Vatican Pool
Death of Pope Francis
 

2025 April 22

A Christian Jeremiad

John Gray

Western societies are still saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions. Christianity led to an ethical revolution, where the lowest and most oppressed became the touchstone of morality.
Woke is not an assault on Christianity but an impoverished and extreme version of it. Emptied of forgiveness and original sin, woke is a religion of merciless punishment of nonconformists. Western Christendom mirrors the confusion of the zeitgeist.
Civilization and barbarism succeed one another in an unending cycle. In pagan antiquity, this was a commonplace. For modern humanists, it is an intolerable truth. Western disorder is ultimately religious in origin.
America is in the throes of a spiritual upheaval. The MAGA movement will lead to economic failure. Yet there will be no reversion to liberal humanism. Defenders of liberalism are a bewildered remnant, silenced by a cacophony of strange gods.
American upheaval has not dented elite faith in science. Tech bros are investing in research to escape biological death with money and resources most people will never possess. The Singularity is a materialist rendition of the Christian rapture.
In Europe, the eclipse of humanism leads to Islamism and ethnic nationalism. Radical Islamism ends multiculturalism and secularism. The West is destined to surrender to barbarism.

AR Gray is getting gloomier as he ages. I diagnose an insufficient faith in the ability of scientists to transform the world for the better. Islamism may trash Europe, but it can't touch the majesty and power of big science and big tech.

 

Allen Institute for Brain Science
Functional connectome: 1.6 PB 3D map of 1 mm³ of mouse visual cortex revealing 75,000 neurons with physiology
and 523 million synapses spanning all 6 layers of primary visual cortex in 3 higher visual areas
Functional connectomics spanning multiple areas of mouse visual cortex − bioRχiv
 

2025 April 18

LLMs That Skip Language

Anil Ananthaswamy

Many forms of thought and reasoning skip the medium of words and grammar.
Large language models (LLMs) process information in mathematical spaces. They are built using deep neural networks, which are effectively complicated math functions in a latent space.
A transformer LLM breaks an input text into tokens and converts them into numerical embeddings. The embeddings go through its layers, each layer feeding its results into the next layer, until each embedding is connected to every other. The final layer generates a hidden state that predicts the next token. The model appends this token to the initial input and repeats until completion.
The model converts token embeddings into a hidden state and then back into token embeddings over and over. This is inefficient and may lose information. Looping the hidden state in a model directly back to input embeddings lets the model process information within the latent space, rather than in word space.
A team designed and trained a transformer that not only learned to reason in latent space, but also figured out when to stop and switch back to language. The LLM increased its number of layers on demand by repeatedly reusing a central block of layers before going back to tokens. The model was trained from scratch and learns for itself how often to use the recurrent block for a problem.
LLMs that reason without words could go beyond human thinking.

AR Such recurrent looping to refine the output is a characteristic of cerebral thought, where thalamo-cortical looping can raise the contents to consciousness − or so it seems to me.
 

2025 April 17

Extraterrestrial Life

Hannah Devlin

JWST observations of planet K2‑18b, 124 light years from Earth, show spectral prints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS). The findings, at 3σ level of statistical significance, suggest high concentrations of DMS or DMDS.
Cambridge astrophysicist and observation team leader Nikku Madhusudhan: "This is the strongest evidence to date for a biological activity beyond the solar system .. This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we're alone in the universe is one we're capable of answering."
K2‑18b is nearly nine times as massive as Earth and orbits in the habitable zone of a cool red dwarf less than half the size of the Sun. Conditions on K2‑18b remain disputed. The Cambridge team favor an ocean scenario.

Strongest evidence of alien life yet
Alex Wilkins

Astronomers first discovered the exoplanet K2‑18b in 2015. About eight times as massive as Earth and orbiting a star 124 light years away from us, in the habitable zone. Observations in 2019 found evidence of water vapor, suggesting the planet may be covered in oceans.
The Cambridge team used the JWST to look at K2‑18b's atmosphere in IR light and found a strong signal for DMS and DMDS, over 10 parts per million, thousands of times greater than in Earth's atmosphere.
The team estimate that 16−24 hours of further observations with JWST could help them reach the 5σ level of confidence, but getting to 5σ might be impossible due to the noise in the data.
Madhusudhan: "We cannot, at this stage, make the claim that, even if we detect DMS and DMDS, that it is due to life .. But if you take published studies so far, then there is no mechanism that can explain what we are seeing without life."

AR Exciting if confirmed. Any science fiction buff knows there's life in abundance out there anyway, but there's nothing like 5σ confidence to convince the religious and other skeptics.
 

2025 April 16

The Origins of Quantum Theory

Carlo Rovelli

In 1900, Max Planck came up with an equation: E = hf. It connects the energy E and the frequency f of black-body radiation via a new constant h, now known as Planck's constant.
In 1905, Albert Einstein saw that light is made of quanta, each having energy E = hf. His quanta predicted the photoelectric effect.
In Denmark, Niels Bohr saw that the structure of atoms could be understood if electrons orbit atomic nucleus in quantized orbits. These orbits can only have quantized energies. Electrons jump from one orbit to the other, emitting photons.
In 1925, Werner Heisenberg produced a calculation that treated the position of an electron not as a single variable but as a matrix, with rows and columns indicating the initial and final orbit of a quantum jump.
In Göttingen, his tutor Max Born saw the role of non-commuting quantities: The position X and the momentum P of an electron satisfy the equation |XP − PX| = ih/2π, where h is the Planck constant and i is √−1.
This is the core of quantum theory: If we first measure the position of a particle and then its velocity, we can find the result is different from measuring first velocity, then position. We cannot exactly determine the position and velocity of an electron simultaneously.
Max Born divined the equation |XP − PX| = ih/2π.
In 1926, Erwin Schrödinger developed an idea introduced by Louis de Broglie that electrons might also be waves, like photons. Schrödinger guessed the equation for these waves.
Schrödinger's wave mechanics is no clearer than matrix mechanics. Both represent the information one physical system has about another. This reading of quantum phenomena is relational.
Quantum phenomena tell us that the world is probabilistic and granular at the scale fixed by the Planck constant. Reality is constituted by manifestations of physical systems to one another.

AR Carlo Rovelli is a good guide to this history. Following my own extensive investigations, I agree that Max Born deserves more prominence in the story, and Erwin Schrödinger less.
 

2025 April 13

The Neuroscience of Limerence

Tom Bellamy

As a neuroscience student, I met and fell deeply, absurdly in love with the woman who would become my wife. Things only went wrong when I accidentally became infatuated with a colleague at work. The delirious highs of adolescent crushes were back, but now laced with guilt.
Dorothy Tenno, author of Love and Limerence: the Experience of Being in Love, invented the term "limerence" to describe an intoxicating early phase of love defined by intense euphoria, a profound sense of emotional connection, mood swings, intrusive thoughts, overarousal, obsessive infatuation, and involuntary craving for the other person.
We can now make sense of limerence in neuroscience. Under the right conditions, the beloved triggers an extraordinary natural high. If the limerence persists unresolved, the neural systems can be driven into a state of supernormal activation that resembles an addiction.
I started a blog. I bought the domain name livingwithlimerence.com and started writing under a pseudonym. The site grew into a community. At least a half of the population have experienced limerence. Of those people, half again had it so badly that the addiction damaged their lives.
Limerence is equally common in men and women. It is a bonding style characterised by uncertainty and insecurity and is thought to arise from unreliable care during infancy and childhood.
After seven years, I wrote a book, Smitten, about limerence, how to make sense of it, and how to recover from it.

AR Intriguing − I hope I'm old and wise enough to be freed of this problem.
 

2025 April 11

Learning to Lead

Jim Mattis, Bing West

"If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you."

US illiteracy
David Brooks

OECD head of education and skills Andreas Schleicher: "30% of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10‑year‑old child."
A lot of Americans are disengaging from the whole idea of mental effort and mental training. As we spend time on our screens, we're abandoning the idea that you should work hard to improve your capacity for wisdom and judgment all the days of your life.
Stolen Focus author Johann Hari: "The world is complex and requires steady focus to be understood; it needs to be thought about and comprehended slowly."
Trump's tariff policy is based on false assumptions, rests on no coherent argument in its favor, relies on no empirical evidence, and has almost no experts on its side. Producing something this stupid is the achievement of a lifetime of incuriosity and resistance to reading or evidence.

AR Maybe America needs a military coup that instals retired US Marines general and former US secretary of defense "Mad Dog" Mattis as interim president.
 

2025 April 10

Global Stocks Soar

Financial Times

Trump backs down, sets tariffs at 125% for China, cuts them to 10% for rest of world.

AR Setting rates on a whim like this, with no warning, is still ruinous. The world economy becomes a casino, rigged by a man who went bankrupt six times trying to run casinos during his business career. Get rid of him before he does any more damage.
 

2025 April 7

Seasonal Blessings?

David French

White House Faith Office senior adviser Paula White offers her supporters seven supernatural blessings for the Easter season:
If you "honor God" during the period of Passover and Easter, "God will assign an angel to you, he'll be an enemy to your enemies, he'll give you prosperity, he'll take sickness away from you, he will give you long life, he'll bring increase in inheritance, and he'll bring a special year of blessing."
An offering to Paula White Ministries of $1,000 or more will also bring you a Waterford crystal cross.

AR This US "administration" has completely lost any mooring in reason and good sense.
 

2025 April 5

Consciousness: Thalamo-Cortical Loops

Science/Nature

The cerebral cortex and the thalamus are active when their owner is aware of specific thoughts.
Researchers studied the brain signals from participants with thin electrodes deep in their brains and measured conscious awareness. The participants were asked to move their eyes to show they saw an icon flash onto a screen − they noticed it flash about half the time. The researchers recorded neural activity in multiple regions of the brain, including the thalamus and prefrontal cortex.
During awareness, thalamo-cortical activity appeared earlier and seemed to be coordinated.

AR This is interesting confirmation of something I firmly expected already. In fact, I recall that such coordinated activation − in recurrent thalamo-cortical loops − was central to the story neurologist Rodolfo Llinás told at the NYAS meeting "The Self: From Soul to Brain" in New York in 2002 and was already strongly implicated in Nobelist Gerald Edelman's "re-entrant network" story. Edelman's young collaborator Giulio Tononi's more recent integrated information theory seems to presuppose the same thalamo-cortical looping behind consciousness.
 

2025 April 3

Evolution of Complexity

Philip Ball

In classical information theory, the complexity of a bit string reflects its algorithmic compressibility: Highly compressible, low complexity; less compressible, high complexity.
In biology, the functional information of a molecule reflects how many other molecules of the same size can do the same task just as well. Functional information shows how complex systems like living organisms evolve in time.
Evolution selects entities richer in functional information. In algorithmic evolution experiments, the increase in functional information sometimes happened in sudden jumps, as in biological evolution. Given functional information, such jumps in evolution raise entropy.
Evolving objects access a new landscape of ways to self-organize. The selection criteria for evolution also change. The new landscape offers possibilities unseen in advance. Evolutionary jumps are like phase transitions in physics.
Functional information is contextual. The appearance of new functions in evolution is unpredictable. New functions can dictate how a system then evolves. Evolution extends its own possibility space. Life evolves into the unknown.
Recall Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Evolution tends to increase complexity. For most things, it's impossible to calculate functional information even in principle.

AR Now I see the logic here. It's good. Like phase changes, evolution opens new worlds of possibility. Despite physics, math says our future is open.

 

AR
"Oh, to be in England, now that April's here."
 

2025 April 2

Trump Declares World Trade War

BBC News

New US tariffs: 20% for imports from EU, 10% for imports from UK, etc.

AR In a war of America versus the world, who wins?
 

2025 April 1

Statement Supporting Science

Ca 1900 scientists

We all rely on science. Science gave us the smartphones in our pockets, the navigation systems in our cars, and life-saving medical care. We count on engineers when we drive across bridges and fly in airplanes. Businesses and farmers rely on science and engineering for product innovation, technological advances, and weather forecasting. Science helps humanity protect the planet and keeps pollutants and toxins out of our air, water, and food.
For over 80 years, wise investments by the US government have built up the nation's research enterprise, making it the envy of the world. Astoundingly, the Trump administration is destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.
The undersigned are elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine ..

AR Probably won't do any good, but worth stating for the record.

 

Leonardo
Defending Europe: Eurofighter Typhoon strike jets
European air forces are taking delivery of US F‑35 stealth jets that may only be deployed on missions
approved by the current US administration, who can disable them via their automatic software updates.
This restriction breaches European sovereignty and constitutes grounds for canceling further deliveries
before the strategic loophole becomes catastrophic.
 

2025 March 31

America vs Europe

Phillips Payson O'Brien

Europe depends on American military protection. MAGA leaders say Europeans have manipulated the United States for decades, while Europeans enjoy their lavish welfare states.
European leaders believe they have been dutifully following US direction on geopolitical matters for 80 years. Europeans have subordinated their fate to the desires of the United States.
NATO may already be doomed. The NATO treaty reflected a political consensus among Americans that a free and democratic Europe was in their interest. This policy was a success.
Trump America is moving closer to Putin Russia. The Trump administration has deprived Ukraine of weapons and intelligence at crucial moments and is helping Russia to lift sanctions.
European leaders have outsourced their strategic thinking for so long that they can no longer fight by themselves. They hoped to maintain the Atlantic alliance for a few more years.
Europe has underfunded its defense for more than 30 years. European governments must spend more on defense, more efficiently. They must help Ukraine survive to protect themselves.
Europe can rebuild its strategic thinking and capabilities and relearn how to protect its freedom and liberties. Europe must save itself.

AR Memo to Europeans: Time to brace up.

 

French Embassy in the United States
European leaders affirm their support for Ukraine at a Paris summit, 2025-03-27
French president Emmanuel Macron: "Ukraine had the courage to accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire ..
Since that Ukrainian announcement, there has been no Russian response."
British prime minister Keir Starmer: "It's clear the Russians are .. playing games and then playing for time."
 

2025 March 30

America, Britain, Europe

Simon Tisdall

America spells trouble for Britain. The US−UK "special relationship" is an embarrassing liability.
Donald Trump says American altruism is exploited by "freeloading" European NATO allies. Tosh. Since 1945, Washington has viewed Europe as its first line of defence against Russia. Germany was its preferred cold war battlefield, Britain its airfield.
Claims that Americans saved Europe in WW2 are overblown. Postwar Britain, devastated and penniless, watched as the US grabbed its global markets and military bases.
Trump sides with Russia and betrays Ukraine and Europe. For such calamities, a weak Europe shares some blame. But Britain and Europe feel locked in a toxic relationship from which there is no escape. The American hegemon has always exacted onerous tribute.
Brexit Britain faces a special problem. Its nuclear weapons, armed forces, security services, defence industries, financial markets, and export businesses are inextricably in thrall to the US imperium.
American rudeness and condescension came from Britain. Ugly Americans learned their imperial arrogance from us. Trump has only added debasement and corruption of the US constitutional and democratic tradition.
The MAGA spasm will pass. But there is no going back: Britain will have to choose.

AR More than any other European country, the UK is a US vassal state. This humiliation must end. Within the EU, the UK is one among equals − a much more congenial relationship.
 

2025 March 28

Hegel on History

Johnny Lyons

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argued that not only has human nature transformed radically and irreversibly over time but that this change has a direction.
Richard Bourke holds the chair in the history of political thought at the University of Cambridge. In his latest book, he aims to:
•  Explain Hegel's notion of world revolutions, especially the French Revolution
•  Depict Hegel's understanding of the historical backdrop from which that revolution arose
•  Consider the reception of Hegel's thought in the twentieth century
Bourke regards the malaise afflicting contemporary culture as a denial of the accomplishments of human history. He says Hegel can help us to see rejection of Enlightenment values as spurious. Hegel understood history in this spirit: "Try again, fail again, fail better."
Bourke shows that a close reading of Hegel's Philosophy of History offers an antidote to the myth of the fresh start and to an unduly dismissive view of our current norms and ideals.
Bourke elucidates and clarifies Hegel's view of human history as progressing more like a game of Snakes and Ladders than like an elevator going up. He shows how Hegel made his breakthroughs by standing on the shoulders of his great predecessor Immanuel Kant.
Bourke asks whether intellectual history should adhere to revivalism (seeking to resuscitate past ideas) or historicism (accepting the pastness of the past). The founders of the Cambridge school of the history of ideas tend to moralize by reviving outmoded ideas, but intellectual historians should diagnose rather than moralize.
Hegel: "The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom."

AR I have been contemplating Hegel's philosophy of history for fifty years now. I still think there's something in it. For a modern but completely different − yet serendipitously similar in its drift − take on the direction of progress, see Daniel Dennett's book Freedom Evolves (2003).
 

2025 March 26

Europe Talks Tough, Lack Unity

Steven Erlanger, Jeanna Smialek

European leaders have gotten the message from Washington and are talking tough on Ukraine against a hostile Trump administration.
But there is a gap between talk and action. The Dutch and others are not fans of raising collective debt for defense. Keeping Hungary on board is ever more difficult.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen (VDL) announced a "ReArm Europe" plan for billions more for the military, but Italy and Spain secured a rebrand to the "Readiness 2030" plan.
EU chief foreign and security official Kaja Kallas wants to support Ukraine as a first line of European defense against Russia. But her effort to get the EU to provide up to €40 billion to Ukraine by a levy on member states failed. Italy, Slovakia, and France also rejected her backup proposal for €5 billion.
VDL sold her rearmament or readiness plan with a headline figure of €800 billion. But only €150 billion of that is real money, available as long-term loans. The rest is a notional figure, a permission for member states to borrow for defense in national budgets.
France wants a high percentage of European content and manufacture for weapons bought with the new loans, and wants to exclude American, British, and Canadian companies. France is also blocking a draft EU defense agreement with Britain.
Out of 27 EU states, 23 are also NATO members, including about 95% of EU citizens. NATO will raise its goal for military spending to close to 3.5% of GDP. Trump is demanding that NATO members pay up to 5% of GDP on defense (the United States spends about 3.4%).
Reinforcing concerns in Europe that America may no longer be a reliable partner was the discussion among top Trump administration officials of the US strike on Yemen revealed by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic.
US VP JD Vance: "I just hate bailing out the Europeans again."
Britain and France propose a European reassurance force in Ukraine once a peace settlement is reached. No other EU country has volunteered to serve in it. Russia and Ukraine have agreed to stop attacks on ships in the Black Sea, but Russians demand an end to restrictions on their agricultural exports.
VDL talks of making Ukraine a steel porcupine. This is not a security guarantee but an endless commitment to supporting Ukraine.

AR I can see why Trump team members use words like "pathetic" to describe European disunity, macho posturing, and unpreparedness over defending themselves and Ukraine.

 

AR
With Violetta at a South Bank pub in London celebrating the publication of her Festschrift Pomiędzy folklorem a folkloryzmem:
Publikacja z okazji jubileuszu 55-lecia pracy naukowej prof. dr hab. Violetty Krawczyk-Wasilewskiej
The book includes my article "A Lifetime in Logic and Philosophy" (preprint)
 

2025 March 24

Will Machines Ever Become Conscious?

Christof Koch

A system is conscious if there is something it is like to be it. Our intelligence and consciousness are consequences of the natural causal powers of our brain.
The global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT) says the brain has architectural features that give rise to consciousness. The brain's cortex hosts a workspace instantiated by a network of pyramidal neurons linked to far-flung cortical regions. When activity in one or more regions exceeds a threshold, it triggers a wave of neural excitation that spreads throughout the neuronal workspace. That signaling becomes available to other processes. Globally broadcasting this information renders it conscious.
Integrated information theory (IIT) starts with experience and proceeds to the activation of synaptic circuits that determine how it feels. Integrated information, Φ (Phi), quantifies how much intrinsic causal power a mechanism possesses. For any system, the more its current state specifies its cause (its input) and its effect (its output), the more causal power it possesses. Greater Φ, more conscious; zero Φ, none.
IIT says Φ for the human cortex is vast, but Φ for programmable digital computers at the level of their metal components is minute, independently of the software running on them. Two networks that perform the same input-output operation but have differently configured circuits can have different Φ. Although they are identical from the outside, one network feels something while its zombie counterpart feels nothing.
If we could scan a person's connectome in the brain, with its roughly 100 billion neurons and quadrillion synapses, at a deep level and then simulate it on an advanced computer, this simulation would wake up and behave like the person.
GNWT says the simulated person would be conscious, reincarnated inside a computer.
IIT says the simulacrum would be a zombie or a deepfake and feel nothing.

AR I'm not convinced by IIT, but accept it may improve on GNWT. The IIT emphasis on "causal power" is hard to spell out and could become a cover for nativist prejudice. A deeper appraisal must await my forthcoming monograph Psy‑Phy.

 

Boeing
USAF NGAD: Boeing F‑47 concept image
 

2025 March 21

Boeing Wins NGAD Contract

The Aviationist

Boeing has been awarded a $20 billion contract to develop the USAF Next Generation Air Dominance manned fighter. Each NGAD fighter may cost $300 million.
POTUS 47: "The F‑47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built. An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years, and we're confident that it massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation."

AR This will be the new top predator on planet Earth.
 

European Leadership: Germany

John Kampfner

Germany has woken up. A €500 billion infrastructure injection and a similar increase in defense spending ensure that Germany can modernize its economy and play its part in reinforcing Europe. Germany has a serious political culture, a durable constitution, and a mature process of building and testing coalitions. This is what Germany, Europe, and the West need.

AR I'll second that.

 

⦿ KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T Slovinský
Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona
 

2025 Spring Equinox

Our Doom: Big Rip or Big Crunch?

Katrina Miller, Dennis Overbye

Astronomers have unveiled evidence that dark energy is not constant. It may not doom our universe to a future Big Rip. Instead, cosmic expansion could wane, leaving the universe stable, or reverse, leading to a Big Crunch.
The evidence comes from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) running on a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. The DESI team announced it at an APS meeting in California on Wednesday.
The expansion of the universe is accelerating, as predicted by the cosmological constant − a fudge factor that Einstein put in his theory of gravity. Quantum theory says empty space is full of energy, producing a repulsive force just like the fudge factor − now in the standard model of cosmology.
The standard model describes a universe born 13.8 billion years ago in the Big Bang and composed of 5% atomic matter, 25% dark matter, and 70% dark energy. If dark energy is constant, the model predicts that the universe will keep speeding up forever, pulling everything apart in a Rig Rip.
DESI astronomers survey the distances between galaxies over cosmic time to compile a catalog of millions of galaxies and other celestial objects. They say the cosmic acceleration driven by dark energy began earlier in time, and is currently weaker, than what the standard model predicts.
The discrepancy between data and theory is at most 4.2 σ, not yet at the 5 σ standard for a discovery. DESI will continue collecting data.

Is dark energy getting weaker?
Charlie Wood

Dark energy is losing steam. The DESI finding aligns with that of the Dark Energy Survey (DES). DES reported evidence of varying dark energy earlier this month.
In his theory of gravity, Einstein added a cosmological constant, causing repulsion. Dark energy may be the vacuum energy predicted in quantum physics. Evolving dark energy could lead to new physics.
DESI and DES are both mapping millions of celestial objects to illuminate the last 11 billion years or so of cosmic history. The DESI team focused on how galaxies cluster into shells left by ripples in the young universe. They used the shells to reconstruct cosmic expansion in detail.
The first year of DESI data yielded signs that dark energy may have been weakening over the last few billion years. Their data set covered 6 million galaxies. The new data set spans nearly 15 million.
The data could match either an evolving dark energy model or the standard theory of cosmology, the ΛCDM model, which assumes a cosmological constant. But when DESI researchers also factored in data on thousands of supernovas and data on the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the combined data sets departed starkly from ΛCDM and pointed to an evolution in dark energy.
DESI reported last spring that the combined data sets diverged from what the ΛCDM model would predict by as much as 3.9 σ. Now that figure has ticked up to 4.2 σ. The tension with ΛCDM persists even if one deletes the CMB data or the supernova data.
The DES team created a catalog of supernovas. Combining that data with CMB observations, they found a tension with ΛCDM of 3.2 σ that disappears when dark energy is presumed to change.
Dark energy seems to have gradually intensified for billions of years before starting to slack off about 6 billion years ago. Perhaps the data from that earlier period is inaccurate.
Cumrun Vafa says universes built of strings can't maintain a positive energy forever, and the DESI data aligns with a slow decline that appears in many models of stringy universes.
DESI plans to make a third cosmic map of 50 million galaxies by late 2026 or early 2027.

AR Well, this is reassuring. We still need a theory to tell us what dark energy is.

 

⦿ Maxim Shemetov
Vladimir Putin with Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, Moscow, 2025-03-13

AR Putin is a small man in a big world. His authoritarian dreams of imperial glory
are completely inadequate to the new realities of life on Earth.
 

2025 March 19

The Bromance of Vlad and Don

Thomas L Friedman

In his phone call with Donald Trump on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin did not agree to a general 30‑day ceasefire. His conditions show he is looking to own Ukraine.
If Trump sells out Ukraine to Putin, he will forever be marked as a traitor to a core US value: the defense of liberty against tyranny.
Trump says he wants to end "the killing" in Ukraine. The easiest and quickest way to end the killing is for the side that started the killing to get out of Ukraine.
Putin wants Trump to help him get a big slice of Ukraine and neutralize the remainder. He wants Ukraine to be like Belarus, not like Poland.
Trump has left all our European allies on the sidelines. The Europeans are determined to stop Putin.

Telefonat 'Nullnummer'
Spiegel Politik

US-Präsident Donald Trump will Russlands Staatschef Wladimir Putin zu einem zunächst für 30 Tage geltenden Waffenstillstand in der Ukraine bewegen. Doch weitreichende Konsequenzen hatte sein Telefongespräch nicht. Russland setzte seine Angriffe am Mittwoch fort.
Bundesverteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius bewertet die Ergebnisse des Trump-Putin-Telefonats als "Nullnummer": Mit dem von vereinbarten Ende der russischen Angriffe werde "ausgerechnet die Infrastruktur weniger angegriffen, die in der Ukraine am besten geschützt ist".

AR Transatlantic solidarity has collapsed. Russia and China are winning.
 

2025 March 15

Coalition of the Willing

PA, 1244 UTC

UK PM Keir Starmer: "Today, I hosted a call with counterparts from across Europe, as well as the NATO secretary-general and the leaders of the EU Commission, EU Council, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to discuss our support for Ukraine. We welcomed the .. US proposal for an immediate and unconditional 30‑day ceasefire .. agreed that now the ball was in Russia's court .. reaffirmed our commitment to Ukraine's long-term security .. agreed that in the case that president Putin refused to agree to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, we would need to increase our efforts to strengthen Ukraine, weaken Russia's war machine, and ratchet up pressure on president Putin .. to ensure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine."

AR Je suis d'accord. Keep up the good work.
 

2025 March 14

America's Reputation Is Shot

David Brooks

President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion. They have realized that America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower.
China's special representative for European affairs to the EU: "I believe European friends should .. compare the Trump administration's policies with those of the Chinese government. In doing so, they will see that China's diplomatic approach emphasizes peace, friendship, good will, and win‑win cooperation."

AR I trust I have no illusions about China, but I find its version of neighborly cooperation better than others on offer as big powers vie for dominance on planet Earth.
 

2025 March 13

Maganomics

Jonathan Portes

US president Donald Trump's approach to trade, tax, and government is Maganomics, a combination of economic nationalism and tech-bro rightism.
Elon Musk sees things the same way as Ayn Rand: Human progress and prosperity depends on the selfish actions of heroic individuals, and the sole role of government is to protect the freedoms of such individuals. Musk's DOGE approach to re-engineering government is pure Rand.
The contradictions between populist nativism and tech-bro libertarianism resemble the UK tensions that broke up the Brexit coalition.

AR The US fiscal trajectory is unsustainable. Hedge against financial Götterdämmerung.

 

NASA
NASA astronaut Suni Williams outside the International Space Station, 2025-01-16
NASA has abruptly closed its chief-scientist office, along with 2 other offices, firing 23 employees.
This comes when NASA aims to send astronauts to the Moon and develop plans to go to Mars.
DOGE czar Elon Musk aims to downsize US federal government by getting federal agencies to fire employees.
Acting NASA administrator Janet Petro: "We're viewing this as an opportunity to reshape our workforce."

AR Downsizing NASA leaves an opening for SpaceX − massive conflict of interest.
 

2025 March 12

Trump America Won't End Well

Bret Stephens

Tariffs are a terrible idea. US tariffs turned a global economic crisis into WW2.
Donald Trump is ignorant of the lessons of history. Stock markets plunged following his tariff threats against trading partners, unpredictable reprieves, and risking recession in the United States. This won't end well:
•  The DOGE will gut the IRS work force but won't lower your taxes. Mass firings of thousands of federal employees won't raise productivity but lead to a decade of litigation. Cutting wasteful spending will leave Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense untouched.
•  Threats against formerly friendly Canada have boosted the political fortunes of Canadian Liberals. Threatening to take Greenland from NATO ally Denmark has shaken the alliance.
•  The outreach to the European far right benefit Germany's AfD and France's RN. They hate America's vulgar culture, revolting fast food, rapacious capitalism, and imperial pretensions. Walking away from NATO will lead to a Germany ruled by fascists armed with nuclear weapons.
•  The Ukraine negotiations won't end the war unless America supports Kyiv with more arms, a security guarantee, a nod to EU membership, and opposition to Moscow.
Trump now faces a Russia that sees no reason to settle, a Europe that will go its own way, a China that believes America will fold, and a Ukraine that cannot trust him.
Trump's policymaking is shambolic.

AR MAGA America looks doomed to repeat some of the worst follies of the twentieth century.

 

CNSA
China National Space Administration's Mars rover Zhurong next to its landing platform imaged by a camera dropped by the rover.
A new study based on its 2021−2022 data finds evidence of sandy beaches beside an ocean on Mars 3.6 billion years ago.
 

2025 March 7

China on MAGA

CNN

China's foreign minister Wang Yi: "There are more than 190 countries in the world. Should everyone stress 'my country first' and obsess over a position of strength, the law of the jungle would reign again, smaller and weaker countries would bear the brunt first, and international norms and order would take a body blow."

Russian view
CNN

Russian state media reporter Igor Naymushin: "Trump [is] giving Russia all the cards and tools to successfully continue the special military operation .. all the tragedies of the world originated in Europe or happened thanks to European policy."

European view
The Guardian

Denmark's prime minister Mette Frederiksen: "Spend, spend, spend on defence and deterrence .. continue to support Ukraine, because we want peace in Europe."

AR Here in the MAGA jungle world, we have three dominant powers vying for supremacy: America, Russia, and China, with Europe struggling to dethrone Russia. China is taking the longer view.
 

2025 March 6

Europe Can Prevail

Bruno Maçães

Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are chasing US security guarantees that may be worthless. Friedrich Merz says Europe must achieve strategic independence.
US VP JD Vance says the only security guarantee the Trump administration is willing to offer Ukraine is their minerals deal. Russia would be happy to take over Ukraine and do a deal with Americans.
Nothing Trump or Vance have said would prevent Russia from threatening Ukrainian sovereignty again after a peace deal. Does anyone believe Trump will support Ukraine militarily after the ceasefire?
A minerals deal may well be signed in the coming days. Trump: "If somebody doesn't want to make a deal, I think that person won't be around very long."
The process initiated by Trump will culminate in Ukraine's disappearance as a sovereign country. The alternative must be presented as a different plan in opposition to Trump's ideas.
Europeans can seize frozen Russian reserves and transfer them to Ukraine. It can make drones for the conflict. Eutelsat can support new users in Ukraine.
Merz says Germany will do whatever it takes to defend freedom and peace in Europe.

AR There's hope if Germany can move fast enough.
 

2025 March 5

UK−US Relations

Patrick Wintour

UK ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2012 Nigel Sheinwald: "America is genuinely changing and the American leadership has changed .. It's difficult to find either a conceptual area in international relations or a particular geographical area where our interests are really converging at the moment .. On more or less any big foreign policy issue that we're dealing with today, we don't agree with the United States and have more alignment with our European partners."
UK ambassador to the United States from 2012 to 2016 Sir Peter Westmacott: "Even if we are now back in the business of trying to find a way forward with a combination of a ceasefire plan and security guarantees that Ukraine needs, we still have got that fundamental problem of a very different approach to Russia."

AR Clear verdict: Keir Starmer take note.
 

2025 March 4

The Imperialist Philosopher

James Verini

Aleksandr Dugin has been called the prophet of the new Russian Empire. His voluminous writings have indelibly shaped Russian politics and policy. Putin has adopted his views.
Dugin inveighs against democracy, secularism, individualism, civil society, multiculturalism, human rights, sexual openness, technology, and scientific rationalism.
He says the destruction of Ukraine is essential for Russia: "The existence of Ukraine .. is tantamount to delivering a monstrous blow to Russia's geopolitical security."
When Putin announced the start of his "special military operation" in Ukraine, he accused the West of seeking to "destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values."
Dugin was born in Moscow in 1962. He dropped out and took up with a group of underground writers in Moscow. In 1983, after the KGB detained him for questioning, he worked odd jobs while reading deeply in the Russian canon, the European canon, Eastern philosophy, and Heidegger's Sein und Zeit.
Dugin wrote that the Russian Empire was alive and sacred, chosen by God to "speak for all of those who have been humiliated and insulted."
After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Soviets stamped out a brief Ukrainian People's Republic. Stalin banned the Ukrainian language, liquidated Kyiv's political class and intelligentsia, and starved millions of Ukrainians to death.
The end of the Soviet Union was a period of social collapse and economic ruin. Putin: "We remember [that the West] called us friends and partners, but they treated us like a colony, using various schemes to pump trillions of dollars out of the country."
Dugin, 1997: "The battle for Russian world domination is not over .. The continued existence of a unitary Ukraine is unacceptable."
He confessed: "I myself am Ukrainian. I'm ashamed of that small but still significant part of my blood. And I want this blood to be cleansed with the blood of the scum, the Kyiv junta. And I think, Kill, kill, and kill!"
Dugin: "A Russian hero is first and foremost a victim. He knows that his fate is tragic, and his path is suffering."

AR This sounds less like philosophy, more like drivel.

 

⦿ Justin Tallis/AP
European leaders summit, Lancaster House, London, 2025-03-02
 

2025 March 2

European Leaders Summit

BBC News

UK PM Keir Starmer unveils a four-step plan to guarantee peace in Ukraine, following a summit with European leaders in London:
•  Military aid must keep flowing into Ukraine while the war is ongoing, with increased economic pressure on Russia
•  Any lasting peace must ensure Ukraine's sovereignty and security, and Ukraine must be at the table for any peace talks
•  In the event of a peace deal, European leaders will aim to deter any future invasion by Russia into Ukraine
•  A "coalition of the willing" would defend Ukraine and guarantee peace in the country
He adds Europe must do the heavy lifting but needs US backing. The UK, France, and others have agreed to work with Ukraine to end the fighting.
The UK government will allow Ukraine to use £1.6 billion of UK export finance to buy more than 5,000 air defence missiles.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen: "It's important we prepare for the worst."

AR European leaders have drawn the necessary conclusions from last week's events and agreed to do the right thing. I find this reassuring.

 

AR
First day of spring on Poole Bay
 

2025 March 1

A Day of American Infamy

Bret Stephens

Friday, Oval Office, Washington — Volodymyr Zelensky was prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except Ukraine's freedom, security, and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.

Relationship damaged beyond repair
Ben Hall

Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the White House on Friday was supposed to salvage his relationship with Donald Trump. Instead, it descended into an angry argument, a breathtaking spectacle, broadcast to the world from the Oval Office.

Talks degenerate into shouting match
Andrew Roth, Lauren Gambino

US military support for Ukraine hangs in the balance and talks over a minerals deal have collapsed following a disastrous White House summit. Trump: "This is going to be great television."

A great moment?
Edward Helmore

White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said Zelensky was impertinent and called the showdown a great moment in American diplomacy: "Millions of American hearts swelled with overflowing pride today to watch President Trump put Zelensky in his place."

Why aren't we in the streets?
Susan B Glasser

Trump has appointed the most extreme Cabinet in American history. Wednesday's Cabinet meeting opened with a prayer from the new secretary of housing and urban development Scott Turner: "Thank you, God, for President Trump."

AR Trump was showing the world how tough he could be, in case Putin thought Trump's friendliness meant he'd be a pushover in negotiations over Ukraine.