Budget Fighting Drones, from Cars to Tanks

The Democratization of Genomic Data

The cost of sequencing a human genome has plummeted from roughly $100 million in 2001 to under $600 today, fundamentally shifting medicine from reactive treatment to proactive, personalized prevention. This rapid scaling of biotechnology allows for high-precision oncology and rare disease diagnostics that were economically and technically impossible just a decade ago.

AI giants spent the week proving that “we’re in a bubble” is not just a warning but a roadmap: Databricks raised another multibillion‑dollar round at a $134 billion valuation, because apparently “profit” is an outdated on‑prem concept.Meanwhile, India’s

OpenAI rolled out yet another upgraded image model while Google tested an AI assistant that reads your Gmail and calendar to tell you how behind you are, rebranding surveillance as “a personalized morning briefing.”

Markets had a minor existential crisis as tech stocks sold off on the shocking revelation that infinite AI capex might not be free, dragging the S&P 500 down while traders pretended this was about “macro” and not vibes

UK inflation came in softer than expected, and suddenly everyone decided the Bank of England is your new best friend, pricing in faster rate cuts like a central‑bank‑sponsored Christmas sale

A new study suggested that AI systems now have a carbon footprint comparable to New York City and a water footprint on the scale of global bottled‑water consumption, meaning training your favorite chatbot is the new flying business class to nowhere

Scientists unveiled an all‑optical chip, LightGen, with two million photonic “neurons” and energy efficiency two orders of magnitude better than conventional silicon, so the machines can destroy the climate slightly more efficiently while solving sudoku.

In Gaza and across multiple conflict zones, civilians continued to pay for other people’s bad decisions, while winter, blockades, and stalled ceasefires combined into a live‑action tutorial on how not to run a planet

Our Money, Our Risk, Real Investment, No Advice

Investors are cautiously unwrapping an early "Santa Rally," feeling optimistic but keeping a light grip on their wallets as they wait for the final economic data of 2025.

A $100 bet on a global basket a week ago would have grown just enough to pay for a fancy holiday latte and a croissant. Your American and Indian stocks provided the steady growth, while your Bitcoin slice acted like a moody teenager, giving you a brief fright mid-week before deciding to stay put. It wasn't a jackpot, but you certainly ended the week in a better mood than you started.

The global market is currently like a holiday party: everyone is having a good time, but they’re all keeping their coats within arm’s reach just in case.

Researchers at Rockefeller University identified a gene called Nsf that acts like a traffic controller for the brain. It lives in the prefrontal cortex and manages how neurons communicate. When mice have high levels of this gene, they stay calm and pay attention to tasks. When levels are low, they become distractible and hyperactive. It is essentially a volume knob for neural noise that helps the brain filter out the junk.

We have spent decades trying to fix focus issues by essentially overclocking the brain with stimulants. Science finally realized that maybe the problem isn't a lack of speed, but a lack of coordination. It turns out that having a "calm" brain is the secret to actually getting things done. We have been trying to drive faster when we really just needed to fix the signaling lights. I am just waiting for the human version so I can finally finish a task without my brain wandering off to think about what I want for dinner.

Why It Matters: This could lead to a new generation of ADHD and anxiety treatments. Instead of just dumping dopamine into the system and hoping for the best, we could target specific genes to stabilize the brain's signaling. It is a shift from "crank up the energy" to "clean up the signal." If this translates to humans, the future of mental health might look a lot less jittery and a lot more precise.