SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " falling " 445 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Why hyperscalers, Mag 7 are falling behind in the stock market's AI trade
Microsoft and Meta in particular are struggling to keep up with the broader tech sector as investors rebel against spending.
Lionel Richie reassures fans he is 'doing well' after dizzy spell forced concert cancellations
Lionel Richie shared concert photos and thanked fans for support after falling dizzy on stage in Minnesota forced him to cancel string of Midwest shows.
Universal Health Services (UHS) Stock May Trade At A Discount On Medicare Payment News
Universal Health Services stock has rebounded in the short term but is still down sharply year to date, which sits alongside valuation checks that currently paint the shares as looking cheap rather than stretched. After falling 28% year to date, Universal Health Services now raises the question of whether the recent bounce is simply a recovery from depressed levels or a sign that value investors are stepping back in. Expectations for solid earnings and ongoing support from Medicare payments...
Karlie Kloss attends Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding a decade after reported falling out
Karlie Kloss and her husband, Joshua Kushner, attended Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding at Madison Square Garden a decade after rumors swirled that the singer and the supermodel had a falling out.
Rescue mission launches to save NASA telescope that's falling back to Earth thanks to solar storms
Launched in 2004, Swift is sinking faster than ever because of recent solar storms.
America’s next 250? A revival of civic virtues might hold the key.
Democracy requires civic engagement – and it can sometimes seem to be falling short. But the seeds of renewal are visible, from potluck dinners to youth programs.
Donald Trump's Freedom 250 celebration suffers setback as falling panel nearly crushes dancers
Donald Trump's beleaguered Freedom 250 celebration suffered another potentially disastrous setback on Thursday, when a large panel on the White House main stage fell, nearly crushing a group of dancers.
Schumer pushes to delay SNAP cuts, warns of costs falling on county budgets
Schumer appeared in Wyoming County Thursday.
Booming business: America250 celebrations boost fireworks shops
Pyrotechnics dealers say the Fourth of July falling on a Saturday and the 250th anniversary of the United States have teamed up to make this one of the best years ever for fireworks sales.
Fixing the health cost crisis
As health costs are expected to be top-of-mind for voters ahead of the midterms, both parties are falling short on proposals that will actually solve the crisis.
NASA launches bold mission to rescue a falling space telescope before it crashes to Earth
NASA's Swift Observatory is slated to enter Earth's atmosphere later this year, but the Katalyst Space spacecraft aims to boost it higher this summer.
Meta Stock Rises on Report It’s Building a Cloud Business. CoreWeave Drops.
Meta rises on a report that it hopes to generate revenue from selling excess computing power to third parties. CoreWeave and Nebius are falling.
Yankees still falling way behind, still searching after latest loss
This time, Cam Schlittler was roughed up, and the Yankees' lineup once again couldn't mount anything in a 9-3 loss to Detroit, their sixth straight.
Bullseye! Enormous 'bow and arrow' galaxy is unlike anything radio astronomers have ever seen — Space photo of the week
Astronomers and citizen scientists have discovered RAD-BAARG, a radio galaxy with a striking bow-and-arrow shape, offering a rare direct view of a galaxy falling into the environment of a galaxy cluster.
The sky is not falling. Americans are getting healthier.
Despite declining obesity and heart disease rates, increasing cancer survival rates, and a record high life expectancy, politicians from both parties are pushing costly and ineffective policies to …
In Trump’s America, two very different views of Christianity in politics emerge
Adherence to organized religion is falling in the United States, but defenders of the religious right are ascendant in positions of power in the Trump administration.
Are You Falling Into These 5 AI Traps? Here's How Smart Leaders Avoid Them.
Artificial intelligence is making founders fall into the same leadership traps. Here's how to make sure you avoid them.
Lionel Richie postpones concerts after falling ill during tour opener
Lionel Richie is pausing his return to the stage after abruptly falling ill during the opening of his new tour.
Online violence against women in politics: what shapes political party responses to technology-facilitated gender-based violence?
Political parties have a primary role to play in tackling online violence against women and gender diverse politicians. While the prevalence and impact of TFGBV, such as coordinated disinformation campaigns, deepfake image-based sexual abuse or trolling are well documented, many parties are still building their knowledge on how to respond effectively and have not put in place internal practices and policies that respond to the rapidly evolving, poorly regulated digital ecosystem. About the ReportIn order to promote and protect fair and democratic participation in politics, this ALIGN Report explores what political parties are doing in response to TFGBV and what factors shape their action. The findings, based on existing literature and interviews with gender and politics professionals, indicate there are three sets of factors which donors, civil society and practitioners should consider when designing action to support political parties to respond to TFGBV internally. These are: (1) gender norms; (2) socio-political environment; and (3) internal party factors.Key messagesUnequal gender norms are ubiquitous across politics, shaping expectations of leaders to be strong and assertive, and practices of political parties to uphold masculinist values and sustain cultures of silence. These often lead to weak response to TFGBV against women politicians.The socio-political context can incentivise or disincentivise action, depending on the salience of gender issues, which are increasingly weaponised. Electoral competitiveness, domestic laws (i.e. quota requirements), and even the political system or global normative frameworks influence political will to act.Internal party factors that shape responses will vary across countries and contexts, but include: structures to enforce codes of conduct, policies and reporting mechanisms on (TF)GBV, political ideology, extent of centralisation of leadership, and crucially the meaningful participation of women in decision-making positions, not least through internal women’s wings.Party responses can be seen as a spectrum, with actions falling between active discouragement to address TFGBV to commitment to transform unequal norms and practices within the party.About the ToolkitTogether with the report, this ALIGN toolkit offers gender professionals and others working on democratic strengthening a set of guiding questions and reflection prompts to identify which responses could be most effective and suitable in different contexts. These actions can complement other solutions to TFGBV, such as regulations promoting safety by design. The assessment spans a broad range of factors including: (1) different manifestations of gender norms, (2) the socio-political environment and (3) internal party structures.Key messagesPolitical parties are duty-bound to take action internally to respond to the significant threats posed to women members and candidates, including from their own party colleagues, affiliates and political peers.Existing party approaches to TFGBV can be assessed along a spectrum which ranges from active discouragement and passive acceptance to minimal response and transformative change.To generate effective and context-appropriate solutions to TFGBV, it is important to consider how gender norms shape leadership expectations and internal party practices, while also analysing the impact of the socio-political environment. While actions to support women to stay safe online are very common, codes of conduct and measures to strengthen women’s voice and power in the parties are proposed as most transformative solutions.
Oprah reveals Whitney Houston moment she begged audience not to share
Oprah Winfrey has revealed she "begged" audience members not to release photos of Whitney Houston falling off the stage at her show in 2009.
Trump touts falling oil prices, economy at Pennsylvania rally
The president spoke at a Mack Trucks factory in Macungie on Tuesday
Trump touts falling oil prices, economy at Pennsylvania rally
The president spoke at a Mack Trucks factory in Macungie on Tuesday
Trump touts falling oil prices, economy at Pennsylvania rally
The president spoke at a Mack Trucks factory in Macungie on Tuesday
Ranking SEC recruiting classes via average commit distance
The 2027 recruiting cycle is moving at warp speed this summer. Prospects are making their college decisions in droves amidst official visit season. Dominoes are falling and classes are being built. Looking at the SEC, many programs are in states that are littered with blue-chip talent. You’ll often see the top schools go nationwide in […]
Man falls to death during Goose concert at Madison Square Garden
A 51-year-old man is dead after falling from an upper tier of Madison Square Garden into a lower section during Saturday's Goose concert.
How Trump’s Fragile Agreement With Iran Is Shaping the Midterms
Democrats say the president started an economically painful war that resulted in nothing positive. Republicans are more divided, even as they show some signs of relief at falling gas prices.
‘We’d love to see prices go down’: Colorado Springs business looks ahead amid falling diesel prices
Within the past month, Colorado has seen record-breaking diesel prices.
Corey Feldman Reveals 'Misdiagnosis' After Medical Emergency on Flight, Says He Actually Had Food Poisoning
The actor reassured fans two days after he was met by paramedics at LAX after falling ill on a flight
Golden Knights’ Mitch Marner opens up about mental health: ‘Some really dark moments’
After the best playoff performance of his career and falling just short of a title, Marner used his platform to discuss mental health.
Steelers great Ben Roethlisberger says Ravens are 'falling apart' and Super Bowl window 'has closed'
The former Steelers QB is clearly not a fan of Baltimore's offseason moves
Microsoft weighs an Xbox spinoff. Would it revive the business or put it at risk?
With hardware sales falling and costs rising, a comeback would be anything but guaranteed.
Jim Acosta ruthlessly mocked for comparing removal of Trump’s name from Kennedy Center to fall of Berlin Wall
Jim Acosta live-streamed for nearly 11 hours awaiting the removal of Trump's name from the Kennedy Center, then compared it to the Berlin Wall falling.
Why middle age is becoming a breaking point in the U.S.
A new international study finds that middle-aged Americans are lonelier, more depressed, and experiencing worse memory and health than earlier generations. Researchers say growing financial strain, weaker social supports, and chronic stress may explain why the U.S. is falling behind other wealthy nations.
Wages Are Falling. Wealth Is Surging. No Wonder Americans Are Unhappy.
As Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, workers are facing higher prices and fears of A.I.-driven job losses.
Consumer sentiment rises for the first time in three months
Consumer sentiment may finally be recovering after falling to historic lows due to wartime price spikes.
Nintendo’s Palworld Lawsuit Is Falling Apart
Nintendo's patent lawsuit against Palworld gets a preliminary end date, as well as some changes suggesting it's falling apart.
I left Canada and moved to California for love; gave up everything
After falling in love on vacation, I gave up everything and sold my dream condo so I could leave Canada and move to the US to be with my partner.
Social Security is Facing a Political Crisis
On Tuesday the Social Security Trustees released their latest report on the system’s finances. The numbers didn’t change much: Unless something is done, the Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program, Social Security’s official name, will be unable to pay full benefits starting in either 2032 or 2034, depending on some technical issues. That’s not far away: If the Trustees are right, the prospect of a Social Security crisis will loom over the next presidential administration. It’s important to understand, however, the nature of the looming crisis. It won’t be an economic crisis. It won’t even be a serious fiscal crisis. Whatever you may have heard, Social Security isn’t in danger of going bankrupt. What we’re facing, instead, is potential political crisis. Congress and the White House could easily take action to sustain America’s retirement system. But given the current state of our politics, there’s no guarantee that they will. There is a widespread misunderstanding of how Social Security works. While Social Security was designed to look like a pension fund, it isn’t. A pension fund pays benefits out of a stock of assets it has accumulated over time. In contrast, Social Security operates as a government transfer program, like food stamps or Medicaid. Now, unlike food stamps — but like the highway trust fund — Social Security is on paper supported by a dedicated tax, the payroll tax, that is assigned to that program. But I say “on paper” because from an economic point of view assigning the payroll tax to Social Security is just an accounting convention. What matters for the U.S. economy is the overall balance between government spending and government revenue, not the difference between one type of spending and one source of revenue. So there’s no inherent economic significance to the fact that by 2034 payroll tax receipts will be insufficient to cover promised benefits. There is, however, a legislative issue. As long as the Social Security Administration can pay benefits out of payroll taxes and its cash reserve, there’s no need for Congress to vote each year to authorize benefits — they just keep going out until further notice. However, once those resources become insufficient, benefits will fall —by 17 percent according to the Trustees — unless Congress passes new legislation that “tops up” Social Security’s finances. Yet the current administration and Republican party are such extremists that there is a real risk that Social Security will be held hostage on behalf of their goals. If this should come to pass, the hostage-takers will claim that shoring up Social Security is unaffordable. Right on cue, Mike Johnson, the Trump-sycophant Speaker of the House, declared on Monday that “entitlement programs” like Social Security “have to be adjusted and fixed,” and that Republicans will introduce a plan to that effect next year. But this is a ploy, because while the cost of maintaining Social Security benefits at their promised level isn’t trivial, it is in fact affordable. According to the Trustees’ report, the actuarial balance of OASDI up through 2050 — the amount of additional funds it would need to keep paying full benefits for the next 25 years — is 1.06 percent of GDP. To put that number in perspective, the Trump administration proposes increasing military spending next year by $420 billion, equivalent to about 1.4 percent of GDP – without any discussion of whether that’s affordable Yet how did we get to the point where Social Security will need to be topped up? The main answer is that we have an aging population, with a growing ratio of retirees collecting benefits to workers paying into the system: Trump’s anti-immigration policies are making this problem worse. According to the Trustees’ report, lower immigration will deepen Social Security’s financial hole because many immigrants are working-age adults who will pay into the system for decades before they collect benefits. In fact, this problem may be much bigger than the report acknowledges: The report’s baseline assumption is that we’ll have net immigration of almost 1.2 million people a year, and even the pessimistic case assumes 750,000 a year. Meanwhile actual net immigration has already been cut far below that — and may now be negative. Moreover, Social Security is being financially damaged by growing income inequality in America. Payroll taxes are levied only on wages up to $184,500, and they don’t touch capital income. With the distribution of income increasingly shifting from labor to capital, as well as becoming more unequal among wage-earners, revenue from the Social Security payroll tax has been falling as a share of national income. From 1990 to 2024, it fell from 5.02 percent of gross domestic income to 4.46 percent. Which brings me to the question that, these days, we ask about everything: How might Social Security be affected by the advent of AI? A short answer: If, as many of us fear, AI accelerates rising income inequality, it will further reduce the payroll tax receipts that currently pay for Social Security and further endanger its finances. On the other hand, if AI, as its advocates promise, leads to faster economic growth, it will increase the potential tax base that could and should be used to support Social Security and other social insurance programs. But to take advantage of that larger base, we’ll have to get serious about taxing wealth and capital income. Is Social Security in trouble? Yes, but only because of the way its financing is currently structured — a structure that no longer works well because our society and economy have become so unequal. Moreover, Trump’s immigration policies are further endangering its already deteriorating financial condition. So don’t believe Republicans’ gaslighting that it will be necessary to cut Social Security benefits. All that is necessary to preserve Social Security is political will to raise taxes on the wealthy and a sensible immigration policy. MUSICAL CODA Actually 67 under current law.
Eagles offense, Jalen Hurts falling behind at minicamp
The Philadelphia Eagles offense and quarterback Jalen Hurts are falling behind the defense before training camp starts in July.
US measles cases pass 2,000 as outbreak nears worst in decades
Outbreak driven by falling vaccination and misinformation as federal public health cuts hamper state response
Amazon Expands Its LTL Shipping Business. Old Dominion Freight Tumbles.
Old Dominion Freight Line and FedEx Freight stocks are falling Wednesday after Amazon expands its less-than-truckload shipping service.
Amazon Expands Its LTL Shipping Business. Old Dominion Freight Tumbles.
Old Dominion Freight Line and FedEx Freight shares are falling Wednesday.
Poor sleep threatens health, society and the economy
An increasing number of people are suffering from sleep deprivation, difficulty falling asleep, or interrupted sleep—with consequences for health, society, and the economy. An international research team ...
'Unbelievable' star confirms he's ready to join Liverpool
Liverpool had a massive fall from grace this season. Arne Slot hugely underdelivered which led to many fans falling out of love with their football team for some time.In fact, some weren't even tuning...
LGBTQ+ business climate declines for fourth straight year
A new business climate index found lower-ranked states falling further behind while top-performing states continue strengthening LGBTQ+ protections.
Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle open up about 'sad' rift with 'Boy Meets World' costar Ben Savage
Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle are opening up about their falling out with 'Boy Meets World' costar Ben Savage, whom they say declined to cohost their rewatch podcast in 2022, and has since gone silent.
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science
With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!
SF: Two Competing Business Tax Measures Both Falling Short In Early Results
Two dueling business tax measures in San Francisco -- Propositions C and D -- are both lagging behind the necessary majority each needs in order to pass, early results showed Tuesday night.
The wasting disease threatening US science and ‘Patient Earth’
Ignorance is a wasting disease, a death of a thousand cuts. A gradual “falling behind” the rest of the world, not only in the ability to advance basic science, but also in the ability to educate, innovate, and retain the best and the brightest minds.
Why Trump’s Pathetic Circus Act Is Falling Apart
“It feeds the correct view that I think is spreading among more and more and more people that, wow, he’s kind of incompetent, isn’t he?” Kurt Andersen said.
Pols & Politics: Massachusetts GOP candidate considers lawsuit over fraudulent signature collections
Republican Lt. Gov. candidate Anne Brensley is speaking out after reportedly falling victim to fraud by a political consultant she hired to collect ballot signatures for her campaign.
'Dutton Ranch' has 'Yellowstone' fans falling for Beth and Rip all over again
"Dutton Ranch" stars Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser say Beth and Rip's relationship works because it isn't perfect — and fans agree.
Five of the most shocking upsets in sports history, from Michigan-App State to Virginia-UMBC
Sinner's stunning French Open loss inspired a look back at five all-time upsets, including Djokovic falling to Denis Istomin at the 2017 Australian Open.
The Politics of the Downwardly Mobile Professional Class
The debate over whether Graham Platner is “working class” comes at a time when more and more people are at risk of falling into it.
Trump's Senate endorsement of Paxton buoys Democrats in Texas
Ken Paxton's primary win has buoyed Democratic hopes of an upset by the viral sensation James Talarico. But touted Democrats have a history of falling flat.
U.K. Sanctions Justin Sun’s Crypto Exchange Over Russia Business
Until a recent public falling-out, Sun was a backer of the Trump family’s crypto ventures.
The Power of Storytelling: How Brands Are Climbing (Or Falling) the Entertainment Ladder
Little Black Book, Dane Brocas, growth lead at Tracksuit explores how the future belongs to companies that treat entertainment as a craft rather than a campaign tactic
Boulder City businesses see steady Memorial Day crowds despite falling Lake Mead levels
Hurricanes, Canadiens take 1-1 series to Canada for Monday's Game 3
Game 2 saw a Carolina returning to its previous playoff form after falling in Game 1 to Montreal.
St. Charles volleyball sweeps Dayton Carroll to earn state berth
After falling short of reaching the OHSAA Division II state tournament last season, St. Charles earned some redemption May 23.
NVIDIA Earnings: New Segments And A $200B CPU TAM Reveal A Business Beyond Hyperscale
NVIDIA (NVDA) reported its 2027Q1 earnings on 5/20/2026 after the market closed. The stock had a muted reaction, falling slightly by -1.8% on 5/21/2026, the next day. However, underneath all the headline noise, what do these earnings results mean for a regular investor? We unpack below.
Months after historic floods, local businesses denied SBA loans and left with few options
Months after historic floods devastated the region, some small business owners are still struggling to recover and say they're falling through the cracks when i
The big strategy themes behind Microsoft's executive overhaul
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is upending his leadership team to better compete in the AI age. Here's who is on the rise and falling behind.
She's 'unhinged.' He's a cowboy with a soft side. 'Dutton Ranch' has 'Yellowstone' fans falling for Beth and Rip all over again.
"Dutton Ranch" stars Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser say Beth and Rip's relationship works because it isn't perfect — and fans agree.
Maine transgender sports referendum is poised to fall off the 2026 ballot
Conservative referendum to bar transgender girls from school sports in Maine is at risk of falling short of signatures needed for the November ballot.
Net migration at new low – so why is immigration such a hot topic?
Despite latest evidence of falling migration numbers, debate around the subject remains ‘hostile’
Colorado’s prisons are underfunded, not overcrowded
By John Kellner The state does not have a “prison crowding” problem. It has a prison under-capacity problem. This is a crucial distinction for lawmakers and the public to understand. If it is not properly understood, the state risks falling into the same kind of criminal justice system spiral that mistakes leniency for clemency. This […]
2026 NBA Draft Big Board: Michigan stars impressive at combine, Flory Bidunga falling in prospect rankings
Adam Finkelstein adjusts his Big Board after scouting prospects at last week's NBA Draft Combine
Evaluating Flutter Entertainment (NYSE:FLUT) After A Sharp Share Price Pullback
Recent performance snapshot for Flutter Entertainment (NYSE:FLUT) Flutter Entertainment (NYSE:FLUT) has drawn investor attention after a period of weaker share performance, with the stock down about 16% over the past month and roughly 25% over the past 3 months. See our latest analysis for Flutter Entertainment. The recent decline has been steep, with the share price down 57.68% year to date and the 1 year total shareholder return falling 62.95%. This points to fading momentum as investors...
[Report] WHO: Global health gains face threat of reversal
WHO published the World Health Statistics 2026 report showing the world is falling short on health targets, with progress uneven, slowing, and in some areas reversing.
Now What? With Carbon Pricing Eroded and Pipeline Politics Advancing, Here Are the Pathways for Climate Success
At the end of a whirlwind week of news on carbon pricing and electricity strategy, capping a madcap year of pretty much non-stop, dramatic change, the word across much of Canada’s climate and energy transition community is that climate policy in this country has been shredded. Eviscerated. Hit with a sledgehammer by policy rollbacks that have pushed the country’s 2050 net zero target “well out of reach”. That means it’s never been more important to look for the rays of hope and glimmers of possibility. To glimpse the seeds of the next set of strategies to get Canada’s climate pollution under control and the country into the accelerating global dash away from fossil fuels. And then, once we’ve spotted those possibilities, get on with the hard, day-to-day slog of trying to make them a reality. Nothing takes away from the frustration and the deep disappointment so many climate and energy hawks are expressing, the sense of betrayal by the author of Value(s) and the former UN special envoy for climate action and finance. But we knew two things as the week drew to a close. We’re looking at the world as it most definitely is. And we don’t get to give up finding the pathways to confront climate change and deliver faster, deeper carbon cuts that leave no one else behind. So really, the first question we all have to ask ourselves is: What’s next? Subscribe All the Oxygen in the Room The outpouring of anger and grief over the carbon pricing deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been absolutely understandable. So much of the climate community poured years, more than a decade, into dragging the current federal pricing regime across the finish line, then defending it from a deluge of three-syllable rhymes after the Trudeau government proved utterly incapable of delivering its own message. The policy foisted on us by neo-classical economists took up all the oxygen in the room, burned through years of climate response time that we won’t get back, while cornering climate hawks into the position that the best response to the crisis of our lifetimes is a new tax…in an era of historic anti-tax sentiment. I mean, really—what could possibly have gone wrong? Against that history, let’s appreciate columnist Max Fawcett’s point that even a modest carbon pricing agreement with a government as off-the-wall libertarian/conspiracist as Danielle Smith’s—those adjectives are mine, not Max’s—is a win worth savouring (as long as Smith keeps her promises for a change). But part of living in the world as it is (no, I’m not letting that go) is to be clear-headed about what we can and can’t control. And one thing we get to decide, after seeing this week’s carbon price festivities take up all the oxygen yet again, is whether we want to keep letting that happen. Particularly when success down that road depends on a factor that no one with a climate agenda can control or influence—a provincial carbon pricing mechanism that has been manipulated and eroded beyond its lowest possible denominator. Thankfully, that’s not the way it has to go. Not when we have so many other powerful, practical tools at our disposal, including the ones still available to us through this abominable Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. Tools In Our Toolbox When I started roughing out this list, I didn’t expect it to grow to nearly a dozen bullet points. It’s probably still incomplete. Some of the greatest hits in today’s climate solutions toolbox include: • No Carbon Capture, No Pipeline: On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly stated that there’s been no change to the MOU provision that there will be no West Coast pipeline without an industry commitment to build its massive, $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage (CCUS) hub in Northern Alberta, and vice versa. The two megaprojects were joined at the hip when the MOU was signed Nov. 27, and the implementation agreement this week affirmed that they still are. A parade of independent analysts have spent years pointing to the economic and technical flaws in CCUS, while the industry kept postponing its investment decision until it could arm-twist the government for more “clarity” (by which it meant even more lavish taxpayer subsidies) on the project. Now the industry itself is running away from the CCUS hub and insisting the pipeline should proceed without it, but Carney doesn’t seem to be budging from a central tenet of the MOU to which Smith has signed on. • No Subsidies, No Investors: Climate analysts and advocates have quite rightly been hammering away at Carney and his team, insisting that any new capacity the industry wants to build must proceed without new subsidies. The government has responded with a growing collection of funding and financing mechanisms for the very wide menu of industrial development and nation-building projects they say they want to take on, and that menu always includes fossil fuel infrastructure. But it’s hard to see how even the combined fiscal clout of the federal and supportive provincial governments will deliver the financial backing private investors would need when the business case for new fossil fuel development is evaporating before their eyes. Particularly when… • No Market, No Demand, No Investors: As our friend Markham Hislop at Energi Media (our apparently sleepless friend, given the massive volume of great material he’s been churning out) points out this morning, the biggest vulnerability in any pipeline deal is the assumption that Asian buyers will want the oil or liquefied natural ga that our fossil industry is so keen to send them. Hislop writes in part: Ottawa and Alberta are effectively betting that countries like China and India will continue increasing oil imports for decades as their economies grow and energy consumption rises. That assumption underpins the entire economic rationale for expanding oil sands production and building billions of dollars in new export infrastructure. But Asian energy systems are changing rapidly… China, India, South Korea, and other major hydrocarbon importers are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into electricity systems built around wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, hydro, and expanded transmission infrastructure. Domestic “energy sovereignty” is increasingly replacing the old energy-security model based on stable oil and gas imports. Those investments are expected to sharply slow oil demand growth and eventually reverse it, even as overall energy consumption continues rising. There are also refining constraints. Many Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes are already optimized to process discounted heavy crude from the Middle East and Latin America. That raises serious questions about how much additional Canadian bitumen Asian markets can absorb at profitable prices. Small wonder that there’s still no private sector investor for the project, despite Smith’s government desperately beating the bushes to put together a deal. For now, Alberta is acting as proponent and covering early start-up costs for a pitch to the federal Major Projects Office, which could actually turn into the next tough hurdle for Smith and her pipeline to jump. • Canada Day Looms: How ironic that Canada’s birthday this year could become a major chokepoint for the provincial premier who’s been working so diligently to tear the country apart! The July 1 target date for Alberta’s pipeline proposal is baked into the MOU, was reaffirmed by the implementation plan, but it hadn’t dawned on me that it cuts both ways. As one very smart colleague wrote in an email yesterday, “they’ve thrown the ball into Alberta’s court to get the project proposal on the table really quickly and to have to do a whole pile of work to put together a massive, complicated project that would typically take years to assemble, and they’ve given them weeks to do it.” That makes July 1 a looming deadline that Smith won’t be able to run away from politically, especially with the separatists in her party and her caucus breathing down her neck. (See previous ref to off-the-wall.) But if Alberta comes in with a sloppy, incomplete submission, even after Carney bent over backwards to simplify the application process and the rules that govern it, it may be harder for the province or the industry to blame Ottawa and insist on the faster process they claim their investors are demanding. (Oh, wait—which investors would those be??) • We’ll See You In Court (Then We’ll See You Again): If Carney did cave, that would be just one more reason for Indigenous and other affected communities to take the government and the process to court—Just as Alberta First Nations did, successfully, in response to Smith’s half-baked separation referendum. Veterans of the Harper era have been warning that a shoddy process around fossil fuel infrastructure or other major projects will be a recipe for the very delays that process seeks to avoid. And now more than ever, with renewable energy and energy storage eating fossil fuels’ lunch in import markets around the world, a delayed pipeline or LNG terminal may be as good as a cancelled one. • Charged Up, Ready to Go: With its goal of doubling Canada’s electricity supply to meet a doubling of demand by 2050, the national electricity strategy that Carney unveiled Thursday has a lot to like. With its explicit language about speeding the shift from fuels to more efficient and affordable electricity, global investment and deployment patterns that already favour that shift, an emerging bidirectional power grid, the role of front-line options like rooftop solar and heat pumps, the emergence of electric vehicles as behind-the-meter energy storage, and the domestic jobs and manufacturing to make it all happen, the document doubles down on the essential cornerstone of a faster shift off fossil fuels. The strategy envisions a more prominent role for gas and nuclear power. But some of those provisions were already in the Clean Electricity Regulations that climate hawks are now fighting so hard to defend, inserted as a compromise in a futile attempt to mollify the industry and its political representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But once again, gas will be a tougher sell when it’s more expensive and now so much more unpredictable than the clean alternatives. The new nuclear technologies are still speculative and deeply vulnerable to cost overruns. Increasingly, utilities, developers, and investors know it. Carney declared Thursday that “it doesn’t do us good to be sitting in court all the time with provinces. It doesn’t do us good to be talking past each other. What does do us good is to come together with specific projects.” There are no guarantees, but so much of the language and narrative-building in the electricity strategy suggests the lion’s share of those projects will be renewable. • The Party Has Already Started: The electricity strategy only rarely digs down to specific projects, but provinces representing three-quarters of Canada’s population are already embracing a faster transition. Hydro-Québec is working on a 10-year, $185-billion renewable energy and grid buildout by 2035. Ontario recently brought 10 provinces and territories together in a National Energy Corridor Agreement to boost interprovincial and -territorial transmission infrastructure. And the MOU implementation agreement commits Alberta to facilitate investment in renewable energy projects, a big step back from its continuing, punitive restrictions on renewables development. The electricity strategy envisions much of the financing and infrastructure that will be needed to pull those advances together into an integrated whole. • Delivering on Affordability: The MOU implementation plan has little or nothing to say about affordability (are you surprised?), but the electricity strategy does, with a top-line pledge to reduce home energy costs for seven out of 10 Canadian households by 2050, a total saving of $15 billion across the board. It’s just a start, but it puts affordability on the government’s narrative map. If they’re serious and deliberate about patching together a least-cost energy strategy, it’ll have little if any room for oil, gas, or nuclear—not with powerful evidence, for example, that electricity prices are higher when those prices are set by gas. • Smith Proves that Canada Works: By signing a deal that makes it harder to claim the federal government is blocking a new pipeline, Smith has helped prove Carney’s constant anti-separatist refrain that “Canada works”—incurring the rage, no doubt, of her own political base. Canada also needs to work for anyone who depends on a clean environment, healthy and thriving ecosystems, and safe, stable climate. But with Smith and her separatist constituents setting up as a fifth column for annexation by Donald Trump’s United States, let’s set aside any notion that 51st state status for Canada is a recipe for anything other than climate disaster (and so much else). Resisting and withstanding Trump (just 170 more sleeps until mid-term elections, which is a damn sight better than the 730 we started with) doesn’t mean a free pass for a pipeline, but we can still appreciate it that keeping Canada whole and sovereign is still Carney’s Job One. • The Words Not Spoken: Apart from a commitment to export a million barrels of “low-emission” Alberta bitumen per day (memo to Smith and Carney: You realize that that’s less than the industry is already exporting??), the MOU implementation plan says nothing about the international trade and economic sovereignty deals that Carney has been travelling the world to negotiate. It didn’t have to. Carney doesn’t need permission from Danielle Smith, her American enablers, or her separatist allies to continue building the alliances that will ratchet down our economic dependency on our unstable, unreliable neighbour to the south. But every connection he builds with countries outside North America helps align our economy and our future with a faster shift off fossil fuels. Little if any of this was on our bingo cards a year or two ago. But it’s the pathway that has opened up to us. And if it gives Canada any climate or energy gains at all in an era still dominated by Trump and his increasingly ridiculous tariffs, his loutish trade negotiations and his continuing annexation threats, we have to take the wins. Not least because they’ll be the point of departure for what we can achieve in 2027, 2029, and beyond, as Trump’s grip and this era begin to loosen and then fade. What is Carney Doing? If this line of thought is right—and it’s a possibility, not a prediction—it means that Carney’s actions and decisions are largely about buying time. Time for Trump’s power to wane. Time for Alberta’s separatist/conspiracist virus to spread, mutate, die out, or at least die back, with help from a vaccine of federal steadiness and calm (appropriate enough, for a movement populated largely by vaccine deniers) that no conspiracy theory can dismiss. And time for the government’s trade and investment agenda to deliver results—even knowing that some of those results will bring impacts that front-line communities will not and should not accept. In the immediate moment, none of this changes the way the wider climate community has to respond, from campaigners to investors to front-line practitioners. All of our voices are still essential. But those voices will be stronger and more confident if we have a clearer sense of the brutal game we’ve been pulled into, and a plausible path (or two it three) for playing it to the win we need. This conversation also underscores our biggest task for the remaining years of what was supposed to be the “decisive” decade for climate response: if we can shift the energy narrative in Canada, make it a mainstream view that the country’s preoccupation with oil and gas has us falling farther behind a changing world, we’ll see far better results in the 2030s and beyond. For many veteran climate advocates, taking on that part of the fight will begin with recognizing that most of our friends and family, neighbours and colleagues already understand that climate change is real and right in front of us: they’re looking away and staying silent because they don’t have what climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “efficacy”. As Hayhoe recently pointed out in a feature interview with The Energy Mix, it amounts to science denial to keep hammering away at the dire news about global warming without also helping audiences understand what they can do about it, with multiple studies telling us why that won’t work. Far better to open those conversations with the dominant crises like energy security, food security, emergency preparedness and business continuity, affordability, and financial security that have knocked climate change far lower on the list of public priorities, and will likely keep it there. We Knew This Would Happen Climate hawks have always known this day would come. For decades, we warned that everyone had to pay attention to climate change right now, because it would be much tougher to respond once the crisis itself started affecting our daily lives. We were right, and here we are. But now, thanks to decades of hard work, communities and countries have an alternative to doubling down on fossil fuels. “In 10 years everyone will have ‘always known’ that solar and batteries were going to win,” Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade writes on LinkedIn. With the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy priorities around the world, Canada and the United States are among the shrinking number of countries that are still very keen on fossil fuel development. Understanding that gap is a first, essential step in spotting the opportunities ahead, and averting the deep economic as well as environmental and social risk we face if we don’t seize them. Thanks for reading The Energy Mix Weekender! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender. Chart of the Week BYD Eyes 20 Dealership Locations After Canada Greenlights Chinese EV Imports ‘Sledgehammer’ Carbon Price Deal Boosts Emissions by 230Mt, Aims for Fall 2027 Pipeline Approval ‘Worse Than Harper’: Regulatory Rollback Would Stop Canada from Assessing Project Impacts, Critics Warn Electricity Strategy Aims for Doubling by 2050, Allows ‘Flexibility’ for Gas Power Plants Opposition Mounts as O’Leary’s Data Centre Approved in Drought-Stricken Utah Diluted Carbon Price Misses ‘Reality of the World We’re In’, Could Impede Diversified Trade: Climate Institute $200B in Clean Energy Investment Will Need On-Time Delivery, Reliable Policies, Trade Association Says ‘Sovereign Pipeline’: CEO Pitches to Keep Trans Mountain in Government Hands What a Supercharged El Niño Could Mean for Canada Canada’s future is electric, and here’s how a power grid superhighway would get us there (Toronto Star) The Perilous Waters of Hecate Strait (Globe and Mail) Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East (The Guardian) Farmers confront rising cost of fertilizer and fuel as spring seeding under way (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Clarkson forecasts 24% decline in offshore oil, gas capital expenditures (Oil & Gas Journal) Pipe Dreams: How Oil and Gas Fail to Deliver Economic Development in Africa (Oil Change International) Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition (Climate Home News) Iran war threatens the dream of a post-oil economy in the Gulf (Washington Post) U.S. Oil, Gas Work Force Hits Lowest Level Since 2022 (Rigzone) Why Polestar Is Doubling Down on Net Zero as Rivals Pull Back on EVs (Bloomberg) Why this Michigan utility plans to sell its hydro dams for $13 (E&E News/Politico) Levees can no longer save New Orleans (Vox)
I used Gemini to restart a hobby I abandoned 20 years ago — and I found something unsettling
AI is very helpful, so why does it feel so wrong?
Is Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) Priced Attractive After Sharp Share Price Declines?
Wondering whether Tencent Music Entertainment Group's current share price really reflects its underlying value, or if the market is mispricing the stock right now. The stock closed at US$8.47, after falling 8.3% over the past week, 14.3% over the past month, 52.6% year to date, and 47.7% over the past year, while the 3 year return stands at 13.6% and the 5 year return shows a decline of 41.3%. Recent coverage has focused on Tencent Music Entertainment Group's position in the online...
Hantavirus outbreak tests post-COVID health communications playbook
A rodent-borne virus with a scary name. A mid-ocean cruise ship in quarantine. Several people dead and more falling sick.
WHO: The world is falling short of and even reversing its health targets
Malaria incidence is increasing, progress on maternal mortality is stalling, and some childhood vaccine rates are plateauing or have dipped below the threshold for herd immunity
Global health gains face threat of reversal
The world is falling short on health targets, with progress uneven, slowing, and in some areas reversing, according to the World Health Statistics 2026 report, published today by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Do you need more protein? What science says about high-protein diets
Are we really falling short on protein—or is the high-protein craze overblown?
Scientists seek to understand effects of rain falling on snow in the Arctic
When rain falls on snow in the Arctic, ice layers can form on top of and within the snowpack. This increasingly common dynamic can influence the ability of animals, including caribou and muskoxen, to forage and move across the landscape. That, in turn, affects the people who rely on wildlife for subsistence, culture, wellbeing and income. Given the widespread impacts of rain-on-snow events, Colorado State University researchers are studying and modeling their effects in Arctic systems. The work is especially important considering the rapid rate of climate change across the region
How the Working Families Party Can Promote Black Political Independence
In many state and local races, the WFP ballot line has helped Black candidates win office without falling in line with the Democratic political establishment.
Peter’s Power Hour: The professional sports schedule is too complicated
Sports are my world. They shape my perspective, and perhaps more importantly, how I view the passage of time. When the football season kicks off, I am conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs to expect to see leaves falling through a crisp breeze as nature’s colors turn duller. When basketball and hockey start a few months later,...
Falling birth rates contribute to Romsey business closing
The owners of child-focused businesses say falling birth rates are impacting their future viability.
Pacers president Kevin Pritchard apologizes for Ivica Zubac trade that cost them lottery pick after falling out of top 4: 'I own taking the risk'
Thousands drop Medi-Cal in Ventura County. Here's what it means
Enrollment in the Medi-Cal insurance program is falling in Ventura County and the decline is expected to continue.
No, AI isn’t going to fix the loneliness epidemic — it may make it worse
Stories abound of people falling in love or developing friendship with a chatbot. But that doesn’t actually solve the loneliness problem.
Aging family kept falling for scams, built no-code app for $20 to help
Matter Sanner, 54, vibe coded an app using Cursor called ScamSkeptic for his aging family, who had fallen victim to scams.
Hantavirus: the risks, the science and what you need to know
On May 2, the World Health Organization got an alarming report: People aboard a ship in the Atlantic Ocean were falling ill. The culprit is now confirmed as hantavirus, a pathogen that some rodents carry that can infect humans in rare, but often deadly, instances. Multiple passengers have died, and more people are showing symptoms. So, we’re talking to Emily Abdoler, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Michigan, about the news – how common is hantavirus in humans, what are the consequences of getting it, and how can at-risk people protect themselves from it? If you found this episode interesting, listen to our episode on Rocky Mountain spotted fever.Interested in more science in the news? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.
Space junk falls back to Earth faster as sunspot numbers climb
A new study links the sun's 11-year cycle to accelerated orbital loss, with debris falling faster once sunspot numbers near their cycle peak.
After pushback, Amazon rolls out Claude Code, Codex to all employees
Some Amazon staff had complained about a lack of access to top AI coding tools, arguing the company risked falling behind in developer productivity.
Greenland ice melt has surged sixfold and scientists are alarmed
Greenland’s ice sheet is now melting in ways never seen before, with extreme events becoming more frequent, widespread, and intense. Since 1990, meltwater production has skyrocketed, and most record-breaking events have occurred in recent years. Scientists say warming temperatures are supercharging these episodes beyond natural climate patterns.
Mira Costa sweeps JSerra for girls' beach volleyball title
The Mustangs send their seniors off with a win after falling to Redondo Union in the Southern Section finals last spring.
Why Spencer Pratt’s Grievance Politics Are More L.A. Than You Think
The reality star, who recently memed himself as the antihero from revenge thriller ‘Falling Down,’ seeks to upturn the Los Angeles liberal establishment with backlash-fueled populism. He’s not the first.
A’s Drop Series Opener To Guardians 8-5
May has officially begun, and the A’s begin the month with a series-opening loss to the Cleveland Guardians, falling to their AL Central foes in a high-scoring 8-5 contest. The starting pitching wasn’t great, the bullpen allowed three runners to cross home plate, and while the offense provided five runs they left 10 on base […]
Pens Points: Turning the page
Here are your Pens Points for this Friday morning… As the Pittsburgh Penguins shift their attention toward the off-season, we can look back at the overall picture of their playoff run and the season as a whole. The team was largely undone by their disastrous start, falling into a 3–0 series hole, in addition to […]
Rockets hold off Lakers to force Game 6 after falling behind 3-0 in series
Bitcoiners encouraged to stay invested amid falling value during Las Vegas conference
Despite a consistent fall, Bitcoin enthusiasts are alive and well, telling people to hold on.
The Internet Is Falling Down, Falling Down, Falling Down (cPanel & WHM Authentication Bypass CVE-2026-41940)
Hello! Yes, it's all a disaster again! Let's get this party started: 0:00 /0:12 1× No comments today, so imagine this: * We wrote something that we find very funny, * Nobody else gets it, * But everyone humors us It's your typical watchTowr Labs blog introduction. What Is cPanel & WHM?
Cause of falling fertility rates isn’t biological
Letters: Peter Foreshaw Brookes says economic conditions and smartphone usage (and its effects on coupling) are more likely causes
Key Business Trends for US Contractors in 2026: Navigating Uncertainty in This Year and Beyond
Contractors are under pressure from every direction. Softening demand, rising competition, workforce shortages, and policy uncertainty are all hitting at once. Our latest SmartMarket Brief with CMiC documents how 262 US contractors are responding, and what separates those holding their ground from those falling behind.
Counting the many costs of the global mental health burden
The cost of mental health conditions build gradually and invisibly, and come from reduced wellbeing, unpaid care and falling workforce participation.
Five biggest draft misses: Ty Simpson jumps into top half of Round 1, Garrett Nussmeier drops to QB10
Experts did not expect the Rams to take Simpson at No. 13, nor did they anticipate Nussmeier falling to Round 7