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AMC Entertainment price target raised to $2 from $1.50 at B. Riley
B. Riley raised the firm’s price target on AMC Entertainment (AMC) to $2 from $1.50 and keeps a Neutral rating on the shares. Industry box office revenue rose 22% year over year in the period, outperforming expectations and driven by strong releases in March, particularly Project Hail Mary, alongside solid contributions from Scream 7 and Hoppers, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Looking ahead to Q2, box office is expected to grow slightly, with gains in June offset by weaker April
Who is hosting SNL next? Final Season 51 lineup, dates
Olivia Rodrigo, Matt Damon, and Will Ferrell are set to host the final three episodes of 'SNL' season 51. Find out who else is performing.
VIPs Entertainment Launches New Booking Platform for Live Bands, DJs, and Custom Event Entertainment
/PRNewswire/ -- VIPs Entertainment, a premier live event entertainment agency with offices in Los Angeles, Nashville, and Houston, has launched a redesigned...
Siri Engineers Sent to AI Coding Bootcamp as Apple Prepares to Deliver Siri Overhaul
Apple is sending a large portion of its Siri engineers to a multi-week bootcamp to learn to code using AI, reports The Information. Apple's decision to teach its programmers to better use AI for coding comes just two months before Apple is expected to unveil a smarter, more capable version of Siri at WWDC. While employees attend the coding bootcamp, around 60 members of the Siri development team will stick around to work on Siri, and an additional 60 will evaluate how Siri is performing.
Taco Bell's Golden Bell awards are key to its company growth
Taco Bell's annual management retreat is more than recognition for its top-performing staff — it's a key driver of growth and staff retention.
What the NC Azalea Festival Street Fair looked like in Wilmington
The N.C. Azalea Festival Street Fair in Wilmington featured live entertainment, a performing arts stage, children's activities and vendors.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Austin musicians learn business side of the industry during free classes at St. Edward's University
For musicians focused on creating and performing, many administrative steps can be easy to overlook, delay or avoid altogether. The college has teamed up with Austin Texas Musicians to help.
Navy Sports Information Office Named one of the 11 Best SID Offices in the Country for the Ninth Time and for the Seventh Time in the Last Eight Years
DALLAS (FWAA) – One first-time winner and 10 previous ones comprise the 17th Super 11 Awards, presented annually by the Football Writers Association of America to the best performing College Sports Communicators departments in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. The awards announced today are for the 2025 season.
'SNL' season closes out with plenty of Olivia Rodrigo, Matt Damon, Will Ferrell and Paul McCartney
Matt Damon, Will Ferrell and Paul McCartney will help close out the “Saturday Night Live” season, with Olivia Rodrigo hosting and performing on May 2 | Talk 1370
'SNL' season closes out with plenty of Olivia Rodrigo, Matt Damon, Will Ferrell and Paul McCartney
Matt Damon, Will Ferrell and Paul McCartney will help close out the “Saturday Night Live” season, with Olivia Rodrigo hosting and performing on May 2 | Talk Radio 1210 WPHT
'SNL' season closes out with plenty of Olivia Rodrigo, Matt Damon, Will Ferrell and Paul McCartney
Matt Damon, Will Ferrell and Paul McCartney will help close out the “Saturday Night Live” season, with Olivia Rodrigo hosting and performing on May 2 | 1080 WTIC NEWSTALK
Billionaire Bill Ackman Thinks This Entertainment Giant Is "Dramatically Underperforming." Here's His $64 Billion Plan to Fix It This Year
This is the latest move by the hedge fund manager to be the modern-day Warren Buffett.
Featured Grandstand Entertainment Announced For Second Weekend Of This Year’s Clay County Fair
(Spencer)– All-Star Monster Trucks, Outlaw Truck and Tractor Pull and Figure 8 races will be the featured grandstand entertainment for the second weekend of this year’s Clay County Fair. All-Star Monster Trucks will put on two shows Saturday, September 19th, with the Outlaw Truck and Tractor Pull performing under the lights that same evening. Figure […]
3 Things to Know: Brands and Social Issues, Adult Recreational Sports League Participation Rebounds, and Sports Betting Partnerships
CivicScience has the world’s largest proprietary database of real-time declared intent, allowing brands to activate high-performing advertising that drives up to 80% better performance. See how our partners achieve superior marketing outcomes here. 1. Consumers hold mixed expectations on brand activism, with Democrats more likely to switch or boycott based on personal values, while Republicans [...]Read More... from 3 Things to Know: Brands and Social Issues, Adult Recreational Sports League Participation Rebounds, and Sports Betting Partnerships
UFL is outperforming NFL in one key area
The NFL reviewed several rule changes this offseason. As football continues to evolve, the league has looked to other leagues for ideas in the past. The XFL — now merged with the USFL to form the UFL — introduced the…
Iterative Health, US Heart & Vascular Partner to Advance Community-Based Cardiovascular Research
April 2, 2026 — Iterative Health and US Heart & Vascular (USHV) have announced a strategic partnership to advance research through community-based innovation in cardiovascular care. "Clinical research is one of the most powerful ways we expand access, improve patient outcomes, and shape the future of cardiovascular care," said Robbie Allen, chief executive officer of US Heart & Vascular. "By partnering with Iterative Health, we are strengthening our ability to bring innovative therapies directly into the communities we serve. This collaboration ensures our physicians and patients have access to leading-edge trials while allowing US Heart & Vascular to remain focused on delivering exceptional, physician-led care." Under the agreement, USHV research sites will join Iterative Health’s global site network, which now spans over 100 sites across three continents. The companies share a commitment to advancing clinical research as a driver of care innovation, and this collaboration represents a major milestone for both organizations, strengthening USHV's leadership in community-based cardiovascular research and expanding Iterative Health's multispecialty focus beyond GI, hepatology, and obesity into cardiology. USHV clinical research sites will gain access to Iterative Health's centralized operational backbone, providing end-to-end support across clinical research operations, services, business development, technology innovation, and corporate functions. The strategic partnership reduces operational complexity and unlocks growth potential for USHV research sites while enabling all USHV physicians to expand access to cutting-edge therapies to the thousands of patients they serve annually. "Innovation in cardiovascular medicine shouldn't be limited to a few academic centers," said Thomas Waggoner, DO, MD, RPVI, FACC, FSCAI, FSVM, RPVI, Structural Cardiologist and Medical Director for Clinical Research at Pima Heart & Vascular, and USHV Physician Champion for Clinical Research. "By expanding community-based research across USHV, we're ensuring more patients have access to clinical trials and breakthrough therapies close to home, where trusted relationships with their physicians already exist." This alliance reinforces Iterative Health's standing as the definitive research partner across specialized therapeutic areas, now spanning GI, hepatology, obesity, and cardiovascular care. Trusted by many of the nation's leading provider organizations and biopharma sponsors, Iterative Health's global site network delivers industry-leading trial performance, accelerating life-changing therapies to market at scale. "Entering cardiology through our strategic partnership with US Heart & Vascular is a defining moment for Iterative Health and reflects the strength of our site-serving model," said Jonathan Ng, founder and CEO of Iterative Health. "Together, we are ensuring that thousands of patients have access to the newest available therapies, and that sponsors have a credible, high-performing partner to accelerate cardiovascular trial success." For more information, visit www.iterative.health and https://usheartandvascular.com/.
Iran War Showcases Strength of South Korean Defense Sector
Missile interceptors made by the South Korean firm LIG Nex1 are said to be performing well, at a small fraction of the cost of U.S. interceptors.
Céline Dion Announces Comeback Concerts After Health Struggles
Music icon Céline Dion shared a surprise video message on her 58th birthday that she’s returning to the stage with ten concerts planned in Paris. Fans are celebrating her long-awaited comeback after she stepped away from performing back in 2022 when she was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition called “stiff person syndrome” which can cause muscle rigidity and painful spasms. NBC’s Emilie Ikeda reports for TODAY.
Celine Dion announces her return to the stage. She always believed she could
Celine Dion was previously sidelined from performing due to a rare neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome. Now, she’s back.
Why Most Quantum Computers Need to Be Colder Than Space
Quantum computers promise to revolutionize whole industries by outperforming classical computers on complex calculations. They just need to be colder than the coldest natural place in the universe.
Explore the best of Nordic music with Orchestra Iowa
Orchestra Iowa will perform their “Masterworks V” program, featuring music from Nordic composters, on Saturday, April 11 at the Paramount Theatre and Sunday, April 12 at the Coralville Performing Arts Center.
Country star Tracy Lawrence calls out ‘divisive’ political climate: Music should bring us 'all together’
Tracy Lawrence urges fans to keep politics out of country music, saying music should unite people regardless of their color or political background.
Democratic lawmaker asks judge to take Trump's name off Kennedy Center
A Democratic lawmaker is asking a federal judge to force the Kennedy Center to block and reverse efforts to attach President Donald Trump’s name to the historic performing arts venue.
Palace Theatre to feature family entertainment with the two Kennys
After years of talking about performing a double header, two of the area’s nationally recognized entertainers will bring their acts to the Historic Palace Theatre on April 4. Ventriloquist and comedia...
Cardinal Health (CAH) Emerged as a Key Contributor on Pharmaceutical Strength and Margin Expansion
Renaissance Investment Management, an investment management company, released its Q4 2025 “Large Cap Growth Strategy” investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The strategy faced a difficult fourth quarter of 2025, underperforming both the S&P 500, which gained 2.7%, and the Russell 1000 Growth Index as market leadership remained concentrated in […]
Marathon has sold 1.2M copies across Steam, PS5, and Xbox
Alinea Analytics estimates show that Marathon has generated gross revenues of $55M via 1.2M copies sold on Steam, PS5, and Xbox: Looking at the split between Steam, PS5, and Xbox, Steam is clearly the main platform for Marathon, accounting for a little under 70% of the audience (800K copies sold). Meanwhile, PS5 takes about 19% (217K) and Xbox (including console, PC, and cloud) accounts for a bit over 11% or 133K. Marathon is technically a first-party Sony title, so seeing the home console struggle to break 20% of the volume is a notable data point for the ongoing platform-agnostic debate. PlayStation Studios online games will almost certainly continue being multiplatform (despite Sony reportedly pulling back on PC releases). Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe As for Marathon, the consensus among hardcore players who pushed through the awkward onboarding phase – myself included – is that it’s fantastic. The gunplay, aesthetic, and presentation are among the best in the shooter genre. A great game doesn’t always equal an immediate hit, though, as shown by our estimates. Things are looking lukewarm right now. But this might be one of those marathon-not-a-sprint situations. Had to, didn’t I? Why wasn’t Marathon a hit on the same level as Arc Raiders? One topic that came up in a lot of conversations at GDC this year was why Marathon hasn’t hit the same stratosphere as Arc Raiders. On paper, they’re both extraction shooters, and Marathon has the Bungie pedigree – the house that built the gold standard for gunplay in Halo and Destiny. Marathon’s neon-futuristic aesthetic also distinguishes itself from the gritty realism of Tarkov or the post-apocalyptic hope of ARC Raiders. But vibes can only get you so far for first impressions if the onboarding feels like a brick wall. Marathon is a sweaty PvP-focused experience with a first-time user experience and UI that I can only describe as dreadful. Players are dropped into a complex ecosystem where the UI, though visually striking, is functionally uninformative, forcing users to manually hover over nondescript, identical icons just to identify basic gear or weapon mods. This lack of clarity is compounded by punishing mechanics like a severe heat gauge for movement and a scarcity of vital resources, all without a clear tutorial or a low-stakes mode to learn the ropes. Most people – even top streamers and veteran shooter players – have no idea what’s going on in Marathon at first. Arc is on the complete other end of the spectrum. As we covered here and here, Arc Raiders offers a more collaborative, approachable loop where players often work together toward shared goals. And the objectives are instantly clear. To many players, this contrast only emphasised Marathon’s issues, especially during the testing period. Players understand the Arc Raiders loop within 30 minutes, while Marathon acts as a massive filter, chewing up newcomers and spitting them out before they can experience the depth of Bungie’s signature gunplay. What I’m getting at here is that the poor first-time user experience of Marathon’s Server Slam likely stifled launch sales, while the opposite was true for Arc. Let’s look at the pre-launch copies sold for each game during their respective Server Slams (launch-aligned) : Looking at the trajectory: Arc Raiders saw a massive 80% jump in copies sold during its three-day Server Slam (day -13 to -11). Players jumped in, realised the water was fine, and immediately opened their wallets. Marathon, meanwhile, saw a 49% increase in the four days following its Slam (Day -7 to -3). At the time of each game’s respective launch, Arc Raiders had nearly double the Steam footprint of Marathon – and word of mouth only continued to grow. Bungie could have had more time to fix the onboarding process had the beta happened earlier. But Marathon launched three days after the beta finished. These factors limited the launch sales quite a bit, I reckon. Marathon has found a niche audience, though Despite the friction-heavy start, the data suggests that those who survived Marathon’s onboarding are loving life. We’ve been tracking cross-platform DAUs, and while there’s the expected post-launch leakage, many players are sticking with it. After peaking at 478K total DAUs on its first Saturday, Marathon has settled into a respectable rhythm, holding 345K DAUs as of yesterday and averaging 380K DAUs across the weekend. Steam continues to do the heavy lifting here, consistently accounting for the lion’s share of the daily players. Players have been putting in the hours, too: On Steam, Marathon’s average playtime has climbed to 27.8 hours, significantly outpacing the console averages on PS5 (16.5h) and Xbox (17.3h). Even more telling than the averages: 22% of the Steam audience has surged past the 50-hour mark, and nearly 7% have already logged over 100 hours. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe This data suggests that once the Bungie magic clicks, it hooks players deeper than the average extraction shooter. There’s also started to be a shift in the game’s discourse. Marathon launched as one of those games that’s cool to hate. But as Marathon’s 100-hour club grows, we’re seeing conversations around its mechanical merit outweigh the negativity. Several high-profile creators, who were initially vocal critics, have spent the last week coming around on the mechanical depth of the endgame. It’s a subtle but positive signal; the hate train is losing steam, and a new narrative about the game is emerging. Bungie faithfuls unite Another interesting metric in Marathon’s first few weeks is who, exactly, is playing. Bungie leans heavily on its prestige as the “makers of Halo and Destiny,” in its marketing, and that message has clearly hit the mark. On Steam, the gravity (hammer) of Bungie’s previous work is unavoidable. A staggering 78.2% of Marathon players also played Destiny 2. The trend carries across other platforms, with 74.2% of PS5 players and 82.7% of Xbox players also having played Destiny 2. The Halo legacy lives on, it seems. More on that in a bit. While Destiny 2 went free to play, these numbers still represent a high-intent migration of a fanbase that trusts Bungie’s specific brand of kinetic gunplay and cryptic world-building. The Xbox data adds another layer of legacy. About 85.7% of Marathon players on Xbox have played Halo Infinite, while over half of the Steam audience has spent time in Halo Infinite and 36.1% in the Master Chief Collection (a paid collection of the old Bungie-made legacy games). Interestingly, we see a 55.9% overlap with ARC Raiders on Steam. Overlap is even higher there on PlayStation (60.5%) and Xbox (66.5%). And there’s also significant crossover with Helldivers 2 on all platforms, too. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe Bungie has found some of its fans with Marathon, and the challenge now is keeping this engaged in a high-stakes PvP environment when they’ve spent the last decade primarily enjoying the power fantasies of PvE. On that note… Go the full 26 miles? Or cut and run? Time for some could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. These things would have improved Marathon’s performance at launch: A more robust onboarding process, perhaps in the form of a short single-player/PvE campaign. We know Bungie fans love this stuff. A traditional arena-based mode akin to Destiny’s Crucible could have been a bridge for the cautious players who’d have been otherwise deterred by the Server Slam. It’s also a great palate cleanser after getting merked. Introducing a dedicated PvE environment would have similarly diversified the conversation and lowered the barrier for the Bungie faithful who found the pure PvP extraction loop too abrasive. PvE is safer than PvP these days. There’s an argument that a thin PvE mode would have just felt like a budget Destiny, potentially hurting the brand more. But given how dire the FTUE is, I think it would have been a net positive. Any kind of tutorialised loop that demystifies the stakes, really. While there is merit in a studio sticking firmly to a singular creative vision, and going all in on the hardcore extraction loop. Less forgiving is the technical reality is that the user interface and first-time user experience (FTUE) were not at a commercial standard for launch. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe In a landscape where player time is oversaturated and the most contested currency, a flawed FTUE is a critical failure point. But it’s not all doom and gloom, as Marathon has an incredible, unique gameplay loop, suggesting that financial success is still attainable if Bungie can pivot effectively. Bungie and PlayStation now face a difficult strategic crossroads, though – one within a challenging games market. They could: Double down on Marathon with a long-term Rainbow Six Siege- or No Man’s Sky-style recovery plan, which is something I heard Last Stand Media’s Chris Maldonado mention last week. While this could be a sunk-cost fallacy in action, it could eventually yield the audience the game’s mechanical depth deserves. Shift focus toward the inevitable Destiny 3 or another project, mitigating the escalating opportunity cost and cutting their losses, so to speak. Doing both is an expensive proposition, given the high overhead and burn rate of operating out of Bellevue, Washington. With Sony recently demonstrating a lower threshold for underperforming studios and projects, the margin for error has vanished. Whatever happens, the next six months will determine whether Marathon becomes a cornerstone of Sony’s live-service portfolio or a cautionary tale of vision exceeding accessibility. I’m hoping it’s the former, because Marathon rocks. As always, hit subscribe to get updates on Marathon and other relevant games. Subscribe Want to get your hands on our data for yourself – for free? We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply to this email, and we’ll set you up. The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
Tacoma Arts Live, longtime WA arts institution, files for receivership
Tacoma Arts Live, a longtime performing arts organization, has filed for receivership. The court process is similar to bankruptcy. Here's what we know.
MacBook Neo Silences Critics Over 8GB RAM Being Inadequate; Can Open 60 Apps In Unison While Windows Laptop Powers Off Performing The Same Task
A YouTube channel decided to take the MacBook Neo for an apps stress test and opened up 60 apps at the same time to see if that 8GB RAM will be sufficient
Studio Entertainment: The Waddington Brothers
Bismarck, ND (KXNET) — The Waddington Brothers are performing at the Belle Mehus in Bismarck, April 24th at 7:30 pm. Tickets are on sale now and you can find them online by going to bismarcke…
Top 5 states with the highest number of safest hospitals, according to new report
Healthgrades named 438 hospitals across 40 states for its 2026 Patient Safety Excellence Award, with Texas and Florida among the top-performing states.
“Loyal Slaves” and Campfire Entertainment in Frank Vizetelly’s Confederate Camp
Frank Vizetelly’s illustration titled “Night Amusements in the Confederate Camp” appeared in the Illustrated London News on January 10, 1863. It was one among a number of wartime scenes that Vizetelly captured for the newspaper. Subscribe Following the war, the illustration appeared in a number of books, including John O. Casler’s Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade (1893) and Campfires of the Confederacy (1898) by Ben La Bree. The scene depicts a Confederate camp at night with an enslaved man, most likely a camp servant, performing a dance around a fire with the music provided by a soldier playing a banjo. Another enslaved man looks on at the right. Vizetelly likely witnessed the scene—one that would have been common throughout the war. It’s a wonderful example of the way in which Confederates—slaveowners and nonslaveowners alike—experienced the presence of slave labor in the army. Vizetelly was deeply sympathetic to the Confederate cause. His depiction of the enslaved man as more than happy to entertain the very people who were fighting to keep him enslaved was precisely the kind of image designed to reassure a British audience that slavery was benign, and by implication, that Britain need not feel morally troubled about recognizing or supporting the Confederacy. Share Just as importantly, the sight of a dancing slave reassured Confederates themselves that the institution of slavery remained secure even after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. I’ve come across this illustration many times before and I plan on using it in my next book project on the role of enslaved labor in the Confederate army during the Gettysburg Campaign, but this is not the reason I am sharing it with you today. It has to do with where I recently found it, which came as a complete surprise and is incredibly revealing. Let’s take a look.
Oz Says California’s Not Fighting Health Care Fraud, but Data Shows It’s Part of a Larger Battle
Trump administration officials say the state allows rampant fraud and have promised to investigate, blaming the “Russian, Armenian mafia” in the hospice and home health care industry. But data shows hotbeds of health care fraud throughout the country, with California outperforming most other states in recovering fraud dollars.
HOMETOWN ENTERTAINMENT: Sheena Easton performing Saturday at Millwald Theatre in Wytheville
Sheena Easton brings over four decades of hits to Wytheville this weekend.
Hundreds of Connecticut companies meet with lawmakers at annual Business Day event
Business owners from all over the state got together on Wednesday at The Bushnell Performing Arts Center in Hartford for the annual Connecticut Business Day event. “Every time a business owner can let their voice be heard, it is a way for us to be able to influence what decisions are being made,” said Chris Davis, vice president of public…
Domestic Politics May Impede Vietnam’s Growing Relationship With the U.S.
Vietnam is performing a balancing act, but it’s unclear how long it can keep the plates spinning. On March 16, Vietnam held its first ever “3+3” summit with China, a meeting that featured both...
Boards protected CEO bonuses as tariffs threatened business. Now, as Iran disrupts trade, CEOs may get more protection
An exclusive analysis of 50 companies found CEOs in the lowest-performing tier still collected 87% of their target bonuses last year—and boards may start adding more comp safety nets to protect from Iran economic impact.
Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board approves two-year closure
President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board of trustees voted Monday to close the storied performing arts institution for two years for renovations.
This weird-looking humanoid robot could help China conquer the moon: scientists
Highly dexterous robot built on a wheeled platform will traverse the lunar surface while performing construction, maintenance and sampling.
In Texas, Democrats discover the power of the ‘nice guy’ candidate
In a political era defined by nasty personal insults and a race to emulate the worst elements of Trump’s broken character, the Democrats performing best are doing so by focusing on the values that …
Barclays Retains an Equal Weight Rating on Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc. (ACHC)
Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACHC) is among the 12 Best Performing Stocks in February. On March 2, 2026, Barclays analyst Andrew Mok elevated Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACHC)’s price goal to $20 from $14, maintaining an Equal Weight rating. On February 25, 2026, Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACHC) announced fourth-quarter 2025 revenue of $821.5 million, […]
HPE Reports Fiscal 2026 First Quarter Results
HPE (NYSE: HPE) today announced financial results for the first quarter ended January 31, 2026. “HPE delivered a strong first quarter, outperforming in our n...
Exclusive | Activist Starboard Takes Big Stake in French-Fry Maker Lamb Weston
Starboard Value is pushing the company to speed up improvements and cost cutting to boost its underperforming stock.
Health Department releases food inspection reports for week of Feb. 22
Find out how your favorite restaurant, convenience store and other food establishments in Jefferson County are performing on Health Department inspections.
FMOL Health earns global workplace honors from Gallup
Baton Rouge-based FMOL Health has been recognized among the world’s top workplaces by Gallup, earning honors for both employee engagement and strengths-based workplace culture. The health system was among 78 organizations worldwide to receive the 2026 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award, which recognizes companies that foster high-performing cultures and invest in employee development. New Orleans-based Ochsner […]
First-ever championship of new extreme sports league coming to Superdome this summer
The inaugural X Games League championship event will feature big-name musical headliners performing at the Smoothie King Center, organizers said.
Mercy Home Health Locations Named Among Nation’s Best
Three Mercy Home Health locations have been named a Best Home Health Agency for 2026 by U.S. News & World Report. This recognition comes as part of U.S. News’ first-ever evaluation of home health providers, identifying the top-performing agencies in the United States.
Tiny Public Assembly Theatre stages 3 new 12-minute plays a month
The tiny Public Assembly theater company is taking community theater to the next level by developing and performing three one-act plays per month. Seeing a show is the only prerequisite to submitting, and you might be surprised by the Hollywood star power that shows up.
Nate Bargatze on comedy retirement, 'Big Dumb Eyes' tour and his surprising napkin phobia
The 46-year-old comedian and host opened up about his growing entertainment empire and plans for his future in stand-up comedy.
Assessing Kenyon Sadiq's performance at the 2026 NFL Combine
With Kenyon Sadiq performing at the NFL Combine on Friday, let's take a look at how he stacked up against the rest of the field.
Aston Martin releases new higher-performing Vantage S super sports car
Meet the newest aspirational ride from Aston Martin: the 2026 Vantage S.
The Jazz Room brings New Orleans spirit to NYC with 20% off tickets for a limited time
Experience the spirit of 1920s New Orleans, with musicians and vocalists performing timeless jazz hits for one night only.
'Saturday Night Live' Star Performing in Verona
A breakout comedian is coming to Turning Stone Resort Casino.
Country music singer battling incurable disease still performing despite rough 2025
The 56-year-old has been open with fans about his battle with the disease.
New sodium ion battery stores twice the energy and desalinates seawater
A surprising breakthrough could help sodium-ion batteries rival lithium—and even turn seawater into drinking water. Scientists discovered that keeping water inside a key battery material, instead of removing it as traditionally done, dramatically boosts performance. The “wet” version stores nearly twice as much charge, charges faster, and remains stable for hundreds of cycles, placing it among the top-performing sodium battery materials ever reported.
Wendy's to close hundreds of restaurants as company looks to focus on value to boost sales
Wendy's planned restaurant closures target underperforming locations in an effort to boost sales and refocus its strategy on everyday value.
The Beach Boys to close 2026 Wisconsin State Fair
WEST ALLIS, Wis. (WKOW) — The Wisconsin State Fair is set to end on a high note with The Beach Boys performing at the Bank Five Nine Main Stage on
A scoping review of silent trials for medical artificial intelligence
Nature Health - This scoping review examines previous experience in performing silent evaluations of clinical AI applications, collecting evidence from 75 studies on implementation features and the...
List of country music acts retiring from the road in 2026 grows. Here’s the latest
Two legendary acts with nearly 100 years experience performing are retiring this year.
Alabama college pauses cuts to sports programs amid budget strain
Prior to the athletics report, the board voted to remove nine low-performing minors and seven concentrations.
Advancing AI for science: extracting and fusing cross-disciplinary expert knowledge with data to accelerate alloy discovery
High-entropy alloys are promising advanced materials for demanding applications, but discovering useful compositions is difficult and expensive due to the vast number of possible element combinations. Now, researchers have developed a novel AI-driven framework that integrates experimental data, computational modeling, and cross-disciplinary expert knowledge extracted from scientific literature. By combining these sources in a way that accounts for uncertainty, their approach can make reliable predictions even for poorly studied alloy compositions, outperforming conventional data-driven machine learning methods that rely on training data alone.
UCSB scientists bottle the sun with liquid battery
A new bio-inspired molecule captures solar energy and releases it as heat on demand, outperforming lithium-ion batteries.
NOCCA student wins national performing arts competition
Keita Kawahara, a musical theater student at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and a senior at Haynes Academy for Advanced Studies, has won season 6 of BroadwayWorld’s Next
See All the Best Photos from Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Performance
The Puerto Rican star took Levi's Stadium by storm, performing hits such as 'NuevaYol,' 'Tití Me Preguntó,' 'Debí Tirar Más Fotos,' and more. Bad Bunny also brought out special guests such as Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, while Jessica Alba, Pedro Pascal and more were spotted dancing during the performance
Who is performing in the Super Bowl halftime show? What to know
Bad Bunny is set to make history as the first solo Spanish-speaking artist to headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show. Here's what to know.
SSM Health Good Samaritan Hospital named to Forbes Top Hospitals 2026 List
SSM Health Good Samaritan Hospital in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, was recognized as one of the top-performing hospitals in the nation in the Forbes Top Hospitals 2026 list.
Benson Boone is (sort of) performing at the Super Bowl
Much to Ben Stiller’s dismay, Benson Boone is showing off his vocal prowess — and affinity for flips — in a Super Bowl ad for Instacart
Bad Bunny leadd star-studded lineup at Super Bowl 60 halftime show:
Super Bowl 60 is set to feature a star-studded musical lineup, with Bad Bunny headlining the halftime show. Find out who else is performing.
Bad Bunny, Kid Rock lead dueling Super Bowl 2026 halftime shows
Bad Bunny headlines the NFL's Super Bowl 2026 halftime show, while Turning Point USA counters with Kid Rock. Here's who's performing and how to watch.
Trump says Kennedy Center will close in July for two years for renovations
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington will close for roughly two years to allow for extensive renovations, President Donald Trump said Sunday.
Kennedy Center to cease entertainment operations for two years, Trump says
The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Performing Arts should not host any events for two years, starting on July 4, President Donald Trump posted on Sunday.
Kennedy Center to cease entertainment operations for two years, Trump says
Feb 1 (Reuters) - The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Performing Arts should not host any events for two years, starting on July 4, President Donald Trump posted on Sunday. "Based on these findings, and totally subject to Board approval, I have ...
Kennedy Center to Cease Entertainment Operations for Two Years, Trump Says
Feb 1 (Reuters) - The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Performing Arts should not host any events for two years, starting on July 4, President Donald Trump posted on Sunday. "Based on these findings, and totally subject to Board approval, I have determined that the fastest way to ...
Live Square Entertainment for Sunday, February 1 - Villages-News.com
Nightly entertainment performing in The Villages Town Squares on February 1, 2026
Health Department releases food inspection reports for week of Jan. 18
Find out how your favorite restaurant, convenience store and other food establishments in Jefferson County are performing on Health Department inspections.
Legendary Musician ‘Thinking Twice’ About Touring In Trump’s America: ‘Too Dangerous’
The guitarist expressed his concerns about performing on U.S. concert stages in a new interview.
Comedian's 6 sold-out shows canceled after video of him mocking Renee Good went viral
Ben Bankas won't be performing at the Laugh Camp Comedy Club after all.
Comedian's 6 sold-out shows canceled after video of him mocking Renee Good went viral
Ben Bankas won't be performing at the Laugh Camp Comedy Club after all.
Grammy-nominated vocalist Shemekia Copeland performing at High Noon Saloon
MADISON, Wis. — Grammy-nominated vocalist Shemekia Copeland will bring her soulful roots music to Madison next month with a performance at the High Noon Saloon.
Justin Bieber Performance Locked In for Music’s Biggest Night at the 2026 Grammys
Justin Bieber has announced that he will be performing at the 2026 Grammy Awards, which will take place on Sunday, Feb. 1. Bieber is a two-time Grammy winner and also… The post Justin Bieber Performance Locked In for Music’s Biggest Night at the 2026 Grammys appeared first on Where Is The Buzz | Breaking News, Entertainment, Exclusive Interviews & More.
ON Culture | A Full Dance Card of Performances, Films, Art and Entertainment
ON the Stage Our dance card is quite joyously full for the next few weeks, with hip hop from the French company Compagnie Hervé Koubi performing Sol
Celebrating Excellence: Honoring P&G’s Top-Performing External Business Partners
P&G recognizes 40 top-performing suppliers committed to performance, partnership and excellence.
Who's performing at Super Bowl 2026? Halftime show and pregame singers
Bad Bunny is the biggest star performing at Super Bowl 2026 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. Here are all the performers and how to watch.
Arsenal 'just missing goals'
The "one final thing" that Arsenal must get right is scoring goals, according to head coach Renee Slegers. The Gunners have failed to find the net in two of their three matches since returning from the Women's Super League winter break, most recently drawing a blank in their 1-0 League Cup semi-final loss to Manchester United on Wednesday. "We have been performing well, apart from scoring," said Slegers in her pre-match news conference on Friday.
Albany Entertainment Centre Chooses Anolis
Albany Entertainment Centre (AEC) is a contemporary performing arts and events venue famous for its stunningly cool architectural design, located on the waterfront in Albany, about 420 km south‑eas | Albany Entertainment Centre (AEC) upgrades the auditorium lighting of its main theatre space with Anolis Ambiane fixtures.
John Legend to perform in Syracuse
The Grammy-winning artist will perform at the Landmark Theatre this spring.
Omaha scholar athletes honored by sports commission for finding success on and off the field
The athletes were honored for excellence both on the field of play and in the classroom while also performing community service.
Mexican Marvel: how an international business got a much-needed health boost with flexible, scalable fulfillment
A leading wellness company transitioned from an outdated, underperforming supply chain to a professional, future-ready, digital logistics solution cutting logistics costs by 30%.
5 Android Phones More Powerful Than The Samsung Galaxy S25
Samsung's Galaxy S25 offers some of the best performance specs of any 2025 Android, but a new processor has come out that has other options outperforming it.
Looking For Local Entertainment This Weekend?
Saturday, January 17, 8 p.m.-11 p.m. – New Tampa Jazz Nights: Chuck Redd with La Lucha. At New Tampa Performing Arts Center (8550 Hunters Village Rd.). Catch world-renowned vibraphonist and […]
Kenny Chesney says he does 'a lot of witchcraft' to his body for health benefits
Kenny Chesney reveals he "does a lot of witchcraft stuff" to his body, including plasma exchange, cold plunges, and IV treatments in his wellness routine.
PS5's First Exclusive Of 2026 Flops With Critics
It looks like PlayStation 5’s first exclusive game of the year is not performing to the expectations its developer had hoped.
Calendar Pick: Workhorses of the Entertainment/Recreational Industry
Composed of veteran musicians Rob Keller (The Welfare Liners), Ben Reynolds (Chickasaw Mudd Puppies), Domingo “Sunny” Ortiz (Widespread Panic) and William Tonks (MrJordanMrTonks), Workhorses of the Entertainment/Recreational Industry is an Athens-based band inspired by the sounds of acoustic rock, traditional folk, country and blues. As of late, the band has played several shows and is working on its album. In a bill presented by local promoter Aubrey Entertainment, the quartet will be performing alongside Scott Low & the Blue Bouillon. Seen sharing stages with artists like Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton and Shovels & Rope, Low is a folk musician whose sound has been compared to Americana acts like Jamey Johnson and Ryan Bingham, but the influence of artists like Tom […]
Grand jury indicts former Duke Health nurse charged with sex crimes
Jomil Tugado is accused of performing sex acts with patients who were incapacitated. Officials said patients who have witnessed or experienced inappropriate conduct at Duke Health can report that to the hospital hotline at 919-385-3575.
Dell’s Underperforming PC Business Seeks a Comeback
Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke says Dell got off course by focusing too much on premium tiers and ignoring other segments of the market.
Dell’s Underperforming PC Business Seeks a Comeback
Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke says Dell got off course by focusing too much on premium tiers and ignoring other segments of the market.
More musicians cancel Kennedy Center concerts after board votes to add Trump's name to the building
Recent cancellations have left the performing arts center in Washington with gaps in programming for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.
"Mr. Las Vegas" Wayne Newton discusses New York City shows
Wayne Newton spoke about his decades of performing.