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Comcast Taps Social Media Reality Series to Tout Xfinity as Tool for Creators, Influencers (EXCLUSIVE)
Comcast’s Xfinity brand is launching “Best in Class,” a seven-part social media competition series designed to position its broadband service as an essential tool for content creators, particularly targeting younger, cord-cutting audiences who typically ignore traditional advertising. The show, which begins on 5 August across TikTok and Instagram, follows six college student influencers competing in…
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Caribbean bears brunt of £43bn climate-fuelled damage to developing islands
A study by development thinktank ODI Global has found that Caribbean nations suffered $53.2bn (£40bn) in economic damage from climate-fuelled disasters between 2000 and 2024, accounting for over 90% of the $57bn total losses recorded across 39 developing island nations worldwide. The findings, which also link the climate crisis to more than 190 deaths a…
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Billy Liar review – Tom Courtenay is superb in classic study of a young man and his quixotic dreams
This is a Guardian review of Billy Liar, John Schlesinger’s 1963 British comedy adapted from Keith Waterhouse’s 1959 novel, part of the “Angry Young Man” literary movement alongside John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim. The critic praises Tom Courtenay’s performance in the title role but expresses long-standing reservations about the…
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AI digs through 3,700 accounts of dreams and waking life, finds method in the madness
Researchers at Italy’s IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca have used natural language processing to analyse more than 3,700 accounts of dreams and waking experiences, concluding that dreams are neither random noise nor straightforward replays of the day’s events. Instead, the sleeping brain appears to blend memories, emotions, familiar places and imagined scenarios into entirely…
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The next American boom could be here — unless Washington regulates it to death
A Fox News opinion piece argues that fears of mass AI-driven job losses are overblown and that excessive government regulation, not the technology itself, poses the greatest threat to America’s economic prospects. The author contends that artificial intelligence could deliver the biggest improvement in American living standards in decades, comparing its disruptive potential to historical…
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Alive by Melanie Challenger review – a maverick study of what it means to have a body
Melanie Challenger’s book *Alive: The Hidden Intelligence of the Living World* argues that we have misunderstood nature and ourselves by fixating on souls, genes or minds rather than paying attention to bodies. The reviewer frames this as an important corrective, noting that bodies have been marginalised in scientific and philosophical thought, perhaps because they remind…
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Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Rajasthan Royals Sales Push IPL Cricket’s Business Value to $20.6 Billion, Houlihan Lokey Study Finds
The IPL’s business value has risen to $20.6 billion, up 11.4% year on year, according to Houlihan Lokey’s 2026 IPL Valuation Study, driven largely by record-breaking sales of two franchises, Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Rajasthan Royals. The findings underline the growing appeal of Indian cricket to major global investors, with the report noting that only…
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‘As Light as Air’ Is a Hypnotic Experimental Doc About Collective Ecstasy in a City in Pakistan (Locarno Trailer)
Pakistani filmmaker Umair Bilal’s feature debut, the experimental documentary “As Light as Air,” will have its world premiere on 11 August in the Critics’ Weeks section of the 79th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. The film explores spiritual life in Sehwan, a Sufi city known for pilgrimage, folklore and collective ecstasy, offering audiences a hypnotic,…
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Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli review – a mother and daughter’s odyssey
Valeria Luiselli’s fourth novel, Beginning Middle End, follows a Mexican narrator living in the US who, after a difficult divorce, travels through Europe on a book tour with her 12-year-old daughter before settling in Sicily for the summer. The novel is prompted by the daughter’s request for her mother to write a story with a…
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Organic eggs have worse impact on climate than eggs from caged chickens
A new study suggests that organic, free-range eggs have a greater climate impact than eggs from caged hens, as free-range systems require more birds to produce the same number of eggs, since caged hens are more efficient producers. This challenges the common assumption that higher-welfare farming methods are automatically better for the environment, and researchers…