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Sea Aggie Researchers Make Evening Fun with Science on the Beach

“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it’s the one thing all of us share.” – Lady Bird JohnsonOn Galveston Island, beaches rank among the favorite environments to share and study, and, as Texas A&M University at Galveston faculty emphasized last week, are “More Than Just Sand.”A program subtitled “The Secret Life & Value of Sandy Beaches” drew more than 40 people to the Aug. 13 meeting of Surfrider Foundation Galveston, a local chapter of a nonprofit focused on the protection and enjoyment of oceans and beaches.The evening began barefoot with ecology lessons on the sand before moving across Seawall Boulevard for beverages, bites, and more beach talk at an area establishment. Drs. Guilherme Corte and Yasmina Shah Esmaeili show how a mesh bag is used as a sieve to separate organisms from samples of the sand. Credit: TAMUG Divisions of Marketing and CommunicationsNot far from where others were enjoying the attractions at Pleasure Pier, Drs. Guilherme Corte and Yasmina Shah Esmaeili introduced the ecologically curious to species living within the sediments.“When people hear ‘coral reefs,’ they immediately think of fish, live ecosystems, but when they think of sandy beaches, they think party, recreation, vacations – not coastal ecosystems,” said Corte, an assistant professor of marine biology in the College of Marine Sciences and Maritime Studies at TAMUG.Shah Esmaeili co-founded the Gulf eDNA Network and works with Corte in TAMUG’s Benthic Ecology Lab.“Sandy beaches are indeed great places for leisure and recreation,” Corte said. “Let’s keep enjoying them, because they are awesome. But they are also full of life that we most of the time don’t realize is there.”The married couple soon had the beachcombers measuring the slope with PVC poles, searching for ghost shrimp with a stainless-steel pump, sifting for marine worms and sand fleas, and guessing which species would burrow fastest back into the sand once released.Away from the sand, the focus turned to research from Drs. Ashley Ross ’03, ’10, and Virgie Greb, ’25 and those words from Lady Bird Johnson reminding people that the environment isn’t separate from their daily lives.“It’s about things that we value, mostly our communities, strong local economies, outdoor recreation, cultural connections, and our overall quality of life,” said Greb, a proud BOI – born on the island – Galvestonian, who now works in Austin as a project manager for the Texas General Land Office. “Along our coast, these benefits are deeply interconnected.”Greb and Ross, an associate professor in marine and coastal environmental science with the College of Marine Sciences & Maritime Studies, have studied a variety of ways beaches and the sea are important to Galveston and those who live there. Drs. Ashley Ross (left) and Virgie Greb (standing at right) field questions after their presentation. Credit: TAMUG Division of Marketing and CommunicationsIn 2023, using three survey methods – online for Galveston County residents, in-person at beaches, and paper distributed via city water bills – they collected 732 complete responses, 53 percent from residents and 47 percent from visitors.Most were frequent beachgoers who gave the recreation value of Galveston beaches a “B” and rated amenities such as restaurants, lodging, shopping, and beach access highly. Lower rated were water clarity and restroom facilities.“It’s noticeable that primary residents actually rate water quality higher; they’re more tolerant of hard, turbid water,” Ross said, crediting them with better understanding the natural conditions with the Trinity and San Jacinto Rivers bringing sediments and rich nutrients to the area around Galveston.Island residents also were more likely to understand that “clear” isn’t the same as clean beach water and to know that water quality is regularly tested. Clean means absent of disease-causing pathogens.“We need more education and outreach focused on water quality and the benefits of Galveston beaches and shores and water,” Greb said. “And it’s not just for tourism. There are a lot of people who are very lucky to live on an island with beaches and the bay.”

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Aug 19 • 1:21 PM EDT • Science • news.galveston.tamu.edu
Report: Bears QB Tyson Bagent Listed Questionable for Bengals Game
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Aug 19 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
☹️ Negative (-45%)
Military Spouses Built R. Riveter Into a $33 Million Handbag Business

R. Riveter grew from two military spouses struggling to find steady work into a handbag company that says it has generated $33 million in sales.

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Aug 19 • 3:00 AM EDT • Business • military.com
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Bears QB Tyson Bagent suffered hamstring injury vs. Browns

Bears backup QB Tyson Bagent wasn't spotted at Tuesday's practice after he suffered a hamstring injury in the preseason opener.

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Aug 18 • 2:19 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Ex-lawmakers, pardoned felons and carpetbaggers seek political redemption in chaotic Florida GOP House primary
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Aug 18 • 1:38 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
10 things to know before starting a resale business — and what actually sells in 2026

Learn how to start a resale business in 2026, from platform fees and sourcing to the sneakers, denim, and handbags actually selling right now

qz.com logo
Aug 18 • 12:13 PM EDT • Business • qz.com
Ask Pinstripe Alley: Yankees mailbag questions request

The Yankees are at a crossroads with the playoff race reaching a fever pitch.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 17 • 4:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
GCs in Tech, Entertainment Industries Bagged Biggest Bucks in 2025

General counsel compensation rocketed to record-shattering levels in 2025, fueled by a hypergolic mix of volatile long-term stock awards and the expanding value of legal chiefs as crucial members of the C-suite.

law.com logo
Aug 17 • 12:49 PM EDT • Entertainment • law.com
I’m hooked on Peak Design’s new City bags

Integrated BagLev hooks make my old bags feel dirty and dumb.

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Aug 17 • 3:00 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
Forget The 7-Year Rule – Scientists Found a Better Way to Calculate a Dog's Age

We've been doing it wrong!

sciencealert.com logo
Aug 16 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com
Going after the wrong butts

Mayor Mike Johnston proclaimed, “It is past time Big Tobacco cleaned up the big mess it’s created.” Yep. Denver is suing tobacco companies for the cigarette butts littering the city. Because Denver’s Big Mess couldn’t possibly be the fault of the mayor, the city council or the people actually dropping garbage on the ground. It […]

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Aug 16 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com
White Sox Minor League Update: August 14, 2026

It’s a mixed bag across the farm, but we can always count on Roch Cholowsky to dazzle — and the DSL to surrender runs

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 14 • 11:10 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
☹️ Negative (-3%)
World Humanitarian Day 2026: honouring fallen humanitarians and calling for greater protection of health care

As we mark World Humanitarian Day on 19 August, WHO pays tribute to humanitarian and health workers who put their duty of care above their own safety and, too often, their own lives as they serve communities affected by conflict and crises.World Humanitarian Day was designated by the UN General Assembly in 2008 to commemorate the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad and honour aid workers worldwide.

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Aug 14 • 9:57 AM EDT • Health • who.int
WWE returns to Maine with two live shows

The live wrestling shows are scheduled for November.

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Aug 13 • 6:21 PM EDT • Entertainment • wabi.tv
Google takes on AirTag with the new $29 Pixel Tag

Google’s new Pixel Tag taps into its Find Hub network to help users track lost keys, bags, and other items.

techcrunch.com logo
Aug 12 • 10:00 AM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com
Health department offering cannabis lock bags

Directors with the health department in Kalamazoo County are offering free cannabis lock bags again. (Aug. 12, 2026)

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Aug 12 • 6:58 AM EDT • Health • woodtv.com
Lake Ozark aldermen approve teen curfew for Bagnell Dam Strip, easing business liability

the City of Lake Ozark Board of Alderment there this evening voted to establish a teen curfew on the bagnell dam strip.The vote count was unanimous.The modified

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Aug 11 • 10:03 PM EDT • Business • krcgtv.com
A pain point in my schedule led me to leave Citadel to found a startup

Maria Cabral Menezes, 27, would work out before her job at Citadel every day. Her smelly gym bag gave her an idea for the company she's now building.

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Aug 11 • 7:53 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Count Binface, the man in a can with a plan, seeks Parliament seat in Britain's wackiest election

Count Binface, an intergalactic comedic candidate with a garbage can on his head, is at the center of the U.K.’s political universe

washingtonpost.com logo
Aug 10 • 12:12 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Count Binface brings comedy to British politics in special election

Count Binface, an intergalactic comedic candidate with a garbage can on his head, is at the center of the U.K.'s political universe.

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Aug 10 • 12:03 AM EDT • Politics • apnews.com
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Count Binface seeks Parliament seat in Britain's wackiest election

Count Binface, an intergalactic comedic candidate with a garbage can on his head, is at the center of the U.K.'s political universe

abcnews.com logo
Aug 10 • 12:03 AM EDT • Politics • abcnews.com
Minnesota woman sues Chipotle after burrito bowl allegedly caused Salmonella infection, sepsis

A Minnesota woman is suing Chipotle after allegedly contracting Salmonella from a burrito bowl, as health officials investigate a multistate outbreak tied to recalled jalapeños.

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Aug 9 • 4:32 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com
Giants' Landen Roupp: Mixed bag in defeat

Giants' Landen Roupp: Mixed bag in defeat

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Aug 9 • 1:38 AM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
A ‘clown show’ of carpetbaggers and characters has upended a Republican primary in Trump’s backyard

Two scandal-scarred former congressmen from other states. A pair of candidates who once competed against each other in Illinois. An adviser to an Indiana lawmaker and an ex-underwear model imprisoned for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

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Aug 7 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
A mixed bag for AIPAC

Also: The Max Miller saga continues.

usatoday.com logo
Aug 5 • 4:54 PM EDT • Politics • usatoday.com
The Beauty Of Settled Science

Commenters convinced me I made a subtle mis-step in my framing of Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine. My framing emphasized that social priming studies had failed to replicate, but that many other subfields of psychology hadn’t. This naturally led commenters to point to failed replications in other subfields. Although none of these were as bad as social priming, few or none were entirely problem-free. Instead of emphasizing the difference between social priming and other subfields, I should have emphasized the difference between settled science and novel research. Here are some of my favorite psychology findings: The brain is sculpted by reinforcement learning, and a key driver of this learning is a prediction-error-based algorithm located in the nucleus accumbens and implemented through dopamine. Psychedelic drugs exert their effects through 5-HT2A receptors, pointing to a role for these receptors in some sort of construct like the balance between priors and new evidence. Certain cognitive functions are localized to certain brain areas (for example, impulse control to the frontal lobes; linguistic structure to Broca’s area, linguistic meaning to Wernicke’s area. But injure one of these areas, or render a certain function useless (eg a blind person having no more use for their visual cortex), and these mappings can gradually shift - suggesting that neurons are general-purpose compute whose specialization is a contingent fact about convenience and efficiency rather than a necessity. Most personality traits and general capabilities are about 50% genetic and 50% random, with little role for family environment or childhood history, with a few notable exceptions like partisan preference. Recent research complicates this story, but the further you go from this basic picture, the gnarlier the chains of indirect causation you require. Neurons fire together in “brain waves”, whose exact frequency corresponds with the character of consciousness; These divide neurons into natural subpopulations and linked graphs. The gamma rhythm corresponds surprisingly well to items in conscious awareness. GABA receptors seem to be involved in something like relaxation. By hitting different GABA receptors in different ways, you can modulate the exact type of relaxation you produce. Hitting GABA-A directly is too powerful and can cause dangerous levels of sedation, but allosteric modulation of GABA is an incredibly fruitful strategy that underlies drugs from benzos to barbituates to alcohol. If you know your GABA-A subunits, you can target specific subtypes of relaxation; for example, Ambien hits GABA-A1 and induces sleep. Memory divides somewhat fuzzily into bins of immediate-sensory, short-term, and long-term, with separate retrieval and storage functions, and separate systems for declarative vs. procedural learning. These can be harmed selectively, usually by hippocampal injury, so that some patients can remember their life stories but not form new long-term memories, or learn new skills like bike-riding but not new facts. The exact substrate of memory is unclear but seems to involve new synaptic connections between neurons in at least some way. The ability of modern psychology and psychiatry to treat mental illness is real but limited. SSRIs work for half or slightly fewer than half of patients; antipsychotics work with extreme side effects; benzodiazpines work but produce addiction and tolerance in many (not all) people. Most supplements are stuck in Poor Quality Study Replication Crisis Hell, but melatonin and l-theanine stand out as especially promising. Psychotherapy works with moderate effect size, but (with a few exceptions) seems to be more about the relationship with the provider than the details of the therapy itself. Mental hospitalization can sometimes defuse immediate crises but work less well than mental hospitals would like, with some studies showing overall negative effects. Schizophrenia is mostly genetic, but risk also increases with prenatal infection (especially rubella) and obstetric complications; there is suggestive evidence for roles of social stress and drug use (with psychedelics and marijuana making things worse, and nicotine if anything making things better). Bipolar and schizophrenia are so closely linked on a pathophysiological level that it seems like they might be the same disease; on the clinical level, they do seem to follow two separate courses/prognoses but can sometimes surprise clinicians by eg someone who seemed condemned to permanent schizophrenia unexpectedly recovering. The brain’s native reinforcement learning algorithms cash out in the phenomena of classical and operant conditioning; different reinforcement schedules reinforce at different levels, which can be exploited by bad actors to make especially compelling products (eg slot machines). None of these are immune to doubt. A few are speculative; one or two are genuinely unorthodox. But they’re all a step above one p = 0.049 paper that might not replicate. If they get overturned, they’ll be overturned by the same sort of genuine scientific shift that replaced Ptolemy with Copernicus or Lamarck with Darwin, not some sort of sordid discovery about someone entering random numbers into a spreadsheet. In 2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about The Beauty Of Settled Science: If you only care about scientific issues that are controversial, you will end up with a head stuffed full of garbage. The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science is worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like “General Relativity still governing planetary orbits” or “Phlogiston theory remains false”? So, by the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline. “Newsworthy” science is often based on the thinnest of evidence and wrong half the time—if it were not on the uttermost fringes of the scientific frontier, it would not be breaking news. Scientific controversies are problems so difficult that even people who’ve spent years mastering the field can still fool themselves. That’s what makes for the heated arguments that attract all the media attention. Worse, if you aren’t in the field and part of the game, controversies aren’t even fun. Don’t be embarrassed to read elementary science textbooks, either. If you want to pretend to be sophisticated, go find a play to sneer at. If you just want to have fun, remember that simplicity is at the core of scientific beauty [...] A steady diet of science news is bad for you: You are what you eat, and if you eat only science reporting on fluid situations, without a solid textbook now and then, your brain will turn to liquid. Psychology isn’t centrally the new paper in Annals Of Recently-Breaking News saying that an n=5 study showing that large portion sizes increase support for terrorism. Psychology is centrally ideas like brain waves, GABA receptors, reinforcement learning, twin studies, and connectionism. People who think differently are worrying too much about BREAKING NEWS!!!, and should stop. The key distinction isn’t “recent research in social psychology” vs. “recent research in cognitive/bio/behavioral psychology”, as my essay last week unfortunately implied. It’s recent research in general vs. the deposit of settled science, battle-tested hypotheses, and carefully-earmarked speculation. And part of the reason social priming in particular was such a disaster was that it defied that heuristic, building itself up over hundreds of studies until it approached or even entered the pantheon of settled science - before collapsing (5-HTTLPR was also sort of like this). This isn’t a claim that settled science is always right - Freud was “settled science” for a long time - just that there’s an intuitive distinction between the level of credence you should have in the existence of power posing vs. the existence of Broca’s Area. (I compounded this error by calling the last post “Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine”, which suggested I was talking about the new research rather than the settled science. I actually meant to distinguish between research-psychology-the-field vs. clinical-psychology-aka-therapy, but this framing unintentionally pushed against the point I wanted to make) Some commenters on the previous article understood this point, but challenged its weight. It’s very cool, they said, to know how many neurons are in which brain lobe, but the main way that Psychology affected their lives was through bad clickbait studies used to buttress dumb policies; some p = 0.049 study says that exposure to microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel into raisins, and now their company has to implement punitive DEI or be sued for hazardous work conditions. I won’t dispute this as an accurate description of how the sausage gets made, but it’s worth examining the trains of thought that connect this observation to a campaign against psychology in general: The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad, and I don’t have good heuristics for distinguishing dumb woke psychology from other psychology, so I’m going to assume it’s all wrong and bad. The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad; it seems useful to punish/discredit psychology as a whole to assist my campaign against it, so for propaganda purposes I will try to discredit psychology as a whole. To people in the first camp, my response is: come on, your heuristics aren’t that bad. “Microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel up like raisins” is in the woke category; “the hippocampal theta rhythm seems to be associated with both memory and pathfinding, suggesting an unexpected yet surprisingly compelling relationship between the two” is in the not-woke category, don’t play dumb here. To people in the second camp, my response is: deliberately exaggerated propaganda campaigns are bad and this is a confession, not an excuse. Inability to view science through anything but a political lens was what got us into this problem; doubling down on it is a temporary solution but a recipe for permanent disaster. If you pronounce entire fields of science to be acceptable collateral damage in your campaign against bad political actors, you will alienate not just scientists but patients, clinicians, and general lovers of truth. Instead, you can say the thing you mean - that woke partisans shouldn’t try to occupy and exploit the otherwise-noble science of psychology for their own political gain - and wage the same campaign with a halo rather than a comic-book-villain goatee. From the font of oracular wisdom that is Weird Sun Twitter: [ Vessel Of Spirit@VesselOfSpirit i love you all conditionally but i love the good part of you unconditionally. even if it becomes a very small part 2:11 AM · Jan 22, 2015 1 Reply · 5 Reposts · 29 Likes ](https://x.com/VesselOfSpirit/status/558084551772471298) This is how I feel about psychology1, too, but with a touch more optimism. The good part of psychology is enormous, a hoard of endless treasures. You just have to look past the headlines! 1 To play devil’s advocate - should one always be so magnamious? Astrology? Phrenology? These seem different in that their entire orientation was flawed from the start; they didn’t simply fail to find the correct constellation-personality connections, the whole project of searching for connections between constellations and personality was doomed from the start. More difficult might be asking the same question about education research, which is notoriously bad. I don’t know enough about education research to know if there’s some settled science of correct and enlightening results lurking in the background beyond the day-to-day froth of poorly-conducted and politically-motivated studies. I think if it’s 90% bad, 10% good, it’s correct to call it bad as a compact way of communicating a useful truth; I think psychology is better than that, but admit it’s a tough judgment call.

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Aug 4 • 5:33 PM EDT • Science • astralcodexten.com
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MrBeast Sales Slow, Angel Stock Falls, MUBI and Neon Look for Hits, and Will an NBA Franchise Set a Sales Record?

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

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Aug 4 • 11:55 AM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Peak Design’s latest bags have clever integrated hooks

The hook is the hook.

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Aug 4 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
SNAP changes push more North Carolina families to food pantries, food banks

In some places, locally supported nonprofits are stepping up, but leaders say their work can never fill the hole left by cuts to the federal food stamps program.

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Aug 4 • 4:15 AM EDT • Health • northcarolinahealthnews.org
Peak Design's City Line Features Six 'Everyday Life' Bags and Backpacks

Peak Design has announced the City Line, a series of six new bags that it says are built around lightweight construction.

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Aug 4 • 3:01 AM EDT • Technology • petapixel.com
Ask Pinstripe Alley: Yankees mailbag questions request

All of the trade rumors have been leading up to today. Now how will the Yankees play once their roster is locked in?

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Aug 3 • 4:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
East meets Appalachia at Bagaduce Music House Party

Indian-roots fusion duo Aditi Sethi and Jay Brown will perform at the Second Wednesday House Party at Bagaduce Music on Wednesday, Aug. 12.

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Aug 3 • 12:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • ellsworthamerican.com
Cyclospora outbreak has Philly shoppers on alert as health department confirms 13 cases

More than 4,100 cases of the parasite have been confirmed nationwide as grocers continue to monitor the lettuce-linked outbreak.

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Aug 2 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • whyy.org
Chile declares health alert for hantavirus

The Chile Ministry of Health issued a Health Alert for hantavirus and other diseases, such as some arboviruses and avian influenza. This is the first time this measure has been taken and it will be in effect until July 31, 2027 and it extends from the Atacama region to the Magallanes region. “Hantavirus causes a disease that is endemic to Chile, transmitted by the long-tailed pygmy rice rat that lives in rural and semi-rural areas throughout almost the entire country. As a ministry, we are constantly monitoring its behavior and are very concerned and actively working because this year the virus's lethality has increased, and for this reason, we decided to declare this alert. As of last week, there were 46 confirmed cases and 18 deaths, representing a 39% lethality rate,” reported the Undersecretary of Public Health, Dr. Alejandra Pizarro. Cases have occurred in the regions of Valparaíso, Metropolitan, O'Higgins, Maule, Ñuble, Biobío, La Araucanía, Los Ríos, Los Lagos, and Aysén. By comparison, in 2025, there were 44 infections and eight deaths (18% case fatality rate). The health alert, which is preventative and prepared, will allow for the granting of extraordinary powers in the event of serious health emergencies to strengthen surveillance, ensure timely resource management, hire specialized personnel, implement health control measures, and expedite the acquisition of supplies through direct procurement. The alert does not imply that there is an ongoing epidemic or that the healthcare system is overwhelmed. Subscribe to Outbreak News TV on YouTube “Hantavirus is not exclusively a summer virus, as the long-tailed pygmy rice rat is present year-round. Therefore, we urge everyone to take extreme precautions: avoid touching rodents, ventilate homes before entering if they have been closed, clean unused spaces with water and bleach, and keep garbage covered and food stored away. Furthermore, it is crucial to be aware of the symptoms: fever, intense muscle pain, and difficulty breathing. If someone experiences these symptoms and has been in rural or semi-rural areas where the long-tailed pygmy rice rat may have been present, they should immediately go to a health center and inform the medical staff so that a hantavirus diagnosis can be considered promptly,” the official added. Since December 2025, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has maintained an epidemiological alert due to the rise in hantavirus cases throughout the Southern Cone, and that the Ministry of Health had an epidemiological alert in place since November of last year. Chile eliminates leprosy As mentioned above, the Health Alert decree also covers diseases transmitted by the Aedes aegypti, Aedes vexans, and Anopheles pseudopunctipennis mosquitoes, such as dengue and Zika, which, according to the alert, “have a high epidemic potential, which could generate high demand and overload for health facilities.” For these diseases, the alert is in effect from Arica to Los Ríos. The authority stressed that it is essential to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in stagnant water and to monitor any suspected cases of people arriving from abroad infected with any of these diseases, in order to prevent any of these vectors from biting a sick person and starting to spread the disease. In the case of avian influenza, the alert was extended to the entire country, because unlike other years, the disease has been concentrated in wild and farm birds, not in poultry farms, increasing the risk of exposure for people. Outbreak News Today 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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Aug 1 • 7:41 AM EDT • Health • outbreaknewstoday.substack.com
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Yankees Mailbag: Final speculation on deadline dealing

The Yankees have a few days left to figure out a whole host of issues.

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Jul 31 • 6:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Have questions about Penn State sports? Submit them here for our monthly mailbag

This month’s mailbag comes on the heels of Penn State football’s fall camp starting and amid ongoing consternation over Penn State men’s basketball’s finances.

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Jul 31 • 9:21 AM EDT • Sports • centredaily.com
Google DeepMind’s new AI model can control a robot’s entire body

The new model can help robots tie up trash bags and unscrew lightbulbs, too.

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Jul 30 • 1:18 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
Bagley Cartoon: Hysteria Science Theater

Check out Pat Bagley's latest cartoon: Hysteria Science Theater

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Jul 30 • 11:35 AM EDT • Science • sltrib.com
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Mobile business owner claims self defense in fatal shooting

Investigators say 25-year-old Evan Bagley came to the business, got into an argument with another man, and pointed a gun at him.

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Jul 29 • 11:34 PM EDT • Business • fox5vegas.com
Mobile business owner claims self defense in fatal shooting

Investigators say 25-year-old Evan Bagley came to the business, got into an argument with another man, and pointed a gun at him.

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Jul 29 • 11:34 PM EDT • Business • fox10tv.com
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Mobile business owner says he shot and killed man in self defense

Mobile police responded to a deadly shooting at Chips Auto Glass on Halls Mill Road on July 28. Investigators say 25-year-old Evan Bagley came to the business, got into an argument with another man, and pointed a gun at him.

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Jul 29 • 10:26 PM EDT • Business • fox10tv.com
Anthony Fauci’s high-profile Senate hearing: what we learned

Six years on from Covid crisis, Republicans still politicizing science – and Fauci remains a political punching bag

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Jul 29 • 4:02 PM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
We discovered a new variant of Super Mario Bros.

Inside, were 97 individually wrapped, brand-new copies of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt. Each game was wrapped in the same baggie that would have come in an

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Jul 29 • 10:59 AM EDT • Technology • nintendowire.com
I Hate Adobe

Adobe is a wretched, exploitative company that loves generative AI. Many are coerced into paying money for their software and the software runs like garbage.

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Jul 28 • 2:50 PM EDT • Technology • aftermath.site
Kentucky Gov. Beshear demands McConnell ‘prove capacity to serve’ or resign

The Democratic governor criticized the limited communication between the Republican senator and constituents after he suffered a fall.

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Jul 28 • 12:48 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
In Italy, beach umbrellas are serious business

In early June, government officials in Sardinia announced a new ordinance that restricts the use of umbrellas at Punta Molentis Beach for everyone between the ages of 10 and 65. The move is a safety measure in response to a...

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Jul 28 • 9:37 AM EDT • Business • seattletimes.com
A steward’s view on how business can rebuild Earth systems

Business is one of the most powerful levers for transformation when it comes to climate and nature, and needs to rethink how modern systems are designed.

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Jul 28 • 4:36 AM EDT • Business • weforum.org
Ask Pinstripe Alley: Yankees mailbag questions request

The final full week before the Trade Deadline is here.

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Jul 27 • 4:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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How do garbage trucks work?

Behind every trash day is a powerful, sophisticated machine.

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Jul 26 • 8:03 AM EDT • Science • popsci.com
Brooklyn Roasting Company recalls cold brew sold in New York and New Jersey over botulism risk

Brooklyn Roasting Company recalled 2.5 gallon bags of cold brew concentrate over Clostridium botulinum toxin risk in New York and New Jersey.

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Jul 24 • 7:30 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com
Yankees Mailbag: Biggest threats and playoff rosters

Is the AL East the gauntlet for this year’s postseason?

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Jul 24 • 4:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
KV the Apostate: Faith-Based Computing Versus the Unnatural Science

If we use LLMs poorly—as so many people already are we will generate megabytes of utter garbage (a.k.a. AI slop, already the bane of many open source projects).

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Jul 24 • 1:04 PM EDT • Science • cacm.acm.org
FDA sees early promise in new gene therapy for BAG3-associated DCM

An investigational drug therapy from Affinia Therapeutics has secured the FDA's orphan drug designation. This means the company now has access to certain benefits, including tax credits and fee exemptions, as it works toward approval.

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Jul 22 • 4:28 PM EDT • Business • cardiovascularbusiness.com
Downtown Sacramento businesses tired of garbage launch volunteer crew to clean up their block
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Jul 21 • 11:18 PM EDT • Business • cbsnews.com
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A break-in created a new slogan for a Galveston bagel business owner to cover damage costs

A bagel store owner in Galveston is turning a burglary into a slogan and using the words to help cover the costs of damages.

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Jul 21 • 6:15 PM EDT • Business • abc13.com
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Popular travel tech find hits its lowest price of the year

Travelers rely on Apple AirTags to keep tabs on bags and valuables — and this four-pack is now the cheapest it's been all year.

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Jul 20 • 8:37 PM EDT • Technology • wpbf.com
An ambassador for WSU’s signature apple

Kate Evans navigated the male-dominated world of plant breeding to become the face of WSU's biggest, and tastiest, commercialization project.

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Jul 20 • 9:00 AM EDT • Science • news.wsu.edu
🏆 Y! Sports AM: Spain wins the World Cup

Spain's defense got the last laugh over Argentina's bag of magic tricks, as La Roja beat La Albiceleste, 1-0, to win their second World Cup title.

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Jul 20 • 8:52 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Braves vs. Rangers series recap: Bats embiggened after Break

June was a bad offensive month for the Braves. The first 12 games of July were a mixed bag: some good outputs, but questionable inputs. Still, it got the Braves to a 6-6 record. Then the All-Star Break came and went, and the Braves started the “second half” with a home series against the Rangers. […]

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Jul 19 • 10:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Sandpoint business owners, residents and tourists divided on suspension of parking kiosks in downtown streets

Along First and Second avenues in Sandpoint, about 25 parking kiosks costing the city $230,000 were wrapped last week with black trash bags.

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Jul 19 • 9:00 PM EDT • Business • spokesman.com
Tal Bagels, Popular UWS Bagel Spot, Closed by the Health Department

The Health Department closure sign on the front of Tal Bagels on the Upper West Side. Photo by Nate Jones.

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Jul 19 • 12:26 PM EDT • Health • westsiderag.com
KKK flyers appear in Fells Point, issuing threat over ‘teen takeovers’

Business owners found bags of rocks Friday with note signed by a group affiliated with the KKK “Teen take overs should result in teen chain gangs,” the note read. “Try and spit on our faces.”

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Jul 18 • 5:56 PM EDT • Business • baltimoresun.com
Guardians News: Let’s Play Two… Hopefully

News and Notes for Saturday, July 18th, 2026

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Jul 18 • 10:58 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
A commitment to reliability fuels Trash Rangers’ rapid business growth

Trash Rangers began in 2018 when Jake Poche identified a need for more reliable, customer-focused waste services in Ascension Parish, Ascension Business Report reports. Built on the promise of showing up when it says it will, the locally owned company has grown from a residential garbage service into a regional waste provider serving communities throughout […]

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Jul 16 • 3:37 PM EDT • Business • businessreport.com
1 Machesney Park business fails liquor compliance check, 7 pass

Out of the eight Machesney Park businesses where a liquor compliance check was done Tuesday, only one failed, according to the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office.

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Jul 16 • 3:30 PM EDT • Business • wifr.com
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Darden Alum’s AI Finance Platform Lightens the Load for Startups and Small Businesses

For Michael Fajardo (MBA ’20), the word is a nod first to Michael Porter, the strategist whose Five Forces framework he studied at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. But it also meant something simpler: a person who carries the bags, lightens the load and helps someone keep moving.

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Jul 16 • 10:22 AM EDT • Business • news.darden.virginia.edu
San Util Design gears up for move to Washington, announces business model changes

This article ran in the June issue of Bicycle Retailer & Industry NewsWINTER PARK, Colo. — San Util Design, a company that handcrafts bags and gear for backcountry travel, bikepacking, and mountain biking, is moving operations from Colorado to Bellingham, Washington. The move, which was planned for the end of June, coincides with changes to San Util’s business model.

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Jul 16 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • bicycleretailer.com
NJ business temporarily closes after copper theft spoils thousands in food

Johnny "Gabagool" Aubry said the thieves stole the copper piping that supplies cold air to the walk-in refrigerator and deli case.

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Jul 16 • 12:24 AM EDT • Business • 6abc.com
How Trash Rangers went from local startup to regional player

When Jake Poche launched Trash Rangers in 2018, the idea was simple: reliable service from a company that would actually show up when it said it would. Today, that same promise has carried the business from a residential garbage service in Ascension Parish into a regional waste provider that stretches across the Capital Region — […]

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Jul 14 • 7:30 PM EDT • Business • businessreport.com
Michigan health officials urge residents to avoid bagged lettuce as Cyclospora outbreak tops 3,300 cases

Michigan health officials are urging residents to avoid bagged lettuce and salad mixes while investigators work to identify the source of a cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people in the state and more than 5,000 nationwide.

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Jul 14 • 4:57 PM EDT • Health • clickondetroit.com
‘We Love Iraq,’ Trump Tells New Prime Minister in Oval Office Meeting

The meeting comes as President Trump’s administration has been ratcheting up pressure on Baghdad to diminish Iran’s influence in Iraq.

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Jul 14 • 2:53 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Trump declares US military no longer needed in Iraq as Baghdad shifts course

President Donald Trump says Iran has been "very much destabilized," arguing Iraq no longer needs U.S. military presence as the coalition mission nears its end.

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Jul 14 • 1:00 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
Stella's Diner in East Lakeview closed for health violations, weeks after sister restaurant The Bagel

Inspectors last week shut down Stella's Diner in Chicago's East Lakeview community after finding a cockroach infestation and other health code violations.

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Jul 14 • 8:58 AM EDT • Health • cbsnews.com
High-Signal Publisher
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
Ask Pinstripe Alley: Yankees mailbag questions request

The All-Star break gives a perfect opportunity to reflect on the Yankees’ season.

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Jul 13 • 4:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
FOX Business anchors reveal wildly overpriced popular products

FOX Business anchors discuss products they believe are widely overpriced. Answers include bottled water, Dyson hair dryers, luxury handbags, and McDonald's value meals, sparking a lively debate about quality versus cost among the panel.

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Jul 13 • 8:32 AM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com
Ask Mark Anything: Does UK Athletics lead the nation in ‘bad contracts?’

Mark Story’s weekly mailbag includes questions on J Batt, Milan Momcilovic & Malachi Moreno & a potential breakout player for UK men’s hoops

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Jul 13 • 5:00 AM EDT • Sports • kentucky.com
Vikings Mailbag: QB Battle, Harrison Smith, Free-Agent Targets

After a break, VikingsTerritory has reopened the mailbag, answering questions from the masses and posting them weekly in a single […]

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Jul 12 • 8:42 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Trinidad and Tobago signs agreements with US companies that pave the way for data centers

Trinidad and Tobago’s government has signed agreements with U.S. companies to install large data centers, raising concerns about energy use and environmental impacts.

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Jul 11 • 4:53 PM EDT • Business • seattletimes.com
How Maison de Sabré built a cult business of bag charms from scraps

The Sabré brothers turned their cutting-room floor scraps into covetable bag charms. They believe the whimsy—and sustainability—they’re offering is key to being a next-generation luxury brand.

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Jul 11 • 6:00 AM EDT • Business • fastcompany.com
Half of Philly businesses aren’t complying with plastic bag laws, report says

The report finds that some businesses are still providing plastic bags, which were banned in 2021.

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Jul 11 • 5:00 AM EDT • Business • whyy.org
The World Cup is turning Erling Haaland's style into big business

Erling Haaland is known for his style both on and off the pitch, whether that's matching his hair ties to his jersey or traveling with Hermès bags.

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Jul 11 • 4:07 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
How to set healthy summer screen time limits for kids: '3 hours of anything is probably too much,' says expert

Summer often means more free time — and more screen time — for kids. Two parenting experts share their best advice for setting healthy screen time limits.

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Jul 10 • 2:59 PM EDT • Health • cnbc.com
Report: LeBron James to Cleveland is ‘Done’

The biggest story of the NBA offseason may have finally reached its conclusion. Although no official announcement has been made by LeBron James or the Cleveland Cavaliers, a new report suggests the four-time NBA champion has already made his decision.…

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Jul 10 • 12:34 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Many Philadelphia businesses are not complying with plastic bag law: Survey

The organization also found that more than 20% of surveyed businesses were still providing plastic bags, despite the citywide ban.

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Jul 9 • 6:37 PM EDT • Business • 6abc.com
Culturally tailored maternity care lifts healthy birth rates for First Nations families

The Baggarrook Yurrongi or "Women's Journey" model ensures women having a First Nations baby are cared for by a known midwife throughout pregnancy, birth and the early postnatal period.

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Jul 9 • 10:20 AM EDT • Health • medicalxpress.com
11-year-old entrepreneur builds thriving garbage bin cleaning business by going door to door

Your Bin Cleaning founder Ashton Meyer and Ashton's father Jonathan Meyer join ‘Varney & Co.’ to discuss how the 11-year-old entrepreneur turned a summer job into a growing garbage bin cleaning business.

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Jul 7 • 12:10 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com
The Mania Mailbag, July 7: Get your questions in now!

We’re doing a mailbag now! Tell us what you think.

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Jul 7 • 11:05 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Ask Pinstripe Alley: Yankees mailbag questions request

This week will be pivotal for the Yankees’ season, so be sure to get your thoughts in on the team.

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Jul 6 • 4:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Musician's hall of fame journey involves Elvis Presley, Woodstock

Tom Borum, a local musician who performs with Rudy and the Bluefish, The Blue Dice and Trick Bag, was inducted into the Maryland Entertainment Hall of Fame.

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Jul 6 • 12:07 PM EDT • Entertainment • heraldmailmedia.com
Indian shares likely to open higher on strong business updates from lenders

Indian shares are set to open with a positive tone on Monday as investors react to quarterly business updates from key ​lenders and companies, while crude oil prices remained below $72 per ‌barrel.

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Jul 5 • 10:27 PM EDT • Business • reuters.com
NCAA president Charlie Baker floats regional approach to non-football sports

Conference realignment has turned college athletics into a much more national endeavor than it ever was previously. The Big Ten stretches from Southern California to New Jersey. The ACC includes a pair of teams on the Pacific coast. And the Big 12 has members located in both the deserts of the Southwest and the mountains…

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Jul 5 • 2:30 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Dior, Chanel bags among items offered at Taylor and Travis' wedding

If an invite to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's New York wedding wasn't cool enough, guests can also flex what they brought home.

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Jul 3 • 7:42 PM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com
Yankees Mailbag: Aiming for a deadline makeover

There’s gotta be some change on this Yankees roster, but will it be impactful enough?

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Jul 3 • 4:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
#PostPulpit mailbag: What are the Patriots’ remaining offseason priorities?

The latest edition of our Patriots mailbag answers questions about the offseason to do list, defensive changes, and more.

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Jul 3 • 1:56 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Mamdani’s politics of joy: What can Arkansas politicians learn from New York’s jubilant mayor?

Zohran Mamdani’s first half-year in office has been a mixed bag when it comes to policy outcomes. There is, however, one area of unquestioned success for the NY mayor: the forging of a sustained politics of joy unmatched by that of any major American politician in recent decades.

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Jul 3 • 10:00 AM EDT • Politics • arktimes.com
Mavs Free Agent Marvin Bagley III Signs Contract with Nuggets

The move is evident of the Mavericks' logjam in the frontcourt.

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Jul 2 • 12:54 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Scientists propose launching a giant 'airbag' into space to protect us from solar superstorms ‪— and experts say it's 'quite feasible'

A new study suggests creating a satellite constellation, dubbed StormWall, that could reduce the impacts of the worst solar storms by more than 50%. The novel plan, which involves dumping gas into the magnetosphere, could be the only way to directly protect ourselves from dangerous space weather, experts say.

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Jul 1 • 10:13 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com
What really happened to Lizzo’s career?

The pop star is back with a new album, a new look and a lot of baggage. People aren’t buying it.

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Jun 29 • 12:30 PM EDT • Entertainment • cnn.com
Iraqi Officials Arrested in Green Zone Corruption Raid, Deepening Political Tensions

Iraqi security forces arrested several senior political figures in a series of overnight raids inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

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Jun 29 • 3:57 AM EDT • Politics • politicstoday.org