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Data center politics shape Virginia scrutiny of NextEra-Dominion deal

Gov. Abigail Spanberger isn't opposing the tie-up yet but says she is "deeply skeptical" that consumers and public policy priorities are protected through the proposed utility merger.

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Aug 7 • 6:08 AM EDT • Politics • eenews.net
"My tattoo business was the trigger for Base44"

Yuval Shlomo reflects on how the business she built sparked the creation of Base44, the AI company founded by her husband, Maor Shlomo, as she leaves tattooing behind for a career in tech.

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Aug 7 • 5:30 AM EDT • Business • calcalistech.com
New Business Licenses: 8.7.26

Crawlspace construction, medical communications, family care practice are some of this week's new licenses. (BizSense Pro required)

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Aug 7 • 2:00 AM EDT • Business • richmondbizsense.com
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7 Days: Your guide to Las Vegas (Aug. 9-15)

'Las Vegas Magazine' publisher Katie Dixon helps you plan the perfect week!

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Aug 7 • 2:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • lasvegasmagazine.com
Jacobs Wellington Foundation And Cox Science Center Celebrate STEM Partnership - Town-Crier Newspaper

The Jacobs Wellington Foundation and the Cox Science Center & Aquarium are celebrating six years of partnership dedicated to expanding STEM education opportunities for Wellington students. Through the foundation’s continued support of the Cox Science Center’s STEM Passport program, approximately 500 Wellington-area elementary and middle school students will participate in hands-on science, technology, engineering and […]

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Aug 7 • 1:26 AM EDT • Science • gotowncrier.com
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Portland warehouse fire sparks health concerns after asbestos discovery

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Days after Portland watched the 116-year-old eight-story warehouse ravaged by fire, concerns grow as dangerous chemicals from the building are being tracked in the air…

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Aug 6 • 10:07 PM EDT • Health • koin.com
Waikīkī resort opens entertainment center

Family bowling is possible in Waikīkī at this entertainment center, which opened in June. The 6,000-square-foot space also includes more than 60 arcade…

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Aug 6 • 9:33 PM EDT • Entertainment • alohastatedaily.com
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Kids Empire Brings High-Energy Family Entertainment To Wellington Green - Town-Crier Newspaper

The Mall at Wellington Green recently announced the grand opening of Kids Empire, a vibrant indoor attraction designed to entertain children of all ages through active, imaginative and social play. “Kids Empire is an exciting addition to the Mall at Wellington Green, where families can spend meaningful time together,” said Carmen Spinoso, president and CEO […]

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Aug 6 • 7:52 PM EDT • Entertainment • gotowncrier.com
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Wellness club gives Latino men space to focus on mental health

There's a new community group designed to use movement to support the mental well-being of Latino men. It's called the Hermanos Wellness Club.

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Aug 6 • 7:15 PM EDT • Health • abc7.com
In the Sport-light: Roundup of news from Hull's wide world of sports

Compiled by Matt Haraden • Registration for the 2026-27 Hull Pirates Youth Basketball Travel season (boys and girls entering grades 3 -8) is now open. Families are encouraged to register early to help with team planning and ensure players are ready for the upcoming season. The

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Aug 6 • 6:12 PM EDT • Sports • hulltimes.com
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'Primetime' star Robert Pattinson shocks fans with Chris Hansen transformation in 'unsettling' trailer

The trailer for A24's "Primetime" reveals Robert Pattinson's uncanny Chris Hansen transformation, sparking Oscar buzz and true crime debate.

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Aug 6 • 5:39 PM EDT • Entertainment • foxnews.com
Environmental groups challenge FCC approval of startup’s plan to beam on-demand sunlight from space

While the FCC approved only a single test mission, the groups argue it could pave the way for a much larger constellation of satellites in the future.

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Aug 6 • 5:27 PM EDT • Technology • nbcnews.com
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Mitch McConnell returns home weeks after hospital admission sparked health speculation

The 84-year-old Republican Senator, who was admitted to hospital in June, says he will continue to work from home for now.

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Aug 6 • 4:09 PM EDT • Health • bbc.com
Springfield Business Journal: Children's Mercy with Mercy plans December opening for O'Reilly Pediatric Center

By Geoff PickleMembers of the media yesterday were invited to a sneak peek of the O’Reilly Pediatric Center, a joint project between Mercy Springfield Communities and Kansas City-based Children’s Mercy.The pediatric outpatient center is located on Mercy's south campus that also includes its orthopedic hospital and a new emergency room. The...

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Aug 6 • 3:21 PM EDT • Business • news.childrensmercy.org
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Video: How the Migrant Crisis in Ceuta Ignited a Backlash Against the Far Right

A sudden migrant surge from Morocco into the Spanish territory of Ceuta attracted the presence of far-right, anti-immigrant politicians. But many locals say they don’t want their multicultural home to be used as a political prop.

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Aug 6 • 3:05 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Bennett calls on Pingree, Charles to disclose donors

Maine State Senator and independent candidate for governor Rick Bennett is demanding more transparency in campaign finance, asking opponents Democrat Hannah Pingree and Republicam Bobby Charles to disclose the names of who he said are anonymous donors funding their campaigns.

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Aug 6 • 2:50 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com
WATCH: Scientists release most detailed sun images ever
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Aug 6 • 2:35 PM EDT • Science • pbs.org
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New creative hub uptown draws hundreds of entrepreneurs, lands first office tenant (PHOTOS)

Sparkhouse Uptown, a 20,000-square-foot creative hub in Charlotte, has attracted hundreds of entrepreneurs since opening in June at 500 N. Tryon St.

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Aug 6 • 2:23 PM EDT • Business • bizjournals.com
Epic Spaceman Uses Animation, VFX To Explain Science. Without AI

Toby Lockerbie explains how he turned self-taught animation and VFX skills into one of YouTube’s top science channels, and why genAI has no place in his videos.

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Aug 6 • 2:06 PM EDT • Science • cartoonbrew.com
First photos of SpaceX lunar rocket crash show blackened hole torn into the moon's surface

New images from South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter reveal where a runaway SpaceX rocket part slammed into the moon on Wednesday.

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Aug 6 • 1:22 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Rochester's Davis-Fetch Building Corp. seeks tax exemptions for LeRoy expansion

The contractor wants to build a new $1.2 million 16,500-square-foot space on Lent Avenue in the village.

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Aug 6 • 12:49 PM EDT • Business • spectrumlocalnews.com
Space Compute Is Moving From Science Fiction To Infrastructure

As satellites generate more data than Earth can efficiently process, space compute is emerging as a new infrastructure category for AI, storage and edge computing.

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Aug 6 • 11:02 AM EDT • Science • forbes.com
Ideas for Home Entertainment Spaces

I love entertaining at home, and the suburban San Diego house I chose as my “forever residence” makes it a pleasure. Holiday gatherings are hosted in the dining room. Brunches…

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Aug 6 • 11:01 AM EDT • Entertainment • kitchenbathdesign.com
Bournemouth sign Spanish right-back Juanlu

Bournemouth announce the signing of right-back Juanlu Sanchez from Spanish club Sevilla in a deal worth up to £11.1m.

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Aug 6 • 9:39 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
New Adobe plugin in ChatGPT combines Photoshop, Firefly, Premiere, Acrobat, and more

Adobe is unifying its ChatGPT integrations into a new plugin with more than 70 tools spanning photo editing, video, design, and PDFs.

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Aug 6 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5mac.com
Cashing in on SpaceX: 'Every chance I get, I'll sell a little more'

Andre Lavoie joined SpaceX in 2009 as an engineer, now he's looking to cash in his shares in the company.

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Aug 6 • 5:40 AM EDT • Business • bbc.com
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Spain's sports minister says country 'deserves' to host 2030 World Cup final, not Morocco

Spain "deserves" to host the 2030 World Cup final, according to the country's sports minister Milagros Tolón.

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Aug 6 • 4:54 AM EDT • Sports • espn.com
‘Spectral lines’ and a giant plume: what science saw when the SpaceX rocket hit the moon

Sodium and lithium gas was detected in a plume thought to span tens of kilometres, created when part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into the lunar surface

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Aug 6 • 12:47 AM EDT • Science • theguardian.com
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Climate change contributed to big Canada fires, study says as Trump blames mismanagement

A new study calculates that human-caused climate change doubled the likelihood of the tinderbox weather conditions that sparked Canada’s massive summer wildfires.

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Aug 6 • 12:05 AM EDT • Science • seattletimes.com
Politics in the Park: Harshman, Kelly spar over school-funding overhaul, standards and screen time

CASPER, Wyo. — Two sitting state representatives running for superintendent of public instruction made their case at Washington Park on Wednesday,

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Aug 5 • 11:13 PM EDT • Politics • oilcity.news
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Baron Von Opperbean reaches 10,000 visitors. What's next?

An all-ages immersive attraction, Baron Von Opperbean (or BVO) opened May 1 in the former Mississippi River Museum space on Mud Island.

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Aug 5 • 9:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • commercialappeal.com
Science|Business summer reads of 2026

As most people in the European research and innovation policy bubble are going on a well-deserved summer break, we have come up with a list of our favourite books, podcasts and essays from the past year that ask deeper questions about science, technology and politics.BooksPasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, by Donald StokesIf you haven’t read Pasteur’s Quadrant yet, now is the time. In the EU and elsewhere, we’re living through a period of dwindling faith that curiosity-driven research automatically leads to economic growth and technological progress. Pasteur’s Quadrant, published in 1997 by the Princeton academic Donald Stokes, is the most influential critique of the standard “linear model” of R&D: the idea that new discoveries made in ivory-tower labs get neatly passed on for commercialisation by start-ups. In reality, Stokes argues, practical applications often inspire more theorical lines of inquiry. Of course, we have long known that things are more complex than the linear model, but even today, it’s still often assumed in Brussels discourse. The book is a useful corrective, and is being used now to argue for new types of scientific institutions. David MatthewsThe Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism, by Jacob Hale Russel and Dennis PattersonAre society’s problems solvable by technical expertise alone? “If only the benighted would listen,” say Jacob Hale Russel and Dennis Patterson, two professors at Rutgers Law School who got frustrated with how scientists and politicians handled public health communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the book, they argue that clichéd mantras about scientific evidence and expertise perpetrated by academics, journalists and politicians have harmed public trust in the very institutions they were trying to defend. Paradoxically, slogans such as “we believe in science,” “follow the science” and “defer to the experts” can fuel mistrust in science, experts and democratic institutions. The authors criticise “condescension” and “technocratic paternalism” in the public discourse and make the case for a more nuanced approach to scientific and expert policy advice that rests on humility, doubt, scepticism and open dialogue. “Most complex social questions in fact revolve around values, not the recitation of unambiguous facts,” they say. Florin ZubascuBreakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan WangIn this book, Dan Wang compares the structural differences between the US and Chinese industrial policies, but raises a very timely question for innovation policy wonks: how can advanced manufacturing know-how contribute to technology-intensive economic growth? Wang says technology has three components: the tools, the blueprints and patents, and the process knowledge. The third component represents the “proficiency gained from practical experience, which isn’t easily communicated and requires years of implementation.” According to Wang, rather than seeing tools and blueprints as the ultimate ends of technological progress, policymakers should see them as milestones in the training of better scientists and manufacturers. Over the past decades, China has amassed “process knowledge” because capital flowed to complex fabrication facilities, while investors in the West have parked their money in capital-light businesses such as digital platforms or chip companies that focus on design. As it turns out, thanks to its oversized focus on manufacturing, China has gained remarkable advantages in the global technology race. Florin ZubascuBaltic: The Future of Europe, by Oliver MoodyWhat can Europe learn from the nine countries surrounding the Baltic Sea? Alongside the familiar stories about Estonia's digital transformation, the book examines how the region has used technology, resilience, education, governance and long-term thinking to respond to geopolitical, economic and security challenges. Innovation policy wonks might find fresh perspectives on how innovation can strengthen defence, societal resilience and Europe's capacity to adapt in an uncertain world. Whether or not you agree with all of Oliver Moody's conclusions, the book is a useful guide to a region that is increasingly shaping European debates on security, competitiveness and technology. Goda NaujokaityteThe Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf This book chronicles the wild and adventurous life of natural science pioneer Alexander von Humboldt who at some point in the 19th century seems to have been just about the most famous person in the world. Through scientific expeditions to the Andes Mountains and to the depths of Siberia, von Humboldt contributed a host of discoveries and concepts. During his life he met and formed relationships with historical figures as different as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Simon Bolivar, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles Darwin. He is also claimed to be the person in the world with most things named after him, a list that includes an ocean current, a penguin and a region of the Moon. Still venerated in Germany, with numerous scientific institutions named after him, von Humboldt has slipped out of public consciousness in most of the rest of the world. For anyone not familiar with him, this book does a good job of describing his fascinating life. Ole EllekrogCareless People, by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsYou may have heard this referred to as the book Meta doesn’t want you to read. The 2025 memoir from Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of global public policy at Meta, then just called Facebook, includes explosive claims about everything from a toxic workplace culture to how the company worked with advertisers to target vulnerable teens, and the lengths it was prepared to go to in order to break into China. It’s a fascinating insight into how and why the tech company gradually shifted its approach to policy, whether in the US, Europe or Asia. Meta has denied the allegations in the book, and last year won an emergency ruling to prevent Wynn-Williams from promoting it. In response, the author is now suing her former employer. If that doesn’t make you want to read it. Martin GreenacrePodcastsThe Europeans: Europe’s anti-ElonThis podcast is a great choice for a light-hearted dose of European policy and culture news. Most of it has little to do with research, innovation and technology, but this particular podcast features an interview with Mastadon’s founder Eugen Rochko. He talks about his experience running an open-source, federated, European-made social media platform, and leaving it all behind. The conversation, which starts 14 minutes in, gently encourages us to reflect on what kind of technology we, as Europeans, want to make. Goda NaujokaityteSolarpunk and how we escape dystopiaNew technologies are very often taken from science fiction. Alberto Santos-Dumont, inventor the airship, was inspired as a child by the adventure stories of Jules Verne. OpenAI’s attempt to build a personal assistant with the voice of Scarlett Johansson was lifted from the 2013 film Her, completely ignoring the movie’s cautionary message. So if we want better tech, we need to imagine it first. Unfortunately, the state of current sci-fi is relentlessly dystopian, giving inventors precious few ideas or hope. However, a new genre, Solarpunk, which envisages a technologically advanced but ecologically harmonious future, is now taking off. The actual tech the genre imagines, such as permaculture, renewable energy or community repair workshops, while nice, isn’t all that inspiring or ambitious. But it’s a first step towards rescuing sci-fi from its pessimistic Blade Runner rut. David MatthewsEveryday AbundanceLaunched in June, Everyday Abundance is a podcast that tells the stories of the inventions we now take so for granted that we barely given them a second thought. For example, the washing machine, which liberated women from a lifetime “bent over washtubs and washboards.” Or modern dentistry, which ended the reality that “tooth pain was simply part of human life.” Historians of technology, Virginia Postrel and Charles C Mann are very much on the optimistic end of the spectrum when it comes to the capacity of invention to improve human life. Here, they set out their case: if it wasn’t for progress, you might be hunched over a washtub with toothache rather than reading these words. David Matthews‘We will not know what we lost’: Conservation fallout a year after USAID shutdownSince his return to the White House, Donald Trump has been on a mission to undermine science. He slashed jobs at federal agencies, terminated grants in some research areas, took unprecedented control over university affairs and, within hours of his inauguration, suspended the US Agency for International Development. While its initial focus was to administer health and food aid around the world, it had since expanded to conservation projects. The result? Some of these projects were stopped abruptly. In this Mongabay podcast, environmental reporter Michelle Nijhuis tells the story of the EcoGuard conservation programme in Liberia, whose local patrols had helped protect rainforests, monitor endangered wildlife and track illegal threats. From one day to the next, these were left without salaries. Luckily, she notes, the initiative was able to get emergency funding from international NGOs, but its future remains “incredibly uncertain.” Juliette PortalaEssaysThe Mars Delusion, by Henry WismayerWhy is humankind so fixated on establishing a colony on Mars? asks London-based writer Henry Wismayer. From space evangelists promoting Martian settlement as an insurance policy, to billionaire Jeff Bezos, who said humans should settle on Mars “because it’s cool,” the mission is not running short of advocates. However, in this essay, Wismayer reminds us that some critics expect any future Mars pioneer to end up “irradiated, sick, mad and dead.” Scientists have already looked into the possible effects of prolonged exposure to Martian gravity, and it’s not pretty: muscle shrinking, bones weakening, changes to the central nervous system and other biological modifications to make us all reconsider the journey. “Some researchers have forecast that the future settler, after generations of evolutionary conditioning, will look less like an Übermensch and more like ET,” Wismayer writes. Juliette Portala

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Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
Honouring Guatemala’s Indigenous midwives and making space for Indigenous health systems

Guatemala’s Indigenous midwives won recognition of their work before the Constitutional Court. Seven years on, UN Human Rights has documented that the ruling still has not reached the health services where they work every day. This year’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is dedicated to them.

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Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • ohchr.org
Digital Science Rolls Out Papers AI Research Ecosystem

Digital Science unveiled Papers AI, an AI-native workspace for research writing, analysis, management, and collaboration.

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Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • newsbreaks.infotoday.com
What scientists are learning after SpaceX debris crashed into the moon
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Aug 5 • 6:40 PM EDT • Science • pbs.org
New Glenn explosion linked to rocket engine valve

Blue Origin has traced the explosion of its New Glenn rocket during a static-fire test in May to a valve in the rocket’s BE-4 engine.

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Aug 5 • 6:30 PM EDT • Technology • spacenews.com
Scientists are certain a wayward SpaceX rocket slammed into the moon as predicted

A SpaceX rocket that launched a pair of lunar landers slammed into the moon as predicted on Wednesday after drifting off course for the past year, scientists reported.

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Aug 5 • 6:05 PM EDT • Science • abc7.com
Blue Origin CEO says faulty valve caused massive explosion in Florida

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp says a faulty valve caused the massive New Glenn rocket explosion that rocked Florida's Space Coast in May.

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Aug 5 • 5:40 PM EDT • Technology • wesh.com
American Dream Opens Two New Entertainment Facilities

American Dream unveiled a 3,000-seat performing arts center and a 60,000-square-foot event space this July at its East Rutherford location. Dream Live Performing Arts Center made its debut on July…

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Aug 5 • 5:31 PM EDT • Entertainment • wdhafm.com
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A Democratic Socialist Disparaged Thanksgiving. Will Voters Forgive Her?

“Cancel Thanksgiving,” she wrote. “VDay” brings out “the worst of humanity,” she mused. Francesca Hong’s old social media posts get a fresh look ahead of Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor.

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Aug 5 • 4:42 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Investors are having doubts about Elon Musk’s grandiose ambitions

SpaceX is spending gobs of money to refashion itself as an AI company

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Aug 5 • 3:50 PM EDT • Business • economist.com
It looks like a SpaceX rocket did slam into the moon (as predicted)

A SpaceX rocket that launched a pair of lunar landers slammed into the moon as predicted on Wednesday, scientists reported, after drifting off course for the past year.

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Aug 5 • 2:28 PM EDT • Science • cbc.ca
UM Health-Sparrow breaks ground on new behavioral health hospital

The Janice M. Granger Behavioral Health Building will have 64 beds and officials broke ground on the project on Wednesday, Aug. 5.

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Aug 5 • 1:36 PM EDT • Health • lansingstatejournal.com
Amid tension, Cunningham says she wants to 'get back to basketball'

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham said Wednesday that she wants the focus to return to basketball after her comments on transgender athletes sparked heated national debate, three rallies and social media reaction all the way to the White House.

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Aug 5 • 1:29 PM EDT • Sports • espn.com
Lima, Boston, Athens and Dubai. Grad goes global for business training

Global business education prepared this Northeastern University graduate for a career spanning Peru, Greece, and Dubai's booming economy.

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Aug 5 • 12:32 PM EDT • Business • news.northeastern.edu
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SpaceX Is Betting on Cybertrucks to Save NASA Astronauts in an Emergency

Tesla's controversial vehicle is replacing a tactical military transport designed to deflect landmine blasts.

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Aug 5 • 11:45 AM EDT • Technology • gizmodo.com
NSF Inouye Solar Telescope Enables Major Discovery of a Hidden Solar Process - NSO

Scientists using the NSF Inouye Solar Telescope discovered Kelvin-Helmholtz instability on the Sun, shedding light on solar activity and space weather.

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Aug 5 • 11:36 AM EDT • Science • nso.edu
The Ocarina of Time and Star Fox Remakes Feel Like Overly Safe Bets From a Typically Bold Company – Has Nintendo Lost Its Creative Spark?

The Switch 2 is an iterative update console. The Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Star Fox remakes are safe bets with generic art styles. The Mario movies are by-the-numbers. Is Nintendo losing its soul?

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Aug 5 • 11:30 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Beautiful science: Spartan research creates art

Sometimes, MSU research leads to striking, unexpected art. From naturally occurring patterns made by honeybees to microscopic images of gut neurons, here is a glimpse into the beauty revealed by MSU research.

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Aug 5 • 11:12 AM EDT • Science • msutoday.msu.edu
Testing Astronaut Health in 30 Seconds of Weightlessness

UC Davis researcher Rich Whittle joined an international team aboard a parabolic flight to study how microgravity affects blood flow to protect astronauts during long-duration space missions.

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Aug 5 • 11:00 AM EDT • Health • engineering.ucdavis.edu
He posted about this controversial medical test. Then came the backlash

Andrew Huberman's recent comments about full-body MRIs sparked a new wave of controversy. Here's what happened.

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Aug 5 • 8:01 AM EDT • Technology • usatoday.com
He posted about this controversial medical test. Then came the backlash

Andrew Huberman's recent comments about full-body MRIs sparked a new wave of controversy. Here's what happened.

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Aug 5 • 8:01 AM EDT • Health • usatoday.com
Report: Aaron Donald exploring media space, developing docuseries

Aaron Donald has signed with a management team to "grow his business, brand partnerships and overall profile" in media and entertainment.

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Aug 5 • 7:41 AM EDT • Entertainment • theramswire.usatoday.com
Marvel Rivals’ next update drastically reduces the game’s install size on PC and console

As of Season 9.5, Marvel Rivals is going to take up a lot less space on your platform of choice.

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Aug 5 • 7:28 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
SpaceX: What can scientists learn from a Falcon 9 rocket hitting the Moon?

While the collision was an accident, it is a unique scientific gift for planetary geologists that could provide important data for future space missions.

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Aug 5 • 7:19 AM EDT • Science • bbc.co.uk
SpaceX: What can scientists learn from a Falcon 9 rocket hitting the Moon?

While the collision was an accident, it is a unique scientific gift for planetary geologists that could provide important data for future space missions.

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Aug 5 • 7:19 AM EDT • Science • bbc.com
Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.

There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. I am particularly pleased that it goes out for free to thousands of subscribers around the world. But, writing this newsletter takes a lot of work. If you are enjoying it and would like to support the project, sign up for one of the subscription options here. It is the equivalent of a fancy cup of coffee per month! Subscribe

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Aug 5 • 7:18 AM EDT • Politics • adamtooze.substack.com
Marvel Rivals Is About to Seriously Shrink Its File Size on PS5

Saving space

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Aug 5 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • pushsquare.com
SpaceX's science fiction dreams come with an astronomical bill

SpaceX shares fell as much as 11% in overnight trading despite the company delivering an earnings beat on Tuesday.

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Aug 5 • 6:07 AM EDT • Science • businessinsider.com
SpaceX slides as AI spending worries overshadow early returns

SpaceX touted faster-than-expected returns ​from its AI spending on its first-ever earnings call as a public company.

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Aug 5 • 6:02 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com
YouTube star Simone Giertz has some life and science lessons to share with you

The Swedish engineer influencer has spent over a decade on YouTube growing a loyal audience of over 2.5 million followers, but for her, the journey was all about living a less typical life in science.

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Aug 5 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • scientificamerican.com
These are the best things to do in Brevard this weekend, Aug. 7-13

Find your weekend adventure! Oddities Expo and space collectibles show top our list of fun things to do in Brevard.

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Aug 5 • 5:02 AM EDT • Entertainment • floridatoday.com
Official | Bayer Leverkusen seal Miguel Gutiérrez capture

Bayer Leverkusen have officially confirmed the signing of Spanish left-back Miguel Gutiérrez from Napoli. The 25-year-old has signed a contract through 2031 and will wear the No. 3 shirt for die Werk...

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Aug 5 • 4:25 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Space for music on late-night TV has dwindled. New media seeks to offer an alternative

When CBS ended “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” earlier this year, it also shuttered the program’s robust music offerings.

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Aug 5 • 3:04 AM EDT • Entertainment • news4jax.com
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Asian shares jump on AI trade revival despite SpaceX, AMD setbacks, as oil prices dip

Technology stocks booming again while Brent crude trades below $80 a barrel amid hopes for a Middle East interim deal

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Aug 5 • 2:59 AM EDT • Business • theguardian.com
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Rad Partners’ Georgia affiliate signs in-network agreement with Anthem BCBS

Northside Radiology Associates said the pact will span multiple years and ensure Anthem members continue having uninterrupted, in-network access to diagnostic and interventional care.

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Aug 5 • 2:49 AM EDT • Business • radiologybusiness.com
Small Business Owners Testify on U.S. Economic Growth

The Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee holds a hearing on tax policy, artificial intelligence, and other issues impacting small businesses.

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Aug 5 • 12:00 AM EDT • Business • c-span.org
NASA Engineers Help Prolong Voyager 2’s Science Mission

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have successfully freed up power on Voyager 2, extending how long the spacecraft can continue to do

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Aug 4 • 6:45 PM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
Orange County weighs restrictions on exotic wildlife entertainment after Sloth World controversy

Nearly a year after the Sloth World controversy sparked outrage across Central Florida, Orange County leaders are exploring whether they can prevent a similar situation from happening again.

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Aug 4 • 6:15 PM EDT • Entertainment • clickorlando.com
Rep. Zach Nunn, U.S. labor secretary say 2025 tax cuts help Iowa businesses expand

Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling toured an Iowa manufacturer with U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn as part of his Tuesday visit.

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Aug 4 • 5:33 PM EDT • Business • iowacapitaldispatch.com
The White House’s New AI Safety Framework Is None of Your Business

How's that for transparency?

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Aug 4 • 5:10 PM EDT • Business • gizmodo.com
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SpaceX quarterly revenue surges in debut results on strong growth in its Starlink business

SpaceX reported on Tuesday a 92% rise in revenue for the April-June quarter, in its first earnings since going public, buoyed by strong growth in its Starlink satellite-internet and AI businesses.

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Aug 4 • 4:05 PM EDT • Business • reuters.com
SpaceX quarterly revenue surges in debut results on strong growth in its Starlink business

SpaceX reported on Tuesday a 92% rise in revenue for the April-June quarter, in its first earnings since going public, buoyed by strong growth in its Starlink satellite-internet and AI businesses. The company's stock has declined 8% since its record-breaking initial public offering in ‌June that valued the company at about $1.75 trillion. The stock could face additional pressure from the expiry of SpaceX's post-IPO lock-up period starting on Thursday, which may unleash ​a wave of insider and early-investor shares on the market.

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Aug 4 • 4:05 PM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com
9 Of The Most Expensive Science Experiments Of All Time

Visiting outer space, exploring the ocean deep, and learning more about humanity are costly endeavors. Here are some of the most expensive science experiments.

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Aug 4 • 4:02 PM EDT • Science • bgr.com
Bemidji City Council votes to revoke business license of Siam Massage and Wellness Spa

Officials from the city of Bemidji and the Bemidji Police Department conducted multiple compliance inspections at Siam Massage, which the company failed.

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Aug 4 • 2:58 PM EDT • Business • bemidjipioneer.com
Buc-ee’s lawsuit sparks a beaver takeover across Ohio cities

Major gas station chain Buc-ee's is suing Beaver's Mini Mart in Beavercreek. Ohio businesses are adding temporary beaver logos in support.

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Aug 4 • 2:31 PM EDT • Business • cincinnati.com
An old SpaceX rocket is about to crash into the Moon

The smashup could provide useful data for future lunar inhabitants

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Aug 4 • 2:15 PM EDT • Science • economist.com
Scientists Tried to Cut a Photon in Half—and Broke the Rules of Physics

New research shows that cutting a single particle of light spawns photons all the way to infinity.

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Aug 4 • 2:15 PM EDT • Science • popularmechanics.com
World Cup hero Ferran Torres says MAGA-inspired hat was 'not about politics'

The Spain forward wore a 'Make Spain Great Again' hat after returning to the country to celebrate the World Cup but said he wasn't making a political statement.

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Aug 4 • 1:32 PM EDT • Politics • usatoday.com
‘Heated Rivalry’ Season 2 Is Filming, and the Show Has a Message for Overexcited Fans

As season 2 of 'Heated Rivalry' begins production, the official account for the show has posted a statement asking fans to give the cast and crew the space they need.

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Aug 4 • 1:03 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
A SpaceX rocket will hit the moon at 5,000 mph tonight. Experts explain what you could see, and when.

An upcoming collision of a Falcon 9 rocket part with the moon may be visible from Earth with telescopes, new research suggests. Here's what scientists and skywatchers are hoping to see.

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Aug 4 • 12:36 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com
URI business professor explains ‘financial unicorns’ and SpaceX, Anthropic IPOs

KINGSTON, R.I. – Aug. 04, 2026 – In mythology, unicorns are fictional. In finance, however, unicorns are very real. Just over a month ago, millions of people witnessed one financial unicorn, and another is quickly approaching. For the first time, privately held company SpaceX was listed on the NASDAQ. Valued at more than $1 trillion, […]

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Aug 4 • 12:04 PM EDT • Business • uri.edu
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MrBeast Sales Slow, Angel Stock Falls, MUBI and Neon Look for Hits, and Will an NBA Franchise Set a Sales Record?

(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) You probably remember egg prices spiking a few years ago. This led to a lot of debate between the pro-market/pro-competition/antitrust/Neo-Brandesian crowd and the center/center-right/center-left/abundance/libertarian crowd over the cause, whether it was the avian flu outbreak or whether industry consolidation led to price fixing, using avian flu as a convenient cover. Basel Musharbash wrote a whole investigation at BIG looking at it. Well, two years later, we have our answer: it was price fixing. The Justice Department found proof, via emails, of price fixing. Indeed, just the threat of an investigation brought prices down two years ago: I bring this up because at least half a dozen of my favorite political writers and pundits, who were skeptical about price fixing at the time, haven’t written any mea culpas on this issue. It’s really dispiriting and makes it much, much harder to trust their work on other issues. If you take a hard stand on an issue, then you get it wrong, you need to explain how and why you got it wrong. Or update your priors. This is how epistemological bubbles are formed! All of which is to say, it’s time for another installment of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. Last issue, I mostly focused on the “wrong” side of the equation, so today’s is a bit more balanced, but with one big mea culpa (though I still stand by my original concerns). Let’s dive right in! Subscribe CORRECTION: UFC Didn’t Release Subscriber Data (But Seems to Have Bragged About It Internally) In my analysis of the viewership of UFC Freedom 250, I wrote... “Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers.” Well, that datecdote did not come from a PR rep, but from great reporting from James Faris at Business Insider. The actual quote was this: “Paramount’s flagship streaming service generated about a million new subscribers on the day of its first-ever UFC event, Paramount product chief Dane Glasgow told employees in a town hall on Tuesday morning, three staffers who attended the meeting told Business Insider.“ This wasn’t the biggest goof in the world; even Faris emphasized to me that this is more a “clarification” than a correction. Still, it sounds like, internally, the folks at Paramount were very happy about this result—and I’m guessing they were happy with this news getting out—even though the gains didn’t last through the quarter, dropping to 700K adds. RIGHT: MrBeast’s Struggles Continue... I’m very skeptical about MrBeast’s burgeoning media “empire” and, in particular, its $5 billion valuation, as I wrote earlier this year and last year. Sure enough, according to Business Insider, regarding its “booming” consumer products division_:_ “US sales volume grew 13% year-over-year in 2025, following a 33% leap the previous year, according to a presentation deck dated May 2026....A February 2025 investor deck viewed by Business Insider showed Feastables’ net revenue more than doubled in 2024 from 2023, to $215 million, and was forecast to grow 74% in 2025, to $375 million.” [Emphasis mine.] If you told investors that you projected 74% growth but delivered 13%,1 that’s not ideal. But it’s not just MrBeast. Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime had sales drop in half for their energy drinks. It’s one thing to build a successful entertainment company and an entirely different thing to succeed in the heavily-consolidated-but-also-very-competitive consumer packaged goods space! CPGs are dominated by a few firms with very wide moats compared to YouTube, which has few barriers to entry. These businesses require different skill sets and have completely different business environments. WRONG: Does the NBA Have an $8 Billion Bidder? Almost as soon as I published my article about the NBA’s finances, casting skepticism on NBA expansion, I saw this Front Office Sports headline: One group “claims to have already raised $8 billion” for the Vegas expansion team. I mean, wow. That’s just $2 billion less than what the Los Angeles Lakers were valued at when they were sold just last year. And they’re arguably the most popular team in the NBA. (Side note: the new owner is now under an investigation for fraud in how he went about financing the Lakers and the Dodgers purchases.) So much for the “dried up” language I used in that article. (This is why I usually stick to my “Entertainment Nuance Guy” tone in articles...) I went off old information—from April, when I read/heard about the NBA downplaying expansion efforts—instead of doing a quick double-check for new news. That said...if you read the article, the market for Seattle is “slow”, with just one reported bidder. So I wasn’t entirely off. This goof has annoyed me since I first published it, mainly because it undercut that article’s real point, which I stand by: NBA franchises are really overvalued right now. Now, I get why NBA teams are overvalued. When it comes to owning sports teams, it’s basically never wrong to assume that some rich person somewhere will care more about owning a team (or just being part of a group since they’re so expensive) than the actual financials. There are only so many teams to own, and opportunities to buy in preferred markets don’t come along very often. This explains why the teams sell for such high multiples (usually above a 10 to 12.5 revenue multiple, which is very high). You only need one person to overpay! Beyond the ultra-wealthy luxury good explanation, I worry NBA teams are becoming speculative assets. More and more private equity investors are buying into NBA teams. But the value, in owning a team, comes from selling it later, not any meaningful relationship to revenue or profit growth. In other words, the newer NBA owners are increasingly expecting someone later to buy their inflated asset. That’s not sound economics; that’s the “greater fool” theory at work.2 At some point, actually making money has to matter. Especially since revenue growth is now below the growth of the stock market. (And this matters because the NBA doesn’t have easy levers to pull to drastically lower their costs—half of their revenue has to go to players and then you actually have to run a team, including coaching, training, travel, media expenses, and more—or raise revenues aside from one-off expansions in America and overseas.) I just don’t see how investors make their money back buying NBA teams, except for selling at a higher price later on down the line. But if revenue/profit growth continues to slow, at some point, someone will be left holding the bag. RIGHT: Baseball and Basketball are about equally popular. Related to the above, I wanted to cite two quick pieces of evidence for one of my other theories: that the NBA and MLB are about as popular as each other, but the NBA gets much, much better media coverage. One YouGov survey has that fans prefer basketball to baseball by 52% to 48%, which I’m guessing is within the margin of error for that poll. That’s virtually even, meaning they’re about the same popularity. Over on NBC, a recent Red Sox-Yankees game averaged 4 million viewers, higher than Sunday Night Basketball’s average of 3.4 million on the same network. A Yankees-Dodgers game averaged 3.9 million two weeks ago. Not every game averages this much, but it shows you that baseball isn’t far off from basketball, depending on the matchup. Altogether, the NBA is just slightly more popular than baseball, but NBC is paying MLB a fraction of what they pay the NBA, a point I’ve made before. RIGHT: Angel, MUBI and Neon Updates... I’ve long been skeptical about many of Hollywood’s buzziest startups/smaller indie studios. It’s not that they don’t make great movies—films like Anora and Everything Everywhere All at Once are amazing—or that they’re not (rightfully) pushing the majors to make better films, but...they get a ton of hype, and that hype often doesn’t live up to the reality or difficulty in scaling up. Starting with MUBI, well, The Wall Street Journal wrote a feature on MUBI’s struggles last April, best summarized by the subheader “After Sequoia valued Mubi at $1 billion, a left-wing revolt sent the indie film company into a tailspin”. MUBI lost $7.3 million on $200 million in revenue in Q4 2025, but reportedly hit a record 1.7 million subscribers at the end of Q1. As for Neon, Department M purchased a “significant stake” in the company earlier this year. How much is that “stake” worth? According to Deadline, “No financial figures for the Neon-Department M deal were disclosed.” So...that’s not great! If it was a big valuation, we’d hear about. Also, I found this curious: “Both Neon and Department M already have separate partnerships with Qatar. The Qatar Film Committee has a slate deal in place with the former, and a biopic production pact with the latter.” Color me skeptical about much Middle Eastern investment dollars. See: LIV Golf. Finally, as for Angel (formerly Angel Studios), their stock very, very slightly popped last month after Young Washington ($20 million budget) which made $45 million in the US, but their stock is still way down from its opening. Smaller Updates RIGHT: The WGA should focus on antitrust concerns! I’ve been on this for years. Post-WGA/AMTPT deal in 2023, I wrote an article for the Ankler calling on the WGA to focus and organize against industry consolidation. Sure enough, the WGA filed a lawsuit against the Paramount-WBD merger, and people are organizing around this issue now. I wish this energy had coalesced earlier (specifically to lobby Washington much earlier), but better late than never! WRONG: Actually, the chip shortage might be due to market manipulation. In my last “Long Reads for the Long Summer” article, I shared an article about how LLMs are causing memory chip prices to spike, which will make all electronics more expensive. Well, turns out, three RAM manufacturers control 90% of the market, and now a private lawsuit accuses them of price-fixing. So yeah. WRONG/UPDATE: The Odyssey will hold! Two weeks ago, I wrote, “As of this moment, we haven’t had a super-blockbuster, though The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday could all cross the $500 million mark. (At this point, The Odyssey would need a very strong hold to get there.)” Well, it’s safe to say it’s going to have that hold! It only dropped 30% in weekend two and IMAX screenings are sold out all month. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is also off to a great start. RIGHT: People are rushing to get shows out yearly. I’ve long been bullish on yearly, weekly-released shows, and Leslie Goldberg at The Ankler wrote about how many people in town are now listening. WRONG: Mark Carney reverses Canada’s stance on homegrown production. After writing about Canada installing domestic production quotas, Canada has backed off. WRONG: I don’t trust Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s online “views”. When I originally wrote about the latest Spider-Man film’s record-breaking trailer, I thought this was just YouTube views, but after watching this Corridor Crew video and doing more research, well, it’s all social views of the trailer globally. Really? That stat includes TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts views. Basically, I don’t trust it anymore. (This film will probably set record, but I trust the pre-sales data more.) RIGHT: Celebrity Production companies are still struggling. I’ve written about this for years, but the company that I didn’t track was Kevin Hart’s HartBeat, which was valued at $650 million but is struggling now and might just end soon, especially after Kevin Hart pulled his endorsement deals. And Bad Robot is moving to NYC. CORRECTION: SpongeBob is a “second run” title. In my 2025 recap article, I had _SpongeBob SquarePants_labelled as a “library” title, when it is still a “second run” show, with new episodes still coming out on Nickelodeon. CORRECTION: In my last “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong” update, I offered a correction from Doug Creutz and misspelled TD Cowen. Thanks, Grammarly! 1 Though he could have increased prices to make up for the gap, he couldn’t have increased them that much. 2 There’s a theory, which I think that Daryl Morey created and Bill Simmons popularized, that, to be successful building your team, you only need a handful of bad GMs in the league to take advantage of. To be clear, Daryl Morey’s theory was also for signing bad contracts, that you could always get out of bad contracts. Basically, there’s always someone who will make a bad trade. It’s not the same exact thing, but similar enough to the Greater Fool Theory that I really like it.

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Aug 4 • 11:55 AM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
U.S. News & World Report: Intermountain Health Saint Joseph Hospital Best in State

U.S. News & World Report has named Intermountain Health Saint Joseph Hospital the 2026-2027 Best Hospital in Colorado in its latest edition of Best Hospitals. Saint Joseph Hospital also ranked as the No. 1 hospital in the Denver metro area, according to U.S. News & World Report. For heart and vascular care, Saint Joseph Hospital ranked No. 1 in...

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Aug 4 • 11:34 AM EDT • Health • news.intermountainhealth.org
MySpace Is Coming Back. I Owe It My First Business

The old network is growing again as people flee the algorithm. It's a reminder of something every business gave up.

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Aug 4 • 11:34 AM EDT • Business • inc.com
How “A Little Bowel Movement” 540 Million Years Ago Sparked An Evolutionary Explosion, Changing The Face Of Earth Forever

Viva la "faecal revolution".

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Aug 4 • 11:14 AM EDT • Science • iflscience.com
NBC Tower owner plans hundreds of apartments amid downtown conversion wave

The preliminary plan would add another high-profile address to a wave of downtown office conversions since the COVID-19 pandemic upended workspace demand.

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Aug 4 • 11:11 AM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com
How Gap and H&M implement AI for supply chain risk management

Apparel brands like Target, H&M, and Gap use AI to enhance supply chain transparency and meet new sustainability regulations effectively.

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Aug 4 • 11:03 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Scientists propose nuking solution to Doomsday asteroid — as thousands of city-killers swarm Earth

Scientists have devised an unorthodox solution to stop a potential Doomsday asteroid from destroying Earth — by nuking the space-rock with a force equivalent to multiple Hiroshima bombs.

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Aug 4 • 10:14 AM EDT • Science • nypost.com
Stakeholders Testify on Medicaid & Health Care Costs

Stakeholders testify on Medicaid, the cost of care, and program funding needs bedore the Senate Budget Committee.

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Aug 4 • 10:01 AM EDT • Health • c-span.org
You can try the newly-launched Switch 2 port of Final Fantasy 14 for free, right now, if you have a spare 117GB

"To help ensure a stable launch experience, subscription fees will be waived for approximately one month following release," says Square Enix.

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Aug 4 • 9:46 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
AI-driven Ring Cycle sparks boos at 150th anniversary Wagner Festival

Artificial intelligence sparked boos at the 150th anniversary performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The audience was frustrated that the software could integrate images but not drama. The staging was subtitled

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Aug 4 • 8:01 AM EDT • Entertainment • lancasteronline.com
Tesla's China footprint complicates path to possible SpaceX merger

Tesla's electric vehicle business in China looms as a key hurdle to a potential merger between Elon Musk's automaker and SpaceX because of complications it could pose ​for the space firm's business with the U.S. government.

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Aug 4 • 6:10 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com
Colorado’s youth mental health corps improves student attendance and behavior

"Near-peer" mental health navigators work in Colorado schools as part of a program designed to improve the professional pipeline, too

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Aug 4 • 6:07 AM EDT • Health • coloradosun.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (8%)
love
35%
wow
33%
ahah
32%
ParTee bar takes a swing at Smokies stadium district: 'Come here and play'

ParTee, opening this fall in downtown Knoxville, will have golf simulators, a putting green and a full bar and food menu at Covenant Health Park.

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Aug 4 • 5:08 AM EDT • Entertainment • knoxnews.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (20%)
wow
63%
love
37%
Digital Science launches AI-native research workspace Papers AI

Developed by the team behind Overleaf, tool is designed to provide single environment for research projects

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Aug 4 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • researchinformation.info
Digital Science Launches Papers AI: An AI-Native Researcher Workspace for Writing, Data and Code

Researchers and students now have a new AI-native workspace, with the launch of Digital Science's Papers AI – where they'll never have to re-explain their work every time they turn to AI for assistance.

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Aug 4 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • newswise.com
Stakeholders Testify on Medicaid & Health Care Costs

Stakeholders testify on Medicaid, the cost of care, and program funding needs bedore the Senate Budget Committee.

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Aug 4 • 12:00 AM EDT • Health • c-span.org
Sen. Mitch McConnell's absence sparks political showdown

As Sen. Mitch McConnell recovers from a fall and pneumonia, Kentucky officials are clashing over who will fill his seat if a vacancy occurs.

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Aug 3 • 10:42 PM EDT • Politics • usatoday.com
Ocular Therapeutix Reports Second Quarter Revenue, Provides Business Highlights

BEDFORD, Mass.—Ocular Therapeutix, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCUL), an integrated biopharmaceutical company in the retina space, has reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026, and provided recent business highlights. Total net revenue was $13.5 million for the second quarter of 2026, flat as compared with the same period in 2025. The company also reported a net loss of $78.8 million for the quarter, compared with a net loss of $67.8 million for the comparable quarter of 2025.

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Aug 3 • 8:21 PM EDT • Business • visionmonday.com