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Appalachian awakening: Rewriting American music culture

AVERY COUNTY, North Carolina -- If there is such a thing as the classic Appalachian success story, the rise in popularity of the outside-the-box band Cigarettes @ Sunset would be that story. But nothing comes easy in Appalachia. The five-member band, which includes Garrett Dellinger, Ryland Bagbey, Sarah Vann, Wells Whitman and Ethan Moore, was born in the winter of 2022, practicing their music in the cold, unheated seats of the EDGE of the WORLD Snowboard Shop in Banner Elk, North Carolina. Four years later, they have amassed over 225,000 monthly Spotify listeners with a unique ...

The controversy around data centers

I’m old enough (as are many of you) to remember UNIVAC, the huge computer which filled a whole room that correctly predicted President Eisenhower’s victory in 1952. But advances in technology have enabled us to hold in our hands a device that is many times more powerful and much faster than UNIVAC. According to the Pacific Standard, “...the iPhone in your pocket has over 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon 50 years ago.” In order for these tiny devices to perform all the everyday tasks that we’ve gotten used to, like checking the ...

When judges lecture instead of listening

When a sitting judge chooses to publish an op‑ed, the public has every right to expect clarity, humility, and a commitment to strengthening trust in the courts. Judge William P. Carlucci’s column, “The High Cost of Not Having a Lawyer,” does the opposite. Rather than illuminating the challenges facing ordinary Pennsylvanians, it reveals a deeper and more troubling reality: too many people in our justice system are blamed for circumstances they did not create and cannot control. Carlucci’s piece frames self‑represented litigants as the architects of their own misfortune. He ...

State House Democrats vote to rip scholarships away from children

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania House Democrats on the Education Committee quietly did something extraordinary — and not in a good way. With barely a day’s notice and not even posting a public committee notice, they passed a series of bills that would decimate educational options in Pennsylvania. The first bill, House Bill (HB) 2632, would gut the state’s most successful educational choice programs, strip scholarships from low-income students, and slam the door on tens of thousands more who are desperately waiting to get in. Another bill, HB 2634, would cut funding to all charter ...

A new chair, a shorter statement

The Federal Reserve left interest rates alone last Wednesday, holding its benchmark in the 3.50%–3.75% range for a fourth straight meeting – after standing pat in January, March, and April – in a unanimous 12–0 vote. That part was expected. The news was everything around the decision, because this was Kevin Warsh’s first meeting as Fed chair, and he used it to signal that the central bank is no longer leaning toward cutting rates. If anything, it is now leaning the other way. What actually changed? Start with the statement itself, the short document the Fed releases after ...

‘Only a matter of national security’ — a mission to fill workforce gap

Mike Rowe has been on a lonely mission. For two decades, he has been raising the alarm. Rowe has been warning anyone who would listen that our skills gap in the trades was widening to a chasm so large that the economic effect on U.S. manufacturing companies, in particular auto and steel industries but also defense, construction and energy sectors, was going to be nothing short of catastrophic. Few listened. Rowe appeared before Congress. Twice. He sent an open letter to then-President Barack Obama. Crickets. Nonetheless, Rowe persisted. His alarm bells were not hyperbole. In fact, ...