Hughes (1993), Ted, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, Faber & Faber 1993 ' Synopsis In this momentous adventure in criticism, one of the leading poets writing in English argues that our profound response to Shakespeare's great late plays is prompted by a mythic, symbolic structure that inheres in each of them, and indeed binds the entire Shakespearean corpus into one huge, complex, ever-evolving work. Ted Hughes sees Shakespeare's early poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece as embodying two great myths of the archaic world, that of the hero who rejects the love of the Goddess and is killed in revenge by a boar; and that of the king, or god, whose crime is rape and whose punishment is banishment. These two complexes merge as Shakespeare's work develops into what Hughes calls the Tragic Equation, a flexible formula through which the poet was able to tap into the innate power of these myths to enliven his own imagination - and through him the imagination of Elizabethan England, in which the conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism in the "living myth" of the English Reformation never lay far from the bloody surface of events. With his characteristic mixture of erudition and immediacy, Ted Hughes traces this idea in a close reading of Shakespeare's entire work. This text originally grew out of correspondence with dramatists, and anyone for whom intimate attention to the plays is important - scholar, student, actor, or common reader - will profit greatly from Hughes's loving, intensive, engrossing, and radical analysis of the greatest writing in the language.' 
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Khinchin (1960, 1998), Aleksandr Yakovlevich, The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Statistics, Dover 1998 'In the area of quantum statistics, I show that a rigorous mathematical basis of the computational formulas of statistical physics . . . may be obtained from an elementary application of the well-developed limit theorems of the theory of probability.' 
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Kolmogorov (1956), Andrey Nikolaevich, and Nathan Morrison (Translator) (With an added bibliography by A T Bharucha-Reid), Foundations of the Theory of Probability, Chelsea 1956 Preface: 'The purpose of this monograph is to give an axiomatic foundation for the theory of probability. . . . This task would have been a rather hopeless one before the introduction of Lebesgue's theories of measure and integration. However, after Lebesgue's publication of his investigations, the analogies between measure of a set and mathematical expectation of a random variable became apparent. These analogies allowed of further extensions; thus, for example, various properties of independent random variables were seen to be in complete analogy with the corresponding properties of orthogonal functions . . .' 
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Nicholls (2025), Jeffrey, Cognitive Cosmogenesis: a systematic integration of theology and physics, Austin Macauley 2025 ' The core idea of the top down theology devised by the Christian bishops for the Emperor Constantine is that the omnipotent and omniscient creator totally controls every moment of every event in the world. The imperial picture. Here we work from the bottom up. A key to the connection of physics and theology is symmetry with respect to complexity.
Although the difference in scale between fundamental particles and the people of an ideal democratic polity is immense, they are formally quite similar. Both democratic politics and quantum electrodynamics work in Hilbert space. Voting is linear, a form of superposition distributed by parties. Individuals and political parties are characterized by their directions in political space which may be modelled by vectors in a Hilbert space.
We may imagine a space with a basis vector for every person. Their sums in various combinations present us with a comprehensive picture of the political directions in an electorate. Such ideal democratic political systems have natural quantum mechanical support which gives us insight into the nature of the world.' 
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Yourgrau (1979), Wolfgang, and Stanley Mandelstam, Variational Principles in Dynamics and Quantum Theory, Dover 1979 Variational principles serve as filters for parititioning the set of dynamic possibilities of a system into a high probability and a low probability set. The method derives from De Maupertuis (1698-1759) who formulated the principle of least action, which states that physical laws include a rule of economy, the principle of least action. This principle states that in a mathematically described dynamic system will move so as to minimise action. Yourgrau and andelstam explains the application of this principle to a variety of physical systems.  
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A Midsummer Night's Dream - Wikipedia, A Midsummer Night's Dream - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict among four Athenian lovers. Another follows a group of six amateur actors rehearsing the play which they are to perform before the wedding. Both groups find themselves in a forest inhabited by fairies who manipulate the humans and are engaged in their own domestic intrigue. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most popular and widely performed plays.' back

A. Gagliano, et al (2025_08_13), Evidence for an Instability-induced Binary Merger in the Double-peaked, Helium-rich Type IIn Supernova 2023zkd, ' Abstract We present ultraviolet to infrared observations of the extraordinary Type IIn supernova 2023zkd (SN 2023zkd). Photometrically, it exhibits persistent and luminous precursor emission spanning ∼4 yr preceding discovery (Mr ≈ −15 mag, 1500 days in the observer frame), followed by a secondary stage of gradual brightening in its final year. Post-discovery, it exhibits two photometric peaks of comparable brightness (Mr ≲ −18.7 mag and Mr ≈ −18.4 mag, respectively) separated by 240 days. Spectroscopically, SN 2023zkd exhibits highly asymmetric and multicomponent Balmer and He I profiles that we attribute to ejecta interaction with fast-moving (1000–2000 km s−1) He-rich polar material and slow-moving (∼400 km s−1) equatorially distributed H-rich material. He II features also appear during the second light curve peak and evolve rapidly. Shock-driven models fit to the multiband photometry suggest that the event is powered by interaction with ∼5–6 M⊙ of CSM, with 2–3 M⊙ associated with each light curve peak, expelled during mass-loss episodes ∼3–4 yr and ∼1–2 yr prior to explosion. The observed precursor emission, combined with the extreme mass-loss rates required to power each light curve peak, favors either super-Eddington accretion onto a black hole or multiple long-lived eruptions from a massive star to luminosities that have not been previously observed. We consider multiple progenitor scenarios for SN 2023zkd, and find that the brightening optical precursor and inferred explosion properties are most consistent with a massive (MZAMS ≥ 30 M⊙) and partially stripped He star undergoing an instability-induced merger with a black hole companion. back

Aarushi Bhandari (2025_07_14) , Is there any hope for the internet?, ' In 2001, social theorist bell hooks warned about the dangers of a loveless zeitgeist. In “All About Love: New Visions,” she lamented “the lack of an ongoing public discussion … about the practice of love in our culture and in our lives.”
Back then, the internet was at a crossroads. The dot-com crash had bankrupted many early internet companies, and people wondered if the technology was long for this world.
The doubts were unfounded. In only a few decades, the internet has merged with our bodies as smartphones and mined our personalities via algorithms that know us more intimately than some of our closest friends. It has even constructed a secondary social world.
Yet as the internet has become more integrated in our daily lives, few would describe it as a place of love, compassion and cooperation. Study after study describe how social media platforms promote alienation and disconnection – in part because many algorithms reward behaviors like trolling, cyberbullying and outrage.
Is the internet’s place in human history cemented as a harbinger of despair? Or is there still hope for an internet that supports collective flourishing? [. . .]
In “Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want,” sociologist Ruha Benjamin points to a way forward. She tells the story of Black TikTok creators who led a successful cultural labor strike in 2021. Many viral TikTok dances had originally been created by Black artists, whose accounts, they claimed, were suppressed by a biased algorithm that favored white influencers. TikTok responded to the viral #BlackTikTokStrike movement by formally apologizing and making commitments to better represent and compensate the work of Black creators. These creators demonstrated how social media engagement is work – and that workers have the power to demand equitable conditions and fair pay. This landmark strike showed how anyone who uses social media companies that profit off the work, emotions and personal data of their users – whether it’s TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram or Reddit – can become organized.' back

Amos Harel (2025_08_08), Analysis | As Israel's Army Prepares Its Latest Offensive in Gaza, Criticism Bubbles Up From Below, ' The lull in the fighting in Gaza and the huge number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed in airstrikes are generating tension in the IDF. This week, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported on a resounding clash between Southern Command head Yaniv Asor and air force chief Tomer Bar. Asor was furious over Bar's decision to retake the authority to approve attacks on targets in the Gaza Strip. The backdrop is the growing frustration in the air force, both at headquarters and in the squadrons, over the results of the strikes. Fighter pilots and drone operators have it different. A pilot doesn't see the target with his eyes but attacks based on 14-digit coordinates dictated from below. He needs to be sure that the whole chain of command above him is operating professionally and without ulterior motives. A drone operator sees everything, including the horrific sights after some of the attacks. [. . .] Most top defense officials who were linked to the mistakes that made October 7 possible are no longer serving. Zamir's predecessor, Herzl Halevi, and the previous head of the Shin Bet security service, Ronen Bar, were maneuvered into resigning; the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, was fired – the motives included Netanyahu's efforts to pass a draft-evasion law for the ultra-Orthodox. Other generals – Aharon Haliva, Yaron Finkelman, Oded Basyuk and Eliezer Toledano – have also resigned, along with top people in Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet. [. . .] And two infuriating absurdities remain. First, almost two years into the war, not one senior figure in the IDF, whether still serving or not, has seen any significant step taken against him, despite the failures that led to the massacres. The second absurdity might even be more infuriating. The army at least is investigating, but Netanyahu and the ministers are totally protected. They're acting as if they had no connection with October 7. back

Antony Eagle, Curriculum Vitae, ' Academic Positions: 2025– Adelaide University, Associate Professor of Philosophy.
2013–2025 University of Adelaide, Associate Professor of Philosophy, (2021–25), Senior Lecturer in Philosophy (2013–20).
2004–13 University of Oxford, University (CUF) Lecturer in Philosophy.
Exeter College, Oxford, William Kneale Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy.
Tenured (‘Reappointed to retirement age’), 2009.' back

Born rule - Wikipedia, Born rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Born rule (also called the Born law, Born's rule, or Born's law) is a law of quantum mechanics which gives the probability that a measurement on a quantum system will yield a given result. It is named after its originator, the physicist Max Born. The Born rule is one of the key principles of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. There have been many attempts to derive the Born rule from the other assumptions of quantum mechanics, with inconclusive results. . . . The Born rule states that if an observable corresponding to a Hermitian operator A with discrete spectrum is measured in a system with normalized wave function (see bra-ket notation), then the measured result will be one of the eigenvalues λ of A, and the probability of measuring a given eigenvalue λ_i will equal <ψ|P_i|ψ> where P_i is the projection onto the eigenspace of A corresponding to λ_i'.' back

Budianto Hakim et al (2025_08_06), Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene, The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda)1 represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated landmasses2,3,4. Previously, the oldest indication of hominins in Wallacea, the oceanic island zone east of Sunda, comprised flaked stone artefacts deposited at least 1.02 ± 0.02 million years ago (Ma) at Wolo Sege on Flores5. Early hominins were also established on the oceanic island of Luzon (Philippines), as indicated by both stone artefacts and cut marks on faunal remains dating to between 777 and 631 thousand years ago (ka) at Kalinga6. Moreover, fossils of extinct, small-bodied hominins occur on Flores (Homo floresiensis)7,8,9,10,11,12 and Luzon (Homo luzonensis)13. On Sulawesi, the largest Wallacean island, previous excavations revealed stone artefacts with a minimum age of 194 ka at the open site of Talepu in the Walanae Depression14, long preceding the earliest known presence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in the region (73–63 ka in Sunda)15. Here we show that stone artefacts also occur at the nearby site of Calio in fossiliferous layers dated to at least 1.04 Ma and possibly up to 1.48 Ma, using palaeomagnetic dating of sedimentary rocks and coupled Uranium-series (U-series) and electron-spin resonance (US–ESR) dating of fossil teeth. The discovery of Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggests that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier. back

Daniel Hannan (2025_08_09), Trump has betrayed Ukraine, making the world immeasurably more dangerous , ' This is a straightforward defeat. A defeat, not just for Ukraine, but for the values which the Anglosphere and its allies have upheld since 1941, to the immense benefit of the human race. Aggression is being rewarded. Borders are being changed by force. A brittle dictatorship has defeated a Western alliance with a combined economy forty times larger than its own. The prestige of the democracies is suffering a Suez-level hit. As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska – a venue surely proposed by the Kremlin, both to demonstrate that Putin is again welcome in the United States and to suggest that there is nothing terribly new about ceding territory – all the momentum is with the Russian leader. [. . .] To understand the scale of the West’s defeat, we need to remember why we were backing Ukraine in the first place. Not because we thought that Zelensky was brave or handsome or even particularly democratic. Not because we believed that Ukrainians were kinder or more amusing than their Russian cousins. Not even because, long before 2022, Russia had been buzzing our airspace and overseeing cyberattacks against our infrastructure and had, on two occasions, committed acts of war against us when it ordered its operatives to carry out lethal attacks on British soil (against Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and, unsuccessfully, against Sergei Skripal in 2018). No, we are backing Ukraine because it is the wronged party. We are sending it weapons because it was attacked without provocation by a neighbour to whom it presented no threat. We are training its soldiers because, when Ukraine agreed to hand over its nuclear arsenal in 1994, it did so in exchange for an explicit promise that its independence would be respected within its existing borders – a promise guaranteed by Britain, the United States and (never forget) Russia.' back

Dhruv Kuller (2025_08_11), How an Ultra-Rare Disease Accelerates Aging, ' Progeria, which derives from the Greek for “early old age,” was first described in the late nineteenth century. It is a disease of rapid, brutal aging that is thought to afflict fewer than one in every four million babies. By the time children with progeria enter their teen-age years, their bodies have effectively aged eight or nine decades. They have a distinctive appearance: small, wizened, and bald, with wrinkled skin, rigid arteries, stiff joints, and weak bones. Many die of heart attacks before their fifteenth birthday. There are estimated to be about twenty people living with the condition in the U.S. and several hundred in the world.' back

Fundamental frequency - Wikipedia, Fundamental frequency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the fundamental (abbreviated as f₀ or f_{1>/sub> ), is defined as the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform. In music, the fundamental is the musical pitch of a note that is perceived as the lowest partial present. In terms of a superposition of sinusoids, the fundamental frequency is the lowest frequency sinusoidal in the sum of harmonically related frequencies, or the frequency of the difference between adjacent frequencies. In some contexts, the fundamental is usually abbreviated as f0 back}

Hannah Rosin (2025_06_12), Elon and the Genius Trap, ' Was Elon Musk ever a genius? Yes, he revolutionized the electric-car industry and space travel. Yes, he once seemed to represent America’s ability to innovate at the cutting edge of technology. But Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, and he doesn’t regularly appear in headlines as a prominent tech genius. In fact, many well-informed people probably don’t even know his name. So what makes one man merely wildly accomplished and another a genius? And which descriptor makes a man more likely to engage in an ego-crushing battle with the president? [. . .]
In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk with Helen Lewis, the author of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea, who explains how Musk has tanked his reputation in many ways: First, he alienated environmentalists by teaming up with Trump, and then he alienated Trump fans by insulting their hero. Another way is clear by looking at American culture’s historical relationship with “genius,” and how it tends to go wrong. Genius, it turns out, is less a series of accomplishments than a form of addiction. It traps the men who indulge it, and they often end up, like Musk, depleted. We talk with Lewis about what Musk has in common with Thomas Edison, how the psychedelics fit into the archetype, and what the possible paths are for Musk moving forward.' back

Jan Lanicek (2025_08_15), Friday essay: who was Anne Frank?, Review: The Many Lives of Anne Frank – Ruth Franklin (Yale University Press)
' Millions have read her diary, watched various renditions in theatres and on the screen, or visited exhibitions devoted to her story. Thousands queue in front of the house in Amsterdam, where she spent 760 days in the secret annex, hiding from the Gestapo and their Dutch collaborators.
People quote the most famous sentence from her diary, immortalised in the Hollywood film, saying that “in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart”.
The sentence was written in July 1944 by 15-year-old Jewish girl Anne Frank, three weeks before the capture of her family by the Nazis. It represents the innocence, perhaps naivety of an adolescent, who after the war became one of the most iconic symbols of the Nazi Holocaust.
The quote carries a universal message that good will eventually prevail. This has turned Anne’s legacy into an easily adoptable trope, serving activists and political agendas. But who, actually, was Anne Frank? And how did she differ from the “Anne Franks” that have emerged since the end of the war?' back

John von Neumann (2014), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, ' Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John von Neumann translated from the German by Robert T. Beyer (New Edition) edited by Nicholas A. Wheeler. Princeton UP Princeton & Oxford. Preface: ' This book is the realization of my long-held intention to someday use the resources of TEX to produce a more easily read version of Robert T. Beyer’s authorized English translation (Princeton University Press, 1955) of John von Neumann’s classic Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik (Springer, 1932).'This content downloaded from 129.127.145.240 on Sat, 30 May 2020 22:38:31 UTC back

Large language model - Wikipedia, Large language model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially language generation. The largest and most capable LLMs are generative pretrained transformers (GPTs), which are largely used in generative chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. LLMs can be fine-tuned for specific tasks or guided by prompt engineering.[1] These models acquire predictive power regarding syntax, semantics, and ontologies[2] inherent in human language corpora, but they also inherit inaccuracies and biases present in the data they are trained in.' back

Le tableau volé - Wikipedia, Le tableau volé - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Le Tableau volé est une comédie dramatique française réalisée par Pascal Bonitzer et sortie en 2024. Le scénario est imaginé à partir de l'histoire réelle du tableau Les Tournesols fanés disparu en 1942 et réapparu en 2004.
Synopsis
André, commissaire-priseur au sein de la prestigieuse maison de vente Scotie's, est contacté pour authentifier un tableau présumé d'Egon Schiele. D'abord sceptique, il reconnaît bientôt un tableau mystérieusement disparu depuis 1939.
À propos du tableau de Schiele
Le film est inspiré d'une histoire vraie. Le tableau d'Egon Schiele, Les Tournesols a été peint en 1914 sous les prémices de la guerre. Il s'est inspiré des Tournesols de Vincent van Gogh qu'il avait vus en 1906. Toutefois, il représente non des Tournesols glorieux et éblouissants comme Van Gogh pour célébrer l'arrivée de Gauguin à Arles en 1889, mais des Tournesols fanés car l'espérance meurt avec le commencement de la Première guerre mondiale.
Le tableau était estimé chez Christie's, en 2003, entre 4 et 6 millions de livres (entre 5,8 et 8,8 millions d'euros). Après une disparition de six décennies, il est vendu, en 2005, pour 11,7 millions de livres, soit 17,2 millions d'euros.' back

Lie Algebra - Wikipedia, Lie Algebra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In more detail: for any Lie group, the multiplication operation near the identity element 1 is commutative to first order. In other words, every Lie group G is (to first order) approximately a real vector space, namely the tangent space g to G at the identity. To second order, the group operation may be non-commutative, and the second-order terms describing the non-commutativity of G near the identity give g the structure of a Lie algebra. It is a remarkable fact that these second-order terms (the Lie algebra) completely determine the group structure of G near the identity. They even determine G globally, up to covering spaces. In physics, Lie groups appear as symmetry groups of physical systems, and their Lie algebras (tangent vectors near the identity) may be thought of as infinitesimal symmetry motions. Thus Lie algebras and their representations are used extensively in physics, notably in quantum mechanics and particle physics. ' back

Louis Menand (2025_08_11), The Lives and Loves of James Baldwin, ' An interviewer once asked James Baldwin if he’d ever write something without a message. “No writer who ever lived,” Baldwin said, “could have written a line without a message.” This is true. People write because they have something to say. Baldwin had something to say, and he spent his life saying it. But many who thought they got his message didn’t get it at all. [. . . ]
That message was simple. We’re afraid of love, because we’re afraid of exposing our true selves. To manage that fear, we invent meaningless categories—Black, white, homosexual, heterosexual—and “other” the groups we don’t belong to in order to avoid a reckoning with ourselves. In America, this manifests as “the race problem.” Until white Americans—or Americans who “think they are white,” as Baldwin sometimes put it—stop posing as innocents and confront who they are, until the country faces its history, until white people learn to love, there will never be genuine equality. [. . .]
But what even sympathetic audiences often failed to grasp—misled, perhaps, by Baldwin’s sermonic style—was that his message wasn’t just hortatory. He meant it literally. He didn’t believe in reform; he believed in revolution. Anything less than a total social reckoning—a complete psychological makeover of white America—was worthless.' back

Manley, D. B., & Taylor, C. S. (1996), Descartes Meditations - Trilingual Edition, ' The publication of this English-Latin-French edition of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is quite simply an experiment in electronic scholarship. We decided to make this edition available and to encourage its free distribution for scholarly purposes. The idea behind the experiment is to see how others involved in electronic scholarship might put these texts to use. We have no predetermined ideas of what such use may be when transformed from this origin. The texts have no hypertext annotations except for those used for navigation. We invite others to download this edition and to create their own hypertext annotated editions and then to publish those additions on their own Web servers for everyone to use.' back

Martin Kear (25_08_11), Beyond recognition: the challenges of creating a new Palestinian state are so formidable, is it even possible?, ' Australia will recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting in September, joining the United Kingdom, Canada and France in taking the historic step. Recognising a Palestinian state is at one level symbolic – it signals a growing global consensus behind the rights of Palestinians to have their own state. In the short term, it won’t impact the situation on the ground in Gaza.
Practically speaking, the formation of a future Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is far more difficult to achieve.

The Israeli government has ruled out a two-state solution and reacted with fury to the moves by the four G20 members to recognise Palestine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “shameful”. So, what are the political issues that need to be resolved before a Palestinian state becomes a reality? And what is the point of recognition if it doesn’t overcome these seemingly intractable obstacles? [. . .]
Finally, there are the conditions that Western governments have placed on recognition of a Palestinian state, which rob Palestinians of their agency.
Chief among these is the stipulation that Hamas will not play a role in the governance of a future Palestinian state. This has been backed by the Arab League, which has also called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish power in Gaza.
Fatah and Hamas are currently the only two movements in Palestinian politics capable of forming a government. In a May poll, 32% of respondents in both Gaza and the West Bank said they preferred Hamas, compared with 21% support for Fatah. One-third did not support either or had no opinion.
Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, is deeply unpopular, with 80% of Palestinians wanting him to resign.
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Michael Rovatsos (2025_08_12), GPT-5: has AI just plateaued? , ' According to OpenAI’s own definition, AGI would be “a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work”. Setting aside whether this is something humanity should be striving for, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s arguments for GPT-5 being a “significant step” in this direction sound remarkably unspectacular.
He claims GPT-5 is better at writing computer code than its predecessors. It is said to “hallucinate” a bit less, and is a bit better at following instructions – especially when they require following multiple steps and using other software. The model is also apparently safer and less “sycophantic”, because it will not deceive the user or provide potentially harmful information just to please them.
Altman does say that “GPT-5 is the first time that it really feels like talking to an expert in any topic, like a PhD-level expert”. Yet it still doesn’t have a clue about whether anything it says is accurate, as you can see from its attempt below to draw a map of North America.' back

Patrick E.Shea (2024_08_14) , US presidents have always used transactional foreign policy – but Trump does it differently, ' The US president, Donald Trump, watched on recently as the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan shook hands in the White House. They had just signed what Trump called a “peace deal” to end nearly four decades of conflict.
The deal grants the US exclusive rights to develop a transit corridor through southern Armenia, linking Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan. The White House says the corridor will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.x
Trump has positioned the US as the guarantor of security in the South Caucasus, packaging this as a commercial opportunity for American companies. This exemplifies what researchers call transactional foreign policy, a strategy that offers rewards or threatens costs to get others to act rather than persuading them through shared values.
US presidents have long mixed economic incentives with diplomacy. But Trump’s approach represents something very different. It’s a foreign policy that operates outside institutional constraints and targets democratic allies. It exploits American power for personal gain in ways no previous president has attempted. [. . .]
Share article Print article The US president, Donald Trump, watched on recently as the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan shook hands in the White House. They had just signed what Trump called a “peace deal” to end nearly four decades of conflict. The deal grants the US exclusive rights to develop a transit corridor through southern Armenia, linking Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan. The White House says the corridor will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. Trump has positioned the US as the guarantor of security in the South Caucasus, packaging this as a commercial opportunity for American companies. This exemplifies what researchers call transactional foreign policy, a strategy that offers rewards or threatens costs to get others to act rather than persuading them through shared values. US presidents have long mixed economic incentives with diplomacy. But Trump’s approach represents something very different. It’s a foreign policy that operates outside institutional constraints and targets democratic allies. It exploits American power for personal gain in ways no previous president has attempted. Trump shaking hands with Mohammed bin Salman. Trump greets the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, during a visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2025. Ali Haider / EPA US presidents have commonly used transactional approaches in their foreign policy. In the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt promised to protect Latin American governments from internal rebels and external European intervention to ensure debt payments to American bankers. This sometimes required the US military to take control of customhouses, as happened in Dominican Republic in 1905 and Cuba in 1906. Presidents Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge ordered similar military interventions in Nicaragua in 1911, Honduras in 1911 and 1912, Haiti in 1915 and Panama in 1926. Get expert voices that rise above the noise. In the mid-20th century, presidents Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy innovated foreign aid policy in an attempt to dampen the appeal of communism. They did so specifically through land reform policies. American officials viewed rural poverty in developing countries as fertile ground for communist recruitment during the cold war. So US aid was used to promote food price stabilisation and facilitate land distribution. Around the same time, Dwight Eisenhower applied financial pressure on the UK during the 1956 Suez crisis. Britain and France, coordinating with Israel, invaded Egypt to retake the critical Suez Canal waterway after it was nationalised. The US blocked British access to financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to force the withdrawal of its troops. More recently, Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal bundled sanctions relief with nuclear limits. And Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, coupled export controls with subsidies and tax credits to pull allies into a shared tech-security posture. As a result, Japan and the Netherlands limited the sale of semiconductor equipment to China. The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace negotiations also began under the Biden administration. It is not hard to imagine that a similar deal, without the Trump branding, would have occurred under a Kamala Harris presidency. [. . .]
Previous US presidents usually embedded transactional bargains within larger institutional projects such as Nato, the IMF, non-proliferation regimes or the liberal trade system. While those arrangements disproportionately benefited the US, they also produced global gains. Trump’s deals may yield benefit. The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement, for instance, could reduce the risk of conflict and unlock trade in the South Caucasus. But his approach represents a fundamentally different kind of American leadership – one that is undemocratic.'/ back

Richard Behiel, Electromagnetism as a Gauge Theory, ' "Why is electromagnetism a thing?" That's the question. In this video, we explore the answer given by gauge theory. In a nutshell, electromagnetism arises from local phase symmetry. But what does that mean, and how exactly does that work? That's what this video is all about!
This video is quite long and technical. Think of it as a video textbook, so you can skip around to different parts if you’d like. But I wanted to err on the side of rigor and thoroughness, to show comprehensively how local U(1) symmetry blossoms into electromagnetism. So the ideas are all there for you, but you don’t have to watch this in one sitting! ' back

Richard Behiel (2025_08_08), The Strong Nuclear Force as a Gauge Theory, Part 2: Group Theory , ' Hey everyone, today we'll be talking about the group theory involved with quantum chromodynamics, not just SU(3) and su(3), but also U(N) and u(N) in general. This will give us the ideas and vocabulary we'll need, to explore how local SU(3) symmetry blossoms into the strong force. back

Ronit Vered (2025_08_09), This Was One of the Last Bridges Between Jews and Arabs. Israel Demolished It, Too, ' On the morning of Thursday, July 31, Israeli military forces, accompanied by bulldozers, arrived at the site of one of the two propagation units of the Palestinian National Seed Bank in the West Bank city of Hebron. The bank, established in 2010, is dedicated to collecting, multiplying and preserving local plant seeds, with an emphasis on heirloom varieties of crops and plants of economic importance. Seeds stored in the bank's units, in which research is also conducted, are grown seasonally, in cycles, with an aim of keeping them viable for future generations. Each year, the Palestinian bank provides free seeds to hundreds of agricultural workers, in an effort to encourage the preservation of the genetic diversity of some 80 traditional varieties. - Advertisement - The main propagation unit, south of Hebron, included four dunams (about an acre) of cultivated land – this time of year, the plots were overflowing with tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, gourds and other summer crops – as well as a 50-square-meter metal structure that included a control room and space for storing equipment. But at 9 A.M. on that recent Thursday, according to Palestinian reports, Israeli Defense Forces soldiers arrived at the site, forcibly removed a Palestinian agricultural engineer from the premises and then used bulldozers to demolish the structure along with its contents: irrigation and monitoring systems, tools for cleaning and drying seeds and important documents relating to the agricultural research conducted there. [. . .] In an era when government ministers, coalition lawmakers and Jewish Israeli citizens are publicly denying Palestinians' humanity and their right to live on their land, amid escalating violent harassment by settlers in the West Bank – it's hard to fault those who claim that the destruction of this agricultural facility is part of a deliberate policy of the State of Israel. [. . .] But what happened that day struck my already-broken heart in particular because I'm very familiar with the Sisyphean and vital work of those who preserve heirloom seeds in Israel, in the area under the PA's authority and around the world. [. . .] Seeds are capsules of wisdom and beauty created by nature, shared by diverse peoples throughout human history. In the modern era, small banks of knowledge have also become economic tools in the hands of large corporations that produce hybrid seeds that farmers must buy anew each year, unlike the freely pollinated heirloom seeds that reproduce naturally. Seed keepers strive to preserve the biological and cultural diversity that once existed in the world, and to adapt it to our time. In a just world, in the kind of society I would like to live in, the Palestinian National Seed Bank and its Israeli counterpart would work together to preserve and share the biodiversity of local plants. (And since the Middle East is the cradle of the world's most important cultivated crops, the region's heirloom varieties are globally significant in terms of research.) But the world is far from just, and some of these traditional crops have become symbols – if not weapons – of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.' back

Ross Gittins (2025_08_13), Albanese is crying poor, but we’re losing billions a year from untaxed gas, The sad story of our misadventures in ensuring the nation benefits from the export of its gas is told in a report by the Australia Institute. To be exported, natural gas has to be liquified. We’ve built 10 liquefaction plants, five in Western Australia, three in Queensland and two in the Northern Territory.
Like all natural resources in the ground, gas is owned by the government. Businesses that wish to extract it have to buy it by paying a “royalty” to the government. Royalty for gas from onshore fields is paid to the state government, as in Queensland.
But gas from offshore fields in Commonwealth waters is the responsibility of the federal government. So the WA and NT plants should buy their gas from the Commonwealth. With one exception, however, the feds don’t levy royalty. Rather, they impose a “petroleum resource rent tax” on the exporters’ profits in lieu of royalty.
Trouble is, the poor design of the resource rent tax has meant little or no money has been collected. According to Treasury, “to date not a single LNG plant has paid any petroleum resource rent tax and many are not expected to pay any significant amounts until the 2030s”. The total value of our natural gas exports over the four years to June 2024 was $265 billion, 56 per cent of which was gas paying no royalties, state or federal.
The total value of our natural gas exports over the four years to June 2024 was $265 billion, 56 per cent of which was gas paying no royalties, state or federal.
Nor do the big multinational exporters of gas – including Exxon, Shell and Chevron – seem to pay much company tax. The Australian Taxation Office has labelled the oil and gas industry “systematic non-payers” of tax.
The Australia Institute report finds that the total value of our natural gas exports over the four years to June 2024 was $265 billion. It estimates that 56 per cent of this resulted in no royalties, state or federal.
“This means that more than half the gas exported from Australia is given for free to the companies exporting it,” it says.' back

Ryan Mac, Kate Conger & Rebecca F. Elliott (2026_06_02), Elon Musk Returns to His Tech Empire, Facing Questions of Inattention, ' Elon Musk recently swapped his Dark MAGA hat and government “Tech Support” garb for his old “Occupy Mars” T-shirt, a reference to his rocket company SpaceX’s mission to colonize the red planet.
He embarked on a media blitz, granting interviews to news outlets that he had previously avoided and saying he was focused on SpaceX and discussing his electric automaker Tesla.
And on social media, he posted that he was again spending “24/7 at work” and sleeping in his companies’ factories and server rooms.
As Mr. Musk steps away from Washington and his Department of Government Efficiency, President Trump’s “first buddy” is shifting back to his role as a business titan. But that move is not likely to come easy after Mr. Musk spent months backing Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and dismantling parts of the federal government, raising concerns that he had become an absentee leader at his various enterprises, including SpaceX, Tesla, the artificial intelligence company xAI and the social media platform X.' back

Suzanne Smith (2025_08_10), Child's death drives churches to call out coercive control and cult-like behaviour, ' How did one man convince 13 other people to let an eight-year-old girl die? This is the question haunting many people of faith in the southern Queensland town of Toowoomba. Elizabeth Struhs died after members of a cult called The Saints withdrew her medication for her type 1 diabetes. They prayed and sang around her until she perished. Then they prayed to God for her resurrection. Fourteen members of The Saints, including Elizabeth's parents, are now serving jail time for manslaughter. The leader of the group is Brendan Stevens, a self-styled pastor who exerted absolute control. He taught followers that doctors and medications were evil, and that only God could heal.' back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek (2008), Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3)) Measurements transfer information about a system to the apparatus, and then further on – to observers and (often inadvertently) to the environment. I show that even imperfect copying essential in such situations restricts possible unperturbed outcomes to an orthogonal subset of all possible states of the system, thus breaking the unitary symmetry of its Hilbert space implied by the quantum superposition principle. Preferred outcome states emerge as a result. They provide framework for the “wavepacket collapse”, designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the measured observable by specifying its eigenstates.' back