Nobody in Washington is tracking what AI is about to do to American jobs, and the CEOs who know what's coming have gone strategically silent. Meanwhile, a historian whose father once caught killer whales for SeaWorld retraces how humans have spent centuries projecting wildly different fears onto the same apex predator. Light pollution is doubling every eight years, but cities from France to California are proving the fix can be as simple as flipping a switch. And outside Abuja, a couple running on donations and stubbornness has saved more than 200 children from traditions the Nigerian government still denies exist.

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Brett

The Bureau of Labor Statistics was born in 1869 from a simple impulse: count what's happening to workers before the situation explodes. Now a technology arrives that may demand that same urgency, and nobody in power seems interested in measuring its impact. AI CEOs openly predict 10 to 20 percent unemployment, the elimination of half of entry-level white-collar positions, and billion-dollar companies run by a single person. Then they went quiet, almost in unison, leaving PR departments to manage the silence. Economists like Austan Goolsbee at the Chicago Fed say the data shows nothing alarming yet, while University of Virginia professor Anton Korinek argues his colleagues are misreading the technology, not the numbers. Former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo calls the rush to cut jobs "a fever." Senator Gary Peters can't get colleagues to fund retraining programs that already exist. Steve Bannon wants the government to take a 50 percent stake in AI companies. Bernie Sanders typed a manifesto with his fists. Meanwhile, the BLS budget keeps shrinking, and the one thing everyone could agree on, simply counting what's happening, isn't happening.

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Historian Jason Colby grew up around killer whales. His father captured them for marine parks in the 1970s. His mother once reassured a terrified five-year-old Colby in Alaska that the black fins slicing nearby water were harmless. That personal history threads through a sweeping account of how human perceptions of orcas have flip-flopped across centuries, driven far more by cultural mood than scientific discovery. Nineteenth-century whalers described them as bloodthirsty wolves of the ocean. A 1937 Oakland Tribune headline screamed about monsters. The U.S. Navy strafed hundreds of orcas in Iceland during the 1950s. Then live capture in the Pacific Northwest changed everything. A harpooned calf named Moby Doll survived in captivity just three months in 1964, but his docility stunned observers. Aquarium displays individualized the species for millions. Scientist Michael Bigg pioneered photo identification of wild populations, revealing complex social structures and food cultures. Now drone footage of orcas dismembering seal pups and disabling yachts near Gibraltar is complicating the cuddly image all over again. Colby's conclusion: the animals haven't changed. We keep projecting different anxieties and aspirations onto the same apex predator.

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Light pollution is intensifying faster than anyone expected. Citizen science data analyzed by German and American researchers shows sky glow increasing roughly 10 percent per year, doubling every eight years. More than 80 percent of the global population now lives under artificially brightened skies, and over a third of humanity can no longer see the Milky Way. The consequences run deeper than obscured stars. Artificial light at night suppresses melatonin, disrupts circadian rhythms, and scrambles migration and breeding patterns across species. A recent Cranfield University study found that lit-up ecosystems release more carbon dioxide at night without absorbing extra during the day, essentially preventing landscapes from resting. Cities are starting to respond. Lille, France created motion-activated corridors for bats. Tucson adopted comprehensive lighting codes to protect nearby observatories. Palo Alto recently passed sweeping rules requiring non-essential lights off after 11 p.m. Marin County lighting designer Anna Kondolf advocates for downward-facing fixtures, warmer LEDs, and a fundamental shift in how we think about illuminating outdoor spaces. The fix, she says, is startlingly simple: just remember to turn off the lights.

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While you were debating if AI would take your job, other people started using it to print money. Seriously.

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Less than 40 miles from Nigeria's gleaming capital Abuja, in communities reachable only by dirt roads, some newborns are still considered cursed. Babies whose mothers die in childbirth, children born with albinism or disabilities, twins and triplets can all be marked for death: poisoned, starved, or buried alongside their mothers. Olusola and Chinwe Stevens, Christian missionaries who arrived in the area in 1996, began collecting these children. Their Vine Heritage Home Foundation now shelters more than 200 kids, from newborns to university students. Esther Stevens, nearly buried alive at birth in 2007, is now 18 and planning to study law. But the operation runs on individual donations in a country where inflation has gutted charitable giving. Chinwe's own health has collapsed from years of self-neglect. Reintegrating children into their home villages remains fraught: one boy was returned within two weeks after elders threatened him. ActionAid helped stop killings in four communities through patient, indirect advocacy, but funding dried up in 2022. Government officials consistently deny the practice exists. The Stevenses hope their oldest children will eventually take over, but the home keeps growing faster than anyone anticipated.

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