Over 2.6 million tickets were sold across 301 venues during the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, despite actual storms and the metaphorical cacophony of large-scale music events just up the road. This quietly astounding feat was accomplished somewhere between the spilled pints, the flyered doorways, and the cacophony of bagpipes and pop-up monologues. By most festival standards, this would be an impossible threshold to clear. Yet here we are—watching artists, volunteers, and festivalgoers manage the unpredictable with a kind of focused anarchy that only the Fringe can generate. The shows? Countless. The genres? Spiraling and clashing. But once again, comedy led…
Author: Eric Evani
Instead of a beep or a badge, it starts with a glance—a silent flash while a camera scans your face and matches it. The Transportation Security Administration is implementing facial recognition lanes at an increasing number of major U.S. airports, which promise to make identification as easy as a blink. This isn’t hypothetical tech. It’s operational at over a dozen airports and set to reach 65 by next year. Rolled out through the TSA PreCheck Touchless ID program, it’s already transforming how identity is validated at security checkpoints. The change is especially helpful for passengers who are enrolled in PreCheck…
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the appointment of Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin to the Supreme Court of Canada in August 2022, the ripple effect wasn’t merely symbolic. Its quiet but unwavering spirit echoed across courtrooms, tribal councils, and law schools. Her swearing-in on September 1 signified not only a long-overdue milestone but a realistic shift in the composition of Canada’s highest judicial authority. Justice O’Bonsawin’s journey to the bench wasn’t planned to make history. It was founded on years of dedicated, sometimes neglected work—on mental health law, labor issues, and the actual application of Gladue ideas in criminal sentencing. She…
The following phases of Artemis will take additional time, NASA revealed in February. Originally scheduled for late 2025, the forthcoming Artemis II mission is now tentatively scheduled for no earlier than February 8, 2026. Artemis III, the first human lunar landing since Apollo, is scheduled for mid-2027. The logic is sobering yet not discouraging: safety, precision, and technology are demanding more. The delay didn’t come as a shock. If anything, it felt like a halt already anticipated by many watching attentively. Ever ambitious, the Artemis program is currently changing its direction—perhaps a little later, but still with the Moon in…
On a cold February morning in Shoreditch, you can still hear the rhythmic clang of setup teams behind Victoria House while stylists stroll past with garment bags and clipboards. London Fashion Week always starts like this: quietly buzzing with the kind of excitement that reminds you something culturally momentous is about to emerge. This year, that sense is particularly strong—especially as a new focus falls on emerging designers from Britain’s Caribbean diaspora. For too long, their contributions to design, music, and style have been worn without credit. But now, through forums like Fashion East and university showcases, the faces behind…
A researcher once told me over tea that genetics was never destiny—but it could be a compass. That idea stuck with me. Now, studies from Oxford are giving shape to that metaphor, particularly through a recent flurry of findings that subtly, yet strikingly, shift how we think about aging. Researchers from Oxford Population Health, working alongside Swiss, Hawaiian, and Italian teams, have unearthed genetic patterns that hint at why some people live notably longer than others. They’re not talking about immortality pills or age-defying cocktails. Instead, it’s about understanding why certain genes don’t necessarily prevent disease—but allow people to live…
Around 2015, something subtly shifted in the way national budgets were written. Behind closed doors, analysts began regarding research grants as symbolic gestures and started treating them as the seeds of future sovereignty. It didn’t make headlines, but the influence was foundational. This wasn’t an issue of pouring more money at institutions. It came down to integrating research into the core of leadership—redefining how economies were built to change, how crises were foreseen, and how policies were formulated. Numbers began to whisper about the future instead of only explaining the past. A research-first mentality was the result. Key Economic Context…
In early 2010, several senior economists began murmuring a hushed warning—growth was weakening in countries that had traditionally set the global pace. Germany, France, and even the United States were exhibiting signs of mild exhaustion rather than collapse. Something had shifted. Capital was still available, but returns on that capital were flattening. Labor was remained mobile, but productivity increases were diminishing. It wasn’t a lack of effort. It was a mismatch between challenges that required something radically different and technologies designed for the past. ThemeDetailsFocusInnovation as an essential force in advanced economiesDriving ForcesSlowing growth, rising global competition, costly R&DStrategic NeedsResilience,…
For many years, the term “Silicon Valley” was used to refer to innovation. However, such abbreviation now seems more and more out of date. What was once considered as the singular lodestar of scientific advancement has gradually become one among many—its light still powerful, but no longer solitary. New IT clusters are emerging startlingly quickly throughout Europe and Asia. In Shenzhen, product cycles are decreasing as companies rush from prototype to production in record time. Bengaluru, long identified with outsourced services, is now producing full-stack AI businesses. In South Korea, battery innovation isn’t just advancing—it’s setting the pace globally. These…
It was a brief line in a footnote that made me pause: “Project direction adapted per ministry guidance.” The paper was on urban water usage in coastal cities, but that one remark stated more than the figures did. It reminded me—sharply—that what researchers examine often relies on who’s asking, and who’s funding. Governments and policy bodies shape research with a subtle but decisive hand. They rarely mandate what scientists must investigate, but by funding incentives and goal framing, they make certain pathways more walkable than others. This shaping force isn’t inherently harmful. On the contrary, it’s often surprisingly effective in…