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Reporting on the science of saunas
For centuries people have sought out saunas and hot springs for their supposed healing properties. But the science behind those claims can be quite vague. So NPR science correspondent Will Stone headed to the International Sauna Congress in Norway to find out just what we know about the health benefits of saunas. This episode was produced by Gabriel Sanchez, with engineering by Eowyn Fain. Our director is Elena Burnett.It was edited by Adam Raney.Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
From saunas to psychedelics, how a health reporter sorts science from hype
A reporting trip to a sauna conference in Oslo found NPR's Will Stone in a sauna with his clothes and recording gear. In this reporter's notebook, he explains how he investigates the science behind wellness claims.
From saunas to psychedelics, how a health reporter sorts science from hype
A reporting trip to a sauna conference in Oslo found NPR's Will Stone in a sauna with his clothes and recording gear. In this reporter's notebook, he explains how he investigates the science behind wellness claims.
Valorant Player Banned Due To Previous GPU Owner’s Cheating
In a wild coincidence a German player was penalized over the playing habits of their Ryzen 7's previous owner, claiming that nothing short of replacing the entire PC will overcome Riot's infamous anti-cheat detection
Trump, Critic of Voting by Mail, Urges Republicans to Do It in Midterms
It was the latest mixed messaging from President Trump, who regularly votes by mail, but has made baseless claims that the practice is “inherently corrupt.”
Goddess Empire Entertainment proudly presents EARTHA... I'M STILL HERE!
STARRING THOMASINA GROSS THOMASINA GROSS HEADLINES SOLD OUT / SRO ACCLAIMED EARTHA KITT TOUR-DE-FORCE
Dave Portnoy Says Ohio State Football Coach Ryan Day Led to His Ouster From Fox’s ‘Big Noon Kickoff’
Football fans tuning in to Big Noon Kickoff on Fox Sports on Saturdays will no longer be watching Dave Portnoy and his Barstool Sports crew, reported the New York Times. Barstool founder Portnoy, 49, confirmed the news and claimed that Ohio State University was to blame. Portnoy is a proud alumnus of the University of Michigan, […]
Josh Allen Can Set Another Bills Franchise Record Sunday
One rushing score away from eclipsing Hall of Fame legends Andre Reed and Thurman Thomas, Buffalo’s dual-threat quarterback poised to claim the franchise’s all-time touchdown crown.
Breaking down Trump’s new ‘drug factories’ claim about Iranian nuclear sites
The president’s refusal to admit the likely gaffe follows a pattern of insisting he is always correct.
Lawmakers probe allegations that NC health officials used false information to secure Medicaid funds
GOP lawmakers in NC say they are looking into allegations that state health officials used false information to secure federal funding for a Medicaid technology overhaul. The claims were made in a lawsuit that has since been dismissed. The state auditor has revived an audit into the project.
Halle Berry's reacts to ex-husband's restraining order, abuse claims
Halle Berry speaks out against ex-husband Oliver Martinez amid his recent restraining order against the Oscar-winning star. He accuses Berry of physical abuse against their 12-year-old son.
IRS takes up whistleblower claim of Hope Florida money that flowed to Uthmeier’s political committee
The Internal Revenue Service is reviewing a whistleblower claim about $10 million in Medicaid settlement money that moved through the Hope Florida Foundation and, within weeks, into a political committee chaired by James Uthmeier, now Florida’s attorney general, according to new records obtained by the Florida Trident.
Wynonna Judd Clarifies Rosie O’Donnell’s Trump Supporter Claims
“I’ve never spoken to her about politics in my life,” Judd said about O’Donnell.
Studying Science in an Anti-Scientific Time
This Chronicle Review Deep Cut was first published in 2025. By Julianne Werlin Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe The last two decades have not been kind to science studies. Already bruised and battered by the “science wars” of the 1990s, by the 2000s sociologists of science — who had long argued that science had to be understood in its human context — were encountering the funhouse-mirror version of their own views in right-wing critiques of climate scientists. It was enough to give some prominent scholars pause. “Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?” asked Bruno Latour, the most famous sociologist of science in the world, in 2003. “Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?” In response, Latour proposed a change of method and attitude. Science studies, now chastened and contrite, would no longer seek to strip facts of their authority, but to enrich and enhance them. What this meant in practice was never fully clear. But his diagnosis of problems resonated, even if his solutions did not. Latour’s exercise in public hand-wringing signaled a shift in mood. By 2016, with the first election of Donald Trump, the idea that skepticism of science was a right-wing position, not a left-wing one, had become a commonplace, discussed eagerly in The New York Times. For liberals, vaccine denial during the Covid era and Trump’s second-term attacks on the funding of scientific research, covered extensively in these pages, added a new urgency to the defense of science on both practical and principled grounds. There was little appetite for a sociology or philosophy of science that emphasized the messiness and missteps of the scientific process rather than its integrity and triumphs. The distinguished historian of science Peter Dear’s new book, The World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern Science (Princeton University Press, 2025), which seeks to tell the story of 18th- and 19th-century science for a general public, may seem comfortably remote from these bitter contests. In its 16 short chapters, Dear draws swift, sure sketches of major discoveries from Newton to Einstein, ably guiding the reader through debates on stellar nebulae, animal taxonomy, atomic chemistry, evolution, and other flashpoints in the history of science. But though a work of history, Dear’s book must still negotiate our polarized present. In a blurb on its back cover, the historian of biology Lynn K. Nyhart alludes to the “present moment, when scientific knowledge is being swamped by misinformation and its institutions are under siege.” Dear himself, in his conclusion, refers to the “yard signs” and “bumper stickers” that proclaim “Science Is Real.” One antidote to both anti-science propaganda and to reductive slogans in science’s defense is a robust history and philosophy of science: exactly what Dear’s scholarship has long offered. But his new book illustrates how difficult such work has become. Dear, an emeritus professor of history at Cornell University, is best known as a creative and philosophically minded historian of the Scientific Revolution. His edited volume The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument (1991) analyzed the rhetoric of Galileo’s thought experiments to brilliant effect. Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (1995) was a major contribution to the analysis of scientific experiments in early modern Europe and beyond, while Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge in Transition, 1500-1700 (2001), now in its third edition, remains one of the best overviews of the profound epistemological upheavals of 16th- and 17th-century science. But Dear has also ventured into later periods. Nearly two decades ago, in The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (2006), he turned to the 18th and 19th centuries to sketch a history and theory of scientific knowledge. Aimed at a generalist audience, Dear’s simple prose belied serious philosophical ambitions. Science, Dear argued, has two aspects: “natural philosophy,” the quest to understand the true nature of the universe, and “instrumentality,” the applied skills and technologies that allow us to manipulate the world for human advantage. Both strands are ancient, but the innovation of the phenomenon we call “science” was to yoke them together. As Francis Bacon wrote, “Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced,” an insight typically abridged to “knowledge is power.” Or, in Bertrand Russell’s characteristically blunt phrase, science has two functions, “1. to enable us to know things, and 2., to enable us to do things.” So far, so conventional. But Dear took issue with this familiar story in one respect. Bacon’s formula implied that theory and practice could be fused in a single method. In fact, Dear argued, the quest to understand nature and the desire to manipulate it were coupled only loosely. They could come together, but they could also pull apart. Focusing on natural philosophy, the “knowing” half of the scientific circle, he used a series of case studies from cosmology, taxonomy, chemistry, electromagnetism, and quantum theory to show how theories changed over time, in dialogue with practice, but never reducible to it. Take the case of matter, the basic substrate of the physical world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists not only disagreed about what it was, but also about how well it could be known. In 1789, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier dismissed speculation about the atomic composition of chemicals as “discussions entirely of a metaphysical nature,” as he sought to orient chemistry away from philosophical abstraction and toward laboratory results. But in the 19th century, atoms returned with a vengeance in the atomic chemistry of John Dalton, who wanted to explain the underlying structure of nature. It was not just that Dalton and Lavoisier had a different set of experimental results, or even a different theory, Dear showed. What counted as an explanation had changed. In arguing that scientific theories depended on their intelligibility to human beings with complex arrays of beliefs and commitments, Dear was in sympathy with science studies. Key figures such as the sociologist Steven Shapin emphasized the importance of psychological mechanisms like trust in the formation and acceptance of scientific ideas. But in focusing on the scientific pursuit of knowledge, not its politics or economics, Dear resisted the more cynical perspective of some of his colleagues. The Intelligibility of Nature strikes a very different note than Shapin’s collection of a few years later, Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If It Was Produced by People With Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority (2010), to name just one example. Walking a very fine line, Dear depicted science as driven at once by complex social dynamics and by the intellectual power of real discoveries. It was a testament not only to his own acumen but also to the vitality of the field that he was able to do so. Nearly two decades later, The World as We Know It returns to the questions broached in The Intelligibility of Nature. Like Dear’s earlier study, it begins with the Newtonian cosmos and ends with debates between Einstein and Bohr on quantum physics. Beyond its terminal figures, many of the same characters appear in both studies, including the naturalists John Ray and the Comte de Buffon; the chemists Étienne François Geoffroy, Antoine Lavoisier, and John Dalton; as well as Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday, among others. Its subject is nearly identical: As in The Intelligibility of Nature, The World as We Know It considers natural philosophy as opposed to instrumentality, here defined as the “desire to create a picture of what the world is really like — the world as God knows it — rather than simply having instrumental or operational control over it.” The two books also overlap in insights — and sometimes even in language. The reader who has learned in The Intelligibility of Nature that Buffon’s method of classifying animals “reflected his belief in the importance of the senses and empiricism in learning about nature (a doctrine associated with Newton and the philosopher John Locke)” will experience a sense of déjà vu on reading, in The World as We Know It, that the classification “reflects Buffon’s commitment to the epistemological stance of Newton and his philosophical underlaborer John Locke, who stressed the role of the senses in creating natural knowledge.” Later in the passage, we read that, “because of its stress on understanding the ways of life of animals in their environments, Buffon’s approach could almost be labeled (anachronistically) as ‘ecological.’” And again, “an anachronistic way of putting it would be to say that Buffon recommends an ecological mode of understanding.” Likewise, in The Intelligibility of Nature we read of Dalton that he was initially drawn to meteorology, and that: He did a bit of experimental work on these things, especially having to do with the water-holding capacity of gases, but his real interest lay in understanding what, at an underlying natural-philosophical level, was really going on physically.” Whereas, in The World as We Know It: He did experimental work on these things, especially concerning the water-holding capacity of gases — although not at a very refined level quantitatively — but he was continually trying to develop a theoretical conception of what was happening physically. The final full chapter of each book closes on the same resigned note. Intelligibility: These days, most serious work on the natural philosophical underpinnings and implications of quantum mechanics is performed not by physicists but by philosophers of science. Among scientific practitioners themselves, Bohr’s attempt to use instrumentality as sufficient grounds for a respectable science has met with a high degree of success. And again, in The World as We Know It: Bohr’s and Einstein’s concerns are now questions that are mostly discussed by philosophers of science rather than by physicists themselves. The marginalization of these sorts of questions amounts to the demise of natural philosophy, at least in physics, in the 20th century. Quantum mechanics “works,” and that’s good enough for most scientists who encounter it. Examples could be multiplied. When handling the same subject matter, some echoes are inevitable. Scholars should not feel that because they have written “Isaac Newton died in 1727” in one book, in the next they must describe him as perishing, expiring, or meeting his maker. But the repetitions of language and arguments (not to mention six reproduced images) threaded throughout The World as We Know It are more extensive than that. They should have been caught by Princeton University Press or its reviewers, and revised. Because the two books have so much in common, it is easy to see where they diverge. The World as We Know It is a less theoretical work than its predecessor. The sociology of knowledge that organized The Intelligibility of Nature has been reduced in scale and folded into readings and examples. The taut interplay between history and theory, which gave the earlier study so much interest, is there, but it is subtle. In the earlier book, the case studies demonstrated theoretical claims about the character and development of science. In the later work, each narrative of discovery is an end in itself. Insights emerge from the history, but they do not control the organization of the study. With the theory muted, it can be hard to understand the logic uniting Dear’s sprawling history of more than two centuries of scientific knowledge. The 16 brisk chapters cover an enormous amount of material. But the closer the volume edges to comprehensiveness, the more obvious the missing elements become. A chapter on “Institutions and Pedagogy,” describing the birth of the research university, illustrates the problem. Inserted roughly halfway through the book, the unnumbered chapter is designed as an “entr’acte,” in acknowledgement that it does not fit the study’s organization around scientific discoveries. Yet as Dear is well aware, no general history of the development of modern science can bracket its 19th-century institutionalization and professionalization. It was the 19th-century university, after all, that gave us the “scientist,” a term coined by the Cambridge philosopher William Whewell. Dear’s history of scientific discoveries implies a wider social and institutional history, but it remains largely subterranean, only occasionally extruded under the pressure of the narrative. It must be said that the balance is not all on the side of the earlier study. There are some advantages to the more historical, less theoretical organization of The World as We Know It. Dear’s accounts of paradigm shifts are remarkably lucid, no small accomplishment given that they span fields and centuries. He makes excellent use of the wealth of new scholarship on Darwin and his influences, to which he has himself contributed. It is satisfying to see puzzle pieces from Buffon’s natural history, Georges Cuvier’s animal taxonomy, Thomas Robert Malthus’s demography, and Charles Lyell’s geology recombined seamlessly in the Darwinian jigsaw. Likewise, Dear’s discussion of stellar nebulae, divided between chapters two and 15, shows vividly how Newton, Kant, Herschel, and Hubble reimagined insights and observations as they sought to discover whether the diffuse light that filtered through early telescopes was a glowing, gaseous substance or discrete but distant stars. Yet despite such pleasures, the book remains a more modest work than The Intelligibility of Nature. Dear has clearly not changed his views about the history of science. But in the two decades that have elapsed, the discipline and the world around it have changed, making it harder to write a sociologically and philosophically ambitious history of science for the general reader. That is a shame, because in the age of Silicon Valley and biotechnology, both the reciprocity and the tensions Dear identified between the epistemological and instrumental ambitions of science are more evident than ever. In recent years, some of the most exciting new books on the history of science in early modernity have focused precisely on this pressure point. Important studies such as Pamela H. Smith’s From Lived Experience to the Written Word (2022), James Poskett’s Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science (2022), and Vera Keller’s The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge (2023) all shed new light on how early modern science negotiated the relationship between its instrumental and epistemological ambitions, or in Russell’s phrase, knowing and doing. There is every opportunity for a philosophically informed approach to draw new insights from this wealth of material. Dear, unfortunately, has not done so in The World as We Know It. But for future scholars of the history of science, his body of work over nearly four decades may provide just the model. Julianne Werlin is an associate professor of English at Duke University. Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe
Wynonna Judd calls out Rosie O’Donnell after political comments leave country star ‘in shock’
Wynonna Judd pushed back after longtime friend Rosie O'Donnell labeled her a Trump supporter, calling the claim a "complete assumption."
Governor Proclaims October 2026 Law Enforcement Appreciation Month
AUSTIN - Governor Greg Abbott proclaimed October 2026 as Law Enforcement Appreciation Month in Texas during a press conference at the Governor’s Mansion, honoring the brave men and women of law enforcement who serve and protect communities across the state.
Bishop’s computer science chair says AI is eliminating ‘grunt work’ and reshaping digital jobs
Dr. Russell Butler, chair of Bishop’s University’s Department of Computer Science, says artificial intelligence is increasingly taking over routine digital “grunt work,” changing the skills students and workers may need in the years ahead. Photo courtesy of Bishop’s University. Click here to read our platform! Get local news like this every morning. Subscribe free below. Subscribe Pulse Newsroom Artificial intelligence is already taking over some of the routine digital work once performed by entry-level employees, according to Bishop’s University Computer Science chair Dr. Russell Butler — a shift he believes will make expertise, judgement and the ability to evaluate AI-generated work increasingly important. Butler described the change as automation reaching what he calls the “bottom of the cognitive pyramid” during an interview with The Pulse about AI, university education and the future of digital work. His argument is not that humans are disappearing from the workplace. Instead, he sees their role changing as AI becomes capable of handling more of the repetitive tasks involved in computer-based work. “Everything’s converging on just AI basically doing all the grunt work,” Butler said. The bottom of the cognitive pyramid Butler is from Lennoxville, completed his undergraduate studies at Bishop’s and later earned his PhD at the Université de Sherbrooke. He joined Bishop’s in 2019 and now chairs its Department of Computer Science. He uses AI in research, teaching and other creative work, and said the technology is increasingly capable of handling routine digital tasks that once required substantial human time. “You’ve got the grunt work, like moving things around in Excel, doing basic programming tasks,” Butler said. “That’s like the bottom grunt work that the entry-level worker would have done two or three years ago.” Butler went further, saying in his view that much of this type of work has already been absorbed by AI tools. He connected that change to a shift he sees taking place in computer science, where entry-level roles have declined while experienced workers can use AI to increase what they can produce. “A senior developer now has access to essentially an unlimited amount of junior developers on demand,” Butler said. He was describing AI systems metaphorically, not literal employees. His point was that one experienced developer can now ask AI tools to produce code or other technical work that might previously have been assigned to more junior workers. That raises a broader question for universities and employers. If some of the simpler work traditionally given to newcomers can now be done by machines, how do people gain the experience needed to become senior workers themselves? Students doing work that once required years of programming Butler said he is already seeing the change inside his classroom. He created a Bishop’s course called CS208, Coding in Plain English, to show students — including those without traditional programming backgrounds — what they can accomplish using AI. Some come from disciplines such as psychology or neuroscience with no previous programming experience. “What I’m finding is that students who have zero programming experience, they come in from another discipline like psychology or neuroscience or something, they are now able to get up and running with real data sets,” Butler said. Butler’s own doctoral work involved neuroimaging, and he said he has assigned students work he considers comparable to the kinds of analysis he performed during his PhD. He described giving students a real dataset, an expected result and instructions to use AI to complete the analysis. Butler said those students have been able to carry out work at a level he associates with tasks he once performed after years of programming experience. That does not mean a student using AI instantly acquires the same knowledge as an experienced computer scientist. But Butler sees it as evidence that AI can dramatically lower the technical barrier between having a problem to solve and producing a working result. The role of the person using the system then changes. They need to know what to ask for, understand enough about the subject to judge the answer and take responsibility for what is ultimately produced. What about AI hallucinations? One persistent concern surrounding generative AI is hallucination — when a system produces information that sounds convincing but is false or unsupported. Butler said that problem has improved substantially in newer systems and is not as severe as it was with earlier models. He pointed in particular to newer AI systems’ ability to search the web, consult scientific databases and return source links rather than simply generating a citation from their internal model. Butler nevertheless said users should verify what AI produces. “You should verify,” he said while discussing citations generated with AI. His position is that hallucinations have become less common in the systems he uses, not that incorrect AI output is impossible. Human checking remains part of the process. Hours of work compressed Butler offered another example from his administrative work at Bishop’s. The university has been comparing CEGEP courses with first-year Bishop’s courses to determine where students may qualify for advanced standing. Traditionally, Butler said, that means reviewing two sets of course descriptions and manually matching one institution’s courses with another’s. As department chair, that could require hours of reading and comparison. He said AI can now be given both sets of material and asked to generate an initial mapping automatically. “It saves me hours and hours of work,” Butler said. Butler said the AI-generated mapping can also produce a better result than he would produce himself. He sees similar opportunities in businesses. A company may receive specifications, drawings, emails or other digital material from customers and then have employees convert that information into an internal format before anything can be manufactured or delivered. AI can increasingly perform parts of that intermediate processing. In Butler’s view, the employee does not necessarily disappear. Instead, the job becomes more about checking the result. “The human is still there,” he said. Judgement could become more valuable That change is central to Butler’s view of where digital work may be headed. If AI can produce a first draft, write basic code, compare documents or process large amounts of information, he argues that knowledge and judgement become increasingly important. “The real scarce resource going forward is going to be domain knowledge, expertise, and… credentials, authority, the ability to work with other people,” Butler said. He is therefore encouraging students not only to learn AI tools but also to broaden their education. He mentioned acting, fine art and photography as examples of courses that can help develop what he described as taste and intuition — the ability to recognize what is good, what is not and what should be changed. “And that’s the skill that they need now because the grunt work has been automated and now it’s about evaluating what the AI produces and telling it how to improve or expand the output,” Butler said. That does not remove the need for technical knowledge. Butler’s argument is that the emphasis may shift away from manually completing every step of a task and toward directing, checking and improving work produced with AI assistance. He also stressed that humans remain responsible for final decisions. “At the end of the day, the human has to make the final call,” Butler said, pointing to the question of accountability. Physical work may be different Butler draws a distinction between digital work and jobs requiring people to manipulate the physical world. He expects AI to continue advancing quickly in tasks performed almost entirely on computers. He is more cautious about claims that humanoid robots will soon be able to replace workers such as plumbers or electricians. Butler said those trades would not be replaced “anytime soon” in his view and described some current robotics demonstrations as overhyped. He described the situation as counterintuitive. “It’s almost like we solved the highest level first,” he said, contrasting advances in digital AI with the harder problem of building robots capable of operating reliably in the physical world. Butler’s argument is that some digital occupations could face automation sooner than trades requiring complex physical work. The wider AI shift in the Townships Butler’s comments come as local institutions are increasingly grappling with how AI should be used. The federal government recently announced up to $162 million over five years for 10,000 AI-related placements through Mitacs. The Université de Sherbrooke told The Pulse that the number of its collaborative research and innovation projects supported through Mitacs has approximately doubled since 2018-19, while the number of placements has approximately tripled. UdeS also said it already has projects involving both AI adoption and the application of AI to other fields. At Bishop’s, Butler said part of his role involves building the Computer Science department’s local presence, connecting students with regional partners and strengthening relationships with the Sherbrooke technology ecosystem. Those developments put universities in a difficult position. They have to prepare students to use the tools employers increasingly have available while also making sure graduates understand enough to recognize when those tools are wrong, incomplete or being applied to the wrong problem. The risk of losing human skills Butler does not see AI as risk-free. Later in the interview, he raised a separate concern: as AI becomes better at reading, writing, programming and other cognitive tasks, people could lose some of the underlying skills that historically helped produce new ideas. “The other danger is that we’re going to lose the human skills,” Butler said. He specifically mentioned reading and writing and argued that people could lose some of the lower-level understanding that contributes to breakthroughs. Butler said AI systems are based on existing human knowledge and argued that they become much more powerful when paired with a capable person. That tension runs through his view of the technology. AI can remove hours of routine work. It can allow beginners to perform tasks that once required substantial technical training. It can give experienced workers significant leverage. But the more capable the technology becomes, the more important it may be for people to develop the judgement needed to decide what should be done in the first place. For Butler, that is where education may have to change. Students still need to understand their field. They still need to know when something is wrong. And they still need to be able to make the final decision. But if AI increasingly handles the bottom of the cognitive pyramid, the value of a worker may depend less on how quickly they can perform the grunt work and more on whether they understand what the work is supposed to accomplish. Don’t miss the next story that affects your community. Join thousands of readers getting The Pulse every morning—plus breaking news alerts when it matters most. If you value this kind of local journalism, consider supporting it. Subscribe, share and like! Subscribe Share
Fact check: Did Newsom’s mental health court hit his goal for helping Californians?
Gov. Gavin Newsom this week claimed a major victory for CARE Court, his program to provide mental health treatment to Californians with serious conditions. Did it really help 10,000 people?"
RFK Jr.'s AI claims spark physician backlash as debate over medical AI intensifies
Robert F. | Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said on Tuesday that artificial intelligence can provide patients a second opinion that is "much better informed than any doctor in the country."
Most health institutions failed to address acetaminophen-autism misinformation on Instagram, audit finds
Most public health institutions failed to respond promptly to misinformation on social media that falsely claimed acetaminophen use during pregnancy is linked to autism, according to research presented ...
AT&T claims iOS 27.0.1 fixes iPhone 18 Pro Max cellular issues, but users disagree
Since the iPhone 18 Pro Max launched, some AT&T customers have complained of various connectivity issues. In a new text...
Exynos 2700 Enters Mass Production, Claims Tipster, 10% Higher Volume Than Exynos 2600 & 10% Higher Multi-Core Performance Than Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6
Exynos 2700 is reportedly in mass production, a tipster claims, with 10% higher volume than Exynos 2600 and 10% faster multi-core speeds than Snapdragon
AI-generated Fallout: New York browser game full of utterly cursed faces slapped with Bethesda cease and desist, its slop prompter claims
Bethesda have seemingly slapped an AI-generated Fallout: New York browser game with cease and desist order.
As quantum’s presence grows on the southeast side, Chicago State University students eye future careers
Chicago State University staked its claim in quantum research nearly a decade ago, aiming to attract research and talent to the Southeast Side.
How speed cameras in East Canton are impacting local businesses
Some business owners in East Canton claim business has slowed after the village installed automated traffic enforcement cameras around town.
‘Self-healing’ coach who was banned from working in Australia to speak in UK
Barbara O’Neill has previously claimed that cancer is a fungus that can be treated with bicarbonate soda
John Peck heads to Arizona Fall Ball
After a promising season stalled by injury, the Tigers’ infielder heads to Scottsdale to reclaim lost development time and refine his offensive approach against elite competition.
Manny Yekutiel drops out of SF supervisor race after new allegations of sexual assault
Manny Yekutiel is dropping out of the District 8 supervisor race in San Francisco following new sexual assault claims.
Hinojosa claims Abbott using cops for political gain in Texas governor race
Gina Hinojosa accuses Gov. Greg Abbott of using Texas law enforcement for political gain in a new ad ahead of the 2026 Texas governor election.
Pieces of History
Chapter 5 of “The American Plague,” the acclaimed 2006 book about the yellow fever epidemic that decimated Memphis in the 1870s, details the life, work, and death of Dr. William James Armstrong as he attempted to care for the stricken.
Cops Can Bypass iPhone’s Automatic Reboot to Get Into Locked Phones, Leaked Video Claims
Magent Forensics, the owner of the GrayKey phone unlocking tool, says it can bypass an iPhone rebooting feature that was locking cops out.
Inside Larry Ellison's Wide Web of Power, Money and Politics, As Oracle's Data Centers Claim Force Majeure
The $200 billion software titan has suctioned himself to many hubs of influence—from data centers to TikTok to Hollywood studios to the Oval Office itself. Tom Dotan dives deep into Ellison’s kingdom, starting on the island enclave of Lanai.
Trump officials abandon effort to investigate election threats, experts warn
Credible threats appear to have been overlooked as administration focuses on unverified claims of voter fraud
Democrats slam Ashley Moody amid a heated U.S. Senate race
Earlier this month, Moody declined to debate Nixon, telling Action News Jax she would bring attention to a “self-proclaimed socialist.”
Gunvor publicly condemned Russia’s war but continued to do business with Russian energy firms, records show
Even as the trading giant publicly claimed to be winding down its Russia business, Gunvor privately acknowledged the deals to its bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, saying they complied with sanctions laws.
September Monthly Review: Health MCP Guy?
For all the time I spend talking about APIs and data exchange, this newsletter has had embarrassingly little interoperability of its own. It’s old-school SaaS, baby - UI or bust. Not all of that is my fault! Substack, for all its popularity, is (as mentioned before) really frustrating as my system of record. The primary user it optimizes towards is the reader, whose attention feeds the app, the Notes feed, and the recommendation network that Substack is actually selling. Health API Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe They’re falling into the same trap that Medium once sprinted into, albeit at a much more glacial speed. Younger generations may not remember (or never knew) it, but Medium once lured publications like The Ringer and Signal v. Noise onto its platform, only to lose them as it rebuilt itself around a paywall and an algorithmic feed. Substack’s original pitch circa 2020 was the antidote (you own your list), but every new feed feature chips away at it. I get it: writers are generic supply in the eyes of the Substack product team. Generic supply follows demand, so the consistent pressure on the PMs is to generate demand, which leads to every product cycle going toward discovery (Notes, recommendations, the app, live video). The end result lackluster author tools (laggy and broken analytics are truly crippling) all despite the premium price point. The archive is where it crosses from authorial gripes to actual reader impact, though. Across Substack and LinkedIn, I’ve published 1,218 posts and nearly 900,000 words since 2018. Substack’s native search can see only the 464 posts that live on Substack, and even there it’s woefully inadequate at surfacing relevant content (even for the guy who wrote it)! Readers have the same problem, writ large. Ask the Archive Fixing search (for both my readers and my own use) turned out to be extremely non-trivial, unfortunately: There’s no public API for readers to access content RSS exists for new content notification, but it only carries the 20 most recent posts and cuts paid ones off at the preview The only Substack MCP is an admin tool for analytics The export exists for authors, but it’s painfully awkward and slow. So I built something to work around that: the Health API Guy MCP. It’s a private MCP server holding the full text of everything I’ve written across Substack and LinkedIn. Add it to Claude or ChatGPT as a connector and you can ask things like: It pairs keyword search (for acronyms and case names, of which we have many) with semantic search. Every post is also labeled by topic, form, and court case, so you can pull a lawsuit’s (or multiple cases’) entire docket across Substack and LinkedIn in one query: Hail, Healthapiguyhydra This is also a bit of me eating my own cooking. I’ve spent the year arguing that headless healthcare is arriving and that developers want primitives over abstractions. Last week in Hail, Benihydra, I watched Salesforce plug its platform into Claude and bet that the records underneath outlive whatever interface sits on top: Salesforce must believe that the Hydra’s immortal head is the records, permissions, and business logic (in that they will survive whatever happens to the interface). It felt a bit hypocritical to keep my own archive behind a Substack search bar. The archive is the body. Substack is one head, and now whatever tool you might use is another. Will the EHRs follow my lead? Probably not imminently, but one can hope! Why Founding Members Only The MCP is available to Founding Member subscribers. A few reasons: It costs money and time to run. Hosting, the database, Clerk usage and AI compute for search and labeling are significant operational costs (that increase with usage). Substack gives me no way to automate access. There’s no API to check whether someone is a paid subscriber, so every user is manual operations for now. It’s a beta. We’ll need to improve things and parts will break. I’d rather they break for a small group of dedicated readers who will tell me about it. The Founding tier deserved a real benefit. Until now it was mostly a generous tip. Now it comes with something. If you’re already a Founding Member, reply to this email with the address you’d like provisioned. If you’re not and want in, upgrade here. Larger teams (such as companies) can get access too: group subscriptions at the Founding tier come with the group discount. The admin for the subscription can reply with the list of addresses to provision. Get 20% off a group subscription Pricing Founding membership is now a flat $200 a year, replacing the old suggested $150 that readers could adjust. Existing Founding Members will have access grandfathered in at their previous rate. Month in Review Articles Published Make Networks Dumb Again (Sep 11): AI is making old analog networks cheaper to use and flooding them with machine traffic in the process. A plea for agent-native rails with the intelligence at the endpoints, and for Washington to drag them to ubiquity. Interoperability, Unbuttoned (Sep 29): Interoperability is a series of workflows in a trenchcoat, and this post finally takes the trenchcoat off. A color-coded map shows which provider workflows went digital, which are fragmented, and which still run on fax. Video Content Antitrust’s System of Record Problem (Sep 3): The FTC’s investigation into Epic prompted a ninety-minute webinar, now posted with chapters and a smoothed transcript. We get into why market definition, missing B2B share data, and the SSNIP test leave antitrust poorly suited to systems of record, plus why information blocking may be doing more than any pending lawsuit. The Information Exchange: Cerner Milking Edition (Sep 18): This was so fucking fun. Ryan Tucker, Ryan Brickner, Brad Thorson, and I try an Around the Horn format, complete with points, penalties, and a mute button. We debate whether Oracle Health is dead, who would actually buy Cerner (IBM enters the chat), p(Doom), and why the front desk still hands you a clipboard. Regulatory Ask Not What Your Network Can Do (Sep 23): CDC’s RFI on public health data intermediaries lists use cases already served, unevenly, by eCR, lab reporting, IZ Gateway, and syndromic surveillance. The real opportunity sits in one question about AI: a network that can handle the next emergency without another interface project. Court cases Particle v. Epic: The Naughty Schoolteacher (Sep 4): After a summer-long vigil, the answer on Epic’s early summary judgment bid is two paragraphs and a remedial assignment. Particle advances to the next grade, and market definition gets another year of discovery. The Epic Discovery Files (Sep 8): Texas’s motions to compel arrive with a 251-page appendix of requests, objections, and meet-and-confer letters with Cravath. Inside: Epic using generative AI for document review, denied interoperability requests in scope, and Noerr-Pennington raised against lobbying discovery. Epic v. Health Gorilla: “Working as Designed” (Sep 9): Epic wants nothing to do with the data breach MDL, and explaining why puts fresh discovery on the public docket. The spiciest allegation: Health Gorilla told GuardDog to scrub its law firm business from its website instead of cutting off access. Veeva v. Epic: Legal Bypass Surgery (Sep 15): Veeva asks the Wisconsin Supreme Court to skip the Court of Appeals, while law professors and three policy groups line up as amici. Meanwhile, Epic’s lawyers apologize for another round of citation errors, including a quote that never existed. Texas v. Epic: Behind the Black Bars (Sep 17): The court portal served up Epic’s unredacted filings, revealing a $5 million document review budget and the AI workflow behind it. Also inside: the 200-plus company names Texas wants searched, and one very expensive Zoom invitation. OpenEvidence v. Doximity: Consequences Will Follow (Sep 25): OpenEvidence tells the court it will not comply with a discovery order, and its own lawyers at Quinn Emanuel say they won’t defend the choice. Add years of Slack reported unrecoverable, and Rule 37 sanctions come into view. Health Tech Keeps Choosing Violence (Sep 28): Doximity moves to end OpenEvidence’s case, Epic asks Texas to show its work, and a sleepy Audacious Inquiry patent fight sprouts antitrust and information blocking counterclaims. The main event is a long-sealed Cognizant v. Infosys ruling that hints where system of record antitrust claims can survive. EHRs One Verb for Oracle Health (Sep 14): Oracle’s earnings call quantifies every data center to the decimal point, while Oracle Health gets a single verb: “accelerate.” Panning the few healthcare mentions turns up an agentic care management system, a research-to-care ledger play, and the question of whether healthcare gets Larry’s patience. Epic’s Forretress Under Siege (Sep 30): Judy Faulkner tells a panel Epic paused hundreds of projects to harden its software and calls it a “shame,” while a spokesperson insists the roadmap hasn’t changed. Project Glasswing, a Pokémon-branded QAN sprint, and a trove of Jodel grievances reconcile the two Epics and preview the Jevons paradox coming for all software. Industry Analysis Scanning for a Network (Sep 1): Scan.com raises $220M to build the imaging network labs never got, speedrunning Zocdoc’s consumer-to-B2B pivot. Its wedge to network density may be the most American one available: personal injury litigation. The Front Desk Wants the Damn Whole Building (Sep 16): Hello Patient buys Converse Health, pushing its AI front desk into referrals, chart work, and prior auth. The copilot categories keep blurring, and your distribution partner is still your final boss. Cross-industry Comparisons A Different Patchwork Quilt (Sep 10): Healthcare loves to envy open banking, but the US version has no mandate, a toll booth at Chase, and data quality problems of its own. The grass isn’t greener; it’s another American patchwork quilt, and perhaps a worse one. Hail, Benihydra (Sep 21): Salesforce brings its platform into Claude, Slack, and its own agent, inviting the interfaces that might replace it. Cut off one head and more grow back, so long as the records underneath stay put. Living on A Trade Secret Prayer (Sep 22): Six credit unions are suing Fiserv, the Epic of core banking, by claiming their own member records as trade secrets. Banking has no Cures Act, so its lawyers reach for legal alchemy that healthcare has already tried. Other News None this month External Media Nabla Accelerate NYC: I kicked off fall conference season at Nabla’s Accelerate event in New York, where Delphine Groll opened by asking the room to picture the company it wants to become and the one it doesn’t. I liked her framework of bureaucracy, fear, and ego as the blockers. I also love vendor conferences/events in general - different vibe than industry biggies. Healthcare 101 with Nikhil Krishnan: I briefly guest lectured Out-Of-Pocket’s Healthcare 101 class. Appreciated Nikhil’s takeaways cover whether AI doctors can query HIEs, why healthcare’s data-liberation rules beat most industries’, and the hi-res graphic is in the comments. HCN: Epic Probed by the FTC: I joined the HCN guys to talk through the FTC’s investigation into Epic. Cedric’s new hairdo was an unexpected plot twist. The episode also covers MFN drug pricing, healthcare M&A and Eli Lilly’s acquisition streak. Fall Conferences: At eHealth Exchange’s Annual Meeting in Austin on Oct 27, I’ll moderate a panel on the tensions between AI, HIEs, and timely patient access with Jean Ross (Primary Record), Therasa Bell (Kno2), Byron Crowe (Doctronic), and Michael Marchant (Freenome). Here’s the rest of my schedule if you want to meet up: CommonWell (Redwood Shores, CA): Oct 13-14 Will be participating in a fun Jeopardy event Open@Epic (Madison, WI): Oct 20-23 Will be enjoying Verona, Willy Street, and other local adventures eHealth Exchange and Sequoia Project (Austin, TX): Oct 27-29 Yeehaw HLTH (Vegas): Nov 15-18 Groundhog Day, Venetian Edition RSNA (Chicago): Nov 30-Dec 2 See me at “Governing AI in Breast Imaging: What Health Systems Are Actually Doing” Digital Health Counsel 2026 AI Summit (Seattle): December 2-3 Will likely be speaking to a bunch of lawyers about information blocking Posts I Liked ChatGPT’s Epic integration: game changer or nothing burger?: Joshua Liu, MD offers five thoughts on OpenAI’s Epic launch, starting from the point that it rides the same open APIs available to anyone. He argues read-only access leaves ordering to Art and the ambient startups, and asks why HCA is piloting it alongside Commure. He’s sorta a must-follow at this point - consistently excellent, thought-provoking takes. Epic, Lilly, and the Discovery pass: Seth Chaney reads Epic’s first major Discovery deal (with Eli Lilly), as well as its revised developer terms on commercial displays, as the pipe finally opening between EHRs and pharma. Life sciences and health continue to collide. Scott Rossignol on EHR payer platforms and ePA fees: Scott argues the top ambulatory EHR vendors are turning the prior auth mandate into a per-member-per-year toll on payers, for an API whose operating cost has nothing to do with covered lives. His fix is two lines of regulatory text: put the CRD/DTR/PAS certification criteria in the Base EHR definition, and bring payer-facing ePA connectivity under § 170.404’s cost-based fee rules. It’s a good solution. Health API Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Australian businesses raise prices as card surcharge ban takes effect
SYDNEY, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Australian businesses said a ban on card surcharges that took effect on Thursday would force them to raise prices, casting doubt on government claims the change would lower living costs by eliminating more than $1 billion in annual card fees.
Alix Earle boldly proclaims she’s ‘never read a book’
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Washington Post Osprey Story Blurs the Line Between Science and Special Interests
Article Repeats Unproven Claims Without Explaining Where They Exceed the Scientific and Regulatory Record
Washington Post Osprey Story Blurs the Line Between Science and Special Interests
Article Repeats Unproven Claims Without Explaining Where They Exceed the Scientific and Regulatory RecordWASHINGTON, D. / ACCESS Newswire / September 30, 2026 / The Washington Post on September 27 published a story by Mark Robichaux under the headline "Ospreys are disappearing along the East Coast.
US government's new AI chatbot pulls back from debunking Trump
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UN Decade of Healthy Ageing midpoint report finds progress, calls for greater investment
New evidence in the Secretary-General's report to the 81st UN General Assembly, prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in coordination with the UN system, finds more countries acting on healthy ageing than ever before – but longer lives will not become healthy, dignified ones without faster, more sustained investment at country level.(NEW YORK, 28 September 2026) The Secretary-General transmitted to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly the mid-term progress report on the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030), marking the midpoint of the ten-year global effort to improve the lives of older people. The report was prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in coordination with the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing and with inputs from thirteen UN entities, the World Bank Group and civil society partners. It finds real progress in countries – and persistent gaps that must close before 2030.The number of people aged 60 and over passed 1 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach 2.1 billion by 2050, with the fastest growth in low- and middle-income countries. Longer lives are not automatically healthy ones: globally, the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy at age 60 widened between 2000 and 2023, and an estimated 71% of excess deaths from COVID-19 between 2020 and 2023 were among people aged 60 and over. “Longer lives are one of humanity’s great achievements, but we cannot congratulate ourselves while leaving millions without health and support,” said Dr Pascale Allotey, Director, Department of Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing, WHO. “The first half of the Decade has shown what is possible. The second half must be about scaling and financing the progress to meet the needs and rights of older persons.”Real progress, unevenly sharedThe report finds that more countries than ever now have legislation against age-based discrimination – up from 44.5% in 2018 to 57.7% today – and over half now have national long-term care policies, up from 49% in 2023 to 56.7%, dedicated programmes to build age-friendly environments (54.6%), and comprehensive health and social assessments of older people (54.6%). New WHO guidance on services for long-term care and for Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) delivered in communities is enabling systemic change as an increasing number of countries incorporate these services within national universal health care benefit packages. A host of UN agencies and other partners support training, increasing health workforce competencies and use of digital health tools.“This report shows the Decade of Healthy Ageing is working,” said Dr Ritu Sadana, Head of the WHO Secretariat for the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing. “More countries are legislating against ageism, providing integrated care, strengthening long-term care systems, and creating age-friendly environments than ever before, in all regions and income levels. But progress is uneven and in one area, regressive: fewer countries report active multi-stakeholder forums on ageing, down from 53.1% in 2020 to 43.3% today. The second half of this Decade must turn commitments into results, in every country.”The financing gap: this Decade's binding constraintFinancing remains the binding constraint: more than a third of reporting countries (33.8%) have very little or no dedicated resources to develop long-term care, with similar shortfalls across the Decade’s other priority areas. Less than half of countries (45.4%) have legislation providing access to assistive devices (including hearing aids, spectacles or rollators), which are key to enabling older people to maintain productive, independent and dignified lives. Only 22.7% of countries can track older people’s health over time – the largest gap across the Decade’s core progress indicators. Nationally representative information is needed in each country, as policies and interventions cannot be designed as if all older adults of a given age share similar needs and capacities. The report calls for sustained investment through national budgets, country-owned plans, development cooperation and innovative financing mechanisms to fully close these gaps by 2030.“The Decade was designed as a whole-of-UN effort, and this report shows it in action,” said Amal Abou Rafeh, Chief of the Programme on Ageing Section at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), and Permanent Co-Chair of the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing. “Thirteen UN entities, the World Bank group and civil society organizations contributed to this report, with WHO as the lead technical and implementing agency. That is the model of coordination the second half of the Decade will need to scale, with countries leading legislation, funding and implementation, engaging older people.”“Investing in healthy ageing is not simply a cost; it is one of the highest-return investments a government can make,” said Fiona Stewart, Global Lead for Ageing and Pensions at the World Bank Group. “Countries that invest early in integrated and long-term care see savings that outweigh the upfront cost many times over. The evidence in this report makes the economic case; what is now needed is predictable financing at country level to act on it, along with efforts to support older entrepreneurs and the silver economy.”Older people's own voicesThe report also draws on the direct experience of older people themselves, including a multilingual global survey conducted by the International Federation on Ageing that reached more than 1000 older people across 58 countries. WHO and UN partners called on Member States to use the second half of the Decade to accelerate implementation, strengthen data systems, and secure the financing needed so that the gains of longer lives reach older people everywhere. About the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030)Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 2020, the Decade is a global collaboration bringing together governments, UN agencies, civil society, the private sector, academia and older people themselves to improve the lives of older people, their families and communities. It is coordinated by the World Health Organization together with the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing. The Decade's mid-term progress report was transmitted to the General Assembly by the Secretary-General, prepared by WHO, and is available in 6 languages.Full Report available: A/81/366 Implementation of the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030): Note by Secretary-General [ العربية | 中文 | English | Français | Pусский | Español
Healthy Kids Healthy Futures: Misleading online health claims
In this edition of "Healthy Kids Healthy Futures," we're revisiting the topic of online health claims, diving deeper into posts made by influencers or created by AI.
Coralville sues University of Iowa Health Care, alleging breach of contract
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Sean Combs' release pushed up, as report details pampered lifestyle
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Is Purdue a MUST-WIN Game for Illinois This Weekend?
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Paula Patton’s Acclaimed Thriller TV Show Returns Today on Paramount+ After 5 Year Wait
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Democrat Troy Jackson apologizes for Holocaust reference
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Switch 2 players Can Claim a Free Copy of The Witcher 3 Thanks to a Loophole
Dig up those old cartridges
What's behind HHS claims that gender-affirming care 'may' radicalize
The report is the agency's latest effort to chip away at trust in established health care models for transgender people. Critics say it frames transgender identity as illegitimate or even dangerous.
LeBron James Discusses Key to 76ers Building Chemistry
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Xbox's Disc-To-Digital Is Rolling Out Now To All Users
Dust off your boxes, folks, it's time to claim those licenses
Penn Badgley Banned Sex Scenes. His Wife Says It's for 'Mental Health'
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Surly Gates: Corte Madera’s Tale of Wealth, a Walking Path and Politics
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The White House Claims Trump’s New Ads Are “Clearly Not Political,” Says Aide
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‘Dazzling’ globetrotting adventure in history of alchemy wins 2026 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize
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GOP senator airballs perjury claim against Jack Smith over apparent Hawks/Hawkeyes mixup
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New proclamation highlights respiratory health awareness across Phoenix, Arizona
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Newsom vetoes insurance-claim bills: Is it ‘petty’ politics?
California governor rejects legislation sponsored by LA fire victims, who had spoken out against his wildfire-liability effort.
Mental health claim frequency rises 47% in comp: WCRI
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Kyle MacLachlan details ‘struggles’ with ‘grim’ plumbing on 'Dune' set, claims he lost 15 pounds
Representative Nathaniel Moran introduces H.R. 10582: Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act
We have received text from H.R. 10582: Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act. This bill was received on 2026-09-24, and currently has 9 cosponsors.Here is a short summary of the bill: This bill would create a new federal tax credit for certain U.S.-based film and television productions. In general, eligible productions could claim a credit equal to a percentage of their qualified compensation costs, meaning wages and c
Kyle MacLachlan details ‘struggles’ with ‘grim’ plumbing on 'Dune' set, claims he lost 15 pounds
Todd Rundgren says Taylor Swift ‘ruined music,’ calls her the ‘apotheosis of mediocrity’
The “Bang the Drum All Day” rocker also claimed the rise of female artists in music was due to video games.
Six Flags permanently closing X2 roller coaster after over 100 brain injury claims
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Athletics' Zack Gelop sues Tigers, others over injury at Comerica Park
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Newsom vetoes insurance-claim bills: Is it ‘petty’ politics?
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed two bills that would have helped improve the insurance-claims process for consumers but signed one that also addresses claims-related issues, leaving Los Angeles County fire survivors and others wondering whether the vetoes were retaliatory. One bill, Senate Bill 877, […]
Newsom vetoes insurance-claim bills: Is it ‘petty’ politics?
California governor rejects legislation sponsored by LA fire victims, who had spoken out against his wildfire-liability effort.
Newsom vetoes insurance-claim bills: Is it ‘petty’ politics?
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed two bills that would have helped improve the insurance-claims process for consumers but signed one that also addresses claims-related issues, leaving Los Angeles County fire survivors and others wondering whether the vetoes were retaliatory. One bill, Senate Bill 877, […]
Newsom vetoes insurance-claim bills: Is it ‘petty’ politics?
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed two bills that would have helped improve the insurance-claims process for consumers but signed one that also addresses claims-related issues, leaving Los Angeles County fire survivors and others wondering whether the vetoes were retaliatory. One bill, Senate Bill 877, […]
Charges fly over $120 million housing measure
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Indie rock band Dream Syndicate to debut at Codfish Hollow
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“Pope of Trash” John Waters has a “vermin sermon” for Iowa
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FBI grapples with fallout from massive data breach
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Doval Wants Giants Reunion to Extend Beyond This Season
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Bobby Kotick’s lawyers sent me a bad email (and later apologized)
The message I had received was unsettling—for a moment. Then it was just really confusing. Back on January 20 of this year, at 5:15pm ET, I received an email with the subject line “Legal Correspondence re Bobby Kotick.” It was from the law firm Clare Locke, a firm I’d heard had been emailing reporters in recent years about their coverage of Kotick, the former, longtime CEO of Activision Blizzard. The letter was threatening. A lawyer from the firm introduced themselves as “defamation counsel to Bobby Kotick.” They issued a “demand” that I “correct” a Game File article I’d published a week prior. The article that had irked them had been a scoop of sorts. I’d written about a a 2022 lawsuit brought by a Swedish pension fund, AP7, over Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard. The suit wasn’t news, but I was first to review and report about Kotick’s extensive pushback to the fund’s claims. The pension fund’s core contention was that the sale had been rushed by Kotick to avoid the consequences of sexual misconduct scandals swirling around the company in 2021. (He’d not been accused of misconduct himself in those suits, to be clear.) As I wrote at the time, Kotick had denied the allegations of the rushed sale. Beyond that, Kotick used a December 2025 reply to the Swedish fund’s lawsuit to assign blame for those workplace scandals, the bad press and even for the AP7 lawsuit. I’d found Kotick’s arguments novel and newsworthy. Across nearly 3,000 words, I explained Kotick’s take: that a Swedish gaming company was behind the Swedish fund’s lawsuit (the Embracer group; they denied it); that the Microsoft-Activision deal was not rushed and was secured at what Kotick felt history had proven to be an optimal price for shareholders; that he believed a conspiracy of people at unions government agencies, PR firms and the media had spun up claims of widespread workplace misconduct at Activision Blizzard in 2021. The article gave context for all of this, letting readers assess the claims and weigh their credibility. As I’d later write to Kotick’s lawyers: I would be surprised if you could point to any news article about Bobby Kotick in the last five years that has spent more of its wordcount articulating his point of view. He is welcome to do an interview with Game File any time. Nonetheless, there they were in my inbox that Tuesday evening: Clare Locke, the law firm that secured a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News over false statements about voting machines. They were emailing me, threatening that failure to comply with their demand could support a claim of “actual malice,” a legal standard for libel. Unless… Unless, they said, I added a key paragraph to my article. This was a paragraph that I already knew Kotick’s lawyers had been emailing reporters about for at least a year, and it was a paragraph that was already in my article. The paragraph they wanted is from a 2023 settlement that California’s Civil Rights Department struck with Activision Blizzard. The settlement had closed a two-year-old lawsuit over alleged sexual discrimination at the game maker. The paragraph basically said that claims of systemic or widespread sexual harassment—or of execs like Kotick tolerating such behavior—had never been proven. I’d already seen proof that Kotick’s lawyers had pushed for the settlement’s language to be added to reports about 2021 sexual discrimination and misconduct lawsuits brought against Activision Blizzard by California and, separately, by the U.S. federal government (both suits were since settled). I knew that Kotick and his lawyers felt that the California settlement language should be mentioned in the same breath as references to an article he hated and denied, a November 2021 Wall Street Journal article claiming Kotick knew “for years” of sexual misconduct at Activision Blizzard. So, in the Game File article that Clare Locke emailed me about, in the interest of ensuring I was being fair and balanced regarding the person I was covering, I had already included the following excerpt from the California settlement [emphasis added in bold]: (Kotick has repeatedly pushed back against that November article in the Wall Street Journal, citing among other things, language from a court-approved consent decree as part of Activision’s 2023 $54 million settlement over the California suit. It states: “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that: there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard [or] that Activision Blizzard senior executives ignored, condoned, or tolerated a culture of systemic harassment, retaliation, or discrimination.”) On the evening of January 20, I was incredulous. How do you write a four page legal threat about a week-old article and miss this? While scrambling to also make my kids dinner, I wrote a lengthy reply to Clare Locke’s lawyers, basically asking them to cool it with the threats and to start making sense. In part, I wrote: I hope you can understand why I am having trouble understanding what you’re asking for, when the statement you’re demanding to see in Game File’s article already appears in Game File’s article. Actual malice, as you know, refers to a reckless disregard for the truth. I’m not sure what your argument is when my article already states your client’s position. Here is where I should remind you, the reader, that I am an independent journalist. I publish on Substack, and have availed myself of the Substack Defender program that provides writers on the platform with legal support. But I’m no Wall Street Journal or New York Times, nor even IGN or GameSpot when it comes to such things as, well, having a legal department. There are more fun things for me to do as an independent journalist than writing back to a powerful law firm representing a very rich person. On the evening of January 20th, I was just trying to cook some pasta, broccoli and chicken nuggets for hungry twins. Nevertheless, I wrote back to them. Two hours later, I got a reply. Summarizing: A lawyer for Clare Locke said they’d “reviewed an incomplete version” of my article and they “apologize for the confusion.” (My guess: Someone didn’t read past the piece’s paywall, even though they’d had a full week to scrounge up the funds to do so. What I’d published above the paywall was balanced, as was what came after.)1 That was almost that, but something about the situation bothered me. The letter had been marked “confidential.” I hadn’t agreed to that, and I disliked the idea that powerful people on the beat that I cover would act like they could unilaterally control what I might tell my readers about. On the morning of the 21st, having already gotten the powerful law firm to back off, I oh-so-wisely re-approached them with just one more thing. I thanked them for clearing things up the night before but noted that I’d never agreed to keep their letter confidential. I’m all for agreeing with a source to keep things off the record, but that’s the thing. We have to agree. You can’t just declare it. I’m not bound by that. I wrote to Clare Locke’s lawyer and said, in part: I trust the matter is resolved. It was disappointing to have to spend less time with my kids last night in order to address your legal letter. Family time’s precious. I will add, for clarity’s sake, that, while your letter stipulated that it was confidential, I did not agree to those terms. In the future, should you wish to communicate with me confidentially, I am happy to agree to classifying our communication as “off the record” prior to the actual communication—as is standard with any professional journalist. The firm’s lawyer replied, not directly addressing the confidentiality issue but asserting that the matter was resolved. Why I didn’t write about this until now In May, I told this story on an episode of Simon Parkin’s podcast My Perfect Console, but I held off on sharing it directly with Game File readers. I held off to avoid stepping on the toes of another reporter, the journalist Mikhail Klimentov. He’d interviewed me in the spring of 2025 about an investigation he was working on regarding Bobby Kotick lawyers pressing the media to add the California settlement language to stories referencing the 2021 lawsuits. And about how some outlets had changed their stories and how some simply deleted them. Initially, I was a third-party source for Klimentov’s reporting, providing on-the-record context about the state of the games media. I’d heard about the letters but hadn’t put the time into pursuing the story. I thought it was interesting, and I was glad he was covering it. When the outlet that Klimentov was going to run his reporting in dropped the story, I began talking to him about potentially publishing his reporting on Game File. This was tentative. Then, in January, when I got my own Clare Locke letter, I told Klimentov that I didn’t think it would make sense for me to publish him, not with me now being part of the story. I had my own version of this situation to tell. But I wished him well and said I’d refrain from telling my tale until he could get his reporting out there. Last Friday, Klimentov finally ran his investigation, in a nearly 48-minute video report for People Make Games. It covers various Clare Locke letters, how media outlets reacted to them and what to make of all this. His video weighs the merits of Kotick’s request and looks at some of the articles that were changed (one of which had a glaring error). I highly recommend watching it: (Note, I did some editorial consulting for a People Make Games video last year but nothing to do with this report.) While many outlets haven’t left any public evidence that they updated their Kotick coverage at Kotick’s counsel’s request, at least one has. Back in October 2025, the mainstream outlet Reuters applied the most transparent article update I’ve seen. On the 3rd of the month, they published an article about the state of the Swedish pension fund’s lawsuit. Days later, they added this: In an October 7 letter sent after publication of this article, Kotick’s defamation counsel disputed claims of widespread harassment at Activision. “Not a single investigation, court finding, verdict, or ruling ever concluded that there was any merit” to the allegations of widespread harassment at Activision, Tom Clare and Nick Brechbill of Clare Locke wrote. I’ve never added a statement to my article on Game File, because none was needed. Not for fairness’ sake, nor to meet any demands of Kotick’s lawyers. I’ve nevertheless wanted to be transparent with Game File readers. If someone powerful is questioning my reporting, is threatening a lawsuit over it… if that threat is part of a pattern involving other games media outlets and if, in my case, the whole thing ran into a ridiculous ditch, I want you to know about it. I also share this as a real example of how I handle threats to Game File. I stand up for my own reporting, even when it’s not comfortable to do so. (In that same category of standing up for the work I do, I’ll point to an incident in late August. Asocial media post I published to X/Twitter regarding reporting I did about Take Two and GTA VI was hit by bogus copyright claim by a firm working for the publisher. I pushed back and got it reversed; even while a bigger games media outlet let themselves be censored. This is the other reason I’m sharing this story: To emphasize that dealing with threats from powerful people is one of the costs of covering the video game industry independently and as fearlessly as possible. This is where you come in. Your support, through free and paid subscriptions (sign up here!), can help me keep doing that. It can ensure that I’ve got the back-up I need. And it can help make fiascoes like this even less of a worry, so I can spend my evenings dealing with more important things, such as making sure I steam the kids’ broccoli just right. 1 That pension fund lawsuit I wrote about in January has all but gone away. In May, the fund and Activision Blizzard owner Microsoft agreed to settle. Lawyers for the fund brokered a $250 million settlement for former Activision Blizzard shareholders. In the settlement, the fund’s lawyers changed their rhetoric. Where once they’d questioned the meaning of the California settlement language, they adopted a version of it for themselves. Several weeks ago, while seeking to get a court to sign off on the terms of the settlement, they proposed their fee for their work in the case: $60 million.
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