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Pay for performance, not for politics
The North Carolina General Assembly approved substantial pay increases for public schoolteachers earlier this year. If a bipartisan commission has its way, teacher compensation will soar over the next few
Ubisoft plans cuts at German studios, adding to wave of workforce reductions
Ubisoft is planning to reduce its workforce in Germany, where it operates a trio of studios, by about 100 workers, Game File has learned. The company wants to offer employees buyouts to, should enough people accept, avoid having to lay anyone off. “In Germany, we initiated discussions with the Works Council last week regarding a proposed voluntary departure plan across Ubisoft Dusseldorf, Ubisoft Berlin & Ubisoft Mainz,” a company rep told Game File. A “works council” is a union-like group representing employees. “The voluntary plan is the primary measure being proposed to support the intended organizational changes,” the Ubisoft rep added. The company declined to confirm the scale of the potential headcount cut. Of the impacted studios, Mainz might be the best known to the public. It leads development of the Anno series and shipped the well-reviewed strategy game Anno 117: Pax Romana in November 2025. Berlin and Dusseldorf operate as support studios within Ubisoft’s creative network. Berlin recently supported the development of Rainbow Six Siege and the Rayman Legends Retold remake. Dusseldorf also contributed to those projects, as well as The Settlers and Ubisoft-branded escape rooms. Dusseldorf is the biggest of the three studios, with some 400+ workers, compared to just over 100 at the other two, a source familiar with the reductions and the teams told Game File. More than half of these new reductions of about 100 people are expected to happen at Dusseldorf. The planned cuts were announced at a town hall for the German studios on Tuesday of last week. In an email follow-up, the studio group’s managing director, Benedikt Grindel, said the cuts were intended to “best position our German studios for the future... with a clearer focus on their role, capabilities and organizational setup needed for the work ahead.” The email was an echo of the past. In January 2025, Grindel had emailed the Ubisoft developers in his region (or studio “zone”) to explain that a round of 185 cuts at the time, including about 65 at Dusseldorf, were “essential to improve our operational efficiency and ensure the long-term sustainability of our studios, the zone and the company.” A half-decade of continued job cuts Ubisoft has been aggressively cutting its headcount for years. At the end of September 2022, it had 20,729 workers. By the end of March 2026, that total was down to 16,590. Studio management is trying to trim costs as it grapples with a changing industry and a drought of releases, let alone hits. The company announced earlier this year that it had reduced its costs since 2022 by “nearly €325 million” ($362m) and planned to lower them through 2028 by another €180 million ($200m). In June the company said it was closing down its Winnipeg and Belgrade studios and cutting roles in its Barcelona team. Even commercial and creative success hasn’t spared studios from this ongoing company-wide contraction. As Game File was nailing down details around the proposed cuts in Germany, Ubisoft management was informing workers of cuts in its Singapore studio, which shipped a hit remake of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag this past July. Some 70 positions in Singapore are being eliminated “to align the studio with upcoming production needs,” per a company rep’s statement to Game File. In early 2024, a large team in the Singapore studio launched the multiplayer pirate game Skull & Bones. It performed poorly but has been supported with regular content updates since. Many of Ubisoft’s studios around the world are heavily subsidized via regional grants and tax breaks. Singapore had been among them for years, but received no such local assistance in the 12 months ending this past March. News of the Singapore cuts broke today alongside word that Ubisoft is also proposing the closure of RedLynx, pending negotiations with officials. The Finnish studio behind the motorbike series Trials was founded in 2000 and sold to Ubisoft in 2011. As reported by VGC (and corroborated by Game File), Ubisoft management told employees it could not come up with a new, sustainable assignment for RedLynx. The 2025 workforce at Ubisoft Dusseldorf were straight-up cuts. This time, Ubisoft is hoping the reductions at its trio of German studios will largely come from workers taking a payout to leave. The company offered such voluntary dismissals at its Massive Entertainment studio (The Division) a year ago. For the German studios’ buyouts this time around, Ubisoft and the Works Council had discussed a formula that’d pay a worker’s monthly salary multiplied by 1.5 and by the number of years they’ve worked at the company, according to Game File sources. The formula is still subject to negotiations with the Works Council and has not yet been part of an official offer to workers. It could be adjusted up or down, and it could be supplemented with additional bonuses. Asked about the floated payout formula, a Ubisoft rep told Game File, “The terms of a potential voluntary departure program remain subject to negotiation with employee representatives. No final agreement has been reached, and we won’t comment on specific proposals while discussions are ongoing.” Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Item 2: Epic’s AI adventures Epic Games (Fortnite, the Unreal engine) is all-in on using AI to try to transform the way it makes video games and game-making tools. It’s leaders appear to be undeterred by any resistance among gamers and some game developers around generative AI—and instead emboldened by advances, particularly in AI-assisted programming. A recap of the last three days: On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Epic management told workers last week that development of an upcoming game combining Star Wars and Marvel characters would be “AI first.” Employees would be expected to use AI models such as Claude to code the game. A manager told Epic’s developers there would be “[n]o more hand-written code” and that art for the game would be “generated with full AI workflows,” per the outlet. Just ahead of that story running, Epic founder Tim Sweeney tweeted: “We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration. The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.” In a follow-up, Sweeney predicted that most game development processes would be at least three times faster a year from now than they were in January 2026, thanks to AI. To a person on X who told him he was failing to read the room, Sweeney said: “Much of the room wants it to be 2016 again, but it’s not. Our job, as the provider of tools and technology to much of the industry, is to design for the present that is and the future that will soon be.” On Wednesday, Epic announced it was releasing a faster launcher for its Epic Games Store marketplace. It did so by stating in a blog post as clear as could be that the launcher is an AI-enabled, vibe-coded project: Programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher that’s way faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look. Programming is hard? That was unexpected phrasing from a company founded by a legendarily great programmer. Back in 2011, Sweeney told me that he’d picked up programming quickly as a kid and rejoiced at the power it gave him. “I could look at any program that anybody else had written and, with enough effort, build something cooler.” Item 3: The Xbox Labs experiment (and one of the people behind it) Microsoft’s Xbox division, which is flooding the zone with announcements lately, yesterday revealed a new internal tech-tinkering team called Xbox Labs. In the words of Xbox boss Asha Sharma Labs is “a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists whose job is to turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience.” Conventional wisdom coming out of the announcement is that Labs is a team that’ll focus on ideas driven by generative AI. In her announcement, Sharma cited some of the dizzying achievements in tech and gaming over the past month as AI agents and other AI tools have been deployed to swiftly figure out how popular games work, then rebuild them and mix them up. She mentioned seeing ”games rapidly decompiled and rebuilt to run on hardware they were never originally designed to support” and said “[p]erhaps more surprisingly, we’ve seen many of the biggest games in the world have been remixed into the source code of another.” (Minecraft plus Elden Ring, for example, or Fortnite + Super Monkey Ball + Overwatch + Diablo + others.) Sharma also cited the work of Windows PC games being ported to run in browsers, a seeming reference to a recent AI-assisted fan port of Halo. Or perhaps Call of Duty or GTA. Sharma didn’t use the specific term “AI” in her memo, but she came close, citing AI “agents” and their potential for game-making tools that Labs could help craft: I think XBOX has an important role to play here. Coding became the first major workload for agents because they can write, run, and test software. Games share many of those same properties, and people spend more than 72 billion hours a year playing XBOX games, roughly five times the estimated time spent writing code worldwide. We’ve spent 25 years learning how to make great games, and I want our game makers to help shape what these new technologies make possible. As we learn, we’ll share the tools we build with developers across the industry, just as we always have. When I asked an Xbox rep if Labs was an AI-centric team, they said genAI was not the focus, describing it as having a broader mandate for using new tech in new ways in gaming. As an example, they pointed to Xbox’s recently launched disc-to-digital gaming usage rights program. Microsoft didn’t specifically name anyone involved full-time in Xbox Labs yesterday, but on social media and LinkedIn, I spotted Adrian Mato IDing himself as leading the creatio of tools at Labs and talking up the launch. Mato first caught my attention in late September, when he said on X that he was “starting to build a new team at Xbox focused on products and tools for how games get built and distributed as agentic tools become more capable.” At the time, he framed AI-based tools as a supplement to traditional game dev tools. “I don’t think we need to replace them,” he said. Since then, he’s publicly shown interest in AI and in games. He’s recently spent some of his X feed marveling at the power of AI agents and praising the lighting in the latest Gears of War. Following the Labs announcement yesterday, he enthused about the Xbox Labs’ stylish landing page. He wrote: “We built some fun tools to art-direct shaders in real time, experimented with interactive ASCII art, and sprinkled in lots of tiny details. “Move your mouse to leave a colorful trail that reveals the original footage, or interact with the video to trigger bursts of particles. “A lot of love went into making it all feel just right. “More to come”
Preparing for the 2026 US midterms
Earlier this year, we shared an update on our election safeguards. Here, we outline how we’ve continued to strengthen these safeguards ahead of this year’s US midterms.
Welcome, World Travelers! Dreamfinder and Figment Return to EPCOT — Entertainment & Lifestyle
Welcome, World Travelers! Dreamfinder and Figment Return to EPCOTby James Coulter "One little spark of inspiration is at the heart of all creation." For decades, that spark has been kept alive by a certain purple dragon, and now, after nearly thirty years, the dreamer who created him is finally returning to EPCOT. Earlier this year at the — Local reporting from Polk County, Florida.
Leading Cancer Researcher, 47, Dies of the Disease She Was Trying to Cure. This Was Her 1st Symptom
Dr. Rachna Shroff was diagnosed with terminal cancer earlier this year.
GC America A Century of Restorative Material Science Now on the Midas Digital Press
SprintRay, the leader in dental 3D printing, and GC, a global R&D and manufacturing leader in dental materials science announced GC's first restorative, GC GRADIA® PREMi, custom designed and engineered for the SprintRay Midas Digital Press. While the partnership was announced earlier this year, the new material was unveiled on Oct. 10 to dental professionals at 3DNext, SprintRay's summit in Miami. This combines GC's 105 years of restorative material science with SprintRay's innovation in dental
Nivea shares health update, announces new music on ‘The Tamron Hall Show’
Singer and songwriter Nivea shared an update on her health during a recent appearance on The Tamron Hall Show. Earlier this year, she revealed on the YouTube series The Cadillac Chronicles that she had been diagnosed with leukemia and is now in remission. During her Oct. 7 interview with Hall, Nivea announced she is preparing […]
'A Haunting' Revived At Radial Entertainment With Jupiter Pictures
Radial Entertainment is bringing back the series after acquiring the New Dominion Pictures library earlier this year.
MacBook Pro overhaul: entry-level model to gain new design sooner than expected
Earlier this year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman revealed that Apple has a new M7-powered entry level MacBook Pro in the pipeline...
Trump names commentator Katie Zacharia as next White House press secretary
Katie Zacharia briefly worked as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year
Trump names commentator Katie Zacharia as next White House press secretary
Katie Zacharia briefly worked as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year
Trump names commentator Katie Zacharia as next White House press secretary
Katie Zacharia briefly worked as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year
Trump’s Nobel Prize quest is now the butt of the joke
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump used his status as the world’s most powerful man to effectively coerce the Nobel Peace Prize winner to give him the medal she won.
Researchers uncover new DarkSword spyware variant affecting unpatched iPhones
iVerify released a report today detailing P7 DarkSword, a new variant of the malware associated with the DarkSword iPhone exploit chain uncovered earlier this year.
Clive Davis' pre-Grammy gala will continue in 2027, the first since his death
The Recording Academy has announced that the annual Clive Davis pre-Grammy gala will continue in 2027, following Davis's death earlier this year | WBBM Newsradio 780 AM & 105.9 FM
Samsung’s over-ear headphones might be called ‘Galaxy Studio’
According to a fresh leak, Samsung’s upcoming over-ear headphones might be called “Galaxy Studio.” A leak earlier this year revealed...
Open science is compatible with research security, says Canada’s chief science advisor
Open science is “not incompatible” with research security and science leaders and policymakers should “demystify” the false dichotomy between the two, according to Mona Nemer, Canada’s chief science advisor. More than a decade ago, EU policymakers were promoting open science, open innovation and open collaboration across the world. It was a political movement that aimed to make scientific research, data, software, publications and methodologies transparent, accessible and reusable for everyone.But that rhetoric has changed over the past few years. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Donald Trump came back to power in 2025, international partnerships have become more pragmatic. Countries are trying to implement protectionist policies and governments are increasingly worried about technology espionage. According to Nemer, science can remain open if the sector can come up with improved security protocols that would protect research data from undue manipulation by foreign actors. “If anybody can fiddle with the with the data, then [open science] is actually quite dangerous and quite useless,” she told Science|Business. Universities and research institutions are increasingly vulnerable to attempted espionage and other types of foreign interference. In September, the UK’s domestic counter-intelligence service MI5 issued a security warning against collaborations with the China General Technology Research Institute. And earlier this year, Germany’s Helmholtz Center for Information Security was criticised by federal research minister Dorothee Bär, who told a parliamentary hearing that “existing rules and systems” at the institute “were not suitable” for preventing leaks to China. According to Nemer, universities and research institutions should perhaps follow the example of the private sector, as companies have been able to safeguard their research while still publishing results. “I think that there is a level of research security hygiene that researchers and institutions need to just adopt,” she said. “You don't have to tell Sanofi or IBM how to safeguard their research, which they end up publishing anyway.”While certain areas of research will not be open for collaboration with certain partners, in other areas cooperation is necessary even with researchers based in adversarial countries. “I stress this because politics change,” she said. “Science and politics don't make for good fellows, and whether we like it or not, politics will influence certain things.”Researchers will play an important role in “protecting the integrity of science,” said Nemer. “I think that it's time that there's a commitment to a certain scientific compact, so that citizens don't think that science is actually an open door for espionage and for anti-nationalism.”New partnershipsNemer spoke with Science|Business on the margins of the Hamburg Science Summit on September 17, the day when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called for increased cooperation with the EU, including in science and technology. Canada is looking to strengthen ties with partners in other corners of the world, after the Trump administration threatened to put tariffs on Canadian goods and services and even openly suggested Canada could become the 51st state. In parallel, the US government has indicated it wants to retreat from international science projects, including US collaboration with Europe’s CERN particle accelerator and other big science labs.Related articlesThe stats we need to better understand R&DCanada looks to deepen research and education links with the EUCan researchers trust that AI models won’t leak their ideas?Nemer said the US is still a science “powerhouse,” but Canada and Europe will have to work closely together on global challenges. “It’s important for both [sides], but I think it's also important for the rest of the world, because the cut in funding for development, in health, in regions like Africa and other places, have dramatic effects.” The Trump administration is also planning a review of the Nelson memo, a Biden-era document that mandated that results of federally funded research would be openly available. With that idea being called into question, Nemer said it could be “very disruptive” to scientific collaborations and could jeopardise research on climate change, the Arctic and global health. “When your collaborator suddenly tells you I'm not going to share the data with you as a researcher, if this happens, I think it's very worrisome,” she said. “I'm certainly hoping that a lot of the Canadian institutions, funders, researchers, have started looking at joining forces on databases and using more European research infrastructures,” Nemer added.
President Trump announces Roger Clemens will receive Presidential Medal of Freedom, calls for him to enter Hall of Fame
The president said he called MLB commissioner Rob Manfred about Clemens' Hall of Fame candidacy earlier this year. Manfred does not control the Hall of Fame.
Microsoft Launches $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra to Take on MacBook Pro
Microsoft today announced launch timing and pricing for the Surface Laptop Ultra that it unveiled earlier this year. The 15-inch Surface Laptop Ultra is priced starting at $2,599, undercutting Apple's $2,999 16-inch MacBook Pro, and it targets the same creator and developer market. Microsoft says it is built for "demanding creative, software development, AI, engineering, and 3D workloads".
Who Won August and September: Original Films or Franchises?
(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.) I just heard someone say that if you’re reading a pundit or data analyst, and they don’t tell you that they got anything wrong, they’re not a pundit but an “influencer”. I agree with that. You have to tell your audience when you get things wrong, or they won’t (or shouldn’t) trust you as much. Today, we’ve got another edition of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. In general, I’m patting myself on the back (and patting very hard) about a few things like IP at the box office, LIV golf, horror films, crowdfunding movies, superheroes, and old people going to the theaters. That said, I also made a couple of data mistakes on the streaming bubble popping and HBO’s datecdotes, so I’m not perfect. But first, I need your feedback... Subscribe Follow-Ups: What Should We Call Mid-Budget Movies Which Aren’t Cinematic Enough for Theaters But Are Too Expensive to Make Money on Streaming? After I asked for feedback on what we should call straight-to-streaming films that are too big to pencil out on streaming but not really big enough to resonate in theaters, I got some great suggestions from you all, including... “Moldilocks” from John Aboud “Little Big Indie” from Travis Frick1 “Midflicks” from Jonathan Funke. “Extra-Medium” from Jona Nwuke. (Read the explanation in the footnote.) Between these and Brandon Katz—who suggested “Bermuda Budget Triangle”, “The Platform Gap” and “The Distribution Deadzone”—we’ve got some excellent suggestions. And they’re better than my suggestion, the “Streaming Budget Dead Zone”, so let’s take a poll! The winning entry becomes the new term. Loading... RIGHT: LIV Golf is Fully Bankrupt…Is Anyone Else Next? A few years ago, I was always a bit perplexed at all the articles I’d read praising LIV Golf and their strategy to disrupt the PGA. LIV Golf, a brand new professional golf league, offered PGA stars ten times what they made on the PGA Tour to join their new league. And folks praised this strategy for its initial “success” in that a lot of big names did indeed leave the PGA. Yeah, of course the players came over. LIV Golf paid them so, so, so much more! But LIV Golf hadn’t discovered a way to increase potential revenue. So think about this in basic business terms… They paid much more in costs… …but had no real way to increase revenue. That’s not a strategy! That’s deficit financing. It won’t work unless you bankrupt the competition (and then turn around and pay those same golfers much, much less). It’s not a sustainable strategy and only lasts as long as the company/person/nation backing it decides they’re cool with losing money. For LIV Golf, that meant Middle East oil wealth, in particular Saudi Arabian money. Clearly, the current Iran War has hurt Middle East finances, so they need to trim their more exorbitant spending. And LIV Golf was part of that trimming. This should be a major warning for others. TGL’s parent company, TMRW Sports, just got a $1 billion valuation, despite TGL’s (the indoor golf league) horrible TV viewership of less than half a million viewers per match. Unrivaled, the women’s basketball league, just secured a $650 valuation, despite its horrible TV viewership and a new rival (Project B) entering the scene next year. To relate this to streaming, Hollywood should ask which streamers may have wealthy patrons funding their losses. (Let’s be clear: Google, Amazon and Apple.) Could those patrons lose their appetite? For Amazon, probably not. But Apple has a new boss, so maybe! WRONG: My Analysis of the Streaming Bubble Was Missing a Week I’m going to be congratulating myself a lot today, but I make mistakes too, like this data goof. When I last compiled the data on the decline in TV shows, I was missing one week at the end of June. If you look at the first image, you can see that one week was mislabelled as “July”. Mainly, this image got updated to show a 27% decline, not 29%: This change doesn’t really impact the overall analysis, but it is two percent better. By the way, through the third quarter, the decline increased and it’s now a 30% decrease since 2022. (I’ll write/visualize this in an upcoming article.) But I want you to trust me and my data. Especially these days, when many people are using LLMs that I know are inserting faulty data into their charts, I want to keep earning my audience’s faith. So that’s the accurate data. RIGHT: IP Remains Very, Very Popular In July, I wrote a giant (and I mean giant) article on Backrooms, Obsession, and the box office, going over what we know, what we don’t know about what works in theaters, looking at YouTubers, IP, the horror genre, comic book movies, and a whole lot more. The month of August really tested a lot of my theses and, being honest, mostly supported my arguments. Let’s start with IP. Looking at 8-Aug (the weekend after Spider-Man: Brand New Day came out) to 18-Sep (the weekend that Resident Evil came out, which I think provides a nice bookend to this time period), there were seven films based on pre-existing IP: Resident Evil (2026) ($126 million) Practical Magic 2 ($65 million) _Insidious: Out of the Furthe_r ($65 million) Coyote Vs. Acme ($59 million) Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie ($53 million) Tony ($15 million) Super Troopers 3 ($7 million) Compare those to the notable original films from the past month—I actually could have included more movies, but here are just thirteen, bringing us to an even twenty films—including.... The End of Oak Street ($54 million) Buddy ($26 million) Mutiny ($15 million) By Any Means ($15 million) The Dog Stars ($14 million) Runner ($14 million) One Night Only ($11 million) Hope ($8 million) Spa Weekend ($7 million) The Uprising ($6 million) Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ($6 million) Onslaught ($3 million) Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man ($2.8 million) Here’s that in chart form: Five of the top six films in this time period were all based on IP. I made a big chart of films that grossed over $200 million at the box office before Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey hit theaters. Let’s update that chart! By the way, if you want to see how I categorized each film—so another bar chart—here it is: I know that many of my fellow critics/pundits/analysts dislike films based on IP and how Hollywood is making so many of them. And I’m sympathetic to this point of view. As I’ve written many, many times before, you need a balance between existing franchises, new IP, and original films. And Hollywood clearly needs to make more films like Resident Evil (a well-made film from a visionary director) and fewer Practical Magic 2’s (which didn’t get critical or customer buzz). But at some point, critics and pundits need to contend with what audiences are telling them: Movie-goers aren’t showing up to original films. Audiences are speaking with their dollars, telling you they want more IP and franchises. You can try to convince studio heads to make fewer IP-based films and franchises, but the data and numbers aren’t there. Instead, critics need to work harder to convince audiences to show up for original films. Aim your ire/concern at the average person, not studio heads.2 Because they’re just making the films that audiences are telling them to make. WRONG: Original Horror Films Didn’t Break Out I’ll be honest, even though I wrote an article casting some skepticism on the horror genre in July, if you asked me to make a prediction, I would have predicted that, in August, a new, original horror film would have blown up. No, seriously, I just assumed that Obsession and Backrooms presaged a change in audience behavior. But none of the buzzy new original horror films from August—Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Onslaught (not an action film in spite of the ads), The End of Oak Street, Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man, or _Buddy—_broke out. To be clear, exactly one of those films (Buddy) had good “ROI”, but again—I try to be specific in my language—none were “popular” in any broad sense of the word. None of them will be “saving” movies theaters like Backrooms or _Obsession_helped save the summer. The new Insidious film and Resident Evil, both based on IP, were far and away the biggest horror films since July. (We’ll see if this changes in October/Halloween season.) RIGHT: Stay Skeptical about Crowdfunding... I’ve long been skeptical about crowd-investing platforms as one of Hollywood’s saviors, mainly because there’s so much hype/buzz. People need to stay more skeptical about more things, explaining both the potential upside but also the downsides. In particular, the media often hypes crowdfunding at the start and never checks in on the actual results after they’ve come in later. And August gave us our first update! _Ice Cream Man—_directed by Eli Roth—grossed $6 million off of a $5.5 million budget. This is a production of The Horror Section, which was one of the first “crowd investing” studios with 2,400 investors, which means that 2,400 investors probably lost money. They certainly aren’t getting as great of returns as if they had just invested their dollars in the stock market. Hopefully Stiletto (Tagline: “Someone’s Going to Make it Rain Blood!”) does better next month. WRONG: Another Data Goof Here’s another data error. When the first episode of House of the Dragon came out, HBO put out that it had 21.5 million viewers in the first three days, and I read that to mean in the US…but no, it was global. So my US-only datecdotes charts shouldn’t have included it. We never got US-only numbers for the first episode, but for the final episode, HBO put out that it had 11 million US viewers. (And that global dropped to 21 million viewers.) Here’s the updated chart (which I’ve since used in the Streaming Ratings Report): Still, this show is absolutely huge. RIGHT: Superhero Films Remain Very, Very Popular After Supergirl flopped, I read a few takes that “comic book movies are going the way of the Western”. Post-Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that take didn’t age well. To be fair, I have a very nuanced take on the superhero genre right now; it’s down right now, for a lot of reasons. But it’s not “dead”. Maybe _Spider-_Man is just a really popular character? I saw that take, and it’s a fair counter-argument. (But pundits arguing that superhero movies were dead should have mentioned this $1.5 billion counter-argument…) But is it just Spider-Man? The next Avengers film already has $50 million in pre-sales (and I was skeptical that that film would do well) and the Avengers: End Game re-release topped the box office two weekends ago (over three original films). And I wouldn’t bet against Batman or Superman. So maybe it’s just Spider-Man, Batman, Superman and the Avengers. Oh, and Deadpool, of course. And Black Panther. And Wolverine. And probably the X-Men. Plus a well-made Wonder Woman or the Hulk film could break out. But that’s it! It’s just those ten characters/teams. Oh, what’s that? Lanterns is also doing well on HBO? (See previous section…) To be fair, I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the argument that more popular characters—like Spider-Man and Batman—anchor more popular films. In fact, I made that exact argument three years ago when I first wrote about the “Marvel-cession”. In many ways, you can blame The Guardians of the Galaxy for fooling Marvel Studios (and the rest of us) into believing that any character could pop. It turns out, the list of iconic characters is probably smaller than most people think. But it’s probably too early to say that superhero films and comic book movies are dead unless “death” means a slight decline over a longtime. RIGHT: Who Killed Theaters? Old People I get frustrated whenever I see headlines or analysis about how young people are “returning” to theaters. As I’ve detailed(for years), young people have always powered the US box office, despite narratives about “kids these days” and their “phones”. Really, what’s changed post-2020/pandemic is that old people aren’t going to the movies nearly as much. This summer, I saw a movie (from an older director) in a theater near a retirement community, and multiple older people at the theater were talking about how this was their first time seeing a movie in years. I dislike personal anecdotes, so YouGov can fill in the data, best summarized by this headline: “Who killed movie theaters? Not the youths”. According to them, 64% of people aged 18-29 have seen a movie in the last year, but only 30% of 65-and-older. 20% of 18-29 have seen a movie in theaters in the last week and 42% in the last month. Here’s the polling data: Most concerning? Many Americans (17%) think theaters are a worse or much worse experience than watching films at home. Slight WRONG: Hadestown Opens Big A live theater capture of the Broadway musical, Hadestown, made $20 million at the US box office, which begs the question: was I wrong to be skeptical about musicals a few years ago? Yes and no. On the one hand, $20 million is a far cry from being “popular”, so yeah, the genre isn’t that popular overall and Hadestown is one of the more popular musicals from recent years (i.e. the “Taylor Swift Data Fallacy” in action). On the other, I doubt filming this cost all that much, and I don’t think that they spent much on marketing, so this is a good source of ancillary revenue. Smaller Updates WRONG: As I mentioned in a Streaming Ratings Report, I underestimated the budget for Enola Holmes 3. It probably cost more like $50 million, if not more. But... I’m not sure that it really matters? At sub-10 million hours, prices have to come down to make this work. WRONG: Netflix is giving Ink a 27-day in theaters! To quote the kids/YouTubers these days, let’s go! Now I might actually have a chance to see Danny Boyle’s latest in theaters. I’d complained about this in a “Coming Soon” section, but I was heartened to read that Netflix is giving multiple films longer theatrical windows this year. RIGHT: Netflix is sending 4-5 films per year to theaters. Netflix is slowly but surely sending more and more films to theaters, as I cautiously predicted earlier this year. For now, it’s just three big films and a number of awards contenders, but still, this is great news. And they’ll be releasing box office grosses! Just this week, Ted Sarandos confirmed that KPop Demon Hunters 2 will come to theaters (and my guess is it performs in the box office top ten at a minimum). WRONG: Angel has 3 million subscribers! How do I know this? Well, they told Deadline, who reported it. I marked this as “wrong”, since they’ve doubled their subscribers in one year but, you know, they don’t really have a hit film to speak of and they’re still losing money. WRONG: Furious was only renewed for one more season. I accidentally wrote “two more seasons” in my latest “Renewals, Cancellations, Un-Orders and Removals Update”. RIGHT: House of David is ending with its third season. In July, Prime Video renewed House of David for a third season, as I just wrote in my latest “Renewals and Cancellations” report. Well, now it’s ending after that third season. Why? As I’ve been writing, its viewership wasn’t great. I got feedback that this show didn’t cost very much, but it cost enough that its limited viewership didn’t save it. WRONG: Adults was a Hulu original! So I missed Adults when it first came out last year; I saw that it aired on FX and just assumed that it was a linear-first program. Turns out, it aired three episodes on FX, but binge-released the rest of its episodes the next day on Hulu. Huh. So I should have covered it last year! But I just wrote about it. 1 “When I was a kid in the 90s, if you wore a t-shirt to school that wasn’t too big and also wasn’t too small, but somehow didn’t quite fit, we’d say you were wearing an “extra-medium” shirt.” 2 As always, a huge exception is Disney, which barely makes anything original anymore.
Hood: Pay for performance, not for politics
RALEIGH — The North Carolina General Assembly approved substantial pay increases for public schoolteachers earlier this year. If a bipartisan commission has its way, teacher compensation will soar over the next few years, as well. Fiscal conservatives should welcome these developments — so long as schools use higher pay as a means of attracting and retaining highly effective teachers, not of scoring political points or placating interest groups.
OPINION: Pay for performance, not for politics
The North Carolina General Assembly approved substantial pay increases for public schoolteachers earlier this year. If a bipartisan commission has its way, teacher compensation will soar over …
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The Big Holes in Wearable Heart Rate Variability And Readiness Scores
On September 9th, Apple announced it was revamping its Apple Watch Health Sensing System, rolling out a Readiness score (0 to 10), and increasing the frequency of heart rate variability (HRV) outputs 24-fold. This can be viewed as upping its competition with various other consumer wearable sensors. These “readiness scores” as a composite of multiple metrics, with heart rate variability (HRV) being front and center for most. The majority of Americans are now using wearable sensors, which equates to well over 100 million adults. HRV and Readiness scores are increasingly being marketed as a measurement of autonomic nervous system health, a digital marker for future disease, a clock for biological age, and a holistic metric to promote healthspan and even longevity. (Apple also introduced a new longevity tab and “Health Age”.) None of this has been proven. In this edition of Ground Truths I am going to review what we know about heart rate variability and readiness scores. Heart Rate Variability HRV is the variation in normal heart cycle timing. The variability of the heart rate, the barely perceptible millisecond changes in time between consecutive heart beats (see R-R intervals in the Figure below, left panel), is due to interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic (vagal nerve) inputs. Distinct from heart rate, individuals with the same heart rate can have very different HRVs. It is a rough reflection of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity, inadequate to say whether a person’s ANS function is abnormal. For more than three decades, heart rate variability (HRV) has been measured and several studies have found an association of low HRV and clinical outcomes, particularly a link with higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. There have also been less well established links of low HRV to risk of early cognitive impairment, dementia, mental illness, Type 2 diabetes and substance abuse. An important reminder is that HRV is a surrogate marker without any established cause-and-effect relationship. If you increase your HRV, that doesn’t mean it will improve health outcomes. In fact, there is no hard evidence for that. All that work linking to health outcomes was done with electrocardiogram (ECG) derived HRV. Now, in the era of consumer wearables, this is getting assessed differently, by optical pulse (yes, the lights you see) plethysmography (PPG) or what is called pulse rate variability (PRV). They are not the same, as shown below (right panel) and only concordant when the delay between the ECG and pulse is kept constant, which basically means at rest. I should mention there’s also what I will call MPV, a mattress mechanical movement sensor, a derived heart rate variability, that companies like Eight Sleep use, even further away from directly measuring HRV. HRV has not one uniform measurement but many different types of quantification, such as RMSSD, the magnitude of difference between successive R-R intervals of normal sinus beats (N-N) or SDNN, the standard deviation of NN intervals, both in milliseconds. SDNN is one of the so-called frequency domain HRVs (others are LF, HF, LF/HF). Different wearable sensors use different metics; Apple has relied on SDNN and nearly all of the others use RMSSD, which is generally considered the more accurate metric. There’s also the different length of time measured, such as for a matter of minutes, all day, or an overnight’s sleep. Short measurements are especially problematic since they don’t capture enough of respiratory modulation and other factors that influence HRV. Share Ground Truths How well does HRV correlate with PRV? There are very limited studies, especially independently done. One that is commonly cited was conducted by Air Force researchers in only 13 healthy adults assessing Oura ring 3 and 4, Whoop 4.0, and Garmin Fenix 6 and showed a correlation coefficient of 0.88 to 0.97 and a mean absolute percentage error from 6 to 10%. The correlation is not a perfect 1.0, but there’s at least a fairly high level of correlation. HRV is supposed to increase during the night due to takeover of the parasympathetic nervous system, and higher during deep sleep. A recent example of my 1 week, all day “HRV,” and one during sleep is shown below. As you can see, the N of 1 data are inconsistent for the same days from different sensors (Oura, AppleWatch, Fitbit Air, and Eight Sleep) by patterns, absolute numbers, and comparison with prior days and weeks. The largest study in over 8 million Fitbit users (the old version, not Google Fitbit Air, introduced in May 2026) gives you a sense of the effect of age, sex, and the 2 different main HRV (here PRV) metrics, with RMSSD on the left and SDRR (=SDNN) on the right below. That study, from data collected in 2018, is a major outlier, since all the more recent ones are tiny with respect to sample size. Many of the companies have not had independent evaluation of their HRV, such as Eight Sleep, but have published a low standard error on their website. There are some other published studies on the correlation between HRV and PRV, but they are all small and only in healthy adults. A scoping review emphasized the lack of study in underrepresented individuals, including the aged, people of color (which affects the PPG signal), and individuals who are underweight or obese. Add the typical adult age 60 plus with one or more chronic diseases. For example, one study in over 900 adults found poor correlation of HRV and PRV, non-uniformly underestimated across many chronic diseases (cardiovascular, endocrine, neurological, respiratory, and others), concluding PRV is “an invalid surrogate for HRV.” A recent systematic review of 43 studies comparing HRV and PRV found reasonable pooled absolute standardized error (HRV as gold standard) but only 10 of the studies provided quantitative synthesis in ideal conditions. Their main conclusion was similarly cautious: “PPG-derived HRV [PRV] should not be regarded as universally interchangeable with ECG-derived HRV across all devices, populations, and recording contexts.” Factors Affecting HRV and PRV That gets me to the long list of factors that affect HRV (and PRV) besides the device, the type of measurement (RMSSD, SDNN or others), the person’s signal, the sensor site, the duration of data capture, if weighting by sleep stage is used, how artifact is processed and corrected. And this list is not complete!: Oura puts out data from their community of users (who input data) on what affects their overnight HRV. The factors currently provided are: no alcohol (increase 8%), melatonin (increase 2%, float tank (increase 2%), wine (decrease 4%), and party (decrease 14%) in overnight HRV. Must be some big parties! Subscribe What is a PRV measurement good for? It has been falsely characterized as an index of “autonomic balance” and a specific indicator of stress. A 2018 review of the studies available for HRV and its relationship to stress, not using any of the current wearables, found that stress can lower HRV. But so can many other factors. The non-specificity of the signal, indexed to the table above, is striking. Evidence from a UK Biobank study of over 46,000 participants with actual HRV looked at genetically predicted HRV, a genetic risk score, that failed to show the expected HRV-mortality link, indicating that _HRV is likely not causa_l, but rather a reflection of person’s physiologic state. A review of consumer wearable HRV data from 5 longitudinal studies showed that nighttime PRV was not associated with perceived stress, and surprisingly higher HRV, in the largest cohort (N=717 participants), was correlated with higher stress. An Oura ring cohort of 525 first-year college students found a link between overnight PRV and perceived stress, but that was also seen with resting heart rate, sleep, and respiratory rate. Several very small studies have examined the relationship of HRV and athletic injuries or guiding training with mixed, and predominantly negative results. HRV biofeedback training with paced breathing had no significant effect on reducing stress or raising HRV, as demonstrated with sham controlled trials. When HRV for multiple days showed a decline in conjunction with body temperature, the Oura ring published data for prediction of Covid. The WHOOP company sponsored an observational study, published in 2026, of 30,000 users for 72 weeks, without a control group, that reported reduced alcohol intake (5.8 % points) by self-report. That doesn’t tell us much, and particularly about the merits of HRV for behavioral change. If you use the same device and conditions as longitudinal trends for multiple (at least 2-3) weeks that may be the one way to get something useful from the measurements. Data for overnight sleep with minimal motion and using RMSSD is the best proxy for real HRV. The reason to look at trends rather than any given night is that it more likely represents something, even though you won’t know with certainty what the “it” is. Keep in mind there are no data, no peer-reviewed evidence, to show that HRV fluctuation in-person has any correlation with health outcomes. Share Readiness Scores These are proprietary scores that integrate different metrics for each of the wearables: no algorithms have been disclosed. They are unvalidated against health outcomes. In a review of 14 composite health scores of readiness and recovery, HRV contributed 86% to the scores, followed by reading heart rate (79%), physical activity and sleep duration (both at 71%). That review noted the substantial variability in measurement protools and lack of standardization. Sleep staging is notoriously inconsistent and inaccurate by these sensors, which adds further to the HRV uncertainties for what the scores, which use sleep stage data, mean. Only resting heart rate has been shown consistently across devices to be extremely accurate. I’ve made a Table to summarize what we know about which metrics are included, the scores, any peer-reviewed studies that compared the readiness score with health outcomes, and the corresponding (if any, NA-not available) citation. You will note that some companies do not use the term “readiness," such as WHOOP for recovery, and Garmin, which has 2 different scores, one of which is Body Battery. Eight Sleep uses the term “Fitness Score.” They all include HRV; Apple includes a new metric they call “Recovery HRV” which among other components uses 7-days of sleep, but it is unclear what this means or how it is differentiated from other scores (there are clearly no data for outcomes). We have no knowledge of how the different components are weighted or whether any of these scores are better than resting heart rate, HRV alone, physical activity, or any other single metric. Since none of these are standardized, they are not interchangeable, so if you get a 90 for Oura that has no relationship to a 90 on a Google Fitbit Air. Notably, the company can update its algorithm for readiness score at any point without notification to device users. Without any useful evidence of actionability for these scores or established relationship with health outcomes, it is hard to make a case for their value. At the Apple recent announcement they showed their Readiness score (0-10) on the watch (Figure below) but there are no published data on this score, not even on their website. It’s available only on their new Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4 [of course, ;-)]. That exemplifies the problems with these scores, lack of data and evidence for being meaningful to promote health. Perhaps the best study (which isn’t saying much) is the WHOOP Recovery for golfer performance, because it did correlate with an objective outcome, even though there was no control group and the authors were all from the company. Among the 389 pro golfers, an absolute 10-per cent point increase in Recovery score was associated with about 0.5 fewer strokes per round. But that’s hardly a health outcome! WHOOP is also conducting a study in over 2,700 runners to see if their recovery score will be linked to less injuries and improved performance, but that is not yet published and has no control group or randomization. Putting This in Context For two decades I’ve been enthusiastic about the potential for digital health and particularly wearable biosensors. Over the years, we’ve seen some great progress for their ability to promote physical activity and accurately detect atrial fibrillation (the first FDA cleared deep learning AI for consumers). That work was the subject of rigorous research. But there are holes in the data and evidence for other metrics. One notable one is the “VO2 max” story that I wrote about earlier this year. At that time many subscribers asked me to cover heart rate variability, which I finally got to here. When I dived into the research and publication for HRV and readiness scores, I expected to find at least some that were of high quality and demonstrated their utility by linkage to health outcomes. To my surprise, I found none. The wearable sensor measurements for HRV (PRV) are, for the most part, accurate, but that validation work has only been done in small studies of healthy adults and does not take into account the long list of factors, from the device, software side, and the user side, that affect HRV measurements. Moreover, this metric chiefly relies on optical sensing and, as we have learned for heart rate PPG sensing, may be less accurate in people of color. Keep in mind that all of the health outcome association evidence comes from ECG-derived HRV; none are from wearable sensor data. I will repeat the key point: there's no peer-reviewed evidence to show that in-person HRV fluctuation—or efforts to raise your HRV— has any correlation with health outcomes. For those of you who look at your HRV on awakening, or even 2+ week trends of it being low, I hope this context helps to relieve any anxiety. Yes, low HRV (not PRV) has been shown to increase risk of some diseases as summarized above. But efforts to raise your HRV—a surrogate metric— has not been established for improving any health outcomes. HRV does not have any evidence of causality (the genetic evidence actually goes against this possibility). In this summary, I have not included data for other wearable sensors such as Polar, Samsung, Withings, Suunto, Amazfit, Coros, Ultrahuman, or additional mattress sensors. These are beyond my first-hand experience, and as far as I know from my in-depth review none have any peer-reviewed published data that differ from the 6 sensors I’ve reviewed here. From the points I’ve gone over above, we’re not ready for readiness scores. Besides being proprietary, they are predominantly based on metrics that have their own issues. It’s compounding the problem, like building a house without a solid foundation that has never undergone a rigorous inspection, and then selling it. Like I mentioned for PRV, you can look at trends over weeks rather than any single day, to get a handle, but even that may not be helpful. There’s simply no evidence that these scores meaningfully relate to health outcomes. I’d emphasize they might, but that requires doing prospective or randomized studies to prove it. None exist. There’s great promise for HRV/PRV utility_. For example**,**_ Prof Maiken Nedergaard, who discovered the brain glymphatics that are essential in eliminating metabolic waste products from the brain during sleep, has posited that HRV could be a non-invasive marker for neuromodulator oscillations, brain-body regulatory circuits, and brain clearance. That would be extremely useful, but like everything else on HRV and readiness scores it requires solid research and validation. The lay media isn’t helping much to get the story straight. Earlier this year The Economist published a piece entitled “The most useful indicator of your overall health” which ordained HRV as an “accumulated stress score.” That’s akin to the false assertion about VO2max: “V02 max is the singular most powerful marker for longevity.” As I’ve summarized here, that is not established. The fact is that so many things can lower HRV, including physical exercise (especially an intense workout), reduced sleep quality, stress, the list above, no less the device, signal, and software. Whatever fluctuations observed have not been correlated with any health outcome. Sadly, “datamaxxers” are widely using HRV and readiness scores that have never been validated to mean anything. We already know that for some people using the sensors for sleep metrics, it can induce “orthosomnia,” an obsession to get high sleep quality, with associated high levels of anxiety. In an experiment done by a company to promote sleep quality for its employees, “For those employees who did use the trackers, many reported feeling perfectly rested until their tracker told them they had had a terrible night. Others were told that they had slept like a baby when they had actually been lying awake worrying about the quality of their sleep. “ The same problem can result from preoccupation with HRV or readiness scores, with anxiety that would lead to further reduction in both. It you are using a wearable like >100 million American adults, it’s OK to look at these data, but contextualized with the major caveats reviewed here. If you are one to require evidence that HRV or readiness scores are linked to health outcomes, you may not even want to look. The companies make it hard to turn them off! Let me end with the companies that make and sell wearables. Apple’s doubling down on HRV (24-fold more reporting and heart rate very 5 seconds) and introduction of a Readiness score tells us that consumers have bought into these metrics and they are joining the club. However, all of this is occurring with a backdrop of tens millions of users, claims about the data that are not backed up by adequate evidence, marketing way out in front of whatever limited data exists, and not being transparent about their readiness score algorithms. The companies can well afford to do the research that is needed to connect these metrics with health outcomes show, once and for all, that increasing HRV or using readiness scores promotes our health. If they believed and invested in the products they are selling, we’d not be in this position of not knowing. That’s essentially where we are with HRV and readiness scores. Perhaps someday this will change and we’ll have good reason to embrace them. NB: I wrote this post. No AI. I have no conflicts of interest with any of its content. Loading... Ground Truths has 215,000 subscribers from every US state and 214 countries. There are over 300,000 followers of Ground Truths so more than 90,000 folks who can easily convert to be free subscribers. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths The proceeds from all voluntary paid subscriptions go to support our summer internship program. It enabled us to accept and support a record number of 62 summer interns that joined us in 2026! These are high school, college and medical students selected from thousands of applicants. We couldn’t do this expanded program without the funds coming in through Ground Truths. Thank you!
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Ranking Members Markey, Velázquez, American Small Businesses Fight Back Against Trump SBA’s Discriminatory Anti-Immigrant Lending Policies
More than 120 small businesses and organizations pen letter of support for Ranking Member Markey’s resolution striking down Trump’s ban on awarding SBA loans to green card holders Letter (PDF) (Washington, September 15) – Ranking Member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) today garnered additional support from Main Street small businesses for his Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to rescind the Trump administration’s discriminatory policy that bans green card holders from accessing essential Small Business Administration (SBA) loans. In a letter of support, more than 120 American small businesses and community organizations, led by Small Business Majority, applauded Ranking Member Markey’s efforts to overturn the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant lending ban and advocated for the passage of Ranking Member Markey’s CRA resolution in the Senate. House Small Business Committee Ranking Member Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY-7) is leading the resolution in the House of Representatives. The Trump administration’s green card holder ban is the most recent escalation of SBA’s draconian citizenship restrictions that are killing jobs and putting the American Dream further out of reach for entrepreneurs. In Fiscal Year 2025, Trump’s SBA made an estimated $5.5 billion in loans to green card holders, which supported more than 80,000 jobs nationwide. “The Trump administration’s continued attacks on American small businesses and jobs are anti-American, they’re discriminatory, and they’re dragging down our communities and our economy. Thanks to partners like Small Business Majority, countless small businesses, and community organizations, we are fighting back and holding them accountable,” said Ranking Member Markey. “I will not stop fighting to rescind this hateful policy that attacks American entrepreneurs and prevents them from pursuing the American Dream.” “Small businesses and organizations across the country are sending a clear message that the Trump administration's discriminatory lending rules are bad for business,” said Ranking Member Velázquez. “I want to thank Small Business Majority for leading this effort and amplifying the voices of the entrepreneurs who create jobs and strengthen our local economies. As Ranking Member of the House Small Business Committee, I will keep pushing to stop these attacks on the American Dream and ensure that every eligible entrepreneur can access the capital they need to succeed.” In the letter, the small businesses write, “Congress must reaffirm its commitment to serving those who are rightfully and legally entitled to accessing key government guaranteed loan programs in pursuit of the American Dream. Restoring access to responsible, government-guaranteed loans for such a critical segment of our economy will allow thousands of small businesses to access the capital they require to grow and invest in American communities. If Congress does not act to protect access to the very ideals that our country was founded upon by rewarding those who adhere strictly to legal immigration pathways, local economies, communities and Main Street will pay the price.” Ranking Member Markey’s CRA resolution follows his introduction of the Investing in the American Dream Act alongside Ranking Member Velázquez earlier this year. The Investing in the American Dream Act would roll back the SBA’s draconian lending restrictions and restore previous SBA lending policies for immigrant entrepreneurs lawfully in the U.S., including green card holders, refugees, and asylees. More than 100 organizations have called for the passage of the legislation and more than 60 Massachusetts state legislators have raised concerns about the impact of the citizenship restrictions in their local communities. Ranking Member Markey is fighting for small business owners and immigrants that rely on SBA loans to start and run their businesses, create jobs, and contribute to their communities. In July, Ranking Member Markey and Ranking Member Velázquez introduced a bicameral resolution to rescind the Trump administration’s policy that bans green card holders from accessing essential SBA loans to start and grow their businesses and invest in Main Streets nationwide. In May, Ranking Member Markey highlighted the significant contributions of immigrant entrepreneurs in Massachusetts and across the country and condemned the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on immigrant communities at a Small Business Committee hearing. MIRA’s Elizabeth Sweet, who participated in Ranking Member Markey’s listening session earlier in May, provided testimony at the hearing. Also in May, Ranking Member Markey hosted a listening session at the Urban College of Boston to hear directly from several Massachusetts immigrant small business owners, lenders, and chambers of commerce how President Trump’s cruel and callous anti-immigrant policies are hurting Main Streets in the Bay State. Earlier in May, Ranking Member Markey hosted a press conference alongside Ranking Member Velázquez, Democratic lawmakers, and stakeholders to condemn the Trump administration’s harmful anti-immigrant lending policies and to introduce the Investing in the American Dream Act. In March, Ranking Member Markey released a comprehensive report detailing the harms to small business owners, workers, and consumers caused by the Trump administration’s ICE raids in communities across the country. In February, Ranking Member Markey introduced the Small Business ICE Disruption Fund Act, which would provide grants to small businesses that have been impacted by the Trump administration’s violent immigration enforcement actions on Main Streets across the United States. Earlier in February, Ranking Member Markey, Ranking Member Velázquez, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) sent a letter urging the SBA to rescind their lending rule change that bars legal permanent residents from receiving SBA loans. Previously, Ranking Members Markey and Velázquez released a statement condemning the actions of the SBA after it announced that small businesses with legal permanent residents will be barred from receiving SBA loans. In December 2025, Ranking Member Markey and all Democratic members of the Senate Small Business Committee sent a letter to the SBA reiterating concerns with the SBA’s citizenship requirements and highlighting a drop in SBA lending volume. In September 2025, Ranking Member Markey heard directly from SBA lenders about the issues with the citizenship verification requirements. In July 2025, Ranking Members Markey and Velázquez sent a letter to the SBA expressing serious concerns with the agency’s new, draconian citizenship verification requirements that require small businesses seeking SBA loans to be 100% owned by U.S. citizens, nationals, and legal permanent residents. ###
Cosmos Health Adds 5.2 Million Units in New Five-Year Agreements with Target Pharma; Orderbook Surges Past 32.7 Million Units, Up 31% Since June
7 million contracted units added in under two weeks \- Cana Laboratories' orderbook has grown from over 12 million units earlier this year to more than 32.7 million today * Secured orders for 1.
In brief: 'Yaga' gets AMC+ premiere date and more
We now know when the upcoming series Yaga will debut on AMC+. The new mystery-thriller series will premiere its first two episodes on Oct. 23. The streamer also released a sneak peek clip of the show that reimagines the myth of Baba Yaga. Noah Reid, Hudson Williams, Clark Backo and Carrie-Anne Moss star in the series ...Did you miss the film Tuner when it was in theaters earlier this year? Not to worry. The movie will mark its streaming premiere to Paramount+ on Sept. 21. Tuner follows a gifted young piano tuner who uses his heightened sense of hearing to open safes in the world of high-stakes theft. Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman and Havana Rose Liu star in the crime thriller ... TNCMS.AdManager.render({region: 'fixed-big-ad-top-asset', slot: 1, fold: "above"}); Ben Platt and Russell Tovey are disrupting the industry. Well, the cast of Industry, that is. HBO has announced that Platt and Tovey have joined the cast of the upcoming fifth and final season of the drama series. The season is currently in production ...Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. Thank you for reading kmaland.comAt KMA, we attempt to be accurate in our reporting. If you see a typo or mistake in a story, please contact us by emailing kmaradio@kmaland.com.
Next governor should fix dysfunctional CU Board of Regents
Earlier this year, the governor and state legislature finally agreed to revamp the board of directors at the Regional Transportation District, downsizing the board while adding appointed members (Polis signs RTD overhaul bill aimed at rebuilding transit ridership, Colorado Politics, May 27). Hopefully the state’s next governor will convince the legislature to fix another problematic […]
New Orleans Saints Drew Brees Almost Played With Denver Broncos
New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame quarterback Drew Brees almost unretired to play with the Denver Broncos after Bo Nix fractured his ankle during the NFL Playoffs earlier this year. After the Denver Broncos defeated the Buffalo Bills to enter the AFC Championship, former offensive coordinator Joe Lombari and offensive assistant Pete Carmichael discussed the […] The post New Orleans Saints Drew Brees Almost Played With Denver Broncos appeared first on HEAVY.
Please Stop Conflating Sports Betting Handle With Spending On Entertainment
Editor’s note: The Cashout for paid subscribers will publish on Tuesday. Every September there’s a huge uptick in how much people bet on sports with the start of football season. Which means it’s time to get ahead of a ridiculous narrative before it picks up steam on social media or in mainstream media. Subscribe Every few months I see some version of this: [ Charlie Bilello@charliebilello Americans bet over $165 billion on sports last year, which is more than they spent on movies, books, concerts and sports tickets - combined. 1:00 PM · Jun 28, 2026 · 4.1M Views 258 Replies · 674 Reposts · 4.23K Likes ](https://x.com/charliebilello/status/2071217050328895935?s=20) Fortune published this in July. The headline and start of the story tell the same narrative (emphasis added): Gambling becomes America’s favorite pastime as Americans spend more on sports bets than movies, arts, museums, and music combined: The North American box office totaled $8.87 billion in 2025, which is still 22% below pre-pandemic levels. Recorded music revenue hit a record $11.5 billion. Live music like concerts and festivals brought in $18.51 billion. Meanwhile, book publishers tracked by the Association of American Publishers reported $14.6 billion for the year. And the U.S. museum industry generated an estimated $16.4 billion. Add it up and the total comes to roughly $70 billion, which is less than half what Americans wagered on sports. The story, to its credit, goes on to tell us why sports betting is entirely different, although people who only read headlines will miss that nuance. (The tweet above definitely skips over the nuance.) I will mostly be preaching to the choir here, but it’s worth saying out loud: Wagering money on sports is not the same thing as spending on entertainment from a financial perspective. When you spend money on a movie or concert ticket, that money is gone. You exchanged money for an experience. It’s a good trade! I get to have fun for “x” dollars. (Unless the movie sucks, I guess.) When you bet money on sports, the money is not necessarily gone every time you wager it. It could be gone, but sometimes it’s not and you actually get more money back! That’s not “spending” money or something you should try to compare directly to entertainment spend. A far better comp would be how much people lose at sports betting. That number was more like $17 billion in the US last year, at least for state-regulated sportsbooks. Why are we trying to equate handle and entertainment spending? I dunno. It makes for splashy headlines, I guess. Now, people should be betting for entertainment, and not because they expect to win in the long term; no doubt about it. Anyway, here’s hoping I don’t see people saying Americans “spent” hundreds of millions of dollars on sports betting this fall. Mindway AI and DraftKings Expand Responsible Gaming Drive with Launch of Gamalyze American Football In time for the NFL kickoff, Mindway AI has expanded its partnership with DraftKings to launch Gamalyze American Football the second title in the neuroscience-based Gamalyze Sports collection. Following the success of Gamalyze Football (soccer) during the FIFA World Cup, this gridiron-themed update replaces static questionnaires with immersive, stadium-inspired gameplay. Backed by 10+ years of Aarhus University research, Gamalyze evaluates real-time decision-making to deliver instant, unbiased player risk assessments. Integrated into DraftKings’ platform and nationwide activations, it engages fans when excitement peaks. Ready to upgrade your player protection? Contact Mindway AI to try Gamalyze Sports today. Gambling news roundup 🚨The important stuff 1st NFL Sunday of Season ‘Champagne-Popping Day for Bettors’ (Covers): “The first NFL Sunday of the season was a champagne-popping day for bettors, while the book was left cleaning up the corks,” Caesars’ head of football Joey Feazel said prior to the Sunday night game. “Caesars Sportsbook reported that Detroit’s Jahmyr Gibbs, Baltimore’s Derrick Henry, Indianapolis’ Jonathan Taylor, and Atlanta’s Bijan Robinson were among the top five most-bet players to reach the end zone, and all of them cashed tickets.” [ Ben Fawkes@BFawkes22 A @CaesarsSports oddsmaker on how Week 1 has gone so far: “The first NFL Sunday of the season was a champagne-popping day for bettors, while the book was left cleaning up the corks.” ➡️8 of 10 most popular anytime TD scorers cashed 1:31 AM · Sep 14, 2026 · 276K Views 16 Replies · 16 Reposts · 615 Likes ](https://x.com/BFawkes22/status/2099310001927995849?s=20) 🔍 Are we already getting a “customer-friendly results” narrative in Week 1? NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke with CNBC about the prediction markets industry: “We think that there needs to be stronger regulations into the predictive markets,” Goodell said. “We want to see that to protect the integrity of our game. We want to make sure we’re protecting the consumers that are on those platforms for the NFL. So, we’re continuing to have conversations with them and talk to them about the things that we think they need to do to strengthen that so that they could be potential partners at some point in the future.” More on the NFL + PMs: [ Straight to the Point Quid Pro Quo The NFL has asked Kalshi and other prediction markets to remove certain easy to manipulate markets. Does a potential partnership hang in the balance… Read more 6 hours ago · 19 likes · Steve Ruddock ](https://straighttothepoint.substack.com/p/quid-pro-quo?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=1472492) Kalshi was on my podcast?: Kalshi was on my podcast [ The Event Horizon Episode 32: Talking Prediction Market Enforcement With Kalshi’s Robert DeNault Kalshi? On my podcast? Yep… Listen now 5 hours ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Dustin Gouker ](https://nexteventhorizon.substack.com/p/episode-32-talking-prediction-market-enforcement-kalshi?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=1472492) DraftKings Enhances Responsible Engagement Efforts With New Customer Initiatives, Tools and Education (press release): DraftKings Inc. today announced a series of new initiatives designed to promote responsible engagement and increase awareness and use of the tools and resources to help customers make informed decisions and engage responsibly. The efforts include a new digital advertising campaign featuring Kevin Hart and Nick Jonas that promotes responsible engagement, a PGA TOUR sweepstakes that promotes customer engagement with responsible engagement features, the launch of Gamalyze American Football in collaboration with Mindway AI, and new custom cool-off options that give customers enhanced flexibility when choosing a cool-off period. The initiatives build on DraftKings’ commitment to making responsible engagement an integral part of the customer experience and providing players with accessible tools and resources that help them make informed choices about their gaming experience. “At DraftKings, responsible engagement is embedded in how we operate and is essential to building trust with our customers and our long-term sustainability,” said Lori Kalani, Chief Responsible Gaming Officer at DraftKings. “We’ve continued to invest in tools and resources that give customers enhanced access to information about their play and more choices for managing how they engage. From My Budget Builder and My Stat Sheet to player-set limits and new custom cool-offs, we’re continuing to evolve our approach while promoting awareness and use of the tools and resources available to help customers play responsibly.” … DraftKings is launching a new digital advertising campaign featuring Kevin Hart and Nick Jonas that continues the pair’s road trip and promotes responsible engagement and awareness of the tools and resources available to help customers make informed choices about their gaming experience and engage responsibly. The campaign was initially launched on Sep. 10th and will reach customers through digital channels, bringing responsible engagement messaging to fans in an engaging way. bet365 Launches “The Matchup,” a New Weekly Video Podcast Hosted by Super Bowl Champions Chris Harris Jr. and Emmanuel Sanders (press release): "bet365, a global leader in online sports betting and gaming, today announced the launch of “The Matchup,” a new weekly video podcast hosted by former Super Bowl Champions Chris Harris Jr. and Emmanuel Sanders. Featuring current and former NFL players, the original series marks a significant, intentional investment in football as bet365 works to become a go-to destination for U.S. bettors throughout the season. “The Matchup” premieres September 10, with new episodes released weekly in both video and audio formats. Full episodes will be available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever podcasts are available, with clips and additional content rolling out across YouTube, X, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok. The show is being produced by Last Row Digital Media. Each week, Harris and Sanders will be joined by guests from across the game to break down the biggest NFL matchups, unpack the latest league news and share perspectives that go beyond the box score. By bringing together two former players with distinct perspectives and firsthand experience, “The Matchup” will give audiences timely context and a deeper understanding of the teams, players and storylines shaping the week ahead. “Every great football conversation starts with a matchup—who has the edge, what everyone is overlooking and what could change the game,” said Chris Harris Jr. “Emmanuel and I have experienced the game from different perspectives, and we want the audience to feel like they are part of the conversation and leave every episode knowing more about the week ahead.” Today’s iGaming companies face new litigation threats as expansive consumer protection statutes spark lawsuits with sky’s-the-limit aspirations, sometimes backed by private funders. Clients of Ifrah Law have a staunch defender in Robert Ward – an agile litigator and case tactician who responds to the changing state of play with creative legal defenses and efficient case-closing strategies. Robert draws on federal clerkship experience and appellate defense work to advise iGaming clients on litigation exposure, white-collar risk, and regulatory defense across multiple jurisdictions. Read More: Robert Ward on Helping iGaming Clients Outmaneuver Lawsuit-Obsessed Adversaries 🔮 Prediction markets Update on legal action in Connecticut: [ Daniel Wallach@WALLACHLEGAL Connecticut says gaming service license holders which received subpoenas over sports prediction markets “are not under investigation” by the @CTDCP but may possess information that could assist the state “in evaluating the conduct of prediction market platforms.” 2:31 PM · Sep 13, 2026 · 844 Views 5 Likes ](https://x.com/WALLACHLEGAL/status/2099143914271670576?s=20) American Gaming Association Opposes CFTC Bid to Block New York Prediction-Market Enforcement (DeFi Rate): “The brief points to the Ninth Circuit’s Aug. 28 decision in KalshiEX LLC v. Assad, which the AGA says supports New York’s authority to regulate sports contracts as gambling. It also cites Kalshi advertising, product comparisons and reporting on Kalshi’s sports volume to argue that the economic product resembles a sportsbook wager more than a conventional financial hedge.” [ Daniel Wallach@WALLACHLEGAL AGA intervenes in CFTC v. NY case to oppose CFTC request for preliminary injunction, says the CFTC’s arguments “obfuscate a simple truth: prediction markets offer sports betting.” Highlights CA9 decision, @DustinGouker (6x), and $1.32 billion in OSB taxes for NY (0 from PMs). Daniel Wallach @WALLACHLEGAL High stakes hearing on Monday in CFTC v. New York State. If SDNY judge Lorna Schofield denies the CFTC’s motion for preliminary injunction, the New York AG would have a clearer path for securing a state court geofencing order against Kalshi, Coinbase, and Gemini Titan. 2:08 AM · Sep 13, 2026 · 4.78K Views 1 Reply · 2 Reposts · 8 Likes ](https://x.com/WALLACHLEGAL/status/2098957043474280584?s=20) Gaming Commission remains member of gambling council after questions raised over ties to Kalshi (Mass Live): “The Massachusetts Gaming Commission will not follow the leads of gaming regulators in Ohio and Michigan and drop ties with the National Council on Problem Gambling over its new association with Kalshi.” Sponsor’s messageTrusted Voices: Conversations About Betting is designed to equip adults, including parents and coaches, with tools and resources to talk to young people about gambling, including information on warning signs, risks and proxy betting. The program is led by retired professional basketball player Randy Livingston and his wife, basketball agent Anita Smith, who share their personal stories related to problem gambling, with the hope of preventing others from experiencing similar harms. Learn more and join the conversation here. 📣 Industry news Gaming M&A: Latest Mergers, Acquisitions and Deals (SBC Americas): “But what else is happening in the world of gaming mergers, acquisitions, investments, and partnerships? Here, we round up some of the news you might have missed.” BetMGM Named Official Sports Betting and Online Casino Partner of the Minnesota Vikings in Canada (press release): BetMGM, a leading iGaming and sports betting operator, announced a multi-year partnership with the Minnesota Vikings, naming it the Official Sports Betting Partner and Online Casino Partner of the team in Canada. The agreement gives BetMGM rights to use Vikings marks across approved sports betting, online casino and marketing activities in Canada. In addition, Vikings Big Kick LuckyTap™, a casino game by Design Works Gaming, is available now exclusively at BetMGM Casino in Alberta and Ontario. “Vikings fans bring a level of passion and loyalty that extends well beyond game day,” said Matt Prevost, Chief Revenue Officer at BetMGM. “As the home of one of the largest collections of sports-themed casino content in North America, BetMGM is uniquely positioned to combine sports fandom with iGaming. We are eager to start football season off strong with another fantastic partnership especially as we expand our reach in Canada to Alberta.” Martin Nance, Minnesota Vikings Chief Marketing Officer, said, “As we continue to deepen our connection with Vikings fans across Canada, we’re proud to welcome BetMGM as the team’s official sports betting and online casino partner in Canada. Their commitment to innovation and fan engagement aligns well with our organization, and we’re excited to create memorable experiences that celebrate Vikings football and connect with Canadian fans in new and meaningful ways.” Caesars Entertainment Launches Ball Rush Jackpots™ in New Jersey,the Latest Proprietary Online Title from Empire Creative™ (press release): Caesars Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ: CZR) (“Caesars”) today announced the launch of Ball Rush Jackpots™, a new ball-and-peg style online casino game developed by Empire Creative™, the Company’s in-house game development studio. Now live in New Jersey across Caesars Palace Online Casino, Caesars Sportsbook & Casino and Horseshoe Online Casino, Ball Rush Jackpots is expected to become available in additional jurisdictions where Caesars offers online casino gaming following regulatory approval. The title expands Caesars’ growing portfolio of proprietary online casino titles, following the successful launch of Ca$hline™ earlier this year and further diversifying the Company’s lineup beyond traditional slots and table games. Ball Rush Jackpots follows the traditional ball-drop gameplay experience where players drop a ball down a board filled with pegs to land in a prize slot. As balls navigate independently through a field of pegs, every drop creates new opportunities to collect feature symbols, unlock bonuses and pursue jackpots, delivering a different experience with every round. “Ball Rush Jackpots delivers a different kind of casino experience for our players, combining easy-to-understand gameplay with meaningful customization, exciting bonus opportunities and jackpot potential,” said Matthew Sunderland, Senior Vice President and Chief iGaming Officer at Caesars Digital. “As we continue expanding our proprietary content portfolio, we’re focused on creating games that are simple to pick up, rewarding to revisit and designed around the features players enjoy most.” Bally’s Corporation Secures New Financing to Support the Development of the Bally’s Bronx Project (press release): Bally’s Corporation (NYSE: BALY) (“Bally’s” or the “Company”) announced today that it secured new financing led by WhiteHawk Capital Partners, LP to fund further development of the Bally’s Bronx project and general corporate purposes. The new financing comprises closing date term loan commitments in an aggregate principal amount of $400 million and delayed draw term loan commitments in an aggregate principal amount of $160 million (together, the “Facilities”). … Bally’s Chairman of the Board, Soo Kim, commented, “This important financing allows us to progress the pre-construction planning process so that we are ready to complete the remainder of the capital raise and remain on schedule. Furthermore, the additional liquidity provides us greater flexibility for other capital opportunities.” WORLD JAI ALAI LEAGUE LAUNCHES CENTENNIAL SEASON AND ENTERS NEXT CHAPTER IN MIAMI (press release): The World Jai Alai League will open its 2026 fall season on Tuesday, September 15 at Miami’s JAM Arena, beginning a milestone season that marks 100 years since professional Jai Alai first arrived in Miami. Season X, the tenth season of the Battle Court team-based competition launched in 2022, will also be the first since entrepreneur and sports asset investor Rob Gough acquired the World Jai Alai League in August 2026. The acquisition marks the beginning of a new chapter for the league. World Jai Alai League will maintain the existing Battle Court competition and operating format, with Chief Operating Officer Scott Savin overseeing Season X. Gough and his team will use the coming months to listen to players and fans, evaluate opportunities across the league, and execute plans for a broader evolution of Jai Alai’s presentation, live experience, media, marketing and commercial strategy beginning in 2027. “This is a really unique moment for Jai Alai,” said Rob Gough, Owner of the World Jai Alai League. “We have a sport with more than 100 years of history in Miami, extraordinary athletes and incredible speed, but I also believe there is enormous untapped potential.” bet365 reveals most popular online slots in 3 US states in August (SBC Americas): “In its monthly Gaming Insights and Performance report, growing online casino operator bet365 tracks player trends and game performance in online slots across its North American online casino markets.” The Closing Line is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Why Outstanding Variety Series could have multiple Emmy winners
A big change earlier this year could result in a trophy for all five nominees.
New survey highlights consumer hesitance with booking travel via social media
Earlier this year, TikTok announced it would begin offering in-app travel booking for users in the United States through a new feature called TikTokGo. The development meant that TikTok’s more
San Mateo County sheriff's deputy seeks mental health diversion in Livermore child abuse case
A San Mateo County sheriff's deputy charged earlier this year with abusing his young son in Livermore is asking the court to grant a mental health diversion program to resolve the criminal case against him, according to court records.
Bob Bolus, Scranton political activist, philanthropist, dies at age 83
Bob Bolus, a tow-truck company owner, divisive political activist and Christmas dinner philanthropist, died late Thursday night in a hospital at age 83 from an illness, a longtime friend confirmed Friday. Earlier this year, the Scranton…
When the call involves a mental health crisis, Bridgeport sends more than police
The fatal police shootings of two Hartford men during separate mental health emergencies earlier this year put a spotlight on how Connecticut law enforcement agencies respond to people in crisis and the role mental health professionals can play in those encounters.
DHS: Salvadoran TPS holders ‘retain protection’ despite expiration
Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced it is ending TPS for Salvadorans effective Wednesday
Luma locks down 15-year, $410M fund for life science investments
Luma Group today announced the final close of its inaugural life sciences venture capital fund, totaling $410 million. The New York-based investment firm has had a grip on life sciences since its founding in 2023. The funds unveiled today, dubbed LumaBio Fund I, include investments that have already been made into more than 10 biotechs. They include the likes of eye disease-focused Character Biosciences, rebranded Belgian biotech Coultreon Biopharma and cellular rejuvenation company Altos Labs. The fund saw early success when one of the companies it co-founded, called Vaccine Company, was picked up by Eli Lilly earlier this year for up to $1.55 billion. The acquisition of the in vivo nanoparticle technology-focused biotech formed part of a trio of vaccine buys for the Big Pharma, which has itself been on a prolonged spending spree in 2026. Luma's fund is structured as a 15-year investment with plans to support groundbreaking science and support companies through key milestones from discovery to commercialization, Luma explained in the release. "We founded Luma Group on the belief that extraordinary science, supported by patient, long-term capital, has the power to improve millions of lives," Joshua Fink, founder and managing member of Luma Group, said in the release. "This fund represents more than capital—it is a commitment to partnering with extraordinary innovators as they translate visionary science into life-changing medicines."
Altour's Boult: Rising Travel Costs a 'Permanent Phenomenon'
Travel costs will continue rising into 2027, though more slowly than earlier this year, according to the annual GBTA-Altour forecast. Altour chief commercial officer Michael Boult spoke with BTN's Michael B. Baker about the findings, why travel buyers should expect little relief from higher prices in the near term, and why policy might not be the answer.
She is my hero’: UT Health East Texas EMS honors 3-year-old girl’s bravery during mother’s seizure
UT Health East Texas EMS recognized three-year-old Naomi “Emi” Vatavuk Tuesday for her lifesaving actions during a medical emergency her mother suffered earlier this year.
Three Rivers Health Department reopens
Three Rivers Health Department reopens after tornado damage earlier this year. (Sept. 8, 2026)
Google Chrome starts two-week release cycle with version 153
As previewed earlier this year, Google Chrome is now operating on a two-week release cycle. Previously, Chrome received...
Apple Acquires Startup Working on 'Breakthrough Sensing Technology'
Earlier this year, Apple acquired California-based startup Sonera, according to a notice published today on the European Commission's website. Sonera previously announced that it had developed "breakthrough sensing technology" that "non-invasively measures magnetic fields" generated by the brain and body. The company said its technology can analyze neural data without direct skin contact, giving it an advantage over traditional electrical sensing techniques.
Plans presented for new White Sox ballpark
Justin Ishbia, the prospective owner of Major League Baseball’s Chicago White Sox, has revealed renderings for a proposed mixed-use district that would include a new ballpark for the team. The development, dubbed The Railyards, would be located in the South Loop neighbourhood of the city. It emerged earlier this year that Ishbia was in the
Local Organizations Seeking $250k in Grants
After announcing a $250,000 grant program earlier this year, the Moore County Tourism Development Authority (TDA) closed the application period on its Tourism Enhancement and Area Marketing (T.E.A.M.) grants, receiving
Wim Wenders clarifies that he does not believe film-makers should stay out of politics
Director’s controversial comments earlier this year warned of films that ‘enter the field of politics’
Country music star was shocked by her own diagnosis: ‘I didn’t even know’
She made the revelation earlier this year.
Country music star was shocked by her own diagnosis: ‘I didn’t even know’
She made the revelation earlier this year.
German director Wenders clarifies views on film and politics
German director Wim Wenders clarified his views about the relationship between filmmakers and politics on Sunday after he caused an outcry at the Berlin film festival earlier this year. Speaking in Venice, where he is presenting a new film about Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the "Paris, Texas" director said he had been misunderstood.
German director Wenders clarifies views on film and politics
German director Wim Wenders clarified his views about the relationship between filmmakers and politics on Sunday after he caused an outcry at the Berlin film festival earlier this year.
German director Wenders clarifies views on film and politics
German director Wim Wenders clarified his views about the relationship between filmmakers and politics on Sunday after he caused an outcry at the Berlin film festival earlier this year.
Wim Wenders Clarifies Stance on Filmmakers and Politics After Berlin
Wim Wenders has clarified his much-discussed statement about filmmakers' role in politics at Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.
CDFW: Scientists keeping an eye on river conditions to protect winter-and-fall-run salmon
From the Department of Fish and Wildlife As California continues to feel the impacts of a heat dome that is bringing higher than normal temperatures to large portions of the state, it’s a good time to remember that fish and wildlife — especially salmon — need cold water, too. River temperature management is critical for salmon’s survival and spawning. Earlier this year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announced that commercial ocean salmon fishing was back after being closed for three […]
15 discouraging hours with Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and 10 brilliant ones with He Who Watches
In the last few weeks, while playing some video games that I might review, I emailed two cries for help. I sent the first to a rep for Capcom, confessing that the company’s samurai game Onimusha Way of the Sword (out today for PC and console) was crushing me. “Feels like I’m playing ‘hard’ mode, not ‘normal,’” I wrote. “And I don’t want to have to knock it down to “story”. I’m exploring, trying to level my gear, but these two-phase boss fights with no mid-fight checkpoints are brutal.” I wagered I was only about halfway through the game, if that. I wasn’t sure I could keep up with the steepening difficulty curve. Was I missing something? Then, on Monday, I took some photos of some puzzles that were baffling me in the mind-bending He Who Watches (out now on PC), wrote out lengthy descriptions of how I’d been trying to solve them and asked Bobby Vanden, the game’s solo developer, for a nudge in the right direction. I told Vanden I’d spent hours on these puzzles. “I’m stuck in triplicate,” I told him. Could he tell me if the solutions I was attempting were even on the right track? I didn’t mention that the puzzles—coupled with major time pressures from other work—were stressing me out so much that playing the game was giving me headaches. This double dose of panic was unusual. I’m used to managing a workload full of reporting and reviewing, used to a crowded schedule and the need to stay calm amid the bustle. But I was stressed about these games. No one was forcing me to review them, nor even play them. I’d simply found them interesting enough to start, hoped they’d be interesting enough to write about and I’d sunk hours into them assuming I’d made the right call. Suddenly, however, I felt trapped. I was emailing for a way out. Above: This guy took me about an hour to beat. The feedback I got from Capcom confirmed my fears. They didn’t say it, but I will: Onimusha Way of the Sword is not for me. It’s a brutally hard game in need of a normal difficulty level. It’s a game that spikes so severely during its abundant boss fights—yet offers such flawed ways to improve when outside of them—that it feels like a bait-and-switch. In the new Onimusha, you play as famed samurai Musashi Miyamoto, aided by a magical soul-absorbing gauntlet that is possessed by a lady who offers advice. (Way of the Sword is a continuation of Capcom’s long-dormant Onimusha series, but that set-up had me wondering if the company was cribbing from their ill-fated Bionic Commando reboot; read about “wife-arm” when you get a chance). Way of the Sword is partially set in 17th century Kyoto, an explorable city where Miyamoto can fight demons, help civilians and eventually rescue ghostly dogs. The city evolves over time, with new mini adventures and obtainable loot on offer, all feeding into systems that promise to upgrade your gear and sword-fighting skills. Upgrades, however, are so incremental as to be imperceptible, causing the exploration of Kyoto to feel like inconsequential busywork. From that hub, players can go on linear missions into forests and old temples, where they will encounter many of the game’s tough bosses. Combat in Way of the Sword is akin to many modern melee games. Players are asked to mix attacks with dodges and parries. They’re encouraged to deplete an enemy’s stamina bar in order to do greater damage to its health bar. The old Onimusha games’ signature move was the issen, a counter-attack so sudden it’s all but pre-emptive. You strike just as they begin to strike toward you, beating them to the cut. By definition, the issen is a high risk move, leaving you wide open to pain. It feels risky in the game, especially against bosses, who can maul you in just a few blows. A game might train you to perform an issen well by offering a variety of lesser enemies who are not as tough as the boss but get close. Or it might offer a toehold against bosses by saving or checkpointing the player’s progress when a boss’ first health bar has been destroyed and before the second health bar appears. It might offer the less skilled player a chance to over-level their character, should the player simply commit to playing through its optional sidequests. Way of the Sword does none of this. Fighting its trivially easy grunt enemies and then its ferociously adept bosses is like playing a game of chess where I’ve got a rook, while the opposing side is all pawns and five queens. Bosses simply don’t checkpoint. You may be able to clear a boss’ first phase without taking much damage. Good for you. Do it again, every time you fail the second phase. As for the the central Kyoto hub, I kept pace with all of its added side activities and never felt like I was overpowered. Bosses could still easily buckle me. The new Onimusha, I concluded, is just too discouraging to keep playing. The advice I got from Capcom had been well-intentioned. They reminded me of the game’s various systems. They alerted me to an optional assist that flashes recommended button inputs (basically: counter this move; dodge that move). It was a little helpful. So was dropping down to “story mode,” which I tried last night. Story mode turns on those button prompts by default. It makes countering and dodging way too easy, nearly automatic. I don’t consider myself a master of action games like these, but I’ve cleared the likes of God of War, Stellar Blade, Star Wars Jedi and others of sub-Sekiro difficulty and had a fun time doing so. Not here. Not yet. Unless they patch Onimusha: Way of the Sword and add a middle difficulty or just checkpoint the damn bosses when they’re between health bars, my streak of loving Capcom games released in 2026 will likely end at two. It’s a shame, because I was having a good time finding those ghostly dogs. And then there’s He Who Watches, a phenomenal first person puzzle game with Portal vibes, except instead of a portal gun you’ve got a magical bow that shoots one arrow that can activate switches or be used to drag blocks. The twist is an actual twist: you can also walk on walls and the ceiling, reorienting gravity as you do, thereby placing blocks onto those other surfaces. Walking on walls and ceilings to solve problems is really the best thing. Would that I could in reality. He Who Watches consists of locked-room challenges, each brief enough to only require about a minute to actually solving, though it will take five, 10, eventually 30 minutes to figure out said solutions. They are not obvious! It’s a game of layered mechanics and shocking solutions. For example, see if you can follow this: You can drag a block to a wall. Then you can walk on the wall, which now feels like the floor, and drag that block across the wall. Later, back on the floor, you might realize you can look up. The block is still on the wall, stuck to it. You can shoot your magic arrow to its underside. Doing so creates a tether, so that you can yank the block off the wall and carry it, as if it were a balloon, into the spot where you need it to be to solve the puzzle. Here, watch Vanden explain some of the game’s basics in this launch trailer: As with any great puzzle game, the solutions to He Who Watches’ puzzles elicit relief and amazement. Oh my god, that worked! I didn’t even think that could be possible! Learning to solve the game’s puzzles feels like learning magic. But, oh, does the game get hard. Its Steam reviews, mostly glowing, are full of players remarking how quickly He Who Watches made them sweat. Wrote one: “loving this one already although my brain is hurting!” Wrote another: “As you get further in the game it feels like you need an IQ level of at least 120+.” Vanden has shown some mercy. Each locked room puzzle includes an optional junior version of the puzzle, meant to teach you. Difficulty nevertheless ramps severely. By the time I was emailing Vanden for help, I was struggling to even clear one of the hint puzzles. When I messaged him, my stress was exacerbated by strange things I’d found in the game’s various hubs: suspicious passageways, odd blocks and some intriguing locked doors. These were hints of secrets, I realized, yet I sensed I needed to play further into the game to understand them. I was stuck, but I wanted to see the rest. Vanden offered to give me the exact solutions, to solve those three puzzles for me, but first he gave four nudges. Three were for the specific puzzles, but his best hint was for all and ultimately proved to be a terrific life lesson: go back a bit, he suggested. Do the puzzles right before those. They were teaching you something. Focus on what their lesson was. Don’t rush, in other words. Recognize what you’ve accomplished. Build off of that. I did so. I absorbed the lessons. I saw those three tough puzzles in a new light. I solved one the night after he wrote back, another the morning after. I left a third for another time. I didn’t need it and I wanted to plunge deeper into the game, closer to the moment when I was sure I could start unlocking those secret doors. My head stopped hurting, too. He Who Watches feels special. It’s got more challenges, and I’m undeterred. It’s also nice that its puzzles don’t have a surprise second health bar. Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Item 2: In brief… 🎮 Ilari Kuittinen, co-founder of Helsinki-based Housemarque (Super Stardust HD, Resogun, Returnal) has stepped down from his studio, after a 31-year run, saying he’s “ taking a rare and well-deserved breather.” Sony purchased Housemarque in 2021, and the studio released its newest game, Saros, earlier this year. Trend-watch: Sony-owned Insomniac saw its founder Ted Price retire in early 2025, after a 30-year run. Sony-owned Sucker Punch saw its co-founder Brian Fleming step down in late 2025, after a 28-year run. 👀 Savvy Games Group chief Brian Ward is stepping down from the Saudi-government-backed games conglomerate, Bloomberg reports. No word on a long-term successor yet, nor if this augurs any closer integration between Savvy and Electronic Arts. EA was purchased by a consortium led by Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, in early August. 💿 Square Enix has denied a Japanese media report that the company was planning to go private. In very different Square Enix news, the company revealed that the physical version of Final Fantasy VII: Revelation, the April 2027 finale of its radical remakes of FFVII, will include just one disc in its case, requiring a download for the rest. The first two FFVII remakes in the trilogy shipped on two discs apiece. While Square hasn’t commented on the reason why, a feature here in Game File last month broke down the processes and costs for physical games. The expense of a second disc comes out of the game publisher’s cut of each copy. Square could be saving in excess of a dollar a copy with this move. 🟥 Grand Theft Auto IV’s 26-minute ’‘extended look” gameplay showcase that premiered on Netflix last week—and was exclusive to the platform for six hours—drew 31.1 million views in its first four days, the streamer announced. (Netflix calculates views as total viewed hours divided by runtime; excludes replays). Compared to YouTube: The version that later premiered on Rockstar Games’ YouTube channel is sitting at 22.6 million views after seven days (YouTube’s more liberal counting system tallies anyone who viewed even just the first few second.) Compared to other Netflix mega-events: Last year, Stranger Things season 5’s first four episodes, which debuted together, drew a record 59.6 million views in their first few days on Netflix. For more of a live event type of comparison, in 2024, the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match drew 65 million concurrent streams as it happened; Netflix didn’t release live numbers for the GTA premiere. ☁️ Microsoft is changing the way it charges for cloud gaming, from an all-you-can-play offer for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, to caps for the subscription’s tiers (15 hours per month at the Ultimate tier), with the option to buy more hours in bulk beyond that. The company also said it will sell batches of cloud gaming time to non-Game Pass subscribers, details TBA. Microsoft does not release figures for cloud game usage, but said its changes would impact 4% of Game Pass subscribers. That implies a small portion of its subscribers exceed the 15-hour monthly mark. Cloud gaming offers the promise of playing games without the need for console or PC hardware, as the graphics, sound and controls are all transmitted via a streaming connection. Microsoft notes that its cloud gaming service can be used for a range of things, including Xbox One players using it to play newer-gen Xbox Series games via streaming; and people playing games via streaming, sans any console, “in markets where consoles are less available or affordable.” (That latter use case could even be relevant in Xbox’s home market soon, as console prices keep rising.) Take Two Interactive chairman Strauss Zelnick recently told investors he expects game-streaming tech, which has been only lightly adopted by gamers for over a decade, to be widely used within three years. 🇺🇸 The Trump administration has published multiple agenda-driven web video games to the White House’s website. One called Build The Wall partially clones Tetris as it asks players to build a wall to stop a “zombie border siege.” While actual Tetris involves clearing lines and basically not building a wall, the Trump-backed game omits the line-clearing aspect (and omits the fun as well). On Instagram, Tetris’ official license holders reacted by stating: “At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them. To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we’re grateful to have you in our community. P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall.’ P.P.S.: We take copyright infringement very seriously.” Item 3: The week ahead: Tuesday, September 8 Game releases: Mewgenics (consoles; already out on PC) is an engrossing tactical combat game (with cats). It is getting its console port right after the release of a Star Wars tactics game and ahead of the late September launch of a Fire Emblem–a bumper crop for the genre. Wanderburg (PC) is an auto-shooting game like Vampire Survivors, but you’re a castle on wheels Event: Nintendo airs a 30-minute Nintendo Direct (10am ET) focused on The Legend of Zelda’s 40th Anniversary. A full unveiling of the upcoming remake of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is expected. Will they also show footage from next year’s live action movie? Tease the next big 3D Zelda? Add Link to Mario Kart World? Shadow-drop a new Tingle game? Wednesday, September 9 Event: Nintendo again! On this day, they’re planning to air a 45-minute Nintendo Direct (10am ET) focused on games heading to Switch 2 this winter. Followed by about an hour of gameplay demoed by the company’s Treehouse team. The September Nintendo Directs are always some of the year’s biggest. The 2025 edition included announcements of several major 2026 Switch/Switch 2 games: Pokémon Pokopia, Mario Tennis Fever, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave. Plus the return of the Virtual Boy. Friday, September 11 Game release: EA Sports NHL 27 (PlayStation, Xbox) is a hockey game. There are so few that an indie studio that had been making wacky sci-fi first-person shooters just announced that, hey, we’re going to fill a void and make a hockey game for PC.
Foldable iPhone Ultra: The Latest Rumors Before Apple's Event
We're less than a week away from the debut of Apple's first foldable iPhone, and rumors have been picking up as the event date approaches. Here's the latest. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. MagSafe - Even though foldable iPhone dummies we saw earlier this year didn't have a MagSafe ring, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claims all signs indicate MagSafe charging will be supported.
How the Los Angeles Angels' $4B sale compares to the price tags of other North American sports franchises
The Angels have been sold for $100 million more than what the Padres' price tag earlier this year.
OpenAI's ad business shows blistering growth, hits $1 billion annualized revenue run rate
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Weekend Break: Bowling, bocce and brunch? Yes, you can do all 3 and more at 810 Entertainment in South Barrington
810 Entertainment opened earlier this year in a newly renovated space in South Barrington, located in Chicago’s northwest suburbs.
Trump says 'Meet the Press' host Kristen Welker will be reported to FCC
President Donald Trump sharply criticized Kristen Welker, the moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," after abruptly exiting an interview with her earlier this year.
Judge says Pentagon's measures against Anthropic were 'illegal and baseless'
The government labeled the company a supply chain risk earlier this year
Judge says Pentagon's measures against Anthropic were 'illegal and baseless'
The government labeled the company a supply chain risk earlier this year
Caesars Entertainment Launches Ball Rush Jackpots™ in New Jersey, the Latest Proprietary Online Title from Empire Creative™
New ball-and-peg style online casino game combines customizable gameplay, layered bonus features and dynamic jackpot opportunities LAS VEGAS (Aug. 28, 2026) Caesars Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ: CZR) (Caesars) today announced the launch of Ball Rush Jackpots(tm) , a new ball-and-peg style online casino game developed by Empire Creative(tm), the Company's in-house game development studio. Now live in New Jersey across Caesars Palace Online Casino, Caesars Sportsbook Casino and Horseshoe Online Casino, Ball Rush Jackpots is expected to become available in additional jurisdictions where Caesars offers online casino gaming following regulatory approval. The title expands Caesars' growing portfolio of proprietary online casino titles, following the successful launch of Ca$hline(tm) earlier this year and further diversifying the Company's lineup beyond traditional slots and table games. Ball Rush Jackpots follows the traditional ball-drop gameplay
NVIDIA DLSS 5 DLL Leaked by NBA 2K27 Early Access Build, Here's Our Analysis
Earlier today, we reported that a DLSS 5 DLL has been leaked by an early access build of 2K's NBA2K27 early access. NVIDIA announced DLSS 5 earlier this year, and showed more details at SIGGRAPH this year, saying it would ship "this fall." However, we were surprised that it is shipping already,...
J. Cole grounded and commanding in sold-out Seattle show
The North Carolina hip-hop great released what has been teased as his final album earlier this year.
Maverick Games partners with Focus Entertainment to publish debut racing title Clutch
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Outgoing House Democrat Al Green files another impeachment resolution targeting President Donald Trump
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Main Street Sports sues Comcast, Charter for underpaid licensing fees
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Focus Entertainment Team Up with Maverick Games to Publish ‘CLUTCH’
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A deep dive into climate change
Some policymakers continue to question the science of climate change, despite the growing evidence of significant damage to life on land and in the ocean.Katja Matthes, director of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, believes the ongoing attempts to politicise climate science and discredit researchers are hindering international cooperation and public understanding. The ocean provides clear evidence of the extent to which changes are occurring, she says.“We are seeing severe, unprecedented and accelerating changes in the ocean — warming ocean temperatures, acidification and oxygen depletion — that are destabilising the most important system that makes life on this planet possible,” Matthes explains. Visible signs of these changes include the melting of ice sheets in the Arctic and Greenland. Deeper down, the growing frequency of hypoxia — or oxygen-deprived “dead zones”, where marine life can no longer survive — in the Baltic and record-high Mediterranean surface temperatures are indicators of the “dramatic warming” of the ocean, she adds.The ocean, which covers around 70% of the Earth’s surface, acts as a vital carbon sink, absorbing around 30% of the planet’s carbon dioxide (CO2) and 90% of the excess heat. However, the global ocean surface temperature has risen by an average of half a degree Celsius since 1982, according to the EU Copernicus observatory. More significant rises have been recorded in the Mediterranean, Black, Baltic and other shallower seas.Some ocean temperature increases do occur naturally, such as during El Niño events. But sustained rises can trigger extreme weather on land — including droughts, floods and catastrophic storms — while also harming marine ecosystems. Only 10% of marine species have been studied, Matthes notes, “so the consequences might be even more severe than we know.”Fostering European cooperation amid uncertaintyMatthes, who holds a doctorate in meteorology, is a professor of atmospheric physics as well as director of GEOMAR. She serves as one of Kiel’s ambassadors to Science Comes to Town (SCTT), an EU-funded programme that aims to promote science’s role in society and strengthen cross-border collaboration in research, innovation and sustainability. SCTT is hosted by the coastal cities of Kiel, Brest (in France) and Split (in Croatia).The SCTT project also provides a platform for raising awareness and understanding between scientists and the public about major issues, such as climate change. Having worked on both sides of the Atlantic, Matthes is frustrated by recent attempts to erode decades of international climate collaboration and question the credibility of research. Earlier this year, the US administration delivered a major blow to global cooperation by withdrawing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and other global climate organisations, claiming they were “contrary to the interests of the United States.”In addition, a US Department of Energy (DOE) report cast doubt on the latest IPCC climate assessment, which was published in 2024. As a contributing author to the IPCC study, Matthes says the DOE sought to discredit scientists like herself. “Climate change is not a matter of opinion, it really exists and we are witnessing dramatic changes,” she notes. “It’s not climate change as a whole that is being targeted, but scientists and their research.”Other US actions have also hit home for Matthes, who spent three years at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. The White House has announced plans to close the facility, a move that was “pretty tough” due to the German scientist’s personal connections with the staff and their reputation for excellence.Changing the narrative on climate changeEurope’s scientific community remains a driving force on climate research and collaboration. As one of the world’s leading marine research institutions, GEOMAR attracts students from more than 50 countries and plays an important role in global observation initiatives that contribute to understanding and protecting the ocean basins. At a European level, GEOMAR works closely with other top marine research facilities, including France’s Ifremer, an SCTT partner in Brest. GEOMAR has also developed innovative and safe strategies for removing unexploded wartime munitions from the seabed, which release toxic substances that pose a danger to humans and the marine environment. Through the Horizon Europe MMinE-SwEEPER project, this knowledge has been transferred to the European level.These initiatives are examples of how local action can have a global impact, Matthes says, and how Europe can strengthen climate research and partnerships. “This is a chance for Europe to step up and work on climate cooperation and agreements,” she notes. “Climate change is an international problem and a real threat, and we need more speed on climate action than we have now.”Matthes believes her fellow scientists need to communicate that climate change is not only a threat, but an opportunity to find solutions. “We need to change our narrative and expand our strategic alliances with those who are willing,” she says, “and luckily there are a lot of willing people and countries.”Science|Business, which connects policymakers, academics and industry through its news reporting, analysis and events, is an SCTT partner.