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Drew Brees Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction Open Thread
Drew Brees takes his rightful place in Pro Football immortality today.
Readers respond: Bennett cartoon crossed the line; Calvary making politics an idol
Mr. Bennett's political cartoon of July 31 was extremely inappropriate and offensive.
Ice Age bird figurines discovered in German cave
The roughly 40,000-year-old figures show that humans were already watching bird behavior
Letters: Dollars and sense of Dodgers acquiring Tarik Skubal
Readers of the Los Angeles Times Sports section give their thoughts on the Dodgers acquiring ace pitcher Tarik Skubal, the Angels situation, Aaron Donald and more.
Letters to Sports: The dollars and sense of the Dodgers acquiring Tarik Skubal
Readers of the Los Angeles Times Sports section give their thoughts on the Dodgers acquiring ace pitcher Tarik Skubal, the Angels situation, Aaron Donald and more.
AMD's Data Center Business Is Skyrocketing. The Stock Is Falling. Here's Why.
A lot of AMD's success has already been priced into the stock.
Drug-resistant fungas on the radar in Michigan as health experts monitor spread
The fungus can live on surfaces, move from person to person and, in some cases, resist the drugs used to treat it. For people who are already sick, the fungus can become life-threatening and, in some cases, fatal.
Ian Garry Keeping Empty Frame On Wall For UFC Belt
Ian Machado Garry is as confident as he can be entering his matchup with pound-for-pound king and UFC welterweight champion, Islam Makhachev, next weekend at UFC 330, which is probably why the brash Irishman already has an empty frame hanging on his wall at home for the 170-pound belt. We’re just one week away from […]
Health officials issue warning after dog dies following swim in Stoughton pond - Boston News, Weather, Sports
STOUGHTON, MASS. (WHDH) - Town officials in Stoughton are warning the public after a dog died following a swim at Ames Pond this week.The town’sRead More
LGBTQ advocates prep for a difficult campaign against 'Protect Girls Sports in Arizona Act'
Arizona already forbids trans girls from joining school sports teams that align with their gender identity, but Republicans want to ban them from school locker rooms and private sports leagues, too.
Mosquito Street Spraying Monday, August 10, 2026
East Middlesex Mosquito Control Project The East Middlesex Mosquito Control Project is planning to use a truck mounted aerosol sprayer to control mosquito populations. Spraying will be done between sunset and 11:30 PM. The following … Read full article→
Braves at Yankees rain delay chat and discussion
The weather is already nasty in the Bronx, oof.
A Caller Posed as Webster Bank’s Fraud Manager. One Business Lost $50,000
A West Hartford business received a phone call from someone claiming to be a fraud manager at Webster Bank. The caller was not working for ... Read More
Dayton Business Journal: New Raj Soin College of Business dean pushes for experiential learning, AI integration and collaboration
Rajneesh Suri is an engineer at heart: he sees a problem, brainstorms a solution, designs an implementation strategy full of tests and experimentation, and analyzes the results for a solution. This mindset allows him to bring fresh ideas to his … Continue reading →
Thunder's Aday Mara: Ready for rookie year
Thunder's Aday Mara: Ready for rookie year
The creatures born from code: Generative AI threatens to upend citizen science records
You need to tread carefully among the leaf litter of the Indonesian scrubland and its tropical rainforests. The dead leaves might seem caught in a gentle breeze, but there's more here than meets the eye. ...
In ancient Rome, tax fraud was punishable by death
Stone tablets recount a corruption case so widespread that it became a capital offense in 480 CE.
Shatema Threadcraft Receives the 2026 Victoria Schuck Award for "The Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian" -
The Victoria Schuck Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best book published on women and politics. Citation from the Award Committee: The committee found Shatema Threadcraft’s The Labors of Resurrection: [...]
Beaver's Mini Mart support spreads to Columbus amid Buc-ee's battle
The beaver controversy roiling southwestern Ohio has spread to Columbus, with local businesses showing their support of a small business.
'Wonder Man' Showrunner Andrew Guest Speaks Out on Disney Cancellation
Andrew Guest posted a TikTok video saying he had already written the first episode of Season 2 when the decision came down.
I read Microsoft's Windows 11 'quality' progress report - and the subtext says it all
Microsoft's latest progress report details much-needed Windows 11 improvements in reliability, performance, stability, and usability. But here's what else I see.
Science Wins A Skirmish
Thank heaven for small favors: Senators on the Appropriations Committee on Sunday released a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown by Oct. 1 and temporarily block a White House proposal that would fundamentally change how the federal government awards and manages grants. In late May, the Office of Management and Budget released … Continue reading "Science Wins A Skirmish"
Small Business Employment Index Picks Back Up
NFIB’s July Jobs Report shows that the Small Business Employment Index rose after four consecutive months of decline, registering 102.1 in July after measuring 100.2 in June. The current reading is above the 2025 average of 101.2 and the historical average of 100.0. In July, 36% (seasonally adjusted) of small business owners reported job openings they could
Apple Testing iOS 26.6.1 Update for iPhones
Apple's software engineers are internally testing iOS 26.6.1, according to the MacRumors visitor logs. Apple already released macOS 26.6.1 yesterday with a fix for a security vulnerability affecting the Screen Sharing app. Apple already released macOS 26.6.1 yesterday with a fix for a security vulnerability affecting the Screen Sharing app.
Packers’ defensive leaders ready to climb all-time leaderboards
Where will the Packers’ big defensive names end up this year?
‘GTA 6’ Publisher Dismisses Digital Replacing Discs Controversy
'Grand Theft Auto 6' will only be sold digitally, and now Take Two is dismissing complaints about that, saying its business is already digital.
Retirement doesn’t make your health benefits simpler. It makes them more complicated
On this episode of Fed Thread, we look at how federal employees can better prepare themselves for FEHB after retirement.
Business Restructuring Review Vol. 25 No. 4 July-August 2026
In This Issue New York Bankruptcy Court: Premature Allegations of Creditor Mistreatment Insufficient to Deny Chapter 15 Recognition of Foreign Restructuring Proceeding In In re ARD Finance, S.A., No. 25-12794 (MG), 2026 WL 817458 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Mar. 25, 2026), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York was presented with a petition seeking chapter 15 recognition of Luxembourg's recently enacted bankruptcy law governing judicial reorganization proceedings. The court granted the petition, turning aside challenges to recognition voiced by a creditor group arguing that recognition should be denied based upon allegations of unfairness to creditors in the Luxembourg proceeding that would make recognition manifestly contrary to U.S. public policy. According to the bankruptcy court, recognition was warranted because: (i) the rules and procedures governing the proceeding under Luxembourg law were fundamentally fair; (ii) the petition otherwise satisfied chapter 15's recognition requirements; and (iii) the creditor group's allegations were premature, given the fact that the Luxembourg court presiding over the debtor's restructuring proceeding had not confirmed a restructuring plan, and all creditors had the right to participate fully and voice their objections in the proceeding (including the right to appeal an order approving a plan). [read more …] Florida Bankruptcy Court Examines Scope of Discovery in Chapter 15 Cases In In re Banco Master, S.A., No. 25-24568-SMG, 2026 WL 931729 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. Apr. 6, 2026), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida granted in part and denied in part post-recognition motions filed by an insider of a foreign debtor seeking to bar or limit discovery sought by the debtor's foreign representative concerning allegedly voidable transfers involving the debtors' U.S. real property. According to the court: (i) although chapter 15 includes its own discovery provisions among the relief that may be granted to a foreign representative, the expansive discovery available in cases under other chapters of the Bankruptcy Code is also available in chapter 15 cases; (ii) the discovery sought by the foreign representative was permissible; (iii) discovery regarding matters that were the subject of a pending adversary proceeding had to be undertaken under the more restrictive rules applicable to such proceedings; and (iv) a discovery request would be barred to the extent that it sought production of documents or testimony from a subpoenaed entity that exceeded the geographic limitations specified in such rules. [read more …] Delaware District Court Affirms Chapter 15 Recognition Order Enforcing Nonconsensual Third-Party Releases In U.S. Int'l Dev. Fin. Corp. v. Credito Real S.A.B. de C.V. SOFOM, E.N.R. (In re Credito Real S.A.B. de C.V. SOFOM, E.N.R.), 677 B.R. 192 (D. Del. 2026), appeal filed, No. 26-2356 (3d Cir. June 5, 2026), the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware affirmed a bankruptcy court order granting chapter 15 recognition to a Mexican "concurso mercantile" proceeding and enforcing nonconsensual third-party releases approved by the Mexican court. Agreeing with the bankruptcy court that the releases were not manifestly contrary to U.S. public policy, the district court concluded: "It is well settled that U.S. bankruptcy courts can give effect to foreign orders in recognized foreign proceedings pursuant to the authority granted in Chapter 15, even when those orders contain relief unavailable under U.S. law. [The appellant's] arguments misconstrue the Supreme Court's narrow holding in Purdue, applicable in Chapter 11 cases, as well as the statutory framework of Chapter 15 and its core policy objectives. Accordingly, I will affirm the Enforcement Order." The ruling has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. [read more …] Fifth Circuit: Bankruptcy Court, Not State Court, Had Jurisdiction to Allow or Disallow Administrative Expense Claim In Storey Minerals Ltd. v. EP Energy E&P Co., LP (Matter of EP Energy E&P Co., LP), 169 F.4th 609 (5th Cir. 2026), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed lower courts' rulings disallowing a creditor's administrative expense claim. It also rejected the creditor's argument that, because the claims were predicated on state law, a state court should adjudicate the merits of the state law causes of action before the bankruptcy court could allow or disallow the claim as an administrative expense. According to the Fifth Circuit, even though the causes of action were based on state law, the bankruptcy court had jurisdiction to determine whether the creditor's claims should be conferred with administrative expense priority in the debtors' chapter 11 case. [read more …] New York Bankruptcy Court: Dismissal of Involuntary Chapter 11 Case Filed Prior to Commencement of Foreign Restructuring Proceeding Unwarranted In In re Xinyuan Real Estate Co. Ltd., No. 25-10745 (PB), 2026 WL 592250 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Mar. 3. 2026), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York considered the bona fides of an involuntary chapter 11 petition filed by certain holders of U.S. dollar-denominated notes against a holding company for a group of Chinese property development companies that filed a restructuring proceeding in the Cayman Islands after the noteholders filed the involuntary chapter 11 petition. The court denied the debtor's motion to dismiss the chapter 11 case. Given the timing of the filing of the Cayman Islands restructuring proceeding, the absence of any progress in the proceeding for seven months, the debtor's need to restructure notes governed by U.S. law, and the debtor's lack of any meaningful contacts to the Cayman Islands, dismissal of the chapter 11 case was unwarranted under the applicable provision of the Bankruptcy Code, international comity, or the doctrine of forum non conveniens. [read more …] Bankruptcy Court Evaluates Trustee's Authority to Sell Avoidance Actions and Right of Target Defendants to Object In In re Law Enf't Officers Sec. Union, No. 24-70277-JAD, 2026 WL 560452 (Bankr. W.D. Pa. Feb. 27, 2026), a chapter 7 trustee sought court approval to sell certain avoidance actions to a creditor of the debtor's estate. Potential targets of the subject avoidance actions objected, arguing that such claims were nontransferable powers of the trustee rather than saleable estate property and urging the court to approve their competing settlement with the trustee. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania disagreed with the potential defendants, holding that they lacked standing to object to the proposed sale, that avoidance actions are indeed estate property, and that the sale—rather than the settlement—best served the estate's interests. [read more …] U.S. Supreme Court Bankruptcy Roundup in Brief In Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction Inc., No. 25-6, 2026 WL 1686028 (U.S. June 11, 2026), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Fifth Circuit decision judicially estopping a chapter 13 debtor from asserting a personal injury claim against a construction company because the debtor failed to disclose the claim during his bankruptcy case. In so ruling, the Court held that "[t]he Fifth Circuit erred by artificially narrowing its inquiry to whether the debtor had knowledge of the underlying facts or a potential motive to conceal the claim." It represents the first time that the Court has applied judicial estoppel in the bankruptcy context, although it has suggested in other contexts that it may be inappropriate where an inconsistent legal position resulted from "inadvertence or mistake." Also in June, the Court denied petitions for certiorari in a few notable bankruptcy cases. [read more …] Newsworthy Heather Lennox (Cleveland/New York) (Star Individual), Bruce Bennett (Los Angeles) (Senior Statesperson), Kevyn D. Orr (Washington) (Eminent Practitioner), Gregory M. Gordon (Dallas) (Band 1), Carl E. Black (Cleveland), Corinne Ball (New York) (Senior Statesperson), Brad B. Erens (Chicago), Jeffrey B. Ellman (Atlanta), T. Daniel Reynolds (Cleveland), and Dan T. Moss (Washington/New York) were recognized as leading lawyers in the practice area Bankruptcy/Restructuring in the 2026 edition of Chambers USA: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business. The 2026 edition of Lawdragon 500 Leading Bankruptcy and Restructuring Lawyers ranked the following lawyers: Corinne Ball (New York) (Hall of Fame), Bruce Bennett (Los Angeles), Carl E. Black (Cleveland), Jeffrey B. Ellman (Atlanta), Brad B. Erens (Chicago), Gregory M. Gordon (Dallas), Heather Lennox (Cleveland/New York), Joshua M. Mester (Los Angeles), and Kevyn D. Orr (Washington). Fabienne Beuzit (Paris) and Jasper Berkenbosch (Amsterdam) were among the "Leading Individuals" ranked in the 2026 edition of The Legal 500 EMEA guide in the field of Restructuring and Insolvency or Insolvency. Rodolphe Carrière (Paris) was named a "Next Generation Partner" in the practice area Insolvency. Sid Pepels (Amsterdam) was selected by Global Restructuring Review's 40 under 40 2026. He was identified as a Rising Star within the global cross-border restructuring community. Global Restructuring Review is a leading digital subscription service, news outlet, and information platform dedicated exclusively to cross-border insolvency and corporate restructuring law. Fabienne Beuzit (Paris), Rodolphe Carrière (Paris), and Isabelle Maury (Paris) were recognized in the 2027 edition of The Best Lawyers in France™ in the practice area Insolvency and Reorganization Law. An article written by Corinne Ball (New York) titled "Comity and Fairness are Critical to Granting Additional Assistance under Chapter 15: A Canadian Reverse Vesting Order and Related Releases in Proceedings Involving Canadian and U.S.-Affiliated Companies Are Approved" was published in the June 24, 2026, edition of the New York Law Journal. An article written by Caitlin K. Cahow (Detroit) titled "New York Bankruptcy Court Weighs In on Adequate Assurance of Future Performance under Assigned Leases and Chapter 11 Plan Exculpation Provisions" was published on June 8, 2026, in Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Trisha L. Mowbray (Real Estate; Chicago) and Ryan Sims (Washington) titled "Chapter 11 Plan that Abridged Non-Debtor Lessee's Rights to Remain in Possession After Rejection Unconfirmable as Having Been Proposed in Bad Faith" was published on June 16, 2026, in the Harvard Law School Bankruptcy Roundtable. An article written by Dan T. Moss (Washington/New York), Corinne Ball (New York), Isel M. Perez (Miami), and David S. Torborg (Washington) titled "Texas Bankruptcy Court Adopts Barnet Rule Requiring Foreign Debtor to Have U.S. Assets to Be Eligible for Chapter 15 Relief" was published on June 10, 2026, in Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Daniel J. Merrett (Atlanta) and Nathaniel Parr (Atlanta) titled "Southern District of Texas Clarifies Post-Purdue Course for Consensual Third-Party Releases and Gatekeeping Provisions" was published on June 11, 2026, in Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Corinne Ball (New York) titled "LMEs, Sophisticated Investors and Equitable Mootness: The Fifth and Third Circuits Warn Against Testing the Limits of Chapter 11" was published in the June 2026 issue of the American Bankruptcy Institute Journal. Nicholas J. Morin (New York) was quoted in an article titled "Serta Ruling Offers Damages Road Map in Lender-on-Lender Disputes," published by Bloomberg Law on July 7, 2026. The article discussed U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez's July 7, 2026, ruling that participating lenders in Serta Simmons Bedding's 2020 non-pro rata uptier exchange breached the credit agreement's ratable-sharing provision, and awarding excluded lenders more than $261 million in damages. The opinion resolves six years of litigation related to Serta's 2020 transaction, where it raised $200 million in new financing and exchanged $1.2 billion of term loans for $875 million in superpriority debt. Judge Lopez found that the debt-for-debt exchange constituted a "payment" under the credit agreement, requiring proportional sharing among lenders, and dismissed various defenses raised by the participating lenders. The case is Serta Simmons Bedding LLC v. AG Centre Street Partnership (In re Serta Simmons Bedding LLC), 2026 WL 1968535 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. Jul. 7, 2026). The New York Law Journal has recognized Andrew M. Butler (New York) as a 2026 "Rising Star" in Restructuring/Bankruptcy as part of the New York Legal Awards. The Rising Star category recognizes New York's most promising lawyers age 40 and under who have distinguished themselves through exceptional legal work, leadership, and contributions to the profession. Lawyer Spotlight: Daniel J. Merrett Dan Merrett, a partner in the Atlanta Office, has spent nearly 20 years representing all manner of stakeholders in complex corporate restructurings and chapter 11 reorganizations. His practice extends to related transactions and disputes involving acquisitions; divestitures; credit facilities; securities; environmental obligations; and vendor, employee, and governance matters. Dan has substantial experience managing mass tort liabilities, including the restructurings and related chapter 11 cases of affiliates of Georgia Pacific and Johnson & Johnson, implemented to resolve asbestos and talc liabilities. He also represents key parties in energy and infrastructure matters, including facility owners, EPC contractors, and joint-venture parties. Dan was a key player in the restructuring teams in the historic bankruptcies of the City of Detroit and Chrysler. His other significant representations in chapter 11 cases include AFA Foods, Alpha Natural Resources, Dana Corporation, M&G Chemicals, McDermott International, Monster/CareerBuilder, Transtar Industries, and Westinghouse. He is licensed in both the United States and England & Wales and recognized in restructuring by Chambers USA and Best Lawyers.
Whole Hog Politics: What we learn on vacation
Greetings, gentle readers! There’s no Whole Hog Politics newsletter today. Not that there wouldn’t have been plenty to talk about, with the meltdown in both parties continuing apace and all. But th…
Bengals News: Colbie Young and Cashius Howell rising
Two rookies are showing up big already for the Bengals.
After Myles Garrett trade, Jared Verse confident joining Browns: ‘I’m ready to see the look on everybody’s face’
The nation’s cartoonists on the week in politics
Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.
Trump’s racist politics BACKFIRE in Michigan GOP primary
Chris Hayes: Trump and his allies are unleashing a wave of anti-Muslim bigotry, and in Michigan, that hatred is already consuming candidates in their own party.
Earth’s molten core suddenly reversed direction — and scientists don’t know why
Earth’s molten iron core unexpectedly reversed direction beneath the Pacific, revealing a dramatic change in the hidden engine that creates our planet’s magnetic field. Satellite data suggest the surge is already weakening, raising the possibility that the deep-Earth upheaval is part of a mysterious natural cycle.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra
We compare Samsung's new form factor foldable to the already established one. Which one is a better fit for you? Now that Samsung has a new form factor in...
In the Sport-light: Roundup of news from Hull's wide world of sports
Compiled by Matt Haraden • Registration for the 2026-27 Hull Pirates Youth Basketball Travel season (boys and girls entering grades 3 -8) is now open. Families are encouraged to register early to help with team planning and ensure players are ready for the upcoming season. The
WATCH: Trump signs executive orders imposing new limits on birthright citizenship
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is once more trying to limit the number of people who are born in the country who can become American citizens, in a sign that even after his first attempt at limiting birthright citizenship was rejected by the Supreme Court, he's ready to try again.
DuckDuckGo mercilessly dunks on big tech's AI 'pervert' glasses
The company's “Normal F***ing Sunglasses" reportedly already sold out.
Klein ISD outscores state STAAR in science exam scores
Klein ISD students in fifth and eighth grade outscored state averages in the spring 2026 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness science exams according to new state data.
Parents argue new lawsuit against Ten Commandments in classrooms
The posters have already survived legal scrutiny under the Establishment Clause, but these parents are relying on a Texas law that prohibits the state from substantially burdening a person’s free exercise of religion.
Do leftovers taste better the next day? Sometimes, according to science
The widespread belief that some foods benefit from a night in the fridge has been put to the test, and it seems to be true for some curries, but not lasagne
Traffic information for Buffalo Bills Return of the Blue and Red practice
The Erie County Sheriff's Office wants you to be ready for traffic in Orchard Park this weekend.
Vanderbilt Health physical therapist bound for Nationals after winning four medals at Tennessee Senior Olympics
Vanderbilt Health physical therapist Grant Schlisner, PT, DPT, Cert. MDT, won four medals in the recent Tennessee Senior Olympics, which qualifies him to compete in the national Senior Olympics, set for July 2027 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Senior Olympians are athletes 50 years or older who compete in regional events for an opportunity to move to state events, and eventually to the Nationals. Schlisner’s medals were in the javelin, discus and softball throw (gold) and shot put (bronze). Schlisner, who is based at Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks, grew up in the Chattanooga area in a family that valued physical fitness and playing sports, and he says, with considerable understatement, “The whole family is quite athletic.” Grant Schlisner (R) with brother Bret and sister Sue, all of whom won medals in the Tennessee State Senior Olympics. (photo courtesy Grant Schlisner) His brother Bret also competed in the Senior Olympics. So did his sister Sue. (His other sister Tammy did not compete, but, Schlisner said, “We’re still going to work on her.”) And their father, who now lives in South Dakota, competed in that state’s Senior Olympics in the category for athletes aged 84 to 89. Schlisner was a high school athlete in several sports, including stints as a baseball pitcher and a football quarterback. Since he was already playing positions in other sports in which he was throwing things, he was also recruited to the school’s track and field team, which is where he gained experience in the events that were his ticket to the 2027 Nationals. The medals are a reward for the hard work of training and preparation, but Schlisner said the real reward is the fitness that the medals represent. Schlisner competes in one of his medal-winning events, the shot put. (photo courtesy Grant Schlisner) “[Preparing for competition] got me working out to train for these events. I added more extensive weight training to promote injury prevention and building flexibility and strength have made me feel better overall.” He also said that, in addition to the physical rewards, he enjoys the camaraderie of the other athletes and a feeling of accomplishment. “It’s great to be able to have a goal,” he said. “If you aim low, you’ll hit it. This is aiming high. I want to bring home a medal in the Nationals.” His physical therapy patients, especially those who may be discouraged or need a little extra motivation, also benefit from his example. “I can connect with patients and say, ‘I’m 57 with previous injuries, and I’ve been doing these events, and you can get back to your ‘sport’ as well, whether that is chasing grandkids or participating in a competitive activity,’” he said. And being around the other Senior Olympians, especially in the older age groups, is motivating for him, as well. “One competitor was 90 years old,” he said. “She’s not just sitting around. That was super motivating and cool to see. I don’t want to be a lump on the couch at 90.”
Xbox Is Getting Platinum Trophies Later This Year, Says CEO
Xbox is attempting to win back fans, or at least satisfy the ones they already have, by making changes, big and small. Now, Platinum Trophies are coming.
VA accelerates electronic health record rollout
After years of delays, the Department of Veterans Affairs says its federal electronic health record (EHR) program is now firmly back on track. VA Secretary Douglas Collins has accelerated the program with a renewed goal: full deployment across all VA medical centers by 2031. A major governance overhaul, replacing multiple competing councils with a single decision-making body, has cut through bureaucratic delays and allowed the VA to move faster and more consistently. Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence has taken a hands-on role, including visiting deployment sites and holding daily meetings with Oracle Health to ensure front-line clinicians have what they need. Here’s how the rollout is going, according to the VA: The federal EHR has only experienced four outages since December 2025. The system has gone nearly two consecutive years without a major incident. It is currently live at six sites, supporting care for over 188,000 veterans. The system creates a lifelong medical record, integrating data across the VA, the Department of Defense and private community providers. With the first new deployments underway and four Michigan medical centers already live in 2026, the VA is entering its first true expansion phase since the program’s reset. Officials say the system’s improved stability, streamlined governance and standardized national workflows have cleared the obstacles that once stalled progress. With 13 sites scheduled for deployment in 2026 and a market‑based rollout strategy guiding future waves, the department believes it’s finally positioned to move at scale toward a modern, fully interoperable EHR, advancing steadily toward its goal of reaching every VA medical center in five years.
What Triggers Business Owners To Want To Sell?
He was on a plane to Berlin when he realised his business had already won. And that terrified him more than any bad quarter ever had.
Flutter Entertainment: Let's Not Only Focus On U.S. Sportsbook Growth
Flutter Entertainment plc reported weak Q2 results and a slight downgrade to the 2026 financial guidance. Click here to read an analysis of FLUT stock now.
Readers sound off on why Massachusetts has lost its competitive edge
Once a star performer, Massachusetts is losing ground to other states on job growth and new business creation.
The Five-Year Exit Plan Every Business Owner Should Start Today
A five-year exit plan helps business owners increase business value, reduce risk, and build a more sellable company long before they're ready to exit.
Polls, prediction markets and Oklahoma politics: What you need to know this election season
Oklahoma's primary runoffs are weeks away, but people are already placing bets on who will win. Here is how prediction markets could impact our elections.
Disagreement doesn’t have to mean disrespect
By Vincent Atchity These days, it doesn’t take long to feel overwhelmed by politics. Turn on the news, scroll through social media or read the comments on almost any political post and you’ll find anger, outrage and personal attacks. For many of us, it’s becoming harder and harder to escape. At the same time, Colorado […]
Ample Entertainment Launches New Documentary YouTube Destination
Ample Entertainment, a nonfiction studio based in New York, on Aug. 6 announced the launch of Ample Originals, a new YouTube destination for original documentaries, series, creator collaborations and companion content. The channel gives audiences an early look at its inaugural slate with exclusive previews available now, ahead of the Aug. 7 premiere of “Ample … Continue reading "Ample Entertainment Launches New Documentary YouTube Destination"
Current and potential outbreaks to be aware of—and ready to talk about
Healthcare stakeholders of a certain age range will remember when the Centers for Disease Control declared measles dead and gone in the U.S. That was in 2000. The eradication was nice while it lasted, wasn’t it?
49ers already dealing with staggering injury totals during training camp
49ers defensive lineman Sam Okuayinonu went down with an injury during training camp on Wednesday, continuing a brutal summer in San Fran.
Viewpoint: Europe needs a new scientific contract
The White House's new science strategy should be required reading in the Berlaymont and every European capital.Not because Europe should copy it. Parts of it should concern Europeans deeply. But because it asks the question Europe has so far avoided while steadily losing ground in the global race for technological leadership.Europe already possesses many of the world's finest universities, scientists and research-intensive companies. It produces world-leading research in fields ranging from quantum technologies and biotechnology to climate science. Yet time and again Europe generates the scientific breakthroughs while others build the companies, industries and strategic advantages around them, particularly in digital technologies. Increasingly, we find ourselves regulating technologies whose underlying capabilities were developed elsewhere.This is not primarily a scientific failure. It is an institutional one.The settlement that shaped modern science policy emerged after the Second World War. In Science, the Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush argued that governments should invest in fundamental research while protecting scientists from political direction. Public investment was justified precisely because no government, university or company could predict where the next transformative discovery would emerge.That scientific contract served liberal democracies extraordinarily well. It underpinned decades of advances in medicine, computing, energy and communications, but the world for which it was designed no longer exists.Artificial intelligence is transforming not only technology but the production of knowledge itself. Advanced chips, computing power, data and scientific instruments have become strategic assets. Scientific knowledge now diffuses globally almost instantly. Competitive advantage increasingly lies not in making discoveries first, but in possessing the infrastructure, capital, engineering capability and institutions required to translate those ideas into products, industries and strategic advantage.The old boundaries between science, industrial policy, national security and geopolitics have largely disappeared. Dual-use technologies now underpin both economic power and military deterrence.The US has recognised this shift. In July, the White House published Science: A New Golden Age, a comprehensive attempt to rethink the relationship between science and national power. The report builds on Bush's legacy, but departs from his framework in important ways. Science is no longer treated simply as the source of future discoveries. It is presented as the foundation of economic resilience, technological leadership and national security. AI, advanced infrastructure and the capacity to build become as important as discovery itself.Yet the report also reveals a striking paradox. The same administration calling for “a new golden age” of US science has simultaneously proposed deep cuts to the federal research enterprise while expanding political influence over the allocation of public research funding. Europe should therefore distinguish between the report's diagnosis and its prescription. The diagnosis, that science has become a strategic asset, is compelling. But the prescription is self-defeating. Long-term technological leadership depends on strong universities, academic freedom and the institutional autonomy that makes scientific discovery possible. This distinction matters. Bush's achievement was never simply to make science serve national strength. It was to establish a division of labour in which governments invested in research without attempting to direct discovery itself. Scientific breakthroughs emerge precisely because researchers retain the freedom to pursue questions whose value cannot yet be demonstrated and whose conclusions cannot be anticipated.Neither China, nor the USAs science becomes more strategically important, the temptation to politicise it inevitably grows. But scientific freedom is not an obstacle to technological leadership, it is an essential precondition.China represents the opposite model. For decades it has integrated science, manufacturing, infrastructure and industrial policy into a single national strategy. Its ability to mobilise resources around critical technologies is formidable. But it does so within an authoritarian system where scientific priorities are increasingly inseparable from political power.Europe should imitate neither model. It should learn from the strategic ambition of the US without importing its growing politicisation of science. And it should learn from China's capacity to build without adopting its concentration of power.Instead, Europe needs a scientific contract of its own. Bush's scientific contract protected the freedom to discover because the defining challenge of the 20th century was producing new knowledge. Europe's next scientific contract must preserve that freedom while ensuring that scientific discoveries can be converted into technological, industrial and strategic capability. Because in a transactional world, Europe's freedom to shape its own future depends on its capacity to build it.Related articlesThe US ‘golden age’ science strategy: what Europeans need to knowEuropean researchers sound the alarm that Trump rule changes will hit cooperationNIH turmoil risks reciprocal EU-US access to health research fundingThis does not mean subordinating free science to competitiveness or industrial policy. On the contrary. Scientific autonomy remains the first principle of Europe's next scientific contract. Governments should not direct scientific discovery. Their responsibility is to ensure that Europe's scientific, industrial, financial and regulatory institutions work together rather than in isolation.Meeting that responsibility requires far more than research funding. European researchers need access to world-class computing infrastructure, advanced laboratories, shared datasets and scientific facilities. Innovative companies need patient capital, testing environments and a genuine single market in which they can scale without facing 27 different regulatory regimes. Public procurement must evolve from purchasing existing technologies to creating markets for new ones. Regulators must become partners in experimentation rather than guardians of yesterday's rules.A connecting architectureEurope does not need to invent the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) model from scratch. Britain's Aria, Germany's Sprind and Wellcome Leap already show that Europe can build institutions capable of taking high-risk, mission-oriented bets while preserving democratic accountability. The challenge now is not to create more isolated initiatives, but to connect them to Europe's broader scientific, industrial and financial system so that breakthrough discoveries can scale.Above all, Europe must stop treating research, innovation, industrial policy, finance and security as separate policy domains. The challenge is no longer to create excellent institutions in each of these fields, but to make them work as one European innovation system. Europe's strength will increasingly depend not on excellence within institutions, but on excellence across them.Europe's ambition should be neither to imitate the US nor to emulate China. It should demonstrate that scientific freedom, democratic legitimacy and technological capability are not competing objectives, but mutually reinforcing strengths. In an age of geopolitical rivalry, Europe's greatest advantage may ultimately be its ability to attract the world's best talent by combining scientific freedom, democratic openness and technological ambition.Bush's scientific contract helped define the 20th century because it protected the freedom to discover. Europe's challenge is not to abandon that achievement but to extend it. The defining task of Europe's next scientific contract is to preserve the freedom to discover while building Europe's capacity to translate scientific discovery into technological power.Kaare Nielsen is founder of Pomus, a Danish think tank on science and innovation.
Science|Business summer reads of 2026
As most people in the European research and innovation policy bubble are going on a well-deserved summer break, we have come up with a list of our favourite books, podcasts and essays from the past year that ask deeper questions about science, technology and politics.BooksPasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, by Donald StokesIf you haven’t read Pasteur’s Quadrant yet, now is the time. In the EU and elsewhere, we’re living through a period of dwindling faith that curiosity-driven research automatically leads to economic growth and technological progress. Pasteur’s Quadrant, published in 1997 by the Princeton academic Donald Stokes, is the most influential critique of the standard “linear model” of R&D: the idea that new discoveries made in ivory-tower labs get neatly passed on for commercialisation by start-ups. In reality, Stokes argues, practical applications often inspire more theorical lines of inquiry. Of course, we have long known that things are more complex than the linear model, but even today, it’s still often assumed in Brussels discourse. The book is a useful corrective, and is being used now to argue for new types of scientific institutions. David MatthewsThe Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism, by Jacob Hale Russel and Dennis PattersonAre society’s problems solvable by technical expertise alone? “If only the benighted would listen,” say Jacob Hale Russel and Dennis Patterson, two professors at Rutgers Law School who got frustrated with how scientists and politicians handled public health communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the book, they argue that clichéd mantras about scientific evidence and expertise perpetrated by academics, journalists and politicians have harmed public trust in the very institutions they were trying to defend. Paradoxically, slogans such as “we believe in science,” “follow the science” and “defer to the experts” can fuel mistrust in science, experts and democratic institutions. The authors criticise “condescension” and “technocratic paternalism” in the public discourse and make the case for a more nuanced approach to scientific and expert policy advice that rests on humility, doubt, scepticism and open dialogue. “Most complex social questions in fact revolve around values, not the recitation of unambiguous facts,” they say. Florin ZubascuBreakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan WangIn this book, Dan Wang compares the structural differences between the US and Chinese industrial policies, but raises a very timely question for innovation policy wonks: how can advanced manufacturing know-how contribute to technology-intensive economic growth? Wang says technology has three components: the tools, the blueprints and patents, and the process knowledge. The third component represents the “proficiency gained from practical experience, which isn’t easily communicated and requires years of implementation.” According to Wang, rather than seeing tools and blueprints as the ultimate ends of technological progress, policymakers should see them as milestones in the training of better scientists and manufacturers. Over the past decades, China has amassed “process knowledge” because capital flowed to complex fabrication facilities, while investors in the West have parked their money in capital-light businesses such as digital platforms or chip companies that focus on design. As it turns out, thanks to its oversized focus on manufacturing, China has gained remarkable advantages in the global technology race. Florin ZubascuBaltic: The Future of Europe, by Oliver MoodyWhat can Europe learn from the nine countries surrounding the Baltic Sea? Alongside the familiar stories about Estonia's digital transformation, the book examines how the region has used technology, resilience, education, governance and long-term thinking to respond to geopolitical, economic and security challenges. Innovation policy wonks might find fresh perspectives on how innovation can strengthen defence, societal resilience and Europe's capacity to adapt in an uncertain world. Whether or not you agree with all of Oliver Moody's conclusions, the book is a useful guide to a region that is increasingly shaping European debates on security, competitiveness and technology. Goda NaujokaityteThe Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf This book chronicles the wild and adventurous life of natural science pioneer Alexander von Humboldt who at some point in the 19th century seems to have been just about the most famous person in the world. Through scientific expeditions to the Andes Mountains and to the depths of Siberia, von Humboldt contributed a host of discoveries and concepts. During his life he met and formed relationships with historical figures as different as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Simon Bolivar, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles Darwin. He is also claimed to be the person in the world with most things named after him, a list that includes an ocean current, a penguin and a region of the Moon. Still venerated in Germany, with numerous scientific institutions named after him, von Humboldt has slipped out of public consciousness in most of the rest of the world. For anyone not familiar with him, this book does a good job of describing his fascinating life. Ole EllekrogCareless People, by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsYou may have heard this referred to as the book Meta doesn’t want you to read. The 2025 memoir from Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of global public policy at Meta, then just called Facebook, includes explosive claims about everything from a toxic workplace culture to how the company worked with advertisers to target vulnerable teens, and the lengths it was prepared to go to in order to break into China. It’s a fascinating insight into how and why the tech company gradually shifted its approach to policy, whether in the US, Europe or Asia. Meta has denied the allegations in the book, and last year won an emergency ruling to prevent Wynn-Williams from promoting it. In response, the author is now suing her former employer. If that doesn’t make you want to read it. Martin GreenacrePodcastsThe Europeans: Europe’s anti-ElonThis podcast is a great choice for a light-hearted dose of European policy and culture news. Most of it has little to do with research, innovation and technology, but this particular podcast features an interview with Mastadon’s founder Eugen Rochko. He talks about his experience running an open-source, federated, European-made social media platform, and leaving it all behind. The conversation, which starts 14 minutes in, gently encourages us to reflect on what kind of technology we, as Europeans, want to make. Goda NaujokaityteSolarpunk and how we escape dystopiaNew technologies are very often taken from science fiction. Alberto Santos-Dumont, inventor the airship, was inspired as a child by the adventure stories of Jules Verne. OpenAI’s attempt to build a personal assistant with the voice of Scarlett Johansson was lifted from the 2013 film Her, completely ignoring the movie’s cautionary message. So if we want better tech, we need to imagine it first. Unfortunately, the state of current sci-fi is relentlessly dystopian, giving inventors precious few ideas or hope. However, a new genre, Solarpunk, which envisages a technologically advanced but ecologically harmonious future, is now taking off. The actual tech the genre imagines, such as permaculture, renewable energy or community repair workshops, while nice, isn’t all that inspiring or ambitious. But it’s a first step towards rescuing sci-fi from its pessimistic Blade Runner rut. David MatthewsEveryday AbundanceLaunched in June, Everyday Abundance is a podcast that tells the stories of the inventions we now take so for granted that we barely given them a second thought. For example, the washing machine, which liberated women from a lifetime “bent over washtubs and washboards.” Or modern dentistry, which ended the reality that “tooth pain was simply part of human life.” Historians of technology, Virginia Postrel and Charles C Mann are very much on the optimistic end of the spectrum when it comes to the capacity of invention to improve human life. Here, they set out their case: if it wasn’t for progress, you might be hunched over a washtub with toothache rather than reading these words. David Matthews‘We will not know what we lost’: Conservation fallout a year after USAID shutdownSince his return to the White House, Donald Trump has been on a mission to undermine science. He slashed jobs at federal agencies, terminated grants in some research areas, took unprecedented control over university affairs and, within hours of his inauguration, suspended the US Agency for International Development. While its initial focus was to administer health and food aid around the world, it had since expanded to conservation projects. The result? Some of these projects were stopped abruptly. In this Mongabay podcast, environmental reporter Michelle Nijhuis tells the story of the EcoGuard conservation programme in Liberia, whose local patrols had helped protect rainforests, monitor endangered wildlife and track illegal threats. From one day to the next, these were left without salaries. Luckily, she notes, the initiative was able to get emergency funding from international NGOs, but its future remains “incredibly uncertain.” Juliette PortalaEssaysThe Mars Delusion, by Henry WismayerWhy is humankind so fixated on establishing a colony on Mars? asks London-based writer Henry Wismayer. From space evangelists promoting Martian settlement as an insurance policy, to billionaire Jeff Bezos, who said humans should settle on Mars “because it’s cool,” the mission is not running short of advocates. However, in this essay, Wismayer reminds us that some critics expect any future Mars pioneer to end up “irradiated, sick, mad and dead.” Scientists have already looked into the possible effects of prolonged exposure to Martian gravity, and it’s not pretty: muscle shrinking, bones weakening, changes to the central nervous system and other biological modifications to make us all reconsider the journey. “Some researchers have forecast that the future settler, after generations of evolutionary conditioning, will look less like an Übermensch and more like ET,” Wismayer writes. Juliette Portala
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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. 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The Beauty Of Settled Science
Commenters convinced me I made a subtle mis-step in my framing of Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine. My framing emphasized that social priming studies had failed to replicate, but that many other subfields of psychology hadn’t. This naturally led commenters to point to failed replications in other subfields. Although none of these were as bad as social priming, few or none were entirely problem-free. Instead of emphasizing the difference between social priming and other subfields, I should have emphasized the difference between settled science and novel research. Here are some of my favorite psychology findings: The brain is sculpted by reinforcement learning, and a key driver of this learning is a prediction-error-based algorithm located in the nucleus accumbens and implemented through dopamine. Psychedelic drugs exert their effects through 5-HT2A receptors, pointing to a role for these receptors in some sort of construct like the balance between priors and new evidence. Certain cognitive functions are localized to certain brain areas (for example, impulse control to the frontal lobes; linguistic structure to Broca’s area, linguistic meaning to Wernicke’s area. But injure one of these areas, or render a certain function useless (eg a blind person having no more use for their visual cortex), and these mappings can gradually shift - suggesting that neurons are general-purpose compute whose specialization is a contingent fact about convenience and efficiency rather than a necessity. Most personality traits and general capabilities are about 50% genetic and 50% random, with little role for family environment or childhood history, with a few notable exceptions like partisan preference. Recent research complicates this story, but the further you go from this basic picture, the gnarlier the chains of indirect causation you require. Neurons fire together in “brain waves”, whose exact frequency corresponds with the character of consciousness; These divide neurons into natural subpopulations and linked graphs. The gamma rhythm corresponds surprisingly well to items in conscious awareness. GABA receptors seem to be involved in something like relaxation. By hitting different GABA receptors in different ways, you can modulate the exact type of relaxation you produce. Hitting GABA-A directly is too powerful and can cause dangerous levels of sedation, but allosteric modulation of GABA is an incredibly fruitful strategy that underlies drugs from benzos to barbituates to alcohol. If you know your GABA-A subunits, you can target specific subtypes of relaxation; for example, Ambien hits GABA-A1 and induces sleep. Memory divides somewhat fuzzily into bins of immediate-sensory, short-term, and long-term, with separate retrieval and storage functions, and separate systems for declarative vs. procedural learning. These can be harmed selectively, usually by hippocampal injury, so that some patients can remember their life stories but not form new long-term memories, or learn new skills like bike-riding but not new facts. The exact substrate of memory is unclear but seems to involve new synaptic connections between neurons in at least some way. The ability of modern psychology and psychiatry to treat mental illness is real but limited. SSRIs work for half or slightly fewer than half of patients; antipsychotics work with extreme side effects; benzodiazpines work but produce addiction and tolerance in many (not all) people. Most supplements are stuck in Poor Quality Study Replication Crisis Hell, but melatonin and l-theanine stand out as especially promising. Psychotherapy works with moderate effect size, but (with a few exceptions) seems to be more about the relationship with the provider than the details of the therapy itself. Mental hospitalization can sometimes defuse immediate crises but work less well than mental hospitals would like, with some studies showing overall negative effects. Schizophrenia is mostly genetic, but risk also increases with prenatal infection (especially rubella) and obstetric complications; there is suggestive evidence for roles of social stress and drug use (with psychedelics and marijuana making things worse, and nicotine if anything making things better). Bipolar and schizophrenia are so closely linked on a pathophysiological level that it seems like they might be the same disease; on the clinical level, they do seem to follow two separate courses/prognoses but can sometimes surprise clinicians by eg someone who seemed condemned to permanent schizophrenia unexpectedly recovering. The brain’s native reinforcement learning algorithms cash out in the phenomena of classical and operant conditioning; different reinforcement schedules reinforce at different levels, which can be exploited by bad actors to make especially compelling products (eg slot machines). None of these are immune to doubt. A few are speculative; one or two are genuinely unorthodox. But they’re all a step above one p = 0.049 paper that might not replicate. If they get overturned, they’ll be overturned by the same sort of genuine scientific shift that replaced Ptolemy with Copernicus or Lamarck with Darwin, not some sort of sordid discovery about someone entering random numbers into a spreadsheet. In 2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about The Beauty Of Settled Science: If you only care about scientific issues that are controversial, you will end up with a head stuffed full of garbage. The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science is worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like “General Relativity still governing planetary orbits” or “Phlogiston theory remains false”? So, by the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline. “Newsworthy” science is often based on the thinnest of evidence and wrong half the time—if it were not on the uttermost fringes of the scientific frontier, it would not be breaking news. Scientific controversies are problems so difficult that even people who’ve spent years mastering the field can still fool themselves. That’s what makes for the heated arguments that attract all the media attention. Worse, if you aren’t in the field and part of the game, controversies aren’t even fun. Don’t be embarrassed to read elementary science textbooks, either. If you want to pretend to be sophisticated, go find a play to sneer at. If you just want to have fun, remember that simplicity is at the core of scientific beauty [...] A steady diet of science news is bad for you: You are what you eat, and if you eat only science reporting on fluid situations, without a solid textbook now and then, your brain will turn to liquid. Psychology isn’t centrally the new paper in Annals Of Recently-Breaking News saying that an n=5 study showing that large portion sizes increase support for terrorism. Psychology is centrally ideas like brain waves, GABA receptors, reinforcement learning, twin studies, and connectionism. People who think differently are worrying too much about BREAKING NEWS!!!, and should stop. The key distinction isn’t “recent research in social psychology” vs. “recent research in cognitive/bio/behavioral psychology”, as my essay last week unfortunately implied. It’s recent research in general vs. the deposit of settled science, battle-tested hypotheses, and carefully-earmarked speculation. And part of the reason social priming in particular was such a disaster was that it defied that heuristic, building itself up over hundreds of studies until it approached or even entered the pantheon of settled science - before collapsing (5-HTTLPR was also sort of like this). This isn’t a claim that settled science is always right - Freud was “settled science” for a long time - just that there’s an intuitive distinction between the level of credence you should have in the existence of power posing vs. the existence of Broca’s Area. (I compounded this error by calling the last post “Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine”, which suggested I was talking about the new research rather than the settled science. I actually meant to distinguish between research-psychology-the-field vs. clinical-psychology-aka-therapy, but this framing unintentionally pushed against the point I wanted to make) Some commenters on the previous article understood this point, but challenged its weight. It’s very cool, they said, to know how many neurons are in which brain lobe, but the main way that Psychology affected their lives was through bad clickbait studies used to buttress dumb policies; some p = 0.049 study says that exposure to microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel into raisins, and now their company has to implement punitive DEI or be sued for hazardous work conditions. I won’t dispute this as an accurate description of how the sausage gets made, but it’s worth examining the trains of thought that connect this observation to a campaign against psychology in general: The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad, and I don’t have good heuristics for distinguishing dumb woke psychology from other psychology, so I’m going to assume it’s all wrong and bad. The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad; it seems useful to punish/discredit psychology as a whole to assist my campaign against it, so for propaganda purposes I will try to discredit psychology as a whole. To people in the first camp, my response is: come on, your heuristics aren’t that bad. “Microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel up like raisins” is in the woke category; “the hippocampal theta rhythm seems to be associated with both memory and pathfinding, suggesting an unexpected yet surprisingly compelling relationship between the two” is in the not-woke category, don’t play dumb here. To people in the second camp, my response is: deliberately exaggerated propaganda campaigns are bad and this is a confession, not an excuse. Inability to view science through anything but a political lens was what got us into this problem; doubling down on it is a temporary solution but a recipe for permanent disaster. If you pronounce entire fields of science to be acceptable collateral damage in your campaign against bad political actors, you will alienate not just scientists but patients, clinicians, and general lovers of truth. Instead, you can say the thing you mean - that woke partisans shouldn’t try to occupy and exploit the otherwise-noble science of psychology for their own political gain - and wage the same campaign with a halo rather than a comic-book-villain goatee. From the font of oracular wisdom that is Weird Sun Twitter: [ Vessel Of Spirit@VesselOfSpirit i love you all conditionally but i love the good part of you unconditionally. even if it becomes a very small part 2:11 AM · Jan 22, 2015 1 Reply · 5 Reposts · 29 Likes ](https://x.com/VesselOfSpirit/status/558084551772471298) This is how I feel about psychology1, too, but with a touch more optimism. The good part of psychology is enormous, a hoard of endless treasures. You just have to look past the headlines! 1 To play devil’s advocate - should one always be so magnamious? Astrology? Phrenology? These seem different in that their entire orientation was flawed from the start; they didn’t simply fail to find the correct constellation-personality connections, the whole project of searching for connections between constellations and personality was doomed from the start. More difficult might be asking the same question about education research, which is notoriously bad. I don’t know enough about education research to know if there’s some settled science of correct and enlightening results lurking in the background beyond the day-to-day froth of poorly-conducted and politically-motivated studies. I think if it’s 90% bad, 10% good, it’s correct to call it bad as a compact way of communicating a useful truth; I think psychology is better than that, but admit it’s a tough judgment call.
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MrBeast Sales Slow, Angel Stock Falls, MUBI and Neon Look for Hits, and Will an NBA Franchise Set a Sales Record?
(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) You probably remember egg prices spiking a few years ago. This led to a lot of debate between the pro-market/pro-competition/antitrust/Neo-Brandesian crowd and the center/center-right/center-left/abundance/libertarian crowd over the cause, whether it was the avian flu outbreak or whether industry consolidation led to price fixing, using avian flu as a convenient cover. Basel Musharbash wrote a whole investigation at BIG looking at it. Well, two years later, we have our answer: it was price fixing. The Justice Department found proof, via emails, of price fixing. Indeed, just the threat of an investigation brought prices down two years ago: I bring this up because at least half a dozen of my favorite political writers and pundits, who were skeptical about price fixing at the time, haven’t written any mea culpas on this issue. It’s really dispiriting and makes it much, much harder to trust their work on other issues. If you take a hard stand on an issue, then you get it wrong, you need to explain how and why you got it wrong. Or update your priors. This is how epistemological bubbles are formed! All of which is to say, it’s time for another installment of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. Last issue, I mostly focused on the “wrong” side of the equation, so today’s is a bit more balanced, but with one big mea culpa (though I still stand by my original concerns). Let’s dive right in! Subscribe CORRECTION: UFC Didn’t Release Subscriber Data (But Seems to Have Bragged About It Internally) In my analysis of the viewership of UFC Freedom 250, I wrote... “Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers.” Well, that datecdote did not come from a PR rep, but from great reporting from James Faris at Business Insider. The actual quote was this: “Paramount’s flagship streaming service generated about a million new subscribers on the day of its first-ever UFC event, Paramount product chief Dane Glasgow told employees in a town hall on Tuesday morning, three staffers who attended the meeting told Business Insider.“ This wasn’t the biggest goof in the world; even Faris emphasized to me that this is more a “clarification” than a correction. Still, it sounds like, internally, the folks at Paramount were very happy about this result—and I’m guessing they were happy with this news getting out—even though the gains didn’t last through the quarter, dropping to 700K adds. RIGHT: MrBeast’s Struggles Continue... I’m very skeptical about MrBeast’s burgeoning media “empire” and, in particular, its $5 billion valuation, as I wrote earlier this year and last year. Sure enough, according to Business Insider, regarding its “booming” consumer products division_:_ “US sales volume grew 13% year-over-year in 2025, following a 33% leap the previous year, according to a presentation deck dated May 2026....A February 2025 investor deck viewed by Business Insider showed Feastables’ net revenue more than doubled in 2024 from 2023, to $215 million, and was forecast to grow 74% in 2025, to $375 million.” [Emphasis mine.] If you told investors that you projected 74% growth but delivered 13%,1 that’s not ideal. But it’s not just MrBeast. Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime had sales drop in half for their energy drinks. It’s one thing to build a successful entertainment company and an entirely different thing to succeed in the heavily-consolidated-but-also-very-competitive consumer packaged goods space! CPGs are dominated by a few firms with very wide moats compared to YouTube, which has few barriers to entry. These businesses require different skill sets and have completely different business environments. WRONG: Does the NBA Have an $8 Billion Bidder? Almost as soon as I published my article about the NBA’s finances, casting skepticism on NBA expansion, I saw this Front Office Sports headline: One group “claims to have already raised $8 billion” for the Vegas expansion team. I mean, wow. That’s just $2 billion less than what the Los Angeles Lakers were valued at when they were sold just last year. And they’re arguably the most popular team in the NBA. (Side note: the new owner is now under an investigation for fraud in how he went about financing the Lakers and the Dodgers purchases.) So much for the “dried up” language I used in that article. (This is why I usually stick to my “Entertainment Nuance Guy” tone in articles...) I went off old information—from April, when I read/heard about the NBA downplaying expansion efforts—instead of doing a quick double-check for new news. That said...if you read the article, the market for Seattle is “slow”, with just one reported bidder. So I wasn’t entirely off. This goof has annoyed me since I first published it, mainly because it undercut that article’s real point, which I stand by: NBA franchises are really overvalued right now. Now, I get why NBA teams are overvalued. When it comes to owning sports teams, it’s basically never wrong to assume that some rich person somewhere will care more about owning a team (or just being part of a group since they’re so expensive) than the actual financials. There are only so many teams to own, and opportunities to buy in preferred markets don’t come along very often. This explains why the teams sell for such high multiples (usually above a 10 to 12.5 revenue multiple, which is very high). You only need one person to overpay! Beyond the ultra-wealthy luxury good explanation, I worry NBA teams are becoming speculative assets. More and more private equity investors are buying into NBA teams. But the value, in owning a team, comes from selling it later, not any meaningful relationship to revenue or profit growth. In other words, the newer NBA owners are increasingly expecting someone later to buy their inflated asset. That’s not sound economics; that’s the “greater fool” theory at work.2 At some point, actually making money has to matter. Especially since revenue growth is now below the growth of the stock market. (And this matters because the NBA doesn’t have easy levers to pull to drastically lower their costs—half of their revenue has to go to players and then you actually have to run a team, including coaching, training, travel, media expenses, and more—or raise revenues aside from one-off expansions in America and overseas.) I just don’t see how investors make their money back buying NBA teams, except for selling at a higher price later on down the line. But if revenue/profit growth continues to slow, at some point, someone will be left holding the bag. RIGHT: Baseball and Basketball are about equally popular. Related to the above, I wanted to cite two quick pieces of evidence for one of my other theories: that the NBA and MLB are about as popular as each other, but the NBA gets much, much better media coverage. One YouGov survey has that fans prefer basketball to baseball by 52% to 48%, which I’m guessing is within the margin of error for that poll. That’s virtually even, meaning they’re about the same popularity. Over on NBC, a recent Red Sox-Yankees game averaged 4 million viewers, higher than Sunday Night Basketball’s average of 3.4 million on the same network. A Yankees-Dodgers game averaged 3.9 million two weeks ago. Not every game averages this much, but it shows you that baseball isn’t far off from basketball, depending on the matchup. Altogether, the NBA is just slightly more popular than baseball, but NBC is paying MLB a fraction of what they pay the NBA, a point I’ve made before. RIGHT: Angel, MUBI and Neon Updates... I’ve long been skeptical about many of Hollywood’s buzziest startups/smaller indie studios. It’s not that they don’t make great movies—films like Anora and Everything Everywhere All at Once are amazing—or that they’re not (rightfully) pushing the majors to make better films, but...they get a ton of hype, and that hype often doesn’t live up to the reality or difficulty in scaling up. Starting with MUBI, well, The Wall Street Journal wrote a feature on MUBI’s struggles last April, best summarized by the subheader “After Sequoia valued Mubi at $1 billion, a left-wing revolt sent the indie film company into a tailspin”. MUBI lost $7.3 million on $200 million in revenue in Q4 2025, but reportedly hit a record 1.7 million subscribers at the end of Q1. As for Neon, Department M purchased a “significant stake” in the company earlier this year. How much is that “stake” worth? According to Deadline, “No financial figures for the Neon-Department M deal were disclosed.” So...that’s not great! If it was a big valuation, we’d hear about. Also, I found this curious: “Both Neon and Department M already have separate partnerships with Qatar. The Qatar Film Committee has a slate deal in place with the former, and a biopic production pact with the latter.” Color me skeptical about much Middle Eastern investment dollars. See: LIV Golf. Finally, as for Angel (formerly Angel Studios), their stock very, very slightly popped last month after Young Washington ($20 million budget) which made $45 million in the US, but their stock is still way down from its opening. Smaller Updates RIGHT: The WGA should focus on antitrust concerns! I’ve been on this for years. Post-WGA/AMTPT deal in 2023, I wrote an article for the Ankler calling on the WGA to focus and organize against industry consolidation. Sure enough, the WGA filed a lawsuit against the Paramount-WBD merger, and people are organizing around this issue now. I wish this energy had coalesced earlier (specifically to lobby Washington much earlier), but better late than never! WRONG: Actually, the chip shortage might be due to market manipulation. In my last “Long Reads for the Long Summer” article, I shared an article about how LLMs are causing memory chip prices to spike, which will make all electronics more expensive. Well, turns out, three RAM manufacturers control 90% of the market, and now a private lawsuit accuses them of price-fixing. So yeah. WRONG/UPDATE: The Odyssey will hold! Two weeks ago, I wrote, “As of this moment, we haven’t had a super-blockbuster, though The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday could all cross the $500 million mark. (At this point, The Odyssey would need a very strong hold to get there.)” Well, it’s safe to say it’s going to have that hold! It only dropped 30% in weekend two and IMAX screenings are sold out all month. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is also off to a great start. RIGHT: People are rushing to get shows out yearly. I’ve long been bullish on yearly, weekly-released shows, and Leslie Goldberg at The Ankler wrote about how many people in town are now listening. WRONG: Mark Carney reverses Canada’s stance on homegrown production. After writing about Canada installing domestic production quotas, Canada has backed off. WRONG: I don’t trust Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s online “views”. When I originally wrote about the latest Spider-Man film’s record-breaking trailer, I thought this was just YouTube views, but after watching this Corridor Crew video and doing more research, well, it’s all social views of the trailer globally. Really? That stat includes TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts views. Basically, I don’t trust it anymore. (This film will probably set record, but I trust the pre-sales data more.) RIGHT: Celebrity Production companies are still struggling. I’ve written about this for years, but the company that I didn’t track was Kevin Hart’s HartBeat, which was valued at $650 million but is struggling now and might just end soon, especially after Kevin Hart pulled his endorsement deals. And Bad Robot is moving to NYC. CORRECTION: SpongeBob is a “second run” title. In my 2025 recap article, I had _SpongeBob SquarePants_labelled as a “library” title, when it is still a “second run” show, with new episodes still coming out on Nickelodeon. CORRECTION: In my last “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong” update, I offered a correction from Doug Creutz and misspelled TD Cowen. Thanks, Grammarly! 1 Though he could have increased prices to make up for the gap, he couldn’t have increased them that much. 2 There’s a theory, which I think that Daryl Morey created and Bill Simmons popularized, that, to be successful building your team, you only need a handful of bad GMs in the league to take advantage of. To be clear, Daryl Morey’s theory was also for signing bad contracts, that you could always get out of bad contracts. Basically, there’s always someone who will make a bad trade. It’s not the same exact thing, but similar enough to the Greater Fool Theory that I really like it.
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