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Results for " app " 35,103 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle

Why Does Roast Chicken Taste So Good? Inside the Science Behind the Flavors We Love

When we cook our favorite meals, what happens to the carbo-hydrates, proteins and fats? I confess I am a less-than-average cook, but God loves a trier. I remember being about 23 years old and tryin…

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Jun 4 • 4:58 AM EDT • Science • lithub.com
Wellness tracking apps are making people stressed out, hurting health

Americans are spending $100 billion on wellness apps and health trackers — but the rise in self-data may end up just stressing people out.

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Jun 4 • 4:43 AM EDT • Health • businessinsider.com
🙂 Positive (50%)
What happens at a longevity festival?

What happens at a longevity festival? On this week's STATus Report, Alex Hogan gets a dispatch from STAT's Sarah Todd.

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Jun 4 • 4:30 AM EDT • Science • statnews.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
After hospitals, patients get a turn to bring AI into the doctor’s office

Ambient scribes were the first large-scale application of AI in health care. Now developers are pitching them as diligent note-takers for patients.

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Jun 4 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com
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Opinion | Alleged fraud by United Healthcare undermines trust in health system

Insurer accused of making patients appear sicker to inflate payments.

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Jun 4 • 4:00 AM EDT • Health • bostonglobe.com
It’s become too expensive to follow sports teams

The leagues have abandoned their fan base.

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Jun 4 • 4:00 AM EDT • Sports • pressherald.com
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Google Photos on Android finally gets this handy feature months after iPhone

Google Photos on Android is finally getting the saved "Stickers" album in the "Collections" tab six months after it rolled out on iOS.

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Jun 4 • 3:14 AM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com
Nintendo Will Launch A Switch 2 With Replaceable Batteries In The EU

Nintendo is preparing to sell a special version of the Switch 2 in the EU with swappable batteries.

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Jun 4 • 2:19 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Skokie trustees raise entertainment tax, apply it to Netflix and other streaming services

It’s about to become slightly more expensive to stream television and music in Skokie. The Skokie Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Monday to raise the village’s Amusement Tax and expand its scope to apply to any “video streaming, audio streaming, or remotely accessed online games” that residents use on a rental or subscription basis, […]

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Jun 4 • 2:10 AM EDT • Entertainment • therecordnorthshore.org
Belgium: 2026 World Cup Squad, Fixtures and Schedule

Belgium travel to North America this summer, aiming to revive a fading football identity at their fourth successive World Cup.Rudi Garcia, appointed in January 2025, takes the Red Devils into the fina...

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Jun 4 • 1:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Nvidia takes AI battle from the data centre to the laptop

Chipmaker opens new front in rivalry with Apple, Intel, AMD and Qualcomm

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Jun 4 • 12:00 AM EDT • Technology • ft.com
President Trump says he will nominate Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general

President Donald Trump says he will nominate Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general, tapping his former personal attorney who has aggressively pursued the Republican president’s agenda while leading the Justice Department in an acting role

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Jun 3 • 11:18 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Google AI Edge Gallery launches to macOS

In addition to Google AI Edge Gallery, the company also released the Gemma 4 12B model and the Google AI Edge Eloquent dictation app for the Mac.

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Jun 3 • 10:58 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
Weekly Entertainment Report, June 4-7: Live music and lively arts in Southern NH » Nashua Ink Link

Music and lively arts remains at the core of the human experience. Celebrate humanity this weekend!

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Jun 3 • 10:46 PM EDT • Entertainment • nashua.inklink.news
Oncology providers ready to swipe right on mobile health apps

Oncology providers are embracing the potential for mobile health apps to support cancer patients, highlighting opportunities for inclusive, evidence-based care.

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Jun 3 • 9:37 PM EDT • Health • fredhutch.org
Greatly improved NBA Finals presentation answers prayers of basketball fans

Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals represented a low point for the NBA on television. And in many ways, Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals felt like a renaissance. Years of discontent with increasingly moribund production culminated in widespread disappointment during last year’s opening game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers.…

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Jun 3 • 9:30 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
15-year-old girl burned during school science experiment released from hospital

The accident happened at Greeneview High School when a science experiment caught on fire in May.

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Jun 3 • 9:29 PM EDT • Science • whio.com
Reno City Council amended a live entertainment ordinance

The original ordinance requires businesses to have a "conditional use permit" for indoor live entertainment. The new amendment applies a temporary exception to that rule *if* a list of conditions

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Jun 3 • 8:42 PM EDT • Entertainment • 2news.com
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Woman accused of trying to steal $52K through fraudulent refunds at Northwest Freeway business

April Timberlake was arrested after allegedly attempting to process fraudulent refunds totaling approximately $52,000 at her workplace on the Northwest Freeway, according to Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office.

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Jun 3 • 8:26 PM EDT • Business • click2houston.com
Report details Apple’s plan to use Nvidia chips for the Gemini-powered Siri

A new report from The Information shares fresh details on how the new Gemini-powered Siri will work under the hood. Here are the details.

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Jun 3 • 8:25 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
Trump strips job protections from 8,000 senior federal workers

The move reclassifies thousands of employees, making it easier to fire them for any reason. Critics say it could politicize the civil service.

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Jun 3 • 8:04 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Latest White House move to politicise science funding provokes ...

US research community mobilising to push back on proposed rule that would give apparatchiks control of which research gets funded

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Jun 3 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • chemistryworld.com
Russell Wilson announces move to CBS Sports in apparent retirement video
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Jun 3 • 7:22 PM EDT • Sports • 10tv.com
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Rabies Makes Its Return to Wyoming - Wyoming Department of Health

As summer approaches and temperatures rise, the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) is warning residents about wild animals that may carry rabies. The most common carriers of rabies in our state are bats and skunks, but any mammal can be infected with rabies, including humans. The first confirmed case of rabies for 2026 occurred […]

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Jun 3 • 6:32 PM EDT • Health • health.wyo.gov
Apple to Launch New Siri in September With Help of Google, Nvidia

Apple is currently on track to launch its overhauled Siri in September, to run in part on Google’s cloud computing servers using Nvidia chips, according to people familiar with the matter. While Apple will try to run as much as possible of the new Siri on devices such as iPhones, certain parts will require more compute power and will run on Google Cloud, as The Information has previously

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Jun 3 • 6:24 PM EDT • Technology • theinformation.com
Ballad Health launches Appalachian Highlands Orthopedic Network

Ballad Health and local orthopedic physicians have launched the Appalachian Highlands Orthopedic Network, a new partnership aimed at expanding access to orthope

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Jun 3 • 6:22 PM EDT • Health • wcyb.com
Steve Hilton, top Republican hopeful for California governor, says the state has lost its way

Republican Steve Hilton is running for California governor on a message that the state is bursting with potential but has lost its way

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Jun 3 • 6:21 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
What just happened in California?

How to make sense of a very messy election.

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Jun 3 • 6:15 PM EDT • Politics • vox.com
Trump Agitates Brazil’s Politics, Again

President Trump appears ready to lend a hand to a new right-wing ally ahead of a crucial election this year that will be the biggest test for Latin America’s left.

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Jun 3 • 5:59 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
House passes resolution for first time to halt military action against Iran in rebuke of Trump

The House approved a war powers resolution that would halt the U.S. military action against Iran, defying the president as a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to end the three-month-long war that has reordered politics at home and abroad.

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Jun 3 • 5:39 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
Health department investigates tuberculosis case at Lloyd Memorial High School

The Northern Kentucky Health Department is investigating a case of active tuberculosis linked to a student at Lloyd Memorial High School, with contact tracing underway for those who had prolonged exposure.

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Jun 3 • 5:28 PM EDT • Health • wlwt.com
House approves war powers resolution to halt military action against Iran

The measure passed with bipartisan support

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Jun 3 • 5:28 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
In a first, House votes to block Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran

The Senate advanced a similar war powers resolution last month on a procedural vote, reflecting growing impatience with a conflict Congress hasn’t authorized.

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Jun 3 • 5:18 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
God Of War Laufey Creates One Of The Fandom’s Funniest Memes

Kratos and Atreus’ journey is downright serene compared to what Faye is going through

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Jun 3 • 5:15 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
WATCH: Rubio said he’s never seen Trump fall asleep in a meeting. Rep. Lieu showed him the videos

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-California, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a tense exchange in a congressional hearing Wednesday over President Donald Trump dozing off in public appearances, like Cabinet meetings.

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Jun 3 • 5:09 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
Phil Ehr vows lawsuit as Broward SOE throws water on Hector Mujica's party switch explanation

Democratic organizations are taking a hands-off approach to a party eligibility dispute that could knock Mujica off the CD 28 Primary ballot.

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Jun 3 • 5:03 PM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
Powering Appalachia Expo connects business owners to valuable resources

Business owners from across the Mid-0hio Valley attended an expo aimed at connecting them to valuable resources.

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Jun 3 • 4:57 PM EDT • Business • wtap.com
GOP lawmakers call homophobic X post from colleague’s account ‘disgusting’

Republican lawmakers blasted a homophobic post that appeared on GOP Rep. Andy Ogles’ X account on Tuesday, saying it was “gross,” “disgusting,” a distraction and had no place in their party.

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Jun 3 • 4:49 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Saints RB Alvin Kamara makes surprise OTA appearance

Despite offseason speculation surrounding his future, the veteran unexpectedly appeared at the facility on Wednesday for practice.

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Jun 3 • 4:43 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
California governor's primary pitted experience against promises of change

California’s crowded primary for governor remained unresolved early Wednesday after three leading candidates tested voters’ appetites for an experienced politician or promises of sweeping change.

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Jun 3 • 4:37 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
🙂 Positive (35%)
The Ultimate Pop Summer Romance Playlist: Taylor Swift, Zara Larsson & More

Summer lovin' happened so fast.

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Jun 3 • 4:03 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Christine Miller takes a warning shot at Tampa Sports Authority appointees

There's more drama as negotiations with the Rays move forward.

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Jun 3 • 3:49 PM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
Google wants to release 64 million bacteria-riddled mosquitoes across California and Florida. Here’s why scientists are enthusiastic.

Google has applied for an experimental mosquito release permit to deploy millions of non-biting southern house mosquitoes that it has infected with the bacterium Wolbachia pipientis, in an effort to reduce mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile virus.

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Jun 3 • 3:40 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Alphabet's record-breaking $85B raise for Google's AI business is a helluva good signal

If Alphabet's record-breaking, $85 billion stock sale signals investor appetite for AI-related offerings, we can see that investors are ready to chow.

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Jun 3 • 3:38 PM EDT • Business • techcrunch.com
Wisconsin approves contract extensions after 2026 spring sports seasons

The UW Athletic Board has signed off on the customary one-year contract extensions for the Wisconsin Badgers' spring sports coaches.

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Jun 3 • 3:31 PM EDT • Sports • jsonline.com
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REV launches new communications platform for businesses

REV Fiber for Business has launched a cloud-based communications platform designed to help employees collaborate and stay connected with customers through a single mobile and desktop application. “As workplace communication needs evolve from traditional offices to hybrid and remote environments, our business customers need platforms that remove friction,” Tressy Leindecker, REV’s executive vice president of […]

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Jun 3 • 3:24 PM EDT • Business • businessreport.com
Poll: President Trump’s approval is 10 points lower than start of second term

People aren’t happy with his handling of their top issue – inflation and the cost of living.

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Jun 3 • 3:24 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumnews1.com
Health Costs Jumping 18% For Small And Medium-Sized Businesses

Healthcare costs are rising 18% for small-and mid-sized businesses as employers grapple with a surge in inflation and medical expenses, a Morgan Health report shows.

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Jun 3 • 3:17 PM EDT • Health • forbes.com
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Health Costs Jumping 18% For Small And Medium-Sized Businesses

Healthcare costs are rising 18% for small-and mid-sized businesses as employers grapple with a surge in inflation and medical expenses, a Morgan Health report shows.

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Jun 3 • 3:17 PM EDT • Business • forbes.com
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Ubisoft all but rules out a Rayman 1 remake, says it's near impossible to do

Ubisoft comments on why a remake of Rayman 1 is unlikely to happen.

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Jun 3 • 2:26 PM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com
Senators urge quick action to halt college sports decay

Senators and college officials on Wednesday urged swift action on a bipartisan measure that aims to overhaul college athletics system they say hemorrhages money and hinders student-athletes — even as two powerful conferences said they would seek changes. During a much-anticipated Senate Commerce Committee hearing, both the bill’s authors — Chair Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and […]

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Jun 3 • 2:20 PM EDT • Sports • rollcall.com
Analysis | What to know about Trump’s immunity deal with the IRS

It’s “a legal absurdity,” said one expert.

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Jun 3 • 2:18 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Kuo: Apple's Vision Pro Successors Off the Table as Focus Shifts to Smart Glasses

Incoming Apple CEO John Ternus signed off on a major revision of Apple's Vision Pro and smart glasses plans, consolidating Apple's work in the category. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Ternus nixed plans for a second Vision Pro and a lighter Vision Air. Kuo says there are only two smart glasses products in development, including the AI smart glasses that Apple is creating to rival the Meta Ray-Bans and a display-equipped set of AR smart glasses.

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Jun 3 • 2:14 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Short-sighted: John Ternus behind Apple Vision project refocuses

Apple's head-mounted hardware plans are slowly being cut, reportedly by new CEO John Ternus himself, with Vision Air said to be killed off alongside Display glasses.

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Jun 3 • 2:05 PM EDT • Technology • appleinsider.com
Martin Bashir recalls being 'gobsmacked' by Michael Jackson telling him he slept in the same bed as children

Journalist Martin Bashir appears in the new Netflix documentary 'Michael Jackson: The Verdict,' in which he details filming the controversial 2003 special 'Living With Michael Jackson.'

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Jun 3 • 1:42 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Alabama ruling demolishes John Roberts’ claim that justices aren’t ‘political actors’

Democratic appointees said the majority “corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders.”

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Jun 3 • 1:39 PM EDT • Politics • ms.now
VIDEO: Law enforcement seen at Upstate business

A law enforcement presence was seen at a business in Abbeville County, South Carolina, Wednesday afternoon.

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Jun 3 • 1:39 PM EDT • Business • wyff4.com
Six Questions Out of Tuesday’s Big Primaries in California, Iowa and Elsewhere

Who will run California? Can Democrats win Iowa? Here’s what happened, and what might be next.

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Jun 3 • 1:38 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Buzz For A June Nintendo Direct Is Building As Switch 2 Turns One

Maybe it's Nintendo's way of celebrating the Switch 2's first anniversary

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Jun 3 • 1:25 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
John Ternus scaled back Apple’s Vision products roadmap: report

Ming-Chi Kuo just shared an update on Apple’s future Vision products that scales back the lineup—a shift reportedly authorized by John Ternus.

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Jun 3 • 1:19 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
NYC Health + Hospitals Appoints Hillary Jalon and Manny Saez, Ph.D., to Senior Vice Presidents - NYC Health + Hospitals

NYC Health + Hospitals today announced the appointments of Hillary Jalon as Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer and Manny Saez, Ph.D., as

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Jun 3 • 1:17 PM EDT • Health • nychealthandhospitals.org
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'A Fundamentally New Threat': Researchers Develop New AI-Powered Worm That Might Be Unstoppable

A team of researchers have shown how a self-replicating AI agent can take over a computer network at almost no cost.

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Jun 3 • 12:50 PM EDT • Technology • gizmodo.com
MacBook Neo is So Popular That Apple Reportedly Doubled Production

On an earnings call in late April, Apple's CEO Tim Cook said that customer response to the MacBook Neo was "off the charts," and the popularity of the laptop has reportedly led the company to significantly boost production. Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo this week said he believes that MacBook Neo shipments to Apple were doubled from an initial target of 5 million units to 10 million units in 2026 at some point after the laptop launched in March.

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Jun 3 • 12:24 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Johnson: Democrats ‘playing politics’ with FISA over Pulte appointment

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lambasted Democrats for suggesting that President Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte to be acting director of national intelligence could imperil reauthorization of the …

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Jun 3 • 12:20 PM EDT • Politics • thehill.com
Nick Saban asks Congress to 'bring order' via college sports bill

Nick Saban appeared in Congress to support the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act, which aims to "bring order to a system that badly needs fixing" in the NIL and transfer portal era.

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Jun 3 • 12:14 PM EDT • Sports • espn.com
Rep. Ogles deletes homophobic tweet, blames staff amid rare GOP pushback

A post on Ogles’s official X account Tuesday stated: “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.”

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Jun 3 • 12:09 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Ford Bronco Sports and Mavericks Hit with 'Do Not Drive' Warning

The recall involves 4653 combined copies of the compact truck and SUV, which have front suspensions that could fall apart.

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Jun 3 • 11:52 AM EDT • Sports • caranddriver.com
Judge with intimate ties to Dem Party's key Russia Hoax players behind latest anti-Trump decision

Trump accuses Obama-appointed Judge Cooper of conflict of interest over Kennedy Center ruling, citing wife Amy Jeffress' work for Biden and Democrats.

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Jun 3 • 11:37 AM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
Apple Says macOS 27 Won't Be Compatible With These Macs

During WWDC 2025, Apple revealed that macOS 26 Tahoe would be the final major macOS version for Intel-based Macs. macOS 27 will be compatible with Apple silicon Macs only, meaning that you will need a Mac with an M-series chip or a MacBook Neo with an A18 Pro chip in order to install the software update. Apple will unveil macOS 27 during its WWDC 2026 keynote this Monday, June 8, and the update should be widely released in September.

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Jun 3 • 11:29 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Changes coming to several polling sites across Erie County

Primary Day takes place June 23 with early voting happening June 13 - 21.

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Jun 3 • 11:19 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
Brennan seeks to 'correct matters' over 12-week ban

The solicitor of Dublin senior football manager Ger Brennan says his client has concerns "a consistent and equitable approach is unfortunately not being applied to every team, player and manager" following his well-documented ban and wishes to "correct certain matters now brought into the public domain".

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Jun 3 • 11:10 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Microsoft drives developers toward native Windows apps at Build 2026

Microsoft wants more WinUI 3 apps across Windows 11, and Build 2026 shows how developers can get there with new tools, agents, and hardware.

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Jun 3 • 11:00 AM EDT • Technology • windowscentral.com
Leading Global Brain Science Conference OHBM 2028 to Be Held in Yokohama

YOKOHAMA, Japan, June 03, 2026--The 2028 Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM 2028) will be held in Yokohama, Japan.

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Jun 3 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • finance.yahoo.com
These iPhones, iPads, Macs may not support Apple’s new software

iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 will be unveiled next week, but certain iPhone, Mac, and iPad models might not support the new software.

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Jun 3 • 10:54 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
Brentford Set to Stun Premier League With £38m Summer Transfer

Brentford Transfer News: Said El Mala Deal Signals Serious AmbitionBrentford Move Closer to Said El Mala TransferBrentford appear to be edging towards one of the most intriguing deals of the summer, w...

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Jun 3 • 10:50 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
May's top PlayStation games by copies sold

Yesterday’s State of Play gave us an idea of where PlayStation’s heading next. But we’ve had our May estimates for a couple of days now (we always update our data daily for clients), so it’s time to look at what performed best on PlayStation last month. We’ve got a new IP at the top, two evergreens doing their evergreen thing, FC26 smashing it ahead of the World Cup Plus pivot, and a quiet but promising result for Lego Batman. Let’s have a look at the state of Play…Station’s top games for May. 007 takes #001 007 First Light sold 1M copies on PS5 in May, easily making it the month’s top PS5 game by copies sold. Over 80% of those May copies were digital, which is broadly in line with where PlayStation’s digital share has settled for new releases this year. To date, 007 First Light has sold through 2.2M copies across platforms (so no unsold retail copies in that figure). The platform split is 55.1% PS5, 33.1% Steam, and 11.8% Xbox (console, Windows, and cloud combined). In gross revenue terms, 007 First Light has generated $150M. Owing to regional pricing and audience composition differences, the consoles make up a higher share of revenue than they do copies. Of the $150M, 60.5% came via PlayStation, 27.6% via Steam, and 12.9% via Xbox. Part of this is because over two-thirds of 007 First Light‘s PlayStation audience is in North America (43.4%) or Western Europe (23.2%), where local currency means the game generates more revenue per player. On Steam, under half of First Light‘s audience is from those same regions (31.8% North America, 15.1% Western Europe). As we covered in last week’s 007 Steam piece, the Steam version is pulling in higher-than-expected numbers in China, which now accounts for 17.3% of First Light‘s Steam audience. 007 is the equivalent of $44 USD in China, which is roughly 37% cheaper than the US price and about 44% cheaper than Western Europe. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe The crossover data backs up what we’ve seen all year about launch-window cohorts. 11% of PS5 players who played 007 First Light in May also played Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which launched just a few days before. Last month was a great month for Denmark! IO Interactive is Copenhagen-based, and Lego Group is headquartered in Billund (TT Games is UK-based but produces work under Lego Group licence and direction). Speaking of which… A very blocky #2 and #3 Minecraft sold another 788K copies on PlayStation consoles last month. Business as usual, since Minecraft hasn’t sold fewer than 760K copies in a single month all year. With over 350M copies sold across all platforms, Minecraft is the best-selling game in history and one of the strongest brands in the world. Every month, a new cohort of children reaches Minecraft age, which guarantees a constant volume of new sales regardless of what the broader market is up to. The demographic refresh rate is truly impressive, with the audience renewing itself faster than it’s churning. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight shifted 757K copies on PS5 last month, bringing its lifetime total on the platform to over 800K. Across all platforms, Legacy of the Dark Knight has now passed 1.5M sold through, so PlayStation accounts for over half of the game’s players. The May crossover data for Legacy of the Dark Knight on PS5 is also useful. 27% of those players also played Fortnite, 16% Roblox, 16% FC 26, and 14% NBA 2K. That’s the household-and-family cohort showing up, plus the launch-window cohort of core gamers who buy practically everything. FC 26 gets players through the door ahead of the World Cup FC 26 sold 411K copies on PlayStation last month (90% via PS5), the fewest copies FC 26 has sold all year and down heavily from April’s 700K. Part of this dropoff is because FC 26 has been available as a PlayStation Plus monthly game since 6 May, cannibalising premium sales. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe The strategic logic is straightforward for EA, which is sacrificing premium unit sales in May to build up the player base ahead of the FIFA World Cup, which kicks off on 11 June. Obviously, a bigger player pool going into the tournament means a bigger pool of potential Ultimate Team spenders during the period when football attention is at its peak. The early returns are around what you’d expect, with 4.4M new players accessing FC 26 via PS Plus last month – a substantial new spender pool. Anecdotally, a few of my mates who were ‘’skipping FIFA and Ultimate Team this year’’, were drawn back in via PS Plus. Lo and behold, one of them is buying packs like it’s going out of fashion. Whether this is all a smart trade for EA depends entirely on the Ultimate Team conversion rate over the next six weeks. Either way, the short-term engagement impact on the game as a whole is evident. FC 26‘s MAUs hit a record 24M on PlayStation in May, up 30% from the previous record set in April. GTA V does what GTA V always does Rounding out the top five is another evergreen title. Grand Theft Auto V shifted another 387K copies on PlayStation last month. No matter what else is happening in the industry, GTA V keeps pulling players in. It’s sold another 1.8M copies on PS5 in the first half of this year alone, helping the franchise pass the 230M-sold milestone across all platforms. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe I have a theory that Minecraft and GTA V are doing the same thing at different demographic levels. Both are functioning as generational gateway games that the audience ages into faster than it ages out of. Minecraft captures kids around age 6-10, GTA V captures much of the same audience around age 12-15 (unofficially, of course). The crossover data suggests this: 40% of GTA V‘s monthly PlayStation players typically play Fortnite in any given month, while 30% play Roblox. Household accounts aside, that’s not the original GTA V audience from 2013. Of course, the under-12 audience would love to get their hands on GTA, too. It’s always been the way of things, and some parents are happy to oblige. Mine did too back in the day, and I turned out just fine. Right? Right!? Want to get your hands on our data for yourself – for free? We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply to this email, and we’ll set you up. The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

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Jun 3 • 10:49 AM EDT • Technology • alineaanalytics.substack.com
Unannounced JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven R surfaces, will be on Nintendo Switch 2 and Switch

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven R hasn’t been announced yet, but Bandai Namco appears to be working on the game – and it looks like we’ll be seeing it on Nintendo Switch 2 as well as Switch 1. Lots of games get leaked through classification databases, and the same thing has happened yet again. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of...

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Jun 3 • 10:28 AM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com
The Trump Administration Has Launched Its Biggest Threat Yet to Scientific Research. We Can Stop Them.

Last week, the White House released draft regulations that—if enacted—will upend US science as we know it. Under the rule proposed by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), political appointees would have the final say over who gets billions of dollars of federal funding for res

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Jun 3 • 10:15 AM EDT • Science • blog.ucs.org
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Milwaukee shouldn’t trade Giannis Antetokounmpo for one major reason

With constant trade talks swirling around superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, this could be the summer a blockbuster deal finally happens. The Bucks’ owner has made comments about wanting to make a move before the NBA Draft to acquire assets, and looking…

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Jun 3 • 10:11 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
SpaceX’s Next Big Business Could Be Building Stuff in Space

The FAA recently approved test flights of the company's reentry vehicles.

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Jun 3 • 9:45 AM EDT • Business • gizmodo.com
Meta's AI agent for WhatsApp Business is now available globally

WhatsApp will charge businesses for using its AI agent based on token usage

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Jun 3 • 9:40 AM EDT • Business • techcrunch.com
Algal blooms explained: How scientists are helping spot them sooner

Algal blooms can seem to appear overnight. A stretch of ocean that looked clear days earlier can suddenly appear discolored and sometimes pose risks to ecosystems and human health. But scientists say ...

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Jun 3 • 9:20 AM EDT • Science • phys.org
Lahn's win in GOP primary for Iowa governor is a setback for Trump that could signal MAHA strength

Businessman Zach Lahn’s win in Iowa’s Republican gubernatorial primary over President Donald Trump’s pick is a rare electoral setback for Trump

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Jun 3 • 9:09 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
The Latest: Trump keeps immunity from tax probes while scrapping $1.8 billion compensation fund

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Trump administration has definitively scrapped a $1.8 billion fund to compensate President Donald Trump’s allies, but the White House is sticking with the part of the deal that permanently drops tax claims against him

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Jun 3 • 8:45 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
The Latest: Trump keeps immunity from tax probes while scrapping $1.8 billion compensation fund

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Trump administration has definitively scrapped a $1.8 billion fund to compensate President Donald Trump's allies, but the White House is sticking with the part of the deal that permanently drops tax claims against him.

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Jun 3 • 8:39 AM EDT • Politics • wsls.com
Amateur sleuth exposes basic blunder in scores of cancer studies

Scientists at Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford and other universities appear to have accidentally used the wrong ingredient in their experiments

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Jun 3 • 8:21 AM EDT • Science • thetimes.com
Apple Announces Europe's First Developer Center

Apple today announced it will open Europe's first Apple Developer Center in Berlin later this year. The facility joins existing Developer Centers in Bengaluru, Cupertino, Shanghai, and Singapore. Apple said the Berlin center, located in Mitte district, will offer developers throughout Europe in-person sessions, workshops, and one-on-one appointments in multiple languages, with consultation areas and dedicated labs staffed by Apple experts.

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Jun 3 • 8:20 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
I Wore a Smart Fart Wearable for Three Days. Here's What I Learned

Researchers at the University of Maryland are trying to get to the bottom of our farts.

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • gizmodo.com
Keto diet shows real promise for anorexia recovery

Restricting carbohydrates may sound like an unlikely approach to treating anorexia, but following a ketogenic diet was linked to recovery in 3 in 4 people with the eating disorder in a small trial

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • newscientist.com
Whitworth University Launches New Bachelor of Science Nursing Program to Strengthen Care and Address Critical Shortages Across the Region

Whitworth University is pleased to announce that its new bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) program has been approved by the Northwest Com...

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • news.whitworth.edu
The best James Bond story since ‘Casino Royale’ isn’t a movie

“007: First Light” is easily the best Bond game ever made, with a spy as fully fleshed out as Sean Connery’s or Timothy Dalton’s versions.

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • washingtonpost.com
Scientists reverse anxiety by fixing a tiny brain circuit

A newly identified group of amygdala neurons appears to play a central role in anxiety and social behavior. Restoring normal activity in this tiny brain circuit reversed anxiety and social deficits in mice, revealing a promising new target for future treatments.

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Elections to top science bodies test Croatia’s gender equality in research

Croatia’s track-record on gender equality in science has been both questioned and lauded in recent months, following both bad and good news on the topic. On the one hand, a senior awards committee was announced without a single woman researcher included. On the other, the national science academy welcomed its first cohort of fellows with more women than men.Members of the committee, which gives national awards recognising scientific achievement, are proposed by the ministry of science and endorsed by the parliament. The current line-up does include a woman, but she is culture minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek rather than a researcher. Even then, she didn’t make it into the photograph released to announce the appointments on April 16. “The image speaks a thousand words,” says Tanja Rudež, a science journalist for Jutarnji List newspaper. “I am surprised that none of these men, all well-known scientists, saw a problem with the fact that there was not a single successful female scientist on the committee,” she told Science|Business.Ivan Đikić, a prominent Croatian biochemist based at Goethe University Medical School, commented on LinkedIn that the news illustrated a “sad truth” about the state of science in Croatia.“It [. . .] reveals a system where women, despite contributing a substantial share of high-quality, internationally competitive science, are systematically excluded from the very processes that determine recognition and influence,” he wrote. Some 60% of researchers in Croatia are women, according to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, and they perform well in international competitions. For example, of the 12 European Research Council (ERC) grants awarded to Croatian researchers, seven went to women.“So how is it possible that decision-making bodies are still dominated by men over 60, while not a single female ERC laureate is involved in the selection process?” asked Đikić. “This is not a marginal oversight; it is a structural failure.” The ministry of science did not reply to a request for comment. The awards committee is not unusual. For example, a scientific advisory body announced by the ministry of demographics in April comprises 35 men and five women. The board of the Croatian Science Foundation, newly appointed by the parliament, is a little better, with five men and two women, but still unequal. “This is especially significant because such bodies do not merely distribute prestige. They shape research priorities, funding allocation and long-term scientific development,” Marija Lugarić, chair of the parliament’s committee on gender equality, told Science|Business. “Representation here matters not only symbolically, but materially.”Referring to the awards committee and the board of the science foundation, Lugarić says that while both bodies were appointed by parliament, neither met the minimum 40% gender balance threshold that Croatian law and EU guidelines expressly recommend for public bodies.Đikić wants to see EU institutions put pressure on the government to ensure basic standards of fairness, transparency and democratic governance in science policy are met. “Meaningful change will not come without pressure,” he wrote. “It must intensify both within Croatia and at the level of European institutions. Anything less undermines the credibility of Europe’s commitment to excellence and inclusion in science.”Rudež also underlined the importance of talking and writing about this topic, “because public opinion in Croatia does influence changes in the status and visibility of women in science.”The European Commission has not yet responded to a request for comment.Good news from the academyA more positive story came from the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts on 21 May, with the announcement of seven new women fellows and five men. This is the first time in the academy’s 165-year history that women have outnumbered men in a new intake.One of the new fellows, two-time ERC grantee Iva Tolić, credits the academy leadership with trying to be more modern and inclusive, representing the whole community better. “The academy is really aware that so far, before this election, there were very few women,” she told Science|Business. “So, they are actively trying to make this more equal.”Related articlesExplained: How the MSCA is close to achieving gender balanceCall for EU to leverage academic freedom in global talent raceRudež is more cautious, noting that despite the academy’s “breakthrough this year [. . .] it is still a predominantly male institution, with only 18% women.”This reflects a wider imbalance in Croatia’s research landscape. “The key levers of power in science are still in the hands of men,” she went on. “For example, all 14 rectors of private and public universities are men.”Similarly, Lugarić says a structural glass ceiling still exists in Croatian science, which is “most visible precisely where power is exercised.”She cites data from the Commission’s She Figures 2024 report, which shows that Croatia ranks second in the EU for gender equality in research and innovation overall, with an equality index of 79.6 out of 100. It is in the top five for women’s career advancement, participation in research; representation across all research sectors and for scientific publications.In stark contrast, it ranks second to last when it comes to women in decision-making positions in science. “This is not a coincidence,” Lugarić says. “It is a structural pattern.”Informal barriersThe persistent under-representation of women in the highest structures of Croatia’s academies, boards, award committees and leadership positions is not down to formal barriers, Lugarić says, but arises from more subtle obstacles such as “informal networks, persistent expectations regarding traditional gender roles and the unequal distribution of care responsibilities.”Tolić would like to see more support for young women in terms of affordable housing and child support, and higher salaries. Currently, she says, salaries in science stay low for the first 10-15 years, while housing and spaces in kindergarten are limited and expensive. “You have to work a lot, you get very little money, so it’s not great to have a family in this situation,” she says.But despite the challenges, Tolić is optimistic, saying that gender equality in research in Croatia is “definitely improving and going in the right direction.” The situation is particularly promising in biology, she adds, where most full professors, heads of department and deans of faculties are women. Lugarić, too, see the glass ceiling “very slowly, cracking,” and cites the academy election as an example that structural change is possible. Yet the situation in the national awards committee is a “stark reminder that without a conscious, systemic commitment to gender balance, progress will remain slow and uneven.”

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
From spider silk to science: a new way to access hidden fungal diversity

A new study from Thailand demonstrates that the debris-heavy webs of orb-weaving spiders can serve as natural, non-destructive tools for collecting and culturing viable environmental fungi. Through the isolation of living organisms, this innovative approach has already uncovered potentially new, undocumented fungal diversity within tropical rice fields.

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • eurekalert.org
Your business software doesn't know what's happening

Why it occurs and what to do about it.

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • fastcompany.com
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science

With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • iai.tv
Caleb Williams Named EA SPORTS™ Madden NFL 27 Cover Athlete

Williams Is the First Chicago Bears Player To Appear On A Madden NFL Cover Fans Can Expect Full Game Reveal on Thursday, June 4, and Worldwide Launch on Aug. 13 EA SPORTS™ announced today that Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams will grace the cover of EA SPORTS™ Madden NFL 27, making him the first player in Chicago Bears history to do so. Bears quarterback Caleb Williams lands on the cover of EA SPORTS Madden NFL 27. Williams’ record-setting season, playoff victory and NFL Moment of the Year — his walk-off, game-winning 46-yard touchdown pass in overtime against the Green Bay Packers — make him one of the most compelling quarterbacks to watch in 2026. Off the field, he’s known as one of the sport’s most distinctive cultural presences, styling his own gameday looks with unique nail art throughout the season. Williams appears on the Standard Edition cover showcasing his signature jump pass, while the Deluxe Edition cover features his iconic celebration that granted him the

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Sports • news.ea.com
UTC REACH Fund supports community-driven health research across the Chattanooga region

The Research for Evidence-based Action in Community Health (REACH) Fund was established earlier this year through the Journey Health Foundation Research Center housed in the Gary W. Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. In less than one year, it’s already funding 10 interdisciplinary projects focused on improving community health across Southeast Tennessee.

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Jun 3 • 7:57 AM EDT • Health • blog.utc.edu
Centrist Democrats launch new pledge: ‘We are capitalist, not socialist’

A pair of Democratic House members who won Republican-held seats want others to sign a vow for moderate policies.

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Jun 3 • 7:53 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Inspiring future innovators: 400+ middle, high school students explore career paths at App State STEAM Expo

Over 400 middle and high school students took part in App State’s STEAM Expo this spring, exploring science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics through hands-on learning and interactive engagement with App State faculty and students. The annual event helps students connect classroom concepts to future academic and career possibilities.

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Jun 3 • 7:33 AM EDT • Science • today.appstate.edu