NASA’s Artemis II mission is officially underway, with the first day marked by a series of successful maneuvers and a—thankfully—fixed problem with the onboard toilet.
The Artemis II crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Not long into their flight, they were tasked with a very important test: to make sure the toilet was working. This is the first time a moon-bound human spacecraft has had a functional toilet, after all.
Worryingly, they noticed a “blinking fault light” on the toilet, according to NASA, but the issue was short-lived and has since been resolved.
The toilet is a notable innovation. Made of titanium, it sits in the floor of the Orion spacecraft and allows the astronauts to defecate and urinate simultaneously—a luxury not afforded to astronauts who had relied on earlier toilet models. (The Apollo astronauts used bags to collect their waste.) In another first for moon missions, it also has a door.
Software was reportedly acting up as well: in a recording of livestream audio from Orion, the astronauts could be heard saying that their computers had two versions of Microsoft Outlook—neither of which seemed to be working. NASA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this issue from Scientific American.
The troubleshooting wasn’t the only task on the crew’s day-one to-do list, however.
The astronauts also practiced an important docking maneuver to test the Orion’s abilities for future missions. Glover, the mission’s pilot, tested the spacecraft’s ability to move up, down, left, and right and tilt in space—critical for ensuring its maneuverability on any future missions.
In the docking test, rather than dock to another spacecraft, the crew used a target on the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS), which was originally part of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that lofted Orion and the crew into space before it separated from the capsule.
After the test, the ICPS will fire its engines for a “disposal burn,” sending it back to Earth and into the Pacific Ocean.
Orion also performed several burns, including one on Thursday morning, to lift the spacecraft’s orbital path, ensuring it wouldn’t fall back to Earth and putting it on the right trajectory as it zips around the planet before heading to the moon.
The rest of day two will also feature some important maneuvers—albeit after the astronauts get some sleep. At around 8:12 P.M. EDT on Thursday, the Artemis II crew will perform a translunar injection burn, a critical step that will send the Orion on its path toward the moon. During this burn, the engines will fire for about six minutes.
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A view of Earth from NASA’s Orion spacecraft as it orbits above the planet during the Artemis II test flight. NASA
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped Thursday in volatile trading as oil prices surged following President Donald Trump’s remarks that the Iran war would continue for weeks.
The blue-chip Dow declined 61.07 points, or 0.13%, closing at 46,504.67. The S&P 500 advanced 0.11% to end at 6,582.69, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.18% to settle at 21,879.18.
The three major indexes ripped higher from their steep losses earlier in the day to briefly turn positive after Iranian state media said that the Middle Eastern country is working with Oman on a protocol to “monitor” ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. At their lows, the Dow was down more than 600 points, or 1.4%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were down 1.5% and 2.2%, respectively.
“It’s pivotal for the United States that the Strait is reopened, not so much because of oil but because of helium,” said Todd Schoenberger, chief investment officer at CrossCheck Management, noting that helium is “more valuable than foreign oil” given its usage in semiconductor processing and that “there is no substitute for it.”
“Expect more volatility going into the long weekend,” he added.
The indexes oscillated between gains and losses throughout the session following the developments. The CBOE Volatility Index, otherwise known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, touched a session high of more than 27.
“I think investors are having knee-jerk reactions — they want the news to be good, but then think about it a little longer and decide perhaps the uncertainty is still too high, hence the high intraday volatility,” Melissa Brown, managing director of investment decision research at SimCorp, said to CNBC.
Trump delivered an address Wednesday night, providing updates on the Middle East conflict. Though he said that the U.S. is “getting very close” to ending the Iran war, Trump added that the nation would “hit” Tehran “extremely hard.”
“Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong,” the president said.
His comments led to a surge in oil prices. West Texas Intermediate crude futures settled up 11.41% at $111.54 per barrel — the highest level since June 28, 2022. Brent crude futures settled 7.78% higher at $109.03 per barrel.
Oil prices will likely “stay higher for longer,” Brown believes. But even if they do eventually come down, she said that gas prices would still take longer to do so, meaning there’s going to be a “continued inflationary impact on the economy.”
Even with the week’s volatile trading, the major averages posted gains over the period. The S&P 500 advanced 3.4% week to date, while the Dow rose nearly 3%. The Nasdaq outperformed and climbed 4.4%.
Thursday marks the last trading day of the shortened week, as markets are closed for Good Friday. March’s jobs report is set for release on Friday morning, however.
— CNBC’s Spencer Kimball contributed reporting.
Dow closes lower Thursday
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished Thursday’s session in the red.
The 30-stock index dropped 61.07 points, or 0.13%, to finish at 46,504.67. However, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both closed in positive territory, rising 0.11% to 6,582.69 and 0.18% to 21,879.18, respectively.
— Sean Conlon
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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the opening bell on April 2, 2026.
President Trump has unapologetically wielded the power of the United States on the global stage, taking a much more belligerent approach economically and militarily to try to dictate the actions of other countries.
From high tariffs to the war with Iran, Mr. Trump has claimed that this aggressive behavior internationally has only upsides, and that past leaders were fools for refusing to tap into America’s power.
But one clear drawback of the strategy is emerging. While many countries have acceded to the president’s demands, some have found a highly effective new way to fight back. Mr. Trump’s aggression has given them the opportunity to test their control over choke points, threatening the United States and the global economy.
One such choke point is the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, which accounts for less than 1 percent of global economic output, has control over the shipping lane that transports a fifth of the world’s oil and gas. Its closure since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran at the end of February has blocked shipments of fuel, fertilizer, and other goods, sending gas prices sharply higher and spreading anxiety among U.S. farmers and manufacturers.
Another experiment in retaliatory coercion began one year ago on Thursday, when Mr. Trump walked into the Rose Garden and unveiled tariffs on what he called “Liberation Day.” While many governments — even powerful economies like the European Union — complied with U.S. demands, China was a notable exception. Beijing rolled out a licensing system for exports of rare-earth minerals and magnets that has given China unparalleled control over the global manufacturing system.
Makers of cars, semiconductors, fighter jets, and other goods — the backbone of a U.S. factory system that Mr. Trump wants to revive — depend on rare earths, most of which are processed in China.
While China is approving some licenses and allowing some rare earths to flow, supplies for many manufacturers are running short. And China has cut off exports of these materials to companies that work for the U.S. military, leaving them struggling to find other suppliers. Mr. Trump’s decision to delay a visit to China by roughly six weeks until mid-May worried some executives who hoped that his meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, could alleviate the pressure.
The difficulties underscore an inconvenient truth for the president: As powerful as the American economy is, its inextricable links with the rest of the world can still bring it to its knees.
Edward Fishman, the author of “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare,” said the rest of the world had seen how the mineral controls had gotten Mr. Trump to back off China last year. Since Mr. Trump threatened in January to take over Greenland, even European officials had been searching for potential choke points in U.S. trade, Mr. Fishman said.
“The lesson is that the way to deal with American economic coercion is to fight back,” he said. “Iran now is proving that again.”
China began designing a system of rare-earth controls before the re-election of Mr. Trump, whose strategy is not entirely new: The United States has a long history of weaponizing supply chains, from using its control of the global banking system to punish enemy nations to trying to halt the flow of advanced artificial intelligence technology to China.
But Mr. Trump stepped up American antagonism, with tools ranging from tariffs to military strikes. One of his basic principles has been that the United States should do a better job of leveraging its power. He argues that, as the world’s biggest consumer market, the United States can force other countries to trade on terms less favorable for them, and that with the world’s most powerful military, it can remove heads of state from Venezuela to Iran.
Mr. Trump has dismissed any criticism that those actions violate international alliances, laws or conventions, preferring to see the world in terms of raw power. The countries that have done best against him, like China, seem to recognize that same principle, responding in economically destructive ways to try to force him to back down.
It remains to be seen whether Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz persuades Mr. Trump to call off his campaign. But the disruption appears to be encouraging him to try to bring the war to a quicker end.
In an address to the nation on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump said that the United States received “almost no oil” through the strait, and that countries that did “must take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.”
“In any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally,” he added.
Oil prices surged, and stocks sank on Thursday after the address.
The United States has been more insulated from the economic aftershocks of the shutdown of the strait than closer economies in Europe, Asia and Africa. But more expensive global energy and tighter supplies of fertilizer, aluminum, helium and other products from the Middle East are still pushing up prices and slowing economic activity in the United States, creating a problem for the Republican Party as midterm elections approach. Higher fuel costs are trickling into the price of fresh food, and rates for international shipping have risen sharply, adding to the cost of importing goods to the United States.
Analysts at Evercore ISI projected on Wednesday that the U.S. economy would grow 2.2 percent this year, rather than 2.8 percent, because of the war and the accompanying energy shock, while core inflation would tick up 0.2 percentage points.
“The U.S. is now heading for a subpar year relative to its potential rather than a strong and above-trend year,” they wrote.
U.S. manufacturers have been quieter about the effect of Chinese rare-earth restrictions, to avoid panicking investors or angering the Chinese government. But many industries are deeply worried about limitations on those shipments and a thinning supply.
China’s controls are having some effect on companies that make M.R.I. and CT machines that use rare earths to do imaging, as well as those that make the magnets inside the machines, said Geoff Martha, the chief executive of Medtronic, a U.S. medical equipment manufacturer, at an event on Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
The industry has engaged with the Trump administration and the Chinese government to try to obtain licenses for exports, he said.
“What we’re finding, it takes work, it creates supply chain disruption, it’s a distraction. But we’re seeing an ability to work through these so far,” Mr. Martha added.
Gina M. Raimondo, who was secretary of commerce in the Biden administration, said at the same event that the Trump administration had seemed surprised by China’s move to weaponize mineral supply chains. She was not, she said.
“It is a huge leverage point that China has over the United States,” she said. She argued that there were plenty of other levers that the U.S. should be attuned to.
For a typical artificial intelligence data center, for example, “most Americans would be alarmed of the dependency we have on China,” Ms. Raimondo said, adding, “China is very aware of that, and they’re going to do everything they can do to maintain that advantage.”
More on the Fighting in the Middle East
Trump’s Address on Iran: More than a month into the war in Iran, President Trump gave a prime-time address to make the case for why he believes the conflict is necessary. Here are five takeaways from the speech.
Diplomatic Talks: Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed in recent days that the Iranian government is not currently willing to engage in substantial negotiations over ending the U.S.-Israeli war, according to U.S. officials.
Passover in Israel: The atmosphere during preparations for the Jewish festival in the country has been unusually subdued, with people afraid to stray far from their homes and shelters.
Southern Lebanon: Israel’s defense minister outlined plans to occupy much of the region, offering his clearest indication yet that Israel intends to control southern Lebanon even after its ground invasion ends. Israel has also pressed some Christian and Druse leaders to expel Shiite Muslims from their towns, according to local leaders.
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President Trump has claimed that his international aggression has only upsides. Credit…Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
The global burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is high and getting higher. In 2023, it was the ninth-leading cause of death for adults and the 12th-leading cause of healthy years lost to illness, disability, or premature death. In the U.S., researchers estimate that more than one in seven adults have CKD. Nine in 10 of those people are not aware that they have it, but their kidneys will struggle to filter waste and extra water from the blood as they worsen.
CKD has many different triggers and is intertwined with a range of other illnesses, including cardiovascular disease and hypertension. An analysis published in 2025 showed that CKD is more common in regions with a high diabetes prevalence, such as Oceania and the Middle East. In other areas with high rates, the cause is attributed to genetic variants within regional populations, such as in West Africa and Central America. Variability across communities underscores the complex nature of this noninfectious disease.
COUNTRIES THAT STRUGGLE AGAINST KIDNEY DISEASE
In 1990 an estimated 378 million people aged 20 and older were living with chronic kidney disease (CKD). By 2023 that number had increased to 788 million worldwide.
The total number of people over 20 with CKD in the U.S., standardized for age, has increased 5 percent since 1990, reaching 11.7 percent in 2023. The 2023 global average was even higher, at 14.2 percent. Countries with large populations, such as China, have a high number of cases, but often their rates are actually below the world average. Countries with the highest rates in 2023 are labeled.
Part of that rise can be attributed to a population that’s increasing in both number and age. But CKD’s upward trend is outpacing those of several other
leading causes of death.
Jen Christiansen; Source: “Global, Regional, and National Burden of Chronic Kidney Disease in Adults, 1990–2023, and Its Attributable Risk Factors: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of
Disease Study 2023,” by Patrick B. Mark et al., in Lancet, Vol. 406; November 22, 2025 (data)
WHAT IS KIDNEY DISEASE?
Kidney disease is an umbrella term that includes a wide variety of causes, but in every case the condition disrupts the kidneys’ ability to filter waste and maintain balance in the body. It is classified based on the amount of damage and remaining kidney function.
How is Kidney Health Tracked?
Physicians divide chronic kidney disease (CKD) into five stages depending on how well the kidneys function, something that helps guide care. Because CKD usually develops gradually, stage-specific treatment can slow damage and keep the kidneys working as well as possible.
What puts your kidneys at risk?
Kidney injury is often triggered by certain medications or another medical condition, such as severe dehydration, a urinary tract blockage, or infection. Factors that fall within the following three categories can also increase the risk of developing the disease.
Where can damage occur in the kidney?
The kidneys are composed of different structures, and damage to any of them can disrupt how waste gets filtered from the blood and removed from the body. Here are some examples of where and how that damage can occur.
Click the link at the bottom for many, many photos
On March 31, 2006 ATL hit theaters, leaving a lasting impact on both the audience, as well as its cast and crew. Directed by Chris Robinson in his feature debut, the film followed Rashad (played by Clifford “T.I.” Harris) and his friends as they navigated their final year of high school in Atlanta, balancing responsibility, ambition, and the pull of their environment. Set against the backdrop of Georgia’s capitol, the film offered a look at a specific moment in life—one where choices begin to carry real consequences.
Over time, ATL has grown into a cult favorite, embraced for its authenticity, its soundtrack, and the way it captured the spirit of Atlanta. It also introduced several new faces to film audiences, including T.I., Lauren London, Evan Ross, and Big Boi, all stepping into their first major roles. Alongside them, a mix of rising talent and established actors helped shape a story that continues to resonate two decades later.
As the film turns 20, we take a look back at the cast who brought ATL to life—and where their journeys have taken them since.
Rashad Swann
The film’s main character, and its narrator. Born and raised in Atlanta, he and his group of friends navigate life in this Southern coming-of-age story. As the older brother of Ant, he tries to steer him clear of the easier path to the streets.
Clifford “T.I.” Harris
Since the release of ATL, Clifford “T.I.” Harris has risen to become one of the most influential rappers in Southern hip-hop. Credited with the subgenre of trap music, T.I. has sold over 15 million records, and won 3 Grammy Awards. As husband and father of 6, he’s now gearing up to release his final album, Kill The King, later this year.
Anton “Ant” Swann
Rashad’s younger brother. Very ambitious, but struggles to find his way as a teenager growing up in Atlanta.
Evan Ross
ATL marked Ross’ film debut. He has since starred in the films Pride, Mooz-lum, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and Part 2. Ross is the son of Diana Ross, and is currently the father of two.
Erin “New New” Garnett
In the film, New New was Rashad’s love interest and John Garnett’s daughter.
Lauren London
Prior to ATL, London appeared in music videos for artists such as Tyrese, Ludacris, Pharrell, and Snoop Dogg. She went on to star in films such as This Christmas, Without Remorse, and You People. She has two children—Kameron Carter and Kross Ermias Asghedom.
Benjamin “Esquire” Gordon
In Chris Robinson’s film, Esquire was Rashad’s childhood best friend. He was extremely smart—hence the nickname—and was a huge fan of New New’s father, John Garnett.
Jackie Long
Long has had a successful career in television following 2006, appearing in shows like Power Book II: Ghost, Games People Play, and Lena Waithe’s The Chi.
Teddy
Teddy was one of Rashad’s close friends, and created custom grills in Atlanta.
Jason Weaver
Weaver was already an industry veteran by the time ATL was released. As a child star, voiced Simba in The Lion King, portrayed a young Michael Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream, and starred in Thea and Smart Guy. Now, he plays Rashaad Marshall in The Chi.
Marcus
Marcus is the drug dealer Ant begins to work for. He serves as the antagonist of the film, as he plans to lure Ant from his brother Rashad for his own profit.
Big Boi
The rapper/producer is best known as 1/2 of the iconic rap duo Outkast. He continued to release music after his film debut, and he performed at the Super Bowl LIII halftime show as a guest of Maroon 5. In 2025, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside friend and collaborator André 3000.
John Garnett
Erin’s father and the businessman that Esquire looks up to. He is unaware of the fact that Esquire is lying about who he really is, although they are from the same walk of life.
Keith David
In a career spanning almost 50 years, David continues to work to this day, becoming a highly sought-after voice actor, and starring in shows like Abbott Elementary and the upcoming film, Spider Man: Brand New Day.
Uncle George Swann
Rashad and Ant’s uncle and guardian. When Rashad and Ant fall out about Ant’s drug dealing, George says things to Rashad he doesn’t mean, but they later make up.
Mykelti Williamson
A seasoned veteran in the film industry, Mykelti is best known for playing Benjamin Buford “Bubba” Blue in the classic film Forrest Gump. He also starred in Waiting to Exhale, Ali, and Troy’s brother in Fences. He can now be seen in the upcoming film Is God Is.
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Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures / Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
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Click the link belowfor the complete article (and all the photos):
A towering orange-and-white NASA rocket blasted off from Florida on Wednesday evening, lifting four astronauts toward space and transporting spectators’ imaginations to a future in which Americans may again set foot on the moon.
As they did during the heyday of the Apollo program, which first put men on the lunar surface, spectators squeezed onto the beaches along Central Florida’s Space Coast. The crowds cheered when the powerful rocket launched into the clear sky at 6:35 p.m. Eastern time. It traveled eastward, over the Atlantic Ocean, on a journey that will take astronauts around the moon but not land there.
“We have a beautiful moonrise, and we’re headed right at it,” said Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut who is the commander of the mission, as the crew headed into space.
Tens of thousands of excited spectators exclaimed and hugged along Cocoa Beach and surrounding communities as the rocket shot into the sky on a column of fire and a long white vapor trail.
“The contrast against the blue sky was absolutely remarkable,” said Anthony Rodriguez, 35, of Orlando. “It’s just an unforgettable sight.”
The flight aboard a spacecraft named Integrity is taking Mr. Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen on what is expected to be a round trip of more than 695,000 miles to clear a path for more exploration, a new lunar landing, eventually a sustained human presence on the moon, and journeys farther out into the solar system.
The last time astronauts traveled that far was Apollo 17, in December 1972.
“After a brief 54-year intermission, NASA is back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon,” Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, said during a news conference after the launch.
The mission, known as Artemis II, is the 21st-century equivalent of Apollo 8, when NASA astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders captured the attention of the world. When they launched in December 1968, it was the first time that astronauts rode on top of the mighty Saturn V rocket.
For that mission, instead of just a short test flight around Earth, the space agency audaciously decided to send the crew all the way to the moon and back, the first time humans reached another celestial body.
While many were elated with the Artemis II mission and its progress, others shrugged or continued their Wednesday, oblivious to the countdown.
In New York City, Maxime Kryvian, 37, a business owner, came to Times Square to see if any screens were broadcasting the launch. To his surprise and disappointment, none of them were.
“I was expecting to see hundreds of people crowded around to watch the launch,” he said, listening to the broadcast through earphones as it played on his own phone screen.
Mr. Kryvian said people had lost interest in space exploration. “We’ve lost a sense of shared achievement,” he said. “We keep looking at our small screens instead of the big one.”
At Tom’s Watch Bar in downtown Houston — also known as Space City and the home of NASA’s mission control for human spaceflight missions — locals were slowly packing in, but not to watch the Artemis II astronauts fly to the moon. Instead, they were looking forward to watching the Houston Rockets later in the evening.
During the launch, most of the televisions in the sports bar were tuned in to a Yankees-Mariners baseball game. A couple of the smaller screens showed NASA’s live broadcast of the mission.
During the news conference, Mr. Isaacman said he thought that when the rocket lifted off, “a lot of people would be paying attention. I suspect when some of the imagery starts to maybe come back from the moon, that’s going to further bring people into this story.”
And at the beginning of his address to the nation on Wednesday night, President Trump congratulated NASA and the astronauts for the successful launch.
“It was quite something,” he said. “These are brave people.”
Mr. Trump then quickly changed the topic to the war with Iran.
Like Apollo 8, Artemis II aims to check that the spacecraft can safely make the journey and keep its crew alive during trips to and from the moon. This particular mission will conclude with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on April 10.
Unlike the Apollo astronauts, who were all white men, this mission sets a number of firsts: Mr. Glover of NASA will be the first Black man to venture into deep space, and Ms. Koch of NASA will be the first woman to do so. Mr. Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency will be the first person on a moon mission who is not an American.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada spoke with Mr. Hansen in a video call before the launch. “It fills me with pride, but it also sends a real message to Canadians,” Carney said in a clip posted on social media. Hansen added, “The fact we’ll be the second country in the world to send a human into deep space says a lot.”
In the 1960s, NASA was racing to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. This time, it does not want to fall behind the space ambitions of China, which is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by the end of 2030. But the goal is not to win the sprint. It is to establish a continuing presence on the lunar surface, building an outpost over the next decade.
Mr. Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who became the NASA administrator in December, has made major revisions to the Artemis program and rallied a work force that was battered by uncertainty and downsizing last year to focus on putting new footprints on the moon by the end of 2028.
“It’s the opening act,” Mr. Isaacman said of Artemis II, and the lessons learned from this mission will be applied to the ones that follow.
During the countdown, leaks of helium and hydrogen that scuttled plans to launch in February and March did not recur. But other technical glitches did pop up.
First, engineers resolved a problem with the rocket’s flight termination system, which destroys the rocket in the event that the crew capsule is ejected during flight. Then, late in the countdown, NASA said it was working on a problem with a battery in that crew capsule ejection system, but it concluded the problem lay with the sensor and not the battery itself.
Those issues pushed back liftoff by 11 minutes.
But then the engines ignited, lifted upward the 322-foot-tall rocket, weighing 5.75 million pounds, generating a low, loud rumble that rolled across East Central Florida.
After liftoff, another technical glitch prevented mission controllers from hearing what the astronauts were saying, even though the astronauts could hear the commands from the ground. Communications were restored after a few minutes.
There was also an undisclosed problem with the spacecraft’s toilet, prompting the crew to plan to use “backup waste management capabilities” until it could be resolved.
The first few hours in space were busy, with two firings of the upper stage of the rocket that placed the spacecraft in a large looping orbit that swung out more than 43,000 miles.
The Orion spacecraft separated from the upper stage of the rocket. Mr. Glover manually flew the spacecraft, nudging it close to the discarded stage. That mimicked the maneuvers that will be used during later missions for docking with lunar landers.
“That is a good-looking American flag,” Mr. Glover said after a maneuver brought the rocket stage with a painted flag on its side into view of the capsule’s docking camera.
On Thursday, Orion will fire its engines to push it on a path toward the moon. On Monday, it will reach the moon and swing around, passing over the far side. The astronauts will spend hours making observations of the lunar surface, including portions of the far side that have never been seen by human eyes before.
As it passes behind the moon, Artemis will set a distance record for the farthest that any humans have traveled from Earth: 252,799 miles, or 4,144 miles farther than the Apollo 13 astronauts traveled when they had to make an emergency return to Earth.
Although the mission seemed to be mostly going well so far, most of the mission still lies ahead. “We will hold our celebration until this crew is under parachutes and splashes down off the west coast of the United States,” Mr. Isaacman said.
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Thousands of excited spectators watched as the rocket rose on a column of fire into the sky above Florida. Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times
You want that new video game so badly, but you’re trying to knock your credit card balance down. Or you’re binging your favorite TV show and can’t wait to find out if a character lives, but it’s late, and you need to be alert for work tomorrow. Just exert a little self-control, you tell yourself. But it’s so hard!
People frequently think of self-control as something that requires willpower—the effort of giving up some immediate pleasure for a long-term goal. A study from last year found that people in the U.S., the Netherlands, and China tend to write about self-control with words such as “difficult” and “unpleasant” and about people who show self-control as “virtuous.” For decades, psychologists held a similar view. In fact, one prominent theory in the 1990s called ego depletion stated that if you used the willpower “muscle” too much, it would get tired and become less effective.
But in the past decade, the science has shifted. Scientists noticed that some people found self-discipline to be completely effortless, yet still stuck to their goals better than those who had to exercise a lot of willpower. People who possess naturally high levels of self-control may create habits that rarely expose them to temptations to veer off course, says psychologist Denise de Ridder, who studies self-control at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
There has been a sea change in the field away from the “willpower” understanding of self-control towards one that focuses on specific strategies or habits that make self-discipline easier, says psychology researcher Johanna Peetz of Carleton University in Ontario. Here’s what scientists have learned.
The Importance of Routine
One of the first clues that the conventional wisdom about willpower was wrong came in 2015. In six varied experiments—one of which lasted more than a year—researchers studied high school students’ self-control. The result: whether students who reported high self-control were pursuing good grades, regular exercise, or better sleep, they relied on routines for studying, exercising, or going to bed. These structured habits—doing the same thing in the same place at the same time of day—were more likely to lead to long-term success than attempting to squelch counterproductive impulses in the moment. People with these good habits reported doing them automatically, without having to think about it.
Since then, other researchers have studied what the average person struggling to stay on track might learn from people who naturally show self-control. In an experiment, de Ridder and colleagues found that establishing small, repeated habits can help achieve goals. They recruited participants who reported struggling to stick to goals, then asked them to pick something they wanted to get better at, such as eating more healthfully, exercising, or protecting the environment. They were encouraged to pick a modest daily goal—for example, exercising for 10 minutes, eating some vegetables for lunch or recycling. Participants logged their progress with an app for three months and through questionnaires. Although the study did not find a connection between the participants’ capacity for self-control and their habit formation, those who completed the study and consistently achieved their small goal reported that they felt they had developed a stronger habit.
Practice Makes Habits Easier
Establishing habits like these can make sticking with a challenging behavior feel easier over time, de Ridder says. In a 2020 study, she and her colleagues followed another group of people who chose a goal that had been hard for them to achieve and kept diaries about their progress over four months. The goals fell into the same general categories as those in the other study. Participants chose, for example, to eat fruit at breakfast, be more patient with a friend, or save money in the supermarket. The more times people practiced the behavior, the more they improved their ability to use self-discipline. Establishing a habit does require effort at first, de Ridder says, but after about three months, it often gets easier.
It makes sense to see self-control not merely as foregoing pleasure, de Ridder says, but also as being able “to create adaptive routines and strategically avoid conflicts, which in turn leaves more room for attending to what one finds important in life.” These structures can help organize your surroundings in a way that makes doing what you think is good for you feel more natural.
Mindset Shift
Habits are not the only advantage people with high self-discipline may have. A 2025 study found that they may actually prefer doing something meaningful—that advances their goals—rather than something that’s just fun or relaxing. In an at-home experiment, participants completed psychological profiles that measured the strength of their self-control trait. Then they were asked to name four things they would do if they had an unexpected free hour. They rated these activities—reading, sleeping, baking, exercising, grocery shopping, and the like—by whether they found them primarily enjoyable or meaningful.
The participants were then told to do anything they liked for the next hour (while being compensated). The people high in self-control chose activities they rated as meaningful, such as exercising or doing chores; the others went for the purely enjoyable, such as taking a nap or listening to music. “Those high in trait self-control would not choose to just lay down on the sofa and dream away for 60 minutes,” says University of Zurich psychologist Katharina Bernecker, lead author of the study. They didn’t have to use willpower to suppress an urge for a nap. “We concluded that maybe the story that they are so good in impulse control and suppressing pleasure may not be the full story.” In fact, they take pleasure in doing activities that are constructive.
Is it possible for the average person learn to reframe their preferences so that they will enjoy doing the hard—but meaningful—thing that’s been haunting their to-do list? There’s no proven tool yet to help a person do this. Nevertheless, creating small habits can still help make a tough task easier. Think about what’s tripping you up and what habits you might use to help.
If you’re having trouble clicking off the screen at night, you could try setting your alarm for half an hour before bed and training yourself to click off as soon as your alarm blasts. If you want to take up running, but something always derails you, create a routine in which you run one mile every day before breakfast.
After a few months, the research suggests, pursuing your goal will get easier. Who knows? If given a free hour, you might even prefer to take a run than a nap.
Two of his senior engineers, Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, drafted the first version in 1884. At first, Eiffel wasn’t impressed by their sketches—he thought they looked too plain. But once architect Stephen Sauvestre added the signature arches and glass pavilion, Eiffel got on board and began promoting the project under his name.
Before Paris said yes, Barcelona said no. Eiffel initially proposed the tower to city officials in Barcelona, but the idea was rejected. Historical records suggest that it was turned down either due to budget concerns or a lack of interest in such a bold and unconventional design.
Success in President Trump’s war on Iran now appears partly to depend on whether Washington can reopen the Strait of Hormuz, stave off global economic decline, and avoid another endless war.
Turkish history offers both a warning and a way forward about how to deal with this vital waterway, which Iran has effectively closed, sharply reducing the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf. Specifically, the lessons concern the Dardanelles, the narrow strait linking the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara and, beyond it, the Bosporus and the Black Sea.
The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most important energy choke points, carrying oil equivalent to one-fifth of global consumption and roughly one-fifth of the global liquefied natural gas trade. That is precisely why the temptation to address the problem militarily is so dangerous.
On paper, choke points can create a false sense of simplicity, especially for a superpower that enjoys a vast technological and military edge over its adversary. To war planners in Washington, a narrow passage can look like a technical problem to be overcome by force. In reality, strategic waterways are never merely geographic bottlenecks; they are tests of sovereignty and the balance of power.
That is what the British and French discovered during World War I when they tried to force passage through the Dardanelles, then controlled by the Ottoman Empire. The Gallipoli campaign, as it was named for the peninsula that runs along the strait, of 1915-16 was Winston Churchill’s brainchild as first lord of the Admiralty. The Ottomans had entered the war on Germany’s side and seemed weak. Britain’s idea was to free up passage in the strait, knock the Ottomans out of the war, and reopen supply routes to Russia. Instead, the campaign became one of the war’s bloodiest disasters for the Allies, killing more than 130,000 men — roughly 44,000 Allied troops and at least 86,000 Ottoman soldiers — and costing Churchill his post.
In Turkish memory, Gallipoli is a story of national birth. Mustafa Kemal, the Ottoman officer who would later become Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, made his name in the defense of the straits. “Canakkale cannot be passed,” a reference to a city on the strait, remains a potent slogan.
The British defeat also left the Ottomans blocking Russia’s only viable warm-water exit to the Mediterranean for grain exports and military aid, deepening the economic and military crisis that fueled revolutionary unrest at home, hastening the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in 1917, and the Bolshevik seizure of power.
A U.S. effort to open the Strait of Hormuz by force would be risky, military experts warn. Iran can exploit the advantages of asymmetric warfare, mining the passage and using drones, missiles, and small-boat swarm attacks to make fighting for a narrow waterway costly even for a superior navy.
But for President Trump, the choice does not need to be between a military gamble and acquiescing to Iranian control over the strait — and, by extension, over global energy markets. The United States can borrow a page from Turkish history and push for a negotiated maritime agreement, taking inspiration from the 1936 Montreux Convention. The document is foundational for modern Turkey and ensures that this critical waterway stays open while acknowledging the sovereignty and security concerns of the state that overlooks it.
For much of the 19th and early 20th century, control of the straits stood at the center of Russia’s imperial ambitions and European great-power rivalry. After World War I, the new Turkish republic accepted a regime of free passage and demilitarization under international supervision. But by the mid-1930s, Europe was rearming, collective security was eroding and Turkey feared growing pressure from both the Soviet Union and Fascist Italy. Ankara pushed for a new convention that would guarantee safe passage without sacrificing the republic’s own survival.
Thus came the Montreux Convention, which was signed by 10 nations, including France, Britain, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and several other Black Sea nations. Montreux preserved freedom of passage for merchant shipping in peacetime while restoring Turkey’s sovereignty over the straits. It also gave Turkey greater discretion in time of war to impose restriction on warships — which Ankara invoked early in the war in Ukraine to restrict the Russian fleet’s access to the Black Sea. In other words, Montreux was a rules-based compromise between openness and sovereignty: It kept commerce moving while recognizing that the state controlling the waterway could not be expected to ignore its own security.
This model offers a useful lesson and perhaps an off-ramp in talks with Iran, even though Montreux is not a copy-and-paste model for Hormuz. Turkey in 1936 was revising an existing international regime in peacetime; Hormuz sits inside an active war.
The geography is also more complicated. The Dardanelles are controlled by one state, Turkey. Hormuz lies between Iran and Oman, with the main shipping lanes largely in Omani waters. Any Hormuz version of Montreux would have to be very specific: no attacks on merchant shipping, no mining of transit lanes, rules to avoid conflict between naval forces, provisions during wartime to allow for restrictions on warships from non-Gulf states. There should also be some outside mechanism — through Oman, the United Nations, or a small contact group of Arab Gulf nations — to monitor compliance.
Washington should test Iran’s appetite for tying a cease-fire to a multilateral framework that guarantees freedom of passage. At its core, a Hormuz convention would need to do what Montreux did: give Iran something it values in exchange for legally binding, verifiable commitments to permit commercial passage. A durable peace in the Gulf is unlikely to come from pretending Iran has no residual capacity to threaten the strait. Nor can the international community accept a situation in which Tehran turns a global artery into a weapon. A deal would have to recognize the security concerns of Iran and the other Gulf states, such as Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, and be tied to a broader cease-fire.
This arrangement would not reward Iranian coercion. It would reflect the hard truth that strategic choke points are governed not by force alone, but by rules and compromises that emerge from war, diplomacy, and the balance of power. To avoid turning the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz into his Gallipoli, Mr. Trump should start thinking about how to build a Montreux.
The Australian biotech company Cortical Labs recently posted a video in which 200,000 living human neurons grown on a silicon chip played the 1993 first-person shooter Doom. The neuron-controlled main character wandered corridors, encountered enemies, and fired weapons—clumsily, and it died often. But the neurons were playing nonetheless.
The demo could mark a genuine inflection point. The neurons appeared to exhibit what Cortical Labs’s chief scientific officer, Brett Kagan, calls “adaptive, real-time goal-directed learning.” The stakes extend well beyond gaming, in part because AI’s appetite for electricity has been rapidly growing. Though neurons are unlikely to replace microchips, they can perform some calculations far more efficiently, and studying them could offer new approaches to computing—and, perhaps, to testing neurological drugs.
To be clear, Cortical Labs’s neural cells aren’t extracted from brains. “You can essentially take a small bit of blood or skin,” Kagan explains, “isolate certain types of cells, turn them into stem cells and then, from those stem cells, generate an indefinite supply of neural cells.” Each of its computing units can house about 800,000 neurons in a self-contained life-support system that can keep them alive for up to six months. The interface relies on electricity—“the shared language between biology and silicon,” as he puts it. When brain cells are active, they generate small electrical pulses, and the system can deliver small pulses back to them.
But wiring is the easy part. The hard part is getting cells in a dish to do anything purposeful. “The temptation is to anthropomorphize and say, oh, they like [playing Doom],” Kagan says. “But this isn’t an animal or a human or anything even as complex as an insect. It’s a system. It’s kind of like saying, ‘Does a computer like or dislike the reward function on a [reinforcement-learning] model?’”
The solution to motivating neurons drew on the free energy principle, which was developed by neuroscientist Karl Friston of University College London. The principle holds that neural systems are driven to predict their environment. “If I reach for an empty can of drink and I successfully predict the outcomes of my actions, that’s sort of a world I can live in,” Kagan says. “But if I reach for it and sometimes it turns into a chicken and sometimes it turns into a firework, that world would be impossible to live in.”
To train the neurons, the team built a simple feedback loop. Wrong moves produced random, unpredictable signals—white noise. Right moves produced structured, predictable ones. “Any signal that the cells could not possibly predict is something that the cells would then just have to learn to avoid,” Kagan says, “because that would be the only way to create predictability in this environment.” In effect, chaos was punishment, and order was reward.
In October 2022, Cortical Labs published a proof-of-concept study in the journal Neuron. Kagan and his colleagues showed that within minutes, neurons on microchips could learn to play Pong, the classic video game in which a player repeatedly intercepts a ball—think two-dimensional ping-pong. But Pong only involves a bouncing square and a moving line. Doom has corridors, enemies, three-dimensional navigation, and a lot of things that are trying to kill you.
To make that leap, Cortical Labs organized a hackathon with Stanford University. Independent researcher Sean Cole paired the neurons with a standard learning algorithm. The hybrid system outperformed the algorithm running on its own, suggesting that the biological cells were contributing to the learning process.
Cortical Labs frames its ambitions around two tracks. The first is medical: “93 to 99 percent of clinical trials, depending on how you cut it, in the neuropsychiatric space fail,” Kagan says. Many of those drugs are tested in neurons in a dish, but he points out that brain cells are not meant to sit in an information void. “We’ve actually published and shown that when you have cells in a game environment or a world environment, they’re fundamentally different in how they respond to drugs, how they exhibit disease,” he says.
The second track is computational. Neurons form “the most powerful information-processing system that we’re aware of,” Kagan says. “The complexity of it far exceeds anything we’ve built with silicon.” Silicon transistors, he says, have first-order complexity—a binary state, 0’s and 1’s. “Biological neurons have at least third-order complexity, probably much higher. They can hold at least three interacting dynamic states at any one time.”
That complexity, researchers argue, could translate into major energy savings. Feng Guo, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington, sees Cortical Labs’s biocomputing platform as capable of “high-level computing.” In a 2023 paper in Nature Electronics, Guo and his colleagues introduced “Brainoware,” a system that uses three-dimensional brain organoids for computing. For Guo, the energy argument is decisive. The human brain uses just 20 watts—less than a dim lightbulb. “If you want to create a similar computing power for the silicon-based AI computing system, that would be at least a million times higher,” he says.
Still, Kagan is careful not to oversell the future. “A pocket calculator will outperform me at long division any day,” he says. “But your best state-of-the-art [reinforcement-learning] AI algorithm isn’t as good as going into someone else’s house and finding the way to make a cup of tea.” Biological computing is “a new tool in the intelligence toolbox,” he says.
Don’t expect a personal computer run on a brain in a vat anytime soon. Kagan speaks realistically about the research still to be done, but says that “you move from science fiction to science once you can work on the problem.” A few years ago, biological computing had one published game of Pong to its name. Now it has a commercial platform, an application programming interface that developers can connect to, and a video of neurons stumbling through Doom—badly, but they’re learning.
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The classic video game Doom at OXO Video Game Museum in Madrid, Spain. Eduardo Parra/Europa Press via Getty Images
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Gustave Eiffel
The classic video game Doom at OXO Video Game Museum in Madrid, Spain. Eduardo Parra/Europa Press via Getty Images
James' World 2 