James' World 2

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CLIMATEWIRE | The Department of Housing and Urban Development is expected to announce Wednesday that it’s moving into the headquarters of the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the union representing NSF employees.

But as of Tuesday evening, staff at the science foundation hadn’t been informed by management about their building’s incoming occupants, leaving them feeling blindsided and unsure about where they’re expected to work.

One NSF employee said that they had “literally zero idea” the move was coming until reports began circulating among staffers Tuesday evening. That person was granted anonymity because they fear retaliation.

Jesus Soriano, president of the union that represents NSF employees, said he was expecting a press conference Wednesday morning in the NSF lobby including HUD Secretary Scott Turner and Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Soriano said he was informed about the plans by NSF employees.

Soriano sent an alert to union members Tuesday evening informing them that NSF’s management “learned this afternoon [from HUD]” that the Wednesday news conference would include an announcement that “HUD will take over the NSF building” and that the science agency was not involved in the decision.

The union, Soriano wrote, “understands that there is no planning except that the HUD secretary may take over the 18th and 19th floors” and start planning the HUD move over the next two years. “There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move,” he wrote.

HUD and the General Services Administration announced in April that HUD wanted to move out of its current location in the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building near L’Enfant Plaza in Washington. That building, which opened in 1968, faces over $500 million in deferred maintenance and modernization needs, GSA said. The building would be at half of its capacity with every HUD staffer at headquarters, according to GSA.

An NSF spokesperson directed a request for comment to GSA. GSA, the White House and a Youngkin spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It’s unclear what happens to the staff at NSF, where more than 1,833 employees work in the building, according to the employee union. The science agency moved into the Alexandria office from Virginia’s Ballston area in 2017.

“Is the government more interested in the technological and scientific leadership of this country or on using taxpayer dollars to offer luxury accommodations to government officials?” Soriano said.

The union said in a press release Tuesday that it was told that plans for NSF headquarters include a dedicated executive suite for the HUD secretary on the 19th floor, the construction of an executive dining room, reserved parking spaces for the secretary’s cars, exclusive use of an elevator for the secretary and a space dedicated to hosting the secretary’s executive assistants on the 18th floor.

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On the surface of the U.S. economy, prices are higher. The latest inflation data out on Friday from the government showed a bigger uptick than forecast. On Thursday, Nike said it took a $1 billion hit due to tariffs and the fact that price increases have yet to be implemented.

Inside the U.S. economy, within distribution networks that manage inventory, there are fewer items overall due to the trade war, but more goods on which sticker prices are going up.

“We are now seeing multiple customers increasing pricing,” said Ryan Martin, president of distribution and fulfillment for ITS Logistics.

While price tags are placed on items at the manufacturer, Martin said over the past month his company has started re-ticketing “millions of units of products for many customers,” items ranging from apparel to consumer products in the warehouse being prepped for eventual delivery or immediate transport to stores.

Depending on the product, price increases range from 8%-15%, he said.

“This is creating additional inflation,” Martin said. It is happening in e-commerce as well, he said, though the price change is reflected online, not on the product.

A new survey from the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America for Q2 shows 55% of respondents expect their average retail price to rise between 6%-10% in 2025 as a result of tariffs.

Martin says the last time he saw this amount of re-ticketing was during the pandemic, and it was much higher then.

“Everything was getting more expensive at that time, transportation, labor and quantities of product,” he said. “We saw increases across all products, including food and beverage,” he said. “Re-ticketing was between 30%-40%.”

It’s not just higher prices but less inventory

With current concerns about trade uncertainty and consumer softness, retailers and manufacturing clients are managing inventory by shrinking SKU counts and importing fewer SKUs they are keeping. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that gross domestic product shrank by 0.5% in the first quarter of 2025.

“The overall inventory footprint is smaller,” said Martin. “You are looking at three months of inventory on hand now versus six.”

Supply chain data from the warehouse sector and the growing number of empty shipping containers at ports are pointing to a more mild peak season (the summer buildup of inventory for the back-to-school and holiday shopping periods).

Warehouse inventory levels are down 6% month over month, according to the Logistics Managers’ Index.

Comparing readings from the first half of June to later in the month, growth in inventories started to slow down, which suggests that an increase in early June was temporary, according to Zachary Rogers, associate professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University. “Because of how long it takes inventories to move through systems, we haven’t seen any big shifts in transportation yet,” said Rogers. “Warehouse capacity did move from mild contraction to mild expansion.”

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Unlocking the future of energy! 🔋 Discover the latest in fusion technology and its potential for limitless clean power. The world might be on the brink of a revolutionary change! #FusionEnergy #CleanPower #SustainableFuture

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Fusion

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Looking at my bookshelf, I’m stricken with guilt: the collected Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle have been sitting untouched for years. Unfortunately, I never got past the fantastic television adaptation starring Benedict Cumberbatch to read the source material. But happily for Holmes, the British detective has a following the world over.

In fact, stories about the ingenious sleuth and his brilliant nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, so appealed to mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern that they played a role in the creation of game theory in the early 20th century. This mathematical discipline explores the strategies for solving various decision-making problems. Take the classic “cake problem,” which posits that the fairest way for two people to split a cake such that each gets as much as possible requires one person to try to cut the cake into two equal pieces and the other to select a slice. Morgenstern and von Neumann did not devise this solution (it has been known since ancient times), but it is a good illustration of how game theorists devise optimal strategies.

The pair were particularly taken by a scenario described by Doyle in his short story “The Final Problem,” in which Moriarty pursues Holmes to a platform at Victoria station in London. There Moriarty sees Holmes jump onto a train to Dover. Moriarty can no longer board the train. He therefore hires a single motorized railroad carriage in pursuit. Holmes’s train does not go straight to Dover, however, but stops at Canterbury on the way. So Moriarty has to make a decision: Should he stop in Canterbury, in the hope that Holmes will get off the train there, or travel all the way to Dover? Holmes, too, must weigh his choices. From Dover, he can flee to the European mainland. He knows that Moriarty may expect that outcome and wait for him there, though, so maybe Holmes should get off the train at Canterbury. But what if that is exactly what Moriarty wants Holmes to think?

This scenario intrigued Morgenstern and von Neumann, who ultimately came to the conclusion in their 1944 foundational book that “Sherlock Holmes is as good as 48% dead when his train pulls out from Victoria Station.” But how could they put such a precise figure on it? And how should Holmes act to escape his adversary? All this can be answered with the help of game theory.

A Battle of Wits

The first thing to consider is that the clever Holmes and Moriarty are each likely to guess what the other is thinking. (“If he thinks that I think that he thinks….”) These considerations could easily land Holmes in an endless logic loop with no way out.

Holmes should therefore assume that Moriarty will foresee his decision in either case and limit the damage accordingly. In other words, the detective ought to optimize his decision with the most pessimistic assumptions in mind. This strategy was published by von Neumann as early as 1928 and was used to demonstrate that a player’s profit can be maximized if one assumes that one’s opponent intends to deal the greatest possible damage.

With no clear winning strategy—unlike in the cake problem—only chance can help. Consider games such as rock-paper-scissors: as soon as one player picks a pattern, the opponent can exploit it to win. The best strategy is therefore to select scissors, rock and paper equally, with a probability of one third each. On average, both parties should then win and lose equally often, minimizing their damage.

The case of Holmes and Moriarty is a bit more complex. To understand this point, it helps to go through the various possible scenarios individually and weight them using numbers, as von Neumann and Morgenstern did. The two mathematicians decided to use values between –100 and 100, with a high value symbolizing a particularly rewarding situation for a given person. The exact numerical values (known as payoffs) chosen for each situation are subjective, but this subjective weighting can then be used to make an optimal decision from an objective point of view.

Morgenstern and von Neumann determined that four different situations could ultimately occur. First, Moriarty and Holmes could both travel to Dover, where Moriarty would assassinate the detective. For Moriarty, this is optimal, so it corresponds to a payoff of 100. For Holmes, on the other hand, it is a disastrous –100 outcome.

Second, Moriarty could get off the train at Canterbury while Holmes travels to Dover. This is bad news for Moriarty because Holmes could flee to the European continent, making it even harder to catch him. This situation is therefore weighted at –50 for Moriarty. For Holmes, on the other hand, it is a positive outcome, so von Neumann and Morgenstern give it a value of 50.

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Summer used to mean one thing: escaping the everyday grind for a much-needed tropical vacation (or for some, a city roaming adventure). But this year feels fundamentally different, and we all know why (hint hint, it has to do with what took place in November 2024).

As families across the country start planning their getaways, a harsh new reality is setting in. In Trump’s America, that dream vacation is a luxury that fewer can justify. In other words, affordable travel is slipping away and a lot of us are feeling it firsthand.

Now I know what you may be thinking: I see people traveling all the time across my social media feeds. Well, according to a recent LendingTree survey, that’s not actually the case. More than half of Americans are scaling back their travel plans, not because they don’t want to explore the world, but because they simply can’t afford to anymore. We’ve become a nation caught between wanderlust and financial survival, so the influencers you may see on TikTok and Instagram are not representing the majority who struggle with finances and can’t prioritize travel this year.

Most people blame soaring travel costs for making vacations feel out of reach. And honestly? Same. I’m not going to lie, as an avid traveler (and one who wants to feel like I’m actually enjoying myself rather than sticking to a tight budget when I travel), I’ve even felt these hits myself. And for many others, the sticker shock of flights, hotels, and dining has changed what once felt like accessible luxury into a significant financial decision. 

What’s particularly heartbreaking is watching an entire generation get priced out of experiences their parents took for granted. I have a sister in her early 30s, and also nieces and nephews in their 20s who won’t get the same opportunity to roam as freely the way we were able to 5-10 years ago when there were flight deals, and opportunity hacks galore (does anyone remember the $175 Dubai flight deal that dropped on Christmas from Christmas 2014?!) Young Americans, already drowning in student debt and struggling with housing costs, are finding travel increasingly impossible. Meanwhile, older generations with more established wealth can still afford to jet off, widening yet another gap in American society.

For families, the math just isn’t mathing. When you’re looking at the cost of four plane tickets instead of two, when you need family suites instead of standard rooms, that “affordable” vacation quickly becomes a mortgage payment. Parents are having to explain to their kids why this summer will be different or why the annual trip isn’t happening. It may just be a summer camp and chill kind of summer (though even the cost of summer camp has gone up drastically, as well!)

Then there’s the tariff nightmare. Trade policies that were supposed to put America first are instead keeping Americans home. The uncertainty alone is enough to make people postpone major expenses, but the actual impact on travel costs is making international trips feel like pipe dreams.

“Prices are still high for so many things, and many Americans are concerned the implementation of tariffs will only make things worse,” says Matt Schulz, LendingTree chief consumer finance analyst. “Those concerns are spurring many people to proceed with caution, delaying bigger expenses such as vacations until things seem more steady.”

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Smiling parents with their daughters are walking with luggage to the airport.

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Online opinion polling and data analytics company Civiqs has polled more than 30,000 US citizens on how they think President Donald J. Trump is faring in his job during his second term as POTUS. Specifically, the question put to the cross-section of America was, ‘do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?’ The results show that Trump’s approval ratings remained mostly steady across the country this past week, though a few states saw some notable shifts. Overall, 54% of those polled currently disapprove of Trump’s presidency, while 43% approve, and 3% neither approve not disapprove (Pictures: Getty Images)

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