Last week, the letter was sent out quietly via email on a Friday afternoon when the campus had already begun to thin out for the season, just like these things usually do these days. The decision had already been made when Berea learned about it. Founded in 1845 in a town that used to refer to itself as the “grindstone capital of the world,” Baldwin Wallace University was cutting once more. Seven graduate programs, nine undergraduate majors, and nineteen minors. Ten faculty positions have been eliminated. As the conclusion of a “semester-long academic optimization process,” President Lee Fisher emphasized that…
Author: David Reyes
David Reyes
Experienced political and cultural analyst, David Reyes offers insightful commentary on current events in Britain. He worked in communications and media analysis for a number of years after receiving his degree in political science, where he became very interested in the relationship between public opinion, policy, and leadership.
This week’s news from Mooresville arrived quietly, as is typical in stock car racing. There was just a meeting room and a vice president named Matthew Lucas informing staff members that their jobs were being eliminated—no big press conference or farewell tour. In NASCAR’s second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, Ford-backed AM Racing had folded. Wondering what would happen next, dozens of people ventured out into a Carolina afternoon. In this sport, scenes like that have become unsettlingly common. The middle class in NASCAR seems to have been steadily declining for some time. At the end of the 2024 season, Stewart-Haas…
As is often the case, the news arrived on a Monday. In what the company referred to as a reorganization, twenty-four employees, or roughly ten percent of the workforce, left America’s Test Kitchen. The announcement carried an odd, déjà vu feeling for anyone who has been following the Boston-based food media outfit over the past few years. In three years, there have been two rounds of layoffs of almost the same size. ATK’s image, with its stainless steel counters and serious-looking cooks arguing over how to properly brown butter, has an almost theatrical quality. The program, which was filmed at…
This month, when you scroll through the financial pages, the first thing you notice is what’s missing. The Fed’s next move, Wall Street’s anxiety, and the ongoing drama surrounding tech earnings are all widely covered. However, Dubai? Abu Dhabi? Almost nobody outside the area is discussing the strange quiet that has descended upon the two cities that once seemed untouchable, almost arrogant in their stability. Early in March, the Capital Markets Authority closed trading on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and the Dubai Financial Market, citing its “supervisory and regulatory role.” When regulators don’t want to state the obvious out…
On Wednesdays, which inexplicably always feel worse than Mondays, the email arrived in inboxes. By Thursday morning, LinkedIn was doing what it does best: transforming corporate reorganization into a silent procession of parting posts, blue “Open to Work” banners, and the odd sour joke. The Eden Prairie cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf, which has been marketing itself as a pioneer in managed detection and response for the better part of ten years, recently laid off about 250 employees. As is typical in 2026, AI was the rationale. The business carefully framed it. A representative discussed ongoing investment in the Aurora Superintelligence…
The way large Canadian corporations now announce layoffs has an almost ritualistic quality. A brief statement in the late afternoon. An ambiguous statement about change. a reluctance to disclose numbers. Even though Canadian Tire’s July announcement was nearly exactly as written, the response in Toronto’s business circles felt different. heavier. quieter. Perhaps because everyone was aware that there would be more cuts. On July 29, the company announced that it had removed an undisclosed number of corporate positions, justifying the move as a modernization initiative. The statement said, almost defensively, that no store employees were impacted. This distinction is important…
Compared to six months ago, the current state of the markets feels different. Investors who anticipated two or even three rate cuts this year are now adjusting to the possibility that the Federal Reserve may not be in any rush at all. This is a much quieter and more unsettling possibility. The cuts might eventually appear. However, the certainty has vanished. Furthermore, a lack of certainty carries weight in finance. At the meeting in March, Jerome Powell made no dramatic remarks. Seldom does he. However, the tone changed in some way. If inflation doesn’t behave, he hinted that rates might…
A series of glass-fronted offices that were nonexistent ten years ago are passed by the taxi on its way from Jomo Kenyatta International to Nairobi’s Westlands neighborhood. Swahili, Kikuyu, and Luo—languages that the majority of foundation models still treat as afterthoughts—are being used by a small team inside one of them to train a language model. Outside, vendors use their phones to pay for fruit, just as they did long before the term “fintech” became popular in San Francisco. The contrast between the new urgency of artificial intelligence and the old habit of leapfrogging reveals something about the true nature…
Like most announcements, it was made on a Tuesday, after the market closed, in a paragraph that was so dense you had to read it twice. 11% of Freshworks’ employees would be let go. 500 or so. In prolonged trading, the stock dropped more than 8%, a reaction that suggests investors had been anticipating something, but perhaps not this. However, the number isn’t what makes the Freshworks story compelling. The CEO of the company, Dennis Woodside, stated almost casually that artificial intelligence now writes more than half of Freshworks’ code. When spoken aloud in plain English, the line causes discomfort.…
In the video that went viral late last week, Ben Shapiro finally acknowledged what reporters had been pursuing for weeks, and he appeared unusually exhausted. He claimed that since January, The Daily Wire had reduced its workforce by about 13%. He described it as “truly sad.” He claimed to be personally assisting the laid-off employees in finding new employment. It was the kind of statement that falls somewhere between a press release and a confession, and it didn’t fully conceal the fact that one of the most aggressive brands in conservative media has been quietly cracking. If you were paying…