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Mariano urges business leaders to make a deal on income tax cut
House Speaker Ron Mariano appealed to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce on Thursday for help in preventing the tax-cut question from reaching the ballot.
House Republicans block Democrats' latest bid for war powers resolution
In a pro forma session in the House Thursday, GOP Speaker Pro-tem Rep. Christopher Smith didn't acknowledge Democrats' request for unanimous consent
Comedians Roast Trump’s Delusional Belief That He’s Healthy
David Spade, Dana Carvey, and Tim Dillon questioned Trump’s energy despite his “purple legs and purple hands.”
UNC chancellors sidestep political questions at forum on challenges facing higher education
At a forum on challenges facing higher education, UNC chancellors mostly dodged pointed questions about budgets and Trump.
Allies or Adversaries? Science Diplomacy’s Calibration in the President’s Budget Request
Nestled in the cuts and investments of interest to the S&T community is a more complex story of how the administration is approaching the practice of science diplomacy.
Off the Grid maker and Game Informer owner Gunzilla Games accused of missing staff salary payments
Current and former staff question the company's stability, alleging months of payroll problems
Exclusive | Justice Department Opens Investigation Into NFL
Government officials have raised questions about whether the league is engaging in anticompetitive tactics that harm consumers.
Planetary Science Caucus Rejects NASA FY 2027 Budget Request
Planetary Science Caucus Rejects NASA FY 2027 Budget Request
Questioning the Science Experts: Is It Even Permitted?
If you’re trying to do ID science, it’s a little bit easier to be intellectually honest, because you have to work harder to make the case for your claim.
Rep. Seth Moulton picks: Josh Shapiro or Gavin Newsrom?
Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, who launched a primary challenge against Sen. Ed Markey to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate, answered rapid-fire questions on his decision to return money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), his past comments about trans athletes and his stance on ICE. With the 2026 elections underway, The Post's Anna Liss-Roy is grilling candidates in races across the country, pressing Democrats and Republicans to share their takes at high-speed.
Abortion Pill’s Safety Called into Question in Congressional Actions Based on Misleading Data — The Monitor
False claims about the safety of mifepristone are driving legislative and investigative action in Congress, even as major medical organizations and decades of clinical evidence support the drug’s safety. And competing interpretations of what censorship and free speech mean are impacting how health misinformation is moderated.
Oil price rises as markets question durability of Middle East ceasefire
Gas prices also increase, while global stock markets slip back after strong rally on Wednesday
Israel’s Quest for Hegemony and Iran’s New Geopolitics
Israel’s strategy relies not only on military objectives but also on the control of energy resources & strategic territories by land and sea.
Do people really switch from iPhone to Android? Apple now wants Samsung's data to answer that
Apple has requested internal Samsung data about how people switch between iPhone and Android to show that its practices are not anti-competitive.
‘They don’t want her to answer questions": Rep. Walkinshaw reacts to DOJ saying Bondi won’t testify in House Epstein probe
Trump renews proposals to slash US science agency budgets
White House requests a 55% reduction to the National Science Foundation's budget, with other agencies facing similar cuts
Steve Vancore: Salt shaking the PPP poll on Ashley Moody vs. Alex Vindman
New poll tightens Florida Senate race but questions linger on methodology
TRADING DAY Markets gorge on huge TACO
World markets soared on Wednesday and oil had its biggest fall in five years, as investors gave a hearty welcome to the ceasefire in the Iran war. The question now is whether this is just a mega-relief rally, or a major turning point in sentiment.
What is the quantum ‘Ghost Murmur’ purportedly used in Iran? Scientists question CIA’s claim of long-range heartbeat detection
Ghost Murmur was described as a futuristic CIA tool that could detect a heartbeat from vast distances. Physicists say the public story clashes with the basic limits of magnetic sensing
Dunlap fields questions from voters during Bangor town hall
In a wide-ranging town hall conversation in Bangor Tuesday night, Democratic 2nd Congressional District Candidate Matt Dunlap said he will not be accepting money from Political Action Committees and will prioritize issues that matter to Mainers.
'Malcolm in the Middle' returns after 20 years with questions of legacy and its trademark craziness
Hulu has revived “Malcolm in the Middle” with a four-part series subtitled “Life’s Still Unfair.” | KNSS Radio
'Malcolm in the Middle' returns after 20 years with questions of legacy and its trademark craziness
Hulu has revived “Malcolm in the Middle” with a four-part series subtitled “Life’s Still Unfair.” | 1010 WINS
'Malcolm in the Middle' returns after 20 years with questions of legacy and its trademark craziness
Hulu has revived “Malcolm in the Middle” with a four-part series subtitled “Life’s Still Unfair.” | KMBZ
With Orion still flying, NASA is nearing key decisions about Artemis III
One of the questions is what the initial orbit will be for Artemis III."
Country Thunder is no friend of sea turtles, or following protocol
Event promoters are already selling tickets even as the event's status remains in question.
Notre Dame mailbag: Do the Irish have more ‘dudes’ than Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia?
Plus: A reader question about how the Irish might honor the memory of Lou Holtz next season.
5 Questions with Public Health Senior Ammad Hasan
The Class of 2026 graduate works to boost heart health, with a legacy that will endure on the Forty Acres.
President's budget brings back NASA science cuts
The President's Budget Request for fiscal year 2027 calls for $18.8 billion in NASA spending, a $5.6 billion cut.
Quest one step closer to permanent science center with $450K grant from Supervisor Haubert
Local nonprofit Quest Science Center is making “steady progress” toward bringing to life its longstanding vision of building a permanent facility downtown Livermore dedicated to science education, its Interim Executive Director Michael Mosby told Livermore Vine.
Sandy Alcantara questions Marlins' decision to end his bid for back-to-back shutouts in 9th inning
Google finally adds a long-requested gaming feature to Android 17
You can now try system-level controller remapping in Android 17 Beta.
3 Big Questions New Browns' HC Todd Monken Must Answer
As the Cleveland Browns open up their offseason program this week, new head coach Todd Monken faces several pivotal questions that he must answer
Viewpoint: FP10 should remain open, excellent and secure
Europe is right to worry about research security. Foreign interference is real. So is the misuse of sensitive knowledge. Universities working in sensitive areas such as AI, quantum, semiconductors and advanced materials cannot afford to ignore the geopolitical environment around them.But Europe is in danger of drawing the wrong conclusion, one that would increase, not reduce, its strategic vulnerabilities.If the EU applies an “EU preference” logic to the next Framework Programme for research and innovation (FP10), it will weaken one of its greatest strategic assets: a research system built on openness, excellence and international collaboration. In the name of security, Europe could end up advancing science more slowly, innovating less effectively and making itself less attractive to global talent and partners in advanced science and technology.That would be a serious mistake.The EU preference included in Article 10 of the proposed European Competitiveness Fund may make sense in some industrial or deployment contexts, but is far harder to justify when applied to collaborative research in advanced science and technology, where excellence and global connectivity are crucial. Research is not procurement. It does not thrive when isolated. It advances through access to the best ideas, the best people, the best facilities and the best data, wherever they are found. This is why FP10 should not simply absorb industrial policy logic by default. Doing so would risk importing instruments that are ill-suited to research and that ultimately increase vulnerability rather than resilience.For universities of science and technology, the issue is especially acute. These institutions sit at the frontier of knowledge and technology creation in the very fields Europe sees as critical for its future competitiveness and resilience. They know better than most that security risks are real. But they also know that openness and security are not opposites. In practice, they have to be made to work together. Research security is not about closing doors. It is about building resilience through collective responsibility, trust, proportionate safeguards and better governance. That is a fundamentally different approach from default restriction.The risks of non-collaborationThe real danger in the current debate is that Europe talks too much about the risks of collaboration and not enough about the risks of non-collaboration. Those risks are strategic too. Cut researchers off from international networks and Europe loses access to knowledge, data, infrastructures and talent. Slow down global collaboration in critical technologies and Europe slows down its own progress on cutting-edge science. Make participation rules unpredictable and Europe weakens its attractiveness to researchers and investors alike.In other words, over-restricting collaboration will create strategic vulnerabilities, particularly in advanced science and technologies.This point is often underestimated in policy discussions that frame openness mainly as a value to be defended. Europe’s scientific strength, technological development and long-term competitiveness depend on remaining connected to the best research ecosystems in the world. For a continent that wants to accelerate deep tech, strengthen industrial capacity and reduce strategic dependencies, weakening the excellence base would be self-defeating. That does not mean ignoring risk. Quite the opposite. Universities are already strengthening due diligence, internal governance, awareness-raising, screening procedures and compliance support. Across Europe, institutions are working to manage risks linked to foreign interference, sanctions, export controls and the misuse of research. The right response is not complacency. It is better risk management. But that means targeted, evidence-based and proportionate measures, not blunt top-down restrictions with wide spillover effects. In the daily reality of universities, openness and restriction often coexist. The real challenge is how to apply safeguards without sliding into securitisation that damages academic freedom, open science and international cooperation. Restrict partners, not nationsMore restrictive treatment of collaborators from European Economic Area members Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, or from Switzerland and the UK, is strategically very difficult to justify. These are deeply embedded partners in Europe’s research and innovation ecosystem. Beyond that, Europe should still resist default exclusion and instead rely on case-by-case assessment. The relevant question is not nationality in the abstract. It is the actual risk profile of a collaboration: the institution, the affiliations, the field, the knowledge involved, the intended use and the safeguards available. Screening should focus on institutions and affiliations rather than nationality alone. Related articlesParliament ‘misreads’ link between Horizon Europe and ECF, Commission official saysFrustration grows at governance gap in next Horizon EuropeIf EU preference logic is imported into research without careful calibration, the likely result is a chilling effect. Researchers may step back from legitimate and beneficial collaboration, even where risks are manageable. International partners may see Europe as less predictable. And Europe may end up undermining the very excellence base it needs to compete, scale up and lead in strategic technologies, thereby increasing its dependence on others.FP10 should do the opposite. It should remain open by default, with restrictions used only exceptionally, and then on the basis of clear evidence. It should integrate research security into open science and research integrity frameworks, not set them against each other. And it should recognise that academic freedom, scientific excellence and responsible international collaboration are not obstacles to Europe’s security, they are part of it. Europe needs stronger tools to protect itself. But it also needs the discipline to avoid measures that would weaken it and increase its strategic vulnerabilities in the process. In FP10, that means staying open, excellent and secure.Louise Drogoul is senior advisor for innovation and sustainability at the Cesaer university association.
Trump Backs Down, but Questions Remain Over Iran and the Strait of Hormuz
President Trump’s short-term intimidation may have worked, but the fundamental divides with Iran are as sharp as they were in February.
Howard Stern's ex-assistant exposes 'immense pressure' and 'questionable business operations' in lawsuit
Losing Dexter Lawrence Would Make the Giants’ Defense Collapse
After years of contract issues, New York Giants superstar defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II has requested a trade. Lawrence’s disgruntledness doesn’t come as a surprise. Despite his All-Pro production, he ranks just 12th among NFL interior defensive linemen in terms of salary. So, with Lawrence’s established, elite production at 28 years old, the Giants shouldn’t hesitate […] The post Losing Dexter Lawrence Would Make the Giants’ Defense Collapse appeared first on The Lead.
View: AI is testing the oldest debate in business: Who’s the customer?
The oldest question in business — who is your customer — turns out to be the one OpenAI still can’t answer.
Acting AG says ‘Nobody has any idea why’ Pam Bondi was fired except for Trump
During his first news conference Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche showcased his loyalty to President Donald Trump while declining to answer specific questions about the war with Iran, why Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired or other investigations into the president’s enemies.
Yarbrough speaks with Lone Star Politics after opponent in TX-32 ends campaign for GOP nomination
After businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley ends his campaign for the GOP nomination in the 32nd Congressional District, Trump-endorsed Jace Yarbrough will take on the Democrat in the November election. The newly-drawn district was designed to favor Republicans by state lawmakers. Yarbrough takes questions from Lone Star Politics about his conservative views and his priorities if elected to office.
Giants' John Harbaugh not surprised by Dexter Lawrence's trade request: 'There’s business involved'
Dexter Lawrence’s trade request upended the opening of the New York Giants' voluntary offseason program under John Harbaugh, but the coach isn’t closing the door on Big Blue reconciling things with the star defensive tackle.
Why Meghan Markle's 'deliberate' business move 'raises questions' about future of brand after Netflix fallout
Public comment open on wording of Maine transgender sports referendum question
The question will appear on the November ballot unless the bill is enacted by the Legislature as written.
The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes
Pantheon Review by Walter Cummins The image of Alfred Tennyson I’ve carried for decades goes back to the childhood card game of Authors that depicts him with a stately continence sharpened by a jutting black beard. He’s formidable, his aura superior. Holmes opens his biography of the youthful Tennyson by describing the similar formality of the imposing Tennyson statue at Trinty College Cambridge, sharing the honor with other Trinity greats, including Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Babington Macaulay. Holmes doesn’t want to chip away at that statue but rather reveal its inner youthful core of the man—tall, handsome, and talented but unformed, emerging from a disturbed family of addicted or insane male siblings and four unusual sisters struggling under a violent alcoholic clergyman father. Alfred was certainly statuesque, but would he end up a block of unformed stone like his equally promising brothers? He was youngest of three equally regarded Tennyson brothers at Cambridge, all bright, handsome, and talented, in fact Alfred regarded by some as less promising than his elders who also wrote poetry. Yet Alfred wrote one of his major poems, “The Kraken,” at twenty, revealing both his talent, his interest in geological forces, and the haunting creature that embodied his anxieties. While Holmes focuses on Tennyson of the 1830s and 1840s, he can’t tell his story without exploring his involvement with the Victorian intellectual upheaval. Tennyson was fascinated by new scientific perspectives, following the latest findings as soon as books and articles were published. He was especially taken with Charles Lyell’s deep studies of geology and the discovery of fossils and a timeline of the planet’s development that did much to question fundamental religious assumptions. The impact of these discoveries is reflected in Tennyson’s poetry and led to the crisis in belief he shared with so many contemporaries. He was especially taken by the cycles of destruction and renewal that informed the struggles he confronted in In Memoriam, Maud, and Idylls of the King. Tennyson was only one of the eventual major figures at Cambridge at the same time, young men just beginning to realize their potential. Charles Darwin was at Christ College, although there is no evidence that he and Tennyson even met as students or later in life. Yet evolution became significant in Tennyson’s thinking and the issues of his poetry. One of Tennyson’s best and most important Cambridge friends was Edward FitzGerald, who became the translator of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and in their on and off relationship served as Tennyson’s harshest critic. FitzGerald was also a friend of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, the two of them partying in Paris as undergraduates. That connection led to a friendship between Thackeray and Tennyson. Others who came to play significant roles in Tennyson’s life were Thomas Carlyle, the Brownings, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Tennyson’s deepest friend at college was Arthur Hallam, who at twenty wrote a glowing review of Tennyson’s first poetry collection, travelled on European adventures with him, and fell in love with his sister Emily. Hallam was also regarded as one more very promising Cambridge student. His sudden death at twenty-two in Vienna from a stroke while travelling with his father devastated many friends, but perhaps Tennyson most of all. He did not write immediate poems of grief but took years to compile those collected in In Memoriam A.H.H., published in 1850, almost twenty years after Hallam’s death For all of Tennyson’s early poetic successes and successes, Holmes reveals him as an often troubled young man suffering periods of depression, fearing planetary upheaval, concerned about supporting himself, disappointed in romances, and worried that he would inherit the family’s mental illness tendencies. Yet despite his seeming withdrawals, he was always writing poetry that he kept private and would not let go, constantly revising. 1850 became a transformative year for Tennyson. He finally consented to publishing In Memoriam with a last-minute prologue that acknowledged God and perhaps convinced the religious Emily Sellwood to marry him after years of pursuit.. He opened up to Emily, revealing his struggles with fears of depression and “weird seizures.” The devastating event of that time was the stillborn death of his unnamed first son. It shook him, but Emily’s faith brought them closer and convinced him to believe in an afterlife. Two later sons survived. With the death of William Wordworth in April of 1950, Tennyson was named poet laureate at age forty-one, reluctantly accepting. It’s as if Tennyson’s life split in half in that year. He lived another forty years, now a recognized success, with the prestige of being an official poet writing patriotic verse, wealthy and revered, no longer the insecure young man seeking an outlet for his immense talent. He earned a place in the Authors deck, now dignified and in 1884 elevated to the peerage as Arthur, Lord Tennyson. Richard Holmes is the author of twenty previous books on the Romantics and Victorians, several of which received awards. The Boundless Deep was shortlisted for the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He captures the complex vicissitudes of Tennyson’s youth, illustrated by frequent excerpts from the poetry, placing that life in the full context of the shattering discoveries that led to an upheaval of thought in the Victorian age.
Video: Opinion | Who Really Controls Your Health Care?
In the first episode of Times Opinion’s new series “Divided,” a doctor and a former insurance executive confront a central question: Do insurance companies prioritize profit over patient care?
AI in the mental health care workforce is met with fear, pushback
Artificial intelligence tools that help mental health therapists take notes and keep records are quickly entering the marketplace. But some question the safety of AI in mental health care delivery.
Dricus Du Plessis reveals his favorite fighters
Everyone has favorite fighters they like to watch, or that they relate to for whatever reason. Former UFC middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis is no different. During a recent fan question and answer session, Du Plessis was asked which fighters he admired and why. "Stillknocks" listed mostly ...
Finding Trends in Sports Stats and ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Puzzles
Ben Blatt, a data reporter for The Upshot, dreams up inventive ways to answer questions like: “Is Taylor Swift actually increasing N.F.L. ratings?”
NC State political scientist Steven Greene on the war in Iran and NC's latest political earthquake
How is the war in Iran impacting the state of our politics? We’ll get some expert analysis on both that question and the latest political earthquake rippling through the North Carolina legislature in a two-part chat with NC State political scientist Steven Greene
Columbia stands to lose tens of millions as White House reopens push to cut science funding
Columbia stands to lose tens of millions in federal funding for fiscal year 2027 if Congress accepts a new budget request from President Donald Trump, released on Friday, which seeks to cut over $15 billion from federal science agencies.
Eligibility questions spark calls to suspend Minnesota’s $100 million ‘promise’ to small businesses
5 INVESTIGATES found several Minnesota Promise grant recipients appear to be operating miles outside of eligible neighborhoods, and others that may not be operating at all.
Ballots cast Tuesday, counted later: Surfside mayoral runoff results pushed to April 28, Judge rules
A Judge’s ruling creates a three-week window for additional mail-in ballots, allowing voters to request and submit them well beyond Election Day.
McConnell weighs in on Trump's proposed defense budget
Sen. Mitch McConnell, who leads the appropriations subcommittee on defense, said he welcomed "the president’s request for significant growth"
NYC health department has questions about the floating pool set for the East River
The pool’s creators are adding an emergency chlorine dosing system as they await health department approvals.
With the Easter Bunny at his side, Trump won’t stop talking about Iran
The White House Easter Egg Roll has evolved with the times, weathering wars and pandemics. And on Monday, it became the site of multiple presidential gaggles as President Donald Trump fielded questions about the war with Iran.
Trump’s Easter Egg Roll Appearance Raises Fresh Health Questions
He’s alive—and his hand is more purple than ever.
Chiefs make 'aggressive' 2026 scheduling request with NFL: Kansas City pushing hard to play in these two games
The Chiefs have circles two dates on the 2026 schedule that they definitely want to play in
Giants All-Pro DT Dexter Lawrence reportedly requests trade, not participating in OTAs
The Giants and Lawrence have reportedly been through two seasons attempting to negotiate a contract.
Do You Have Questions About a No-Bid Federal Contract? Tell Us Here.
The government is supposed to let many vendors compete for contracts, to get the best deal for taxpayers. We are looking at cases where it did not.
New Yorker profile of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman raises character questions
Sam Altman is one of the most powerful people in the world. Are we OK with that?
Gov. DeSantis says Samuel Alito writing opinion in case that will drive congressional redistricting
The outcome is allegedly beyond doubt, even as timing is a question mark.
YouTube’s copyright system strikes again.
Nvidia’s own DLSS 5 trailer was taken down from YouTube after an Italian TV channel — which reportedly used the footage in a segment about the upscaling tech — issued copyright takedown requests for videos using the same clips. The takedown requests impacted some creators using the footage as well. [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/nvidia-copyright-takedown.png?quality=90&strip=all]
‘Crimson Desert’ Has A Quest You Should Save Rollback To Avoid
Crimson Desert has a lot of quests, but there is one that you should avoid like the plague.
UnitedHealth makes a bet on AI. What does it mean for us?
A hep B trial raises ethical questions, the peptide hype, and more Morning Rounds news
Natural Gas Reliability as a Public Health Essential
Whether it’s a sprained wrist from trying to relive a childhood outdoor game, the sniffles from an unexpected rain shower on an evening walk, or questionable leftovers you knew may not be good; hospital trips happen every day. When anyone walks into a hospital, they expect machines to be working properly, temperatures to be comfortable, and equipment to be clean. The way patients rely on hospitals for care would not be […]
What Canada’s Euthanasia Surge Reveals About Single-Payer Health Care
For patients facing severe illness and suffering, the option is framed as an act of compassion. But its rapid expansion raises uncomfortable questions.
Live updates: Trump's massive military request faces tough climb, senator says
Get live updates and the latest news as Sen. Tim Kaine casts doubt on Trump's $1.5 trillion military request and Ruben Gallego considers a run for president in 2028.
Billionaire candidate for California governor catching heat for past business interests, wealth
Hedge fund founder Tom Steyer, among the top Democrats running for governor who has spent more than $100 million of his money on his campaign, faces questions about how he made his wealth.
Billionaire candidate for California governor catching heat for past business interests, wealth
Hedge fund founder Tom Steyer, among the top Democrats running for governor who has spent more than $100 million of his money on his campaign, faces questions about how he made his wealth.
Philly’s competitive U.S. House race narrows — but big questions loom
With about six weeks to go until Election Day, these are the big questions as three top candidates vie for the congressional seat held by retiring U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans.
Immigrant Seniors Lose Medicare Coverage Despite Paying for It
Rosa María Carranza has worked and paid taxes for more than two decades, but a provision in the GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill Act will make her and an estimated 100,000 other lawfully present immigrant seniors ineligible for Medicare. Now Carranza’s once secure retirement is in question.
Real Madrid open to Eduardo Camavinga sale
Real Madrid are open to selling French midfielder Eduardo Camavinga (23), according to a report from L’Équipe. Camavinga’s place in the France squad is being called into question ahead of the W...
String of deadly police shootings raising questions about mental health and law enforcement
There are five deadly police shootings under investigation in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, including calls tied to mental health crises.
Iran’s World Cup participation depends on relocation from US, minister says
Iran awaits FIFA's response after requesting relocation of its games to Mexico amid the US-Israeli war.
Sen. Tim Kaine says Congress will 'have a hard time' reviewing Trump's military budget request
The Virginia senator told "Meet the Press" he and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee would be "taking a look" at the request over the next few weeks.
Book Review: Streetwear's Conquest - Culture Captured, Politics Ignored
Concentrating on the strategies that enabled casualwear to grow worldwide, the book ignores the broader historical and political conditions that encouraged that success in the first place.
Celtics upgrade Nikola Vučević to questionable for Sunday's game vs. Raptors after 14-game absence
Gun sales at Academy Sports questioned in new report
Straw purchasers often supply guns to criminals through the firearms black market.
A Look At Penn Entertainment’s (PENN) Valuation After A Market Rally On Easing Macro Concerns
PENN Entertainment (PENN) moved following a broader market rally tied to potential de-escalation in Iran and more reassuring Federal Reserve comments on interest rates, raising questions about how much of the stock reaction is company specific. See our latest analysis for PENN Entertainment. That move sits within a mixed recent pattern, with a 7-day share price return of 7.26% but a 30-day share price return of 4.52% and a 1-year total shareholder return of 3.36%. Longer term performance,...
Cincinnati Bengals 2026 NFL Draft Preview
Despite having undeniable star power, the 2025 season was the worst for the Cincinnati Bengals since Joe Burrow‘s rookie season in 2020. From August to December, Cincinnati fans had to put up with one of the worst defenses in the league, a still-struggling offensive line and questionable play calling. Bengals Draft Picks: Thankfully, the Bengals […] The post Cincinnati Bengals 2026 NFL Draft Preview appeared first on The Lead.
“Threatened retaliation on first contact”: As I dig into a former Halo art director’s claims, I’m left questioning what else Microsoft didn’t want anyone to see.
New allegations from a former Halo Studios developer outline claims of misconduct and organisational issues, prompting questions around accountability and internal investigations at Microsoft.
As Trump orders UFO data released, a question hangs: If aliens exist, what would they think of us?
It came from outer space?
Album Review: 6WA by BigXthaPlug & 600 Entertainment
BigXthaPlug spent eight months in Nashville making a country-rap album that debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, put “All the Way” with Bailey Zimmerman at No. 4 on the Hot 100, got him a Rolling Stone cover, and filled arenas with Jelly Roll. And then he came back to Dallas, rounded up four of his signees, and made a gangsta-rap record with N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton on the cover. 6WA is the second group release from 600 Entertainment, named after the 600 block of Meadowridge Street in Ferris, Texas, where BigX and his people grew up. The whole thing is loaded with West Coast samples. From N.W.A.’s “8Ball,” Eazy-E’s “Real Muthaphuckkin G’s” and “Boyz-N-The-Hood,” Ice-T’s “6 in the Mornin’,” Snoop Dogg’s “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” and more. BigX is staking his name on the lineup he built—Rosama, MurdaGang PB, Yung Hood, KevanGotBandz, KaineMusic—and claiming a lineage from 1,400 miles away while insisting Dallas is its own thing. A million dollars in cash, split and handed straight to his mother. That’s the first place BigX goes on “From the Bottom.” He’d probably still be in the streets if he didn’t have his son and daughter. He only started rapping to make life better for Carter. Couldn’t start his car back then, now people get starstruck at Starbucks, and he throws the whole field away in one sentence: “How you think we competin’? You on the same bag, I just made me some millions off country.” Goyard bags off a Nashville payday, and he wants you to know exactly how far he’s come from everybody else. “Safe to Say” does something similar but looser. It’s a straight Ice Cube “It Was a Good Day” flip, and BigX nails it. Wakes up, checks both phones, nobody’s locked up, kid accounts look good. Gets pulled over, only catches a warning. Pulls up on the squad to liquor, ladies, and haze. Rosama takes the second verse and matches him. Wakes up to his girl cleaning his cuticles, twins playing peekaboo, pays off his car, calls a cousin, sees the opps and they don’t trip. Lawyer calls, he beat his case. Rosama is the strongest voice in the 600 camp after BigX, and “Life of a Gangster” is why. Third person, riding low, blacked-out windows, snub-nose revolver. A character who chose sticking people up over selling dope. “Quick eraser like a number-two pencil.” He never breaks character, and his delivery drops lower and slower than anything he does on the group cuts, like he’s telling you something at a cookout that he probably shouldn’t. Then on “Long Live Fre$h” he’s a completely different rapper. “Short-bus diamonds, these bitches retarded,” wide-body Durango he can’t even park. That kind of range matters on a group record. MurdaGang PB’s best verse is on the title track. Feds at his door at 6 AM, cameras busted, flushing dope, ram truck putting everybody on the floor. Yung Hood on “The Hottest” just lays out four reasons to keep hustling. Who wants to be broke, women cost money, you need bail, and home has to be straight. It’s funnier and more honest than most rappers get when they’re trying to explain why they sell drugs. KevanGotBandz on “Ain’t Never Slowin’ Down” talks about his father getting caught on the dope while he’s sitting on $300K somewhere in the hills, which is a specific kind of guilt that doesn’t usually make it onto crew tapes. KaineMusic, the newest signee, takes the back half of “Who Dunnit” and introduces herself in third person—“Took flight just to show these hoes how to perform”—but it’s too short to know if she can hold a full song. The flex tracks fill the middle of the LP and mostly run together. “I Go” is Rosama and PB trading brands, guns, and food punchlines. Rosama’s “anemic, my iron tucked low in this shirt” is a slick gun bar, PB fires back with “.223 with a clip ‘bout as big as a toddler” and “I go Burger King, stay with that whopper.” Quick, funny sometimes, but it’s all shopping lists. “Dopeman” is a chant. “6ixer Party” brings Snoop Dogg, who does exactly what you’d expect Snoop Dogg to do. BigX contributes the night’s wildest overshare: “She say she brought a friend too, well, I’m tryna put sausage on her dental.” These songs move fast and don’t overstay, but three or four of them could trade verses and nobody would catch it. Midway through, The D.O.C. shows up for a spoken-word interlude. Tracy Curry. West Dallas native, former N.W.A affiliate, co-writer on a lot of the records getting sampled on this very album. He thanks BigX for the tribute and then gets direct: “This your time, this DFW time. You need to do it like we do it down here.” Leave bread crumbs so everybody behind you can eat. Keep God in your life. It’s fatherly and generous, and it does raise the question of whether 6WA follows that advice. The album borrows heavy. The cover art, the Eazy-E samples, “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” opening with a direct “Boyz-N-The-Hood” lift, Yung Hood rapping “Flag on my left side, Crip until I die.” But the stuff that actually stays with you is Dallas. BigX talking about Pleasant Grove, Rosama calling himself a country boy, PB recounting a raid that could’ve been last Tuesday. The record smells most like itself when it smells like Ferris, Texas, and least like Compton. BigX on “The Hottest” says his father was the first person he knew who had chickens. Not the way rappers usually wave at the drug trade. He means his actual father, his actual family. On “600 Degrees,” Rosama compares his chopper’s stutter to a speech disorder, PB claims he still has the block on his back even after leaving the city. BigX closes that one saying he used to spin and smack, and now the plaques are platinum. Thirty-two minutes was right for this. Nobody overstays, Tony Coles and Rance and Charley Cooks keep the production punchy, and BigX gives his signees real room instead of crowding every song. 6WA doesn’t reinvent anything. Five rappers, good beats, short clock. Most of what they say you’ve heard before. Some of it—the million to his mother, the cuticles and peekaboo, the four reasons to hustle—you won’t forget. Solid (★★★½☆) Favorite Track(s): “Safe to Say,” “From the Bottom,” “The Hottest” Subscribe
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Having written a lot of model release blog posts, there’s something much harder about reviewing open models when they drop relative to closed models, especially in 2026. In recent years, there were so few open models, so when Llama 3 was released most people were still doing research on Llama 2 and super happy to get an update. When Qwen 3 was released, the Llama 4 fiasco had just gone down, and a whole research community was emerging to study RL on Qwen 2.5 — it was a no brainer to upgrade. Today, when an open model releases, it’s competing with Qwen 3.5, Kimi K2.5, GLM 5, MiniMax M2.5, GPT-OSS, Arcee Large, Nemotron 3, Olmo 3, and others. The space is populated, but still feels full of hidden opportunity. The potential of open models feels like a dark matter, a potential we know is huge, but few clear recipes and examples for how to unlock it are out there. Agentic AI, OpenClaw, and everything brewing in that space is going to spur mass experimentation in open models to complement the likes of Claude and Codex, not replace them. Especially with open models, the benchmarks at release are an extremely incomplete story. In some ways this is exciting, as new open models have a much higher variance and ability to surprise, but it also points at some structural reasons that make building businesses and great AI experiences around open models harder than the closed alternatives. When a new Claude Opus or GPT drops, spending a few hours with them in my agentic workflows is genuinely a good vibe test. For open models, putting them through this test is a category error. Something else to be said about open models in the era of agents is that they get out of the debate of integration, harnesses, and tools and let us see close to the ground on what exactly is the ability of just a model. Of course, we can’t test some things like search abilities without some tool, but being able to measure exactly the pace of progress of the model alone is a welcome simplification to a systematically opaque AI space. Share The list of factors I’d use to assess a new open-weight model I’m considering investing in includes: Model performance (and size) — how this model performs on benchmarks I care about and how it compares to other models of a similar size. Country of origin — some businesses care deeply about provenance, and if a model was built in China or not. Model license — if a model needs legal approval for use, uptake will be slower at mid-sized and large companies. Tooling at release — many models release with half-broken, or at least substantially slower, implementations in popular software like vLLM, Transformers, SGLANG, etc due to pushing the envelope of architectures or tools. Model fine-tunability — how easy or hard it is to modify the given model to your use-case when you actually try and use it. The core problem is that some of these are immediately available at release, e.g. general performance, license, origin, etc. but others such as tooling take day(s) to week(s) to stabilize, and others are open research questions — with no group systematically monitoring fine-tunability. In the early era of open models, the days of Llama 2 or 3 and Qwen pre v3.5, the architectures were fairly simple and the models tended to work out of the box. Some of this was due to the extremely hard work of the Llama, Qwen, Mistral, etc. developer teams. Some is due to the new models being genuinely harder to work with. When it comes to something like Qwen 3.5 or Nemotron 3, with hybrid models (either gated delta net or mamba layers), the tooling is very rough at release. Things you would expect to “just work” often don’t. I’ve been following this area closely since we released Olmo Hybrid with a similar architecture, and Qwen 3.5 is just starting to work well in the various open-source tools that need to all play nice together for RL research. That’s 1.5 months after the release date! This is just to start really investing more into understanding the behavior of the models. Of course, others started working on these models sooner by investing more engineering resources or relying on partially closed software. The fully open and distributed ecosystem takes a long time to get going on some new models. All of this is lead-in for the most important question for open models — how easy is it to adapt to specific use-cases? This is a different problem for different model sizes. Large MoE open-weight models may be used by entities like Cursor who need complex capabilities in their domain, e.g. Composer 2 trained on Kimi K2.5. Other applications can be built on much smaller models, such as Chroma’s Context-1 model for agentic search, built on GPT-OSS 20B. The question of “which models are fine-tunable” is largely background knowledge known by engineers across the industry. There should be a thriving research area here to support the open ecosystem model. The first step is to understand characteristics of different base and post-trained models to understand what they look like. The second step is to tune pretraining recipes for open models so they’re more flexible. Interconnects AI is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe For The ATOM Project and other Interconnects endeavors, we’ve put in substantial effort to measuring adoption trends in the open ecosystem. Everything takes a long time to unfold after a model is first publicly available — and adaptability is why. What we know for sure now, when Qwen has been going from strength to strength with its releases, is that technical staff across the industry has gotten comfortable working with Qwen models. Countless research methods and datasets were made to work with Qwen. It’ll take patience for any other model family to get to this point — a patience I’m not sure many open model builders have. This takes us to Gemma 4, Google’s latest open models. Gemma 3 was released more than a year ago, in March of 2025, and is a bit underrated. Gemma 4 comes in 4 sizes for now, with a bigger, MoE model of over 100B total parameters rumored but not released yet. The models we have today come in sizes of ~5B dense, 8B dense, 26B total 4B active MoE, and 31B dense. I’m most excited that they’re finally adopting a standard Apache 2.0 open source license. This’ll massively boost adoption. The standard of better licenses for strong open-weight LLMs was set by mostly Chinese open model labs in the last 1-2 years, and now U.S. companies are following suit. I will personally be so happy if the horrible Llama licenses and Gemma terms of service were an ~18-month transient dynamic of the industry being nervous about releasing strong open models. The Gemma 4 scores look very solid, the small models have incredible benchmark scores (especially in general domains like LMArena) and the 31B model rivals the recent Qwen 3.5 27B, which is the leading member of that class. The ~30B size range is an important one, as it’s accessible both to researchers and to enterprises looking to deploy the model in real use-cases. Where the 7B model scale is the default for tinkering and research, a 30B model is the default for seeing if an open model can unlock substantial value in your specific workflow — a good mix of intelligence, low price, tractability for downstream training, etc. This takes us back to the above adoption criteria I mentioned for open models and the bigger question — do I think Gemma 4 will be an overwhelming success? Previous Gemma models have been plagued by tooling issues and poorer performance when being finetuned. Gemma 4’s success is going to be entirely determined by ease of use, to a point where a 5-10% swing on benchmarks wouldn’t matter at all. It’s strong enough, small enough, with the right license, and from the U.S., so many companies are going to slot it in. I’m cautiously optimistic that Gemma 4 is going to work better here. Winds are shifting for open models built in America. We saw GPT-OSS go through a bumpy launch to become an overwhelming success. There’s a collective energy around the likes of Reflection, Arcee, Nemotron, Gemma, Olmo, and peers that show substantial demand for building new stacks around open models. There’s capital to be spent on AI stacks across the economy by those who want more ownership of everything, including the model. After launching The ATOM Project 240 days ago, the conversation is shifting into the next stage. Summer of 2025 was a crisis moment where the U.S. AI scene realized it can’t wait and figure out open models after building AGI. The two markets will capture different areas and proceed in parallel. Now that more companies in the U.S. are releasing strong models, we need to improve the ecosystem so that these models are easy to use, understand, and build value around. It’s the hard work to build another inflection point in these adoption plots I’ve been updating consistently, but that’s the work to be done. Join me in it. More data coming soon! Here’s a sneak peek:
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