Friday, May 8, 2026
ArchiveDavid Reich – Why the Bronze Age was an inflection point in human evolution
David Reich's new paper finds human evolution didn't slow after agriculture — it sped up dramatically. The Bronze Age pushed cognitive performance up a full standard deviation. This rewrites the timeline.
Hormuz Transits Halted Since Tuesday as US, Iran Clash
The world's most important oil chokepoint is shut. Commercial shipping through Hormuz has been halted since Tuesday after US-Iran clashes overnight. This is the economic escalation everyone feared.
The 2025 Alaskan Tsunami That Measured 1578 Feet Tall
Last August, a landslide triggered a wave taller than all but 13 of the world's tallest buildings in an Alaskan fjord. Twenty cruise ships had passed through that week. A new Science paper has the details.
Trump Exempted Some of the Nation’s Biggest Polluters From Air Quality Rules. All It Took Was an Email.
ProPublica got the emails. Major polluters requested Clean Air Act exemptions from the Trump EPA and got them through informal correspondence. The paper trail is damning and specific.
Do We Think Too Much About the Future?
Futurism is a modern invention. For most of history, humans didn't try predicting what comes next. This New Yorker essay makes a surprisingly strong case that they were onto something.