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As they traveled back toward Earth following a solar eclipse and a communications blackout, President Trump called the space capsule to praise the four astronauts on their success.

On the sixth day, 248,655 miles from Earth, four people ventured farther from home than any human being who has ever lived.

Embraced by the moon’s gravitational pull, four astronauts accelerated Monday afternoon on a path to swing around the lunar far side, five days after launching on the Artemis II mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

President Trump calls the Artemis II astronauts after their historic journey.

President Trump spoke with the astronauts of the Artemis II mission hours after their spaceship swung around the far side of the moon and took them farther from Earth than any humans on Monday.

“You’ve made history and made all America really proud,” Mr. Trump said, and later acknowledged the contribution of the Canadian member of the mission, Jeremy Hansen.

Jared Isaacman wrapped up the Q&A by thanking the astronauts for taking us to the moon with them. “We are just honored to be a part of that,” Reid Wiseman said.

When asked how this mission change’s humanity’s future among the stars, Victor Glover, the mission’s pilot, said he had huge expectations for what’s coming next.

Isaacman next asked what thoughts filled the astronauts’ minds when they were out of contact. The mission specialist, Jeremy Hansen, said they were so busy that they just tried to do a good job collecting science observations. But Reid Wiseman added they had a a brief moment eating maple cookies to celebrate Canada’s participation in Artemis II.

Isaacman then asked what were some words that come to mind when the astronauts try to wrap their minds around this very unique experience.

Christina Koch said, “Humility,” talking about all the people who came before.

Next question: what advice would you pass on to the Artemis III mission, which is to orbit the Earth and test docking with lunar landers in 2027. The pilot, Victor Glover, says they’ve been taking notes to pass on. How the astronauts pack is apparently very important. He also brought up the troubles with the toilet. Isaacman, in response, acknowledged, “We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing.”“What inspires you?” is the next question to the crew. Wiseman, noting he is now over 50, says it all comes back to family.

Reid Wiseman, the mission commander, said, “We’ve got to explore. We’ve got to go farther.”“I’m not ready to go home,” Christina Koch said, who noted how much fun she’s having in spite of the cramped quarters.

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NASA’s Lunar Science Team at Johnson Space Center in Houston watching the Artemis II flyby of the Moon.Credit…Cassandra Klos for The New York Times

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A humpback whale nicknamed Timmy that has been stranded in the Baltic Sea off Germany will be left to die; all rescue efforts have been called off, according to Till Backhaus, environment minister of the German state where the whale is now stranded.

The 12- to 15-meter-long whale became stuck on sandbanks a few times at the end of March—in one incident, it was freed with the help of an excavator that dug an escape channel, and in another, it freed itself. Currently, Timmy is beached on a small island near the port of Wismar, Germany, in the Baltic. Reports suggest the animal, which is thought to be male but whose sex has not been fully confirmed, is exhausted, breathing irregularly, and hardly moving.

Marine biologist and whale conservationist Fabian Ritter has been following the situation in the media and has been in regular contact with those on the ground. Scientific American’s German-language sister publication Spektrum der Wissenschaft spoke with Ritter about the difficult decision to halt rescue efforts and needed changes in policy and individual actions around such incidents.

Experts and others have voiced varying opinions about the state of the whale’s health. Why has that been so difficult to assess?

We are primarily dependent on external signs from the animal’s behavior. Is it breathing regularly, and how forcefully [is it doing so]? What does [its] skin look like? What is its general condition? These are things we can only roughly assess. What we do know, however, is that the humpback whale has endured weeks of suffering because it was entangled in a fishing net, which has certainly weakened it considerably. And there are still pieces of the net in its mouth, which is why it might not be able to eat, even if it wanted to. It is growing weaker and is now likely nearing the end of its life.

Throughout this saga, have you seen any hopeful signs that the whale might pull through?

Five or six days ago, I gave the whale no chance at all—and was then surprised when it freed itself again. But my hopes remained low. In the past few days, it has only circled a few times and then settled down again. This suggests that it is pretty much at its physical and mental end.

If the whale had made it to the open sea, would it be safe?

Had [the whale] gotten moving again and swum in the right direction, [it] would have still had hundreds of kilometers to go to reach the Atlantic. It was certainly within [the whale’s] grasp that [the animal] would have found [its] way. But the net in [its] mouth is likely causing [it] pain and preventing [it] from eating much, if anything. Ultimately, that would be a death sentence, no matter how far [it] manages to swim.

What exactly is the next step? Will this marine mammal just die naturally? There has also been talk of euthanasia.

Euthanasia has been ruled out by all involved. Such an undertaking is logistically too difficult, especially because the animal is currently lying on muddy ground. And then there’s the question of how exactly it would be done. There are three possibilities: One could, for example, inject a high dose of toxin. But no one knows how much a humpback whale would need. The second option is the use of high-caliber firearms. The problem with this is that the shot would have to be extremely precise; otherwise the animal would suffer even more. The third option would be an explosive device. While this would be the most effective, what if cameras were rolling? The world would be watching. No, that wouldn’t be a good solution. [More about whales: Scientists saw a sperm whale giving birth. And then things got weird]

What happens after the death of the marine mammal?

The carcass [will be] hauled onshore with heavy equipment, and veterinarians [will] thoroughly examine it: blood tests, internal injuries, pollutant levels, parasites. Naturally, everyone is interested in determining the actual damage the net caused in its mouth or digestive tract. Afterward, the whale must be butchered and disposed of.

How did the whale get into this predicament? Is there any more information about it now?

The main reason is likely the net. It’s unclear whether [the whale] got entangled in it in the Baltic Sea or already in the North Atlantic. If the latter is true, [the animal] arrived weakened and was therefore already in great distress. Another possibility is that [it] ended up in the Baltic Sea as a stray—perhaps with a preexisting condition and disorientation. Reasons for this could include hearing damage from underwater noise. Sometimes humpback whales simply appear in unexpected areas. Therefore, it’s possible [it] was simply curious and ended up in the Baltic Sea for that reason. Such things happen from time to time.

What is the most likely scenario?

[The whale] probably got lost. I think it’s rather unlikely that [the animal] deliberately swam into the Baltic Sea. What is certain is that when [it] was first sighted [in early March], the net was already wrapped around [its] body. That certainly made [its] predicament worse.

Although the whale has been largely freed from the lines, its situation hasn’t improved. Could there be a deeper problem with the whale’s ability to navigate?

The question is: How exactly does [it] navigate in the Baltic Sea? Does [it] use [its] sense of taste, Earth’s magnetic field, [its] hearing? Or does [it] orient [itself] by water temperature? Experts are debating which is the most important sense for a baleen whale. The fact is, [this whale] is getting weaker, and with that, [its] senses are diminishing. And perhaps [it] is also losing the motivation, the strength, and the ability to decide where to swim.

How do you assess the measures taken to save the humpback whale in retrospect?

That’s a difficult question. From my perspective, the strategy was sound. Giving the animal periods of rest and then motivating it again—that was the right approach. The decision to enter the water with it was rather unwise, however. If you ask whale experts from rescue teams worldwide, they all say the same thing: don’t go into the water with the whale—and certainly not alone. A careless movement could lead one to be struck by a fluke or otherwise injured. There’s no easy solution for such situations. The team from the Institute for Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife Research (ITAW), the German Oceanographic Museum and Greenpeace ultimately used a trial-and-error approach to see what could be done. If the whale dies, no one on the rescue team can be blamed afterward. The odds were stacked against them from the start.

And what about the decision not to remove the gillnet from the mouth—was that the right call?

I think they should have tried. When the whale was still in [Timmendorf Strand, Germany], there was at least a chance. But that was only possible with a specialized team and specialized equipment. In hindsight, though, we should be thinking more about what we can do differently in the future to prevent whales from ending up in this situation again. After all, it’s a very visible and tragic victim of fishing.

What types of political action could help these situations?

Marine conservation organizations working to protect whales have long been calling for an end to bottom trawling and gillnet fishing—at least within protected areas. These fishing methods destroy habitats and are responsible for horrendous bycatch. Every year, 300,000 whales and dolphins die worldwide, along with millions of seabirds, not to mention sharks. Thousands of harbor porpoises are killed in nets in Europe every year. And that’s despite the fact that they are a strictly protected species.

How is it even possible that fishing is taking place in a marine protected area?

We marine conservationists have been asking ourselves this question for decades. Fishing is just one of many uses [for protected areas]. Shipping, gravel extraction, tourism, and military exercises also take place in protected areas; some even contain wind farms. It’s absurd what’s going on in these so-called protected areas today.

Do you see any chance of this current case bringing about a change of heart?

Yes, because the connection couldn’t be clearer. Backhaus is now called upon to give serious consideration to the problem of bycatch in gillnet fisheries. I hope that the fate of the lost whale will serve as a wake-up call and motivate people to take action. And by that, I don’t just mean politicians—we are all called upon to act. Ultimately, with every tuna steak, every salmon fillet or every cod on our plates, we are contributing to the plundering of the oceans. At least, that’s the case if the fish don’t come from explicitly sustainable fisheries or aquaculture.

Isn’t the fact that so many people are touched by the whale’s fate a good sign? Is a shift in values perhaps taking place?

I think this could be an opportunity for a shift in values. We should recognize that our emotion reveals an ambivalence. We’re anxiously following the plight of the humpback whale, yet at the same time, we have salmon fillets and sausages sitting in our refrigerators. If the fate of a whale affects us so deeply, then the deaths of the 300,000 marine mammals that perished in nets should also affect us deeply. We urgently need to ask ourselves: How should we treat the oceans and animals? These are indeed profound ethical questions, but the story needs to be brought to this level. If we translate our compassion into action, the whale’s death will not have been in vain.

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This next-generation network technology won’t just make our phones faster; it’ll unlock new capabilities in robots, turning them into all-sensing, always-learning fleets.

Why are there so many robots at a show focused on phones? This is the question I asked myself as I roamed the halls of Mobile World Congress, on the lookout for the most exciting technology that will define the next few years.

The first and most obvious answer is that robots draw crowds. A dancing humanoid is an easy way to attract people to your booth. But to see the robots at this year’s MWC purely as a publicity stunt would be to ignore the bigger conversation happening around robots and connectivity.

Already in 2026, we’ve seen major leaps forward in robotics, with companies including Boston Dynamics and phone-maker Honor showing off humanoid robots designed for industry and home environments. But there is yet another level to unlock, and it relies on 6G — the next-generation network technology set to succeed 5G in 2030 and beyond.

On the surface, 6G and robotics might seem distinctly unrelated — beyond being technologies of a future that we’re not living in quite yet. But in this future, 6G will open new doors for humanoid robots that’ll transform them from clunky, standalone mechanical figurines into efficient fleets, where individuals will form part of an all-sensing, always-learning ecosystem.

This will happen first in industry, then in hospitality and care environments, before potentially landing in our homes. It’s an exciting prospect, but as the experts I spoke to at MWC last month cautioned, there’ll be some big leaps in technology required before they, and we, are ready for that.

The power of 6G

To understand how 6G will unlock new possibilities for robots, let’s start with the special capabilities the network technology will have. 

The first is that 6G will act as a sensor network, with sensors embedded into both the robots and their environments, Qualcomm’s executive vice president of Robotics Nakul Duggal told me. 

This allows the 6G radio to act like radar — constantly scanning and mapping its surroundings in real time to detect obstacles. Imagine a robot attempting to navigate a crowded environment: The 6G network should quickly and cheaply help create a kind of virtual map for it to do so safely.

Second, there’s the pure speed at which 6G will communicate vast reams of data. The 5G networks we currently use aren’t necessarily built to handle AI requests, but the 6G networks will be, providing a consistent, low-latency, relatively low-power way to process intelligence and deliver that intelligence to robots, according to Frank Long, associate director of intelligent services at deep tech research firm Cambridge Consultants. 

Private 5G networks combined with edge AI (relying on devices for computing, not just the cloud) can fill the gap for now, but public networks, not so much. By contrast, Long said, “with 6G you can pretty much have that quality of service guarantee.”

Cambridge Consultants brought a demo of an autonomous humanoid robot to MWC that can pick up and place down a box based on where it sees you pointing. The gesture recognition, plus the ability to react in real time, while varying its grip to pick up something that might be on an angle, requires an enormous amount of compute power. (The demo was powered by a private 5G network.)

Whether robots are connected to the cloud, or to each other in a peer-to-peer fleet, the network will need to handle their intelligence demands at speed. For robots to be constantly talking to the infrastructure around them — and to each other — a strong, reliable uplink will be required, explained Anshuman Saxena, general manager of robotics at chipmaker Qualcomm.

He gave the example of two robots working in a retail environment where one is unloading soda cans from a truck, and another is restocking shelves. They’ll need to align on how to read the space around them to complete each task, including understanding how many cans will need placing, and when they’ll be ready.

“The only way is this robot, while shelving, goes to the back door entry of the truck that is getting unloaded and sees what is available,” said Saxena. “Or the robot that’s unloading is communicating the bigger picture to every other robot, so that we have a view of where the things are placed, so that they can plan.”

This is what’s known as long-horizon planning, where a robot isn’t just focusing on the immediate task but thinking about how that task fits into a broader context over a longer timeframe within a dynamic and unstructured environment. In other words, it’s performing the kind of ongoing mental multitasking that humans do on a daily basis, reacting at speed to what’s going on around us, while also considering what’s next. In the Cambridge Consultant demo, the robot was capable of thinking 16 steps ahead.

Meanwhile, lightning-fast 6G will help robots make split-second decisions, based on feedback not just from their own sensor-packed bodies, but from other robots and tech in the environment. “The retail stores have cameras,” said Saxena. “It’s not a robot, but it can be the eyes of the robot.”

For robots, every day will be a school day

In your own home, you might have only a single humanoid robot. But that won’t be as different from the retail scenario as you may think.

That’s because many of the devices you own, including your phone and security cameras, can already communicate with each other, and the robot will be just another one in the mix. Or maybe you’ll have one humanoid and a bunch of smaller robots designed for specific tasks.

“There is a fleet aspect in the products that we use,” Duggal said. “You don’t feel that, but that is exactly how the product is working.” 

Keep in mind that your phone is both a physical object itself and all the software and data that are managed elsewhere. The phone also provides feedback to refine that software, as will the 6G-equipped robots.

“So a robot is going to be performing a certain physical task, and while it may perform it in your home, if it’s also performing the same task in many other homes, there is this aspect of learning and deployment,” Duggal said.

This continuous learning is perhaps one of the biggest challenges that 6G is expected to help solve in robotics. Robots and AI will need massive amounts of real-world data that today’s networks can’t keep up with, even for mundane tasks.

For example, picking up and serving you a cup of coffee, which involves dexterity and balance, with the added element of heat. A robotic arm might not care about the temperature. “But if it is hot, how would we react?” said Saxena. “We would just quickly leave it, which is a very fast reaction time.” 

The speed of 6G networks will be essential. By the time a robot arrives in our homes, we will want to know that it shouldn’t hand us a scalding-hot drink and how to protect itself from damage.

Much of this learning might have taken place in hotels or restaurants, where overnight, robots load and unload dishwashers and reset the kitchen. The robot will bring that training into your home, where it’ll still need to further learn about your unique layout and routine. This will likely be a time-consuming process.

“It’s going to be incredibly challenging,” said Long. “Put it this way, members of my immediate family still struggle with opening the baby gate in my stairs, even after extensive training. So a robot, I think, might be a few years away from opening that baby gate.”

Readying robots for 6G… and our homes

But 6G is not expected to roll out widely until at least 2030. What are the robots that companies are already building and deploying to do until then?

They’re making the leaps and bounds they can with the networks of today. “So you’re not waiting for 6G,” Saxena said, “but when the connectivity comes along, you are talking about experiences which can be way beyond what robotics can do [today].”

While the confluence of robotics and 6G will indeed unlock some hitherto unseen next-level robotics, there is plenty that robots can learn in the meantime — particularly when it comes to improving dexterity — to prime them to take advantage of better connectivity. That’s especially true if we’re ever to consider inviting humanoids into our homes, an idea that feels, at least for now, like something worth delaying until at least the 6G-enabled 2030s — if not beyond.

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The confluence of two seemingly distinct technologies will result in new capabilities for robots. Jeffrey Hazelwood/Katie Collins/CNET

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An Air Force weapons officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky Saturday night mission that took commandos deep into enemy territory, said current and former U.S. officials briefed on the operation.

President Trump confirmed in social media post just after midnight that the stranded officer had been brought out of Iran safely by U.S. forces. “He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump said. He added the there were no U.S. casualties among the rescuers.

President Trump said in a social media post just after midnight that the Air Force officer whose jet was shot down in Iran had been brought out safely by U.S. forces. “He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Trump said.

Commandos save crew member of U.S. warplane shot down deep in Iran.

An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky Saturday night mission that took commandos deep into enemy territory, said current and former U.S. officials briefed on the operation.

The rescue followed a life-or-death race between U.S. and Iranian forces that stretched over two days to reach the injured airman, who was a weapons officer, the officials said. In the end, U.S. commandos extracted the officer in a massive operation that involved hundreds of special operations troops.

There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, a senior U.S. military official said. All the commandos, and the weapons officer returned safely. Rescue planes flew to Kuwait to treat the injured weapons officer.

A building housing several government ministries in Kuwait was significantly damaged after it was targeted by an Iranian drone on Saturday evening, the country’s Ministry of Finance said. The Ministries Complex houses agencies, including the finance, justice, and industry and commerce ministries. No casualties were reported, the ministry said, adding that employees would work remotely on Sunday.

Kuwaiti authorities said early Sunday that drone strikes they attributed to Iran significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, forcing the shutdown of two electricity-generating units. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation also said its oil complex in the Shuwaikh district in Kuwait City was targeted by Iranian drones early Sunday, sparking a fire, causing damage, and prompting the evacuation of the building. No casualties were reported in either attack, the company and Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said in a joint statement.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that at least nine civilians were killed across Iran in the past 24 hours during U.S. and Israeli strikes. The group recorded 272 attacks in 14 provinces on Saturday, with a total of at least 184 people injured or killed. Tehran saw the highest number of strikes, followed by Khuzestan and Isfahan.

Here’s what happened in the war in the Middle East on Saturday.

U.S. forces on Saturday continued their search for an American crew member whose fighter jet was shot down over Iran on Friday, as the Israeli military struck a major petrochemical complex in Iran.

The search-and-rescue operation for the missing airman entered its second day after Iran brought down an Air Force F-15E fighter jet carrying two crew members. U.S. officials said on Friday that one had been rescued but have since offered no updates on the operation to recover the second airman.

Israel struck Iran’s largest petrochemical complex.

Israel attacked Iran’s largest petrochemical industrial complex in the city of Mahshahr on Saturday, a move that has effectively shut down all production across the sprawling complex, according to two senior Iranian oil ministry officials.

The airstrikes targeted two utility plants, known as Fajr 1 and Fajr 2, that provided the over 50 petrochemical plants operating inside the complex with the basic services needed to function — gas, power and industrial water, among others — according to Iranian state media reports and the two senior Iranian oil ministry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

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A screenshot of U.S. aircraft over southwest Iran on Friday

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Around 540 million years ago, the ocean erupted with complex life: Creatures rapidly transformed from simple, soft-bodied, ocean-floor-dwelling animals into bodies we might recognize today—animals with, say, a shell or cartilage, a mouth and anus, and the ability to swim, burrow, or hunt.

Scientists call this short, sharp burst of evolutionary activity the Cambrian explosion, and it has informed the way we think about how life as we know it evolved on our planet. But the discovery of a trove of bizarre fossils in China is challenging that consensus—the Cambrian explosion may have been less explosive than we thought.

Hundreds of fossils uncovered in southern China’s province of Yunnan reveal that at least some of the life-forms scientists had thought arose in the Cambrian period were alive and thriving millions of years earlier, in an era known as the Ediacaran period. Many of the fossils look alien, from wormlike creatures tethered to the ground to a “sausage-shaped” animal and a fingerlike organism with tentacles. The findings were published in the journal Science on Thursday.

The discovery was something of an accident, says Frances Dunn, a senior researcher of natural history at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and a co-author of the paper. Her colleagues at Yunnan University in China found the trove while looking for algal fossils in the region’s cliff faces—its rocks are famous for their ability to preserve ancient life.

This chance finding, Dunn says, turned out to hold “some of the most significant early animal fossils” found in decades. More than 700 specimens from the Ediacaran period were there. Some were mere algae, but hundreds more were animals that appeared in “a variety of different forms,” she says.

The most common animal the team found was an organism about the size of a human adult index finger that had a wormlike body and a disk that kept it rooted to the seafloor. Its frequency—more than 100 of the new specimens were examples of this unnamed creature—suggests it once densely populated the ocean floor, Dunn says.

“It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Dunn says.

What was most jaw-dropping, however, was that so many of the found fossils looked uncannily like they belonged to the Cambrian period rather than the Ediacaran, she says. Some, including the abundant worm, were “bilaterians.” This term refers to animals with bilateral symmetry, or a body plan where one side mirrors the other. This critical evolutionary adaptation helped early life to move through sediment or the water column, develop a nervous system, and eventually “dominate” the animal kingdom, Dunn says. Most animals today are bilaterians—including humans.

Before, scientists thought bilaterians primarily arose during the Cambrian period and were rare—certainly not diverse and flourishing—in the Ediacaran.

The new fossils offer a glimpse into a “transitional world,” where simple, soft-bodied life-forms lived alongside complex bilaterians. Some of the specimens look highly similar to cambroernids—animals that looked vaguely similar to modern-day sea cucumbers—which have previously only been dated to the Cambrian.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime find, Dunn says. “People have been on the hunt for a fossil site like this, but not found it until now,” she adds. It indicates that the Cambrian “explosion” may have been more gradual. Or, as Dunn puts it, the finding “defuses the Cambrian explosion.”

Now Dunn and her colleagues are working to formally describe all of the fossils and name any new creatures. Once everything has been cataloged, scientists can study where these animals fit on the tree of life.

“The fossils from this site are going to keep us busy for like 10 years, easily,” she says.

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It feels like we’re living in uniquely dangerous times, but if you spend long enough in the financial industry, you’ll recognize a clear pattern in events — and the quality that helps investors weather the storm.

If you spend enough time sitting in local diners or answering the phones at a wealth management firm, you start to notice a rhythm to human anxiety.

The headlines change, the names of the politicians rotate, and the specific economic “boogeyman” of the month evolves, but the underlying sentiment remains remarkably consistent.

Right now, the air is thick with a familiar brand of apprehension. You hear it in the booth next to you over breakfast, and you see it in every notification on your phone:

• “The market is overdue for a collapse“
• “Interest rates are a permanent weight on the economy”
• “The world is simply too volatile right now”

I have been a witness to these conversations for nearly 30 years. I’ve seen the seasons of worry shift from the “Japan Inc.” fears of the early ’90s to the dot-com euphoria, the existential dread of the Great Recession and the sheer confusion of the post-pandemic inflationary spike.

Sometimes the catalyst is technology; sometimes it’s Washington; sometimes it’s a virus. The details change, but the feeling that we are standing on the edge of a cliff does not.

And yet, looking back across those decades, a clear pattern emerges. Through every recession, bubble and crash, the people who achieved their long-term financial goals weren’t the ones who found a “trick” to beat the system.

They were the ones who anchored themselves to a few fundamental realities that don’t make the evening news because they aren’t flashy or frightening. Especially when the noise gets as loud as it is today, it’s worth stepping back to look at what lasts.

The high cost of emotional decisions

In my career, I have reviewed thousands of portfolios and sat through hundreds of market cycles. I can say with certainty that almost every significant investing mistake I’ve seen was a failure of temperament, not a failure of intelligence.

These weren’t math errors or a lack of analytical data. They were emotional reactions to a world that felt like it was spinning out of control.

Fear, greed, and panic are the most expensive emotions an investor can have. They act as a “reverse compass,” almost always pointing you toward the exit exactly when you should be standing still or pushing you toward a “hot” investment just as it’s about to peak.

I often think back to a call I received in March 2020. We were in the early, terrifying days of the COVID-19 lockdowns. A client who had been steady and rational for over a decade — called me with a tremor in his voice.

“Dennis,” he said, “I’ve stayed the course through plenty of dips. But this feels different. The world is literally shutting down.”

He wasn’t wrong. It did feel different. The streets were empty, and the markets were in freefall.

We spent nearly an hour on the phone, not talking about P/E ratios or technical indicators, but talking about history and his specific life goals. We talked about why we built his plan the way we did and how it was designed to navigate periods of uncertainty.

Ultimately, he chose to stay aligned with that strategy.

Discipline is the most unglamorous part of investing. It’s boring, and in the heat of a crisis, it feels passive. But in reality, maintaining discipline in the face of a falling market is one of the most active and difficult things a human being can do. It is the bedrock of wealth.

Real ownership in a ‘ticker symbol’ world

Somewhere along the way, the financial media turned investing into a high-stakes video game. We talk about “the market” as if it’s a sentient, fickle beast or a series of random numbers on a screen. We focus on day trading, “hot tips” and the quest for the next unicorn. But this perspective misses the entire point of what we are doing.

At its core, investing is about ownership. When you buy a share of a company, you aren’t just buying a ticker symbol — you are buying a stake in a real business. You are becoming a partial owner of an organization with employees, customers, infrastructure, and intellectual property. You are betting on the collective ingenuity of people who wake up every morning trying to solve problems and create value.

History has a very clear bias toward patient owners. After World War II, as the American middle class expanded, investors in American business benefited. In the 1980s and ’90s, as computing and the internet reshaped the global landscape, the owners of those technologies benefited.

Even after 2008, when the popular narrative was that the global financial system was permanently broken, the following decade proved to be one of the most productive periods for long-term investors in history.

Of course, individual companies fail. This is why we diversify — so that the failure of one “engine” doesn’t bring down the whole plane.

But the broader story remains the same: Productive businesses are the most reliable engines of wealth ever created.

If you view yourself as a long-term owner rather than a short-term gambler, the daily fluctuations of the stock market become much easier to ignore.

Why this matters for the road ahead

Today’s environment is undeniably complicated. We are dealing with record-high markets, elevated interest rates and a geopolitical landscape that feels increasingly fractured. It is tempting to believe that we are living in uniquely dangerous times that require a complete abandonment of traditional wisdom.

But every generation believes their challenges are the ones that will finally break the rules.

• In the ’70s, it was the end of the gold standard and double-digit inflation
• In the ’80s, it was the threat of nuclear escalation
• In 2000, it was the collapse of the “New Economy”
• In 2020, it was a once-in-a-century pandemic

Each of these moments felt overwhelming while we were in them. And each eventually became a chapter in a history book.

What endured through every one of those chapters were the disciplined investors, the patient owners and the thoughtful planners. Most successful investors aren’t brilliant strategists; they are simply people who are consistent:

• They show up
• They review their goals
• They rebalance their portfolios when things get out of alignment
• They stay calm when everyone else is rushing for the exits

In a world of loud headlines and constant “breaking news,” perspective is your most valuable asset. Volatility is not the same thing as failure, and a market correction is not a catastrophe — it’s the price of admission for long-term growth. 

f you can focus on discipline over emotion, ownership over speculation and planning over prediction, you aren’t just “investing.” You are building a foundation for your family’s security that can help survive whatever the future holds.

When the noise gets louder, stop looking at the scoreboard and start looking at the plan. That is how real wealth is created, and more importantly, that is how financial confidence is maintained.

Note:

This material is intended for informational/educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security or investment product. Please contact your financial professional for more information specific to your situation.

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Investments are subject to risk, including the loss of principal. Some investments are not suitable for all investors, and there is no guarantee that any investing goal will be met. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

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Diversification does not assure a profit or protect against loss in declining markets, and diversification cannot guarantee that any objective or goal will be achieved.

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The case study in this article is for illustrative purposes only and should not be construed as a recommendation. It may not be representative of your experience.

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

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On April 1, 32 days after abruptly launching a wave of airstrikes on Iran, President Trump made his first formal White House address to the American people about the war. He offered no new information or clarity on his strategy or goals. It was mostly just Trump, talking. But amid the familiar superlatives and tangents, there was a curiously specific digression.

“It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective,” Trump said. “American involvement in World War I lasted one year, seven months, and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months, and 25 days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month, and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months, and 29 days! Iraq went on for eight years, eight months, and 28 days.” All of this was to say that 32 days was really not very long at all.

What was most surprising about Trump’s history lesson was its inference that wars were linear events with beginnings, middles and endings. This was not the impression that a reasonable person would have gotten from the past several months of increasingly disjointed foreign adventures: the capture of Venezuela’s president, an oil blockade, and intimations of regime change in Cuba, weeks of open deliberation over invading Greenland, and finally the Iran war.

These episodes followed the logic of content more than conflict, not so much ending as just kind of receding down the feed, replaced by bigger and better explosions. The White House social media team leaned trollishly into the idea, posting videos to X that spliced airstrike footage with movie and video game clips and a reference to the unofficial Proud Boys motto, “[expletive] around and find out.”

By the time Trump addressed the nation, however, America seemed to be settling into its own finding-out phase, and even the president’s allies were getting nervous. Memes had given way to maps of the Strait of Hormuz; gas was clearing $4 a gallon. Scapegoats were being sought: “As this thing goes south,” the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said, “we need to know exactly who talked him” — Trump — “into it and what representations were made to convince the president that this was a good idea.”

One Trump national security official, the National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent, had already resigned over the war. “In your first administration, you understood better than any modern President how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into never-ending wars,” Kent admonished Trump in his resignation letter, blaming “Israel and its powerful American lobby” for luring him into an open-ended conflict.

The “never-ending wars” that Kent bemoaned have been the dominant condition of American foreign policy throughout the 21st century, a once-dystopian-seeming possibility that, somewhere in the long shadow of Sept. 11, became a quietly accepted reality. Americans don’t particularly like endless wars, but it’s been years since they opposed them all that actively, a fact that surely has to do with how little the wars — fought under thickening layers of classification by a professional military drawn from a sliver of the population, and with a rapidly expanding suite of autonomous technologies — cost them personally.

Trump has benefited from this jaded complacency as much as anybody. He railed against the entanglements of the Bush and Obama years in his 2016 campaign and declared in a first-term State of the Union address that “great nations do not fight endless wars.” But in that term, he mostly served as a distracted custodian of the occupations and covert operations he inherited, and voters did not seem inclined to punish him for it. Though he lost the 2020 election, in Gallup polling published early that year, only about a quarter of Democrats and independents, and even fewer Republicans, considered foreign affairs an “extremely important” issue.

In his second term, Trump seems hellbent on changing that. “Trump 47 is almost a different president from Trump 45,” says Michael O’Hanlon, the director of research for the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.

A leader who was once ambivalent at best about far-flung conflicts has, in the space of a few months, tried on several centuries’ worth of American imperialist costumes: the unapologetic empire-building of James Polk and James Monroe, the petro-political intrigues and Latin American chess games of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s spooks, Donald Rumsfeld’s fantasies about frictionless air wars. Trump’s April 1 speech, with its scattered musings about triumphs both real and imaginary, did not suggest he planned to change course anytime soon.

This president is, eternally, a break from American history and a logical culmination of it at the same time. On the one hand, his newfound adventurism would seem to run counter to the unspoken pact that Americans and their government have arrived at in the 21st century, in which the country’s citizens agree to mostly ignore the open-ended and opaque military operations conducted in their name as long as the government agrees not to ask them to sacrifice anything for them. On the other hand, the weightless vision of war-making that the Trump White House is presenting to the American people is an obvious product of this same recent history.

The Rise of the Endless War

“This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger,” George W. Bush said in his speech at the National Cathedral three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. American history would beg to differ: The United States was actively involved in military conflicts at home or abroad for most years of the 19th and 20th centuries, and has remained so in the quarter-century since Bush’s speech.

Public opinion of these wars has reflected less resolve than suggestibility. In his 2009 book “In Time of War,” Adam J. Berinsky, an M.I.T. political scientist, surveying seven decades of public opinion data, found that while Americans’ support for wars was affected by major attacks on the country — Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11 — it mostly followed the domestic “ebb and flow of partisan and group-based political conflict”: That is, it tracked politicians’ fights about the wars more than the events of the wars themselves.

This is understandable. Wars are complicated and, for Americans, almost always fought far away. The sacrifices they entail, even when they are painfully felt, are open to interpretation. But the fickleness of public opinion has provided obvious incentive for presidents — who, since Franklin D. Roosevelt, have closely studied polling on their wars — to withhold or shape information.

This project proceeded steadily through America’s postwar hegemony. Congress hasn’t formally declared war since World War II. Heeding the lessons of Korea and Vietnam, presidents have gradually shifted the financing of wars toward borrowing and printing money and away from a direct “war tax,” making it harder for voters to assess their cost. Richard Nixon ended the draft, corralling wars’ human losses within a small and, increasingly, demographically and culturally specific segment of the population.

The War Powers Act of 1973, informed by Vietnam, was supposed to reassert Congress’s authority to openly debate wars before beginning them. But with the arguable exception of George W. Bush, every president since Ronald Reagan has invaded or bombed a country without congressional approval.

Sarah Kreps, a professor at Cornell University who has studied military financing, argues that these innovations have gradually undermined one of the most famous ideas in democratic theory, advanced by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay “Toward Perpetual Peace.” Kant argued that democratic states behave differently, and more judiciously, in their war-making than monarchies and oligarchies. Their governments are responsive to their citizens, Kant reasoned, and their citizens are responsive to the costs of war, because they bear them. But what if the cost is hidden from them?

From Drone Strikes to TikTok Spartanism

And what if the gravest costs are not borne by them at all? This question has become particularly urgent since the advent of armed drones, which, in their capacity to inflict death without risking it, have changed the elemental moral calculus assumed in warfare. A country that does not incur much human cost from its wars is a country that does not think much about them at all. “The absence of casualties isn’t a bad thing,” Kreps said, “but what it does is make Americans not think twice about how they are spending their resources.”

This became evident during Obama’s presidency, as his administration attempted to shift the war on terror away from the Bush-era counterinsurgencies and into a more amorphous, drone-centric program of counterterrorism. Critics have long contended that this was a perverse consequence of mounting concern over the civil liberties violations of the Bush years: a replacement of black sites and Guantánamo detentions with ghostly assassinations by increasingly autonomous airborne machines, the particulars of which would remain far from the view, and consciences, of the president’s supporters.

It was a bargain that many of those supporters were tacitly willing to accept. Polls during Obama’s presidency found that even as large majorities of Americans opposed staying in Afghanistan, most also approved of the administration’s drone strikes — even when a plurality of respondents couldn’t name the countries being targeted.

The professional-class liberalism of the Obama years, happy to whistle past its moral and ideological contradictions, is one of the main targets of Alexander Karp’s 2025 book “The Technological Republic.” Karp is the chief executive of the data analytics firm Palantir, which used Obama-era Afghanistan operations as a laboratory to develop battlefield software it now provides to Trump’s Pentagon; its programs have been used to target airstrikes in Iran.

In “The Technological Republic,” he describes a fast-arriving future in which wars with beginnings and ends are replaced by constant tactical engagement with elusive, artificial-intelligence-enabled threats. In this new reality, Karp argues, one of the most pernicious threats to national security is the estrangement of American elites from the battlefield: Silicon Valley executives and programmers who angrily protest the military use of the tools they create, a political class that has “never flown halfway around the world to risk one’s life.” He argues for a return to the values of the early Cold War, when technology, culture and national defense were united in common purpose, and has suggested resuming the draft — that America “only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”

Now that we are fighting the next war, however, it’s not hard to see the contradiction between Karp’s civic vision and his products. Advances in military technology, and especially the transformative technologies currently poking into view, aim to reduce the risk and cost of warfighting, not to share them as widely as possible. In the Palantir-assisted Iran airstrikes, we are getting a glimpse of a new reality in which human deliberation is considered a tactical liability. This is a recipe for a country in which citizen participation in war, where it exists, takes on a different and shallower meaning — “engagement” in the digital audience analytics sense, not the civic one.

You can see this contradiction on particularly garish display in Trump’s second-term bellicosity. The administration’s TikTok Spartanism, on a surface level, affirms Karp’s vision: The White House’s Iran content is an unapologetic brief for American hard power in a zero-sum world full of enemies. But it is a burlesque of the technologized warrior republic rather than a real enactment of it. The videos are possible only in a country that asks little from its people beyond their YouTube clicks, where the intellectual and moral muscles necessary to work through questions of war and peace disappeared into the couch a long time ago.

It is another variation on a familiar decadence rather than a repudiation of it, another reminder of how malleable the narrative of a nation is when it comes unmoored from reality. Once the links between citizen and conflict have been severed, you can tell yourself whatever story you want about who you are and what you are doing in the world.

More on the Fighting in the Middle East

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• Iran’s Military Strength: Iranian operatives have been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by bombs, returning them to operation hours after an attack, according to U.S. intelligence reports. And the news that Iran had shot down a U.S. jet showed that Iran has retained the ability to strike back, however degraded.

• Strait of Hormuz: European leaders and other officials have ideas for bringing shipping back to the strait once the war in Iran war ends. But the few options they have carry risks.

• Attacks on Infrastructure: In Kuwait, an attack damaged a power and water desalination plant. Kuwait blamed Iran, which denied carrying out the attack.

• Iranian Citizens: Families gathered for picnics and games to mark the end of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year holiday, seizing a brief chance to celebrate amid the war. In interviews, fifteen residents of Tehran spoke of their fear as the capital weathered heavy bombardment.

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Photo illustration by Chantal Jahchan

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Octopus sex hinges on a peculiar anatomical trick. In lieu of a penis, the male has a special mating arm called a hectocotylus. He feels around with it inside the female’s mantle—the bulbous structure behind the eyes that houses all of an octopus’s organs, including reproductive ones—until he finds her ovaries. He then slides a sac of sperm down his arm and deposits it. But the male can’t actually see what he’s doing. So how does he know when he’s found the right spot to send in the sperm? The answer, it turns out, lies in the arm itself.

In a new study published today in Science, researchers show that the male octopus’s mating arm can sense a female’s sex hormones emanating from the oviduct.

The suckers on octopus arms are equipped with chemotactile receptors that allow them to “taste” their surroundings through touch. But octopuses don’t typically use the hectocotylus in hunting or seafloor exploration—instead, males hold it close to their bodies when they’re not mating. Nevertheless, this appendage, like the other seven, comes loaded with receptors, says Pablo Villar, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and co-lead author of the new paper.

To understand what purpose these receptors might serve, Villar and his colleagues coaxed a pair of California two-spot octopuses to mate in the lab. Because octopuses can be aggressive, the researchers installed a divider in the tank with a few small holes so the pair could warm up to each other. This arrangement might seem ill-suited for lovemaking, but surprisingly, the male simply reached across the barrier and got busy. The researchers tested four more mating pairs and got the same result—even in total darkness. “They made it seem super, super natural,” Villar says.

Octopuses are highly visual creatures who communicate through body language and color changes. But these flourishes don’t seem essential for mating. “They were able to do it with no visual cues,” Villar says, “just by touching.” Female octopuses, he and his team theorized, must release some kind of chemical signal to guide males in.

They found that the octopus oviduct produces enzymes that are used to make the sex hormone progesterone. This hormone seems to be what gets the hectocotylus going: when the researchers attached tubes to the holes in the tank divider, each coated with a different chemical, males were quickly drawn to the one containing progesterone. Even amputated mating arms behaved the same way, responding to progesterone but not to other molecules.

Many animals rely to some extent on detecting sex hormones to mate. But the organ that senses those hormones is usually separate from the one that delivers the sperm; in male octopuses, the hectocotylus does both. That way, says Nicholas Bellono, a molecular biologist at Harvard University and Villar’s postdoctoral advisor, “you make sure at the site of release that that’s the exact spot.”

Females of different octopus species may have unique chemical signatures, and males’ receptors may be tuned to respond only to the right blend of hormones. If so, this mating strategy could help keep species separate and potentially give rise to new ones. “Species boundaries are shaped not only by the genes organisms carry, but by the molecular systems that determine how organisms perceive one another,” Anna Di Cosmo, a zoologist at the University of Naples Federico II, wrote in a commentary accompanying the new study. “By reshaping perception, evolution reshapes reproduction, which reshapes the tree of life.”

Elena Gracheva, a neurophysiologist at Yale University, who was not involved in the new study, says it’s too soon to tell whether all octopuses mate in this way or what role these sensory systems may play in evolution. She is impressed by the thoroughness of the research, however, which began with a naturalistic observation and proceeded all the way to fine-grained molecular analyses. “You have very striking animal behavior, and then you’re going down to the single molecule, which I think is beautiful,” she says. “But I would say that this is just the beginning of the discovery.”

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What we know so far

• US aircraft downed: The status of a US service member remains unknown after an F-15 fighter jet was shot down over Iran. The jet’s other crew member was rescued, US sources told CNN. Iran also struck a second US military plane Friday, forcing the pilot to eject outside Iranian territory, according to a US official.

• Iran offers reward: Tehran has claimed responsibility for shooting down the F-15 and has promised a reward if Iranians find and hand over an American service member.

• In Washington, DC, President Donald Trump still has not publicly commented on the search and rescue mission for the downed crew member. He said in an interview Friday that the jet’s downing would not affect Iran war negotiations.

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Hmmmm … Very short view!

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TNASA executed several engine firings on Thursday. The apogee raise burn sent Orion into high-Earth orbit, where the backdrop offered a striking view of the planet. (Source: NASA, speed-increased)

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A striking view of the planet Earth

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