Morning Digest
35 stories from 9 sources, 130 more held back.
CHICAGO -- Cubs starter Matthew Boyd watched plenty of video of Joshua Báez before the Cardinals rookie stepped into the batter’s box at Wrigley Field on Saturday afternoon. Boyd studied his strengths and weak spots, coming up with a game plan for facing the highly touted slugger. Boyd will now be studying up on what just happened.
CHICAGO -- The Cubs and Cardinals have one of the oldest rivalries in all of sports -- one that is filled with heroes and villains and a long list of classic games and historic moments. St. Louis rookie Joshua Báez stepped into the rivalry for the first time on Saturday and quickly added his name to the lore.
CHICAGO – Clay Holmes has pitched on some of baseball’s biggest stages. He has handled high-leverage outs in the World Series. He has made a pair of All-Star teams.
CHICAGO -- As Clay Holmes walked off the mound on Friday afternoon, he was greeted with a standing ovation from the Cubs fans getting their first look at the pitcher at Wrigley Field. Holmes raised his glove in appreciation of the well-earned reception.
Saudi Arabia launches maritime coalition amid escalation in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has announced the formal launch of a multinational maritime defense coalition aimed at safeguarding shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as escalating hostilities with Yemen’s Houthis threaten one of the world’s most important trade routes.
US-based tech billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have rekindled their friendship after falling out last year, with Musk preparing a major donation to Republicans for the midterm elections, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people who accompanied the two to China.
Iran has invoked Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky to accuse Washington of basing its foreign policy toward Tehran and the wider Middle East on “lies,” as efforts to end the months-long conflict remain stalled.
Despite the conspicuous difference in size, speed, and strength between the sexes, a debate is now raging in women’s professional basketball in the United States whether to let men compete alongside the ladies. Nobody would ever confuse Royce White, 35, with a woman. The man with stands 6 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 260 pounds (118 kg), sports a bushy beard, and is bald.
MMA's pound-for-pound king, Islam Makhachev, makes his first Octagon appearance of 2026 on Saturday night, putting the UFC welterweight championship at stake against Ian Machado Garry in the main event of UFC 330 at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Another game, another trip to the blue medical tent. And New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart isn't too happy about the reccurrence. After being checked for a concussion five times last year during his rookie season, Dart was sent to the medical tent after taking a big hit in Saturday's preseason opener against the Minnesota Vikings.
CHICAGO -- The Cleveland Browns dropped their preseason opener to the Chicago Bears on Saturday, but coach Todd Monken was pleased with the play of quarterback Deshaun Watson in his first game since the 2024 season. Watson, who is competing with Shedeur Sanders to be Cleveland's starting quarterback, started the first preseason game alongside the Browns' projected offense and played the first…
Texas A&M secured one of the top quarterbacks in the 2028 cycle Saturday with a commitment from four-star quarterback Donald Tabron II. The 6-foot-4, 190-pound prospect from Detroit's Cass Technical High School is ESPN's No. 2 pocket passer in the 2028 class. He announced his pledge to Texas A&M over finalists LSU and Oregon on Saturday evening following visits with each program in June.
Cubs ace left-hander Matthew Boyd came into Saturday’s game against St. Louis on a roll. Cardinals left fielder Joshua Báez, making his major-league debut, slammed the brakes on it in – in historic fashion. Báez homered in his first three at-bats in the “bigs,” becoming the first player to ever do so.
Before leading a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the seventh-inning stretch of the Cubs game, Mr. T practiced in the press box with starstruck journalists and staffers. He wanted to nail the “root, root, root” cadence and put extra emphasis on the line, “I don’t care if I never get back!”
“No one performs an experiment once and considers the work done. They repeat it with different variables, correcting what they thought they knew, adding what they’ve learned.”
Manager Craig Counsell made the announcement after Cabrera threw a bullpen session before the Cubs’ 3-0 victory Friday. Left-hander Shota Imanaga, who had been slated to start Sunday against the Cardinals’ Hunter Dobbins, will pitch the opener of the Cubs’ three-game set Monday against the White Sox at Wrigley Field. Cabrera is 5-4 with a 5.10 ERA in 14 starts in his first season with the Cubs.
Ellison whines about the “needless costs” of the empire he’s buying, Melania tops the Epstein subpoena list, and Ivanka can’t buy her way into Miami’s most exclusive club. David Ellison, the MAGA billionaire buying Warner Bros., is having a temper tantrum about the “needless costs” of the antitrust suit standing between him and CNN.
Donald Trump is now telling families of sailors trapped on an aircraft carrier with reportedly horrid conditions that their deployment hasn’t gone on “nearly long enough. He also bragged to a crowd that “beautiful young girls” can’t stop fawning over him at the White House.
Hunter Biden recently joined Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson, where the second son of the 46th president of the United States sounded off on President Donald Trump’s corruption, the fight over holding Trump officials accountable under a future Democratic administration, the future of the Democratic Party, his views on the war in Gaza and his own recovery from addiction, among other topics.
His administration is destroying one of the paper trails investigators need to follow secret money…. U.S. President Donald Trump walks to speak with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan, U.S., July 27, 2026. Trump just took steps to make it very difficult to prosecute money laundering, a crime he and his real estate buddies may well have been committing much of their felonious…
At recent major tech events, humanoid robots were everywhere. Some of them walked, navigated, and manipulated objects with a level of dexterity that would have seemed unrealistic just a few years ago. And yet, despite all of this progress, I find myself consistently underwhelmed when I try to communicate with them at Treble.
Marc Kermisch is the chief technology and AI officer at Protolabs. He leads the Maple Plain, Minn.-based company‘s global technology organization, overseeing its software product development, digital manufacturing platform evolution, and enterprise-wide artificial intelligence and research & development strategies.
Neros Inc. this week announced it raised $250 million in a Series C round. This brought the drone defense contractor to a $2.5 billion valuation. “This newest round of funding accelerates Neros into a multi-capability drone manufacturer,” stated Soren Monroe-Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Neros.
On June 24, Agility Robotics Inc., a leading humanoid robotics and physical AI company, announced it had entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company or SPAC. The deal values Agility at a $2.5 billion pre-money equity valuation.
Morris is a local celebrity: the only known Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus) in the entire Pacific Ocean. He showed up in the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco 14 years ago.
I still have quite a bit of older content on my blog that I never got round to tagging. My blog has 1,856 tags - likely too many to feed to an LLM in one go and say "which of these tags match the following content". Doug Turnbull has a neat solution.
Fixes a crashing bug in sqlite-utils 4.2. I'd introduced code that looks like this:. from typing_extensions import Self.
Lots of improvements in this one relating to the table.transform() feature, which adds support for complex alter table operations by creating a fresh table, copying across the data and then dropping and replacing the old one. transform() now preserves a much larger array of edge-case schema definitions, including check constraints, unique constraints and even comments describing the columns.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Objects constructed by robots are ubiquitous. If you’ve used a car, household appliance, or smartphone today, you’ve used an object constructed at least in part by robots. The more products that manufacturers want to produce (and consumers want to consume) at lower costs, the more industrial robots will be needed.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “Covered List,” originally published in 2021, identifies communications equipment and services that it says pose a threat to national security.
Trump’s proclamation also orders Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to establish an onshoring incentive program for entities investing in manufacturing drones and their components. China’s drone market, projected to reach a $15.6 billion value in 2025, has the largest global presence and the “deepest component supply chain,” according to research firm Drone Intelligence.
Ford and Changan Automobile launched the Changan-Ford JV in 2012. The JV produces both Ford and Lincoln brand vehicles for the China market. The JV factory in Hangzhou, which opened in 2015, currently builds the Lincoln Nautilus, Aviator and Ford Explorer and Edge L SUVs, according to Ford’s website.
A Department of Defense’s multimillion-dollar contract has brought a metal casting competition to the worldwide stage as reality show competition in an effort to spread awareness of the skill trade and inspire a new workforce.
Saudi Arabia launches maritime coalition amid escalation in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has announced the formal launch of a multinational maritime defense coalition aimed at safeguarding shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as escalating hostilities with Yemen’s Houthis threaten one of the world’s most important trade routes.
US-based tech billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have rekindled their friendship after falling out last year, with Musk preparing a major donation to Republicans for the midterm elections, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people who accompanied the two to China.
Iran has invoked Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky to accuse Washington of basing its foreign policy toward Tehran and the wider Middle East on “lies,” as efforts to end the months-long conflict remain stalled.
Despite the conspicuous difference in size, speed, and strength between the sexes, a debate is now raging in women’s professional basketball in the United States whether to let men compete alongside the ladies. Nobody would ever confuse Royce White, 35, with a woman. The man with stands 6 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 260 pounds (118 kg), sports a bushy beard, and is bald.
MMA's pound-for-pound king, Islam Makhachev, makes his first Octagon appearance of 2026 on Saturday night, putting the UFC welterweight championship at stake against Ian Machado Garry in the main event of UFC 330 at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Another game, another trip to the blue medical tent. And New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart isn't too happy about the reccurrence. After being checked for a concussion five times last year during his rookie season, Dart was sent to the medical tent after taking a big hit in Saturday's preseason opener against the Minnesota Vikings.
CHICAGO -- The Cleveland Browns dropped their preseason opener to the Chicago Bears on Saturday, but coach Todd Monken was pleased with the play of quarterback Deshaun Watson in his first game since the 2024 season. Watson, who is competing with Shedeur Sanders to be Cleveland's starting quarterback, started the first preseason game alongside the Browns' projected offense and played the first…
Texas A&M secured one of the top quarterbacks in the 2028 cycle Saturday with a commitment from four-star quarterback Donald Tabron II. The 6-foot-4, 190-pound prospect from Detroit's Cass Technical High School is ESPN's No. 2 pocket passer in the 2028 class. He announced his pledge to Texas A&M over finalists LSU and Oregon on Saturday evening following visits with each program in June.
Ellison whines about the “needless costs” of the empire he’s buying, Melania tops the Epstein subpoena list, and Ivanka can’t buy her way into Miami’s most exclusive club. David Ellison, the MAGA billionaire buying Warner Bros., is having a temper tantrum about the “needless costs” of the antitrust suit standing between him and CNN.
Donald Trump is now telling families of sailors trapped on an aircraft carrier with reportedly horrid conditions that their deployment hasn’t gone on “nearly long enough. He also bragged to a crowd that “beautiful young girls” can’t stop fawning over him at the White House.
Hunter Biden recently joined Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson, where the second son of the 46th president of the United States sounded off on President Donald Trump’s corruption, the fight over holding Trump officials accountable under a future Democratic administration, the future of the Democratic Party, his views on the war in Gaza and his own recovery from addiction, among other topics.
His administration is destroying one of the paper trails investigators need to follow secret money…. U.S. President Donald Trump walks to speak with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan, U.S., July 27, 2026. Trump just took steps to make it very difficult to prosecute money laundering, a crime he and his real estate buddies may well have been committing much of their felonious…
CHICAGO -- Cubs starter Matthew Boyd watched plenty of video of Joshua Báez before the Cardinals rookie stepped into the batter’s box at Wrigley Field on Saturday afternoon. Boyd studied his strengths and weak spots, coming up with a game plan for facing the highly touted slugger. Boyd will now be studying up on what just happened.
CHICAGO -- The Cubs and Cardinals have one of the oldest rivalries in all of sports -- one that is filled with heroes and villains and a long list of classic games and historic moments. St. Louis rookie Joshua Báez stepped into the rivalry for the first time on Saturday and quickly added his name to the lore.
CHICAGO – Clay Holmes has pitched on some of baseball’s biggest stages. He has handled high-leverage outs in the World Series. He has made a pair of All-Star teams.
CHICAGO -- As Clay Holmes walked off the mound on Friday afternoon, he was greeted with a standing ovation from the Cubs fans getting their first look at the pitcher at Wrigley Field. Holmes raised his glove in appreciation of the well-earned reception.
Cubs ace left-hander Matthew Boyd came into Saturday’s game against St. Louis on a roll. Cardinals left fielder Joshua Báez, making his major-league debut, slammed the brakes on it in – in historic fashion. Báez homered in his first three at-bats in the “bigs,” becoming the first player to ever do so.
Before leading a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the seventh-inning stretch of the Cubs game, Mr. T practiced in the press box with starstruck journalists and staffers. He wanted to nail the “root, root, root” cadence and put extra emphasis on the line, “I don’t care if I never get back!”
“No one performs an experiment once and considers the work done. They repeat it with different variables, correcting what they thought they knew, adding what they’ve learned.”
Manager Craig Counsell made the announcement after Cabrera threw a bullpen session before the Cubs’ 3-0 victory Friday. Left-hander Shota Imanaga, who had been slated to start Sunday against the Cardinals’ Hunter Dobbins, will pitch the opener of the Cubs’ three-game set Monday against the White Sox at Wrigley Field. Cabrera is 5-4 with a 5.10 ERA in 14 starts in his first season with the Cubs.
At recent major tech events, humanoid robots were everywhere. Some of them walked, navigated, and manipulated objects with a level of dexterity that would have seemed unrealistic just a few years ago. And yet, despite all of this progress, I find myself consistently underwhelmed when I try to communicate with them at Treble.
Marc Kermisch is the chief technology and AI officer at Protolabs. He leads the Maple Plain, Minn.-based company‘s global technology organization, overseeing its software product development, digital manufacturing platform evolution, and enterprise-wide artificial intelligence and research & development strategies.
Neros Inc. this week announced it raised $250 million in a Series C round. This brought the drone defense contractor to a $2.5 billion valuation. “This newest round of funding accelerates Neros into a multi-capability drone manufacturer,” stated Soren Monroe-Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Neros.
On June 24, Agility Robotics Inc., a leading humanoid robotics and physical AI company, announced it had entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company or SPAC. The deal values Agility at a $2.5 billion pre-money equity valuation.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Objects constructed by robots are ubiquitous. If you’ve used a car, household appliance, or smartphone today, you’ve used an object constructed at least in part by robots. The more products that manufacturers want to produce (and consumers want to consume) at lower costs, the more industrial robots will be needed.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “Covered List,” originally published in 2021, identifies communications equipment and services that it says pose a threat to national security.
Morris is a local celebrity: the only known Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus) in the entire Pacific Ocean. He showed up in the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco 14 years ago.
I still have quite a bit of older content on my blog that I never got round to tagging. My blog has 1,856 tags - likely too many to feed to an LLM in one go and say "which of these tags match the following content". Doug Turnbull has a neat solution.
Fixes a crashing bug in sqlite-utils 4.2. I'd introduced code that looks like this:. from typing_extensions import Self.
Lots of improvements in this one relating to the table.transform() feature, which adds support for complex alter table operations by creating a fresh table, copying across the data and then dropping and replacing the old one. transform() now preserves a much larger array of edge-case schema definitions, including check constraints, unique constraints and even comments describing the columns.
Trump’s proclamation also orders Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to establish an onshoring incentive program for entities investing in manufacturing drones and their components. China’s drone market, projected to reach a $15.6 billion value in 2025, has the largest global presence and the “deepest component supply chain,” according to research firm Drone Intelligence.
Ford and Changan Automobile launched the Changan-Ford JV in 2012. The JV produces both Ford and Lincoln brand vehicles for the China market. The JV factory in Hangzhou, which opened in 2015, currently builds the Lincoln Nautilus, Aviator and Ford Explorer and Edge L SUVs, according to Ford’s website.
A Department of Defense’s multimillion-dollar contract has brought a metal casting competition to the worldwide stage as reality show competition in an effort to spread awareness of the skill trade and inspire a new workforce.