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Science of Speed off to fast start

PITTSBURGH — One month in and Pittsburgh is proving it’s ready to put the pedal to the metal. Since opening Aug. 1, Science of Speed, Powered by Lenovo, at Kamin Science Center has welcomed nearly 10,000 visitors, with 90 percent of racing experiences selling out through the first month of operations. The 21,000-square-foot immersive experience […]

Sep 3 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • weirtondailytimes.com

Wisconsin health officials urge back-to-school shots as measles spreads

Federal data shows only 85 percent of Wisconsin kindergarteners were vaccinated against measles during the 2025-2026 school year.

Sep 3 • 6:17 PM EDT • Health • wpr.org

Should you trust AI with your health questions?

If you’re concerned about your health, AI chatbots promise detailed answers in seconds. One survey found 17 percent of adults ask AI chatbots health questions at least once a month.

Sep 3 • 3:26 PM EDT • Health • nbcmiami.com

Anker put a display on the case of its new sleepbuds

The non-Pro model is 20 percent slimmer which is good for side sleepers.

Sep 3 • 3:30 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

Dodgers on Deck: Thursday, September 3 vs. Cardinals

The Dodgers finish off their home series against the St. Louis Cardinals with Tarik Skubal on the mound on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium. Skubal in his first month with the Dodgers had a 3.00 ERA in five starts and 30 innings, with 37 strikeouts (a 30.6-percent strikeout rate) against only seven walks, and two […]

Sep 2 • 8:02 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

New Mexico’s largest reservoir plunges to just 1. 4% full

Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico’s largest reservoir, plunged to just 1.4 percent capacity in July 2026 after years of extreme drought and record early snowmelt. The dramatic decline exposed long-submerged debris and underscored the growing strain on Rio Grande water supplies used by farms in New Mexico and Texas.

Sep 2 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Middleton leads Johnson in race for Texas attorney general, but the contest is unusually close

State Sen. Mayes Middleton spent lavishly to capture the Republican nomination and build statewide name recognition. But the most recent polling shows him just five percentage points ahead of Democratic state Sen. Nathan Johnson -- with more than a fifth of voters still undecided.

Sep 2 • 8:42 AM EDT • Politics • houstonpublicmedia.org

Employer Health Costs Are Expected to Spike in 2027

A new U.S. survey anticipates an average increase of 11 percent unless benefits are cut, the highest rate in decades. Other findings also predict a sharp rise.

Sep 2 • 6:00 AM EDT • Business • nytimes.com

Employer Health Costs Are Expected to Spike in 2027

A new U.S. survey anticipates an average increase of 11 percent unless benefits are cut, the highest rate in decades. Other findings also predict a sharp rise.

Sep 2 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • nytimes.com

Poll shows nearly 90% of Americans believe government corruption is widespread

The belief increased by 10 percentage points compared with last year, a Gallup poll found.

Sep 2 • 2:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Cleveland Clinic survey highlights social media's influence on men's health

Seventy-four percent of men rarely or never trust health information shared by influencers, yet 39% admit they tried a new diet or wellness trend after seeing it on social media.

Sep 1 • 5:00 PM EDT • Health • spectrumnews1.com

'It's bad for business': Lincoln Park water rate hike goes into effect today

Starting today, residents and businesses in Lincoln Park are facing higher water bills following the city's decision to raise rates by as much as 28 percent.

Sep 1 • 6:44 AM EDT • Business • wxyz.com

The Google TV Streamer Now Costs $150 After A 50 Percent Price Hike

Google's streaming device used to cost $100. Now, it'll set you back $150.

Sep 1 • 2:31 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com

Global Oil Price Rises to $90 a Barrel After U.S. and Iran Trade Attacks

The first attacks in a month jolted energy markets. The average U.S. gasoline price remained 37 percent higher since the war began.

Aug 31 • 5:07 AM EDT • Business • nytimes.com

Jodi's Journal: Lincoln County's sales tax wake-up call

As they voted to bring the sales tax rate up to as much as 7 percent, Lincoln County commissioners taught a lesson about a different sort of cost this week

Aug 30 • 8:18 AM EDT • Business • siouxfalls.business

University Computer Science department remains hopeful in the age of AI

According to National Student Clearinghouse, undergraduate enrollment in traditional information and computer science degrees at four-year institutions fell by 8.1 percent in the fall of 2025 compared to fall 2024.

Aug 30 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • cavalierdaily.com

AI-generated videos are already displacing actors and livestreamers across China's entertainment industry

In China, 95 percent of the 128,000 short dramas released in Q1 2026 were AI-generated. Some actors are being forced to hand over their voice and likeness to AI tools before getting fired, the Financial Times reports. AI-related labor disputes are rising fast.

Aug 29 • 9:25 AM EDT • Entertainment • the-decoder.com

New report finds that over 2 million women live in maternal care deserts

Thirty-four percent of counties in the U.S. lack access to OB-GYN care

Aug 28 • 5:00 PM EDT • Health • spectrumlocalnews.com

Apple One and Apple TV subscription prices increase by up to 20 percent

Annual subscriptions see the biggest bump.

Aug 28 • 1:23 PM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com

Nearly 1 in 5 Medicaid-eligible Adults in Expansion States Are At Risk of Losing Health Coverage Due to Insufficient or Inconsistent Work Hours

A new study found that nearly 20 percent of eligible adults in Medicaid expansion states are in danger of not meeting the minimum work hours that will be required nationwide beginning January 1. Women, unmarried people, White individuals, and those with limited education all had a higher risk of losing their health coverage due to noncompliance with these new requirements.

Aug 28 • 1:03 PM EDT • Health • bu.edu

Neronha urges R.I. regulators to reject proposed health insurance premium hikes

Neronha’s office has formally submitted a brief objecting to Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island’s request for a rate increase of 22.4 percent.

Aug 28 • 10:49 AM EDT • Health • bostonglobe.com

The Literacy Crisis Reaches Dog-Bear Science

“New analysis of more than 300 bear encounters suggests our canine companions often increase odds of conflict and rarely serve as early warning systems many recreationists assume,” reads a subhead in Mountain Journal. The thing is, that study reaches no such conclusion. But you have to read beyond the abstract to understand that. Mountain Journal is not alone. Let’s look at a brief list of takeaways published elsewhere just to establish that none of them seem to know how to read science. Wes Siler’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Here’s CBC: “A new peer-reviewed study, The Canine Conundrum: Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country?, dug into conflicts similar to what the video depicts, by analyzing 326 reported human-bear conflicts from 1901 to 2023 involving dogs.” “The study found 54 per cent of conflicts were started by dogs. In the encounters researchers included in the study, five people and 56 dogs were killed, and 170 people were injured.” “Lana Ciarniello, an independent researcher who co-authored the study, said researchers found when a person goes hiking with at least one other person, the odds of a negative bear encounter decrease by 50 per cent.” “However, when a dog is involved, the chances of a negative bear encounter increase because ‘a dog really adds a chaotic factor into the mix of recreation,’ said Ciarniello.” Again, the study finds no data supporting that conclusion. “Hiking with your pet dog may make you feel safer in bear country—but a hiker’s recent encounter and a new study prove that the numbers don’t add up,” writes Backpacker, which is now part of Outside. The numbers don’t add up to support this take. There’s plenty more examples, but all are equally dumb, so I’ll stop there. How did so many people get this so wrong? Three reasons: 1) the study is published behind a paywall, with only the abstract freely available. 2) the methodology sets out to create work relevant to a hyper-specific audience, not the public. And 3) the dataset studied is almost absurdly limited and doesn’t bear (get it?!) comparison to wider information. Let’s work through all three. The Problem is Money I understand the irony, since I’m writing about this on a subscription-model newsletter, but information wants to be free. The study is published by The Wildlife Society and costs $16 to access. Reprinting it is specifically prohibited by the terms of use, so I can only share snippets and my conclusions with you here. Having worked as a journalist for 24 years, I can report with some authority that journalists are both lazy and cheap. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that much of the material you’re seeing written about this study is drawn from the freely-available abstract (above) only, and not a deep dive into its methodology or data. And that’s a problem, because abstracts are where researchers are able to break from their numbers and editorialize their opinions about conclusions. So what’s getting reported isn’t based on numbers, it’s based on an opinion designed for a specific audience, not the general public. Hell yeah ladies, kick that bear’s ass. The Methodology is Designed to Support a Predetermined Conclusion One of the biggest issues with the science that everyone likes to cite about bear spray’s efficacy is that no one understands that study was designed for a specific audience, looking for a specific answer. And since that audience is not the public, and our safety was not the question being asked, its conclusion is rendered irrelevant to our needs. Yes, I’m talking about Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska, which was created by Tom Smith and Stephen Herrero, two of the same scientists who put together this dog-bear conflict analysis. In the spray study, the purpose was to present relevant agencies with the information they needed to issue their field workers with bear spray. As such, incidents where people were unable to access the spray or similarly failed to get it deployed in time were excluded from the results, and only incidents they deemed successful were included. Could a ranger roll down their vehicle’s window and scare a bear away from a dumpster by spraying it? Turns out the answer was yes, and that was good enough for the purposes of that study. The sample size of actual bear attacks—the thing you and I would want bear spray to provide a solution to, was too small to draw conclusions from, and didn’t indicate success in that role. Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country? has similar limitations. “Insights provided here are intended to help wildlife managers create effective guidelines regarding the presence of domestic dogs in bear habitat,” is explained clearly by the study’s text. To conduct the study, Smith and Herrero went looking for publicly available reports of dog-bear conflicts: “All incidents included in our analysis involved at least one bear, one dog, and one person who was at immediate risk of injury (e.g., not in a protective structure such as a cabin or vehicle), injured, or killed,” explains the report’s methodology. Why is that a problem? “We recognize that data used in this study are biased in that people generally only report adverse interactions with bears, not benign ones. Consequently, we assume that for the most part, people and their dogs pass through bear country without incident.” As was the problem with the bear spray study, people are drawing conclusions here from a study that was never intended to be relevant to the general public. The Smith-Herrero database famously excludes Alaska’s Defense of Life and Property records, which are elsewhere considered the largest and most authoritative source on human-bear conflict. The Dataset is Absurdly Limited A 2009 study conducted by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife estimates that each year there are at least 43,000 documented complaints of human-bear conflict across North America. Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country? Examined those reports for years ranging from 1901 to 2023, and only managed to find 326 such incidents that met the criteria explained above. Let’s do some quick math, poorly. 43,000 incidents x 122 years = 5,246,000 total incidents of documented human-bear conflict. Smith and Herrero were only able to find 326 incidents that met their criteria for dog+human+bear+risk or occurrence of injury. That means there’s a 0.006 percent chance that the study’s conclusion—that dogs make bear encounters more dangerous—even gets a chance of occurring. And remember, that’s only in documented conflicts. There’s no way to know how many people across North America run into a bear in any given year without any conflict, but it’s probably safe to assume that the total number is well in excess of 43,000. And, dig deeper into the study and you can find further restrictions that skew its conclusions even more. “While the people involved in these incidents did not report the level of training their dogs had received, it is our assumption that most were untrained companion dogs as opposed to well-trained bear dogs, such as Karelians and livestock guardian breeds that have proven to be significant aids in bear country,” the study’s methodology explains. And that’s a problem, because an ongoing study here in Montana is finding that the simple presence of a Kangal like our youngest dog Teddy can reduce visits to private property from grizzly bears by 87.8 percent. In addition to being a badass, Teddy is also a companion animal. And in my admittedly limited sample size of the three dogs currently present in our living room, she’s no more effective than her mutt brothers. Plenty of people own a dog capable of deterring bears, even if they didn’t set out to own a bear dog. The real purpose of this study appears to be a recommendation that leashes are mandated and recreationists pursue training in their deterrent of choice. But that doesn’t make for sensational headlines. Are There Any Real Takeaways Here? Let’s throw some numbers around, just to try and get our hands around what the larger picture might look like for bears and dogs here. The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that 42.6 percent of American households own a dog. The Canadian Animal Health Institute says roughly 35 percent of households in Canuckistan own a dog. In an attempt to create the worst possible result for dogs, let’s run with that 35 percent number. And given that outdoorsy and rural people are more likely to both own a dog, and have bear encounters, let’s just make a giant assumption and apply that number to those 43,000 conflicts documented annually. If 35 percent of 43,000 human-bear encounters involve a dog, then we can assume that at least 15,050 dog-bear conflicts are occurring annually in North America. 15,050 x 122 = 1,836,100. Smith and Herrero were only able to find 326 incidents that met their human, dog, chance or occurrence of injury criteria across 122 years. And only 170 documented human injuries. So, with all the obvious caveats about these numbers in no way describing reality beyond narrow study parameters, what they actually found is that your risk of injury if your dog tangles with a bear is only 0.009 percent. I’ll take those odds next time I’m hiking my dogs in bear country. Top photo: “Superintendent Horace Albright, eating pancakes with bears, at Lake Lodge, Yellowstone National Park.” NPS. A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, plan outdoor adventures, and prepare for real life, and who promises he’s less salty in real life than he sometimes comes across as on the Internet. Wes Siler’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

Aug 27 • 6:47 PM EDT • Science • wessiler.substack.com

Nintendo announces 2026 Blockbuster sale for Switch 2 and Switch, the full list of deals

Nintendo started up a new sale on the eShop today which is bringing lots of discounts for both Switch 2 and Switch. Rather than focusing on its own games, Nintendo decided to emphasize third-party titles. Games like Marvel Cosmic Invasion and Darwin’s Paradox are now at new low prices. Discounts are available for up to 80 percent off. The full...

Aug 27 • 12:29 PM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com

Women for Troy launches statewide

A Fox News poll from earlier this month shows among women, Jackson is favored over Collins by 4 percentage points.

Aug 27 • 7:51 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Science Confirms 'Leisure Guilt' Is Real—and You're Likely Wasting Hours on It

A new study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin reveals that Americans spend a full 14 percent of their downtime worrying about productivity instead of resting.

Aug 27 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • inc.com

Manhattan-sized ice island breaks off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier

A Manhattan-sized ice island has broken away from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier after years of growing fractures weakened its floating ice tongue. Scientists expect two more huge sections could soon detach, potentially removing about 22 percent of the remaining ice tongue.

Aug 26 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Vikings’ J.J. McCarthy Gets Concerning Take Ahead of Broncos Game

Minnesota Vikings QB J.J. McCarthy hasn’t had the best preseason so far in 2026. That’s not really a good thing since the preseason is 66% over.None of the drives that he’s led so far in the preseason have led to a touchdown, and his cumulative completion percentage is a hair above 50%. He’s looked shaky, […] The post Vikings’ J.J. McCarthy Gets Concerning Take Ahead of Broncos Game appeared first on HEAVY.

Aug 25 • 8:56 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

James Talarico continues to edge out Ken Paxton in Texas’ U.S. Senate race, new poll finds

The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll shows Democratic state Rep. Talarico leading Republican Attorney General Paxton by three percentage points, with 14% of respondents undecided. Republicans maintain a modest lead over Democratic candidates in most other leading statewide contests.

Aug 25 • 2:21 PM EDT • Politics • houstonpublicmedia.org

No Surprises in Kazakh Politics: New Presidential Party Wins Majority

Adilet, as expected, secured a majority of the vote – 71 percent according to official preliminary data.

Aug 24 • 6:49 PM EDT • Politics • thediplomat.com

Disney Tightens Spousal Health Benefits as Industry Costs Surge

The entertainment giant joins a growing list of major employers scaling back coverage amid a projected 11 percent rise in 2027 healthcare costs.

Aug 24 • 4:29 PM EDT • Health • hollywoodreporter.com

Amazon hikes hardware prices by 60 percent, blaming memory shortage

As the memory shortage continues to cause trouble for hardware makers, Amazon says it is now being forced to pass on the costs to its consumers.

Aug 24 • 3:54 PM EDT • Technology • finance.yahoo.com

Amazon hikes hardware prices by 60 percent, blaming memory shortage

As the memory shortage continues to cause trouble for hardware makers, Amazon says it is now being forced to pass on the costs to its consumers.

Aug 24 • 3:54 PM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com

‘We got attacked’: Canada says it will retaliate for new tariffs enacted by Trump

President Trump tried in recent days to use an untested legal power to force Canada to swallow trade concessions. Instead, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney quit the negotiations. 50 percent U.S. tariffs took effect early Saturday on an array of Canadian products. Carney said Canada will retaliate on Sept. 8 for the new tariffs with its own trade measures. President Trump on Monday said he would impose higher tariffs on additional Canadian products beginning Jan. 1.

Aug 24 • 12:08 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

275 Marine Scientists Demand Stronger Protection for Australia's Ocean Parks

A group of 275 marine scientists has released a consensus statement calling on Australia's Federal Government to expand sanctuary zones to cover at least 30 percent of every marine bioregion and ban bottom trawling, longlining, and mining from all Commonwealth marine parks.

Aug 24 • 10:21 AM EDT • Science • ecomagazine.com

The New Shokz OpenFit Air 2 Earbuds Are Nearly 20 Percent Lighter Than The Previous Generation

They feature an open-ear design that reduces pressure and heat buildup.

Aug 24 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com

Haaland leads Hull in first public poll

By Pat Davis, nm.news — With less than 90 days until New Mexico chooses a new governor, the first public polling of the 2026 gubernatorial race shows that former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is enjoying a commanding 17-percentage-point lead over former Rio Rancho Mayor Greg Hull in early August. This story was originally […]

Aug 23 • 4:23 PM EDT • Politics • nmpoliticalreport.com

Fmr VP Pence: President Zelensky said ‘we’re looking just for 5 percent of your remaining Patriot inventory’

Aug 23 • 1:01 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Amazon just hiked the prices for Echo, Fire TV, and Kindle products by up to 60 percent

RAMaggedon strikes again

Aug 22 • 9:41 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

No deal reached in U.S.-Canada trade talks as 50 percent tariffs take effect

The U.S. will impose new tariffs on Canada after the two countries failed to reach a deal.

Aug 22 • 12:03 AM EDT • Business • washingtonpost.com

Iron hydride enters an exotic state of matter under Earth's inner-core conditions

Earth's inner core, composed primarily of iron with a small percentage of light elements, may enter a superionic state at extreme pressure and temperature, according to experimental results from researchers ...

Aug 21 • 4:00 PM EDT • Science • phys.org

Employer health costs projected to rise 9.5 percent

A new risk analysis released by leading insurance broker Aon this week projected that employer health costs in the U.S. will rise by roughly 10 percent in 2027. Aon, the second largest global insur…

Aug 21 • 2:57 PM EDT • Health • thehill.com

Opinion: Lowering CTs electric bills takes more than political promises

CT should increase the percentage of renewables in our energy mix by switching to more stable, alternative power sources.

Aug 21 • 12:01 AM EDT • Politics • ctmirror.org

New study raises concerns over use of weight-loss drugs in elite sport

Researchers surveyed 114 sports medicine physicians from 38 countries, covering 93 different sports, to explore their views on athletes' use of GLP-1 drugs. Twelve percent said they were aware of athletes ...

Aug 20 • 10:00 AM EDT • Sports • medicalxpress.com

Rolex's Certified Pre-Owned Business Is Booming

Rolex's certified pre-owned business notched a 101 percent growth in sales for the first half of 2026, says EveryWatch's Secondary Market Report.

Aug 20 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • robbreport.com

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.”

Aug 19 • 1:21 PM EDT • Science • news.galveston.tamu.edu

Canada battles the clock, politics in scramble to avert Trump’s tariffs

Canadian officials are making a last-ditch effort to negotiate a reprieve from 50-percent tariffs.

Aug 18 • 3:41 AM EDT • Politics • aljazeera.com

Tracy Rietzke Inducted Into Kansas Sports Hall of Fame

Former Kansas Wesleyan standout player and coach Tracy Rietzke ’77 was inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame Sunday in Kansas City, Kansas. Rietzke was part of a KSHOF record 32-person class inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2026. KSHOF officials divided the inductions into three separate ceremonies concluding on Sunday at Sporting Park. Rietzke retired from coaching volleyball at Rockhurst University following the 2019 season, leading the Hawks for 32 seasons, amassing a 1105-229 record (.828 win percentage). He also coached eight seasons in women’s basketball at Rockhurst from 1988 to 1996, leading the Hawks to a 206-45 record and five NAIA National Championship appearances. Before heading to Kansas City and Rockhurst, Rietzke coached at Kansas Wesleyan after a stellar playing career for the Coyotes. Rietzke coached volleyball, women’s basketball and softball at KWU. In volleyball, Rietzke coached six seasons leading the Coyotes to a 172-56 record. He never won less than 25 games in a season and had three 30-win seasons, the only three in program history, culminating with a 34-9 season in his final year in 1987. He still ranks second in all-time coaching wins at KWU. In women’s basketball, he coached six seasons, leading the Coyotes to a 94-60 record. His career culminated with a 25-5 season in 1987-88, earning the program’s first KCAC Championship that season and the program’s only conference title until 2009. He ranks third all-time in career wins at KWU in the sport. In softball, Rietzke started the dynasty of KWU softball in the 1980’s and 1990’s, leading the program for six seasons, amassing a 126-40 record, ranking third in all-time wins in program history. Rietzke’s teams never finished worse than third place in the KCAC and won or shared four straight conference championships from 1985 through 1988. The Kensington, Kansas native brought his basketball talents to Kansas Wesleyan after two seasons at York College (now University) in York, Nebraska after starring at Kensington High School. In two seasons with the Coyotes, he was a two-time All-KCAC honoree and was an Honorable Mention NAIA All-American in 1976. He continues to hold the KWU school records for season field goal percentage (.771) in 1976, and the career field goal percentage record (.692 (423/611)). His .771 field goal percentage in 1976 led the NAIA. Rietzke is also a member of the Jerry Jones Kansas Wesleyan University Coyote Athletic Hall of Fame (a 1986 charter member), the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, the American Volleyball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Rockhurst University Athletic Hall of Fame. KWU will sponsor Smoky Hills PBS’ presentation of the induction, which will be presented on tape-delay later this fall. Stay tuned to university social media outlets for the announcement of a date and time. Release Courtesy of KWU Athletics

Aug 17 • 5:54 PM EDT • Sports • kwu.edu

As Asian business ownership declines, Tulsa commissioners pivot focus

The percentage of Asian Tulsans who own businesses is dropping. Asian Affairs commissioners are responding, shifting their focus from events to business resources.

Aug 17 • 5:56 AM EDT • Business • tulsaflyer.org

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ leads domestic box office to stunning return to pre-pandemic form

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ is leading the charge, along with ‘The Odyssey,’ in boosting 2026’s summer box office to historic new heights, with grosses 5.7 percent ahead of the summer 2019 box office.

Aug 16 • 8:07 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Atlanta teen with autism uses basketball tournament to raise money for youth mental health

According to America’s Health Rankings, Georgia ranks 47th in the country for the percentage of children who receive needed mental health treatment or counseling.

Aug 16 • 5:32 PM EDT • Health • wsbtv.com

Scientists documented 1,121 previously unknown marine species in a single year — increasing the annual identification rate by 54 percent — yet the head of science at Ocean Census says researchers are still in a race against time, with estimates suggesting up to 90 percent of ocean species remain undiscovered.

Ocean Census documented 1,121 candidate marine species in one year, but its rapid discovery status is distinct from a completed formal taxonomic description.

Aug 15 • 12:30 PM EDT • Science • scienceblog.com

Florida AG Uthmeier rewrites property tax amendment language after ruling

Sixty percent of voters have to vote in favor of the amendment for it to pass.

Aug 13 • 7:37 PM EDT • Politics • baynews9.com

Wisconsin primary offers mixed signals for Democrats, and other election takeaways

David Crowley’s win by less than a percentage point over state Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, showed neither side of the party debate was winning the argument convincingly.

Aug 12 • 10:42 AM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

An Overview of State-Directed Payments and Medicaid Provider Taxes: History and Potential Effects of the Working Families and Tax Cut Legislation on Health Care Costs

Health care provider taxes and state-directed payment policies in the Working Families and Tax Cut legislation are expected to reduce non-Medicaid prices by up to 3.5 percent in markets with provider taxes and reduce spending on Medicaid, commercial and Medicare coverage. Our spending estimates indicate that there will be an additional $29 billion in federal savings on Medicare and commercial coverage for each $100 billion that federal Medicaid spending is reduced.KEY POINTS

Aug 12 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • aspe.hhs.gov

The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized

Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA

Aug 11 • 6:33 AM EDT • Health • paulkrugman.substack.com

Apple's Foldable iPhone Ultra Faces a Surging Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8

Apple's foldable iPhone is expected to arrive in September against a rival already outrunning its own forecasts. ETNews reports Samsung is building an extra one million Galaxy Z Fold 8 units, after the 4:3 device took 70 percent of a record 1.44 million Galaxy Z8 series pre-orders. ETNews reports Samsung is building an extra one million Galaxy Z Fold 8 units, after the 4:3 device took 70 percent of a record 1.44 million Galaxy Z8 series pre-orders.

Aug 10 • 10:41 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

Boeing to Sell 3 Autonomous Flight Subsidiaries

In exchange for the sale to Archer Aviation, which is developing a piloted electric aircraft, Boeing will receive a 16.5 percent stake in Archer.

Aug 10 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • nytimes.com

A Monday with Brad Pitt

The 62-year-old has lived a singular life. He resides in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent of all movie stars, not only today but ever, as measured by any metric you like, including intrigue. What does he have to say about all of it?

Aug 10 • 6:50 AM EDT • Entertainment • esquire.com

iPhone 18 Pro Costing Apple 38% More to Make, TrendForce Estimates

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro will cost nearly 40 percent more to build than its predecessor because of soaring memory prices, according to new data analyzed TrendForce. The research firm's latest smartphone analysis puts the bill of materials for the 256GB iPhone 18 Pro roughly 38 percent above the equivalent iPhone 17 Pro, and says higher retail prices will be unavoidable as a result.

Aug 10 • 6:29 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

FULL SHOW: Inside INdiana Business 8/9/26

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Aug 9 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • insideindianabusiness.com

Time out! A reality check on business aviation’s sustainability record

Even with its minimal carbon footprint, the sector has slashed emissions by 40 percent in just four decades.

Aug 7 • 12:00 PM EDT • Business • thehill.com

How Abdul El-Sayed rose from political oblivion to progressive breakthrough in Michigan

El-Sayed, 41, has never held elected office and entered the race seven years after losing Michigan’s Democratic gubernatorial primary by more than 20 percentage points.

Aug 6 • 2:56 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

Most Division I colleges lose money on sports

Over 90 percent of these athletic programs spend more money than they generate, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Aug 6 • 10:00 AM EDT • Sports • washingtonpost.com

Bernie Sanders hails Michigan result as ‘most extraordinary victory that I can think of in modern American politics’

Abdul El-Sayed has never held elected office and entered the race years after losing the Democratic gubernatorial primary by over 20 percentage points.

Aug 6 • 9:20 AM EDT • Politics • fortune.com

Trump fills ambassador posts with more donors, loyalists than any recent president

Ninety percent of his nominations have gone to political supporters rather than career diplomats, even as dozens of embassies lack envoys, The Post found.

Aug 6 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

World’s most-used weedkiller disrupts honeybee brains

Glyphosate was long thought to be safe for honeybees because they lack the enzyme the chemical targets in weeds. However, researchers found that exposed bees foraged 13 percent less after only three days and showed changes in brain chemicals linked to behavior. Across a whole hive, that decline could reduce honey production, weaken pollination, and threaten long-term survival.

Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Why did the polls miss so badly in Michigan?

Polls overestimated Abdul El-Sayed’s lead by 12 percentage points. That isn't unusual for statewide primary contests.

Aug 5 • 3:11 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.

There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. I am particularly pleased that it goes out for free to thousands of subscribers around the world. But, writing this newsletter takes a lot of work. If you are enjoying it and would like to support the project, sign up for one of the subscription options here. It is the equivalent of a fancy cup of coffee per month! Subscribe

Aug 5 • 7:18 AM EDT • Politics • adamtooze.substack.com

Minneapolis Independent Music Venues Generate $2.2 Billion but Face Financial Challenges

A new report reveals a disconnect between the industry's economic impact and profitability, finding that locally owned venues are essential to the city's economy, even though only 20 percent report turning a profit.

Aug 5 • 6:48 AM EDT • Entertainment • mspmag.com

A Seemingly Rock Bottomless Glass

Just when you think it can’t get any worse…A comically pathetic 8th inning turns a possible actual win into just another disheveled loss and the “free fall” stats keep mounting. It’s hard to believe that on June 19th the A’s were 38-38, winning percentage that would earn them a spot 1.5 games out of 1st […]

Aug 4 • 11:36 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Answer Man: Helene Business Recovery Fund borrowers facing skyrocketing rates? Messy I-26 median?

Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers: Question: You should look into the disaster bridge loans a lot of people took out through Mountain BizWorks and the Golden Leaf Foundation after Helene. These were loans with a 1 percent interest rate for 12 months, which was later extended to 24 months. […]

Aug 4 • 7:17 AM EDT • Business • avlwatchdog.org

GBTA Projects 2026 Spending Growth as Business Travel Volume Lags

The Global Business Travel Association cited solid economic growth and business investment as the positives behind its projection that 2026 business travel spending will increase more than 7 percent year over year, even after a 2025 that outstripped GBTA's previous projections.

Aug 4 • 12:00 AM EDT • Business • businesstravelnews.com

A shocking 92 percent of US adults are not going to the doctor because it’s too expensive

The decision to delay medical care involves multiple factors, including gender - women are more likely to put off care than men

Aug 3 • 1:01 PM EDT • Health • independent.co.uk

Urgent Politics and Easy Convenience Drive Early Voter Surge

High turnout trend holds through two weeks, boosting primary ballots 35 percent from 2024

Aug 3 • 11:40 AM EDT • Politics • nashvillescene.com

We Were the 99 Percent

Roughly once a week, in August and early September of 2011, I sat in a semicircle in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park with eighty to a […]

Aug 2 • 4:25 AM EDT • Politics • thepointmag.com

Hospitals Can Save the Environment and Your Health — Or At Least Not Make Them Worse - Petrie-Flom Center

The provision of healthcare is responsible for roughly 8.5 percent of total carbon emissions in the United States. In turn, carbon emissions cause climate change and harm human health.

Aug 1 • 8:52 PM EDT • Health • petrieflom.law.harvard.edu

Northeast Minnesota wildfires causing disastrous economic impacts to tourism industry

Small business owners in northeastern Minnesota told their state legislators Friday that the wildfires that have been burning in and around the Boundary Waters for almost a month have had a “disastrous” impact on their bottom lines. One canoe outfitter says he lost 98 percent of his revenue to cancellations in July.

Aug 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • mprnews.org

Nearly two-thirds of Wisconsin hospitals receive top federal quality ratings

Of the 86 Wisconsin hospitals rated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 64 percent received a four- or five-star rating for overall hospital quality.

Jul 31 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • wpr.org

The new "science golden age" looks suspiciously like a grift

This edition of PN is made possible by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️ 🚀 Subscribe to PN 🚀 The Trump regime is trying to usher in a “Golden Age in Science” where scientific research is run like a Trump family business, artificial intelligence is all that matters, profit is everything, and expertise is for chumps. Or at least that’s the vision emerging from a new 123-page “Report to the President” from Michael Kratsios, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In a normal administration, you could probably skip over learning about a science policy document — but this is no normal administration, and this is no normal science policy document. Instead, it’s Trump’s attempt to end the actual golden age of science that was kicked off in 1945 with the publication of '“The Endless Frontier” by Vannevar Bush. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) [ Harmeet Dhillon demonstrates danger of posting through it ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) Liz Dye · Jul 29 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harmeet-dhillon-portland) Bush, at President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s request, laid out a vision of federal support for science that centered on funding universities to do basic research, saying that as long as those institutions were “vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere.” Kratsios’s report is supposed to be the successor to Bush’s, and even apes the format, but this isn’t really a document about science policy. It’s one about ending science research as we know it in favor of shoveling cash at big tech companies. While it might be temping to wave this away as an aspirational policy document, Trump has already begun to shift billions in research funds to AI projects and has taken a hatchet to science funding across the board. He’s teed up the shift Kratsios proposes here, and since neither Congress nor the Supreme Court seem inclined to stop him from doing whatever he wants with taxpayer money, it isn’t doomering or hyperbole to say we are staring down the barrel of a world where the only “science” the government intends to support is for-profit tech and defense advancements. Science for dummies Part of how you can tell this isn’t a document about science is that you are immediately faced with an absolute wall of business-speak of the worst sort. Did you know we must “tightly couple our science and technology enterprises to ensure that groundbreaking ideas invented in the United States are rapidly prototyped, tested, manufactured, and scaled domestically”? You do now! That tone isn’t surprising, because Kratsios has no background in science or research. He has a bachelor’s in political science and spent most of his career working for Peter Thiel at Thiel Capital. After a stint in the first Trump administration as Chief Technology Officer, where he also did not do any science, Kratsios was tasked in 2020 with overseeing the Pentagon’s research budget for a brief time, a position that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, “carries a great deal of power in terms of dictating investment allocations.” He spent the Biden years at Scale AI as “head of strategy,” which you will also note is neither a science nor a research job. But Scale AI has contracts with the Department of Defense and, as the Washington Post wrote in 2023, “has been aggressively pitching itself as the company that will help the US military in its existential battle with China.” And now you have the necessary background for our new golden age, which is going to be a golden age of taking money away from scientists and universities and giving it to companies like Scale AI. A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Lisa takes resources. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please become one to support our work. 👇 Subscribe In a genuinely galling move, Katsios spends a lot of time slamming universities because of “administrative burdens on researchers” and the “well-documented inefficiencies” in academia, the message being that those damn universities waste the time of amazing researchers with paperwork. Except it’s the administration that is attempting to impose inefficient, unnecessary burdens on those researchers with a proposed Office of Management and Budget rule that would require senior political appointees to approve every science grant and ensure it aligns with Trump’s personal priorities. Researchers would also have to seek prior government approval to attend conferences or publicize their research. And political appointees could terminate any grant at any time if they feel like it. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) [ The murder of expertise ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) Lisa Needham · Jun 11 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/omb-rule-science-funding) But when it comes to AI, we’re going to “restore permissionless innovation.” The report proposes to give lucky ducky innovators a pile of cash up front for grants lasting five years or longer, saying “awards should be fully-funded in year one, with all resources earmarked upfront, to minimize administrative burdens and reduce pressure for researchers to generate intermediate results to secure continued funding.” Yeah, wouldn’t want to have to make the Very Special Tech Bros show results or get money parceled out year by year like the plebes at universities. The report also proposes that we should have “fast grants” with “simplified applications requiring just a few pages of writing” because that is definitely how science works, just writing a bit off the dome and getting some cash. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) [ Tech elites are turning AI into ChatGPTrump ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) Paul Waldman · July 29, 2025 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-ai-action-plan-altman-llms) Oh, and we should have prizes and challenges, where multiple teams compete. The proposed prizes include incentives like “advance procurement commitments,” which means the federal government agrees to buy whatever is being developed. There’s also “regulatory fast-tracking,” making sure all those great AI thingies don’t have to wait too long to be unleashed on a market. These aren’t incentives to do science. These are incentives to develop things with tax dollars that you can then sell to the government for more tax dollars. In the suggestion that might be the most unhinged, the most very opposite of how both government and research work, our new age will include “golden tickets.” That’s where an individual reviewer in an agency — yes, just one person — can “recommend unconventional proposals that may not pass consensus-driven review panels” because somehow this will “surface valuable ideas too divisive for committees and attract higher quality reviewers by empowering them to exercise independent scientific judgment.” Yes, that’s saying that a random person in an agency should be able to shovel money at some idea even if it can’t pass a review panel, and that the opportunity to do so will attract better employees because apparently all the best minds in science are chomping at the bit to be allowed to unilaterally fund AI research based on their personal vibes. But that isn’t at all how actual science works, and actual scientists aren’t unhappy about review panels. They work collaboratively, not siloed in some secret race to create the next AI chatbot. A 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research examined whether peer review panels succeed in helping agencies predict which research ideas will best advance science. Peer review was better at finding “diamond in the rough” applicants than a single government program official. How about that. Trump always wants a taste It’s painfully clear that what Katsios is trying to do here is turn the whole of government science research and funding into the sort of “move fast and break things” paradigm that is the hallmark of big tech. That method works to line the pockets of tech executives, but it isn’t science. There’s a reason the government funds different kinds of research than private tech companies do. What Katsios either fails to understand or deliberately ignores is that the federal government is the main funder of basic research precisely because it can take a long time for it to bear fruit and is not intended to be profitable as such. “Basic” here does not mean rudimentary or simple, but rather research that is designed to advance scientific knowledge instead of achieving a specific outcome or product. Big tech companies don’t widely fund that sort of research, because it doesn’t make them money. Industry dollars account for only about 20 percent of basic research funding, while the government contributes around 60 percent. Big tech companies and startups do, however, rely on and benefit from that basic research. A 2019 study found that 35 percent of all patents obtained by venture-backed startups from 1976 to 2016 cited federally supported research. Basic research funded by the NIH contributed to every single drug the FDA approved from 2010 to 2016. [ ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) [ The Saudi nuclear farce and governance by whim and meme ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) Noah Berlatsky · Jul 27 [ Read full story ](https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal) Unlike inventing the next ChatGPT, actual science is slow and iterative. Government funding of research that, on its face, would not appear to lead to any big new invention is actually what underpins those big new inventions. If the government hadn’t funded research into desert lizard venom, we wouldn’t know about semaglutide, and we wouldn’t have Ozempic. If research scientists hadn’t studied how bees optimize nectar foraging within a colony, we wouldn’t have the algorithm that assigns internet traffic across computer servers. The report assiduously ignores that a symbiotic, profitable relationship between the federal government, universities, and private companies already exists. Each federal research dollar generates about $1.50 to $3.00 in long-term economic benefits. The $36 billion the government awarded in NIH research funding in fiscal year 2025 generated $94 billion in new economic activity. Trump’s proposed new golden age is intended to strip those billions from universities, resulting in the dismantling of departments and the shuttering of labs. But Katsios has a plan for that: Universities should just become trade schools to churn out no-show STEM degrees! “Require universities and community colleges to embed practical technical training and externships into STEM curricula. Let hands-on experience and industry credentials count toward degrees.” It’s quite the feat to, on the one hand, strip schools of funding for scientific research while simultaneously demanding to control what is taught and, oh, also, colleges need to give degrees to employees at big tech companies just for being employees at big tech companies. The new golden age would also exacerbate the brain drain Trump’s policies have already caused. Nature found that in the first quarter of 2025, US scientists submitted 32 percent more job applications abroad than in 2024. A March 2025 poll by Nature of roughly 1,600 scientists found that over 1,200 said they were considering leaving the country. Europe is investing $565 million to make it a “magnet for researchers” and provide funding for scientists who relocate. The new golden age is also about embedding Trump’s xenophobia into the fabric of American science. The report complains of an “over-reliance on foreign students” that “creates a security challenge our institutions are ill-equipped to address” and that a “reliance on foreign talent sidelines American students.” This is, to put it mildly, nonsense. International students pay far higher tuition and often receive no financial aid. Their tuition dollars are what make it possible for American students to get financial aid. In the 2023-2024 school year alone, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the US economy and supported over 378,000 jobs. Those 1.1 million international students accounted for only six percent of the total number of students in higher education that year, but were such an economic engine that for every three international students, one job was created or supported. It’s impossible not to wonder whether part of Trump’s loathing for universities and their leading role in scientific research is that there is no way for him to corrupt the process and make money off it in the same way he can by giving millions and billions to Silicon Valley types who, in turn, give him millions in cash. There’s no way for his children to invest in universities that the government then gives no-bid contracts to, fattening the family’s bottom line, which is pretty much the Trump sons’ current venture capital practice. Trump and Katsios’s view of science is narrow, cramped, and wrong. We’re not in a crisis, we’re not a failed state. We’ve been a science superpower for decades, and the only thing that threatens that is Donald Trump. Tech bros are already living high off the hog in this administration. They don’t need any more of our tax dollars. Hopefully this new golden age never comes to pass. Thanks for reading Public Notice. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s PN, please do your part to keep us free by signing up for a paid subscription. 🚀 Subscribe to PN 🚀 Thanks for reading, and for your support.

Jul 30 • 8:12 AM EDT • Science • publicnotice.co

After Hobbes vs Rousseau: Politics must move beyond human nature

Since the great debate between Hobbes and Rousseau, our political theory has been organised around a single question: is human nature essentially good or essentially corrupt? Graham Harman, the philosopher behind object-oriented ontology, argues that this is simply the wrong question to be asking. The real forces governing our collective fate - climate change, artificial intelligence, geography, and pandemics - are non-human; therefore, questions about human nature are not the central ones. Instead, Harman proposes a politics reorganised around our relationship to non-human objects and environments, in which quasi-government institutions incentivise and deter actions with the aim of extending the survival of the human race. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This has become one of the most popular phrases among twenty-first-century intellectuals. Often misattributed to Fredric Jameson, it has been warmly embraced by such influential authors as Slavoj Žižek and the tragically departed Mark Fisher, and has fueled the notion that the major problem with the political Left is that it simply needs to become more speculative and creative. Naturally, this is never a bad idea in any human pursuit. But what if the political distinction between Left, Right, and Center itself results from a failure of imagination? SUGGESTED READING Hobbes vs Rousseau: are we inherently evil? By Robin Douglass This particular division has been with us only since the summer of 1789. During the simmering prelude to the French Revolution, it referred originally to the physical position in the National Assembly of radical figures on one side and loyal monarchists on the other. These positions are linked with two entirely different camps of modern political theory. On the Left we find a series of authors ranging from the moderate (Locke) to the supercharged (Rousseau) to the truly radical (Marx), all of them contending that exploitation of the many by the few justifies revolutionary overthrow of the existing order. On the Right they are countered by the likes of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Schmitt, a group of thinkers convinced that corrupt human nature can be tamed only by force. In the words of the Nazi supporter Schmitt: “One could test all theories of nature and state and political ideas according to their anthropology and classify these as to whether they consciously or unconsciously presuppose [humans] to be by nature evil or by nature good.” This is the division we continue to face today, even in the daily retail politics of Western democracies.___Our species has regularly proven itself capable of both the noblest gestures and the most scathing cruelties, making it hard to define us as essentially either emancipatory or brutal in our aims.___The most refreshing feature of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s 2021 book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was their awareness that the forced choice between Rousseau and Hobbes (as they put it) is no longer sufficient. Our species has regularly proven itself capable of both the noblest gestures and the most scathing cruelties, making it hard to define us as essentially either emancipatory or brutal in our aims. Far from being stationed “beyond good and evil,” we seem to be fully entangled with both. We are not naturally good or evil, Graeber and Wengrow contend, but naturally experimental and imaginative. They rest their case on the archaeological record, which seems to bear witness to numerous episodes of seasonally shifting governments and festivals, which vacillate in the same society (even in the same year) between the egalitarian and the dictatorial. Such praise of political experiment makes a good fit with the generally anarchist position defended by these authors. Yet it is also what I find most disappointing in their position. Although they are right that the forced choice between Hobbes and Rousseau falls short of what our new situation requires, the authors simply replace it with praise for the human being as a political tinkerer and performer. In other words, they give us just another theory of human nature, one that would not have been out of place in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. What other options might we have?___The time is ripe for a retheorization of politics on the basis of something other than human nature… We are not just alienated and limited by objects, but also empowered and unleashed by them___One fresh approach would be to treat politics within a broader framework than human nature, given that the polis does not exist in a vacuum filled exclusively with people. When Bruno Latour went to observe the baboons of Kenya with the San Diego anthropologist Shirley Strum, they jointly concluded that these primates were more socially interdependent than our own species. Each baboon is so reliant on the dynamics of the group that they find themselves locked into constant surveillance of their potentially dangerous peers. The group structure turns out to be inherently volatile. Humans, by contrast, are able to stabilize their societies to a large degree through the mediation of inanimate objects. Although one’s position in society may seem to fluctuate over time, considerable stability is produced through such items as apartment keys, wedding rings, and identification cards, all of them serving to secure us a place distinct from that of our fellows. The Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris has written at length about the crucial role of documents in establishing social relations, making him a hero among notaries in his country. Proper names and license plates cement our position amidst other humans, as do symbolic achievements such as graduation from a top university or distinguished wartime service with its various medals and ribbons. None of this is found among baboons, despite their closeness to us on the evolutionary tree: after all, we did share a common ancestor just 25 to 30 million years ago. SUGGESTED VIEWING The goodness paradox With Richard Wrangham The time is ripe for a retheorization of politics on the basis of something other than human nature, whether understood in the manner of the Left or of the Right. We are not just alienated and limited by objects, but also empowered and unleashed by them. But initially, it is true, we face non-human things primarily in the form of constraints. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to form a human civilization underwater, deep underground, atop Mount Everest, or in outer space. Human dependence on the non-social background takes on subtler form in discussions of political geography, especially unloved on the more idealistic Left. Consider the luckless position of Poland during World War II, sandwiched between Hitler on one side and Stalin on the other. By contrast, note the good fortune of the United States in not having a military peer positioned on any land border. Anglo-American geopolitics, since the writings of the American naval commander Alfred Thayer Mahan and the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder, has been wedded to the notion that one or more liberal offshore naval powers should prevent any authoritarian “heartland” regime from gaining effective control of Eurasia. That remains the case whether the opponent is the impatient Napoleon, the swashbuckling German Kaiser, the villainous Hitler, the murderous Stalin, or the industrial juggernaut Chinese. In their current Foreign Affairs article “Heartland vs. Rimland,” Michael Beckley and Hal Brands analyze the current and coming state of the world on the basis of these same rather durable principles. In recent years a similar outlook has been embraced, in inverted form, by the Putin-loving Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, an icon of the Rightist intellectual underworld. For Dugin, the Anglo-Saxons are an evil force bent on destroying the spiritually superior people of the land: much like Athens in its failed war with Sparta, or Carthage in its eventual collapse against Rome. But the shared notion on both sides is that any strategy that fails to take geography into account is likely to end up as a defeated form of excessive optimism.___When dealing with environmental degradation, then, we are doing business with forces that promise dire effects on our species as a whole.___More striking for us today than geography is the non-human object called climate, which threatens rimland and heartland equally. Even if we contend that humans are one hundred percent responsible for triggering the climate crisis, it remains non-human in the sense of being an independent force beyond our effective control. In a major work published just before his death in 2002, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould noted the tendency of evolutionary theorists to focus too closely on the fate of individuals in view of their successful or failed adaptation to circumstances. With climate change, however, we confront a force that goes well beyond the scope of any individual life. Whereas Richard Dawkins extended evolutionary questions downward from individuals to the sub-individual gene, Gould pushed it upward, speaking of entire species or clades as impacted by environmental change. The asteroid that struck the Yucatán 66 million years ago is only the most famous example of this sort. In the wake of that catastrophe, large animals needing abundant supplies of food were at a fatal disadvantage by contrast with the smaller birds and mammals of the planet. When dealing with environmental degradation, then, we are doing business with forces that promise dire effects on our species as a whole. The effect is to shift our attention away from individual beings towards the survival of the group.In the United States in particular, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked considerable backlash among those who asserted a nearly absolute degree of individual freedom. In California I encountered those who demanded that their businesses be allowed to reopen, that it was enough to cover their mouths but not their noses, or that they should have the right to enter any public area despite refusing vaccination. Yet public health is probably the clearest argument against libertarianism, which often merely asserts the autonomy of individuals against any claims of the commons. In normal times the individual is worth defending; under conditions that threaten the survival of part or all of our species, compulsion may be our only resort, as with perfectly reasonable blackouts and rations in wartime. To rebuild human society under the constraints of climate change will be one of the great challenges of the century to come, as will our improvised grappling with artificial intelligence. Such phenomena pose existential risks for humanity, and leave far less room for tolerance of individual brattiness. Cases are mounting of devastating wildfires caused by arson. Recently it was reported that there is even a website where one can bet on the location of coming wildfires, raising the specter of deliberate blazes set to collect on wagers. The death penalty has steadily lost support in a world where many stress the infinite value of human life. But if we focus instead on entire ecosystems, those who purposely burn the forests may begin to look worse than serial murderers.___The politics of the future may be splintered by disagreement over such topics as how to manage our environing background and how to permit or restrict the entry of new objects into the political sphere.___So far I have spoken of force, authority, and punishment: measures sure to have greater appeal to those who identify with what we know as the Right. But other implications of the post-anthropocentric world are likely to have different backers. If non-human objects are seen as structuring political space, it stands to reason that they can no longer be introduced solely by the pace of technical breakthrough. Fields ranging from cybernetics to energy will demand increased politicization once they are reconceived not just as products of individual human investment, but as renovations of collective political geography. This need not involve world government, with its inherent risk of tyranny, but may involve quasi-governmental enforcers of prestige along the lines of a less corrupt FIFA or International Olympic Committee, punishing deviant states not with violence but with less tangible incentives.Politics will never lose its historic links with conflict and faction. But rather than factions aligned by differing theories of human nature, the politics of the future may be splintered by disagreement over such topics as how to manage our environing background and how to permit or restrict the entry of new objects into the political sphere. This will prove just as incommensurable with the modern Left/Right spectrum as a globe is with a two-dimensional map.

Jul 30 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • iai.tv

Nvidia GPUs see yet another price hike of up to 30 percent, as the generative AI hardware crisis worsens

In response Samsung announced another price increase across DRAM as the personal computing nightmare deepens.

Jul 30 • 7:37 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net

Banijay Entertainment revenue dips as All3Media merger takes shape

Banijay Entertainment posted a first-half revenue drop of 2.2 percent to €1.37 billion amid reduced production volume, before its All3Media merger results kick in.

Jul 30 • 1:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • northeasttimes.com

Xbox revenue drops 10 percent as Microsoft’s cloud and AI business surges

Xbox’s woes continue.

Jul 29 • 4:26 PM EDT • Business • theverge.com

Xbox revenue drops 10 percent as Microsoft’s cloud and AI business surges

Xbox’s woes continue.

Jul 29 • 4:26 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

Lawmakers Need to Get Serious About Business Tax Reform

Last week, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) said he wants to revisit expanding Section 199A. He argues that the deduction should be as high as 25 percent because pass-through businesses need to compete...

Jul 28 • 11:39 AM EDT • Business • aei.org

The 99 Percent Funding Rule Every Founder Should Know Before Borrowing Money

Every funding approach has its purpose. The key is to find the approach that's best for what you need.

Jul 28 • 6:00 AM EDT • Business • inc.com

Tech Stocks Tumble on Worries About A.I. Spending and China’s Chip Competition

South Korea temporarily paused trading on Tuesday as its benchmark stock index led losses across the region, closing more than 10 percent lower.

Jul 28 • 4:21 AM EDT • Business • nytimes.com

Mamdani Is Makes City-Owned Grocery Stores Sound Pretty Good

The mayor revealed that the five planned municipal stores will sell staples like produce, meat, and cheese at 30 percent below retail prices.

Jul 27 • 5:32 PM EDT • Politics • nymag.com

This 25-Year-Old Founder Turned B2B Memes Into a $500,000 Business

Skits and stunts sell. But Aidan Brannigan’s 400 percent growth rate is no joke.

Jul 27 • 5:00 AM EDT • Business • inc.com

COMMENTARY: Science, Not Politics, Must Guide Lifesaving Medical Research

AFRO-AMERICAN – WASHINGTON — A recent announcement regarding a new treatment for metastatic pancreatic cancer, daraxonrasib, has shown it doubled survival rates for patients and reduced the risk of death by 60 percent. This breakthrough stemmed from sustained, peer-reviewed scientific investment.

Jul 27 • 3:49 AM EDT • Science • blackpressusa.com