Key Points
- Westside Gunn's Saucony Grid Jazz 9 "Awesome God" releases today at $225 (style code S71047-5), on the date Buffalo recognizes as Westside Gunn Day.
- Chris Sale struck out 11 in a five-hit, 1-0 shutout Thursday as Atlanta swept Los Angeles, his first complete game since June 2019.
- Alabama Shakes released I Must Be Dreaming on Island Records, their first album since Sound & Color in 2015 and their first as a trio.
- A federal judge ordered the Pentagon to remove its "supply chain risk" designation on Anthropic, ruling it violated the First Amendment.
The Daily Briefing
Friday's board: a $225 Saucony collaboration from a Buffalo rapper on his own city-designated holiday, a 1-0 pitcher's duel in Atlanta that completed a Braves sweep of the Dodgers, an Alabama Shakes album, their first in eleven years, and a court order stripping the Pentagon's risk label off an AI company.
Sneakers
The Westside Gunn x Saucony Grid Jazz 9 "Awesome God" releases today for $225 in unisex sizing, style code S71047-5. The upper layers cheetah, zebra, cow and deer-inspired patterns with faux pony hair and pink faux fur, with scorpion patches in place of the usual side logos and leather moccasin-style laces. Because the materials are cut differently from pair to pair, no two versions look exactly the same, per SneakerNews. It drops through Saucony's EQL raffle, Gunn's own blientele.com, and select retailers, and it lands on August 28 — the date Buffalo, New York recognizes as Westside Gunn Day. Packaging includes a mirror set into the lid, per SneakerFiles.
Also releasing today is the Nike Shox BB4 OG "Black/Lapis", back today at $190 in style code IR1984-010. It returns in the original 2000 colorway associated with Vince Carter: black leather on the toe, tongue and eyestays, Metallic Silver across the side panels and heel, and Lapis blue running through the midsole and the four exposed Shox columns. It releases at Nike Basketball accounts including SNKRS, Foot Locker, Finish Line, Shiekh and Hibbett. Yesterday's roundup covered the Supreme x Nike Air Max 2001 drop that opened this week.
Sports
The Premier League plays matchday two of the 2026-27 season this weekend. Saturday's card opens with Liverpool v Nottingham Forest at 12:30 BST on TNT Sports and closes with Tottenham v Newcastle at 17:30 BST on Sky Sports; Chelsea host Brighton at 14:00 BST Sunday.
The NFL runs its last preseason weekend before every team cuts from 90 players to 53 on Sunday, August 30. Cuts are already landing: Cleveland released wide receiver Cedric Tillman, Denver released safety Taylor Rapp and wide receiver Hakeem Butler, Arizona waived running back Trey Benson with an injury designation, and Seattle cut linebacker Chris Paul Jr.
Chris Sale threw a five-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts and no walks Thursday night in Atlanta, and the Braves beat the Dodgers 1-0 to complete a three-game sweep. Drake Baldwin turned on Yoshinobu Yamamoto's first pitch of the game for a leadoff home run into the right-field Chop House, and that was the entire scoring. Sale threw 80 of his 109 pitches for strikes, dropped his ERA to 2.06 and moved to 13-9, and it was his first complete game since 2019, against Kansas City. He also hit 100.1 mph on a fastball to Shohei Ohtani in the third, his first triple-digit pitch since July 2018. Atlanta is now 5-1 against Los Angeles this season. We previewed the matchup Thursday morning as a seeding game; details of the final are via CBS Sports.
Culture
Alabama Shakes released I Must Be Dreaming today on Island Records. It is the band's third studio album and their first since Sound & Color in 2015, and the first made as a trio of Brittany Howard, Heath Fogg and Zac Cockrell. Shawn Everett produced it with the band at Sound Emporium and Blackbird Studio in Nashville, and the singles "Another Life," "American Dream" and "I Feel Hope Coming" preceded it, per Wikipedia's release listing. NPR lists it alongside new records from Interpol, Mastodon, Dinosaur Jr., The Linda Lindas and a posthumous Prince collection of unreleased material recorded between 1977 and 2016. Our own weekly New Music Friday column runs separately — last week's edition led with Rapsody, Victony and The Game.
In theaters, today's slate includes Coyote vs. ACME, the Warner Bros. film that spent years shelved before reaching release, and The Dog Stars, Ridley Scott's adaptation of the Peter Heller novel with Jacob Elordi as the pilot Hig. Buddy, Finding Emily and The Whisper Man also open.
Technology
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ordered the Pentagon to remove its "supply chain risk" designation on Anthropic, ruling that the Defense Department's action "constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment" and was based on a desire to make a public example of the company, CNBC reported. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth applied the label in February after Anthropic declined to remove guardrails blocking the use of Claude in autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. A second Anthropic suit over the same designation is still pending in a Washington, D.C. court, per TechCrunch. The company is separately preparing an IPO it expects to match or exceed SpaceX's $75 billion raise.
On the funding side, Cambridge-based Transfyr launched with a $25 million seed round led by General Catalyst, with Lux Capital, Breakout Ventures, Factory, Neo, SV Angel, MVP Ventures and Underscore VC participating; the company is building sensor-and-model instrumentation to capture laboratory activity. South Korea's Wrtn Technologies closed roughly $72 million in Series C funding at a valuation above $722 million, taking total funding to about $166 million, per Tech Startups.
Today on Uristocrat
Thursday's Games to Watch called the Dodgers-Braves game as the night's marquee on seeding grounds, with Sale against Yamamoto and a first-round bye at stake — the shutout that followed made Atlanta 5-1 in the season series. Thursday's Daily Roundup led with the Supreme x Nike Air Max 2001 "Air Ecstasy" at $180.
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