UFC 318: HOLLOWAY vs POIRIER 3takes place Saturday, July 19 at Smoothie King Center with the main card at 10pm ET/7pm PT on ESPN+ PPV. The prelims will be available on ESPN, ESPN Deportes, Disney+, and ESPN+ at 8pm ET/5pm PT. The early prelims will kick off at 6pm ET/3pm PT on ESPN 2, ESPN+, Disney+ and UFC Fight Pass.
Russell Martin says the support he has had from Sir Alex Ferguson since taking over as Rangers head coach has been “incredible”.
The former Manchester United manager paid his first visit to the club’s Auchenhowie training centre on Friday, in the company of Rangers great John Greig.
Ferguson, 83, played for two seasons at Rangers from 1967-69, while Greig, 82, spent his entire career at Ibrox before a five-year spell as manager.
“Any team talk or message I give is done when those two speak about this club and what it means to them,” Martin told RangersTV.
“They are both really behind us and what we are doing. They are desperate for this team to do well.
“They feel the same way as the fans. They want to see a team that fights and works for everything and has a way about them on the pitch that exemplifies what they believe this club to be about.”
Martin played under Sir Alex’s son Darren Ferguson at Peterborough United who made him captain when he was just 21.
“He reached out and said his dad wanted to give me a call,” Martin added.
“I said ‘of course’ and since then Sir Alex has been in touch regularly. He’s been great. He’s been so supportive of me personally, which is incredible.
“It’s the first time he’s been here and it was just brilliant for everyone to see him.”
Ahead of partnering Efrén Llarena to seventh place on Italy’s all-Tarmac counter, Spaniard Fernández, 39, took time out of her busy schedule to answer five questions from Rally.tv’s Julian Porter.
How did your motorsport adventure begin?
“I started in 2005, 20 years ago because my whole family are motorsport lovers. For us it’s our way of life, my father was a motocross rider in the national championship and also my brothers. I think motorsport is the most important for me because it’s my way of life.”
Fernández won the ERC Co-Drivers’ title for the first time in 2021
Rally di Roma Capitale marked 200 competitive starts. Did you ever imagine you’d achieved such a milestone when your started?
“I never dreamed something like this. I started rallies as a hobby, never to be a professional co-driver. But, to be honest, I am so happy to be here and to win titles for me is very special, especially in the international events. I won have won three titles because I won in ERC3, then ERC1 twice. We started in ERC because we won the Beca Júnior title from the Spanish federation [in 2017] and the prize was an ERC programme. Step by step, we win overall. Winning [in Azores in 2022] was very, very special, it was our first overall victory in the ERC. We saved tyres for the Power Stage to try to attack because we were seven seconds behind Ricard Moura. We attack so much and it was amazing. I remember my family and friends were watching on television, so it was a very special moment, very nice. But it will be difficult to do 400 rallies. I would like, of course, but we will see in the future.”
Motorsport is a life-long passion for ace co-driver Fernández
“Winning the Spanish Junior title gave us the possibility to compete in the ERC with Rallye Team Spain and it was very nice to compete with other young drivers because, for me, the ERC is very good for young drivers because you can win a title with your own team, your own mechanics. It’s very nice and for that reason there is a lot of drivers competing. Brands like fuel brands and tyre brands can compete against each other and this is a good point for sponsors and support for the drivers. The ERC is like a family but when you put the helmet on you forget everything and are flat out in all the special stages. But the people are very nice, especially the organisers who work very well. You can see this year Rally Islas Canarias was going to WRC, so it means the events are very, very good.”
Llarena Racing is new to the international arena in 2025
What do you do when you are not co-driving in the ERC?
“I’m a third-generation farmer. We have a dairy farm in the north of Spain. We have 200 cows and produce milk. I really love my job, I love to work in my own business, it’s good for the future to have a plan B because rallies is a good job but I prefer to have other options. I also have a Ford Focus gravel car, Group N, that I drive only for fun. I try to do more rallies close to where I live but it’s very difficult with my calendar to try to find free time. We also create Llarena Racing this year to think in the future to do something for the future. I do the same things like a co-driver, logistic, manage the team. We want to help and support other drivers with our experience in international championships.”
Rally di Roma Capitale was Fernández’s 200th outing as a co-driver
“Carlos del Barrio. He’s the best co-driver and I’m very lucky because he’s also my friend. I love how he reads the pacenotes, he’s very calm, he’s a good person. For me I think he’s the best co-driver and the best crew for sure is Jesús Puras and Carlos del Barrio, they inspire me a lot. I also met Geri Haliwell from Spice Girls during the FIA Prize Giving in 2021. We only speak for two minutes but she was very nice with me.”
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies that made me smile, think, and despair for humanity this week.
First up, it’s officially a hot Jurassic summer with the recent release of yet another Mesozoic movie filled with de-extincted animals that are oddly preoccupied with human flesh. We’ll lead with a story about a fantastic Jurassic predator that didn’t make the cut for Jurassic World: Rebirth, but will eternally star in your nightmares hereafter.
Then: a whole new world, the horrific consequences of Medicaid cuts, and the cosmologies of ancient graveyards.
The case of the cursed ichthyosaur
Lindgren, Johan et al. “Adaptations for stealth in the wing-like flippers of a large ichthyosaur.” Nature.
Jaws, a summer blockbuster about how a rampaging shark can expose paradigms of masculinity, turned 50 years old last month. But if you want to meet a truly O.G. stealth ocean predator, you’ll need to wind the clock back another 181 million years, according to a new study about Temnodontosaurus, a Jurassic predator that belongs to the extinct ichthyosaur family.
Scientists have discovered an exquisitely preserved front fin from this giant hunter, which grew to lengths of more than 30 feet. Unearthed in Germany, the fin includes a “wing-like” shape with “a serrated trailing edge” that probably evolved to reduce the sound it makes while sneaking up on its prey, according to researchers led by Johan Lindgren of Lund University.
183-million-year-old soft-tissue fossil (SSN8DOR11; Paläontologisches Museum Nierstein, Nierstein, Germany). Image: Randolph G. De La Garza, Martin Jarenmark and Johan Lindgren.
“The notably wing-like fin sheds light on the unique hunting strategy” of Temnodontosaurus, “revealing secondary control structures that probably served to minimize self-generated noise during foraging activities in low-light habitats—in effect, a novel form of stealth (silent swimming) in an ancient marine reptile,” the team said in the new study.
In other words, this animal had a silencer built into its fin, all the better to ambush fish, squid, reptiles, and other aquatic Jurassic delicacies. But wait—it gets creepier. Temnodontosaurus is most famous for its absolutely enormous eyeballs, with sockets that measured some 10 inches in diameter, potentially making them the biggest eyes of any animal that ever lived.
“A conspicuous feature of Temnodontosaurus is its huge eyeballs; these are the largest of any vertebrate known, rivaling those of the giant and colossal squid (of the genera Architeuthis and Mesocychoteuthis) in absolute size,” Lindgren and his colleagues said. “There is broad consensus that the eyes conferred advantages at low light levels, and thus were well suited either for nocturnal life or deep diving habits.”
Temnodontosaurus, staring at you from beyond the grave. Image: Ghedo, taken at the Paris Museum of Natural History
In Jaws, the shark hunter Quint, played by Robert Shaw, seems especially haunted by the eyes of sharks, describing them as “lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes” in his chilling firsthand account of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
But hey, I’ll take the doll’s eyes of a great white over the freakish monster gaze of Temnodontosaurus any day of the week (or geological epoch). What a relief that none of us will ever encounter this nighttime predator with its bus-length body, acoustic invisibility cloak, and pizza-pan peepers.
In other news…
New sednoid just dropped
Chen, Ying-Tung et al. “Discovery and dynamics of a Sedna-like object with a perihelion of 66 au.” Nature Astronomy.
Scientists have discovered a new world in the solar system: the trans-Neptunian object (TNO) 2023 KQ14, nicknamed Ammonite. The object is estimated to be about a hundred miles across and has an extreme orbit that takes it as far as 252 times the orbit of Earth. It belongs to a family of distant worlds called “sednoids” after the dwarf planet Sedna.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z561PGgTe8I
“The discovery of ‘Ammonite’…offers a valuable opportunity to evaluate current models of outer Solar System formation and evolution,” said researchers led by Ying-Tung Chen of Academia Sinica in Taipei. “These findings highlight the diversity of orbital properties and dynamical behaviours among distant Solar System objects.”
As an interesting twist, this new world may be a strike against the idea that a giant hypothetical planet, popularly known as Planet Nine, is lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system. Its orbit doesn’t seem to line up with that theory. Time will probably tell, because Planet Nine—if it does exist—is running out of places to hide.
Medicaid cuts could cause thousands of excess deaths by 2034
Basu, Sanjay et al. “Projected Health System and Economic Impacts of 2025 Medicaid Policy Proposals.” JAMA Health Forum.
There has been a lot of speculation about the extreme Medicaid cuts in the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill, but a new report summarizes the predicted effects with devastating brevity.
“CBO projections suggest 7.6 million individuals in the US would become uninsured by 2034 due to Medicaid policy changes” resulting in an annual increase of “approximately 1,484 excess deaths, 94,802 preventable hospitalizations” and “1.6 million people delaying care due to cost,” said researchers led by Sanjay Basu of the University of California, San Francisco.
This is a conservative estimate: In the higher-impact scenario where more than 14 million people lose Medicaid by 2034, annual impacts “are estimated be substantially greater: 2,284 excess deaths, 145,946 preventable hospitalizations [and] 2.5 million people delaying care,” according to the study.
This analysis doesn’t include the cutting of subsidies to the Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans or possible changes to Medicare, which will compound these negative effects. At the risk of sounding glib…seems bad!
Eternal sunsets for the Yangshao dead
Chen, Yuqing. “Cosmology in the Orientation of Neolithic Burials in Central China: The Xipo and Qingliangsi Cemeteries.” Journal of World Prehistory.
You can tell a lot about a culture from the way it treats its living (see above) but also from the way it treats its dead.
With that in mind, Yuqing Chen of Durham University set out to better understand the Yangshao culture (仰韶) of central China, which spanned 4700–2800 BCE, by cataloging the orientations of graves of people buried at the Xipo and Qingliangsi burial grounds.
This work is overflowing with cool insights, from the careful placement of goods inside graves, like cooking pots and ovens, to reconstructions of the Neolithic sky, to an explanation of the Gaitian model of the universe in which “the sky was perceived as a lid parallel to the Earth, and the celestial bodies, such as the Sun, were thought to move within the lid,” according to the study.
A diagram of the Gaitian model. Image: Wu, 2020
Ultimately, Chen concluded that the predominately westward orientations of the Neolithic graves did not necessarily reflect “the importance of particular astronomical phenomena known to have been important in later times (e.g. the Milky Way or the star Antares), but rather the direction in which sunsets are most commonly seen throughout the year.”
“It is suggested that in the cosmology of the Late Neolithic period, the Sun was perceived to play a key role throughout the year in the worlds of the living and the dead, by maintaining the harmony of sky, Earth and human,” she said.
May we all aspire to maintain some harmony between, sky, Earth, and humanity this weekend, and beyond. Thanks for reading! See you next week.
New York City recently hosted an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects, featuring the largest piece of Mars ever found which was sold for over $5 million.
However, it was a rare young dinosaur skeleton which actually stole the show when it fetched more than $30 million in a bidding frenzy.
The largest Martian meteorite rock on Earth
The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock, officially named NWA 16788 was sold for approximately $5.3 million, including fees and costs, making it the most valuable meteorite ever auctioned.
The rock was discovered in the Sahara Desert, Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after it was blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike, according to Sotheby’s report, cited by AP.
The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian pieces currently on this planet, AP reported.
Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s highlighted the rarity of the find, noting that only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth are Martian.
“This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,” Hatton said. “So it’s more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.”
The star of the auction
Stealing the show was a rare young dinosaur skeleton that fetched an astounding $30.5 million, including fees and costs after a six minutes bidding war among six interested participants.
The skeleton is identified as a Ceratosaurus nasicornis, which is one of only four known skeletons of its species and the only juvenile one. The species resemblesthe Tyrannosaurus rex but is smaller.
The bidding began with a high advance offer of $6 million, quickly escalating during the live round with bids $500,000 higher than the last and later $1 million higher than the last before ending at $26 million.
The winner plans to loan dinosaur skeleton to an institution, Sotheby’s told AP.
This sale marks the third-highest amount paid for a dinosaur at an auction. A Stegosaurus skeleton called “Apex” holds the record after it was sold for $44.6 million last year at Sotheby’s.
Parts of the juvenile dinosaur were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, which is considered a gold mine for dinosaur bones. It was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company.
The skeleton is more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long, and is believed to belong to the lateJurassic period, about 150 million years ago.
Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the T. rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long, the news agency reported.
A penny for the thoughts of our thankless call center workers.
Long have they had to endure indignant customers fuming at them for problems beyond their control. And now they must suffer accusations that call their very humanity in question, Bloomberg reports, as the proliferation of AI tech has many callers suspecting that the human they’re speaking to is actually a chatbot.
If these customer support personnel weren’t treated like robots before, in other words, they are now — in a distressingly literal sense.
Jessica Lindsey is one call center agent who’s fallen victim to this paranoid thinking. At her job at Concentrix, where she takes calls for American Express, she tells Bloomberg that she’s regularly harassed by shouting customers who demand to speak to a real human, or straight up ask if she’s an AI.
“Speak to a representative! Speak to a representative!” they might yell, as if casting a spell that magically takes them to the top of a phone tree.
And to be fair, a lot of the time customers are speaking to an AI or a pre-recorded message before they’re handed over to a human rep. This saves the companies money, but at the cost of the humans on both ends of the phone: the customer is left frustrated, and the call center agent is dumped with the unenviable task of conciliating their rage induced by a thousand bots.
Sometimes, Lindsey tries to show she’s not an AI by coughing or giggling. “I even ask them, ‘Is there anything you want me to say to prove that I’m a real human?’” she told Bloomberg. This often has the opposite of the intended effect.
“They just end up yelling at me and hanging up,” she said, sometimes leaving her in tears. “Like, I can’t believe I just got cut down at 9:30 in the morning because they had to deal with the AI before they got to me.”
This has been Lindsey’s experience as AI has come to the forefront of social discourse of the last few years — and over time, it clearly takes its toll.
She’s far from alone, though. Seth, another US-based Concentrix employee, estimated to Bloomberg that he’s asked if he’s an AI once a week. One customer grilled him for 20 minutes to see if he was a bot, asking questions about his hobbies.
“[It was as if she wanted] to see if I glitched,” Seth told the outlet. “At one point, I felt like she was an AI trying to learn how to be human.”
But Seth doesn’t completely blame AI, or customers for that matter. Some of his frustration stems from his employer demanding that workers stick to a script unerringly, under punishment of losing their job.
This is a practice that creeped into call centers in the ’90s, according to Nell Geiser, director of research at the Communications Workers of America union, when the advent of electronic tools allowed bosses to surveil their workers’ every move. Today, these systems can automatically flag if an agent uses the wrong words — or even the wrong tone of voice, he told Bloomberg. Human spark and spontaneity quickly went out the window.
“Instead you just have to act like a robot and follow a script,” Geiser added.
It certainly hasn’t made things easier now that robots are literally being used in these roles, capable of fielding questions while using an eerily human-sounding voice. It’s one of the many frontiers in the AI gold rush: the AI voice agent space is projected to become a nearly $50 billion industry by 2031, according to one estimate, with frenzied investors pouring nearly $400 million into voice startups last year. One startup, Toma, which recently raised $17 million in funding, is gunning to replace the phone staff at car dealerships.
“This inability to tell if you’re talking to a human or not is only going to grow,” Nir Eisikovits, professor of philosophy and director of the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts, told Bloomberg. “Our sense of uniqueness as a species will gradually erode.”
More on AI: Vast Numbers of Lonely Kids Are Using AI as Substitute Friends
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar will visit the United States next week to attend high-level events of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and “certain” other engagements in Washington, the Foreign Office (FO) said on Saturday.
Earlier this month, Pakistan assumed presidency of the UNSC, marking the country’s eighth term on the 15-member body and its first presidency since 2013. Islamabad began its current two-year term as a non-permanent member in January 2025 and will serve through the end of 2026.
Dar will visit the US to “attend the high-level signature events of Pakistan’s UN Security Council (UNSC) Presidency in New York, as well as for certain engagements in Washington”, the FO said in a statement.
The statement, which did not specify the dates of Dar’s visit, mentioned at least four UNSC-affiliated events that he will attend. His expected engagements in Washington, the hub of the White House, come amid ongoing trade talks between the countries.
To express Pakistan’s “strong commitment and unwavering support” for the right to self-determination of Palestinians, Dar will also attend a high-level conference on the “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the implementation of Two-State Solution”.
The conference was originally planned for June but was postponed due to the Iran-Israel war, which also led to the rescheduling of Dar’s visit. According to The Guardian, the moot will now be held on July 28 and 29.
While in New York, Dar will chair a high-level open debate on “Promoting International Peace and Security through Multilateralism and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes”. The debate will aim at exploring ways to strengthen multilateralism and enhance diplomacy and mediation for the peaceful settlement of disputes, the FO said.
In addition, the deputy premier will preside over the UNSC’s Quarterly Open Debate on the “Situation in the Middle East including the Palestinian Question”.
Pakistan’s high-level participation in UNSC’s Quarterly Debate on the Middle East, as well as the global conference on the Palestine question, “is a testimony to Pakistan’s unwavering commitment to and support for the Palestinian cause”, the FO stressed.
Dar will also chair a high-level UNSC briefing that will focus on enhancing cooperation between the UN and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The meeting will be held as part of Pakistan’s efforts to “strengthen collaboration between the OIC and the UN for the maintenance of international peace and security”, according to the FO.
During his stay in New York, Dar is also expected to have several bilateral engagements with his counterparts, as well as senior UN officials.
“Dar’s visit to New York and Washington exemplifies Pakistan’s growing role and importance in the multilateral arena as well as its expanding multifaceted relations with the US,” the FO highlighted.
On Friday, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb met with US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and United States Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer as part of another round of trade negotiations to avoid a 29 per cent tariff.
US-Pakistan relations saw a major boost when Trump hosted Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir at the White House last month in an unprecedented meeting.
Earlier in the week, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, once again called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaking at the UNSC’s Briefing on the Humanitarian Situation in Gaza, he called on the international community to act without delay.
Earlier this month, Pakistan had urged the UNSC not to remain “a bystander” amid the deepening humanitarian crisis in conflict-battered Gaza, where Israeli military operations continue to claim civilian lives and take a devastating toll on infrastructure.
