The AI Boom has reshaped the global economy, bringing with it a wide range of consequences. While companies like Anthropic and OpenAI boast record growth, raising $30 billion and $122 billion in their latest funding rounds respectively, workers seeking entry-level positions are forced to adapt to an increasingly uncertain job market. Yet there is one place that has benefited enormously from the AI Boom: Taiwan. The AI Boom has done wonders for the island’s economy, which is h

In Nepal, nearly eight hundred are dead, thirty-thousand still unaccounted for, because the Bagmati River rose past every danger mark the state painted on its banks. The roads into Kathmandu were erased so thoroughly that the capital was, for a few days, an island reachable only by helicopter. Assam drowned as it has for sixty years, until one July night a hundred died in the Sivasagar district. A ninety-seven-year-old woman was carried out of her home on a raft made of banan

Benjamin Bloom once said: “Education must be increasingly concerned about the fullest development of all children and youth, and it will be the responsibility of the schools to seek learning conditions which will enable each individual to reach the highest level of learning possible.” For almost forty years, the “2 Sigma Problem” presented by Benjamin Bloom has presented an opportunity for Generative AI to revolutionize education. Bloom’s research demonstrated that the aver

Imagine these scenarios: A child falls into a pond and is unable to swim. In one case, a bystander notices cameras recording the scene and, motivated to preserve their good reputation, jumps in and successfully saves the child. In a second case, a bystander sees the child slip, and with the intention of saving them, jumps in; however, a crocodile reaches the child first, and they fail to save them. Although the first bystander acts from a selfish motive, they succeed in savi

In a period defined by stagnant productivity across the United Kingdom — labour productivity growth slowed from an annual average of 1.9–2.1% in the decade before the 2008 financial crisis to roughly 0.4–0.6% thereafter (Martin et al., 2025) — and by the long-term decline of deregulated of local bus networks, which saw journeys outside London fall by 35-50% since 1986 (Alan Howes Associates, 2011), Andy Burnham’s “Manchester Model” has emerged as an alternative to centralized

There is a particular kind of insect that survives nuclear winters, chemical warfare, and every extermination attempt humanity has thrown at it. This summer, thousands of India's brightest young minds decided that was the animal they wanted to be. To understand why tens of thousands of 19-year-olds spent their summer camped on pavement instead of preparing for medical school, you have to rewind to the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test of 2024; the exam that first cracke

The National Democratic Alliance in December 2021 repealed three farm laws it had spent months insisting were necessary and non-negotiable. Coincidentally, they were timed to precede state elections that the government could not afford to lose, while nothing in the underlying shape of agricultural markets was rebuilt in their place. It cost the government nothing other than the appearance of having lost. Perhaps mathematics works differently in politics, for this was the chea

How a regional peace agreement bolsters major U.S. supply chains for batteries, grids, and clean energy technologies In December 2025, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda confirmed and began implementing a U.S.-brokered peace agreement intended to reduce armed conflict in eastern Congo and stabilize cross-border relations [1]. The agreement, referred to as the DRC–Rwanda Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity, builds on a preliminary diplomatic agreemen

Imagine a jury instructed to look at a flickering courtroom monitor, watching grainy CCTV footage of a shop store front at midnight. Half of the jury is convinced that they saw the defendant's hand slip around a knife's hilt; whilst the other half insists it is nothing but a mere shadow cast by a passing car. This then begs the question are they witnessing two different ‘facts,’ or are their intellects abstracting distinct interpretations of the one real event? In other word

Should We Be Polite to ChatGPT? A Confucian Insight It’s 2 a.m. and Roy, an investment banker, is trying to figure out a company valuation using ChatGPT. Restlessly, he types: “You’re useless. Give me the correct valuation, you piece of garbage.” Hours later, at sunrise, he starts his shift by greeting his boss: “Good morning, Mr. Brown. What do you think of my proposal for the company valuation strategy?” A study published in 2025 exposed how impolite prompts consistently o

Germany deployed a 2-phase fiscal stimulus in response to the 2008-2009 global financial crisis (German GDP contracted by 2.5% in 2009), which totalled ~€82 billion (3.5% of GDP over 2009–2010). The package included corporate tax cuts, direct transfer payments to vulnerable demographics, as well as a €2,500 car scrappage premium (government incentive to replace old polluting vehicles). As an export-oriented economy – with exports accounting for over 40% of GDP – Germany was

Introduction Humanity has never been promised an uninterrupted road to progression: it is purely the people who persevere with a starved desire for moral justice, even in the evil glare of injustice, who triumph over the oppressor and pave the way for future generations to thrive. Of course, this metaphor should be taken with a grain of salt, as there are such periods of time when the powerless remained powerless long enough never to see their oppressors toppled by the great

Often, yes, at least when the task is communicative: when we ask ChatGPT to explain, write, advise, or persuade. The "should" is instrumental-epistemic: if your aim is better inquiry, cooperative register often helps. This is not a moral claim about owing the machine anything, and the recommendation is conditional, not universal. "Polite" needs disambiguating. Moral courtesy extended to a being with welfare does not apply here; ChatGPT very likely lacks it. Surface markers, "

There is a universal human aversion to incest. This is often described by psychologists as ‘moral dumbfounding’, because it is so visceral and has managed to persist despite common individuals being unable to provide rational justifications for it. Family members tend to feel responsible for one another, so incest, even consensual, could be a form of exploitation. It is not considered ethically permissible to have intercourse in fiduciary relationships, like teachers are to s

It is the year 2125, and a student named Brina asks in her history class, “Mrs. Brown, why did the people back in 2025 allow algorithms like the ‘Credit Score’ and ‘Social Engagement Metrics’ to guide their lives?” For people of that time further in the future, it is difficult to understand why society believed in algorithms to optimize all aspects of their daily lives. The 21st century can be seen as the “Age of Optimization,” where human complexity was flattened into digita

Hindi has a word for the sycophant, and it is chamcha, the spoon. It is often said that this is because a spoon owns nothing. It carries food from the hand that has it to the mouth, and when the meal is over, it is washed and put back in the drawer. It has no appetite of its own and no opinion on the dish. It is judged entirely by how it does its work. Then, there is makkhan lagana, to apply butter. There is jee-huzoori, and there is khushamad, from Persia, which refer to mor

Federal purchasing power used to slow coal plant closures and prioritise grid reliability In February 2026, the U.S. administration ordered the Department of Defense to purchase electricity generated from coal-fired power plants, one of the most direct federal interventions in power markets in recent years.[1] The move is designed to extend the operating life of ageing coal facilities scheduled for retirement, as coal’s share of U.S. electricity generation hovers at around 16

Imagine turning on your kitchen faucet and watching flames shoot out instead of water. This is a real consequence of fracking, and its adverse impacts have changed our planet drastically. From earthquakes to enormous water usage, fracking is an unsafe path that we cannot afford to take. Fracking is a process to get natural gas and oil from deep underground rock formations, where companies pump different substances such as sand, water, and chemicals into the ground at a high p

Neil Lawrence once said: “We have built computers that make errors, but we have not built machines that understand or suffer the consequences of those errors” (Lawrence). This insight captures a central dilemma of artificial intelligence: while AI systems increasingly shape human lives, they remain incapable of bearing moral responsibility for the harms they may cause. A world-changing revolution is happening as a result of Artificial Intelligence (AI) diversification. Nowad

Every marriage has an origin story that its constituents enjoy telling at dinner parties. Liberalism and nationalism, for example, have been married for over two centuries. If you ask either one how they met, they’ll tell you it was the French Revolution. But these two ideas should have never worked. “The Universal, Democratic, and Social Republic: The Pact Between Nations” by Frederic Sorrieu Liberalism claims each person has rights simply by virtue of being a person. These