Wednesday, July 2
Tuesday, July 1
The Big THINK
Tolkien’s Middle-earth wasn’t a place. It was a time in (English) history.
The fellowship’s journey through Middle-earth mirrors the modernization of the English countryside.
Headlines
Mikhail Makarov/Getty Images
Senators voted on a slew of amendments to the “Big, beautiful bill.” The Senate pulled an all-nighter to hold a vote-a-rama—a marathon voting session that’s probably less fun than it sounds—to slog through proposed amendments to the tax bill full of GOP priorities the president hopes to have on his desk by July 4. Lawmakers grappled with many thorny political issues, like Medicaid cuts and clean energy tax credits, as Republicans tried to inch toward a vote on the bill while keeping enough members of their own party on board to pass it without support from any Democrats. To do that, the Republicans can only lose three votes, and two members of the party have already vowed to oppose it. If the Senate version passes, it’ll go back to the House, which will have to sign off on any changes from the version passed there.
Canada scraps tech tax that caused Trump to call off trade talks. One day before it was set to start collecting its new digital services tax—which would have impacted both domestic and foreign tech companies—Canada rescinded it in an effort to get trade talks with the US back on track. The move to kill the tax came after President Trump said last week that he was halting all trade discussions with Canada because of it. The tax would have put a 3% levy on the revenue companies make from digital services for Canadian users that exceeds C$20 million each year. But the stakes of the trade talks are even higher: About 75% of Canadian exports go to the US, while Canada is the biggest buyer of US goods, per Bloomberg.
Home Depot targets pro market with $4.3 billion acquisition. Looking to expand its customer base to homebuilding professionals alongside all the ambitious dads, Home Depot is buying building products distributor GMS for $4.3 billion. A Home Depot subsidiary will buy up shares in GMS in a deal that values it at $5.5 billion that it expects to be completed by early next year, which GMS agreed to despite a competing $5 billion bid. It’s the second recent big purchase for the retailer as it inserts itself deeper into the building materials supply chain in search of new revenue now that the Covid home improvement boom has ended.—AR
Robert Reich
The real crisis we are living through
Friends,
During a three-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan some months ago, Elon Musk revealed the core of the ideology animating the richest person in the world.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” Musk said, adding that liberals and progressives are “exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Musk pointed to California’s move to provide medical insurance even to undocumented people who qualify for its low-income Medi-Cal program.
“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk continued. Empathy has been “weaponized.”
Musk is now officially out of Trump world but his DOGE lives on. It has already destroyed almost every empathic part of the U.S. government.
At A Glance
Desert farm, icy spiral among June's best science photos.
The science behind Agatha Christie's poisons.
American pride falls to new low at 58%.
Fireworks: Today's 1440 Science and Technology newsletter unpacks the holiday explosives. Email comes out at 8:30 am ET—sign up here to receive!Explore an interactive world map of 30,000 plant species.
Browse through photos of Wild West mining towns.
Should we ban left turns at intersections?
A quest to learn the origins of tarot cards.
Ranking the 21st century's best feuds.
Clickbait: When coworkers pry, stress levels rise.
In The NEWS
Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> Dave Parker, baseball Hall of Famer, former NL MVP, and seven-time MLB All-Star, dies at age 74 (More) | D. Wayne Lukas, horse trainer who won 15 Triple Crown races, dies at age 89 (More)
> Brad Pitt's "F1" pulls in $55.6M in its opening weekend, the best-ever opening for an Apple-produced film (More) | Final installment of "Fast & Furious" franchise to feature the late Paul Walker's character, sets April 2027 release date (More)
> The 2025 NHL Draft wraps; see tracker of all 224 picks (More) | LeBron James picks up $52.6M player option to remain with Los Angeles Lakers next year; James will play an NBA record 23rd season (More)
Science & Technology
> Tesla provides first demonstration of a fully self-driving car leaving the factory and driving to the new owner's home without human assistance; Tesla Model Y traveled 30 miles in Austin (More, w/video) | Tesla explained (1440 Topics)
> Engineers develop smart pill that can monitor glucose, temperature, serotonin levels, and more after ingestion; approach may provide a cheap method for real-time monitoring of gut health (More)
> Chemists discover new spontaneous reaction that produces urea, a highly reactive molecule, from carbon dioxide and ammonia; researchers theorize process may have been involved in the origin of life on Earth (More)
Business & Markets
> US stock markets close higher Friday (S&P 500 +0.5%, Dow +1.0%, Nasdaq +0.5%), with S&P 500, Nasdaq closing at record highs (More)
> US-Canada trade talks resume after Canada rescinds digital services tax the day before first payment was due; tax was set to impact high-earning tech companies including Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon (More)
> President Donald Trump says a group of wealthy buyers is prepared to purchase TikTok's US operations from parent company ByteDance, will unveil buyers in two weeks (More)
Politics & World Affairs
> Former President Joe Biden, former VP Kamala Harris attend funeral for Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, killed weeks ago (More) | See previous write-up (More)
> Serbian police clash with protesters calling for early elections and end to 12-year rule of President Aleksandar Vucic (More) | Thailand protesters call for end of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra's rule over border dispute with Cambodia (More)
> Russia launches over 500 drones and missiles in largest aerial attack since start of its three-year war with Ukraine, downing F-16 (More)
July 2025
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For many of us, July of any year, represents the middle of summer... cool spells disappear, summer rains are here, humidity starts to worsen, air conditioners are in full swing, out of school children have become either more demanding or more independent, and we are planning our FOURTH OF JULY celebrations.
I remember the follow slogan:
Of course, for those who did not drink alcohol ignored it.
But this celebration is not just about alcohol... it is about family and friends, picnics, parades, remembrances, our freedoms, and fireworks.
For me, JULY IS SUMMER...
By the time this month rolls around each year, I am usually spending more and more time inside rather than outside. I am beginning to grow weary of mowing and weed eating, the mosquitos force me to wear long clothes or repellant, humidity makes it difficult to breathe, smoke from grilling constantly flows through the air, and there is absolutely nothing new on cable to occupy your time.
Being retired, I do not have to worry about all the additional traffic on the highways and around town because school is not in session. Colleges are on summer schedules so most of the students have returned home, if you live in a college/university town which I do.
What is most intriguing to me is how light it still is at 9:00 pm or if you are on military time at twenty-one hundred hours. During the non-summer months, I am usually in bed by 9:00/9:30, now it it 10:00/10:30 because of this light. Our circadian rhythms change during the summer months, especially during the month of July.
However, July also means, if you have backyard gardens, that you are now eating your fill of tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, bell peppers, squash, zucchini, lettuce, cabbage, potatoes, and whatever else you might have planted like melons. There has been plenty of rain for melons of all kinds and varieties.
Astronomers discover a tiny star with a giant planet that should not exist
Astronomers have spotted a giant exoplanet, named TOI-6894b, that’s bigger than Saturn and circling a red dwarf star only one-fifth the mass of the Sun.
This finding rewrites expectations about where massive planets can form and hints that such worlds may be common around the smallest stars. The discovery emerged from a survey of Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data.
TOI-6894 is a cool red dwarf that shines with far less light than the Sun. Yet its companion, TOI-6894b, is a puffed-up gas world whose radius exceeds Saturn’s while its mass is only half as large.
