Aug 20, 2026 · 5 min listen · Last updated August 20, 2026
From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Jessica, August 20th. The day in ten — let's begin with the story drawing the most coverage. Let's get into it. First, from The Guardian World. Melancholy made in Hungary is fuelling bestsellers across the globe – and widely misunderstood.
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The Day's Top 10 Stories · August 20th
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Melancholy made in Hungary is fuelling bestsellers across the globe – and widely misunderstood
A ‘capacity for despair’ forged by political oppression has long been consider a Magyar national trait. But after Orbán, writers in the country remind us that melancholy must not always be bleak A lone visitor looks for a garden outside an empty monastery. A morose housekeeper won’t let anyone behind the door of her own home. A retired general living alone on a crumbling estate waits 40 years to confront the only friend he ever had.
Farage using Christianity ‘to stir anti-Muslim feeling’, says Rowan Williams
Former archbishop of Canterbury also has ‘awkward questions’ for activist Tommy Robinson on his claimed faith A former archbishop of Canterbury has accused Nigel Farage of misusing the UK’s Christianity “to channel anti-Muslim feeling” and said he also had “some awkward questions” for the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Dr Rowan Williams, who was the archbishop of Canterbury for 10 years until 2012, said there was an “inevitable scepticism these days about some claims to religious conviction”. Continue reading...
Thai PM Anutin’s Family Firm Eyes $1.5 Billion Data Center Bids
Stecon Group Pcl plans to bid for three data-center construction projects worth a combined 49.8 billion baht ($1.5 billion), betting on the sector to drive further growth as technology investment surges in Thailand.
Game Of Thrones: Respite & Retribution Release On August 23
Game of Thrones fans may be in a brief lull between seasons of HBO's newest spin-off series, House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but there's plenty to look forward to in the meantime. If you managed to get tickets already, you'll be one of the lucky few to see the new Mad King stage play at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre ahead of its last showing on September 5, though it will likely return elsewhere at some point in the future.
Breaking: The Republican party is panicking over its ties to Big Tech
Remember my annual Politico “black swan” prediction, published January 2, 2026? Trump himself hasn’t entirely bolted — yet — but he’s certainly changed course sharply, moving from full anti AI regulation to strongly encouraging the voluntary preflight testing of frontier AI models. Axios just reported this: A new Super PAC called Guardrails Alliance, just put out a statement from their Political Director Charlie Blaettler which sums it up: The Republican Party is panicking because they sold out to the AI industry – a while ago – and they know it.
Spirited Gesture and Angel In My Heart clash at Newcastle
Today on Sky Sports Racing: Lingfield Park and Newcastle In Thursday's feature, the beautifully-bred Spirited Gesture looks to make it two from two for John and Thady Gosden in the feature contest from Newcastle. We also have competitive flat action from Lingfield Park, live on Sky Sports Racing from 2.10pm We have a busy day’s racing on Thursday with flat action from Lingfield Park and Newcastle, live on Sky Sports Racing...
A friend texted me last week: How come you haven’t written anything about The Odyssey? -given my love for Nolan and history! Well, I was late to the movie, and then work took over. Writing is still the sidekick; I have an entrepreneurial life to run- maintaining what we have build, toying on my nextBiGThings, and also talking with other builders and operators. However, I did watched The Odyssey a few weeks ago. But more than Odysseus, I went into rabbit hole for the another word Homer gave us: mentor. An “odyssey” is a long journey.
Welcome to our Who am I? game. The rules are simple. Each day, there's a new footballer and the challenge is to guess who they are in as few attempts as possible. After each wrong guess, you unlock a new clue. The fewer clues you need to get the right answer, the more points you score. Three is a good score, four or five points is exceptional. So take part and return for more tomorrow. Today's player and clues set by BBC Sport's Joe Rindl.
[AINews] Death of Params: Z.ai CEO Jie Tang on GLM 5.3 and the new Post-training Scaling Law
We’ve covered GLM 5.2 very excitedly before, and Prof Jie Tang’s belief that there will be an open weights Fable-class model by end of the year (spot check - with 134 days left, there are now two 2-3T models (Qwen 3.8 Max and Kimi K3) with estimates that Fable is 3-7T, and only 2 points higher on the AA index.) Prof Jie Tang is back on X to tell us that our shorthand for model sizes is no longer enough: “Parameter count is only meaningful alongside three others — how much data you have, where you intend to spend your compute, and who will run the model, under what conditions.” We have covered…