One giant, cheap for mankind: SpaceX’s Starship
SpaceX successfully test-flighted the Starship Super Heavy, a 120-meter high vehicle roughly twice as powerful as the Saturn V moon rocket.
The launch featured "hot staging," where the Starship upper stage ignited six Raptor engines to separate from the Super Heavy booster just seconds after liftoff.
The Super Heavy booster returned to the launch site in Texas, landing vertically alongside the launch tower ("Mechazilla") using three of its 33 Raptor engines after a 75-kilometer descent.
The Starship upper stage completed a trajectory of approximately halfway around the Earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of 26,000 km/h before floating in the Indian Ocean.
Future iterations of Starship aim to carry 100–150 tons to low-Earth orbit (LEO), with potential designs reaching 200–250 tons, enabling the transport of prefabricated space stations.
SpaceX plans to establish orbital fuel depots where Starship tankers will refuel vehicles for missions beyond LEO, including NASA's Artemis moon landings and eventual human missions to Mars.
Elon Musk targets uncrewed Mars flights by the 2026 planetary alignment, with human missions likely targeted for the 2030s, though NASA's 2026 moon landing timeline is widely viewed as unrealistic.
Brazil's far-right is experiencing a significant resurgence following municipal elections, driven by the influence of former President Jair Bolsonaro despite his eight-year ban from public office.
Center-right and centrist parties won the majority of municipal seats, benefiting from a high incumbent re-election rate of 81% compared to a historical average of 58%, largely fueled by federal earmarks and a strong economy.
In São Paulo, far-right candidate Pablo Marçal secured 28% of the mayoral vote by adopting more extreme positions than Bolsonaro, while establishment candidate Ricardo Nunes gained the former president's endorsement by selecting a running mate with a militaristic profile.
Analysis indicates that 23 of Brazil's 100 largest cities saw Bolsonaro-backed candidates polling in first place, signaling a shift where conservative candidates must align closer to the far-right to secure the "Bolsonarista" vote.
The 2026 presidential race is projected to remain polarized, with President Lula da Silva facing challenges due to his advancing age (turning 81 in 2026) and a lack of a clear successor within the shrinking Workers' Party base.
Demographic shifts in Brazil, including a rise in evangelical Christians and the agribusiness sector alongside a decline in the urban working class, are structurally favoring conservative politicians over the traditional left-wing coalition.
The self-help genre, originating with Samuel Smiles' 1859 book Self-Help, has historically sold in higher volumes than major scientific or philosophical works like Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
Modern self-help trends, such as James Clear's Atomic Habits, continue to emphasize individual will and behavioral discipline, echoing 18th-century Puritan manuals that focused on mortality and daily reflection.
The genre experienced a major surge during the Industrial Revolution, reflecting a cultural shift toward individualism and the necessity for self-improvement in a rapidly changing economy.
Critics often dismiss the genre due to varying levels of charlatanism and ill-conceived advice, yet the volume of titles remains a precise metric of societal anxieties.
Publishing data reveals that self-help titles are categorized alphabetically by the specific anxieties they address, such as 77 books on adolescence, 63 on love, and 13 on alcoholism in American catalogs.
The content of the genre fluctuates with historical context; for example, post-Great Depression America saw a boom in money-making books, though the efficacy of such advice remains debated against the backdrop of existential uncertainty.