The size of the American enterprise as compared to that of smaller countries has always ensured that American life interacts in a particularly intense way with mass media. All modern societies are vulnerable to mass-media influence, of course, but consider, for comparison, a country such as Iceland, which is a real country, a rather nice […]

U.S. Freezes Visas For Palestinian Passport Holders Amid Mounting National Security Threats  Weeks after the Trump administration paused approvals of visitor visas for people of Gaza, the New York Times now reports that the administration has broadened the suspension to cover nearly all categories of visitor visas for Palestinian passport holders.  NYT cited an August […]

Bitcoin No Longer Plays Gold’s Game Authored by Armando Aguilar via CoinTelegraph.com, Bitcoin was treated as a purely inert asset for years: a decentralized vault, economically passive despite its fixed issuance schedule. Yet more than $7 billion worth of Bitcoin already earns native, onchain yield via major protocols — that premise is breaking down.  Gold’s […]

Opioids More Likely To Kill Than Car Crashes Or Suicide The National Safety Council reports that Americans are more likely to die from an opioid overdose than a car crash or suicide. As Statista’;s Katharina Buchholz shows in the following chart, the likelihood of dying from opioid use in the U.S. increased from lifetime odds of one in 96 in 2017 to one […]

Russia Gears Up For New Nuclear Missile Test Authored by RFE/RL Staff via OilPrice.com, Significant activity on Russia’s Novaya Zemlya archipelago indicates an impending test of the nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, known as Skyfall by NATO. The Burevestnik, a complex system designed to carry a nuclear warhead and evade missile defenses, has a history of […]