Whole Foods shelves sit empty after a data breach shut down its wholesale distributor. Meat packers working for JBS Foods are paralyzed as an $11 million ransomware attack takes out their processing facilities. Some 2.2 million workers at Stop & Shop and Hannaford have their personal data exposed as the result of a cyberattack on parent company Ahold Delhaize USA. These scenarios, straight from a William Gibson novel, are becoming increasingly common in supply chains across the world.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order promoting the production of glyphosate, the chemical that powers the weed killer Roundup and a longtime target of the MAGA faithful. Glyphosate has also long been one of the main targets of the MAHA movement, which considers it a dangerous carcinogen poisoning the country. (Experts say that the pesticide's danger to the public is minimal, but the scientific community is not in agreement about its health effects.)
For over a thousand years, Constantinople stood among the medieval world's richest and most sophisticated cities. As the capital of the Byzantine Empire, it was more than a political centre: it was a living city shaped by imperial ceremony and Christian devotion, by merchants and craftsmen, and by the everyday routines that kept a vast urban population fed, housed, and working.
For those of us who aren't scientists or daring expeditioners, it's hard to imagine what the polar desert of Antarctica is really like. We chalk it up to temperatures well below freezing, endless icy terrains, and life only in the form of penguins, seals, and humpback whales. Across the vast majority of the continent's 5.5 million square miles, this is the reality.
