Albert Einstein was famous for prioritizing his rest, frequently sleeping for 10 hours a night and taking regular daytime naps.
He often used a technique where he would hold a metal spoon or ball while drifting off; as he fell asleep, the object would drop and wake him up, allowing him to capture the creative insights formed during the transition into sleep.
Modern neuroscience supports this approach to rest. During deep sleep, the brain activates the glymphatic system to clear metabolic waste, while also consolidating memories and reorganizing information.
This cognitive processing directly enhances problem-solving and creativity, making rest a functional part of mental clarity.
Einstein also balanced his intense work with quiet, unscheduled thinking time, frequently taking long walks or sailing to let his mind wander.
This state of cognitive rest allows the brain’s default mode network to activate, which is highly associated with deep insight and creative breakthroughs.
His routine serves as a reminder that sustained intellectual performance relies heavily on deliberate rest and giving ideas time to develop naturally.
During summer, the Salvation Army is looking for backpacks and school supplies ahead of the upcoming school year.
The organization also accepts hygiene kits for people experiencing homelessness.
Donations of children’s winter wear are always accepted and needed.
Whether you’re moving or simply want to get rid of extra stuff taking up space in your house, summer is a great time to declutter.
Rather than throwing your unwanted items away, you can also donate to local stores aimed at serving the community, such as Salvation Army.
If you’re curious what the organization is always in need of during the warmer months, here’s what’s in high demand at Salvation Army over the summer, according to an employee. Do you have anything on the list?
Dan Furry is a divisional marketing and communications director for Salvation Army.
Mark Nelson is the commander of the Salvation Army’s western territory Adult Rehabilitation Centers Command.
Backpacks
Dan Furry, a divisional marketing and communications director for Salvation Army, notes that backpacks are always needed, especially as the school year approaches.
“All of our metro area service centers hold backpack giveaways, usually during August, so that always comes in handy,” Furry says. “These are needed for all grades, K to 12.”
If you’re looking for a place to drop off summer clothing you no longer want, consider Salvation Army.
“Salvation Army thrift stores see strong demand for seasonal essentials, including lightweight clothing such as short-sleeved shirts, shorts, hats, dresses, swimsuits, and sandals,” says Mark Nelson, commander of Salvation Army’s western territory Adult Rehabilitation Centers Command.
School Supplies
Dropping off any spare school supplies around your house ahead of back-to-school season is always worth doing.
“That constitutes basic school supplies that we can put inside backpacks—notebooks, pencils, pens, rulers, markers, erasers, kid-safe scissors, et cetera,” Furry says.
Children’s Winter Wear
The weather is warm now, but Salvation Army is already thinking ahead to winter—specifically children’s winter wear for all ages through high school.
“As fall begins, we look for donations of various types of children’s warm wear, such as winter coats, gloves, mittens, hats, scarves, boots, and warm socks,” Furry says. “We generally hold coat distributions in mid-fall, around October.”
Hygiene Kits
Furry says that Salvation Army employees also appreciate receiving hygiene kits for people experiencing homelessness.
“Generally, these are gallon-size Ziploc bags that are filled with toiletries like toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, shampoo, soap, combs, nail clippers, socks, and sometimes snacks, such as granola bars,” he explains.
Food Donations
Although you may associate Salvation Army with its thrift stores, the organization also has food shelves that are consistently in need of donations. These donations can be especially helpful in the summer, when many children don’t have access to their schools’ free breakfast and lunch programs.
“Our service centers will generally accept any kind of food that is fresh and/or unexpired, and non-perishable food is the most common donation as they are shelf stable,” Furry says. “That said, the food shelves and certainly take perishable foods such as produce, dairy, meat, and bread, but these must all be fresh and unexpired.”
President Trump will allow a housing bill to become law after canceling its signing ceremony more than two weeks ago — a mostly symbolic gesture, as the bill will become law at midnight with or without Trump’s signature. Go deeper. One of Spain’s deadliest wildfires on record killed 12 people overnight, authorities said, with rising temperatures expected to continue this weekend, AP reports.
Go deeper. President Trump said today that the U.S. agreed to continue talks with Iran, but it will not adhere to the ceasefire anymore, Axios’ Barak Ravid reports.
LeBron James back to Cleveland? The “Cupcake Lady” — who famously predicted James’ return to Ohio in 2014 — is back with another prediction: James is headed home, and he’s bringing his ol’ pal Draymond Green with him. See her prediction.
Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Romain Maurice / Getty Images; Shutterstock
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President Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, cofounded a crypto mining venture called American Bitcoin Corp last year — and it’s already in deep trouble.
As the Bitcoin community reels from a major downturn — the digital currency has plummeted by over 40 percent year to date — the company’s shares have plummeted right along with it, crashing over a whopping 95 percent compared to their peak.
On Wednesday, its stock price hit an all-time low of well under $6, down from a high of $140 last autumn.
That means Eric Trump’s six percent stake in the company has lost more than $600 million in market value, per Bloomberg‘s calculations, a bruising crypto play that perfectly illustrates the enormous risks of going all-in on extremely volatile digital assets.
After merging with an existing mining company, the company made the questionable decision last year to pivot from building data centers — an extremely lucrative industry that has seen massive interest as of late — to crypto mining, a gambling-like practice that’s far from guaranteed to make a profit.
Since then, the crypto world has had a rude awakening. As prices plunged, the industry made a sharp turn towards leasing all of that hardware to AI companies instead of mining Bitcoin.
However, American Bitcoin stuck to its guns, ultimately going down with the ship. Most of its assets are tied up in crypto-mining hardware and Bitcoin holdings, meaning it didn’t really have anywhere to run.
Eric Trump, meanwhile, is doubling down.
“Thrilled to announce American Bitcoin crossing the 8,000 BTC mark!” he gloated in a July 7 tweet. “The stacking continues.”
Despite Trump’s enthusiasm, American Bitcoin lost well over $100 million in the first quarter of this year. Whether the tide will turn and crypto will see another rise in value is ultimately a question of belief.
“Just hold on guys, just hold,” Eric Trump warned during this year’s Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas.
The elder Trump appears to have fared far better, reporting last week that he had made more than $1.4 billion in income from his family’s crypto ventures in 2025 — an astronomical conflict of interest, considering we’re talking about the president of the United States.
I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei to U.S and Israel: We will get revenge for killing my father “Revenge for my father is the demand of the nation and must certainly take place. We pledge to avenge the blood of the martyred leader and all of the martyrs of these two wars. Revenge does not stop at my existence or the existence of the rest of the officials, and revenge will inevitably be achieved.” Source: Al Jazeera,
Consumer gasoline prices in Russia rose 6.88% in June 2026 from the previous month, the Russian news agency Interfax reported, citing Rosstat data.
Compared with June 2025, gasoline prices were up 19.90%.
AI-92 grade gasoline rose 7.3% in June from the prior month, AI-95 gained 6.7%, and AI-98 was up 3.1%. Diesel fuel prices rose 7.1%.
Rosstat data also show that annual inflation in Russia reached 6.02% in June, up from 5.31% a month earlier. Consumer prices rose 0.87% in June and 4.19% since the start of the year. The annual figure topped 6% for the first time since January 2026, when it stood at 6.58%, the Russian business news outlet RBC noted.
RBC also reported that the government and relevant agencies are discussing a new package of measures to support the fuel market. Specifically, authorities plan to analyze the pricing of Belarusian fuel on the St. Petersburg Exchange, resolve the unjustified nighttime closure of gas stations, extend the import damper to diesel fuel, and develop a mechanism for exchange-based swap operations with petroleum products to optimize supply logistics.
Gasoline production in Russia has fallen to 65% of average seasonal consumption following Ukrainian drone strikes on oil refineries, according to a Reuters assessment.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak acknowledged on July 10 that Russia faces “problems and a shortage, because of which we are seeing lines, or gas stations sometimes working unreliably.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Ukrainian forces are striking Russian oil refineries to create a “nervous atmosphere” in the country.
Russia opens investigation into ‘Empire of Geese,’ the anime-and-gaming community whose creators allegedly locked children’s computers with ransomware and then demanded nude photos to unlock them
July 10, 2026, 11:01 pm
Source: Meduza
Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed on July 10 that its offices in the Moscow and Sverdlovsk regions are conducting criminal investigations into “unlawful actions against teenagers.” The announcement follows media reports that the creators of the popular online community “Empire of Geese” had coerced teenagers into producing sexualized photos and videos.
“Empire of Geese” was founded in 2014. The project has 350,000 subscribers on YouTube and around 3,000 on Telegram. The community posts music aimed at teenagers who are fans of niche anime and video games.
Several days earlier, on July 7, Anna Levchenko, a human rights activist and leader of the “Sday Pedofila” (“Turn In a Pedophile”) movement, alleged that the creators of “Empire of Geese” had drawn underage fans into producing pornography.
According to Levchenko, group administrators targeted “insecure children who valued the community” and, under various pretexts (such as asking them to vote somewhere), sent links containing ransomware that locked access to their computers. The administrators would then promise to restore access in exchange for intimate photographs. “After that, those who complied were subjected to blackmail: refuse to send new photos and they’ll be shared online, sent to relatives and friends,” she said. Those who refused to give in to the blackmail did indeed find their photos sent to people close to them, she added.
Levchenko said the “Sday Pedofila”movement is aware of 22 victims across Russia, currently between 13 and 22 years old, the majority of them male.Some of the children, according to the activists, were subjected not only to extortion of photographs but also to actual sexual violence.
The Russian Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti reviewed accounts from victims and records of their correspondence, finding that many of the teenagers noted how easily their trust had been won, since they were genuine fans of the community.
Ekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, who was contacted by activists from the “Sday Pedofila” project, said there were 24 victims across 12 regions. “The teenagers drawn into the network were required to produce around 40 intimate videos or photos for the organizers every day,” she said.
Mizulina said the community’s creators are Viktor Postnov and Alexey Kuzmin, both living in the Moscow region, and that they allegedly sold the photos and videos obtained from the children to buyers in Latvia and Estonia.
Several children had already filed complaints with law enforcement, Mizulina added. One girl in Yekaterinburg who had been subjected to sexual violence was initially turned away when she tried to file a report, with officials telling her to come back “once a case is opened in Moscow.”
Viktor Postnov, one of the creators of “Empire of Geese,” rejected the accusations in an interview with the network REN TV. He said the community’s creators do not handle moderation — the subscribers do it themselves. He laid the blame for the affair involving “all these photographs” on one such subscriber, who at one point had served as an administrator. “As soon as we learned about the situation — this was two or three years ago — we threw her out right away. We tried not to get into a confrontation with anyone and simply eased her out quietly,” he said
According to diplomats, the talks at Monday’s meeting in Brussels are unlikely to produce immediate decisions but are expected to gauge whether there is sufficient backing to advance the proposal.
Several EU members, including Ireland, the Netherlands, and Spain, have already introduced national trade restrictions on goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, which are regarded as illegal under international law.
Amid growing calls for an EU-wide response, the European Commission this week presented several options to limit trade with the settlements, including a potential import ban.
EU officials remain divided over whether such a measure would require unanimous approval from all 27 member states or only a qualified majority.
Diplomats said Germany and Italy, two key member states, have yet to decide their positions on the proposal.
Former PM Liz Truss discloses that those who speak against the approved narrative in Parliament are ostracised and cancelled and that a shadowy global elite led by the central bankers control all our senior politicians! From experience I know she is correct I know she is correct
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President Trump will allow a housing bill to become law after canceling its signing ceremony more than two weeks ago — a mostly symbolic gesture, as the bill will become law at midnight with or without Trump’s signature. 
One of Spain’s deadliest wildfires on record killed 12 people overnight, authorities said, with rising temperatures expected to continue this weekend, AP reports.
President Trump said today that the U.S. agreed to 
LeBron James back to Cleveland? The “Cupcake Lady” — who famously predicted James’ return to Ohio in 2014 — is back with another prediction: James is headed home, and he’s bringing his ol’ pal Draymond Green with him. 
