Today's reads span cosmic ambition and earthbound struggle.

NASA prepares to send four astronauts beyond the moon for the first time in half a century, while Charlie Kirk's assassination fractured the conservative coalition he worked to unite, unleashing anti-Semitism that now threatens to consume the movement.

Closer to ground, three Colorado Springs mothers reveal the devastating failures of America's mental health system through their sons' battles with schizophrenia, and in the Falkland Islands, rockhopper penguins demonstrate extraordinary athleticism while confronting population collapse driven by warming Southern Ocean waters.

Happy reading,

Brett

NASA's Artemis II mission marks humanity's return to lunar space after 54 years, launching as early as February 6 with a crew of four: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. The 10-day flight will follow a circumlunar trajectory, reaching a record 4,700 miles beyond the moon's far side without entering orbit, testing the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for future landings. Koch becomes the first woman headed moonward, Glover the first person of color, and Hansen the first non-American, representing a demographic shift from Apollo's exclusively white male crews. The mission faces technical hurdles including a delayed SpaceX Starship lander and mounting competition from China's 2030 lunar goals, but serves as crucial preparation for establishing a permanent base near the south lunar pole through the 61-nation Artemis Accords.

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Charlie Kirk's assassination in 2025 destabilized the Trump coalition by removing the activist who had contained rising anti-Semitism within conservative ranks. Kirk spent years fighting white nationalist Nick Fuentes and his Groyper followers while attempting to separate criticism of Israeli policy from anti-Jewish conspiracism, walking a precarious line that balanced populism with rejecting explicit bigotry. After his death, former allies dismantled his legacy: Candace Owens alleged Israeli involvement in the killing, Tucker Carlson blamed Jews for Kirk's murder and platformed Fuentes for 138 minutes, and the Heritage Foundation split over normalizing white supremacist rhetoric. The fracture exposed a power struggle over post-Trump conservatism, with figures like Carlson and Steve Bannon weaponizing anti-Semitism against rivals including Ben Shapiro, while Kirk's vision of a broad multiracial coalition collapsed as polling showed demographic gains from 2024 evaporating.

Read here, free for LBR Readers.

Three Colorado Springs mothers navigate the brutal realities of raising children with schizophrenia amid inadequate mental health infrastructure. Tracy's son Ben died homeless in Dallas at 23 after years of psychosis went untreated despite neuropsychological diagnosis; Elisabeth fought to secure clozapine treatment for son Luc through the Laitman Protocol after he experienced command hallucinations and was repeatedly denied M-1 involuntary holds; Felicia's son Quentin endured over 20 hospitalizations and currently resides in assisted living on multiple antipsychotics. The mothers formed support networks through NAMI, advocating for legal changes around "gravely disabled" definitions while confronting systemic barriers: insurance denials, medication mismanagement by undertrained staff, difficulty obtaining involuntary treatment, and profound social stigma. Their experiences reveal how even families with resources struggle against a system where anosognosia prevents patients from recognizing illness, catastrophic treatment gaps push young people into homelessness, and parents must choose between enabling independence and preventing tragedy.

Read here.

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Rockhopper penguins, the smallest and most athletic penguins in sub-Antarctic waters, face population collapse as warming oceans disrupt their brutal lifestyle in the Falkland Islands. These aggressive birds navigate deadly surf landings and vertical cliff colonies with explosive jumps and tenacious determination, but breeding pairs plummeted from 1.5 million in the 1930s to under 300,000 by 1996, earning vulnerable species status. Researcher Petra Quillfeldt's GPS tracking on New Island reveals birds increasingly foraging for harder-to-digest prey between islands rather than energy-rich crustaceans in open ocean, while intensifying Southern Ocean storms kill downy chicks and predation escalates after imperial cormorants abandoned shared nesting sites. Conservation efforts include stone shelters built by Sarah Crofts to protect fledglings and decoy sculptures to lure protective cormorants back, producing modest survival gains, but rockhoppers cannot migrate south to cooler waters due to lack of nesting islands, leaving populations vulnerable to accelerating climate catastrophes.

Read here.