We're gonna lead today with the war. No, not the war taking place in a small sliver of the world but that has dominated headlines and discourse. No, not that other war over a much bigger piece of land being run by a murderous mob boss on a quest to expand his power and his national land mass. This other war is one we don't see much coverage of. But it's not just the media. The American government isn't covering it much either. It's a war that is devastating in terms of the number of those directly impacted ("About 14 million people have been displaced by years of fighting, more than in Ukraine and Gaza combined. Some 4 million of them have fled across borders, many to arid, impoverished places—Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan—where there are few resources to support them. At least 150,000 people have died in the conflict, but that’s likely a significant undercounting ... But no statistics can express the sense of pointlessness, of meaninglessness, that the war has left behind alongside the physical destruction."). It's also a war that increasingly represents a broader trend: The end of the American led liberal world order. Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic (Gift Article) on how we got here and what's filling the vacuum. The Most Nihilistic Conflict on Earth. "On both of my trips to Sudan, I traveled out via Dubai, and each time it felt like a scene from a children’s book, where one of the characters walks through a mirror or a wardrobe and emerges in a completely different universe. In Sudan, some people have nothing except a bowl of bean soup once a day. In the Dubai airport, the Chanel store is open all night, AirPods can be purchased for the flight home, and multiple juice bars serve crushed tropical fruits. But despite the illusion of separation, those universes are connected, and the same forces that have destroyed Sudan are coming for other countries too. Violence inspired and fueled by multiple outsiders has already destroyed Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and is spreading in Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and beyond. Greed, nihilism, and transactionalism are reshaping the politics of the rich world too. As old rules and norms fall away, they are not replaced by a new structure. They are replaced by nothing." 2Lithium Battery of TestsDid researchers just find a glimmer of hope in the quest to fight Alzheimer’s? "Seven years of investigation by scientists at Harvard Medical School have revealed that the loss of the metal lithium plays a powerful role in Alzheimer’s disease, a finding that could lead to earlier detection, new treatments and a broader understanding of how the brain ages. Researchers led by Bruce A. Yankner, professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical School, reported that they were able to reverse the disease in mice and restore brain function with small amounts of the compound lithium orotate, enough to mimic the metal’s natural level in the brain." Research on reversing Alzheimer’s reveals lithium as potential key. 3The Nuclear ReactorAs we mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, have we reached a new level of risk when it comes to a nuclear war? "We are living through one of the more febrile periods of the nuclear era. The contours of World War III are visible in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia has been aided by Iran and North Korea and opposed by Europe and, for the time being, the United States. Pakistan and India, two nuclear states, recently fought a near-war; Iran, which has for decades sought the destruction of Israel through terrorism and other means, has seen its nuclear sites come under attack by Israel and the United States, in what could be termed an act of nonproliferation by force; North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal, and South Korea and Japan ... are considering going nuclear in response." And whether or not America would use nukes ultimately comes down to a decision made by a single person in what could be a matter of minutes. Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic (Gift Article): What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Nuclear War. "Trump is highly reactive, sensitive to insult, and incurious. It is unfair to say that he is likely to wake up one morning and decide to use nuclear weapons—he has spoken intermittently about his loathing of such weapons, and of war more generally—but he could very easily mismanage his way, again, into an escalatory spiral." 4A Crossing to Bear"The jailing of Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins cruelly answers the question of whether parents still have a right to let their children go for a walk. It is particularly harsh given that America seems to have forgotten that pedestrians, adults and children even exist as it accommodates drivers in the sprawl of cheap growth. But as many parents now control their children’s every move, transgressions by parents who take a freer approach — one that used to be normal — can result in criminal charges." Nicole Gelinas with a sad and thought-provoking piece in the NYT (Gift Article): They Let Their Children Cross the Street and Now They’re Felons. 5Extra, ExtraThere's No Cure for Stupid: "The new cancellations dismayed scientists, many of whom regard mRNA shots as the best option for protecting Americans in a pandemic. 'This is a bad day for science,' said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania." Editor's note: It's a(nother) bad day for science. Kennedy Cancels Nearly $500 Million in mRNA Vaccine Contracts. 6Bottom of the News"If you think you're moving fast and breaking things, you haven't met Jake Adler, who poured his actual blood into his startup. Adler, the founder of Pilgrim, a biotech and defense startup building medical devices for the battlefield, tested his flagship product — a hemostatic dressing he calls Kingsfoil — by cutting open both of his thighs." This 21-year-old founder cut open his leg to show off his biotech. (It worked.)
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Wednesday, August 6, 2025
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