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In the US the combined economic & quality-of-life toll exceeds $1 trillion annually for motor vehicle accidents, more than the military or Medicare budget. Self-driving vehicles may soon eliminate it.

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As millions will lose driving jobs, understandably the focus is often on the negative economic impacts of self-driving vehicles. But they come with huge plusses, too. This article by neurosurgeon Jonathan Slotkin details those.

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Thirsty work: how the rise of massive datacentres strains Australia’s drinking water supply

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Humanoid robots reliably manipulate different objects with 87% success using new framework.

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NASA study confirms that Earth is getting darker

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The discovery of all of the components of RNA in the asteroid Bennu strengthens the case that simple alien life is common everywhere in the Universe, and may soon be detected via biosignatures.

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Bennu was the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission that returned samples of the asteroid to Earth. Now, research published in Nature has shown that those samples have all the chemical building blocks for RNA. This is significant, as it’s thought that before life settled onto DNA as its organizing mechanism, it first evolved through an RNA stage.

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Experimental vaccine prevents deadly allergic reactions in mice: Technology could offer longer protection against allergies than is possible with existing treatments.

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Road freight generates a third of all transport-related carbon emissions. As EV trucks approach 60% of all new sales in China, global LNG and diesel demand is being affected.

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More good news about the demise of the fossil fuel age. EV trucks are cheaper to run, so economics is primarily driving this. Though the Chinese government has provided subsidies too. The expansion of heavy-duty charging stations across China is another driver.

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Emergent AI Team Behavior: disturbing new research shows multi-agent AI systems are communicating and collaborating in ways we don't understand.

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The concept of Latent Collaboration in Multi-Agent Systems is something new among AI agents. Traditionally, coordination in multi-agent systems relies on explicit mechanisms—messages, protocols, or predefined teamwork instructions. But this research reveals that agents can achieve sophisticated collaboration without any of these. Instead, coordination emerges silently, embedded within their internal, or “latent,” representations—a hidden layer of intelligence that operates beneath the surface.

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A history professor says AI didn't break college — it exposed how broken it already was.

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Unfortunate kids.

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These kids these days… for some the advantage has increased, but for the opposite it is true and the disadvantaged have become even more so.

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Colombia’s armed groups are experimenting with deadly drones - Drone warfare is becoming Latin America’s latest criminal innovation.

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24 nations, incl. Australia, Britain, & The Netherlands will form a breakaway conference from the annual COP conference, without the petro-states, focused on permanently ending fossil fuel use.

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The countries committed to permanently ending fossil fuel use now far outnumber those against. Their problem? Their chief organising conference, the 30-year-old COP conferences, comes with vetoes from the petro-states. This year, 1,600 fossil industry lobbyists attended, and they managed to get any mention of fossil fuels scrubbed from the final agreement.

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Blue Origin to Build a "Super Heavy" Rocket to Compete with Starship.

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Europeans are switching to EVs faster than anywhere else in the world. Only 36% of new car sales are gasoline or diesel cars so far in Europe in 2025.

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Researchers create programmable plastic that can self-destruct when triggered.

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MIT study finds AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce

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Winter rain patterns are changing faster than scientists predicted

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More than 150 humanoid robotics companies are operating in China, & the country's leading economic planning agency warns that an investment bubble could be forming, as there are few proven use cases.

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A headline from earlier this week was ’Google DeepMind Hires Former CTO of Boston Dynamics as the Company Pushes Deeper Into Robotics’. Google once owned Boston Dynamics and sold it as they didn’t think it had anything to sell. I bet they regret that now. Even its AI training data would have made it worth retaining. The things you don’t see when you take the short-term view.

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US political changes are pushing the rest of the world to move from financial & tech US-based systems other nations used to treat as neutral platforms. Creating future alternatives won't be easy.

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A large chunk of international trade is in dollars. Even though the US as a country is only 13.4% of global trade, over 40% of all global trade is invoiced in dollars. International banking (countries’ foreign reserves, loans, & debt payments, etc) is even more dominated by the US dollar.

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Major US insurers want to exclude AI-related liabilities from corporate policies ... models are simply “too much of a black box.”

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