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Using a smartphone with long nails can be frustrating, forcing people to awkwardly tap with their fingertips instead of their nails. Now, researchers are working on a clear nail polish that could change that by turning fingernails into touchscreen-friendly tools. By experimenting with dozens of formulas, they discovered that combining common compounds like taurine and ethanolamine can help nails carry just enough electrical charge for screens to detect a touch.

A team led by Professor Mian Long from the Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, investigated the effects of space microgravity on cultured liver cells aboard the China Space Station.

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The oxymoronically-named Union of Catholic Christian Rationalists (UCCR) has joined the yammering pack of believers that keeps telling us that New Atheism has died, when, in fact, it did its job and then moved on. It’s like saying that suffragism failed and has died out!  The New-Atheist-dissers are trying desperately to explain the failure of a phenomenon that not only succeeded in changing minds, but whose proponents, no longer consumed by a need to point out the lack of evidence for gods, have moved on to other things.

You can read this tripe by clicking the UCCR articlebelow. Excerpts are indented, and my own comments are flush left. The piece is also archived here in case they want to correct stuff like their mis-naming of Rebecca Watson.

Here’s their intro (bolding is theirs):

Why did New Atheism fail?

Numerous observers have tried to explain the astonishing failure of new atheism, despite a society that was intellectually lazy, affluent, and consumerist, and that agreed with them on everything: the supposed anachronism of religious thought, the bigotry of moral judgments, the violence generated by religions, and the unhealthy mixing of politics and religion.

And yet, as the rationalist Scott Alexander observed, “in the bubble where no one believes in God anymore and everyone is fully concerned with sexual minorities and Trump, it is less painful to be a Catholic than a fan of Dawkins.”

Indeed, Alexander continues, only in the case of “New Atheism”, “modern progressive culture turned toward the ‘new atheists’ and, seeing itself, said: ‘This is truly stupid and annoying.’”

UCCR was born precisely during the years of fame of the “new atheists,” out of the need to provide a tool for believers “surrounded” by opinion-makers, intellectuals, and journalists. We followed the evolution of the phenomenon and its deflation, despite predictions that it would dominate the scene.

Having familiarity with the topic, we suggest five decisive factors to explain the disastrous end of “New Atheism.”

They are of course more biased against atheism than they are familiar with the topic.  I’ll condense the five factors; there is more text at the site:

1.) The election of Obama

It may seem incredible, but former U.S. President Barack Obama delivered the first major blow to the “new atheists.”

First of all, his election removed the “common enemy” that had ensured unity within the movement.

Before 2008, the glue binding activists was the much-hated conservative George W. Bush. Biologist PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins (today bitter enemies) appeared together publicly to oppose Bush and became idols celebrated by the progressive establishment.

Secondly, the Obama administration—supported by major media and cultural circles—pulled the rug out from under them: it reshaped American (and thus Western) culture by making criticism of Islam politically incorrect.

In fact, “New Atheism” emerged in the aftermath of September 11, and for years Islam was the preferred tool for generalizing about religious violence.

Under Obama, however, it became a minefield, and the first to step on it were two leading figures, Sam Harris and Michael Onfray, who began to be viewed negatively and portrayed as racists even by progressive media.

Obama was elected in 2008 and, as you see below, America’s rejection of established religion was well underway by then.

2.) Rejection by the academic world.

After the publication of his bestseller “The God Delusion” (2006), Dawkins, together with the other “horsemen,” began to denigrate agnostics and “moderate atheists,” accusing them of tolerating religious opinions and refusing to take sides.

Over time, the entire academic world was accused of cowardice for not joining the attack on religion. One example was Coyne’s media campaign against the agnostic historian Bart D. Ehrman, author of works defending the historicity of Christ.

Another emblematic case was the media pressure by Sam Harris in the New York Times and against the scientific community to prevent the Christian geneticist Francis Collins from remaining head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The attempt of “New Atheism” to enter and influence the academic world was explicitly stated at the 2006 Beyond Belief conference.

But the resounding failure was confirmed by the deep embarrassment expressed by non-believing academics themselves. For example, Nobel laureate Peter Higgs stated: “The problem with Dawkins is that he focuses his attacks on fundamentalists, but clearly not all believers are like that. In this sense, I think Dawkins’ attitude is fundamentalist, from the opposite side.”

Having lost the academic world, all their visibility depended entirely on media support, which gradually began to crumble, as seen above.

In fact, in the last relevant survey I could find, published in 2010, 23% of American college professors were agnostics and atheists, compared to just 4% of the American public. If there were no reporting bias, the rate of nonbelief among university academics is about six times higher than that of the American public in general. Once again, the authors of this dire piece are not using data as evidence, but simply ad hominem arguments—mostly detailing people’s criticisms of Dawkins and Sam Harris. But given the continuing rise of “nones” (which may have hit a temporary plateau but has not decreased), these are post hoc rationalizations. As faith slips away from Americans, it’s not enough for religionists to hold on to their personal beliefs—they need the support of like-minded people to make them think they’re on the right track.

I should add that as I quote and document in Faith Versus Fact, American scientists are 41% atheists, with only 33% believing in God (the other didn’t answer or were “spiritual”). If you look at more accomplished scientists, the rate of atheism rises to nearly 100%. It’s simply dumb to think that academics as a lot have rejected New Atheism.

3.) The response of believing intellectuals

Another reason for the decline of “New Atheism” lies in the entry into the debate of various Christian scientists, philosophers, and thinkers.

A new generation of believing intellectuals succeeded in presenting reasonable arguments in support of faith, showing that the “New Atheists” spent much of their time constructing straw-man arguments about religion, only to knock them down.

In his books, for example, Richard Dawkins strongly opposed a god that no one has ever believed in: the famous “god of the gaps”.

Some of these Christian intellectuals engaged directly with “New Atheism” by publishing books explicitly opposed to it, catching irreligious activists off guard. Among them:

• John Lennox, emeritus professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, author of “God’s Undertaker”;
• Amir D. Aczel, professor of Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, author of “Why Science Does Not Disprove God”;
• Francis Collins, renowned geneticist, author of “The Language of God”;
• Kenneth R. Miller, emeritus professor of biology at Brown University, author of “Finding Darwin’s God”;
• Owen Gingerich, emeritus professor of Astronomy and History of Science at Harvard University, author of “God’s Universe”;
• Arthur Peacocke, theologian and biochemist at Oxford, author of “Paths From Science Towards God”.

More briefly, we also mention philosophers Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Robert Spaemann, Roger Trigg, Richard Swinburne, and Richard Schroder; physicists Gerald Schroeder, John Polkinghorne, and Russell Stannard; and sociologist Rodney Stark.

I have to laugh when I look at that list of names.  While Ken Miller, who’s circumspect about exactly what he believes, is a good scientist and textbook writer, I’ve look at the beliefs of most of these people either on this website or in Faith Versus Fact. I usually don’t count theologians as intellectuals because most of them adhere to an unevidenced superstition—that there’s a God.  They are academics with a delusion.  If you want to take frozen waterfalls as evidence for God, for example, read Francis Collins. Or, for a good laugh when you want reasons why people think that Jesus was Lord, read the “evidence” used by C. S. Lewish. For every name they give above, I could give the name of five real intellectuals who are atheists.

This next one’s a corker, and even mentions me:

4.) The “Elevatorgate Scandal”

In 2011, a minor dispute about the behavior of participants at an atheist convention became known as “elevatorgate” and sparked the first major internal feud among irreligious activists online.

Feminist Emma Watson was sexually harassed in an elevator and publicly reported it, but was rebuked by leaders of “New Atheism” for risking negative publicity for their movement.

This episode marked the beginning of a break between the movement and feminism.

The situation worsened when Richard Dawkins made sexist remarks about the victim, hosted on the blog of PZ Myers. The community split between feminists and Dawkins supporters.

At that point, PZ Myers turned against Dawkins, labeling him racist and Islamophobic, alongside Sam Harris.

The media amplified everything and even named Dawkins among the worst misogynists of the year—a devastating blow to the movement.

Gradually, more commentators began to turn against the “priests of atheism”. Biologist Jerry Coyne tried for a time to defend Dawkins and Harris but eventually burned out. Today, much of his blog focuses on cats. . . .

First of all, “Elevatorgate” involved Rebecca Watson, not the actress Emma Watson. Do your homework, Christians! But beyond that, no, Elevatorgate did not make people start believing in God again, or erode the increase in nonbelief, as you can see by looking at the years around 2011 in the two plots below. It was a tempest in a teapot, and there’s not a scintilla of evidence that it buttressed faith, stemmed the rise of atheism, and so on. It just led some people who already hated Dawkins to criticize him even more.

As for me being “burned out” and focusing on cats, that’s ludicrous. I’m as atheistic as ever, and still promulgating it, as I am in this piece. But after I spent three years researching and writing Faith Versus Fact, I grew weary of banging the same old drum, and decided to bang it only when necessary, for example when this moronic article came out. As for “focusing on cats”, you be the judge. Sure, I write about them, but they’re by no means in every post I put up.

And, god help me, we have the last one:

5.) Richard Dawkins

The creator himself turned out to be the worst cause of his creation’s demise.

Richard Dawkins was the most prominent figure, a YouTube celebrity and tireless preacher. After “elevatorgate,” however, he became a target of internal criticism.

His downfall, however, came with social media—especially Twitter. Without editorial filtering, the zoologist revealed aspects of himself that had previously remained hidden.

With nearly a million followers, his sexist and racist remarks, his defense of “mild pedophilia”, encouragement of infidelity, and criticism of mothers who give birth to children with Down syndrome did not go unnoticed.

For years he has become a mockery online, especially after opposing the transgender movement.

According to Vice, “he has dishonored atheism”. His books have flopped, and even his most important scientific theory, the “selfish gene”, has been challenged by physiologist Denis Noble.

Yes, people have found plenty of “reasons” to go after Richard Dawkins, and he’s become the lightning rod for believers who hate atheism.  But nowhere in those criticisms, or in this very piece, do we see any refutation of Richard’s main reason to be an atheist: lack of evidence.  One would think that a genuine reason for rejecting atheism is that new evidence for a personal god has appeared. It hasn’t, and even a new line of anti-atheistic arguments, Intelligent Design, has come to nothing.

As for Dawkins’s books flopping, I’d suggest the authors look up the sales of The God Delusion, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Blind Watchmaker, and others. All of them were bestsellers, and all gave arguments against religious belief.

Here’s the summary of the piece:

Primatologist Frans De Waal accused the “new atheists” of being “obsessed with the non-existence of God, going on media campaigns, wearing T-shirts proclaiming their lack of faith, and calling for militant atheism.”

But he also asked: “What does atheism have to offer that is worth fighting for in this way?”

This is the question that remains. Defining oneself as “anti-” allows only limited survival; without offering meaningful answers to life’s meaning, failure is inevitable.

Philosopher Philippe Nemo wrote a remarkable epitaph for “New Atheism,” which we reproduce in full:

“Despite attempts to eradicate Christianity, atheism has died a natural death; it was not killed, since the modern world has given—and continues to give—it every opportunity to defend its cause and offer humanity new reasons for living. Opportunities wasted, because it failed to keep its promises, did not fulfill the intellectual programs that constituted its only attraction, and did not succeed in showing that man is less miserable without God than with God.”1.

This is ridiculous, of course. First, nobody, including the Great Satan Richard Dawkins—thinks of atheism as something that gives their life meaning.  It is simply a lack of belief in gods: an abandonment of religious superstition.

And what were the “promises” that New Atheism made? None, as far as I can tell. They maintained only that if you accept things based on evidence, you’re not going to embrace religion. And as the power of science grows (it’s one reason people give for leaving religions), so the grip of belief loosens.

The rise of nonbelief in America is documented in the two plots below, one from Pew and the other from Gallup. The plots (summaried in The Baptist News!) show the rise of the “nones”—people who don’t embrace an established church—as well as the fall of the ‘not-nones,” that is, people who do adhere to an established church.

Yeah, nonbelief has really fallen in America since the first New Atheist book (by Sam Harris) in 2004. NOT!

One question for readers:

Why are so many people eager to proclaim the death of New Atheism?

This is a Gallup plot:

And a Pew plot:

A computer language designed to robustly verify mathematical theorems and expose logical flaws has been turned towards a physics paper – and spotted an error. The discovery raises questions about how many other papers may harbour similar issues

It’s out. The top sci-fi draw of the year Project Hail Mary is now showing in a theater near you. The movie tells the tale of middle school teacher Ryland Grace, who is sent on a one way, last ditch mission to save humanity. The story is a refreshing take on first contact and just how different life out there could be… but are there real ‘Adrians’ or ‘Erids’ out there? A new paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society identifies 45 rocky worlds with a potential for life, out of the currently 6,281 exoplanets known.

Douglas Adams famously told us the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. Astronomers have been wrestling with their own version of that answer for years, except their number is the Hubble constant, a measure of how fast the universe is expanding, and nobody can agree what it is. Now a new study using ripples in spacetime as a measuring tools has produced a fresh value that might just help resolve one of the biggest arguments in modern cosmology.

Look up on a clear night and you can spot the distinctive 'W' shape of Cassiopeia with the naked eye. The middle star of that W, which has the catchy name of Gamma Cas, has been puzzling astronomers since 1866, and for the last fifty years it's been blazing with peculiar high energy X-rays that simply shouldn't be there. Now, thanks to a next generation space telescope with extraordinary precision, the mystery has finally been solved. The culprit is a hungry invisible companion, quietly feeding in the dark.

In the absence of much of a backlog, I’ve stolen some gorgeous photos from reader Scott Ritchie of Cairns, Australia (his FB page is here).  Scott’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Recently I visited my friends, Karen and David Young in the Crater Lake cabins near Lake Eacham, Atherton Tablelands, west of Cairns. This area is a mega for birds and they did not disappoint. In particular, we got great up close and personal views of our local bird of paradise, bird of prayer, paradise, the Victoria rifle bird.

The male of the species has jet black feathers. However, in just the right light you get a lovely iridescent reflection. The other thing these birds do is dance. It’s an amazing shuffling of the wings while top of stump while throwing their head out and flashing your lovely iridescent blue throat. The immature riflebird is a beautiful brown/rufous color, and they can’t help to practice their dance moves. And of course dad’s gotta come along and join in the festivities.

Also, here’s a few photos of some other creatures that I saw on my little five hour trip to the table lands. I hope you enjoy them.

Male Victoria’s Riflebird (Ptiloris victoriae),in full dance pose. Note the jet black feathers:

Swishes wings sideways, like a flying saucer. Peering above the wings:

But in the right light, iridescent rainbows appear:

I love the cooper and purple sheen on his back:

Meanwhile, youngster, an immature male, practices his dance moves. He leans back, showing off his wild yellow throat:

“Peek-a-boo”
Stands up, and swishes his wings back and forth, hiding his head behind them:

Then stands proud:

And then the adult male shows up. I’ll show you who’s boss:

Has he lost his mind?

I’m definitely King of the Stump:

Off youngster goes, only to be replaced by another male!:

And a few other local birds made an appearance. Pacific Emerald Dove (Chalcophaps longirostris):

Macleay’s Honeyeater (Xanthotis macleayanus):

Grey-headed Robin (Heteromyias cinereifrons):

And the musky rat-kangaroo (Hypsiprymnodon moschatus), our smallest proper roo!:

And the Boyd’s Forest Dragon (Lophosaurus boydii) appeared for the lizard and snake lovers:

Venus is increasingly becoming a touch point for our studies of the exoplanets, as missions like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)and the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) begin to characterize rocky exoplanets around other stars. Understanding the difference between the evolutions of Venus and Earth, which ended up with such different results, is a key to understanding whether we might be looking at an Earth-analogue or a hellish landscape like Venus. A new paper by Rodolfo Garcia of the University of Washington and his colleagues, which is available in pre-print form on arXiv, simulates Venus’ 4.5 billion year evolution as part of the solar system to try to understand some of those differences.

The war in Iran is challenging pharmaceutical supply chains and revealing strains in the system.

The post Geopolitics and Drug Shortages first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Deepfake X-rays created by AI are now convincing enough to fool both doctors and AI models. In tests, radiologists had limited success identifying fake images, especially when they didn’t know they were being shown. This opens the door to risks like fraudulent medical claims and tampered diagnoses. Experts say stronger safeguards and detection tools are critical as the technology advances.

In the cloud forest of Costa Rica, many canopy-dwelling animals do their business in strangler fig trees, perhaps as a way of leaving messages

A device that relies on quantum effects and oversized atoms may be a more reliable way to measure temperature that doesn't require calibration

It’s been said that “He who controls the media controls the mind.” (Variously attributed to Jim Morrison of the rock band The Doors, along with Noam Chomsky.)

Whoever said it, billionaires seem to have taken it to heart. Elon Musk has made 𝕏 his “de facto public town square.” Jeff Bezos has The Washington Post. Rupert Murdoch continues to consolidate conservative media outfits via Fox and News Corp (which owns The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and HarperCollins). Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has expanded from merely friending people on Facebook to Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. Brian Roberts’s Comcast is in charge of NBCUniversal, Sky News, Peacock, and Universal Pictures. And so on. Meanwhile, the Ellison family controls Paramount and CBS. 

Recent headlines read like a game of high-stakes Pac-Man. Most notably, David Ellison’s Skydance Media merged with Paramount Global, bringing CBS, Paramount Pictures, MTV, Nickelodeon, and other assets under its new entity, Paramount Skydance Corporation. Then Paramount Skydance proceeded to buy The Free Press for some $150 million—putting its founder, Bari Weiss, at the helm of CBS News as its new Editor-in-Chief (she also retains her role at The Free Press). 

Meanwhile, Netflix is in an $82.7 billion definitive agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Studios (subject to regulatory approvals), but not if Paramount Skydance can help it, with a lawsuit in place against the venerable studio alleging that the Netflix deal lacked transparency and that the Warner Bros. board has ignored higher offers from Skydance (the board has repeatedly rejected Skydance’s offers in support of the Netflix deal). The matter is currently in dispute, but if Paramount Skydance manages to win, it would have control over a giant piece of the media apparatus—including both CBS News and CNN. 

And then there’s the recent forced sale of TikTok U.S. to an American entity. The deal creates a new U.S. joint venture where a consortium of investors led by Oracle Corporation, Silver Lake Technology Management, and MGX Fund Management Limited will hold a 50 percent stake, while ByteDance retains a 19.9 percent minority interest. 

This marks a fundamental restructuring of the media landscape. Is it good for the public? 

On the one hand, it’s possible that audiences will be pleased with having access to larger content libraries from a single provider, though Netflix is likely to raise its prices for the privilege of being able to share HBO’s “It’s not TV” content with them. Given its market share and massive content library, Netflix will sit firmly in the driver’s seat when negotiating acquisition costs and more. 

It also means that Netflix could control 30–40 percent of all paid streaming in the U.S., according to analysts. This move risks creating a content monoculture where data-driven algorithms, rather than creative risk, dictate what gets made, especially given Netflix’s streaming-forward model, rather than a focus on theatrical releases. This new layout also makes it incredibly difficult for mid-sized companies with less capital to acquire attractive content and compete with existing massive IP libraries, and creates a near monopoly on content: a few giants at the helm, with only smaller, niche creators, podcasters, and independent outlets left on the margins. It also means that filmmakers have fewer options for their projects. 

In fact, Netflix already offers a preview of what a fully consolidated media environment looks like in practice. Netflix has become infamous for canceling series after one or two seasons, often despite strong critical reception or dedicated audiences. Shows like Mindhunter, 1899, Glow, and Archive 81were all discontinued without narrative resolution. In several cases, creators later stated that the shows met or exceeded traditional benchmarks of success but failed to satisfy Netflix’s internal metrics for rapid audience growth and completion rates. The result is a cultural landscape littered with unfinished stories. Viewers learn, over time, that emotional investment is risky. Storytelling itself becomes provisional and disposable. 

Genres proliferate, aesthetics vary, but narrative structures converge.

This incentive structure also shapes how stories are told. Former Netflix writers and executives have described internal guidelines that prioritize early engagement above all else. As a result, many Netflix originals front-load dramatic events—major chases, twists, or revelations often occur within the first five to ten minutes of an episode. Compare this to earlier television and feature films, where narrative tension was allowed to accumulate gradually, and climactic moments were often reserved for the end. 

Dialogue has changed as well. In series such as The Witcher or You, key plot points are frequently repeated verbally, sometimes multiple times within the same scene. This is not accidental. Matt Damon, while promoting his new Netflix film The Rip, has mentioned that they’ve had discussions with the streamer about ensuring that the plot is restated “three or four times in the dialogue” to address the fact that many of the viewers are simultaneously on their phones while watching. 

A number of writers have also openly noted that scripts are being increasingly optimized for distracted viewing. In other words, they are designed to be intelligible even when audiences are scrolling on their phones or half-paying attention. Subtle visual storytelling gives way to explicit exposition, because ambiguity does not perform well in engagement data. And Netflix is quite data driven indeed. 

Over time, this produces a subtle form of cultural monoculture. Genres proliferate, aesthetics vary, but narrative structures converge. The result is a narrowing of how storytelling is constructed. Novelty is cosmetic and experimentation is constrained by metrics designed to optimize retention rather than meaning. 

For most of television history, this logic would have been alien. In the broadcast era, shows were often allowed to fail slowly or to grow into themselves. Series such as The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men all struggled initially to attract large audiences, despite being critically acclaimed. The Wirein particular was never a ratings success during its original run, yet it survived because executives believed in its long-term cultural value and its ability to enhance the network’s reputation. Success was measured over years, not weeks, and shows were allowed to develop complexity that only made sense in retrospect. Creative risk was tolerated because it signaled seriousness, ambition in storytelling, and—significantly—trust in the audiences. Initially a modestly performing niche show, Mad Men saw a 63 percent increase in viewership by its second season alone and went on to become a cultural phenomenon. 

HBO famously framed itself not as television, but as something adjacent to cinema—summed up in its slogan, “It’s not TV.” The network accepted that certain shows would never be mass hits, but would instead function as prestige anchors, shaping brand identity and attracting subscribers indirectly. A series like The Sopranos justified risks taken elsewhere; Six Feet Under or Deadwoodexisted because the ecosystem allowed for uneven returns. FX’s The Americans showrunners—Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg—had chosen to end the show on its sixth season—something they had announced during the fourth, which allowed them to plan their storytelling and provide a proper ending. 

In that environment, creative autonomy was not merely tolerated but protected. Writers could trust that if an audience existed—even a modest one—it would be allowed to find the work. Today’s streaming platforms invert that logic. Instead of prestige underwriting experimentation, experimentation must justify itself instantly in data. What once functioned as cultural capital has been replaced by performance analytics, and patience has been redefined as inefficiency. 

Of course, the issue drawing the most attention and concern is how this consolidation will affect who controls the narrative and how it is shared. 

When only a handful of entities control the information available to us about the world around us, how can we make informed decisions about its future?

In particular, a lot of attention has surrounded the acquisition of CBS and the installment of Bari Weiss as its Editor-in-Chief. Proponents see this as a positive move that will help CBS become a more ideologically moderate—or centrist—outlet, creating a legacy broadcast network that appeals to and serves everyone on the political spectrum, not just those who lean left. 

Critics, meanwhile, are concerned that the outlet will reflect the ideological leanings of its new owner, sympathetic to the current U.S. administration. As evidence, they point to the last-minute pulling and postponement of a 60 Minutes segment on the Trump administration’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, with reports of internal tension around the ongoing delay. When the segment did eventually run, some critics noted that it didn’t contain additions that justified delaying it and argued it was intentionally aired during an NFL playoff. 

To many of Weiss’s detractors, this seems to serve as a confirmation of what they believed all along—that Weiss is the mouthpiece of the Trump administration, intentionally put in place by Ellison to promote specific narratives. They point to her tenure at The Free Press, where sustained criticism of Trump has been less prominent. 

Her proponents disagree, and claim that she was merely ensuring the coverage was balanced and provided an opportunity for the administration to respond to various claims—as per journalistic standards that they feel have been replaced by bias and activism elsewhere. They also note that none of the recent hires brought into CBS under Weiss could reasonably be described as MAGA. 

It’s possible that Weiss is genuinely striving to bring a balanced perspective to CBS News, without ulterior motives or loyalties. Yet the network’s legacy audience is likely to remain skeptical, and many may drift away. Weiss’s goal appears to be attracting a more centrist, moderate audience—both left- and right-of-center—but in today’s polarized media landscape, many viewers seek content that aligns with their existing perspectives. In the first week under new editorial leadership, for example, CBS Evening News saw viewership drop 23 percent compared to last year, which signals, at the very least, a steep adjustment period. 

Mainstream media has generally leaned left, with exceptions such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. Hollywood, too, has remained largely left-leaning, which makes the recent acquisitions all the more significant when it comes to shaping culture. The right-wing media ecosystem has expanded beyond Fox with a strong presence in the online world. 

In a recent article about Bari Weiss in The New Yorker, it was noted that her new role wasn’t necessarily a matter of a merely editorial choice. “Don’t think about it as David Ellison paying a hundred and fifty million dollars for The Free Press,” an unnamed industry exec said. “Think about it as a hundred and fifty million dollars on top of the price they paid for Paramount. It was basically the cost to get it to go through.” Whether that’s true will continue to be debated. 

As more media outlets consolidate into the hands of a few, the number of voices shaping what we see and hear shrinks.

But as I mentioned earlier, whatever the ideology, what matters isn’t who owns which outlet, but that ownership itself is converging—across news, entertainment, and social platforms—into a single layer of influence. 

When ownership is diverse, multiple perspectives can still compete for public attention. But as more media outlets consolidate into the hands of a few, the number of voices shaping what we see and hear shrinks, from news and opinion reporting to entertainment in the case of Netflix, Paramount, etc. 

Our ability to understand the world from multiple perspectives diminishes, and our view of reality becomes narrower. When only a handful of entities control the information available to us about the world around us, how can we make informed decisions about its future?

In a landmark trial, social media giants Meta and YouTube were found negligent and ordered to pay for harming a user's mental health. The decision could force major changes in how social platforms work

Astronomers have observed two planets forming in the disc around a young star named WISPIT 2. Having previously detected one planet, the team have now employed European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes to confirm the presence of another. These observations, and the unique structure of the disc around the star, indicate that the WISPIT 2 system could resemble our young Solar System.

With the ISS set to retire in 2030, several plans are in place to replace it. These include existing space stations, proposals by rising national space agencies, and commercial space stations. In terms of the commercial space sector, the plans are diverse and numerous.