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Secure at home and facing no rival spheres abroad, Washington is allowing its alliances to slide toward protection rackets, its trade relationships toward trade wars, and major sea-lanes toward militarized zones. The institutions the United States once underwrote are fraying, and the markets it upheld are fragmenting. Some U.S. partners, including Canada and the United Kingdom, now look for short-term security wherever they can find it, even at the cost of long-term dependence on China. The result is not stability but the slow hollowing out of the relationships that once converted American dominance into a durable order. ~Michael Beckley

Mark Twain famously observed: ”A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes ." Yesterday was the 16 th  anniversary of the retraction of Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent report claiming a link between vaccination and autism. Sadly, RFK Jr and his fellow anti-vaxxers got the lie but not the truth. Americans, particularly American children, are paying the price.

I grew up in Oak Ridge Tennessee in the ‘60s. At the time, it was a town with one of the highest concentrations of scientists and engineers in the nation. Both of my parents were college grads. So, I took it for granted that most Americans graduated from college. I didn’t know until I was in college that  in 1977 (the year I graduated), approximately  15%  of American adults aged 25 and older were graduates of four-year colleges or universities.   Today, that number is nearly 40%. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that a bachelor’s degree from a 4-year college or university isn’t the meal ticket it once was. “ The unemployment gap between workers with bachelor’s degrees and those with occupational associate’s degrees - such as plumbers, electricians and pipe fitters -   flipped in 2025, leaving trade workers with a slight edge for six months out of the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the first time trade workers have had a leg up since ...

Apart from their utility in criminal finances, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (other than stablecoin) are manifestations of The Greater Fool Theory of Investing. So how is the Bitcoin investment performing for ya? “ The world’s largest cryptocurrency slipped below $76,000 in thin weekend trading, dropping about 40% from its 2025 peak and revisiting levels last seen in the aftermath of the “Liberation Day” tariff fallout.” *snip* “ Bitcoin fell nearly 11% in January, marking its fourth straight monthly decline — the longest losing streak since 2018, during the crash that followed the 2017 boom in initial coin offerings. “I don’t think we’ll see a new all-time high for Bitcoin in 2026,” said Paul Howard, director at market maker Wincent.” So a buying opportunity, right? “ Even more striking than the drop itself is the relative lack of optimism around it on social media. In a space known for relentless bravado and “number go up” memes, Bitcoin’s slide has been met with little cheerlea...

I spent my entire research career working on animals. In this case, the animals were Drosophila melanogaster, or “fruit flies.” I dissected tens of thousands of larval salivary glands because their giant polytene chromosomes afforded a relatively high resolution map of the genome. I made over 100 transgenic lines to gain insight into gene function. I screened tens of thousands of flies in mutagenesis screens to identify mutations that answered questions about genetics. And of course, much of my research rested on a literature of science using flies. Now I understand that some folks consider flies to be vermin. Their status as invertebrates places them beneath the notice of the NIH rules on animal care. But much of our lifesaving vaccines, drugs, devices and surgical techniques relied on research using vertebrate models, rodents and primates in particular. Yes, I know we’ve cured cancer in mice hundreds of times in ways that didn’t translate to cancer in humans. But I wouldn’t take a va...

Musk’s Tesla brand is becoming toxic. The unsold cyber trucks are accumulating in large lots. Sales of Tesla sedans have slumped, partly because Musk himself is a toxic brand and partly because of competition. Looks like Musk is crying “uncle.” “Elon Musk, who turned an upstart electric vehicle maker into an industry-changing powerhouse, is pulling the plug on the two models that helped get him there, as he struggles with another quarter of declining profits and car sales. “He announced the end of production of two models – the Model S and Model X, among the company’s most expensive models, on a Wednesday earnings call. Instead, the company will use that factory space to build humanoid robots instead. “ And he seemed to suggest that selling electric vehicles, which Tesla helped to introduce to the global mass market, would soon be an afterthought for the company.” Musk says Tesla will pivot to robotaxis: “Musk predicted the Cybercab, a two-seat self-driving “robotaxi” vehicle with no s...