Author: Janine Heller

Every time AMD makes an earnings call, there is a certain level of tension. The analysts are upbeat. The forecasts are massive. However, there’s always that quiet skeptic in the back of the room who recalls the days when AMD was the chip manufacturer that Intel put up with, primarily to avoid uncomfortable monopoly questions from regulators. that history is important. It influences how the market interprets each optimistic prediction made by AMD’s management. However, something has changed. As you look at the figures AMD released for 2025 and 2026, you get the impression that this time, the ambition isn’t…

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On a Tuesday morning, most middle schools have the same layout: rows of desks, a teacher at the front, and a whiteboard covered in notes that half of the students are copying and the other half have already tuned out. That is not how Alpha Chicago appears. No rows are present. No instructor is presiding over the court. An AI system that is silently operating in the background already knows whether a specific twelve-year-old has trouble with fractions, reads two grade levels ahead, and becomes distracted after twenty minutes of screen time. Without anyone having to ask, it makes the…

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One type of frustration that develops gradually is the kind that results from realizing you were entitled to something but were unaware of it. Millions of people nationwide are currently sitting on legitimate claims against businesses they dealt with years ago, from dollar store checkout lines to hospital patient portals. The funds are present. But the deadlines aren’t waiting. By all accounts, April 2026 is a busy month for class action settlements. Claims are currently being accepted in at least ten major cases, with a total value well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Some payouts are small, such…

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When you realize that a country that lost two world wars and split in half for forty years now provides better conditions for scientific research than the nation that rebuilt it, a certain type of cognitive dissonance sets in. The idea is uncomfortable. However, it keeps coming up in graduate school forums, faculty lounges, and conversations between researchers who are discreetly updating their resumes and looking up flight costs to Frankfurt. The free university model in Germany has been in place for decades, with the majority of public universities charging students little more than a nominal semester fee, sometimes less…

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When something truly significant is being discussed at a school board meeting, a certain kind of tension arises. Not the typical calendar changes or budget shuffles, but a structural reevaluation of a district’s self-governance. When Lisa Mott, the assistant superintendent of Waxahachie ISD, appeared before the board of trustees to discuss proposed changes to the district’s District of Innovation Plan, that was, by most accounts, the mood. It wasn’t very loud. Seldom is it. However, it seems that the issues being discussed in this Ellis County district have far-reaching effects outside of the boundaries of Waxahachie. CategoryDetailsDistrict NameWaxahachie Independent School…

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You can still find boxes of chemical hair relaxers stacked in familiar rows, their packaging bright and comforting, in practically any pharmacy in the American South or beauty supply store in Newark or Chicago’s South Side. Lovely and dark. ideal. Nature’s Creme. For many years, millions of Black households nationwide relied on these products as a Saturday morning ritual. The protective gloves, the cautious timing, and the chemical odor are all components of a very private routine. It’s difficult to watch it now without being affected by the lessons we’ve learned since. FieldDetailsCase NameMDL 3060 — In re: Hair Relaxer…

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Most legal shifts have a point at which a case becomes a cautionary tale rather than an intriguing one. It seems that the time has come for workplace harassment enabled by AI. A $4 million jury award in favor of a police captain was recently upheld by a California appellate court following the distribution of an AI-generated, sexually explicit image of her to her coworkers. At about the same time, a state trooper from Washington filed a lawsuit alleging that his supervisor had created and disseminated a deepfake video of him having a private moment with a coworker using AI…

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I’ve always felt that school choice is incomplete, like a policy argument that began with a legitimate complaint and then outgrew the supporting data. It’s easy to see why the concept of choice appeals when you stand outside a public school in a mid-sized American city and watch parents drop off children in the early morning gray. Because of a zip code, no parent wants to feel as though their child is enrolled in a failing school. It makes sense and is a human instinct. Why the nation continues to spend billions of dollars on a policy whose academic record…

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That Monday night in Celina, Texas, the meeting room wasn’t exactly quiet. Parents had arrived. For months, opinions had been forming, loudly and publicly, in a way that only small-town school board disputes can spark a community. Nevertheless, the board voted 5–2 to keep Dr. Tom Maglisceau in his position for an additional year when it came time to actually speak up and record something. That vote, which was narrow but decisive, is the kind of thing that, in retrospect, either appears to be steadiness or a grave error in judgment. It’s actually difficult to tell which right now. CategoryDetailsFull…

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Families used to have to travel for hours to get to a stretch of water in northeastern Oklahoma. Located at the southern end of the Illinois River Watershed, a million-acre expanse of rolling terrain, Cherokee Nation land, and small farms that have been producing chicken for corporate giants for more than thirty years, is Tenkiller Ferry Lake, which was once touted as Oklahoma’s clearest body of water. The lake looks different now. The court record doesn’t play around with the fact that the clarity it was known for has diminished. Additionally, a federal judge ruled last week that a $31…

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