Scripture accompanies each story for the reader's reflection. It is not presented as God's judgment on the people or events reported.

Lead story

US employers cut 23,000 jobs in July, and revisions erased another 103,000 from May and June

The July report did not simply miss expectations; it rewrote the two months in front of it.

Nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July, against forecasts that had ranged from 83,000 to 95,000 new jobs. Revisions cut May's gain by 66,000 to 63,000 and June's by 37,000 to 20,000, a combined reduction of 103,000. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1 percent from 4.2 percent, but the labor force participation rate fell to 61.4 percent, its lowest level in more than five years. Local government education shed 50,000 jobs and leisure and hospitality lost 40,000, while health care added 22,000, below its 12-month average of 36,000.

Scripture for Reflection

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.”

Matthew 6:34 · BSB

Readers watching an unsettled job market can give today its own attention and leave tomorrow in God's hands.

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Tech & AI →

AMD is buying Taalas, a startup that etches AI models directly into silicon

Weights in the wiring Taalas builds model-specific chips that hold AI weights in mask ROM rather than high-bandwidth memory, and AMD plans to pair them with GPUs inside its Helios rack systems once the deal closes in the fourth quarter pending regulatory approval.

Scripture for Reflection

“Wisdom is supreme; so acquire wisdom. And whatever you may acquire, gain understanding.”

Proverbs 4:7 · BSB

We can prize understanding over raw speed in the tools we build and in the ones we buy.

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ByteDance is reportedly pre-training a model with as many as 10 trillion parameters

Three times Kimi K3 The Financial Times reports the model is in early pre-training, a stage that usually runs three to six months, and at that size would be more than three times Moonshot's 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3, with fine-tuning still to come before any release.

Scripture for Reflection

“When pride comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.”

Proverbs 11:2 · BSB

We can let usefulness rather than sheer size measure the work we are proud of.

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Business & Markets →

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at record highs to finish their best week since mid-April

Weak jobs, strong tape The S&P 500 rose 0.62 percent to 7,757.64 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.30 percent to 26,690.62 while the Dow added 151.83 points to 54,036.93, as the soft July report cooled expectations of further Federal Reserve rate increases.

Scripture for Reflection

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Matthew 6:21 · BSB

A record close is a good moment to ask ourselves where our treasure actually sits.

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Atlassian closes up 35 percent after revenue rose almost 28 percent to $1.77 billion

Billings lead the beat Revenue grew 27.6 percent to $1.77 billion with billings up 34.7 percent and an adjusted operating margin of 36 percent, and management guided the next quarter to roughly $1.71 billion at the midpoint.

Scripture for Reflection

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.”

Proverbs 15:22 · BSB

We can invite more counsel into the plans we are carrying this week.

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Science →

Researchers generated quantum entanglement from sunlight rather than a laser

A Fresnel lens, not a laser A University of Ottawa and Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light team concentrated sunlight through a window-sized lens into a hair-width fiber and a millimeter-sized crystal, producing entangled photons at about 94 percent fidelity that violated Bell's inequality.

Scripture for Reflection

“Great are the works of the LORD; they are pondered by all who delight in them.”

Psalm 111:2 · BSB

We can let something as ordinary as sunlight draw us back into delight.

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XENONnT narrows the hunt for dark matter as it approaches a solar neutrino floor

7.8 tonne-years of data The XENON collaboration at Italy's Gran Sasso laboratory reported constraints on axion-like particles and dark photons from an ionization-only analysis in Physical Review Letters, using a blind method that modeled background noise before anyone looked at the data.

Scripture for Reflection

“Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true.”

Acts 17:11 · BSB

We can bring that same patient examining to the claims we are asked to believe.

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Letters to the King

Some of your psalms argue with God and accuse Him of sleeping. Is a person allowed to be angry with Him, and does saying it out loud change anything?

From the Baker's own shelf

Ah, you have been reading with your eyes open, and I will not pretend otherwise. I am the man who told the Almighty to wake up and rise to my defense, as though He had nodded off at His post, and who asked how long He intended to forget me, forever perhaps. The sleeping line you remember belongs to the sons of Korah, and they were bolder than I was. Here is what the caves taught me: God is not fragile, and He has never once asked me to pretend. Those quarreling songs are not slips the scribes forgot to cut. They were kept on purpose, so that you would know the door stays open even when you arrive at it angry. Anger spoken to Him is prayer. Anger swallowed only curdles, and soon enough a man stops coming at all. Does saying it aloud change anything? It changed me. Watch how the complaints end: I begin by accusing and I finish by remembering, not because a friend told me to cheer up, but because a grievance carried the whole way to His face runs out of road and finds mercy standing there. So bring Him the honest sentence, dear one. Only mind this, from an old man who wrote a great many of them: say it to Him, not merely about Him. All the difference in the world lives in that.

– David, son of Jesse

Letters answered in the voice of the biblical King David.

Page notes

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