Author: nick
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Recent data on corporate mergers and acquisitions reveal a trend of fewer and fewer individual deals of larger and larger values, with “megadeals” (that is, deals valued over $5 billion) coming to dominate the world of industry consolidation. A June report from PwC notes: M&A has joined this supersize party. This year, we’ve seen the largest ever deals in sectors from utilities to streaming to real estate investment trusts. Global deal value is on track to hit $4tn in 2026, up by about 13% year-on-year, even though deal volumes are declining. M&A transactions above $5bn have made up almost…
A pox upon the supermarkets who start showing Halloween decorations in August! Mystery deepens over ‘vampire’ woman buried with sickle across her neck. A man took synthetic testosterone, and started hearing voices. What will we eat if we live on the Moon or Mars? Lifeforms can survive on ‘significant’ regions of the Moon, study finds. From grainy orbs to cinematic hauntings: How YouTube reinvented the ghost investigation. BoA Revival invites our hermano Joshua Cutchin to talk about his newest book, The Inverted Path. What really happened on Easter island? (Archived link) Medicinal mushroom supplements linked to a sudden relapse of…
Photo Credit: Patrick Newman It is an exceedingly rare thing that I eagerly await the release of a book. However, Patrick Newman’s second installment in his series on the history of cronyism in the United States, just published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is precisely that. Indeed, ever since the release of the first installment in 2021, Cronyism: Liberty Versus Power in Early America, 1607-1849 was released, I and other similarly impressed readers have been checking regularly for updates as to the progress of the second installment. Well, it has arrived and it does not disappoint! In Cronyism: Rise…
Image by Mike Newbry . British Columbia, Canada is my home and once again, it’s burning. More than 100 fires were burning across the province as B.C. declared a state of emergency. Across the border, Washington and Oregon are burning too as wildfires spread through the American West. Across the Atlantic, wildfires have swept through France, Spain, Greece, Croatia and Germany. And despite all that, so much mainstream discussion about climate change is inadequate. A whole lot of carbon talk while barely discussing power. And if we want to understand the power which results in a burning planet, eventually we have…
U.N. spokespeople are deflecting questions about a Drop Site News investigation of alleged spying by staffer Yahav Lichner in 2014 and 2015, Dulcie Leimbach and Damilola Banjo report. Ron Prosor, at right, Israel’s U.N. ambassador at the time, in Israel in February 2012 with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe) By Dulcie Leimbach and Damilola BanjoPassBlue Two weeks since news broke that an Israeli mole working inside the United Nations was leaking confidential information years ago to Israeli diplomats, the organization has released few facts about the allegations against Yahav Lichner. That means there are more questions than answers…
What it would take to win back the zoomers. Source link
Hasn’t Bill O’Reilly done enough harm beating the drums for America’s failed foreign wars? But he’s still around somewhere, trying to top his earlier act with more of his trademark fever-swamp rants, now offering advice to President Donald Trump on the Iran War. His latest advice is the stuff of world historic war crimes. The danger is acute. The president watches Fox News “incessantly.” No one is real in Trump-world unless they are seen on TV. Those who are real assume a larger-than-life influence if they’ve been Fox fixtures. The passageway between Fox News and the Trump administration is like…
Photograph Source: U.S. Secretary of Defense – Public Domain In geopolitics, words do matter, and sometimes a deletion says a lot more than a thousand-page defense white paper. The Pentagon’s recent move to quietly strip the word “Indo” from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, reverting to its Cold War-era title of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), was officially framed as a “nostalgic gesture” to the command’s history. But the concept of “Indo-Pacific” was never just about geographical description. It was a deliberate geopolitical framework engineered to merge two distinct oceans into a single strategic theater by positioning New Delhi as a counterweight to Beijing.…
The Strange Politics of the AI Backlash Source link
Abhari, R., & Horvát, E.-Á. (2025). “They only silence the truth”: COVID-19 retractions and the politicization of science. Public Understanding of Science, 34(3), 291–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625241290142 Albarracín, D., Fayaz-Farkhad, B., & Granados Samayoa, J. A. (2024). Determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(6), 377–392. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00305-0 Albarracin, D., Romer, D., Jones, C., Jamieson, K. H., & Jamieson, P. (2018). Misleading claims about tobacco products in YouTube videos: Experimental effects of misinformation on unhealthy attitudes. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20(6), Article e229. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.9959 Atkinson, M., Ntontis, E., Neville, F., & Reicher, S. (2023).…