Alvaro Lopez Ortega / 2026-07-18 Briefing

Created Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:05:56 +0000 Modified Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:49:22 +0000
5590 Words

Verizon is cutting 3,000 jobs and selling 274 stores as part of a restructuring to reduce costs by $5 billion by 2026. A critical OpenSSL vulnerability, HollowByte, lets remote attackers cause denial of service with an 11-byte payload; a fix is included in v4.0.1. UFO disclosure debates intensify as Jesse Michels and David Grusch allege a secret society runs a global cover-up, with a former CIA officer warning the truth may be psychologically difficult.

🤖 AI & Machine Learning

Human-like AI via Overtraining

A speculative proposal suggests that training extremely overparameterized neural networks with high learning rates and regularization can trigger “catapulting” or grokking, leading to human-like generalization and sample efficiency. Similarly, Gwern argues that large language models lack human-like flexibility because they are not overtrained to achieve grokking, and proposes that frontier labs invest billions in this approach, though his recent post has received little public attention.

Codex Resets

OpenAI’s Codex usage limits have been reset 35 times, with an average interval of 8.9 days and a longest gap of 67.7 days. The resets, announced by @thsottiaux on X, often coincide with milestone user counts or system improvements.

Co-evolution of self-replication and function in a digital primordial soup

A study demonstrates that self-replication and mathematical problem-solving can co-evolve from random Z80 assembly programs in a digital primordial soup. Task pressure accelerates compact reproductive architectures, while metabolic constraints favor conditional halting and spatial niches generate an emergent learning curriculum. The results reveal a feedback loop where environmental demands shape replication and vice versa.

What’s the deal with all the random weekly quota resets for agents lately?

Anthropic and OpenAI have been frequently issuing unscheduled weekly quota resets for subscription coding agents like Codex, especially after new model releases. While intended as a bonus, the random resets annoy heavy users who feel pressured to urgently consume their quota to avoid wasting money.

Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

Turn your spare Mac into a dedicated machine for Claude Code, accessible remotely via SSH or the Claude app, to isolate risks by giving the agent full control over a separate environment instead of your main machine. The guide covers enabling SSH, passwordless sudo, and optional data erasure for security, allowing Claude Code to run tasks with full Mac capabilities like controlling GUI apps.

The Voice of Google

The author recounts starting at Google in 2007, where they attended a charismatic company-wide meeting led by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, embodying a mission-driven culture. They quickly began supporting the P.R. team, learning talking points and undergoing training that emphasized accountability and a “player” mindset. Despite the modest campus, Google’s amenities and collective belief in its mission defined the experience.

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? (2025)

Many AI company logos, such as OpenAI’s, feature circular shapes with central openings and radiating elements that resemble an anus. Anthropic’s Claude logo animates with a clenching motion upon clicking, reinforcing the comparison. This trend is attributed to circular design psychology and unintentional biomimicry.

Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol on an NP-Hard Problem: Does /goal help?

Claude Fable 5 significantly outperformed GPT-5.6 Sol on an NP-hard fiber-network design problem, producing the best and most consistent solutions. However, using the native /goal mode yielded mixed results, slightly improving median performance but occasionally causing large regressions, making it unreliable as a “try harder” switch.

🔒 Cybersecurity & Privacy

OpenSSL HollowByte: A DoS Hiding in 11 Bytes

The OpenSSL HollowByte vulnerability allows a remote attacker to send an 11-byte payload that triggers unvalidated memory allocation before the TLS handshake, causing heap fragmentation and permanent memory bloat. In tests, unpatched servers were OOM-killed at 547 MB in a 1 GB RAM environment, and 25% of system memory was locked in a 16 GB setup. The fix, implemented via incremental buffer growth, is included in OpenSSL v4.0.1.

LG ThinQ Terms of Use

LG ThinQ’s updated terms of use have drawn criticism for their aggressive clauses, including mandatory individual arbitration with no opt-out, a broad, perpetual license for user content, and permission for LG to monitor communications and share data with third-party AI systems. The terms also bundle marketing consent into app usage, allow targeted advertising, and cap LG’s liability at $100, while granting the company the right to remotely update or discontinue services without additional consent.

Qubes OS Security in the Public Record

A longitudinal study of 109 Qubes Security Bulletins (2011–2025) found that 79.8% of vulnerabilities originate from upstream components such as Xen or CPU microarchitecture, not from Qubes-core logic. The public advisory record is stable but not quiet, with disclosure rates plateauing at a higher level than in earlier years, and the security burden remains concentrated in upstream trust anchors.

🔧 Tech & Engineering

NextBSD Revived with Apple Source

NextBSD, a project combining the FreeBSD kernel with Apple’s open-source Darwin userland components, has been revived under new maintainer Joe Maloney. The project, originally founded by Jordan Hubbard, aims for ABI compatibility with FreeBSD while integrating macOS elements like launchd, Grand Central Dispatch, and Bonjour, and has already produced a bootable disk image.

Dictionaries and Tables | DefconQ

KDB/Q natively supports dictionaries and tables, requiring equal-length key and value lists for dictionaries, with heterogeneous keys but homogeneous values. Dictionaries can be indexed via brackets or postfix notation, and version 4.1 introduced a simplified syntax for creating empty or singleton dictionaries.

Studying Linux Schedulers, and Why Metrics Matter

The study aimed to measure how Linux scheduler decisions across CPU cores and sockets impact cache coherence penalties for multi-threaded programs, with plans to evaluate EEVDF and CAS schedulers and propose improvements. However, due to resource limitations, the authors pivoted to profiling the LAVD scheduler instead.

Repeatable Read vs Snapshot Isolation

MySQL’s Repeatable Read isolation level actually implements Snapshot Isolation (SI) by using a read snapshot taken at the first SELECT. SI prevents phantoms but permits write skew, whereas traditional Repeatable Read blocks write skew but allows phantoms, making them similar yet distinct.

Gleam Source Code Mirrors on Tangled

Gleam, a type-safe programming language, has mirrored its source code on Tangled, a forge built on the AT protocol. The project is community-supported and not owned by any corporation, and it encourages sponsorship.

A better bitset for enum flags

Using enums for bitflags is flawed due to operator precedence issues, poor ergonomics, and conflating naming with representation. The author argues a dedicated bitset type using enum values as indices would offer superior type safety and usability, but expects the community to adopt enum bitflags despite these drawbacks.

Half-Edge Data Structure. Part2

This article is Part 2 of a series on the half-edge data structure, referencing Part 1 from 2024. No further content or details are provided in the given text.

The essence of architectural work - Part 4

The article highlights two often-overlooked purposes of architectural work: cognitive and humane. The cognitive purpose involves managing the overwhelming complexity and contradictions of problem and solution domains by synthesizing vast details and implicit expectations. The humane purpose is presented as equally important but frequently ignored in commercial environments.

Haunt 0.4.0 released

David Thompson released Haunt version 0.4.0, updating the package from version 0.2.6 in the guix.scm file. The change was made in a single commit that modified the version string.

Cache Directory Tagging Specification

Many applications create cache directories in user home directories that are unnecessary to back up, but their unpredictable locations make exclusion tedious. The article proposes a convention: applications should place a file named CACHEDIR.TAG containing the signature Signature: 8a477f597d28d172789f06886806bc55 inside such directories to enable reliable identification by backup utilities.

PowerShell over SSH in 2026: OpenSSH on Windows, Key Auth, and PowerShell 7 Remoting

The article recounts how Microsoft finally fulfilled a 2006 plea to use SSH, shipping OpenSSH with Windows 10 and preinstalling it on Windows Server 2025. It then provides current instructions for configuring PowerShell 7 as the default SSH shell, enabling the SSH agent, and deploying public keys, noting that admin accounts require a separate authorized_keys file with strict ACLs.

neither gcc nor clang are compliant with standard c++

GCC and Clang do not distinguish function types with different language linkages (e.g., C vs. C++), violating the C++ standard’s requirement that they be distinct types. This leads to incorrect behavior in std::is_same and overload resolution. The author argues the standard should be updated to make this implementation-defined, since changing GCC/Clang would break ABI and calling conventions are identical on most platforms.

Latest GitRoot News

GitRoot is a lightweight, plugin-based git forge that stores all data in plain files within git repositories rather than a database, using a .gitroot/users.yml file for branch-based access control. It allows customization with independent plugins like issue boards and merge request features. The project is currently in alpha and not yet production-ready.

8GB RAM insufficient for Windows 11

The 2025 entry-level Microsoft Surface Laptop, priced at $950 (a $50 increase from last year), comes with only 8GB of RAM, which reviews find insufficient for Windows 11 as it frequently hangs during moderate multitasking such as Teams calls and Google Docs. While the build, keyboard, and battery remain excellent, the reduced memory makes it a worse value and limits usability compared to the superior-performing 16GB predecessor.

Real-Time LuaTeX: Recompiling Large Documents in 1ms [pdf]

A new approach using LuaTeX enables real-time recompilation of large documents, reducing update times to just 1 millisecond. This technique allows for instantaneous previews and iterative editing without full reprocessing.

curl can be used to send emails with SMTP

To use the Mastodon web application, JavaScript must be enabled. Alternatively, users can try one of the native apps for Mastodon for their platform.

Classic Amiga titles, free to download

The Amiga Freeware Archive offers thousands of classic Amiga games, applications, demos, and tools for free download, comprising over 10,142 MiB of content from public domain libraries, scene groups, and user group compilations. Notable collections include 17 Bit Software, Fred Fish, and the LSD Compendium series.

Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day

The Hardcore IndieWeb approach advocates for complete independence by storing website content on your own hard drive rather than relying on third-party services, ensuring full control and portability. This method mirrors 1990s web practices—authoring locally, previewing in a browser, and publishing directly—while avoiding risks such as service shutdowns or provider misconduct.

Fable 5 finds major bugs in 10 year old open source game networking libraries

Claude Code Fable 5 discovered significant bugs in the open source networking libraries netcode, reliable, serialize, and yojimbo, which are widely used in games. Users are urged to immediately upgrade to the latest versions and avoid using older releases. The fixes were completed under intense time pressure to ensure game security.

Pico W firmware creates driverless USB WiFi bridge (Layer-2)

An open-source firmware called pico-usb-wifi turns a Raspberry Pi Pico W into a driverless USB WiFi adapter by implementing a transparent Layer-2 bridge between its wireless and USB interfaces. It supports WPA2/3 and IPv4/IPv6 but is limited to about 4.75 Mbits/sec throughput due to the USB 1.1 interface. The project is primarily useful as an emergency WiFi solution when a spare Pico W is available.

Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

A new typing speed test specifically for developers measures how quickly and accurately they can type terminal commands. The test runs for 60 seconds, tracking words per minute, accuracy, commands typed, and mistakes made.

How early SunOS did diskless workstations before NFS

The blog’s anti-crawler measures block outdated browsers and suspicious user agents to combat high-volume LLM training crawlers, causing legitimate users with old browsers or feed readers like Feedly and Inoreader to see a block page. The author recommends using current browsers, contacting him if wrongly blocked, and using archive.org instead of archive.today sites.

Elixir-lang.org has a new design

Elixir-lang.org has undergone a design refresh. The language’s immutability, memory safety, and gradual type system help developers write clear, fault-tolerant code that is easy to maintain.

Q3Edit – Edit and play Quake 3 maps in the browser

A new browser-based level editor for Quake 3, called Q3Edit, supports Radiant-style editing features including brushes, patches, CSG, terrain sculpting, and entity editing. It can open and save .map files, and users can play their created maps directly in the browser using a WebAssembly build of ioquake3.

The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal

A Scottish hi-fi company, Linn Products, built the Rekursiv processor in the 1980s—a custom chip that enforced memory safety, garbage-collected in hardware, and treated memory and disk as a single persistent object store. Although the project failed commercially and was famously dumped in a canal, its core ideas have since been adopted in production Arm silicon, vindicating the company’s technical vision.

Find someone in the dark – light them or light yourself? (Three.js)

A Three.js experiment compares two search-and-rescue strategies: a moving searchlight and a stationary beacon, with presets like mobile hiker, injured, and dense forest. Monte Carlo trials randomize worlds and starting positions to test outcomes. The project is explicitly a simplified conceptual model and not validated for real-world rescue scenarios.

Three workers digging in a field outside the data center

On May 15, three workers performed a digging activity near Google’s datacenter in Westpoort, Groningen, documented by Dinnis van Dijken. The workers wore yellow vests over orange coats to obscure company logos as they set up equipment in the wet field. Videographers captured the performance, which was described as a staged event.

Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves

Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit 4 beta delivers a 66% frame rate boost for GTA V on an M4 Pro MacBook Pro, translating Windows DirectX calls to Metal in real time. The update marks a major leap in Mac gaming performance, suggesting software is no longer a bottleneck for Apple Silicon.

Japan now has human refrigerators inspired by Japanese vending machines

A Japanese company has introduced the Do Hiemon Box, a one-person cooling booth that maintains a 15°C interior and blows 5°C air to rapidly lower body temperature in about 10 minutes. Using half the electricity of a typical spot air conditioner and requiring no installation, it is already deployed in public spaces like Maebashi City Hall. Priced at 1.5 million yen, the booth is designed for businesses and organizations to protect workers and the public from rising temperatures.

ASCII Art

Asciiville is a project that provides nearly 1,000 pieces of ASCII and ANSI art, animations, and utilities for text-only terminal environments, integrating and extending several packages with convenience commands. It is now available as a Kasm Workspace and is part of the Neoman managed projects.

LoRa radio communication devices for Raspberry Pi

LoRa radio modules enable Raspberry Pi projects to transmit small data packets over long distances (up to 15 km) at low bit rates, making them ideal for IoT sensors. The article reviews several add-on boards, including the SX1262 module for Pico and the Perpetuo LoRa board, emphasizing the need to comply with regional ISM band regulations.

Moonstone: Modern, cross-platform Lua runtime and package manager written in Zig

Moonstone is a new cross-platform Lua runtime and package manager built with Zig. It aims to provide reliable Lua environments with a simple installation via a single curl command.

Open Source Parametric DIY Air Purifier Builder

The article covers an open-source, parametric DIY air purifier builder, but the content only indicates that a FilterBoxBuilder is loading. No further details or body text are available for summary.

Stenchill: 3D Printable Solder Paste Stencil Generator

StenchillBeta is a free online tool that converts PCB Gerber files into 3D-printable stencil STL files for solder paste application, enabling rapid prototyping at home with features like registration shoulders for alignment. It recommends using a 0.2mm nozzle with PLA or PETG for best results with components 0603 and larger. The service was inspired by Barbatronic’s Twitch stream and integrates into fabrication workflows via a KiCad plugin.

PSA about abuse of cat(1) command. Don’t abuse cats

The article criticizes the “useless use of cat” pattern, where a single file is piped through cat to commands like grep, wc, or sort that can read files directly. This wastes a process, as cat merely copies bytes to a program that already knows how to read them. The article advocates using the command with a filename argument instead of piping from cat.

🔬 Science & Health

A study of nearly 13,000 adults found that higher consumption of artificial sweeteners like aspartame and saccharin was linked to faster declines in memory and thinking skills, equivalent to about 1.6 additional years of cognitive aging. The association was strongest in people under 60 and those with diabetes, though researchers caution the study does not prove causation.

Supplement that binds to microplastics may remove them from our body

A postbiotic supplement called Qi601 reduced visible microplastics in saliva by over 90% after chewing gum in the first human trial, and in lab experiments it prevented nanoplastics from entering intestinal cells while also reducing plastics already inside cells by 43%. However, the study did not confirm that the bound particles are prevented from entering the gut or excreted, and experts note that reducing plastic pollution at the source is more effective than post-exposure removal.

A new study found no significant link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and preterm birth or birth weight, though it was associated with lower odds of large-for-gestational-age births. The findings offer reassurance about the medication’s safety regarding birth timing and infant size.

The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

Landis’s percolation theory explains the Fermi Paradox by arguing that interstellar colonization is limited by distance and the low probability that colonies will themselves colonize, resulting in a sparse settlement pattern. The author connects this to a Lindsay Nikole video on cheetah genetics, where population bottlenecks cause genetic problems, drawing an analogy to how isolated human colonies might similarly fail to expand.

The case for eating more organ meat

Organ meats are highly nutrient-dense, containing more vitamins and minerals per gram than muscle meat, yet their consumption has declined in developed countries, contributing to food waste. Research confirms that offal like liver is rich in iron, B vitamins, and choline, which can help address common nutrient deficiencies. Despite global traditions of eating offal, Western diets have largely abandoned it due to preferences for texture and flavor.

London Underground users should know about toxic dust risk, whistleblower says

A London Underground worker who was unfairly dismissed after whistleblowing about unsafe exposure to asbestos and toxic dust has won a tribunal ruling that his complaints were protected disclosures. The tribunal found that his employer failed to properly handle hazardous waste and gave him an ultimatum to retract his concerns or be fired. He now wants passengers to be aware of the potential dangers his case revealed.

I started a “dirt notebook”

An author started a “dirt notebook” using an old, low-quality notebook and cheap ballpoint pens to break the habit of keeping notebooks too organized for casual notes. Over a week, they filled it with random quotes, ideas, and notes without structure, enjoying rediscovering forgotten content. Their goal is to fill the notebook and embrace messiness before potentially returning to better materials.

Alien world chemistry found inside meteorite that struck New Jersey home

A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home contains chemical signatures indicative of alien worlds, according to researchers. The extraterrestrial material offers clues about the formation of other planets beyond our solar system.

💼 Business & Economy

Employees react as Verizon cuts another 3,000 jobs, sell 274 stores in latest restructuring

Verizon is cutting 3,000 jobs and selling 274 company-owned retail stores to franchise operators, with most affected retail workers expected to transition to the new franchise owners. The restructuring also eliminates 500 corporate positions and follows previous layoffs of over 13,000 employees, part of CEO Dan Schulman’s plan to reduce operating expenses by $5 billion by 2026.

Cribl acquires AI threat detection startup CardinalOps for ~$100M

Data infrastructure startup Cribl has acquired Israeli cybersecurity firm CardinalOps, which offers AI-powered threat detection tools, for approximately $100 million. The acquisition will extend Cribl’s telemetry platform into security operations and includes the establishment of a new Tel Aviv office.

China’s National AI Fund gains voting rights in DeepSeek via $7.4B round; Tencent, JD get none

DeepSeek held an unusual four-hour pitch meeting with investors, allowing only two representatives per institution, where founder Liang Wenfeng described the team as “very ordinary people.” The meeting came as China’s National AI Industry Investment Fund gained voting rights in DeepSeek’s $7.4 billion funding round, while other investors like Tencent received none.

REO Trucks I4 4WD Pickup Truck Starts at $21,500

REO Trucks has announced the I4 4WD pickup with a starting price of $21,500, featuring a gas engine, 600-mile range, and five-minute refueling. The truck uses a body-on-frame design with mechanical 4WD, owner-serviceable parts, and will be sold directly online without dealers, with production targeted for late 2028.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Organizing events is the fastest way to join a social group because demand for activities far exceeds supply. Most people passively consume social fabric rather than produce it, but those who take on the work of organizing quickly become valued members and make friends more easily. Individuals can solve the problem of social alienation in their own community by simply supplying the events that others want to attend.

Narcissistic leaders more likely to oppose remote work, new research suggests

New research from the Wharton School suggests that narcissistic leaders are more likely to oppose remote work due to a desire for attention, control, and status, rather than productivity concerns. The study found that leaders’ narcissism correlated with greater resistance to virtual work, as remote arrangements deprive them of opportunities for direct control and reverence.

EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

From 19 July, large EU companies are banned from destroying unsold clothes, clothing accessories and footwear, with medium-sized firms facing the same rule from 2030 under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. The measure aims to prevent waste and promote reuse, repair and resource efficiency, with destruction allowed only in limited cases such as unsafe or counterfeit items. National authorities will enforce the ban and can impose fines, while small and micro-businesses are exempt.

Steam Machine: Between 12k and 15k Units Sold per week

Valve is estimated to be selling between 12,000 and 15,000 Steam Machine units per week as of July 18, 2026, based on revenue data from Steam’s Global Top Sellers chart. The estimation uses a bounding box method, with Counter-Strike 2 serving as the revenue ceiling and lower-priced viral software as the floor.

IKEA Complexity Index

An independent fan-created “IKEA Complexity Index” ranks approximately 20,000 IKEA products by estimated assembly time, calculated as the product of assembly steps and total parts, multiplied by an empirical factor. It also includes an average ease-of-assembly rating (1–5) based on reviewer feedback from IKEA.com. The project is not affiliated with IKEA.

Newly retired couples may lose $16,900/year in Social Security in 2033

Newly retired couples could lose $16,900 annually in Social Security benefits by 2033 if Congress does not address the program’s insolvency, as the trust fund is projected to run dry by the end of 2032, triggering a mandatory 22% benefit cut. Additionally, Medicare Part A will face an 11% cut around the same time, and rising Part B and D premiums will further erode beneficiaries’ income.

Open Source is not immune to monopoly

Large open-source projects like the Linux kernel can become monolithic and anticompetitive, making forking nearly impossible. The article argues for breaking such projects into smaller, interoperable components, following the UNIX philosophy, to prevent monopolistic dynamics. It also suggests that monopolistic behavior may be an inherent feature of human organization, not just capitalism.

Credit Card Points Are a Transfer from the Broke to the Comfortable

Credit card rewards are funded by over $160 billion in annual interest, $30 billion in fees, and $149 billion in merchant swipe fees, with Federal Reserve research showing that $15.1 billion yearly transfers from less sophisticated, lower-income, and less educated cardholders to wealthier, more educated users. The system profits banks while encouraging overspending, disproportionately burdening those who carry balances or pay cash.

🌍 Society & Culture

On the UFO fringes – Jesse Michels, David Grusch, and the CIA’s latest claims

Jesse Michels and Jason Samosa alleged that a Panama-registered secret society, the World Commerce Corporation, administers a global UFO cover-up. David Grusch’s new documentary connects UFO disclosure to Catholic theology, while former CIA officer Jim Semivan said the truth may be psychologically difficult. The article concludes that UFO disclosure debates are increasingly moving beyond evidence into religion, intelligence secrecy, and public trust.

UK’s next PM Burnham to scrap Starmer’s digital ID cards after petition got 3M signatures

Incoming UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham plans to scrap Keir Starmer’s digital ID card scheme, redirecting resources to address the cost-of-living crisis. The unpopular proposal, which drew about 3 million petition signatures, was intended to combat illegal working but lacked a clear budget.

Mayor Mamdani Says Landlords Can’t Use AI Images to Advertise

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a “Rental Ripoff Report” recommending landlords and realtors disclose the use of AI-generated or AI-edited images in rental listings. The report, based on hearings with thousands of tenants, also proposes recognizing tenant unions and expanding bargaining rights to address deceptive practices and unsafe housing conditions.

Judge a book by its first pages

This article promotes a service offering an endless stream of free book samples, illustrated by the opening lines of classics such as Moby-Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, and Emma. Users are encouraged to read, reveal, and save the samples they like.

Heresy (2022]

The concept of heresy has been revived in modern employment, where certain opinions can lead to termination. These heresies are treated as more important than truth or falsity and outweigh all other actions of the speaker. Such labels are used to end discussions and are applied inconsistently based on who says something.

Frozen 2 should be Rated R

The article contends that modern films increasingly rely on high-stakes existential jeopardy (e.g., mass destruction) as a lazy storytelling device, contrasting this with older movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that used smaller personal stakes effectively. ChatGPT-analyzed data from the top 10 box office films per year over 50 years reveals a clear trend from lower average jeopardy scores in the 1970s–80s to higher scores in the 2010s–2020s, suggesting this “jeopardy inflation” desensitizes audiences to real-world tragedy.

Surrender as a non-stupid life strategy

Surrendering self-chosen goals and instead following the flow of inner and outer circumstances led the author to greater happiness and a richer life after achieving material desires. This approach recognizes the limits of the planning mind and argues that true authenticity emerges from unselfconscious action.

British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years

British runner Josh Kerr broke the world record for the mile, ending a 27-year reign by the previous holder. His performance marked a historic achievement in track and field.

Why is tiny Norway so good at sports? It’s more than Erling Haaland

Norway’s sports success is rooted in a youth philosophy that prioritizes process over winning, with no scorekeeping before age 11 and no rankings until 12-13. This focus on fun and personal development, rather than hypercompetitive commercialization, has produced top-tier national teams like the world’s best women’s handball squad.

America Broke Its Own Military

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used the post-9/11 wars to push a radical privatization agenda, shifting military services to private contractors until they nearly equaled uniformed personnel in Iraq. This “Transformation” aimed to streamline and corporatize the Pentagon, but it stretched the military thin and led to catastrophic consequences for troops and occupied populations.

Israeli ministers announce plans for illegal settlements in Gaza and West Bank

Israeli ministers announced plans for three illegal settlements in Gaza and over $400 million in funding for West Bank settlements ahead of October elections, while the military commander praised violent extremist outposts as “security partners.” The UN described settler violence as state-led annexation, and the far-right coalition is racing to expand control of occupied Palestinian land before its mandate expires.