🚨ALERT: In explosive testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dropped a bombshell that has Cuba on high alert. "I think we would love to see the regime there change.. it would be of great benefit to the United States," Rubio stated. pic.twitter.com/1pMZA0lphO
“£72,000”@vicderbyshire speaks to Dr Arthur Joustra, a trainee paediatrician, about how his student loan debt has risen since he graduated in 2022 – despite making payments. #Newsnightpic.twitter.com/rgBhJIaJyx
Xi Jinping has spent three years gutting his own military leadership. Five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission – China’s supreme military authority – have been purged since 2023, all of whom were handpicked by Xi himself back in 2022. But if anyone seemed safe from the carnage, it was Zhang Youxia.
Zhang wasn’t just China’s most senior uniformed military officer. He was a fellow “princeling” whose father fought alongside Xi’s in the revolution, a combat-tested general who distinguished himself in the 1979 war with Vietnam, and someone who had backed Xi since he first rose to power in 2012.
And yet, on Jan. 24, Beijing announced that Zhang and another CMC member, Liu Zhenli, were under investigation for “suspected serious discipline and law violations.” In practical terms, that means detention and dismissal. Official PLA media accused them of causing “damage to combat capability construction,” a phrase suggesting problems that go well beyond ordinary corruption. Wild rumors have swirled about what really happened. Some online chatter ties Zhang to a foiled coup attempt against Xi; a Wall Street Journal report suggests he leaked nuclear secrets to the United States. Color me skeptical of both.
What’s more likely, and plenty alarming in its own right, is that this reflects Xi’s deepening paranoia and mistrust. Zhang had accumulated significant power simply by surviving the earlier purges, and his combat pedigree, reputation for competence, and princeling status made him a potential rival in Xi’s eyes. By removing him, Xi blocks the formation of an alternative power center that might one day defy his rule and sends an unmistakable message to every party leader, military commander, and provincial official in China: whatever authority you hold is delegated, not owned.Loyalty guarantees nothing; no one is ever truly safe. Once that lesson sinks in, officials become consumed not with whether they’ve done anything wrong but with whether they might be next. Taking initiative becomes riskier than doing nothing.The ambitious learn to keep their heads down; the cautious get promoted. Honest information stops flowing upward. Problems don’t get flagged until they’re crises.
This is Maximum Xi – the logical endpoint of a system where all power flows to a single leader with no checks, no dissent, and no trusted counsel. We’ve witnessed this dynamic since Xi emerged from China’s 20th Party Congress in 2022 with a grip on power unrivaled since Mao Zedong. Back then, the concern was that stacking the Politburo Standing Committee with loyalists would leave Xi virtually unfettered and unconstrained in his ability to make big mistakes. Arbitrary decisions, policy volatility, elevated uncertainty – these are the consequences of concentrating so much authority in one man’s hands. Three years later, we’re watching that play out in the most dramatic arena possible – the military command structure itself.
The only people left on the CMC now are Xi and his anti-corruption enforcer, Zhang Shengmin. The chairman commands an army of two million with what is essentially a committee of one. Some will read this as proof of Xi’s iron grip, and there’s certainly truth to that. But control and power aren’t the same thing. Xi exercises more direct control over the People’s Liberation Army than at any point in his tenure, but a hollowed-out CMC means a less effective military in the near term – even if the purges are intended to produce a stronger, more disciplined fighting force over time.
The CMC’s five vacancies will likely remain open until the 21st Party Congress in October 2027, with Xi elevating trusted service chiefs or theater commanders to acting roles in the meantime. He’ll screen these candidates primarily for loyalty and disciplinary records rather than competence or warfighting ability, heightening operational risks. As one of the few active Chinese generals with actual combat experience, Zhang’s loss will be felt particularly hard. His removal creates a vacuum of reliable counsel at the very top of the command structure. Orders will be more difficult to transmit clearly down the chain of command. Readiness for complex joint operations – the kind required for, say, an amphibious invasion of Taiwan – will suffer.
The silver lining is that this turbulence pushes back the timeline for an already-unlikely invasion of Taiwan. Beijing has always viewed this option as a last resort: the risk of US military intervention remains too high, the economic costs would be staggering, and Chinese leaders still believe unification can be achieved without a direct conflict. Xi has reason to feel comfortable about the near-term trajectory: President Donald Trump is much more personally invested in bilateral stability than in Taiwan, President William Lai is in political trouble at home, and the opposition KMT is making favorable noises about Beijing ahead of Taiwan’s 2028 elections. And China is playing a long game, betting that as it catches up militarily and becomes economically and technologically self-reliant, unification can be achieved at a lower cost in the future. Why risk everything on an invasion today when time is on your side?
Against that backdrop, losing two senior generals with real warfighting experience pushes the invasion timeline back further still. The purges themselves clearly signal Xi’s lack of confidence in his military right now. Leaders don’t gut their command structures when they’re feeling bold, suggesting a reduced appetite for large-scale kinetic moves, at least until he fills the CMC vacancies with vetted loyalists. And even then, Xi will be asking generals he barely knows, men who watched him throw all their former bosses in jail, to advise him on the biggest military decision China has faced since splitting with the Soviet Union – hardly a recipe for candid counsel.
This doesn’t mean Taiwan can breathe easy. Xi remains set on unification by any means necessary. Beijing will continue favoring gray-zone coercion to chip away at the status quo and deter Taipei (and Washington) from moving toward independence. China will likely conduct at least two major military exercises in 2026 and work to isolate Taiwan internationally.
Perhaps most importantly, Maximum Xi cuts both ways. A degraded command structure makes the PLA less capable today, but it also means Xi is less likely to hear that from anyone around him. If he ever convinces himself the PLA is ready to pull off an invasion when it isn’t – or feels cornered enough to act – there will be fewer voices in the room to stop him. When no one dares tell the emperor he has no clothes, the risk of miscalculation rises. And if Xi eventually succeeds at forging a more disciplined, loyal military, Taiwan will face a far more dangerous threat down the road.
The more power Xi accumulates, the more brittle the system becomes. The fewer people who can tell him he’s wrong, the more likely he is to be wrong. And the tighter his grip on the military, the less capable that military may be when it actually matters … or so we should hope.
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A commentary, published in theJournal of Neurotrauma, calls for traumatic brain injury to be recognized as a chronic condition as are diabetes, asthma, depression and heart failure.
To provide comprehensive care for traumatic brain injury throughout individuals’ lifespans, the authors propose that coordinated care models they and others have developed, tested and applied to various populations—including older adults, individuals living with depression and post-intensive care unit survivors—be adapted to improve communication and integration between brain injury specialists—including physical medicine and rehabilitation clinicians—and primary care physicians, fostering better long-term patient care for traumatic brain injury survivors and more support for both patients and their families.
The incidence of traumatic brain injury (frequently referred to as TBI) is rising in the U.S., with an estimated 2.8 million Americans receiving a traumatic brain injury each year. The health care system and insurance coverage predominantly focus on the acute phase of the condition, typically the first year after the injury is sustained.But for a significant number of those living with a traumatic brain injury, the effects are long lasting, occurring for a lifetime. Post-acute care options, however, are often rather bleak.
Traumatic brain injury is most commonly caused by falls (especially in older adults), blunt trauma (particularly sports-related injuries), firearms, motor vehicles or assaults.Damage can be confined to one area of the brain or it can occur over a more widespread area. Many factors including the size, severity and location of the brain injury as well as age of the individual and prior brain injuries impact recovery.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, populations more likely to be affected by traumatic brain injury include:
racial and ethnic minorities
service members and veterans
people who experience homelessness
people who are in correctional and detention facilities
survivors of intimate partner violence
people living in rural areas
The commentary authors observe that many clinicians believe that residual impairments due to traumatic brain injury are static once initial recovery has plateaued and do not expect significant changes over the remainder of a person’s life. In contrast, the commentary authors write that the long-term course of traumatic brain injury involves waxing and waning and thus could be better characterized as dynamic rather than static. Accordingly, they call for traumatic brain injury to be considered and managed as a chronic condition.
“Acknowledging traumatic brain injury as a chronic condition and providing coordinated care will make a difference to patients, their families and to how the health care system operates in several ways. It recognizes that for many patients it’s not over after 12 months and, importantly, provides these patients with a place of care where they can be monitored and helped over many years,” said commentary senior author Kurt Kroenke, M.D. of the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University School of Medicine.
“Recognizing TBI as a chronic condition and using coordinated care models support the important role of self-management for both the patient and their family. These two steps facilitate collaboration between the limited number of brain care specialists and the primary care clinicians who typically oversee care throughout the TBI survivor’s lifetime.
“Collaborative care models, which we at Regenstrief Institute and others have developed, provide patients living with chronic conditions with the support and coordinated care they need. Medicare recently recognized TBI as one of 18 chronic conditions, hopefully others will follow.”
Dr. Kroenke notes that the chronic condition designation by Medicare opens the door to change in how traumatic brain injury is managed long-term and may guide health care systems to better integrate brain injury specialists—who are in short supply—with primary care providers through collaborative care models. It may also encourage health insurers to provide coverage for the many years of care needed by some survivors.
“We can improve life after brain injury with a more proactive approach and a longer-term view of brain injury as a chronic and dynamic condition. This approach anticipates changes overtime and incorporates strategies to optimize healthy living with coordinated care that is individualized for the lifetime needs of those living with brain injury,” said commentary co-author Flora M. Hammond, M.D., Covalt Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the IU School of Medicine.
“Recognition of TBI as a chronic condition would not only focus more resources on problems associated with living with brain injury but would also enhance both the public’s and professionals’ awareness of how to optimize the health and well-being of persons living with the effects of TBI,” the commentary concludes.
Publication details
John D. Corrigan et al, Recognition of Traumatic Brain Injury as a Chronic Condition: A Commentary, Journal of Neurotrauma (2024). DOI: 10.1089/neu.2024.0356
Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk has long garnered a reputation for being massively wrong in his promises and predictions about the future.
In 2024, for instance, he said that AI would become “smarter than the smartest human” by 2025. He said his company’s SpaceX Starship rocket, which is still exploding during test flights, will land on Mars this year. Like clockwork, he’s predicted that self-driving cars will become a reality “next year” every year for well over a decade now. He promised robotaxis without human safety monitors by mid-2025, which the company still has yet to accomplish.
We could go onand on. In short, it’d be far easier to count the occasions on which he’s been right than when he’s been wrong.
Now, as NBC News reports, users on online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are making big bucks off of Musk’s astonishing track record for being wrong about the future. Case in point, Polymarket user David Bensoussan made a ten percent return after betting $10,000 that Musk wouldn’t follow through on his threat of forming a new political party following his falling out with president Donald Trump.
He also successfully bet against Musk’s prediction that Tesla would launch an “unsupervised” version of its erroneously-named “Full Self-Driving” software by the end of 2025.
To Bensoussan, it’s a matter of principle.
“He does have a solid fan base, and so if I can help separate them from some of their money, I’m always happy to do that,” he told NBC. “He has a habit of exaggerating timelines, and of saying he’s going to do these amazing things and attaching more immediacy than what his intent may necessarily be.”
In total, Bensoussan’s ploy to bet against Musk’s wildly optimistic predictions has paid off, garnering him over $36,000.
Online prediction markets have surged in popularity in recent years. While benefitting from a largely unfettered regulatory vacuum, sites like Polymarket and Kalshi have also become embroiled in major insider trading controversies. Case in point, earlier this year, an anonymous bettor netted a cool $410,000 after accurately predicting the Trump administration’s attacks on Venezuela mere hours before Trump issued orders authorizing the strikes.
Even Musk himself has frequently voiced his support for prediction markets. His AI company, xAI, has deep integrations of both Kalshi and Polymarket.
But as it turns out, actively betting against his many attempts to reassure investors that a major technological revolution is just around the corner — a gambit that has largely worked out for him in the past — could be pretty lucrative.
As for current predictions, the online platforms aren’t exactly eager to stand behind his latest prophecies. For instance, only 13 percent of Kalshi users believe Musk will make good on his recent threat to buy airline Ryanair by the end of this year. The airline’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, had questioned the economics of adding SpaceX Starlink internet to airliners, resulting in petty name-calling.
Markets expectedly rose, with odds tripling to about 40 percent.
However, as the rules stipulated, a robotaxi service would only count if it was open to the general public — something that only materialized well after July 2025 — leading to plenty of users getting “burned.”
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.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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The earliest signs of dementia are rarely dramatic. They do not arrive as forgotten names or misplaced keys, but as changes so subtle they are almost impossible to notice: a slightly narrower vocabulary, less variation in description, a gentle flattening of language. The case of Sir Terry Pratchett
New research my colleagues and I conducted suggests that these changes may be detectable years before a formal diagnosis — and one of the clearest examples may lie hidden in the novels of Sir Terry Pratchett.
Pratchett is remembered as one of Britain’s most imaginative writers, the creator of the Discworld series and a master of satire whose work combined humour with sharp moral insight. Following his diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease, he became a powerful advocate for dementia research and awareness. Less well known is that the early effects of the disease may already have been present in his writing long before he knew he was ill.
Dementia is often described as a condition of memory loss, but this is only part of the story. In its earliest stages, dementia can affect attention, perception and language before memory problems become obvious. These early changes are difficult to detect because they are gradual and easily mistaken for stress, ageing or normal variation in behaviour.
Language, however, offers a unique window into cognitive change. The words we choose, the variety of our vocabulary and the way we structure description are tightly linked to brain function. Even small shifts in language use may reflect underlying neurological change.
In our recent study, we analysed the language used across Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, examining how his writing evolved over time. We focused on “lexical diversity” — a measure of how varied an author’s word choices are — and paid particular attention to adjectives, the descriptive words that give prose its texture, colour and emotional depth.
Lexical diversity changed over time. Stephen Frost/Alamy
Across Pratchett’s later novels, there was a clear and statistically significant decline in the diversity of adjectives he used.The richness of descriptive language gradually narrowed. This was not something a reader would necessarily notice, nor did it reflect a sudden deterioration in quality. Instead, it was a subtle, progressive change detectable only through detailed linguistic analysis.
Crucially, the first significant drop appeared in The Last Continent, published almost ten years before Pratchett received his formal diagnosis. This suggests that the “preclinical phase” of dementia — the period during which disease-related changes are already occurring in the brain — may have begun many years earlier, without obvious outward symptoms.
This finding has implications that extend far beyond literary analysis. Dementia is known to have a long preclinical phase, during which opportunities for early intervention are greatest. Yet identifying people during this window remains one of the biggest challenges in dementia care.
Linguistic analysis is not a diagnostic tool in itself, and it would not work equally well for everyone. Factors such as education, profession, writing habits and linguistic background all influence how people use language. But as part of a broader approach — alongside cognitive tests, brain imaging and biological markers — language analysis could help detect early risk in a non-invasive and cost-effective way.
Importantly, language data already exists. People generate vast amounts of written material through emails, reports, messages and online communication. With appropriate safeguards for privacy and consent, subtle changes in writing style could one day help flag early cognitive decline long before daily functioning is affected.
Why early detection matters
Early detection matters more than ever. In recent years, new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease have emerged that aim to slow disease progression rather than simply manage symptoms. Drugs such as lecanemab and donanemab target amyloid proteins that accumulate in the brain and are thought to play an important role in the disease. Clinical trials suggest these treatments would be most effective when given early, before significant neuronal damage has occurred.
Identifying people during the preclinical phase would allow people and their families more time to plan, access support and consider interventions that may help slow progression. These may include lifestyle changes, cognitive stimulation and, increasingly, new drugs to slow the disease progression.
More than a decade after his death, Terry Pratchett continues to contribute to our understanding of dementia. His novels remain deeply loved, but hidden within them is another legacy: evidence that dementia may leave its mark long before it announces itself. Paying closer attention to language — even language we think we know well — could help transform how we detect, understand and ultimately treat this devastating condition.
canisgallicus 