Read it.

The influential philosopher Jason Stanley, until now a professor at Yale, will—together with renowned European historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore—leave that elite US university for Canada’s Munk School at the University of Toronto.[1] This, says Stanley, protests Trump, who harasses universities with accusations of antisemitism and coerces them with financial threats. When asked whether he would speak of the present-day US in terms of “fascist conditions,” Stanley’s answer was equally succinct and definite: “Yes, of course.” He sees no other, more fitting concept: “Trump is a fascist. His movement is fascist.”

But things are not quite so clear, as the testimony of one of the leading researchers on fascism shows. Robert Paxton, a professor at Columbia University and decades-long luminary of comparative-historical research, stresses that Trump, in contrast to historical fascists, neither wants a strong welfare state nor commands uniformed paramilitaries: “this is not the style of Americans.” Most German historians agree. They are not very visible in comparative fascist studies, since they reference Nazism above all else and often compare the present with Hitler’s dictatorship. Unsurprisingly, this method reveals more differences than similarities. Opposing such a national fixation, David Remnick, editor-in-chief of the New Yorker, put it with inimitable sharpness: “Hitler ruined fascism.”

Many historians consider the term “fascism” to have become vague and worn out by polemical overuse, for example in the GDR or the student movement. Leading intellectuals such as Jürgen Habermas see few similarities between the present situation and historical fascism because “no uniformed marching columns” accompany right-wing populism today. The fact that Trump or Meloni do not indulge in the celebration of war or the use of paramilitary violence is, indeed, one of the best arguments against the choice of this term. Nevertheless, even Jürgen Habermas is by no means certain of his judgment, having seen in the new right-wing populism of 2016 the “breeding ground for a new fascism.”

The thing is that ‘fascism’, however defined, has more in common with the Left than with the Right—Mussolini began as, and always claimed to be, a socialist, and Hitler’s party had that right in its name. The only substantive difference (and, as we all know, small differences can lead to the worst fights) is between nationalist socialism and internationalist socialism.

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The developing human brain gains billions of neurons while in the womb, and tacks on some more during childhood. For most of the 20th century, the conventional wisdom was that the brain cells grown before adulthood would be the only ones we would have for the rest of our lives. But over the past few decades, more and more research is challenging that belief.

So is it actually possible for adults to grow neurons? While some experts believe there’s strong evidence that we can gain brain cells after childhood, others are still skeptical of this notion.

The process of creating new brain cells is called neurogenesis. Researchers first observed neurogenesis after birth in lab animals of various ages, including mice, rats and songbirds. In adult mice, they found new neurons growing in parts of the brain collectively called the subventricular zone, an area closely linked with sense of smell, as well as in the hippocampus, a structure that’s central to memory.

Read it.

The FBI arrested a married couple accused of fraudulently billing Medicare for $7.45 million while running a hospice with a survival rate reported to be more than 97% after five years, in what federal officials say is part of a broader crackdown on rampant healthcare fraud.

The early-morning Thursday raid in San Dimas, California, targeted Gladwin and Amelou Gill, who co-owned 626 Hospice, operating as St. Francis Palliative Care.

Authorities said the unusually high survival rate at the hospice — a major red flag given hospice patients are typically terminally ill — helped trigger the investigation.

The arrests were among the first in a sweeping enforcement operation, with at least eight individuals charged so far and more expected.

John Stossel.

Politicians tax what we earn, regulate what we build and often decide what we can do with our bodies and our money.

I like to think I own myself. But politicians increasingly act as if they do.

“People should not have power over other people’s lives,” says Timothy Sandefur, author of the book “You Don’t Own Me.”

In my latest video, Sandefur challenges the attitude that “freedom belongs to the government and it can parcel it out to us.”

He starts with building permits.

“A building permit really says, you’re not allowed to build on your own property until the government gives you permission. And you have to pay for that permission. The government has essentially confiscated your land and sells it back to you in exchange for more rights.”

Such government control makes it harder to build anything.

“The Empire State Building,” Sandefur reminds me, “was built in a single year. Now it’s unimaginable that you could accomplish a project like that, or even just the paperwork, within a year.”

So vast sums of money are wasted. Take high-speed rail for example. Somehow, California has spent 16 years and $14 billion without laying down a single mile of high-speed track.

“How much would Californians have done with that colossal amount of money?” Sandefur asks.

The Atlantic, a Voice of the Crust.

By dismissing the distinction between legal and illegal immigration as bogus, advocates signaled that they would not defend it.

Read it.

In case you weren’t sure about the impact of birthright citizenship in the United States….

The number of ‘African-Americans’ in the U.S. is about 13%.

Is that too much to ask?

Read it.

How can a navy with 11 aircraft carriers still struggle to keep enough of them ready when a crisis breaks out? The answer is less about the headline fleet total than about availability, maintenance, and distance. U.S. law still requires the Navy to maintain at least 11 operational aircraft carriers, but only a portion of that force is normally deployable at one time. Some ships are in overhaul, some are in training cycles, and others are recovering from long deployments that have pushed crews and equipment well past a comfortable rhythm. On paper, 11 remains a formidable number. In practice, it produces a much thinner forward presence than the public often assumes.

That readiness gap is now the core carrier problem. The United States still fields the world’s most capable flattops. Nimitz-class carriers bring large air wings, nuclear endurance, and decades of operational experience, while the Ford class was designed to add more electrical power, more efficient sortie generation, and room for future systems. The newest Chinese carrier, Fujian uses electromagnetic catapults, a sign that Beijing is narrowing the technology gap in visible ways. Yet the comparison that matters most is not simply 11 American carriers versus three Chinese ones. It is whether the U.S. industrial base can keep enough decks available, on time, and combat credible across the Pacific, Middle East, and Europe without grinding down the fleet.

Daily Record (UK).

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Quillette.

Tariq Ramadan is either a predatory manipulator who belongs behind bars or a calm voice of reason victimised by a prejudiced ruling class. It really depends on whom you ask. Last week, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced Ramadan to eighteen years in prison for raping three women between 2009 and 2016. This ought to have settled the question about one of Europe’s most divisive thinkers. In fact, Ramadan’s punishment will only fortify the views of the two opposing camps.

Ramadan’s background is well known in France and his native Switzerland but less so elsewhere. His maternal grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. In the late 1940s, al-Banna’s daughter Waffa married a Brotherhood activist named Said Ramadan. After al-Banna’s assassination in 1949, Said became one of the organisation’s leading figures. Expelled from Egypt in 1954 during president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the couple moved to Syria and then Pakistan before eventually settling in Switzerland, where Tariq was born in 1962.

According to his defenders, Ramadan rejected the illiberal fanaticism of his father and grandfather and grew up to be an urbane and moderate academic, enculturated by Western norms but with a heritage that provided him with the legitimacy to speak to and on behalf of radical Muslim communities. Western liberal elites were entranced by this paradoxical figure, and they embraced him as a figure who could explain East to West and vice-versa. This was especially true in France, where he enjoyed his highest profile, frequently appearing in debates and on talk shows.

Read it.

In a blistering exclusive interview with The Telegraph, President Trump has declared he is “strongly considering” pulling the United States out of NATO, branding the 77-year-old alliance a “paper tiger” after European allies – including the UK under Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer – refused to join America’s military campaign against Iran or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Read it.

In the span of nine months, nine top-level scientists in the United States have died or vanished without a trace.

Seven of them were connected to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) or the institutions it directly funds.

AFRL develops and transitions the most sensitive aerospace technologies in the United States’ defense arsenal.

Don’t call them ‘conspiracy theories’—call them ‘spoiler alerts’.

John C. Write.

All, or nearly all, the classical logical fallacies are fallacies because they are perfectly reliable social methods of weighing evidence in real life in cases where logic does not necessitate an answer.

Ad hominem: It is normal and reasonable to take the character of the witness into account when weighing the believability of his testimony — it merely does not necessarily prove he is lying here and now, even though he lies frequently.

Ad Antiquitatem: It is normal and reasonable to pay more respect to a belief that has stood the test of time, and been found worthy by several generations to pass from father to son. This does not prove an older belief is true, but it may shift the burden of proof.

Ad populum: It is normal and reasonable to take into account whether a belief has been pondered and accepted by a large number of people, rather than being a fringe belief, believed by a few. Two heads are better than one. This does not prove the popular belief is true, but it means the unpopular belief must overcome a greater burden of skepticism: for one must not only explain the question at hand, but also explain why this wisdom is confined to so few.

Ad Verecundiam: It is normal and reasonable to defer to expert opinion on a topic, if the experts have spent more time, effort, or resources studying the issue, particularly if one is in no position to compare this with what is commonly known. Again, it does not prove the expert is correct, but it may shift the burden of proof.

And so on.

For example, stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. They reflect the learned experience of a lot of people.

For another example, clichés are clichés for a reason. They reflect the learned experience of a lot of people.

This all relates to the cliché that correlation does not imply causation. That’s perfectly true—BUT there is no causation without correlation, and when you don’t know what the causation chain is, and you need to make a decision, correlation is all you’ve got and it‘s better than nothing.

Read it.

How strong is a missile defense network if the hardest part is not the interception, but the refill? That question has moved to the center of defense planning as analysts examine the strain placed on some of the Pentagon’s most specialized munitions. The issue is not whether the United States can launch strikes or defend key sites in the short term. It is whether the country can keep doing both while preserving enough high-end inventory for other theaters, especially when the most capable interceptors and long-range missiles are also the slowest to replace.

Naval News.

Super-sized hovercraft provide a rare and specialized capability that only a handful of navies can afford. China is the only nation investing in these massive platforms, pursuing series production of the Zubr-class vessels for amphibious assault operations. These offer key operational advantages and may signal a growing level of preparedness for a potential invasion of Taiwan.

Watch it.

More than you ever wanted to know about Taiwan, its geography, its place in the international order, and (oh, look) the chip business.

Watch it.

Something I have wondered about for years.

Read it.

Birth rates are falling across the world, and no one seems to know why. But maybe the answer is simpler than we think: people don’t trust the future anymore. This essay introduces the idea of temporal inflation?—?a hidden force that could be reshaping civilization itself.

Commonweal.

In his new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, historian Erik Baker calls this self-help ideology “the rot festering at the core” of our national obsession with work. A comprehensive and sharply written intellectual history, the book traces the origins of several reputedly twenty-first-century maladies to an earlier age. Gig work, as it turns out, didn’t begin with Uber but with Avon direct-sales reps. The wacky metaphysics of today’s tech billionaires have their analogues in the “mind-cures” of nineteenth-century spiritualists. And the celebration of “charismatic” executives has its origins in German social science, with disturbingly fascist undertones. Baker also demonstrates how a fetish for entrepreneurs shaped both modernization theory during the Cold War and now-discredited market-based solutions to global poverty, especially microfinance. But the “marriage of positive psychology and the entrepreneurial ethic” is the book’s primary target. It’s a rotten worldview because it “enjoins us to work more intensely than we need to,” and more importantly, it “leaves us feeling devoid of purpose when we don’t have work.”

Petra Palusova.

The digital age brings a new economic epoch. Many say that traditional capitalism is ending, and by many, I mean plenty. It is said to be a result of the change of the social fabric and advance of technology – intertwined. The core of this is happening in the digital domain, or better said informational domain and through digital platforms, which will soon move into synthetic virtual spaces as a next step.

There is, of course, no such thing as ‘capitalism’. What most people talk about when they think they are talking about ‘capitalism’ is more accurately industrialism, and socialism needs industrialism more than than un-socialism ever did.

According to the former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, value extraction has increasingly shifted away from markets and onto large digital platforms, which no longer operate like oligopolistic firms, but rather like private fiefdoms or estates.

The digital domain has expanded beyond communication and commerce infrastructure. Because an ecosystem of economic and social interaction is getting more and more complex, it has become a battleground for economic and social power. The digital realm – the realm of information and data – interconnects digital spaces governed by technology and those behind it. Some see them as the architects and custodians of a new equalizing infrastructure, others as behemoths that rule over the digital space with their algorithmic dictatorship. So what are they – the builders or techno-feudal lords?

In this article I will review the definitions and arguments, and present an insight, or perhaps a counter-insight, that highlights some major characteristics of today’s digital economy that I don’t necessarily see as feudal.

Read it.

Now the thing that, in the last couple of decades, everyone has realized is wrong (I suspect some early Lindybeige videos had something to do with how widespread this notion is), is that you don’t tell archers to ‘fire’ because their weapons don’t involve any fire. But the solution in film has been to keep the arrow volleys – that is, the coordinated all-at-once shooting – and simply change the order to ‘release’ or ‘loose.’ Which isn’t actually any better!

Archers didn’t engage in coordinated all-at-once shooting (called ‘volley fire’), they did not shoot in volleys because there wouldn’t be any point to do so. Indeed, part of the reason there was such confusion over what a general is supposed to shout instead of ‘fire!’ is that historical tactical manuals don’t generally have commands for coordinated bow shooting because armies didn’t do coordinated bow shooting. Instead, archers generated a ‘hail’ or ‘rain’ (those are the typical metaphors) of arrows as each archer shot in their own best time.

More to the point, they could not shoot in volleys. And even if they had shot in volleys, those volleys wouldn’t produce anything like the impact we regularly see in film or TV. So this week, we’re going to walk through those considerations: briefly looking at what volley fire is for and why archers both wouldn’t and couldn’t do it, before taking a longer look at the problem of lethality in massed arrow fire.

This is a sure-fire laugh for any movie that tries to treat archers like musketeers.

Watch it.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Read it.

When President Trump returned to the White House, he didn’t just get to work cleaning up Joe Biden’s mess—he set his sights on dismantling decades of entrenched bureaucratic bloat, waste, and corruption. With a relentless series of executive orders and policy directives, Trump reignited his mission to drain the swamp—this time with laser precision and zero patience for the status quo.

Predictably, the left went into full-blown panic mode. Liberal legal groups immediately launched a barrage of lawsuits, cherry-picking friendly courts in a shameless attempt to stall Trump’s agenda. They’re terrified of losing control over the bloated regulatory state they’ve used for years to push policies they could never pass through Congress.

But that strategy just hit a major roadblock. In a landmark ruling on Saturday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Trump administration a decisive legal victory—one that could fundamentally change how activist judges and forum-shopped cases interfere with executive authority.

Read it.

In 2008, genetic researchers studying Ötzi’s mitochondrial DNA concluded that his direct maternal lineage was extinct. No living person appeared to share the same genetic signature. The conclusion was blunt and widely cited: it was highly unlikely that Ötzi had any living maternal relatives.

That assumption has now been overturned.

Through modern genetic genealogy, FamilyTreeDNA researchers have identified a living man whose maternal DNA traces back to the same ancient lineage as Ötzi, reconnecting a family line believed lost for millennia.

Read it.

Introduction
The modern nation-state is not natural nor permanent. It’s a technological product of the industrial era’s logic of mass warfare, bureaucracy, and centralized taxation. That logic is breaking down. In a world of cyberspace, mobile capital, and digital commerce and geography, brute force lose much of their leverage. You cannot conquer the internet with tanks, nor can a government easily tax a truly digital wallet whose private keys are hidden in someone’s mind. The Information Revolution is a shift in the logic of power as fundamental as gunpowder was to medieval knighthood. Every institution built on yesterday’s logic of violence will either adapt or crumble. This was the original thesis of the 1997 book The Sovereign Individual (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). And in 2026—with the rise of China, the regional military conflicts now underway, and the polarization of politics both within nations and between them—that shift is no longer speculatory. It is existential.

What matters now is what kind of order will emerge from it. The battle is no longer between rival “-isms” competing for control of the same nation-state, but between two fundamentally different civilizational logics: an empowering future that facilitates progress and an authoritarian one that dooms humanity.

A civilization can survive poverty. It can survive corruption. It can survive decadence for a time. What it cannot survive indefinitely is the slow freezing of criticism, the politicization of truth, the administrative management of thought, and the suppression of the independent mind. If centralized authoritarian models become the dominant operating system of the twenty-first century, then the danger is that humanity becomes less capable of discovering what is true, building what is new, and expanding beyond its present limits. In other words, stagnation. And stagnation necessarily leads to extinction.

This manifesto therefore renews the sovereign individual thesis under harsher conditions. The survival argument is simple: decentralization is the only civilizational trajectory that does not end in extinction. The individual mandate follows. Do science. Build technology. Start or fund companies at the frontier—AI, DeFi, fintech, data science, space, neurotechnology, anything that compounds intelligence and autonomy.

For every unit of wealth created, disperse it: into offshore jurisdictions that compete for your presence rather than conscript you, and into cryptographic infrastructure that answers to mathematics rather than to ministers.

Oh wrist, make me an instrument of thy peace….

New York Post.

Controversial comedian Druski has triggered fresh outrage over his latest mega-viral skit in which he dressed up as Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika — with many calling him “disgusting” and “completely disrespectful” to a grieving widow.

I’m pretty sure that ‘grieving widows’ don’t go on stage in leather pants. Just sayin’.

Daily Record (UK).

A leading American infectious disease specialist who had travelled to the African country of Botswana in order to help tackle the country’s HIV crisis was killed in front of his helpless wife when a massive crocodile pulled him from a canoe and into a river.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Daily Mail (UK).

I understand that soldiers used to shoot themselves in the leg to avoid duty they didn’t like.

Alternatively, perhaps he wanted her to feel as if her husband were still President.

Read it.

The climate science world (‘settled’ division) is in shock following the discovery in ancient ice cores that levels of carbon dioxide remained stable as the world plunged into an ice age around 2.7 million years ago. Levels of CO2 at around 250 parts per million (ppm) were said to be lower than often assumed with just a 20 ppm movement recorded for the following near three million-year period. In addition, no changes in methane levels were seen in the entire period. Massive decreases in temperature with occasional interglacial rises appear to have occurred without troubling ‘greenhouse’ gas levels, and this revelation has caused near panic in activist circles.

 

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

The picture of electrons “orbiting” the nucleus like planets around the sun remains an enduring one, not only in popular images of the atom but also in the minds of many of us who know better. The proposal, first made in 1913, that the centrifugal force of the revolving electron just exactly balances the attractive force of the nucleus (in analogy with the centrifugal force of the moon in its orbit exactly counteracting the pull of the Earth’s gravity) is a nice picture, but is simply untenable.

I have to confess that I never gave it much thought.

The Robb Report.

It’s a dream many might share: turning a scrap of tropical land into a luxury paradise, a rarefied riff on Robinson Crusoe. And the appeal of such an idea—not to mention the practicalities of it—has only been enhanced in the Covid pandemic’s wake. “When you’re in the middle of Zoom calls, no one knows where you are, as long as you’re not doing it on the beach with palm trees in the background and staff bringing you spicy margaritas,” says Edward de Mallet Morgan, who runs super-prime sales at Estate Prestige Knight Frank and has carved out a particular niche in island-brokering. “Nothing about it feels like normal life,” he adds. “Its incredibly peaceful and good for the soul.” As soon as you’ve tamed the landscape enough to build somewhere to sleep, that is.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

First, of course, you need to watch the film The Punisher to be aware that living on a tropical island can go very wrong very quickly.

Read it.

Nature magazine is at the front of the pack in the New Scientific Journalism: First, they have to tell you how to respond to what they’re going to tell you, then they can actually give you the information—without, apparently, being conscious of the fact that quite often the data don’t support their conclusions.

I’m not sure whether this is related to Fembot Journalism, in which the writer (typically female) first has to relate a tear-jerking anecdote before describing whatever the subject is that you’re supposed to wring your hands over.

Read it.

Most Democrats want their party to “become more progressive,” and say they agree with the more aggressive stance being taken by lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are calling on the party to take a “more aggressive stance” against President Donald Trump and his administration, according to new polls.

A poll from Survey USA, taken from April 2-6 of 859 Republicans and 885 Democrats, showed that 50% of Democrats want their party to become more progressive, with 24% wanting it to stay the same, and 18% calling for it to become more moderate, reports Real Clear Polling.

Among Republicans, 40% said their party should become more conservative while 44% said it should remain the same.

Some of you will get this, and you are my tribe.

Read it.

Useful nuggets of information can be found in the most unlikely of places—even The Hollywood Reporter.

Cutting-edge technology was once a de rigueur residential amenity for any eight-figure listing, along with elaborate home gyms, zero-edge swimming pools and 12-car garages. It’s becoming nearly impossible to find a fridge, toaster or LED light that isn’t Wi-Fi-enabled or voice-activated. But the fully loaded tech compound is suddenly falling from favor as high-end homeowners frantically reset the password to escape the $100 billion home-automation industry.

“Just like the arts-and-crafts movement was a reaction against industrialization, we’re now experiencing a reaction against the smart home. People are looking for more manual, less complicated places to live,” says interior designer Jamie Bush, who has worked on some of Los Angeles’ most iconic architectural residences for studio heads, celebrities and tech titans.

While celebrities like Sofía Vergara were once the smart home’s most vocal advocates — the Modern Family actress gushed about how she controlled her home’s security, appliance and media systems from her phone — the honeymoon period with digital domiciles is now facing the reality of unintelligible interfaces, endless updates and forgotten passwords.

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The Sifraniyah, whose name loosely translates to “those of the cipher,” operated not merely with books and balances, but with an internal trade-language that bore all the hallmarks of early programming logic. This was not a language of poetry or politics, but a kind of economic compiler, designed to streamline, automate, and encode trade transactions across nodes in the Mediterranean-African lattice.

Called Al-Khatt al-Tujjari (The Commercial Line), this cryptic syntax resembled a curious fusion of abjad notation, Berber numerals, and Nabataean counting gestures. But its true novelty lay in its structure: conditional statements, looped inventory management, abstract commodity representations, and even primitive error-checking glyphs.

Imagine this: a caravan master receives a wax-sealed scrolllet from the coastal guildhall in Mahdia. On its surface, not a letter of Arabic or Greek, but a modular script indicating: IF salt > 50 kantar AND camels ? 20 THEN delay; ELSE proceed to Ghadames via Node-B. This wasn’t mere instruction — it was compiled logic, a kind of analog execution framework.

I’m wondering whether this sort of encoded procedural logic might be used for compact tactical communications and orders in a battlefield situation.

LifeHacker.

Sure, the refrigerator can keep food fresher longer, but for serious life extension, the freezer is where you should focus your attention. Preserving food isn’t just better for reducing food waste, it’s crucial for staying on budget, especially as grocery prices hit new highs. Stop the pattern of bulk buying and bulk tossing spoiled food, and get comfortable with freezing more of your grocery haul. Here are the best ways to pack your freezer, the best things to freeze, and how to do it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

Women and minorities hardest hit.

Read it.

Humans tend to put our own intelligence on a pedestal. Our brains can do math, employ logic, explore abstractions and think critically. But we can’t claim a monopoly on thought. Among a variety of nonhuman species known to display intelligent behavior, birds have been shown time and again to have advanced cognitive abilities. Ravens plan (opens a new tab) for the future, crows count and use tools (opens a new tab), cockatoos open and pillage (opens a new tab) booby-trapped garbage cans, and chickadees keep track (opens a new tab) of tens of thousands of seeds cached across a landscape. Notably, birds achieve such feats with brains that look completely different from ours: They’re smaller and lack the highly organized structures that scientists associate with mammalian intelligence.

“A bird with a 10-gram brain is doing pretty much the same as a chimp with a 400-gram brain,” said Onur Güntürkün (opens a new tab), who studies brain structures at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. “How is it possible?”

How is it possible that an iPhone has more computing power than the Apollo Lunar Lander? Yeah, that’s a head-scratcher.

Researchers have long debated about the relationship between avian and mammalian intelligences. One possibility is that intelligence in vertebrates — animals with backbones, including mammals and birds — evolved once. In that case, both groups would have inherited the complex neural pathways that support cognition from a common ancestor: a lizardlike creature that lived 320 million years ago, when Earth’s continents were squished into one landmass. The other possibility is that the kinds of neural circuits that support vertebrate intelligence evolved independently in birds and mammals.

The third possibility is that we still don’t have an adequate definition of “intelligence”. Look at Congress.

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Why would the United States send one of its least stealthy combat aircraft into airspace that should punish slow, low-flying jets? The answer says less about the A-10 Thunderbolt II than about the condition of the defenses below it. The aircraft’s appearance around the Strait of Hormuz points to a basic airpower rule: a platform built for close-range attack only works when the enemy’s radar and missile network has already been broken down enough to make the sky tolerably safe.

A fork makes quite a versatile interrogation device. It’s also useful for cheesecake.

Read it.

While keyboards dominate modern classrooms, a new study in Frontiers in Psychology suggests handwriting may be irreplaceable when it comes to learning. Researchers found that writing by hand activates far more extensive and interconnected brain networks compared to typing, particularly in regions linked to memory and sensory processing. These findings provide new evidence that handwriting engages the brain in unique ways, raising concerns about the growing reliance on digital tools for education.

As digital tools replace traditional handwriting in classrooms, concerns have arisen about how this shift might impact learning. Typing on a keyboard is often preferred because it enables children to express themselves more quickly and with less physical strain. However, prior research has shown that handwriting is linked to better memory retention, letter recognition, and overall learning outcomes. The fine motor movements involved in handwriting seem to stimulate the brain differently than typing, but the exact neurological mechanisms behind this difference remained unclear.

To investigate, the researchers focused on brain connectivity, which describes how different brain regions work together to accomplish a task. By comparing brain activity during handwriting and typing, the team hoped to uncover whether the physical act of handwriting promotes more extensive brain communication patterns—patterns thought to support learning and memory formation.