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Every few months, a familiar ritual plays out in Western commentary. Oil prices wobble. Sanctions tighten. A tanker gets seized. A spreadsheet somewhere flashes red. And suddenly, a confident chorus announces that this is it —the final economic blow that will bring Vladimir Putin’s Russia to its knees. It is always “just one more shock” away. One more sanctions package. One more price dip. One more disruption in the oil trade. One more clever workaround finally closing. One more domino teetering on the edge. And yet, here we are. Four years into a grinding war, after sanctions that were supposed to be “unprecedented,” after asset freezes, export bans, financial isolation, and moral condemnations delivered in impeccably worded statements—Russia’s economy is battered, degraded, and increasingly grotesque, but it is still standing. More importantly, it is still funding a war. This does not mean sanctions are useless. It does not mean Russia is healthy. And it certainly does not mean th...

There was a time when weight loss had a predictable emotional arc. First came optimism. Then came hunger. Then came resentment toward celery. Then came partial success. Then came slow, steady regain, usually accompanied by a shrug and the phrase “well, that was inevitable.” Now we have a new storyline—one with syringes, subscription medicine, discreet packaging, and a marketing aura that whispers this time it’s different . Until it isn’t. According to newly published data in the British Medical Journal , people who stop taking weight-loss injections like GLP-1 agonists regain weight four times faster than people who lose weight through old-fashioned dieting and exercise. Not slightly faster. Not modestly faster. Four times faster. On average, 0.8 kilograms per month , a metabolic boomerang that brings users right back to baseline in roughly eighteen months. Which raises an uncomfortable question no glossy ad wants to answer: If the weight comes back faster than it ever left,...

Philadelphia waited a long time for Michelin to notice it. Not because the city lacked great food—Philadelphia has been quietly feeding America better than it deserves for decades—but because the Michelin Guide tends to arrive fashionably late to cities that don’t scream for validation. When it finally did, the city didn’t just get a polite nod. It got stars. And tucked neatly into that historic moment is an 11-seat restaurant in Society Hill where venison is treated with the kind of reverence usually reserved for saints, heirlooms, or very expensive watches. Welcome to Provenance , the restaurant that somehow managed to open, survive, and then casually earn a Michelin star in just over a year—an act that should probably require permits and background checks. This is not a place where you “pop in.” This is a place where you commit. Two and a half hours. Twenty to twenty-five courses. No menu up front. No choices. No substitutions. You sit down, surrender control, and trust that someo...

If you listen carefully to the latest monthly assessment from Korea Development Institute , you can almost hear the collective clearing of throats. The Korean economy, we’re told, is gradually recovering . Not charging ahead. Not rebounding. Not roaring back. Just… recovering. Gradually. Carefully. Politely. Like someone getting up from a chair after pretending their knee doesn’t hurt. According to the report, industrial production is inching forward, consumption is doing its part, exports are looking lively again, and employment hasn’t entirely fallen through the floor. The catch, of course, is that one of the largest pillars of any modern economy—construction—has collapsed into a heap and is still lying there, unmoving, while everyone else debates whether to step over it or pretend it’s just resting. Welcome to the 2026 version of economic optimism: things are technically improving, as long as you don’t look too closely at the parts that aren’t. Semiconductors: Because Someone Ha...

There are two immutable laws of CES. First: if it exists, someone will try to make it smarter, thinner, more modular, and somehow worse for human dignity. Second: every January, the tech industry gathers in Las Vegas to announce that this is the year we finally figured out what a computer should look like—only to immediately contradict itself with a product that feels like a dare. CES 2026 did not disappoint. Enter the HP EliteBoard G1a , a keyboard that is also a computer, which is also an AI-ready enterprise workstation, which is also a philosophical question disguised as office equipment. It’s a keyboard. It’s a PC. It’s both. And if you’re squinting at your screen wondering whether this is a joke, HP insists it is not. This thing ships in spring. Somewhere between the metaverse kiosks and the autonomous lawnmowers that can probably unionize before you can, HP quietly dropped the most unintentionally revealing product of the show: a slab of keys that contains an entire modern ...

There is a specific kind of chaos that only happens when a small child needs you urgently, passionately, and for three unrelated reasons at the exact same time. It is the chaos of simultaneous emergencies that are not technically emergencies but feel like them anyway because your nervous system doesn’t speak nuance before coffee. One minute you’re attempting a basic adult task like cooking food that contains vitamins. The next minute, you’re a rescue worker responding to a lava-sofa disaster while a different child announces, with the urgency of a government alert, that bodily systems are entering DEFCON 1. This is not poor planning. This is parenting. And yet, despite how universal this experience is, parents are still quietly haunted by the idea that somewhere out there exists a perfect day . A day where the kids are emotionally fulfilled, physically healthy, developmentally enriched, screen-limited but not screen-deprived. A day where meals are balanced, routines flow smoothly, v...

There are press releases, and then there are statements of national mood . Eli Lilly’s decision to drop more than $6 billion on a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Huntsville, Alabama is not just an infrastructure announcement—it’s a Rorschach test for where the American economy, healthcare system, and political imagination currently live. Spoiler: the inkblot looks like a GLP-1 molecule wearing a hard hat, holding a flag, and whispering “supply chain resilience” while an algorithm nods approvingly. On paper, the story is straightforward. Lilly will build a massive API manufacturing facility. Construction begins in 2026. Completion lands around 2032. Thousands of construction jobs, hundreds of permanent roles, and a long runway of economic spillover for Alabama. The drugs involved include small-molecule and peptide medicines—most notably GLP-1 therapies aimed at obesity. Toss in AI-driven monitoring, machine learning, digital automation, carbon-neutral aspirations, and you have ...

In 1958, while the rest of the computing world was busy teaching machines to think in ones and zeros like obedient little digital soldiers, a group of Soviet engineers looked at binary logic and said, essentially: “What if… no?” Thus was born Setun , the world’s first ternary computer—a machine that did not merely tweak binary logic but openly defied it. While Western computing marched forward chanting bit, bit, bit , Setun calmly introduced a third option and dared everyone to deal with it. And for a brief, fascinating moment in Cold War history, it worked. This is the story of the computer that chose three when everyone else settled for two, the machine that was mathematically elegant, technically sound, politically inconvenient, and ultimately too clever for the system that created it. Binary: The Tyranny of Either/Or Modern computing mythology treats binary as inevitable. Sacred. Unquestionable. Ones and zeros are portrayed as the only possible foundation for computation, as ...