Cardinals need Carson Beck on the field

In a 45-21 loss to the Lions on Sunday, the Cardinals continued their trend of bipolar performances, writes Dan Bickley.

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Oct 11 • 7:58 PM EDT • Sports • arizonasports.com
Readers Write: Health care reform, U.S. defense, road funding fight

We need to research and weigh all the trade-offs of reform. Then act.

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Oct 11 • 2:28 PM EDT • Health • startribune.com
Commentary: I opened a primary care practice. Now I see why doctors are giving up.

Traditional health insurance pressures doctors to work at volume, or if they add layers of bureaucracy that independent physicians can't easily handle, writes Dimitri Coupet, who says it's time to consider formalizing a direct payment of care model.

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Oct 11 • 2:23 PM EDT • Health • marylandmatters.org
Voters have many reasons to be upset

The rising costs of fuel, food, and housing are wearing on people, and the labor market isn't helping, economist Joel Naroff writes.

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Oct 11 • 5:45 AM EDT • Business • inquirer.com
Michigan high school football Super 25 rankings after Week 7

Free Press sports writer Jared Ramsey ranks the top 25 teams in the 2026 Michigan high school football season after Week 7.

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Oct 11 • 5:06 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Opinion: Politicians need to be honest about Social Security's insolvency

If politicians don't find a solution to Social Security's insolvency now, one will be forced upon them later, Joseph Stango writes.

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Oct 10 • 10:16 AM EDT • Politics • yahoo.com
It’s the ‘black hole theory’ as Trump hits historic low in WA

President Trump’s poll numbers have sunk so low in WA they form a sort of political “event horizon,” a black hole that can’t be escaped, Danny Westneat writes.

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Oct 10 • 9:00 AM EDT • Politics • seattletimes.com
HASNAIN: The mental health taboo and its many adverse effects

Yet, I write this not to propose some novel solution on finding inner peace and instead hope to push students to capitalize on existing reliable resources.

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Oct 10 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • cavalierdaily.com
Editorial: AI’s risks are no reason for panic

“Nobody knows anything,” the screenwriter William Goldman famously said of the movie business. Much the same can be said today for artificial intelligence, a technology that’s moving fast, destination unknown.

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Oct 10 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • thederrick.com
EAST TEXAS POLITICS: Smith County Clerk Karen Phillips, write-in candidate Terry Morrow discuss race

Smith County Clerk Karen Phillips (R) and write-in candidate Terry Morrow join Blake Holland on this week’s edition of East Texas Politics.

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Oct 9 • 7:52 PM EDT • Politics • kltv.com
EAST TEXAS POLITICS: Smith County Clerk Karen Phillips, write-in candidate Terry Morrow discuss race

Smith County Clerk Karen Phillips (R) and write-in candidate Terry Morrow join Blake Holland on this week’s edition of East Texas Politics on East Texas Now to discuss the race for Smith County Clerk.

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Oct 9 • 7:43 PM EDT • Politics • kltv.com
“The Exorcist ”film, starring Scarlett Johansson, should feel ‘dangerous’: ‘It made me wildly uncomfortable’

“I want this to be a world where God is dead,” writer-director Mike Flanagan tells EW as the new trailer drops.

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Oct 9 • 6:32 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
‘Avatar: Seven Havens’ review: Beloved franchise gets vibrant expansion

The sequel to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and "The Legend of Korra," premiering Friday on Paramount+, is a worthwhile franchise addition, writes our reviewer.

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Oct 9 • 4:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
How Baton Rouge businesses are putting AI to work

Artificial intelligence is moving faster than many businesses anticipated, forcing leaders to continually rethink how their organizations adopt the technology, train employees and improve efficiency. For Baton Rouge companies, the challenge is not simply implementing AI, but finding practical ways to integrate it into everyday operations. As Business Report writes in its Best Places to […]

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Oct 9 • 3:38 PM EDT • Business • businessreport.com
Netflix’s Summer of Bummer

(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.) Today, I’ve got a guest post from longtime friend of the newsletter, Brandon Katz. I’ve been trying to find time all summer to look at Netflix’s straight-to-streaming film slate, but between a pre-planned trip and Nielsen moving up their streaming data timeline, I’ve been swamped. So I reached out to Brandon, one of my favorite fellow analysts, to write about it. And I feel like he captured the tone and data focus of the newsletter perfectly. You can connect with Brandon on LinkedIn and Twitter. Enjoy! Don’t worry, folks. You’re in safe hands with me. To ease any anxieties about an interloper in ESG’s domain, I’ll start by stealing one of his best framing devices: headlines. Box office flops are covered in the same way the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles eye pizza: with cartoonish insatiability. I would know. I’m a former reporter who wrote nearly identical headlines: Yet, intentionally or not, streaming misses get treated with kids gloves, filtered through a rosy lens: In the last six years, U.S. streaming viewership has become nearly as transparent as the box office, but the data often arrives weeks later, in a number of less intuitive metrics, and with nary an official budget to be found. This plays into the Wall Street-whispering narratives major streamers have been cultivating for years. They get a pass in a way that theatrical studios simply don’t. Subscribe Netflix’s Summer Slate Not a single Netflix original film released between May and August this year opened above 20 million U.S. TV hours, per Nielsen. That benchmark usually serves as the EntStrategyGuy’s floor for a streaming hit on Netflix. None of these films enjoyed a hit-cementing single week of 20-plus million hours during their runs. Netflix’s two best films were true crime docs, Maternal Instinct (16.5 million hours) and The Crash (19.7 million), the best overall week for a film this summer. Great for most other streamers, but not necessarily what we’re used to seeing from Netflix. For an overly-dramatic comparison, Happy Gilmore 2 opened last summer to around 47 million hours (celebrity cameos, baby!). Zooming out, the picture looks even worse. In 2026, Netflix’s five biggest scripted summer films posted the lowest average (28.6 million hours) and median (28.8 million hours) eight-week viewership totals of the past four years. Now, it’s unrealistic and unfair to expect Netflix to deliver a _KPop Demon Hunters-_sized hit every year. But it’s also not ideal to see the size of their hits shrinking over the last few summers. Let’s quickly run through some of the notable summer misses. Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein’s perfectly fine romcom, Office Romance, fell off the charts after 20 million hours in its first two weeks. Top films usually last for four-plus weeks. Starry titles ideally don’t decay that fast either. Homegrown star Millie Bobby Brown couldn’t prevent the snappy Enola Holmes franchise from diminishing returns. At 14.3 million U.S. hours, the third film posted roughly half of what the first two films did in their first two weeks. What’s on Netflix calculated that per-day global views were down nearly 60% from the second movie. The Whisper Man did okay with more than 36 million hours over its first four weeks. But I expected a little more juice from a film featuring Robert De Niro, Michelle Monaghan, and Adam Scott. Kevin Hart’s Ladies First collected just 11.2 million hours total across two weeks. That’s a big miss for one of Netflix’s go-to stars. Plopping into the same bucket are Sunny Sandler’s Don’t Say Good Luck (10.3 million in two weeks) and John Cena’s Little Brother (17.5 million). Meanwhile, English-language originals Color Book (June 19), In the Hand of Dante (June 24) and Heartstopper Forever (July 17) never sniffed Nielsen’s Top 10 at all, despite needing only 2 to 5 million hours to land in the top ten most weeks. (By my count, eleven English-language scripted original films released between May and August did chart). It’s only fair to mention that Swapped (1-May) posted nearly 42 million U.S. hours over five weeks (the longest Netflix original run this summer) and is currently their eighth most-watched English-language film ever worldwide. Remarkably Bright Creatures (37 million, 4 weeks) and Voicemails for Isabelle (27 million, 4 weeks) weren’t bombs either. Still, overall, I think it’s fair to say this was a quieter summer season than we’re used to seeing from the market-leader. You might not realize that given the language commonly used in public analysis. The Twist Despite the starkly black-and-white tone of the coverage, here’s the twist: when many box office bombs arrive on streaming, their viewership looks a whole lot like many of Netflix’s supposedly successful summer releases. Hmm, where have we heard that one before? Masters of the Universe topped out at $65 million stateside against a $170 million budget_._ I’ll admit, Skeletor ripping sleeveless curls as a gym bro and bodyslamming Adam’s co-workers was funny. But, much to the chagrin of my bank account, my laughter doesn’t launch franchises. Yet the He-Man reboot opened to 19.6 million hours (from a Wednesday five-day opening instead of just one weekend), on par with Hoppers on Disney+ (19.4 million). It put up nearly 47 million hours over its first six weeks, bigger than all of Netflix’s summer releases. Pretty darn healthy and likely to land among the 25 most-watched movies on streaming this year. Sticking with Amazon, The Sheep Detectives just barely broke even at the box office with $133 million worldwide (and only $66 million domestic). I never expected cloven-hooved, cud-chewing mammals to be able to bring me to tears. Yet that’s exactly how I found myself at the end of this surprisingly affecting movie (#NoShame). It was likely the unexpected quality in a family-friendly film that powered its streaming over-performance. Sheep Detectives delivered a solid run for Prime video netting 26.2 million hours! How about franchise IP? Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu had the lowest opening ($81 million) and lowest-grossing Disney-era live-action Star Wars film ($178 million domestic). One day before release, its Heat score (19.8%)—audiences who list their interest as a 7/7—fell behind blockbusters Wicked (21%), Superman (23%), Fantastic Four: First Steps (23%), Michael (23%), Toy Story 5 (26%) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (27%), according to Greenlight Analytics. The urgent enthusiasm just wasn’t there. On streaming, Mando opened to weeks of 12.1 million, 6.1 million and 2.7 million hours (21 million total) over its first three frames. Not the numbers Lucasfilm was hoping for nor the numbers of a streaming hit. But they’re in the same vicinity as some Netflix summer releases with $345 million at the global box office to offset a smidgen of the pain. Final Thoughts So why oh why does this nuance gap exist? Four key reasons: Data Literacy: A “$100 million opening” just makes sense. After decades of box office reporting, even casual movie fans are well-versed in the benchmarks of hits and home runs. There’s an immediate shorthand. But “16.5 million” hours doesn’t land nearly as cleanly. Despite leaps of progress, the streaming ratings era is still in its infancy compared to theatrical. The EntStrategyGuy and I met thanks to a late 2010s group chat of data nerds hungry to find a shred of certainty in nebulous streaming performance. I’m not surprised to see “No. 1 on Netflix” still getting misconstrued out in the wild. Timing: By Friday morning, we have the box office’s Thursday night previews totaled, allowing us to better project the weekend’s expectations. From there, ticket sales are reported daily. By Sunday, the film’s fate is usually finalized, at least in terms of public perception. In streaming, Nielsen recently improved its delay to…two weeks. The medium isn’t forced to contend with instant gratification as harshly. Financials: Theatrical film budgets are a mere Google away. Profit and loss is calculated in the cold and unforgiving naked light of day for all to see. But finding the vast majority of streaming exclusive movie budgets requires the forensic investigation skills of a Criminal Minds detective. Also, it’s very difficult to calculate how much revenue/value a straight-to-streaming films provides a streamer. This is why there are so few stories about streaming original movies “losing X amount of money”. On top of that, marketing budgets are far greater for theatrical movies than streaming exclusive movies, which leads to earlier and better awareness. This then translates to a wider pool of potential interest. Narrative Control: Netflix is the only major streaming service to publish weekly first-hand viewership data and annual engagement reports. Naturally, some headlines borrow their first-hand framing**.** Other streamers benefit from their comparative lack of transparency. They may occasionally announce vague performance platitudes such as Apple TV’s Mayday becoming its “biggest film debut on the platform to date over its first 18 days,” and that it ranked No. 1 with left-handed viewers in its first weekend. (Fine, I made up that second one). But, for the most part, they keep first-hand viewership shrouded in mystery to avoid bad press. Especially for outlets that demand multiple articles per day from their writers, it’s an easy (and understandable) way for some reporters to hit their daily article quota by just repeating what the streamers have told them. TL:DR version: Streaming-exclusive movies are asked to do different things than theatrical movies, but that doesn’t mean they should escape judgment. Both still need to draw enough eyeballs to justify their cost within the proper performance contexts. The more cleanly we can inject a little nuance into streaming analysis, the better we’ll understand the audience and content trends that drive this industry. And that’s what all of this is really about: knowing what audiences actually want! Brandon Katz is the Director of Insights & Content Strategy at Greenlight Analytics where he focuses on evaluating the ever-fluid media landscape to unearth understanding, opportunity and value. Greenlight Analytics is the entertainment intelligence consulting company redefining how Hollywood finds, understands, and activates audiences. Prior to joining Greenlight Analytics, he served as the senior entertainment industry strategist at Parrot Analytics, and as a full-time entertainment industry reporter covering the Xs and Os of Hollywood, most notably with TheWrap and the Observer.

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Oct 9 • 3:32 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
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Employee development shouldn’t stop at promotion

A promotion is only the beginning. For businesses competing to retain top talent, advancing employees into leadership roles can be a powerful investment, but a new title doesn’t automatically make someone an effective manager. As Business Report writes in its Best Places to Work issue, training, mentorship and ongoing support can help newly promoted employees […]

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Oct 9 • 11:00 AM EDT • Business • businessreport.com
Who Participates in Politics on Social Media, and Why?

People really do learn about politcs on social media says a new study from Belgium, but the loudest voices are often not the most objective, writes Tim Bernard.

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Oct 9 • 10:28 AM EDT • Politics • techpolicy.press
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Aaron Sorkin reveals the tough question he’d ask Mark Zuckerberg if he ever got the chance

‘The Social Reckoning’ writer-director Aaron Sorkin has never spoken to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg despite writing two movies about him. He tells Entertainment Weekly the one question he’d like to ask if he got the chance.

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Oct 9 • 10:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Aaron Sorkin reveals the one thing he’d ask Mark Zuckerberg: ‘There’s a whole other movie in answering the question’

‘The Social Reckoning’ writer-director has never spoken to the billionaire Facebook founder.

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Oct 9 • 10:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Hard Pressed: Alaska Journalists Rewrite the Rules of Survival

The revival of the Anchorage Press as a weekly newspaper defies an industry-wide tide of media outlets going online or out of business.

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Oct 9 • 9:30 AM EDT • Business • akbizmag.com
Skydance's Gerhard Zeiler, Warner Bros President International, Exits

"It is surprisingly difficult to find the right words to say goodbye," the Austrian writes in an internal memo obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. "At the end of next week, I will leave the company."

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Oct 9 • 6:49 AM EDT • Politics • hollywoodreporter.com
World Mental Health Day: a Miami film can help us see through someone else’s eyes

I made the film while studying at Miami Dade College. Choosing to write a film about myself was one of the most vulnerable things I had ever done. | Opinion

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Oct 9 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • miamiherald.com
Why We Must Invest in Scientists, Not Just Science

“It is through patient, painstaking work, driven by curiosity and pursued through personal dedication and sacrifice, that scientific advancement occurs,” writes Nicholas B. Dirks.

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Oct 9 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • time.com
Why We Must Invest in Scientists, Not Just Science

“It is through patient, painstaking work, driven by curiosity and pursued through personal dedication and sacrifice, that scientific advancement occurs,” writes Nicholas B. Dirks.

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Oct 9 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
Your next business might last six months. That can be enough.

"A business can support you between jobs, give you experience or show you that a line of work is not the life you want," writes Tom Lahat, co-founder and CXO of Tailor Brands. "Closing it does not erase that value."

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Oct 9 • 4:40 AM EDT • Business • calcalistech.com
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50 years ago, my colleagues and I pursued basic research science that became revolutionary

“Basic studies led to clinical and translational advances that no one could have predicted,” Robert Gallo writes of his work with interleukin-2.

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Oct 9 • 4:30 AM EDT • Science • statnews.com
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Proposed U.S. census changes could be catastrophic for public health

“Erasing data does not erase need or harm,” writes social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger.

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Oct 9 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com
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Emma Camp wants Gen Z to grow up

'Nobody is coming to save you.' A conversation with the anti-therapy pro-capitalist writer and influencer riding the short form video wave.

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Oct 9 • 4:13 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Music Review: Remi Wolf emerges, dirty but renewed, on 'Mud'

Remi Wolf, the singer-songwriter known for her funk and soul-inspired choruses and danceable beats, comes down to earth on “Mud,” her third album. Wolf settles into new territory on the

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Oct 9 • 12:01 AM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
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Sanibel Island Writers Conference returns this November

During the past decade, as cell phones and tablets made their way into every jacket pocket and onto most bedside tables, you may – fairly – have subscribed to the

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Oct 9 • 12:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • floridaweekly.com
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Zuckerberg's image is in trouble - but Meta's business is booming

A new film paints the Meta founder as a villain. But the tech firm seems immune to bad publicity, writes our North America tech correspondent.

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Oct 8 • 7:14 PM EDT • Business • bbc.com
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Bickley: Pat Murphy can save baseball

If the Brewers eliminate the Dodgers on their way to a pennant, Pat Murphy will detonate the argument for a hard salary cap, Dan Bickley writes.

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Oct 8 • 5:27 PM EDT • Sports • arizonasports.com
‘NAZA’ review: An urgent, unsettling work of journalism and filmmaking

"NAZA" is everything a documentary about the civilian casualties of Israel's military operations in Gaza can and should be, writes our reviewer.

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Oct 8 • 5:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
The Great Healthcare Cost Hike Is Here

"Here’s how the looming healthcare hike will impact insurance costs, wherever you get your coverage," write Neale Mahoney and Abigail Sanchez.

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Oct 8 • 2:59 PM EDT • Health • time.com
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Google Cloud introduces Gemini agent for work as AI race heats up

Alphabet's Google Cloud on Thursday introduced the Gemini agent, a single AI agent for work ​that can answer questions, handle tasks, create content ‌and write code.

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Oct 8 • 11:08 AM EDT • Technology • reuters.com
More older vessels on seas raise underwriting risks

Declining ship demolition rates have pushed the average age of merchant ships on their final voyages to 22 years, increasing pressure on underwriters, according to Ilias P. Tsakiris…

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Oct 8 • 10:10 AM EDT • Business • businessinsurance.com
Stafford, Allen lead Week 5 fantasy football quarterback rankings

Matthew Stafford and Josh Allen lead UPI senior sports writer Alex Butler's Top-20 fantasy football quarterback rankings for Week 5 of 2026.

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Oct 8 • 9:50 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Cuteness Is Political

Conservatives are attracted to baby-like cuteness due to its association with purity, write Chethana Achar and Carolyn Wells Keller.

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Oct 8 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • time.com
L.A.’s comedy mentors teach kids more than how to write jokes

Across Los Angeles, comedy mentors are using stand-up and improv to help young people find their voices, build confidence and connect with others.

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Oct 8 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
As AI Learns to Write, Tuhin Chakrabarty Studies What Humans Stand to Lose

As AI models are able to generate increasingly convincing prose, what began as an experiment—can AI write something that sounds plausibly human?—is becoming a commercial reality, with blog posts, YouTube video scripts and even bestselling novels bearing AI’s fingerprints. But the speed of that shift brings unique challenges, including questions of copyright infringement and an

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Oct 7 • 7:22 PM EDT • Science • news.stonybrook.edu
Readers Write: International Falls Broncos, U.S. healthcare system, Israel, presidential chaos

Regardless of record, a supportive community is a winner.

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Oct 7 • 7:00 PM EDT • Health • startribune.com
Who Won August and September: Original Films or Franchises?

(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.) I just heard someone say that if you’re reading a pundit or data analyst, and they don’t tell you that they got anything wrong, they’re not a pundit but an “influencer”. I agree with that. You have to tell your audience when you get things wrong, or they won’t (or shouldn’t) trust you as much. Today, we’ve got another edition of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. In general, I’m patting myself on the back (and patting very hard) about a few things like IP at the box office, LIV golf, horror films, crowdfunding movies, superheroes, and old people going to the theaters. That said, I also made a couple of data mistakes on the streaming bubble popping and HBO’s datecdotes, so I’m not perfect. But first, I need your feedback... Subscribe Follow-Ups: What Should We Call Mid-Budget Movies Which Aren’t Cinematic Enough for Theaters But Are Too Expensive to Make Money on Streaming? After I asked for feedback on what we should call straight-to-streaming films that are too big to pencil out on streaming but not really big enough to resonate in theaters, I got some great suggestions from you all, including... “Moldilocks” from John Aboud “Little Big Indie” from Travis Frick1 “Midflicks” from Jonathan Funke. “Extra-Medium” from Jona Nwuke. (Read the explanation in the footnote.) Between these and Brandon Katz—who suggested “Bermuda Budget Triangle”, “The Platform Gap” and “The Distribution Deadzone”—we’ve got some excellent suggestions. And they’re better than my suggestion, the “Streaming Budget Dead Zone”, so let’s take a poll! The winning entry becomes the new term. Loading... RIGHT: LIV Golf is Fully Bankrupt…Is Anyone Else Next? A few years ago, I was always a bit perplexed at all the articles I’d read praising LIV Golf and their strategy to disrupt the PGA. LIV Golf, a brand new professional golf league, offered PGA stars ten times what they made on the PGA Tour to join their new league. And folks praised this strategy for its initial “success” in that a lot of big names did indeed leave the PGA. Yeah, of course the players came over. LIV Golf paid them so, so, so much more! But LIV Golf hadn’t discovered a way to increase potential revenue. So think about this in basic business terms… They paid much more in costs… …but had no real way to increase revenue. That’s not a strategy! That’s deficit financing. It won’t work unless you bankrupt the competition (and then turn around and pay those same golfers much, much less). It’s not a sustainable strategy and only lasts as long as the company/person/nation backing it decides they’re cool with losing money. For LIV Golf, that meant Middle East oil wealth, in particular Saudi Arabian money. Clearly, the current Iran War has hurt Middle East finances, so they need to trim their more exorbitant spending. And LIV Golf was part of that trimming. This should be a major warning for others. TGL’s parent company, TMRW Sports, just got a $1 billion valuation, despite TGL’s (the indoor golf league) horrible TV viewership of less than half a million viewers per match. Unrivaled, the women’s basketball league, just secured a $650 valuation, despite its horrible TV viewership and a new rival (Project B) entering the scene next year. To relate this to streaming, Hollywood should ask which streamers may have wealthy patrons funding their losses. (Let’s be clear: Google, Amazon and Apple.) Could those patrons lose their appetite? For Amazon, probably not. But Apple has a new boss, so maybe! WRONG: My Analysis of the Streaming Bubble Was Missing a Week I’m going to be congratulating myself a lot today, but I make mistakes too, like this data goof. When I last compiled the data on the decline in TV shows, I was missing one week at the end of June. If you look at the first image, you can see that one week was mislabelled as “July”. Mainly, this image got updated to show a 27% decline, not 29%: This change doesn’t really impact the overall analysis, but it is two percent better. By the way, through the third quarter, the decline increased and it’s now a 30% decrease since 2022. (I’ll write/visualize this in an upcoming article.) But I want you to trust me and my data. Especially these days, when many people are using LLMs that I know are inserting faulty data into their charts, I want to keep earning my audience’s faith. So that’s the accurate data. RIGHT: IP Remains Very, Very Popular In July, I wrote a giant (and I mean giant) article on Backrooms, Obsession, and the box office, going over what we know, what we don’t know about what works in theaters, looking at YouTubers, IP, the horror genre, comic book movies, and a whole lot more. The month of August really tested a lot of my theses and, being honest, mostly supported my arguments. Let’s start with IP. Looking at 8-Aug (the weekend after Spider-Man: Brand New Day came out) to 18-Sep (the weekend that Resident Evil came out, which I think provides a nice bookend to this time period), there were seven films based on pre-existing IP: Resident Evil (2026) ($126 million) Practical Magic 2 ($65 million) _Insidious: Out of the Furthe_r ($65 million) Coyote Vs. Acme ($59 million) Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie ($53 million) Tony ($15 million) Super Troopers 3 ($7 million) Compare those to the notable original films from the past month—I actually could have included more movies, but here are just thirteen, bringing us to an even twenty films—including.... The End of Oak Street ($54 million) Buddy ($26 million) Mutiny ($15 million) By Any Means ($15 million) The Dog Stars ($14 million) Runner ($14 million) One Night Only ($11 million) Hope ($8 million) Spa Weekend ($7 million) The Uprising ($6 million) Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ($6 million) Onslaught ($3 million) Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man ($2.8 million) Here’s that in chart form: Five of the top six films in this time period were all based on IP. I made a big chart of films that grossed over $200 million at the box office before Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey hit theaters. Let’s update that chart! By the way, if you want to see how I categorized each film—so another bar chart—here it is: I know that many of my fellow critics/pundits/analysts dislike films based on IP and how Hollywood is making so many of them. And I’m sympathetic to this point of view. As I’ve written many, many times before, you need a balance between existing franchises, new IP, and original films. And Hollywood clearly needs to make more films like Resident Evil (a well-made film from a visionary director) and fewer Practical Magic 2’s (which didn’t get critical or customer buzz). But at some point, critics and pundits need to contend with what audiences are telling them: Movie-goers aren’t showing up to original films. Audiences are speaking with their dollars, telling you they want more IP and franchises. You can try to convince studio heads to make fewer IP-based films and franchises, but the data and numbers aren’t there. Instead, critics need to work harder to convince audiences to show up for original films. Aim your ire/concern at the average person, not studio heads.2 Because they’re just making the films that audiences are telling them to make. WRONG: Original Horror Films Didn’t Break Out I’ll be honest, even though I wrote an article casting some skepticism on the horror genre in July, if you asked me to make a prediction, I would have predicted that, in August, a new, original horror film would have blown up. No, seriously, I just assumed that Obsession and Backrooms presaged a change in audience behavior. But none of the buzzy new original horror films from August—Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Onslaught (not an action film in spite of the ads), The End of Oak Street, Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man, or _Buddy—_broke out. To be clear, exactly one of those films (Buddy) had good “ROI”, but again—I try to be specific in my language—none were “popular” in any broad sense of the word. None of them will be “saving” movies theaters like Backrooms or _Obsession_helped save the summer. The new Insidious film and Resident Evil, both based on IP, were far and away the biggest horror films since July. (We’ll see if this changes in October/Halloween season.) RIGHT: Stay Skeptical about Crowdfunding... I’ve long been skeptical about crowd-investing platforms as one of Hollywood’s saviors, mainly because there’s so much hype/buzz. People need to stay more skeptical about more things, explaining both the potential upside but also the downsides. In particular, the media often hypes crowdfunding at the start and never checks in on the actual results after they’ve come in later. And August gave us our first update! _Ice Cream Man—_directed by Eli Roth—grossed $6 million off of a $5.5 million budget. This is a production of The Horror Section, which was one of the first “crowd investing” studios with 2,400 investors, which means that 2,400 investors probably lost money. They certainly aren’t getting as great of returns as if they had just invested their dollars in the stock market. Hopefully Stiletto (Tagline: “Someone’s Going to Make it Rain Blood!”) does better next month. WRONG: Another Data Goof Here’s another data error. When the first episode of House of the Dragon came out, HBO put out that it had 21.5 million viewers in the first three days, and I read that to mean in the US…but no, it was global. So my US-only datecdotes charts shouldn’t have included it. We never got US-only numbers for the first episode, but for the final episode, HBO put out that it had 11 million US viewers. (And that global dropped to 21 million viewers.) Here’s the updated chart (which I’ve since used in the Streaming Ratings Report): Still, this show is absolutely huge. RIGHT: Superhero Films Remain Very, Very Popular After Supergirl flopped, I read a few takes that “comic book movies are going the way of the Western”. Post-Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that take didn’t age well. To be fair, I have a very nuanced take on the superhero genre right now; it’s down right now, for a lot of reasons. But it’s not “dead”. Maybe _Spider-_Man is just a really popular character? I saw that take, and it’s a fair counter-argument. (But pundits arguing that superhero movies were dead should have mentioned this $1.5 billion counter-argument…) But is it just Spider-Man? The next Avengers film already has $50 million in pre-sales (and I was skeptical that that film would do well) and the Avengers: End Game re-release topped the box office two weekends ago (over three original films). And I wouldn’t bet against Batman or Superman. So maybe it’s just Spider-Man, Batman, Superman and the Avengers. Oh, and Deadpool, of course. And Black Panther. And Wolverine. And probably the X-Men. Plus a well-made Wonder Woman or the Hulk film could break out. But that’s it! It’s just those ten characters/teams. Oh, what’s that? Lanterns is also doing well on HBO? (See previous section…) To be fair, I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the argument that more popular characters—like Spider-Man and Batman—anchor more popular films. In fact, I made that exact argument three years ago when I first wrote about the “Marvel-cession”. In many ways, you can blame The Guardians of the Galaxy for fooling Marvel Studios (and the rest of us) into believing that any character could pop. It turns out, the list of iconic characters is probably smaller than most people think. But it’s probably too early to say that superhero films and comic book movies are dead unless “death” means a slight decline over a longtime. RIGHT: Who Killed Theaters? Old People I get frustrated whenever I see headlines or analysis about how young people are “returning” to theaters. As I’ve detailed(for years), young people have always powered the US box office, despite narratives about “kids these days” and their “phones”. Really, what’s changed post-2020/pandemic is that old people aren’t going to the movies nearly as much. This summer, I saw a movie (from an older director) in a theater near a retirement community, and multiple older people at the theater were talking about how this was their first time seeing a movie in years. I dislike personal anecdotes, so YouGov can fill in the data, best summarized by this headline: “Who killed movie theaters? Not the youths”. According to them, 64% of people aged 18-29 have seen a movie in the last year, but only 30% of 65-and-older. 20% of 18-29 have seen a movie in theaters in the last week and 42% in the last month. Here’s the polling data: Most concerning? Many Americans (17%) think theaters are a worse or much worse experience than watching films at home. Slight WRONG: Hadestown Opens Big A live theater capture of the Broadway musical, Hadestown, made $20 million at the US box office, which begs the question: was I wrong to be skeptical about musicals a few years ago? Yes and no. On the one hand, $20 million is a far cry from being “popular”, so yeah, the genre isn’t that popular overall and Hadestown is one of the more popular musicals from recent years (i.e. the “Taylor Swift Data Fallacy” in action). On the other, I doubt filming this cost all that much, and I don’t think that they spent much on marketing, so this is a good source of ancillary revenue. Smaller Updates WRONG: As I mentioned in a Streaming Ratings Report, I underestimated the budget for Enola Holmes 3. It probably cost more like $50 million, if not more. But... I’m not sure that it really matters? At sub-10 million hours, prices have to come down to make this work. WRONG: Netflix is giving Ink a 27-day in theaters! To quote the kids/YouTubers these days, let’s go! Now I might actually have a chance to see Danny Boyle’s latest in theaters. I’d complained about this in a “Coming Soon” section, but I was heartened to read that Netflix is giving multiple films longer theatrical windows this year. RIGHT: Netflix is sending 4-5 films per year to theaters. Netflix is slowly but surely sending more and more films to theaters, as I cautiously predicted earlier this year. For now, it’s just three big films and a number of awards contenders, but still, this is great news. And they’ll be releasing box office grosses! Just this week, Ted Sarandos confirmed that KPop Demon Hunters 2 will come to theaters (and my guess is it performs in the box office top ten at a minimum). WRONG: Angel has 3 million subscribers! How do I know this? Well, they told Deadline, who reported it. I marked this as “wrong”, since they’ve doubled their subscribers in one year but, you know, they don’t really have a hit film to speak of and they’re still losing money. WRONG: Furious was only renewed for one more season. I accidentally wrote “two more seasons” in my latest “Renewals, Cancellations, Un-Orders and Removals Update”. RIGHT: House of David is ending with its third season. In July, Prime Video renewed House of David for a third season, as I just wrote in my latest “Renewals and Cancellations” report. Well, now it’s ending after that third season. Why? As I’ve been writing, its viewership wasn’t great. I got feedback that this show didn’t cost very much, but it cost enough that its limited viewership didn’t save it. WRONG: Adults was a Hulu original! So I missed Adults when it first came out last year; I saw that it aired on FX and just assumed that it was a linear-first program. Turns out, it aired three episodes on FX, but binge-released the rest of its episodes the next day on Hulu. Huh. So I should have covered it last year! But I just wrote about it. 1 “When I was a kid in the 90s, if you wore a t-shirt to school that wasn’t too big and also wasn’t too small, but somehow didn’t quite fit, we’d say you were wearing an “extra-medium” shirt.” 2 As always, a huge exception is Disney, which barely makes anything original anymore.

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Oct 7 • 6:41 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
‘The Social Reckoning’ review: A pale shadow of ‘The Social Network’

“The Social Reckoning,” while never less than watchable and occasionally mesmerizing, feels a bit miscast and misdirected, writes Moira Macdonald.

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Oct 7 • 5:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
Rosalind Franklin had seen the helix: A forgotten photograph rewrites the history of DNA’s structure

Notes by the scientist pointing to a helical structure once again challenge the distorted account of her role in the discovery

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Oct 7 • 10:45 AM EDT • Science • english.elpais.com
AP Chiefs Mailbag: How could the Chiefs address wide receiver?

Arrowhead Pride staff writer Jared Sapp answers your questions with Kansas City on the bye.

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Oct 7 • 9:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Who Controls the Technology Protecting Your Business?

Cybersecurity sovereignty gives organizations transparency, hybrid control, and resilience over critical systems, writes Claudio Martinelli.

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Oct 7 • 7:30 AM EDT • Business • mexicobusiness.news
Resident Evil Requiem's Writer Reveals What The Upcoming DLC Might Be About

Well, part of it at least

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Oct 7 • 7:15 AM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com
Tuchel's England 2.0: what has changed?

Since the World Cup Thomas Tuchel has made deliberate changes in both tactics and personnel. So what has he tweaked as he looks to refine his England blueprint rather than rewrite it from scratch?

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Oct 7 • 7:06 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Early NFL All-Rookie Team: Cardinals Jeremiyah Love listed

Some writers have too much time on their hands

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Oct 7 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Resident Evil Requiem Writer Teases DLC Plans, Immediately Says He Probably Shouldn't Have

Screenwriter Haris Orkin has teased plans for Resident Evil Requiem’s DLC.

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Oct 7 • 6:25 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Resident Evil Requiem Writer Accidentally Reveals DLC Plans

We finally have a story direction to latch onto for Capcom's in-development Resident Evil Requiem DLC, expected to release next year.

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Oct 7 • 6:20 AM EDT • Technology • insider-gaming.com
Steel mill politics will be about predictions, not reality

Two views about Iowa's steel mill plans are emerging, but assessing who's right will take longer than the current campaign, writes Steffen Schmidt.

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Oct 7 • 5:31 AM EDT • Politics • desmoinesregister.com
Sitcom king Chuck Lorre says Roseanne Barr ‘fundamentally hated’ her show’s writers: ‘It was malice’

Lorre, who created hits like “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory,” got his start writing for the tempestuous stand-up on “Roseanne.”

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Oct 7 • 12:05 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Chuck Lorre says Roseanne Barr ‘fundamentally hated’ her show’s writers: ‘It was malice’

Chuck Lorre, who got his start writing on ‘Roseanne’ in the ’80s, says Roseanne Barr ‘fundamentally hated’ her sitcom’s writers, because as a stand-up, ‘she made herself a superstar based on her words.’

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Oct 7 • 12:05 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
The University of Arizona to host hundreds of science writers

The university will host ScienceWriters2027, giving science journalists and communicators a firsthand look at the people, discoveries and facilities behind U of A research.

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Oct 6 • 5:39 PM EDT • Science • news.arizona.edu
😐 Neutral (22%)
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‘Carrie’ review: Prime adaptation of Stephen King’s first novel is superb

Prime Video's winning adaptation of Stephen King's novel, premiering Wednesday, brings the story to the modern day in darkly familiar ways, writes our reviewer.

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Oct 6 • 5:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
We studied American Jews’ mental health after Oct. 7. They’re not OK.

Research showed invalidation in ways that were painful, isolating and sometimes startling, writes a co-founder of The Jewish Community Mental Health Initiative.

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Oct 6 • 3:17 PM EDT • Health • jta.org
Alexandria residents pick safety, health care access and youth programs as focus of next health plan

The health department announced the results Tuesday and is recruiting residents for workgroups that will write the plan's specific actions.

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Oct 6 • 2:58 PM EDT • Health • alexandriabrief.com
U of A to host hundreds of science writers

The university will host ScienceWriters2027, giving science journalists and communicators a firsthand look at the people, discoveries and facilities behind U of A research.

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Oct 6 • 1:44 PM EDT • Science • news.arizona.edu
Reflecting on three years of arts coverage since October 7: Balancing culture, tragedy

Over the past three years, as an arts and culture writer, I have tried my best to cope with the events of October 7 by striking a balance between arts chronicling those killed in the war.

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Oct 6 • 12:24 PM EDT • Entertainment • jpost.com
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Brazil: Lessons from a Disaster

By Antonio Martins (Outras Palavras) Defeats become deeper and more prolonged when we misunderstand what caused them, avoid correcting course, and embrace “solutions” that only compound our mistakes. Lula’s government and the Brazilian left suffered a disaster in Sunday’s election. Contrary to every poll, the president finished the first round 2.2 million votes behind Flávio Bolsonaro—and, more significantly, 3.4 million votes below his total four years ago, when the machinery of the state was working against him and in favor of his opponent. His vote share declined in 98 percent of Brazil’s municipalities. The PL, the main party of the far right, elected 121 deputies and 28 senators, becoming the largest caucus in both houses of Congress. The parties aligned with the Centrão—Brazil’s bloc of transactional center-right parties—were somewhat diminished, but will still hold roughly 250 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 35 in the Senate. That will make it easier to assemble the majorities needed to amend the Constitution or impeach Supreme Federal Court justices. If elected, Flávio Bolsonaro could appoint four members of the Court, substantially altering its internal balance of power. What produced these results? How can the far right be prevented from consolidating them into a prolonged political hegemony? And what is the essential change of direction the left now needs? Explaining the Disaster Across the commercial media and the exuberant chaos of digital platforms, interpretations are multiplying. Some focus on specific episodes: Lula’s absence from the Globo debate, his very close relationship with Alexandre de Moraes, or his emphasis on issues supposedly remote from most people’s everyday concerns, such as rare earth minerals. Among the more systemic interpretations, three seem especially questionable. One argues that the principal defeat was not the left’s, since its congressional representation declined only slightly. The decisive movement captured at the ballot box, according to this view, was a shift within the right itself—from the more moderate and transactional forces of the Centrão toward the more ideological and radicalized forces of the PL and Novo. A second interpretation holds that the nature of electoral and political processes has changed. The material interests and aspirations of society, it argues, no longer play the central role they once did; they have given way to forms of subjective self-identification that the left has yet to understand. And a third concludes that, because of these two developments, we should expect a political winter: a prolonged period in which the far right and the broader right dominate Brazilian political life. There are important elements in all three interpretations. The problem lies in what they deny or leave out: Lula’s third government was a small-bore government. It offered the majorities that elected it neither a clearly better life nor reasons to believe again in politics and its power to transform society. These failures flowed from two fatal accommodations, which I will examine below. As a result, the government suffered a slow but steady erosion of support. And, as has happened in so many Western countries, it gave the far right the opportunity to present itself as anti-system and to benefit from popular frustration and distress. The interpretation that emphasizes the migration of votes from the center-right and traditional right toward the far right has been advanced, among others, by the courageous journalist Leonardo Sakamoto. In his UOL column on Monday, October 5, he highlights the miserable behavior of the traditional conservative parties. Over the past four years, they repeatedly joined forces with the “neo”-fascists, helping to “normalize” them—a criticism that could equally be directed at almost the entire corporate media. Believing they could use the far right as a stepping stone, they instead ended up partly devoured by it. This was especially true in the Senate, where the PL’s gain of 13 senators and Novo’s gain of two came at the expense of the PSD, which lost nine; the MDB, which lost two; the PSDB, which lost two; and the PP, which lost one. Sakamoto’s observation is accurate and necessary, but it leaves uncomfortable questions unanswered. Why did the erosion of the Centrão benefit the far right rather than, for example, producing growth for the left—as has happened so many times before, both in Brazil and elsewhere? The answer is not difficult. Throughout its four years in office, Lula’s third government was almost invariably associated with the Centrão. Here lies its first accommodation: accepting the limits imposed by conservative institutions; avoiding, as much as possible, any attempt to strain those limits through popular pressure; and believing only in the modest changes that could be squeezed through openings in Congress. The failure of the campaign to end the six-day workweek is emblematic. Lula could have electrified the presidential race by pairing it with a popular campaign for passage of the measure. Instead, he chose to place his hopes in the hands of Senate president Rodrigo Alcolumbre. He generated no mass mobilization, did not force his opponents onto an uncomfortable defensive, and won no victory. In September 2025, the government squandered the greatest of its many opportunities to shake up conservative power in Congress. Popular opposition to the so-called Shielding Amendment—which, if approved, would have restricted criminal proceedings against members of Congress—brought crowds into the streets, mobilized primarily by artists and social movements. This opened the possibility for a broader political education: a campaign that could begin exposing the limits and dysfunctions of Brazil’s political system while putting Bolsonaro’s movement on the defensive for its predictable support of political privilege. The amendment was defeated. But the executive branch then backed away from the fight. It remained associated with an institutional world widely seen as corrupt, elitist, and indifferent to ordinary people’s struggles. In doing so, it forfeited its credibility as a vehicle for the protest vote. On Sunday, it reaped the bitter fruits. Are We Doomed? Taking a different approach from Sakamoto, the philosopher Moysés Pinto Neto and other writers have drawn attention, in their first analyses of October 4, to the fragmentation of the public sphere produced by Big Tech platforms. Through their algorithms, these platforms present each person with a different view of social reality. As a consequence, it becomes much harder to identify common material problems and demands—for example, the fight for labor rights or for a properly funded public health system. Voters no longer embrace such demands, these authors argue, because they no longer see themselves as part of a collective. Instead, they tend to value the identities assigned to them by neoliberal subjectivity—the role of the entrepreneur, for example. On this interpretation, the left’s possible error lies in clinging to outdated illusions. Moysés’s warning is highly relevant and resonates with arguments such as Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s “Apocalyptic Fascism and the Billionaires’ Bet.” Unlike a century ago, the far right no longer promises a radiant future. It concentrates instead on resentment—especially that of young men. “They belong to a generation that fears it may never own a home, but compensates with the pleasure it gets from constantly provoking progressives online. Convinced their future has been stolen, they share memes romanticizing historical authoritarian regimes,” the authors write. But Moysés seems to confuse this danger with inevitability. He fails to see that the left’s answer cannot be adaptation. On the contrary, it must strengthen the possibility of politics as collective action. Nor does he recognize that precisely such a reversal is already becoming possible in some of the most promising mobilizations of the twenty-first century: the election, at the end of 2025, of the young Muslim Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York, on a platform centered on the intensely material fight for an affordable city; the Left Party’s victory in Berlin two weeks ago, built around the demand to expropriate private real-estate corporations; and the very recent wave of demonstrations in Spain—including an occupation of Madrid’s Puerta del Sol—in which tens of thousands of young people mobilized by the Tenants’ Union have demanded limits on rents. By putting itself in the straitjacket of the “fiscal framework” in the first months of 2022, Lula’s third government adopted the second fatal accommodation of its term. Faced with conservative institutions and a country devastated by four years of Bolsonaro, increased public investment was the government’s remaining weapon for offering a more dignified life to the majority and forging an anti-conservative pact with them. The same state that disburses 1 trillion reais a year to enrich a small class of rentiers could instead spend money to extend the Family Health Strategy to every Brazilian, at a cost of 30 billion reais; provide full-day public schooling and childcare to all adolescents and children—and, especially, relief to their mothers; achieve universal sanitation while cleaning up polluted urban rivers; multiply metro systems; begin transforming the urban peripheries; and undertake many other urgently needed projects. In April 2023, an article in Outras Palavras warned that the fiscal framework could “shrink the Lula government and preserve the forces that condemn the country to inequality and regression.” A year later, another article showed that restraints on public spending were strangling policies vital to ordinary people and undermining the president’s popularity. In November 2024 came a reality check, in the form of the government’s humiliating defeat in the municipal elections. Even then, the fiscal lock was neither removed nor loosened. On the contrary: throughout the government’s four years, fiscal restraint remained central to its political narrative. The administration proudly proclaimed that it had “put the state’s accounts in order,” without grasping either how misleading that phrase was—given the payment of 1 trillion reais in interest—or how badly the message was hurting it politically. Lula finally woke up in September 2026. The increase in Bolsa Família benefits, after four years of being frozen; the announcement that anti-obesity drugs would be offered through Brazil’s public health system; and the ban on online betting showed that the state has the power to act decisively on behalf of the majority when those in government are willing to confront obstacles. The huge marches that closed the campaign in Fortaleza, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo on the eve of October 4 showed how such initiatives can mobilize activists and the broader public. But it was too late—and too little to change the outcome of the first round. History has not ended The possibility of a turnaround in the three weeks leading up to November 25 cannot be ruled out. It will not be simple or easy. Lula must not only make up a deficit of 2.2 million votes; he must also offset the movement of voters who backed other right-wing candidates in the first round, most of whom are likely to move toward Flávio Bolsonaro. Pulling that off will require a broad, grassroots effort to win over voters, potentially reinforced by new initiatives from Lula. The coming hours and days will be decisive. If Bolsonaro’s movement also wins the presidency, the result will create a high-risk situation for Brazilian sovereignty and democracy. The enormous challenges posed by such an outcome would require the left to reexamine, in depth and with a genuine willingness to engage in self-criticism, its political projects—or its lack of them—and its practices. But would that mean we are condemned to the long winter of far-right hegemony that some analyses are beginning to forecast? It is far too early to say, suggests a recent text by Álvaro García Linera, the thinker who served as vice president of Bolivia under Evo Morales. His central hypothesis is that this political current will prove short-lived. At a moment when the entire world is once again talking about sovereignty and protecting national economies, the far right offers a stale, recolonizing neoliberalism. Its submission to the United States is as blatant and pathetic as Flávio and Eduardo Bolsonaro’s overtures to Donald Trump. Its project amounts to something like every man for himself: greater inequality, capitalism without limits, devastation, and supremacism. Will it work? In the United States, just two years into his second term, Trump himself is reaching record levels of unpopularity and may be on the verge of losing Republican control of both the House and Senate in November. Every new beginning is difficult. Whatever the outcome of the second round, the defeats of October 4 show how profoundly the Brazilian left will have to rethink and rebuild. But just as it would be foolish to underestimate the seriousness of its mistakes, it would be equally foolish to conclude that rebuilding a political project is no longer possible. History has not ended. The times are moving faster than ever. Originally published in Portuguese by Outras Palavras. English translation by Eric Blanc; I’ve added the subtitles. More We can’t stop the far right at home or abroad without a revitalized labor movement, which is yet another reason why you should become a sustaining supporter of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) — one of US labor’s pivotal bright spots. Relatedly, Jacobin published a short piece of mine reflecting on a decade of Bernie Sanders inspiring a whole new generation of young worker organizers.

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Oct 6 • 10:08 AM EDT • Politics • laborpolitics.com
‘Adventure Time’ creatives break down its most haunting episode

Talk about a pillow fright! ‘Adventure Time’ writers and storyboard artists talk about how they created one of the cartoon’s most haunting episodes ever, ‘Puhoy!’

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Oct 6 • 9:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
NY-KIDDE

Noah Schnacky, country music singer-songwriter and content creator, delivered a special performance honoring the service and sacrifice of the fire service community at Kidde’s Cause For Alarm™ Home Safety Forum

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Oct 6 • 9:05 AM EDT • Entertainment • caledonianrecord.com
The Daily Mauling: 10/6/26

Kansas Jayhawks News The LJW has a writeup on what the return of Council means for the men’s basketball team. And it’s not paywalled! The KC Star took a close look at Darryn Peterson’s first NBA experience in this weekend’s preseason game. Should I consider DP content to be KU content? He doesn’t exactly carry […]

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Oct 6 • 7:03 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Trump wants to rewrite the midterm lexicon

Changing the words may not change the politics.

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Oct 6 • 6:20 AM EDT • Politics • axios.com
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As Halo Moves to Activision, Halo Studios Writers Tease What Might Have Been

Following the launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved, Halo Studios has put out a blog post detailing plans for the future of Master Chief’s story. It’s an interesting look at where the series might have gone, prior to the recent announcement that Activision is now the shepherd of the Halo series.

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Oct 6 • 6:18 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Bella Kay on life in L.A. and her viral hit 'Iloveitiloveitiloveit'

The 20-year-old singer and songwriter scored a viral hit this year. Now she's in the mix for a coveted best new artist nod at the Grammys.

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Oct 6 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
Why the FDA should not approve an ineffective multicancer screening test

“Telling more people they have cancer is not progress; progress is having fewer people die from cancer,” H. Gilbert Welch writes of Grail’s multicancer screening test.

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Oct 6 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com
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Will R.I. voters, elected officials continue investing in life sciences?

Rhode Island starts in a strong position and has the ingredients needed for innovation and growth. What we don’t have yet is a long-term commitment, writes the CEO of the RI Life Science Hub.

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Oct 5 • 2:22 PM EDT • Science • bostonglobe.com
Utah plows ahead with more health AI pilots for prescriptions, women’s health

Utah plans to allow an AI product to evaluate patients and write new drug prescriptions without prior human review.

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Oct 5 • 12:00 PM EDT • Health • statnews.com
Dawg Sports on the Radio

Your Georgia Bulldogs defeated the Vanderbilt Commodores 38-14 on Saturday, and we intend to not just write about it, but also talk about it. That’s why I’ll be listening to MaconDawg’s chinchilla ranching consultant on WFOY in St. Augustine(102.1 FM/1240 AM) this evening around 6:45 pm Eastern to talk Georgia Bulldog football on SportsNow with host […]

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Oct 5 • 10:45 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
GTA VI Writers Sidestep Trump and MAGA, as Rockstar’s Rupert Humphries Says Florida Satire Targets Conspiracy Theories Instead

Rockstar said there won't be any references to specific trends or persons in GTA VI, as the game focuses on stuff like conspiracy theories.

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Oct 5 • 10:00 AM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
Inspired By My Love Of STEM, I Collaborated With 22 Teens To Write A Kids Picture Book About Science

Teen STEM student Eliana Miao wrote a picture book about the microbiome and empathy titled "The Brave Fuzzy: A Microbiome Story"

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Oct 5 • 10:00 AM EDT • Science • girltalkhq.com
John Ternus writes post celebrating Steve Jobs on anniversary of passing

Apple CEO John Ternus and former CEO Tim Cook have shared posts in remembrance of Steve Jobs today on the 15th anniversary of his passing.

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Oct 5 • 9:13 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
Innovation That Solves: From Business Needs to AI Solutions

Targeted AI innovation transforms business challenges like hydrocarbon compliance into effective technological solutions, writes Jorge Mandujano.

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Oct 5 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • mexicobusiness.news
“We’re in the entertainment business. If someone uses Suno to write a lyric, it’s not a high crime or misdemeanour”: Joe Bonamassa has sympathy for up-and-coming artists using AI to get an edge

But AI ‘artists’ shouldn’t be in the same chart as humans, he says

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Oct 5 • 6:59 AM EDT • Entertainment • musicradar.com
CAPCOM Wants REX Engine to Become an Engine for the “AI Generation,” Where AI Could Write Code and Hunt Bugs

CAPCOM has detailed its plans to integrate AI tools into the REX Engine, so that it's ready for the "AI Generation".

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Oct 5 • 4:00 AM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
Readers Write: Health care, AI, Minneapolis City Council and Public Schools, the death penalty

Be an informed health care voter this November.

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Oct 4 • 2:28 PM EDT • Health • startribune.com
I have ALS. The promise and potential perils of AI are personal

OPINION: While concerns over AI safety are warranted, the technology could help us design bigger, smarter and more inclusive trials for people with diseases like ALS, Kevin J. Morrison writes.

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Oct 4 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • sfchronicle.com
America’s Health Care Workforce Is in Crisis

We must prevent financial barriers from determining who has the opportunity to become a health care leader, writes Michellene Davis.

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Oct 4 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • time.com
America’s Health Care Workforce Is in Crisis

We must prevent financial barriers from determining who has the opportunity to become a health care leader, writes Michellene Davis.

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Oct 4 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • yahoo.com
We Must Fight Health Misinformation With Empathy

People reported being more likely to take advice when they believe, first, that their concerns and experience have been taken seriously, writes Dr. Megan L. Ranney.

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Oct 4 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • time.com
Guest Commentary: Affordability without access isn’t sound health policy

Byron Donalds’ record of politicizing his health policy is harmful, writes a former healthcare CEO.

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Oct 4 • 5:30 AM EDT • Health • orlandosentinel.com
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Littwin: Election-year debates are becoming increasingly rare. Is it fear or calculation? Or both?

The columnist writes that the lack of public debate stems from a combination of fear of gaffes and political calculation.

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Oct 4 • 5:05 AM EDT • Politics • coloradosun.com
‘A Statement’ Review: Tom McCarthy’s Talky Climate Crisis Seriocomedy Is Light Entertainment That Hardly Rakes the Muck

New York Film Festival: The Oscar-winning writer/director turns his spotlight on a plushly appointed ensemble as the environmental stewards and scholars who tried to solve the climate crisis over one ...

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Oct 3 • 8:15 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Michigan State football grades vs Wisconsin: Why are Spartans lifeless?

Free Press sports writer Chris Solari grades Michigan State football after the Spartans’ 31-3 loss at Wisconsin on Saturday, Oct. 3.

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Oct 3 • 6:42 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
New Journal Section Puts Epigenetics on Trial: Ethics, Society and Science Collide

Epigenetics has spent the past two decades promising to rewrite the rules of biology. The idea that chemical tags sitting on top of DNA can switch genes on and off, that these tags can be shaped by diet, stress, pollution and poverty, and that some of them might even be passed

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Oct 3 • 2:17 PM EDT • Science • bioengineer.org
Saturday Sports: Major League Baseball playoff time; WNBA

NPR's Scott Simon and sportswriter Howard Bryant discuss the WNBA and MLB playoffs.

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Oct 3 • 7:47 AM EDT • Sports • npr.org
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New UPS Store open in Cold Spring and Jesse Procter is ready for business

By Andy Furman NKyTribune staff writer Jesse Procter wanted a change of pace. “I wanted something exciting where I could meet people and serve their needs,” he told the Northern Kentucky Tribune.

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Oct 3 • 12:38 AM EDT • Business • nkytribune.com
Your AI Agents Can Write Code. Can They Understand Your Business?

AI agents need to understand how businesses work. Graphify’s rise shows why ontologies and knowledge graphs matter for the agentic enterprise and economy.

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Oct 2 • 8:56 PM EDT • Business • forbes.com