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After his Reflecting Pool vandalism case is dismissed, David Hearn looks for closure
The ex-Olympian accused of damaging the reflecting pool tells NPR the experience has been "Orwellian" and "Kafkaesque." And it's not over yet: His lawyers are fighting to close the case permanently.
Part of G10 parking garage closed as Neyland Entertainment District construction begins
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — The University of Tennessee has closed part of the G10 parking garage as work begins on the Neyland Stadium Entertainment Project that will transform part of the waterfron…
Saber's newest game trailer takes a shot at Gearbox's CEO, if you look closely
The first hint that something might be up with the recent debut trailer for Saber Interactive’s Rideshare Stimulator is an unusual choice of words—aside from that second one in the game’s title. “Don’t take your passengers too seriously,” the trailer’s narrator says, as he describes this upcoming game. It a car game about the gig work of driving eccentric people to their destinations, a riff on Crazy Taxi. And then, he says: “When I think I’ve met the randiest of passengers, someone even stranger gets in.” “Randiest”? That suggests “randy,” which usually means having strong sexual desire. Yet none of the oddball backseat occupants featured in the trailer seem particularly lustful. One is an old man who considers his grandson a failure, another shares the theory that birds might control traffic lights, another says he’s banned from an aquarium. A little later, there’s a license plate, shown 63 seconds into the trailer, on the front of an SUV: USB DRV It’s a Texas plate. The symbol between those letters is a cog wheel. If you know, you know. That’s a reference to Texas-based Borderlands game development studio Gearbox Software (their logo features a cog wheel). More specifically, it’s a reference to Gearbox’s CEO Randy Pitchford, who in 2018 found himself explaining the nature of video he’d saved on a USB drive that was found at a Medieval Times restaurant before being returned to the studio: “It was ‘barely legal’ porn. This girl’s handle was ‘Only 18.’” The “girl” in the video had committed a solo sex act that Pitchford, an avid practitioner of magic, found remarkable. “I realized, this is not a sex worker…This is a fucking magician.” Back then, the USB drive was central to competing lawsuits against Gearbox by the studio’s former lawyer and by Gearbox against him. A settlement in late 2019 “exonerated” Pitchford, per the Hollywood Reporter. The USB story has resurfaced at times, now in a trailer from a company that not long ago was corporate brethren with Gearbox. Saber vs. Gearbox The head of Saber told Game File that the reference is payback. “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4,” Saber CEO Matt Karch told me when I asked him about the license plate. “Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.” Having interviewed Karch during a cross-country flight in late 2024, I can confirm that Karch was unimpressed with Pitchford during their time both working in the Embracer group. I’d approached him not out of surprise that there was animosity but that it was manifesting publicly now. Gearbox was founded in 1999, worked on a port of Halo early on, and developed hit series such as the loot-based sci-fi shooter Borderlands before it was purchased by The Embracer Group in early 2021 for $363 million (with a possible earn-out of over $1 billion, if certain targets were hit by 2027). Saber was founded in 2001, worked on a remaster of Halo early on, had a big hit with zombie shooter World War Z and was purchased by Embracer in early 2020 for $150 million, with a potential earn-out of up to $375 million. For a few years, the Embracer group was a voracious acquirer of game studios. Then, as investment dried up, it choked. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber to an investment company controlled by Saber CEO Matt Karch, and it sold Gearbox in an all-stock deal to long-time Borderlands publisher Take Two Interactive. Other studios were shut down. Hundreds of developers were laid off. Gearbox didn’t say much about their Embracer experience, nothing too direct, at least. In the summer 2024, Pitchford told reporter and occasional Game File contributor Nicole Carpenter that Borderlands 4’s story was in some way thematically connected to Gearbox’s experience at Embracer: “There’s this cultural and emotional shift in me, personally, and at the studio. What does it mean to trade some autonomy for organization?” When Borderlands 4 came out, there was something stranger: the matter of “Embracer’s Bluff,” a location in the game featuring an AI-powered toilet and a large trash dump, according to a detailed Kotaku account of the place. Gearbox never commented on it; Take Two never got back to me about it when I asked them last year. By contrast, since Saber exited Embracer, Karch has been one of Embracer’s biggest defenders, casting their management as well-meaning and supportive despite the layoffs and studio closures that resulted from their excessive expansion. Like others, Saber’s Karch saw Embracer’s as a shot. With Rideshare Stimulator’s trailer, he’s returned fire. “It’s amazing to me how fast people forget those who went above and beyond for them,” Karch told Game File. A rep for Gearbox did not comment by press time. Game File is a reader-supported publication. Your backing makes my reporting—including any coverage of trailer-based beefs—possible. Good news! I’m currently running Game File’s first big sale of 2026. You can get a one-year subscription for 23% off. Click here to take advantage of the limited-time offer. And thank you for your support! Item 2: In brief… 🚫 Wal-Mart has laid off the staff of Restart, a games media outlet launched in 2024, Aftermath reports. 🟥 A GTA VI preview is on the way, at last, via an “extended look” that will premiere, unusually, on Netflix at 3pm ET on August 27, then officially go live elsewhere six hours later. Last week, Game File noted that Take Two label Rockstar Games is overdue for showing off GTA VI, based on the timing of the initial hands-off previews of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. During a call with investors, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders for GTA VI were “unprecedented and astonishing,” but added the company can’t predict how many of those pre-orders represent bonus sales vs. sales that otherwise would have been made at launch. During the same call, Zelnick was noticeably bullish on the future of playing games over streaming cloud connections (predicting wider adoption in three or so years). He sounded unbothered by Sony’s plans to stop making discs for new games (he said the business is 90% digital already and predicted that there could still be limited edition physical editions of games “in the same way there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business.”) 👀 Take Two wrote off $43 million in their spring quarter after deciding “not to proceed with further development of an unannounced title in its pipeline from a third-party developer.” 🤔 Some rare age-demographics from a big publisher: Capcom recently told investors that “users in their 20s account for approximately half of the users of both Pragamata and Resident Evil Requiem.” Item 3: The week ahead Tuesday, August 11 Game releases: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (Switch 2; already out for PC, PS5, Xbox) continues the Bethesda strategy of putting Elder Scrolls games on everything; Royalty Free-For-All is a Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose brawling with Oliver Twist in a stage based on the original Little Shop of Horrors movie. Wednesday, August 12 Game release: Pro Jank Footy (PC, console) is an arcade-style Australian Rules Football game with increasingly ridiculous rules, the more you play (I enjoyed the Steam demo) Thursday, August 13 Game release: Super Mario Sunshine (Switch 2, originally released in 2002 on the GameCube) is released for Switch 2’s Nintendo Switch Online service. This game is the black sheep of 3D Mario games. It’s the successor to the breakthrough Super Mario 64 and the rare Mario game built around a single (vacation resort) theme. Mario’s got a water-spraying backpack, a Yoshi pal and a lot of blue coins to collect.
D-backs to DFA former Seattle Mariners closer Paul Sewald
The Arizona Diamondbacks are moving on from Paul Sewald, who had three strong seasons with the Seattle Mariners and has 24 saves this year.
5 SWLA residents accused of stealing equipment from closed business near Crowley
Five Southwest Louisiana residents are among several people accused of stealing from a vacant building off I-10 near Crowley.
HeyDay Entertainment to close Norman location after selling to Oklahoma Turnpike Authority
HeyDay Entertainment announced on Monday that it will be closing its Norman location on August 28 after reaching an agreement to sell its property to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority for planned hig…
California may fine content creators who don't disclose they were paid to post about politics
States are debating whether to crack down on social media influencers making political advertisements without disclosing that they were paid.
After 41 Years, Super Mario Bros. Players Are Close to Achieving a Perfect Playthrough
Speedrunners have nearly pulled off the impossible
HeyDay Entertainment’s Norman location to shut down Aug. 28, 2026
HeyDay Entertainment has announced that its Norman location will close on Friday, Aug. 28, 2026, due to the planned highway construction by the Oklahoma Turnpik
Singhs Vietnamese shuts down San Antonio locations after eight years in business
Singhs Vietnamese has permanently closed both San Antonio locations after not reopening from an August break. Co-founder Eric Treviño confirmed the 8-year banh mi and bowl concept has ended; no reason given.
Singhs Vietnamese shuts down San Antonio locations after eight years in business
Singhs Vietnamese has permanently closed both San Antonio locations after not reopening from an August break. Co-founder Eric Treviño confirmed the 8-year banh mi and bowl concept has ended; no reason given.
HeyDay Entertainment to sell to Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, close later this month
HeyDay Entertainment announced in a press release Monday it will close its Norman location following an agreement to sell the property to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority.
Yankees Named Offseason Trade Suitor for Superstar Closer
The New York Yankees made some notable moves ahead of the 2026 MLB Trade Deadline. They made some upgrades to their roster, as they brought in infielder Luis Garcia Jr. from the Washington Nationals and outfielder Heliot Ramos from the San Francisco Giants. They also traded reliever Camilo Doval to the Pittsburgh Pirates after he […] The post Yankees Named Offseason Trade Suitor for Superstar Closer appeared first on HEAVY.
HeyDay Entertainment to close Norman location after sale to OTA
HeyDay Entertainment announced Monday that it will close its Norman location to the public Aug. 28 after reaching an agreement to sell the property to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority for
New FDA rule may require food manufacturers to disclose new additives
U.S. health officials want food manufacturers to provide more information about new additives and ingredients.
California may fine content creators who don't disclose they were paid to post about politics
States are debating whether to crack down on social media influencers making political advertisements without disclosing that they were paid.
Hemp businesses ask federal judge to block Virginia’s new THC cap
Seven Virginia hemp businesses are asking a federal judge to block new restrictions on consumable hemp products, arguing the changes will wipe out much of their inventory, trigger layoffs and force some companies to close when they take effect on Aug. 15.
Inter vs. Real Betis, where to watch it on TV
The beginning of the new season is getting closer and Inter are preparing for their final friendly before the league starts: on Saturday 15 August at 19:30 CEST, the Nerazzurri will face Real Betis at...
Dell XPS 13 (2026) review: A MacBook Neo alternative that needs more RAM
There’s a lot to like about the XPS 13, but most people should shell out for 16GB of RAM.
New Penn Vet research moves science closer to a solution to male infertility
By converting human skin or blood cells into stem cells and coaxing them into early-stage human sperm cells, researchers are furthering the understanding of how sperm cells are formed.
This sports retailer's turnaround is just getting started, Wells Fargo says
Wells Fargo's price target for Dick's Sporting Goods implies 15% upside from Friday's close, a new analyst note shows.
Hemp businesses ask federal judge to block Virginia’s new THC cap
Seven Virginia hemp businesses are asking a federal judge to block new restrictions on consumable hemp products, arguing the changes will wipe out much of their inventory, trigger layoffs and force some companies to close when they take effect on Aug. 15. The lawsuit, filed July 31 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, challenges a new provision in the state budget that will eliminate an exception for products containing more than 2 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) per package when they also contain at least 25 times as much cannabidiol (CBD).
Teddy Bridgewater Steps Away From the NFL Again
Teddy Bridgewater is stepping away from the NFL once again, bringing another chapter of his unique football career to a close. Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell announced Sunday that Bridgewater is leaving the team and is expected to retire from football. The 33-year-old quarterback had returned to Detroit after spending the 2025 season with…
Eagles' QB2 Battle Is Still Too Close to Call
One of the key training camp battles for the Philadelphia Eagles was who would be the backup for Jalen Hurts: Tanner McKee or Andy Dalton. While Dalton currently has the slight edge, the race is not over just yet. Last season, McKee served as the second quarterback, starting in Week 18 against the Washington Commanders when the Eagles decided to rest their starters heading into the playoffs.
Haywood Road repaving begins as west Asheville businesses and drivers brace for disruption
Starting today, a 2-mile stretch of Haywood Road in west Asheville will close for repaving work.
Forgotten Cowboys QB is Quietly Winning Position Battle
The position battles at Dallas Cowboys training camp are only going to get more intense as the weeks go on.One that is sparking interest from the fan base is the QB2 battle behind Dak Prescott. Joe Milton III and Sam Howell have been in a very close race through two weeks.With not much separating Milton […] The post Forgotten Cowboys QB is Quietly Winning Position Battle appeared first on HEAVY.
3 Takeaways From the Giants' Final Practice in West Virginia
The legendary John Denver song "Country Roads" speaks glowingly about West Virginia, but the New York Giants are surely ready for someone to take them home to the northeast. The Giants closed their 11-day residency at The Greenbrier with one final practice Saturday. Here are three impressions of how things went in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
FULL SHOW: Inside INdiana Business 8/9/26
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California may fine content creators who don't disclose they were paid to post about politics
California and other states are debating whether to crack down on social media influencers making political advertisements without disclosing that they were paid.
Liverpool Starlet Abe On the Mark in U-21 Draw
Liverpool look to open the Andoni Iraola Era at Anfield in a few hours with a pre-season friendly against AS Monaco and most Reds fans are likely a mix of shades of eager and anxious. Eager because each day we get closer to the season means we get to revel – and commiserate – in […]
Fauci Contempt Vote Reflects the Enduring Politics of COVID
Experts say the focus on COVID grievances shows that some wounds it opened were never closed
WEBTOON ENTERTAINMENT Q2 2026 Earnings Preview: Recent $WBTN Insider Trading, Hedge Fund Activity, and More
WEBTOON ENTERTAINMENT ($WBTN) is expected to release its quarterly earnings data on Monday, August 10th after market close, per Finnhub. Analysts are expecting revenue of $346,249,710 and earnings of -$0.07 per share.You can see Quiver Quantitative's $WBTN stock page to track data on insider trading, hedge fund activity, congressional trading, and more.WEBTOON ENTERTAINMENT RevenueWEBTOON ENTERTAINMENT had revenues of $320.9M in Q1 2026. This is
5 Anker Accessories That Are Better Than Their Competitors
These Anker products earned top marks from reviewers and customers, while direct comparisons showed why they beat their closest rivals.
Orange County restaurants shut down by health inspectors (July 30-Aug. 6)
There were 14 restaurants and food establishments ordered closed by Orange County inspectors from July 30 to Aug. 6.
The Atlanta Braves Have a Raisel Iglesias Problem
The Atlanta Braves have a problem regrading closer Raisel Iglesias' performance since July 1st.
Homewood restaurant briefly closed over 48 health score: Jefferson County’s worst July 2026 inspections
Inspectors cited restaurants for live roaches, flies, gnats, mold, grime and food out of temperature.
Can would-be buyer afford to take over more Chicago-area hospitals?
Insight Health Systems is in talks to take over West Suburban Medical Center and Weiss Memorial Hospital, which closed in the last year. But records show its Chicago hospital has money troubles.
‘It’s been chaotic’: Trump’s immigration crackdown prompts worries from industry groups
Industry groups ranging from construction to agriculture are raising concerns with the Trump administration over its ongoing immigration crackdown, arguing it is undercutting President Donald Trump’s agenda and weakening the economy, according to multiple groups who spoke with CNN and sources close to the White House.
Aston Villa closing in on €20m Matteo Ruggeri deal
The deal is not yet finalised, but Villa are close to agreeing personal terms with the Italian left-back.
Flutter Entertainment (FLUT) On Guidance Cuts And Losses Still Looks Undervalued
Guidance cut, net loss and delisting put Flutter Entertainment in focus Flutter Entertainment (NYSE:FLUT) is under close watch after a Q2 2026 net loss, a cut to full year revenue guidance and confirmation that its shares now trade only on the New York Stock Exchange. The shift in guidance reflects higher investment to build U.S. market share and the impact of specific sports results on revenue. These moves, together with the London delisting, are shaping how investors reassess Flutter...
Aaron Donald Responds to Rams Return Buzz After Practice Appearance
Los Angeles Rams star Aaron Donald is getting closer to coming back, and on Friday, August, he finally spoke about his possible return. The post Aaron Donald Responds to Rams Return Buzz After Practice Appearance appeared first on LA Sports Report.
Jays Survive Near Collapse, Beat Phillies 5-4
That was stressful, especially after yesterday’s nightmare ending. It was close all game, with the Jays just edging out to what seemed like a comfortable lead in the late innings before nearly throwing it all away again in the ninth. In the end they hung on by a fingernail. The deadline additions played a huge […]
California may fine content creators who don't disclose they were paid to post about politics
States are debating whether to crack down on social media influencers making political advertisements without disclosing that they were paid
California May Fine Content Creators Who Don't Disclose They Were Paid to Post About Politics
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Weeks before voting ended in California's primary for governor, Los Angeles-based influencer Shaka Smith took to Instagram to tell his more than 700,000 followers whom he was voting for and why. “Healthcare shouldn't bankrupt you, housing should not feel impossible,
Could the last time a Democrat was elected Ohio governor foreshadow this year's election?
Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland was elected governor twenty years ago this November, and recent polls indicate the race for Ohio governor this year is close.
Popular Tex-Mex Chain Closes All Locations After 17 Years in Business
The restaurant chain was founded in Florida in 2009
Bills heading back to Orchard Park to open new stadium
The Bills closed out this part of training camp at St. John Fisher University outside Rochester and packed up for home base back in Buffalo.
Judge orders Meta to pay hundreds of millions over kids’ mental health
Meta says it will appeal the order by a New Mexico judge that said the social media giant has to pay close to one billion dollars to address how its apps have contributed to harm to children. NBC News’ Brian Cheung reports.
Jahmyr Gibbs: The contract process was extremely stressful
There was reason to believe that Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs was close to signing a contract extension on Thursday morning when he suited up for practice for the first time at training camp and those thoughts became a reality when news of an agreement broke later in the day.
Ravens to sign LB Jamon Johnson
The Ravens will close out the week by adding a linebacker.
Seattle’s Old Rainier Brewery is for sale for $29 million
A piece of Seattle history is on the market, and it could be yours for $29 million.
THQ Nordic Showcase 2026: All The News, Trailers, And Reveals
From Abba DLC to whole lot of classic Gothic, here’s a closer look at every announcement from the THQ Nordic Showcase.
MU Health Care's South Providence medical building temporarily closed
One of MU Health Care’s buildings was temporarily closed on Friday.The South Providence Medical Building closed at noon on August 7, and would remain closed thr
Downtown Sarasota business closing after being open 27 years
Downtown Sarasota business is closing after 27 years on Main Street, ending a longtime local tradition filled with memories
Downtown Sarasota is losing a beloved business after 27 years
Downtown Sarasota is losing a beloved Main Street business after 27 years, bringing an emotional end to a longtime local favorite
PA Pork names new inaugural Penn State Sports Nutrition Fellow
Chritz will work closely with Penn State Sports Nutrition while serving as a nutrition ambassador for Pennsylvania Pork Producers Council.
Forsyth County Health and Human Services Campus Closed due to Outages
Forsyth County Health and Human Services Campus Closed due to Outages
Business Restructuring Review Vol. 25 No. 4 July-August 2026
In This Issue New York Bankruptcy Court: Premature Allegations of Creditor Mistreatment Insufficient to Deny Chapter 15 Recognition of Foreign Restructuring Proceeding In In re ARD Finance, S.A., No. 25-12794 (MG), 2026 WL 817458 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Mar. 25, 2026), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York was presented with a petition seeking chapter 15 recognition of Luxembourg's recently enacted bankruptcy law governing judicial reorganization proceedings. The court granted the petition, turning aside challenges to recognition voiced by a creditor group arguing that recognition should be denied based upon allegations of unfairness to creditors in the Luxembourg proceeding that would make recognition manifestly contrary to U.S. public policy. According to the bankruptcy court, recognition was warranted because: (i) the rules and procedures governing the proceeding under Luxembourg law were fundamentally fair; (ii) the petition otherwise satisfied chapter 15's recognition requirements; and (iii) the creditor group's allegations were premature, given the fact that the Luxembourg court presiding over the debtor's restructuring proceeding had not confirmed a restructuring plan, and all creditors had the right to participate fully and voice their objections in the proceeding (including the right to appeal an order approving a plan). [read more …] Florida Bankruptcy Court Examines Scope of Discovery in Chapter 15 Cases In In re Banco Master, S.A., No. 25-24568-SMG, 2026 WL 931729 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. Apr. 6, 2026), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida granted in part and denied in part post-recognition motions filed by an insider of a foreign debtor seeking to bar or limit discovery sought by the debtor's foreign representative concerning allegedly voidable transfers involving the debtors' U.S. real property. According to the court: (i) although chapter 15 includes its own discovery provisions among the relief that may be granted to a foreign representative, the expansive discovery available in cases under other chapters of the Bankruptcy Code is also available in chapter 15 cases; (ii) the discovery sought by the foreign representative was permissible; (iii) discovery regarding matters that were the subject of a pending adversary proceeding had to be undertaken under the more restrictive rules applicable to such proceedings; and (iv) a discovery request would be barred to the extent that it sought production of documents or testimony from a subpoenaed entity that exceeded the geographic limitations specified in such rules. [read more …] Delaware District Court Affirms Chapter 15 Recognition Order Enforcing Nonconsensual Third-Party Releases In U.S. Int'l Dev. Fin. Corp. v. Credito Real S.A.B. de C.V. SOFOM, E.N.R. (In re Credito Real S.A.B. de C.V. SOFOM, E.N.R.), 677 B.R. 192 (D. Del. 2026), appeal filed, No. 26-2356 (3d Cir. June 5, 2026), the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware affirmed a bankruptcy court order granting chapter 15 recognition to a Mexican "concurso mercantile" proceeding and enforcing nonconsensual third-party releases approved by the Mexican court. Agreeing with the bankruptcy court that the releases were not manifestly contrary to U.S. public policy, the district court concluded: "It is well settled that U.S. bankruptcy courts can give effect to foreign orders in recognized foreign proceedings pursuant to the authority granted in Chapter 15, even when those orders contain relief unavailable under U.S. law. [The appellant's] arguments misconstrue the Supreme Court's narrow holding in Purdue, applicable in Chapter 11 cases, as well as the statutory framework of Chapter 15 and its core policy objectives. Accordingly, I will affirm the Enforcement Order." The ruling has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. [read more …] Fifth Circuit: Bankruptcy Court, Not State Court, Had Jurisdiction to Allow or Disallow Administrative Expense Claim In Storey Minerals Ltd. v. EP Energy E&P Co., LP (Matter of EP Energy E&P Co., LP), 169 F.4th 609 (5th Cir. 2026), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed lower courts' rulings disallowing a creditor's administrative expense claim. It also rejected the creditor's argument that, because the claims were predicated on state law, a state court should adjudicate the merits of the state law causes of action before the bankruptcy court could allow or disallow the claim as an administrative expense. According to the Fifth Circuit, even though the causes of action were based on state law, the bankruptcy court had jurisdiction to determine whether the creditor's claims should be conferred with administrative expense priority in the debtors' chapter 11 case. [read more …] New York Bankruptcy Court: Dismissal of Involuntary Chapter 11 Case Filed Prior to Commencement of Foreign Restructuring Proceeding Unwarranted In In re Xinyuan Real Estate Co. Ltd., No. 25-10745 (PB), 2026 WL 592250 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Mar. 3. 2026), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York considered the bona fides of an involuntary chapter 11 petition filed by certain holders of U.S. dollar-denominated notes against a holding company for a group of Chinese property development companies that filed a restructuring proceeding in the Cayman Islands after the noteholders filed the involuntary chapter 11 petition. The court denied the debtor's motion to dismiss the chapter 11 case. Given the timing of the filing of the Cayman Islands restructuring proceeding, the absence of any progress in the proceeding for seven months, the debtor's need to restructure notes governed by U.S. law, and the debtor's lack of any meaningful contacts to the Cayman Islands, dismissal of the chapter 11 case was unwarranted under the applicable provision of the Bankruptcy Code, international comity, or the doctrine of forum non conveniens. [read more …] Bankruptcy Court Evaluates Trustee's Authority to Sell Avoidance Actions and Right of Target Defendants to Object In In re Law Enf't Officers Sec. Union, No. 24-70277-JAD, 2026 WL 560452 (Bankr. W.D. Pa. Feb. 27, 2026), a chapter 7 trustee sought court approval to sell certain avoidance actions to a creditor of the debtor's estate. Potential targets of the subject avoidance actions objected, arguing that such claims were nontransferable powers of the trustee rather than saleable estate property and urging the court to approve their competing settlement with the trustee. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania disagreed with the potential defendants, holding that they lacked standing to object to the proposed sale, that avoidance actions are indeed estate property, and that the sale—rather than the settlement—best served the estate's interests. [read more …] U.S. Supreme Court Bankruptcy Roundup in Brief In Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction Inc., No. 25-6, 2026 WL 1686028 (U.S. June 11, 2026), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Fifth Circuit decision judicially estopping a chapter 13 debtor from asserting a personal injury claim against a construction company because the debtor failed to disclose the claim during his bankruptcy case. In so ruling, the Court held that "[t]he Fifth Circuit erred by artificially narrowing its inquiry to whether the debtor had knowledge of the underlying facts or a potential motive to conceal the claim." It represents the first time that the Court has applied judicial estoppel in the bankruptcy context, although it has suggested in other contexts that it may be inappropriate where an inconsistent legal position resulted from "inadvertence or mistake." Also in June, the Court denied petitions for certiorari in a few notable bankruptcy cases. [read more …] Newsworthy Heather Lennox (Cleveland/New York) (Star Individual), Bruce Bennett (Los Angeles) (Senior Statesperson), Kevyn D. Orr (Washington) (Eminent Practitioner), Gregory M. Gordon (Dallas) (Band 1), Carl E. Black (Cleveland), Corinne Ball (New York) (Senior Statesperson), Brad B. Erens (Chicago), Jeffrey B. Ellman (Atlanta), T. Daniel Reynolds (Cleveland), and Dan T. Moss (Washington/New York) were recognized as leading lawyers in the practice area Bankruptcy/Restructuring in the 2026 edition of Chambers USA: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business. The 2026 edition of Lawdragon 500 Leading Bankruptcy and Restructuring Lawyers ranked the following lawyers: Corinne Ball (New York) (Hall of Fame), Bruce Bennett (Los Angeles), Carl E. Black (Cleveland), Jeffrey B. Ellman (Atlanta), Brad B. Erens (Chicago), Gregory M. Gordon (Dallas), Heather Lennox (Cleveland/New York), Joshua M. Mester (Los Angeles), and Kevyn D. Orr (Washington). Fabienne Beuzit (Paris) and Jasper Berkenbosch (Amsterdam) were among the "Leading Individuals" ranked in the 2026 edition of The Legal 500 EMEA guide in the field of Restructuring and Insolvency or Insolvency. Rodolphe Carrière (Paris) was named a "Next Generation Partner" in the practice area Insolvency. Sid Pepels (Amsterdam) was selected by Global Restructuring Review's 40 under 40 2026. He was identified as a Rising Star within the global cross-border restructuring community. Global Restructuring Review is a leading digital subscription service, news outlet, and information platform dedicated exclusively to cross-border insolvency and corporate restructuring law. Fabienne Beuzit (Paris), Rodolphe Carrière (Paris), and Isabelle Maury (Paris) were recognized in the 2027 edition of The Best Lawyers in France™ in the practice area Insolvency and Reorganization Law. An article written by Corinne Ball (New York) titled "Comity and Fairness are Critical to Granting Additional Assistance under Chapter 15: A Canadian Reverse Vesting Order and Related Releases in Proceedings Involving Canadian and U.S.-Affiliated Companies Are Approved" was published in the June 24, 2026, edition of the New York Law Journal. An article written by Caitlin K. Cahow (Detroit) titled "New York Bankruptcy Court Weighs In on Adequate Assurance of Future Performance under Assigned Leases and Chapter 11 Plan Exculpation Provisions" was published on June 8, 2026, in Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Trisha L. Mowbray (Real Estate; Chicago) and Ryan Sims (Washington) titled "Chapter 11 Plan that Abridged Non-Debtor Lessee's Rights to Remain in Possession After Rejection Unconfirmable as Having Been Proposed in Bad Faith" was published on June 16, 2026, in the Harvard Law School Bankruptcy Roundtable. An article written by Dan T. Moss (Washington/New York), Corinne Ball (New York), Isel M. Perez (Miami), and David S. Torborg (Washington) titled "Texas Bankruptcy Court Adopts Barnet Rule Requiring Foreign Debtor to Have U.S. Assets to Be Eligible for Chapter 15 Relief" was published on June 10, 2026, in Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Daniel J. Merrett (Atlanta) and Nathaniel Parr (Atlanta) titled "Southern District of Texas Clarifies Post-Purdue Course for Consensual Third-Party Releases and Gatekeeping Provisions" was published on June 11, 2026, in Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Corinne Ball (New York) titled "LMEs, Sophisticated Investors and Equitable Mootness: The Fifth and Third Circuits Warn Against Testing the Limits of Chapter 11" was published in the June 2026 issue of the American Bankruptcy Institute Journal. Nicholas J. Morin (New York) was quoted in an article titled "Serta Ruling Offers Damages Road Map in Lender-on-Lender Disputes," published by Bloomberg Law on July 7, 2026. The article discussed U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez's July 7, 2026, ruling that participating lenders in Serta Simmons Bedding's 2020 non-pro rata uptier exchange breached the credit agreement's ratable-sharing provision, and awarding excluded lenders more than $261 million in damages. The opinion resolves six years of litigation related to Serta's 2020 transaction, where it raised $200 million in new financing and exchanged $1.2 billion of term loans for $875 million in superpriority debt. Judge Lopez found that the debt-for-debt exchange constituted a "payment" under the credit agreement, requiring proportional sharing among lenders, and dismissed various defenses raised by the participating lenders. The case is Serta Simmons Bedding LLC v. AG Centre Street Partnership (In re Serta Simmons Bedding LLC), 2026 WL 1968535 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. Jul. 7, 2026). The New York Law Journal has recognized Andrew M. Butler (New York) as a 2026 "Rising Star" in Restructuring/Bankruptcy as part of the New York Legal Awards. The Rising Star category recognizes New York's most promising lawyers age 40 and under who have distinguished themselves through exceptional legal work, leadership, and contributions to the profession. Lawyer Spotlight: Daniel J. Merrett Dan Merrett, a partner in the Atlanta Office, has spent nearly 20 years representing all manner of stakeholders in complex corporate restructurings and chapter 11 reorganizations. His practice extends to related transactions and disputes involving acquisitions; divestitures; credit facilities; securities; environmental obligations; and vendor, employee, and governance matters. Dan has substantial experience managing mass tort liabilities, including the restructurings and related chapter 11 cases of affiliates of Georgia Pacific and Johnson & Johnson, implemented to resolve asbestos and talc liabilities. He also represents key parties in energy and infrastructure matters, including facility owners, EPC contractors, and joint-venture parties. Dan was a key player in the restructuring teams in the historic bankruptcies of the City of Detroit and Chrysler. His other significant representations in chapter 11 cases include AFA Foods, Alpha Natural Resources, Dana Corporation, M&G Chemicals, McDermott International, Monster/CareerBuilder, Transtar Industries, and Westinghouse. He is licensed in both the United States and England & Wales and recognized in restructuring by Chambers USA and Best Lawyers.
Take-Two sticks to annual bookings outlook, says on track for 'GTA VI' November launch
Take-Two Interactive maintained its annual bookings forecast on Friday, but reiterated the November 19 launch date for its highly anticipated title "Grand Theft Auto VI", bringing the blockbuster release one step closer to fans.
Burger chain bucks California trend, doubles down on Golden State despite rising costs
Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers CEO says California gets a "bad rap" as competitors close doors, planning 60 new locations nationwide this year with a Northern California focus.
Employee versus entrepreneur mentality: Is the wealth management business 'dying comfortably'?
As the industry logs record-high profits alongside anemic organic growth, it's time to ask whether firms have permanently lost their business development muscle.
Longitudinal look at nursing-home closures uncovers some telling wrinkles
When a nursing home closes down, the local population and press often perceive the move as a simple exit from the market due to failing fiscal health. But in about half the cases, additional forces are in play—and “closures” may be, in truth, do-overs of one kind or another.
$250M downtown Louisville sports entertainment district one step closer to reality
A major $250 million investment in downtown Louisville is one step closer to reality.
$250M downtown Louisville sports entertainment district one step closer to reality
A major $250 million investment in downtown Louisville is one step closer to reality.
Bennett calls on Pingree, Charles to disclose donors
Maine State Senator and independent candidate for governor Rick Bennett is demanding more transparency in campaign finance, asking opponents Democrat Hannah Pingree and Republicam Bobby Charles to disclose the names of who he said are anonymous donors funding their campaigns.
Candy business inside Dayton Mall prepares to close after 15 years
Sweet Sensations, located inside the Dayton Mall next to Chick-fil-A, will close in mid-August after 15 years in business.
Revised bill to overhaul college sports moves closer to full Senate vote
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s revised college sports bill is gaining momentum after getting support from the country’s biggest college conferences.
Revised bill to overhaul college sports moves closer to full Senate vote
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s revised college sports bill is gaining momentum after getting support from the country’s biggest college conferences.
Iran says it's in final stages of draft agreement with Oman on Strait of Hormuz
The agreement is likely to be contingent on the U.S. lifting its blockade on Iran’s ports
Your blood pressure cuff may expose your health data
FTC cases reveal major health apps disclosed blood pressure and glucose data to advertising and analytics companies without users realizing it.
This Week in Sports Trivia: August 6, 2026
How closely were you following the sports news this week? Find out and test your knowledge by taking The Athletic's weekly quiz.
Inside the Oval Office showdown between Trump and Jeanine Pirro
The showdown shows anyone who is willing to contradict a theory trumpeted by the president is in trouble, even if the dissenter happens to be among his closest family friends.
Federal regulators invite industry, researchers, and lobbyists to closed-door meetings on clinical AI
Federal health officials invited tech companies and lobbyists to closed-door meetings as they seek to boost adoption of clinical AI.
Wisconsin pharmacist says Trump’s tariffs could end his business
The owner of Fitchburg Family Pharmacy says his pharmacy could close due to Trump’s tariffs on generic drugs.
Judge criticizes Trump's Justice Department as he says he has no choice but to dismiss Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy case
The move Tuesday closes the book on the Jan. 6 cases that were wiped out with Republican President Donald Trump's sweeping pardons and commutations last year, freeing from prison people convicted of violent of assaults on police and other crimes.
Video game giant Electronic Arts closes $55 billion go-private sale of its business
CHICAGO (AP) — Video game giant Electronic Arts officially has new owners.
Video Game Giant Electronic Arts Closes $55 Billion Go-Private Sale of Its Business
CHICAGO (AP) — Video game giant Electronic Arts officially has new owners. The California-based maker of popular titles like “Battlefield” and “The Sims” announced Tuesday that it closed the $55 billion sale of its business to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF, investment firm Silver Lake ...
New York Film Festival unveils lineup to main slate. James Gray opens and Ava DuVernay closes
The New York Film Festival has unveiled the main slate of films to its 64th edition, including films from James Gray, Ava DuVernay and Tony Gilroy.
Burke Airport businesses demand chance to have their say amidst closing saga
A plan to close Burke Lakefront Airport faces opposition from businesses that are connected to the airport.
Silver Bay clinic closure draws concerns over rural health care access
Aspirus Lake View’s Silver Bay Clinic will close Dec. 31. The health care provider announced that future clinic visits, laboratory services and radiology will relocate to the Lake View Two Harbors Clinic. The Minnesota Department of Health held a hearing July 28 to provide a forum for community members to discuss the change in services....
Donald Trump and the Rise of Parasocial Politics
As technology has brought us closer to our politicians, it has simultaneously tricked us into believing we have a real relationship with them.
Michigan Senate Democratic primary race remains too close to call as El-Sayed holds narrow lead
The former public health official has slight lead over congresswoman Haley Stevens, but vote count could continue well into the day
Procter & Gamble acquires Thorne for $3.8bn in bet on science-backed supplement growth
The deal, expected to close in Q4 2026, brings Thorne's clinically validated, practitioner-trusted supplement portfolio into P&G's consumer health stable — signalling mainstream consumer goods giants' accelerating move into premium VMS
What to expect if the Protect College Sports Act passes
Hurdles remain in the House of Representatives after the Senate recess, but the possibility of passing something is closer ever.
Michigan Election Results Live Updates: El-Sayed and Stevens Locked in Close Senate Race
The race between Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive, and Representative Haley Stevens, a centrist, had not been called as of 4 a.m. Wednesday. Kansas, Missouri, Virginia and Washington also voted.
Capital One dismissal bid puts Trump's JPMorgan Chase "political debanking" lawsuit in sharper focus
New filing in Trump's Capital One case spotlights the challenge of proving political bias when banks can broadly close accounts at their discretion.
Hinson introduces bill requiring insurers to disclose healthcare claim denial data
How often does your health insurance company deny claims? An Iowa congresswoman has introduced a bill that would require insurers to make that information public.
The Beauty Of Settled Science
Commenters convinced me I made a subtle mis-step in my framing of Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine. My framing emphasized that social priming studies had failed to replicate, but that many other subfields of psychology hadn’t. This naturally led commenters to point to failed replications in other subfields. Although none of these were as bad as social priming, few or none were entirely problem-free. Instead of emphasizing the difference between social priming and other subfields, I should have emphasized the difference between settled science and novel research. Here are some of my favorite psychology findings: The brain is sculpted by reinforcement learning, and a key driver of this learning is a prediction-error-based algorithm located in the nucleus accumbens and implemented through dopamine. Psychedelic drugs exert their effects through 5-HT2A receptors, pointing to a role for these receptors in some sort of construct like the balance between priors and new evidence. Certain cognitive functions are localized to certain brain areas (for example, impulse control to the frontal lobes; linguistic structure to Broca’s area, linguistic meaning to Wernicke’s area. But injure one of these areas, or render a certain function useless (eg a blind person having no more use for their visual cortex), and these mappings can gradually shift - suggesting that neurons are general-purpose compute whose specialization is a contingent fact about convenience and efficiency rather than a necessity. Most personality traits and general capabilities are about 50% genetic and 50% random, with little role for family environment or childhood history, with a few notable exceptions like partisan preference. Recent research complicates this story, but the further you go from this basic picture, the gnarlier the chains of indirect causation you require. Neurons fire together in “brain waves”, whose exact frequency corresponds with the character of consciousness; These divide neurons into natural subpopulations and linked graphs. The gamma rhythm corresponds surprisingly well to items in conscious awareness. GABA receptors seem to be involved in something like relaxation. By hitting different GABA receptors in different ways, you can modulate the exact type of relaxation you produce. Hitting GABA-A directly is too powerful and can cause dangerous levels of sedation, but allosteric modulation of GABA is an incredibly fruitful strategy that underlies drugs from benzos to barbituates to alcohol. If you know your GABA-A subunits, you can target specific subtypes of relaxation; for example, Ambien hits GABA-A1 and induces sleep. Memory divides somewhat fuzzily into bins of immediate-sensory, short-term, and long-term, with separate retrieval and storage functions, and separate systems for declarative vs. procedural learning. These can be harmed selectively, usually by hippocampal injury, so that some patients can remember their life stories but not form new long-term memories, or learn new skills like bike-riding but not new facts. The exact substrate of memory is unclear but seems to involve new synaptic connections between neurons in at least some way. The ability of modern psychology and psychiatry to treat mental illness is real but limited. SSRIs work for half or slightly fewer than half of patients; antipsychotics work with extreme side effects; benzodiazpines work but produce addiction and tolerance in many (not all) people. Most supplements are stuck in Poor Quality Study Replication Crisis Hell, but melatonin and l-theanine stand out as especially promising. Psychotherapy works with moderate effect size, but (with a few exceptions) seems to be more about the relationship with the provider than the details of the therapy itself. Mental hospitalization can sometimes defuse immediate crises but work less well than mental hospitals would like, with some studies showing overall negative effects. Schizophrenia is mostly genetic, but risk also increases with prenatal infection (especially rubella) and obstetric complications; there is suggestive evidence for roles of social stress and drug use (with psychedelics and marijuana making things worse, and nicotine if anything making things better). Bipolar and schizophrenia are so closely linked on a pathophysiological level that it seems like they might be the same disease; on the clinical level, they do seem to follow two separate courses/prognoses but can sometimes surprise clinicians by eg someone who seemed condemned to permanent schizophrenia unexpectedly recovering. The brain’s native reinforcement learning algorithms cash out in the phenomena of classical and operant conditioning; different reinforcement schedules reinforce at different levels, which can be exploited by bad actors to make especially compelling products (eg slot machines). None of these are immune to doubt. A few are speculative; one or two are genuinely unorthodox. But they’re all a step above one p = 0.049 paper that might not replicate. If they get overturned, they’ll be overturned by the same sort of genuine scientific shift that replaced Ptolemy with Copernicus or Lamarck with Darwin, not some sort of sordid discovery about someone entering random numbers into a spreadsheet. In 2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about The Beauty Of Settled Science: If you only care about scientific issues that are controversial, you will end up with a head stuffed full of garbage. The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science is worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like “General Relativity still governing planetary orbits” or “Phlogiston theory remains false”? So, by the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline. “Newsworthy” science is often based on the thinnest of evidence and wrong half the time—if it were not on the uttermost fringes of the scientific frontier, it would not be breaking news. Scientific controversies are problems so difficult that even people who’ve spent years mastering the field can still fool themselves. That’s what makes for the heated arguments that attract all the media attention. Worse, if you aren’t in the field and part of the game, controversies aren’t even fun. Don’t be embarrassed to read elementary science textbooks, either. If you want to pretend to be sophisticated, go find a play to sneer at. If you just want to have fun, remember that simplicity is at the core of scientific beauty [...] A steady diet of science news is bad for you: You are what you eat, and if you eat only science reporting on fluid situations, without a solid textbook now and then, your brain will turn to liquid. Psychology isn’t centrally the new paper in Annals Of Recently-Breaking News saying that an n=5 study showing that large portion sizes increase support for terrorism. Psychology is centrally ideas like brain waves, GABA receptors, reinforcement learning, twin studies, and connectionism. People who think differently are worrying too much about BREAKING NEWS!!!, and should stop. The key distinction isn’t “recent research in social psychology” vs. “recent research in cognitive/bio/behavioral psychology”, as my essay last week unfortunately implied. It’s recent research in general vs. the deposit of settled science, battle-tested hypotheses, and carefully-earmarked speculation. And part of the reason social priming in particular was such a disaster was that it defied that heuristic, building itself up over hundreds of studies until it approached or even entered the pantheon of settled science - before collapsing (5-HTTLPR was also sort of like this). This isn’t a claim that settled science is always right - Freud was “settled science” for a long time - just that there’s an intuitive distinction between the level of credence you should have in the existence of power posing vs. the existence of Broca’s Area. (I compounded this error by calling the last post “Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine”, which suggested I was talking about the new research rather than the settled science. I actually meant to distinguish between research-psychology-the-field vs. clinical-psychology-aka-therapy, but this framing unintentionally pushed against the point I wanted to make) Some commenters on the previous article understood this point, but challenged its weight. It’s very cool, they said, to know how many neurons are in which brain lobe, but the main way that Psychology affected their lives was through bad clickbait studies used to buttress dumb policies; some p = 0.049 study says that exposure to microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel into raisins, and now their company has to implement punitive DEI or be sued for hazardous work conditions. I won’t dispute this as an accurate description of how the sausage gets made, but it’s worth examining the trains of thought that connect this observation to a campaign against psychology in general: The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad, and I don’t have good heuristics for distinguishing dumb woke psychology from other psychology, so I’m going to assume it’s all wrong and bad. The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad; it seems useful to punish/discredit psychology as a whole to assist my campaign against it, so for propaganda purposes I will try to discredit psychology as a whole. To people in the first camp, my response is: come on, your heuristics aren’t that bad. “Microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel up like raisins” is in the woke category; “the hippocampal theta rhythm seems to be associated with both memory and pathfinding, suggesting an unexpected yet surprisingly compelling relationship between the two” is in the not-woke category, don’t play dumb here. To people in the second camp, my response is: deliberately exaggerated propaganda campaigns are bad and this is a confession, not an excuse. Inability to view science through anything but a political lens was what got us into this problem; doubling down on it is a temporary solution but a recipe for permanent disaster. If you pronounce entire fields of science to be acceptable collateral damage in your campaign against bad political actors, you will alienate not just scientists but patients, clinicians, and general lovers of truth. Instead, you can say the thing you mean - that woke partisans shouldn’t try to occupy and exploit the otherwise-noble science of psychology for their own political gain - and wage the same campaign with a halo rather than a comic-book-villain goatee. From the font of oracular wisdom that is Weird Sun Twitter: [ Vessel Of Spirit@VesselOfSpirit i love you all conditionally but i love the good part of you unconditionally. even if it becomes a very small part 2:11 AM · Jan 22, 2015 1 Reply · 5 Reposts · 29 Likes ](https://x.com/VesselOfSpirit/status/558084551772471298) This is how I feel about psychology1, too, but with a touch more optimism. The good part of psychology is enormous, a hoard of endless treasures. You just have to look past the headlines! 1 To play devil’s advocate - should one always be so magnamious? Astrology? Phrenology? These seem different in that their entire orientation was flawed from the start; they didn’t simply fail to find the correct constellation-personality connections, the whole project of searching for connections between constellations and personality was doomed from the start. More difficult might be asking the same question about education research, which is notoriously bad. I don’t know enough about education research to know if there’s some settled science of correct and enlightening results lurking in the background beyond the day-to-day froth of poorly-conducted and politically-motivated studies. I think if it’s 90% bad, 10% good, it’s correct to call it bad as a compact way of communicating a useful truth; I think psychology is better than that, but admit it’s a tough judgment call.
Lawrence location of Kansas City pizzeria closes after 14 years in business
Minsky’s Pizza said its goodbyes to the Lawrence community after serving its inventive pizzas there for 14 years.
Trades solidify Dodgers' strong betting odds, boost Red Sox
The Dodgers, after acquiring Tarik Skubal on Saturday, are way ahead of the Yankees, the next closest team, on the World Series odds board Tuesday.
Behind closed doors, Trump and White House officials hope Rep. Max Miller drops reelection bid, sources say
MrBeast Sales Slow, Angel Stock Falls, MUBI and Neon Look for Hits, and Will an NBA Franchise Set a Sales Record?
(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) You probably remember egg prices spiking a few years ago. This led to a lot of debate between the pro-market/pro-competition/antitrust/Neo-Brandesian crowd and the center/center-right/center-left/abundance/libertarian crowd over the cause, whether it was the avian flu outbreak or whether industry consolidation led to price fixing, using avian flu as a convenient cover. Basel Musharbash wrote a whole investigation at BIG looking at it. Well, two years later, we have our answer: it was price fixing. The Justice Department found proof, via emails, of price fixing. Indeed, just the threat of an investigation brought prices down two years ago: I bring this up because at least half a dozen of my favorite political writers and pundits, who were skeptical about price fixing at the time, haven’t written any mea culpas on this issue. It’s really dispiriting and makes it much, much harder to trust their work on other issues. If you take a hard stand on an issue, then you get it wrong, you need to explain how and why you got it wrong. Or update your priors. This is how epistemological bubbles are formed! All of which is to say, it’s time for another installment of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. Last issue, I mostly focused on the “wrong” side of the equation, so today’s is a bit more balanced, but with one big mea culpa (though I still stand by my original concerns). Let’s dive right in! Subscribe CORRECTION: UFC Didn’t Release Subscriber Data (But Seems to Have Bragged About It Internally) In my analysis of the viewership of UFC Freedom 250, I wrote... “Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers.” Well, that datecdote did not come from a PR rep, but from great reporting from James Faris at Business Insider. The actual quote was this: “Paramount’s flagship streaming service generated about a million new subscribers on the day of its first-ever UFC event, Paramount product chief Dane Glasgow told employees in a town hall on Tuesday morning, three staffers who attended the meeting told Business Insider.“ This wasn’t the biggest goof in the world; even Faris emphasized to me that this is more a “clarification” than a correction. Still, it sounds like, internally, the folks at Paramount were very happy about this result—and I’m guessing they were happy with this news getting out—even though the gains didn’t last through the quarter, dropping to 700K adds. RIGHT: MrBeast’s Struggles Continue... I’m very skeptical about MrBeast’s burgeoning media “empire” and, in particular, its $5 billion valuation, as I wrote earlier this year and last year. Sure enough, according to Business Insider, regarding its “booming” consumer products division_:_ “US sales volume grew 13% year-over-year in 2025, following a 33% leap the previous year, according to a presentation deck dated May 2026....A February 2025 investor deck viewed by Business Insider showed Feastables’ net revenue more than doubled in 2024 from 2023, to $215 million, and was forecast to grow 74% in 2025, to $375 million.” [Emphasis mine.] If you told investors that you projected 74% growth but delivered 13%,1 that’s not ideal. But it’s not just MrBeast. Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime had sales drop in half for their energy drinks. It’s one thing to build a successful entertainment company and an entirely different thing to succeed in the heavily-consolidated-but-also-very-competitive consumer packaged goods space! CPGs are dominated by a few firms with very wide moats compared to YouTube, which has few barriers to entry. These businesses require different skill sets and have completely different business environments. WRONG: Does the NBA Have an $8 Billion Bidder? Almost as soon as I published my article about the NBA’s finances, casting skepticism on NBA expansion, I saw this Front Office Sports headline: One group “claims to have already raised $8 billion” for the Vegas expansion team. I mean, wow. That’s just $2 billion less than what the Los Angeles Lakers were valued at when they were sold just last year. And they’re arguably the most popular team in the NBA. (Side note: the new owner is now under an investigation for fraud in how he went about financing the Lakers and the Dodgers purchases.) So much for the “dried up” language I used in that article. (This is why I usually stick to my “Entertainment Nuance Guy” tone in articles...) I went off old information—from April, when I read/heard about the NBA downplaying expansion efforts—instead of doing a quick double-check for new news. That said...if you read the article, the market for Seattle is “slow”, with just one reported bidder. So I wasn’t entirely off. This goof has annoyed me since I first published it, mainly because it undercut that article’s real point, which I stand by: NBA franchises are really overvalued right now. Now, I get why NBA teams are overvalued. When it comes to owning sports teams, it’s basically never wrong to assume that some rich person somewhere will care more about owning a team (or just being part of a group since they’re so expensive) than the actual financials. There are only so many teams to own, and opportunities to buy in preferred markets don’t come along very often. This explains why the teams sell for such high multiples (usually above a 10 to 12.5 revenue multiple, which is very high). You only need one person to overpay! Beyond the ultra-wealthy luxury good explanation, I worry NBA teams are becoming speculative assets. More and more private equity investors are buying into NBA teams. But the value, in owning a team, comes from selling it later, not any meaningful relationship to revenue or profit growth. In other words, the newer NBA owners are increasingly expecting someone later to buy their inflated asset. That’s not sound economics; that’s the “greater fool” theory at work.2 At some point, actually making money has to matter. Especially since revenue growth is now below the growth of the stock market. (And this matters because the NBA doesn’t have easy levers to pull to drastically lower their costs—half of their revenue has to go to players and then you actually have to run a team, including coaching, training, travel, media expenses, and more—or raise revenues aside from one-off expansions in America and overseas.) I just don’t see how investors make their money back buying NBA teams, except for selling at a higher price later on down the line. But if revenue/profit growth continues to slow, at some point, someone will be left holding the bag. RIGHT: Baseball and Basketball are about equally popular. Related to the above, I wanted to cite two quick pieces of evidence for one of my other theories: that the NBA and MLB are about as popular as each other, but the NBA gets much, much better media coverage. One YouGov survey has that fans prefer basketball to baseball by 52% to 48%, which I’m guessing is within the margin of error for that poll. That’s virtually even, meaning they’re about the same popularity. Over on NBC, a recent Red Sox-Yankees game averaged 4 million viewers, higher than Sunday Night Basketball’s average of 3.4 million on the same network. A Yankees-Dodgers game averaged 3.9 million two weeks ago. Not every game averages this much, but it shows you that baseball isn’t far off from basketball, depending on the matchup. Altogether, the NBA is just slightly more popular than baseball, but NBC is paying MLB a fraction of what they pay the NBA, a point I’ve made before. RIGHT: Angel, MUBI and Neon Updates... I’ve long been skeptical about many of Hollywood’s buzziest startups/smaller indie studios. It’s not that they don’t make great movies—films like Anora and Everything Everywhere All at Once are amazing—or that they’re not (rightfully) pushing the majors to make better films, but...they get a ton of hype, and that hype often doesn’t live up to the reality or difficulty in scaling up. Starting with MUBI, well, The Wall Street Journal wrote a feature on MUBI’s struggles last April, best summarized by the subheader “After Sequoia valued Mubi at $1 billion, a left-wing revolt sent the indie film company into a tailspin”. MUBI lost $7.3 million on $200 million in revenue in Q4 2025, but reportedly hit a record 1.7 million subscribers at the end of Q1. As for Neon, Department M purchased a “significant stake” in the company earlier this year. How much is that “stake” worth? According to Deadline, “No financial figures for the Neon-Department M deal were disclosed.” So...that’s not great! If it was a big valuation, we’d hear about. Also, I found this curious: “Both Neon and Department M already have separate partnerships with Qatar. The Qatar Film Committee has a slate deal in place with the former, and a biopic production pact with the latter.” Color me skeptical about much Middle Eastern investment dollars. See: LIV Golf. Finally, as for Angel (formerly Angel Studios), their stock very, very slightly popped last month after Young Washington ($20 million budget) which made $45 million in the US, but their stock is still way down from its opening. Smaller Updates RIGHT: The WGA should focus on antitrust concerns! I’ve been on this for years. Post-WGA/AMTPT deal in 2023, I wrote an article for the Ankler calling on the WGA to focus and organize against industry consolidation. Sure enough, the WGA filed a lawsuit against the Paramount-WBD merger, and people are organizing around this issue now. I wish this energy had coalesced earlier (specifically to lobby Washington much earlier), but better late than never! WRONG: Actually, the chip shortage might be due to market manipulation. In my last “Long Reads for the Long Summer” article, I shared an article about how LLMs are causing memory chip prices to spike, which will make all electronics more expensive. Well, turns out, three RAM manufacturers control 90% of the market, and now a private lawsuit accuses them of price-fixing. So yeah. WRONG/UPDATE: The Odyssey will hold! Two weeks ago, I wrote, “As of this moment, we haven’t had a super-blockbuster, though The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday could all cross the $500 million mark. (At this point, The Odyssey would need a very strong hold to get there.)” Well, it’s safe to say it’s going to have that hold! It only dropped 30% in weekend two and IMAX screenings are sold out all month. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is also off to a great start. RIGHT: People are rushing to get shows out yearly. I’ve long been bullish on yearly, weekly-released shows, and Leslie Goldberg at The Ankler wrote about how many people in town are now listening. WRONG: Mark Carney reverses Canada’s stance on homegrown production. After writing about Canada installing domestic production quotas, Canada has backed off. WRONG: I don’t trust Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s online “views”. When I originally wrote about the latest Spider-Man film’s record-breaking trailer, I thought this was just YouTube views, but after watching this Corridor Crew video and doing more research, well, it’s all social views of the trailer globally. Really? That stat includes TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts views. Basically, I don’t trust it anymore. (This film will probably set record, but I trust the pre-sales data more.) RIGHT: Celebrity Production companies are still struggling. I’ve written about this for years, but the company that I didn’t track was Kevin Hart’s HartBeat, which was valued at $650 million but is struggling now and might just end soon, especially after Kevin Hart pulled his endorsement deals. And Bad Robot is moving to NYC. CORRECTION: SpongeBob is a “second run” title. In my 2025 recap article, I had _SpongeBob SquarePants_labelled as a “library” title, when it is still a “second run” show, with new episodes still coming out on Nickelodeon. CORRECTION: In my last “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong” update, I offered a correction from Doug Creutz and misspelled TD Cowen. Thanks, Grammarly! 1 Though he could have increased prices to make up for the gap, he couldn’t have increased them that much. 2 There’s a theory, which I think that Daryl Morey created and Bill Simmons popularized, that, to be successful building your team, you only need a handful of bad GMs in the league to take advantage of. To be clear, Daryl Morey’s theory was also for signing bad contracts, that you could always get out of bad contracts. Basically, there’s always someone who will make a bad trade. It’s not the same exact thing, but similar enough to the Greater Fool Theory that I really like it.
'We are not Superman': How Boston is pushing to improve men's health
To reach more male patients, the Whittier Street Health Center in Boston runs a men’s health clinic and hosts an annual summit to focus attention on men’s health issues. In June, Boston health leaders announced plans to invest $1 million a year to help close the gap in Black men’s life expectancy.
The Purple-State Problem
Most close readers of this column know that I see our nation’s political divisions as so great as to make the last line in the Pledge of Allegiance, that we are “one nation” and “indivisible,” hardly descriptive.While some states or congressional districts are characterized as red for Republicans or blue for Democrats, purple states or districts are thought of as fair fights where neither party has a distinct advantage. In those purple regions, it’s often thought that to win, a candidate must do well with voters near the ideological center.
Kustom Entertainment Closes $6.1 Million Divestiture of Legacy Video Solutions Business to Cycurion
Completes strategic transformation into a pure-play live entertainment and ticketing technology company; Secures $1.25M upfront cash, $4.25M secured...
In April 2029, a Massive Asteroid Will Just Miss Earth. Scientists Are Worried There Could Still Be Major Consequences
Apophis is going to get close.
Time's running out to nominate for 40 Under 40, presented by SouthEast Bank
Nominations for East Tennessee's 40 Under 40 close Aug. 12. Learn how to submit a winning entry, and don't delay!