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There’s a Vast Network Beneath Your Feet—And It Could Be Conscious, Some Theories Claim
It’s so large that it could stretch from the sun to Pluto an unfathomable number of times.
Unexpected consequence of Seattle-area lax return-to-office mandates
As tech companies in Seattle examine their budgets, some adjustments exclude the local business partnerships that have existed in their offices for years.
Radiation vest tested on NASA moonshot can quell effects of solar storms, study suggests
A new study suggests a protective vest tested on a manikin during NASA's first Artemis moonshot could slash the radiation exposure of lunar astronauts during severe solar storms.
Letters: Lakers sale to Iger and Kushner is talk of L.A.
Readers of the Los Angeles Times Sports section share their thoughts on the Lakers' sale to Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner, the WNBA, Dodgers and more.
As a new Bucks chapter begins, team president wants more fans
Milwaukee Bucks President Josh Glessing said at Cap Times Power Hour that Wisconsin’s NBA team is competing for customers with many entertainment options.
Sporting Jax men face Indy Eleven, and former Jacksonville midfielder
Nearly a month since their last home game, Sporting Jax men's soccer is back at home against a familiar opponent for Jacksonville soccer fans.
Adam Driver will play Mister Sinister and Inde Navarette will go Rogue in Marvel’s ‘X-Men’ reboot
Adam Driver will join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Mister Sinister in Disney and Marvel's “X-Men” reboot.
Exhausted health workers in Congo struggle to keep up as Ebola outpaces contact tracing
Gédéon Banga Ngbape and his team of community health workers are laboring tirelessly in eastern Congo to track the country’s fastest-growing Ebola outbreak.
Homeless man suing for $10 million after breaking into business and being shot by owner
A homeless man who was shot multiple times after breaking into a Portland granite and marble shop is now suing.
Homeless man suing for $10 million after breaking into business and being shot by owner
A homeless man who was shot multiple times after breaking into a Portland granite and marble shop is now suing.
Homeless man suing for $10 million after breaking into business and being shot by owner
A homeless man who was shot multiple times after breaking into a Portland granite and marble shop is now suing.
‘Coordination, not subordination’: Sheinbaum attacks U.S. 'meddling' in Mexico’s politics
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum let long-mounting frustrations with the Trump administration rise to the surface.
Homeless man wants $10M after breaking into Portland business and being shot 3 times by owner
Kenneth Voyles is seeking $10 million from Touchstone Granite & Marble and its owner over a March 2023 shooting following an after-hours shop break-in.
Trump says USS Abraham Lincoln deployment 'not nearly long enough'
Lawmakers are pressing for answers amid reports that sailors aboard the San Diego-based carrier have endured food shortages, plumbing failures and severe fatigue.
Packers preseason game highlights include a rising sideline reporter
Former WKOW sports director Karley Marotta shared a special tie with Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike McCarthy. Both also have fresh new starts.
Netflix plans to close two gaming studios, including one in Hollywood
Netflix said has closed Hollywood-based Night School and plans to close Helsinki-based Moonloot.
Comedian Stavros Halkias talks Magoobys, Baltimore and politics with The New York Times
Ahead of his new Netflix special, Stavros Halkias spoke to The New York Times about growing up in Baltimore, politics in comedy, and more.
This bizarre star is defying physics—scientists stunned by unexplained quantum effect - Futura-Sciences
Published in Nature, the study details observations of 1E 1547.0-5408, a magnetar formed by a massive star’s supernova explosion. The star rotates once every 2.1 seconds and generates a magnetic field more than one trillion times stronger than Earth’s. Unprecedented multi-observatory campaign Testing vacuum birefringence requires magnetic fields 100 million...
Denver Broncos preseason schedule: Dates, times and TV channels
The Denver Broncos are scheduled to play three preseason games this month. Take a look at the full schedule.
Entertainment with the Illinois Times
There's more than just the Illinois State Fair happening in Springfield -- including music and remembrances of the 1908 Springfield race riots.
Opinion: After Michigan, Will Pro-Israel Politics Get a Ground Game?
Michigan’s $80 million Democratic U.S. Senate primary demonstrated that money can buy attention, but it cannot create a movement.
'Call Her Daddy' host shuts down Unwell beverage line after short, buzzy run
Top podcaster Alex Cooper’s beverage business is shutting down, demonstrating the challenges online creators often have in diversifying their work away from content.
Laufey created a ‘third space’ with her annual fan event, ‘A Very Laufey Day.’ Then it exploded
The Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey has created a global fan event called “A Very Laufey Day.”.
Inside track: Live entertainment dominates Boulder, Longmont scene this week
Here’s what’s going on this weekend (and beyond).
Homeless man sues for $10M after he breaks into business and owner shoots him 3 times
The trial has begun of a homeless man who burglarized a Northeast Portland business, then discovered the owner was inside.
Health policy must be driven by data, not political grandstanding
'The administration’s anti-vaccine rhetoric will only sow widespread confusion, ultimately driving up rates of entirely preventable childhood diseases,' writes an L.A. Times reader.
UNC Health Rex Holly Springs Adds New Patient Beds to Meet Demand for Care
Expansion Increases Capacity, Reducing Patient Wait Times
Netflix leans into young adult dramas as YouTube threat grows
Netflix is making it easier for fans to find hundreds of YA films and TV shows, including supernatural mystery "Sid & Zoey" and coming of age tale "Sunshine Girls."
Family Fun Day returns Sept. 19 with free food, entertainment and activities
A longtime community tradition will return next month as the Sciotoville Church of the Nazarene and Potter’s House Ministries host their 17th annual Family Fun Day on Sept. 19.
Matthew Whitaker invites audiences into his Birchmere debut
The Grammy-winning musician brings a quintet and new music
Effort to ban genetically modified animals dies in California Legislature
A bill that would have banned the sale of genetically-modified pets for cosmetic reasons died in committee Thursday.
Karoline Leavitt, the Press Secretary Who Perfected the Art of Defending Trump
The 28-year-old and the president shared a tone and, it seemed at times, a mind.
Laguna Beach business leaders get public safety update
Laguna Beach Police Chief Jeff Calvert was a guest speaker during the Chamber of Commerce’s government affairs meeting on Aug. 6.
Trump is selling early access to his posts on Truth Social
President Donald Trump gets sued by media organizations for selling early access to his Truth Social posts.
Jon Batiste cancels Connecticut gig for 'personal circumstances'
Jon Batiste announces he will take a brief break from live performances as he deals with undisclosed "personal circumstances," he said in a statement shared by Connecticut's Westville Music Bowl.
Lakers again have most nationally televised games on their schedule
The NBA released full schedules for each team on Thursday, and only the Knicks, Spurs and 76ers have as many national TV games (34) as the Lakers.
Forbes editor out; report says he took $6M from founder of firm that does business with magazine
The top editor of Forbes has left his job after reportedly being fired for accepting $6 million from the founder of a firm that works with the magazine. The New York Times reported this week that the payment came from RJ Shook, whose company, Shook Research, has collaborated with Forbes since 201...
Forbes editor out; report says he took $6M from founder of firm that does business with magazine
The top editor of Forbes left his job last month and was reportedly dismissed for accepting $6 million from the founder of a firm that does business with the magazine. The New York Times reported this…
AI needs science’s search history
“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.
Total War: Warhammer 3 Just Confirmed the Release Date for Its Biggest Piece of DLC in the Series 10-Year History
Creative Assembly’s Total War: Warhammer 3 will soon get the biggest piece of DLC in the series’ 10-year history, with Lords of the End Times due out on September 24. Here's everything included.
When Apollo came to the Bronx
Private equity’s entrance into baseball is a sign of the times
Gorge Amphitheatre founders plan intimate, ambitious new venues
Renderings show the project, dubbed The Hilltop. It will feature a 1,000- to 1,200-seat indoor theater and a 2,000-seat outdoor venue.
Eurovision music contest will take place in Bulgaria’s Black Sea city of Burgas next year
Next year's Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Burgas, Bulgaria.
How Democrats plan to rein in Trump should they win in November
For Democrats, impeachment remains an option, but they are reluctant to make it a centerpiece of their agenda this time.
David Ellison is best argument to block Paramount-Warner Bros. deal
Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison faces an antitrust lawsuit over his proposed purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. He recently threatened to move Paramount out of California if the suit is not settled.
‘Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea’ is haunted by an ancestral legacy
American Players Theatre produces Nathan Alan Davis’ poetic, funny drama through Sept. 25 in the indoor Touchstone Theatre.
'Don't Say Good Luck' review: Sunny Sandler and Melanie Lynskey shine
In a landscape littered with teenage dysfunction, Netflix's 'Don't Say Good Luck' is a moving argument for aspirational television.
How Wisconsin high schools are navigating NIL for student-athletes
A year after the WIAA adopted name, image and likeness rules for high school athletes, questions remain for students and schools.
In Paramount merger, law and politics collide
David Ellison is threatening to pull Paramount out of Hollywood if the state continues its lawsuit against his merger. Is that a real threat?
Junior Fair events and top entertainment highlight this year's fair
Events you'll want to include when planning your trips to the fair.
Eric Lauer shows his value as Dodgers sweep the Royals
Left-hander Eric Lauer, who could be odd man out when the postseason begins, pitches well as Dodgers sweep the Royals.
NBA YoungBoy, now in Korea, talks heart condition and how many albums his future holds
While a guest on the Open Thoughts podcast, the 26-year-old Baton Rouge rapper revealed that the left side of his heart is "still enlarged."
New Lakers buyer Joshua Kushner is a Democrat with sports roots
Venture capitalist Joshua Kushner, brother of President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, has tried to forge his own legacy that includes sports investments.
Lakers begin NBA Cup play at Warriors on Oct. 30
The in-season tournament feature six groups of five teams. The Lakers and Warriors are grouped with the Trail Blazers, Kings and Spurs.
2026 NFL Thanksgiving Games: Schedule, Teams, How to Watch
See the 2026 NFL Thanksgiving schedule, including all five Thanksgiving Week matchups, kickoff times, TV channels and streaming information.
Buying Lakers makes Bob Iger's dream of owning a sports team come true
Throughout his storied career as a media executive, Bob Iger has made repeated attempts to own a major sports franchise.
Little League World Series Regions: Live updates, scores, today's schedule
Follow the Little League World Series on Aug. 12, including game times, TV channels, scores and how to stream.
Sports on TV for Aug. 17
ADV15-16 (All times Eastern) Schedule subject to change and/or blackouts Monday, Aug. 17 4 p.m.
We asked Madison: How much money do you make?
Over a dozen states have pay transparency laws, including Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Washington. While no such laws exist in Wisconsin, money is still at the top of mind
What Devon Witherspoon said about contract negotiations with Seahawks
Devon Witherspoon remains in contract negotiations that could make him the highest paid cornerback in the NFL, but the Seahawks star said he's fully focused on the field.
My partner is monitoring his sleep score, steps and fibre intake. He has become a dry shite
Tell Me About It: What happened to spending half the day in bed, eating chocolate, wine and olives?
A tale of two candidates in LD 14: Biggs’ political name versus Walsh’s career experience
Legislative District 14 is reliably Republican, making a Democratic upset this November a long shot.
California to phase out paraquat, a powerful weedkiller associated with serious health issues
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation said all manufacturers of pesticide products containing paraquat have "voluntarily canceled" their product registrations.
Orlando Magic Team Reporter Kendra Douglas’ Game plan: Dish Assists to Other Women
As a regional sideline reporter, Kendra Douglas serves as the primary bridge between the team and the public, which sometimes means traveling across the coun...
Ari Emanuel's events business will acquire theater owner ATG Entertainment
Mari, an events and experiences business founded by Ari Emanuel, plans to acquire ATG Entertainment, the owner of theater venues in areas including London's West End. The financial terms were not disc...
Ari Emanuel's events business will acquire theater owner ATG Entertainment
Mari, an events and experiences business founded by Ari Emanuel, plans to acquire ATG Entertainment, the owner of theater venues in areas including London's West End. The financial terms were not disclosed.
Ari Emanuel's events business will acquire theater owner ATG Entertainment
Mari, an events and experiences business founded by Ari Emanuel, plans to acquire ATG Entertainment, the owner of theater venues in areas including London's West End. The financial terms were not disc...
Ari Emanuel's events business will acquire theater owner ATG Entertainment
Mari, an events and experiences business founded by Ari Emanuel, plans to acquire ATG Entertainment, the owner of theater venues in areas including London's West End. The financial terms were not disclosed.
Majority of VA mental health visits are timely, but referrals lag: Watchdog
The VA watchdog found that 80% of referrals for mental health services in the Community Care program were scheduled within 30 days.
Fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history has claimed 2,000 lives. Here's why it is hard to contain
Congo’s health authorities report 4,381 confirmed cases, including 2,011 deaths. This outbreak is spreading almost three times faster than the 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa, the deadliest in history.
Curtain Call Cabaret & Lounge launches new pay model for entertainment, food
The Curtain Call Cabaret & Lounge in downtown Medford has introduced an innovative Pay-What-You-Want model that includes both admission and its food menu. For all Curtain Call-produced performances, guests may […]
Lucas Museum announces new restaurant inspired by Skywalker Ranch
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on Tuesday announced its flagship restaurant, Skywalker Grill. Nestled at the top of the museum with sweeping city views, the classic American eatery is now taking reservations.
How extreme weather is becoming a business expense
Extreme weather is creating growing financial challenges for businesses and households as heat waves, storms, wildfires and heavy rain become more disruptive, The New York Times reports. In Chicago, for example, a bakery owner lost inventory and spent $1,700 on dry ice after a storm caused a power outage, while other businesses have faced higher […]
Mexican restaurants receive low health inspection scores
A group of Mexican restaurants were among those getting low inspections scores this week.
New images of the sun show its surface in the finest detail yet
It’s dangerous to look directly at the sun without proper eye protection. But researchers were able to peek at its scorching surface with the help of the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope.
2026 NFL Christmas Games: Schedule, Teams, How to Watch
See the complete 2026 NFL Christmas Day schedule, including matchups, kickoff times, TV channels and streaming information for all three games.
LeBron James set to return to L.A. for Lakers-76ers Christmas matchup
LeBron James, who signed with the Philadelphia 76ers last month, will be making his return to Los Angeles on Dec. 25 when the Lakers host Philadelphia at Crypto.com Arena.
Why GameStop’s bold $56-billion play for eBay is suddenly in doubt
(Bloomberg) -- GameStop Corp., led by Chief Executive Officer Ryan Cohen, is considering withdrawing its $56 billion bid for eBay Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized
Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA
A Badgers defensive lineman is ready for a fresh start
Hammond Russell IV came to Wisconsin after five seasons of loyalty to West Virginia, and after earning a degree.
APT’s Two ‘Gentlemen’ of Verona plays like a teen drama
Playwright and director Aaron Posner spins “Two ‘Gentlemen’ of Verona” into a heartsick teen romance with a folk music score.
Video: How We’re Covering an ‘Identity Crisis’ in Politics
Recent primary wins have posed critical questions for both Republicans and Democrats as they head into the fall midterms. Carolyn Ryan, managing editor of The New York Times, shares how reporters approach coverage of shifting political dynamics.
Homeland Security intensifies pursuit of noncitizens on voter rolls
Immigrants who said they inadvertently registered to vote while obtaining or renewing driver’s licenses are increasingly facing deportation under the Trump administration.
How a counterintelligence inquiry Into Trump’s Russia ties was derailed
Documents released by the White House shed new light on the demise of an often-overlooked 2017 FBI investigation.
iPhone 18 Pro BOM cost estimated to be up by 40%
Apple is reportedly paying three times more for RAM and storage than it did with the iPhone 17 Pro. We’ve already seen rumors that iPhone 18 Pro...
DOGE said it saved $1.7 billion by terminating a military health IT contract. GAO found the contract was never terminated.
DOGE reported $1.76 billion in savings from terminating a contract, but GAO found that the contract was never terminated and no funds were deobligated.
'Game of Thrones' fans gush over 'Mad King' at Royal Shakespeare Theatre
"Game of Thrones: The Mad King," the first stage adaptation of writer George R. R. Martin's bestselling fantasy saga, opened Saturday at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre with Martin — and rapturous fans — in attendance.
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.
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