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The Closure of Hormuz Drove Up Prices Without Triggering Feared Stagflation
Within a few days of the Strait of Hormuz's closure in 2026, approximately 20 million barrels per day normally transited through this passage, but the volume actually interrupted was estimated at 11–14 million barrels per day — the closure being partial and selective, with partial alternatives exist
The French Love Science and Doubt Those Who Practice It
Six out of ten French people declare themselves interested in science. Fewer than one in two judge the scientific community to be independent. These two figures, drawn from the Universcience and Viavoice 2026 critical thinking barometer, do not contradict each other. They sketch a decoupling that pu
AI Agents Produce Scientific Results in Hours, Researcher Becomes Supervisor
In October 2024, the Nobel Committee awarded Demis Hassabis and John Jumper the prize for AlphaFold, DeepMind's program that predicts the three-dimensional structure of proteins. In 50 years of structural biology, the scientific community had solved approximately 200,000 structures. AlphaFold predic
One Billion Proteins in Open Access: The Bet of Open Science Against Proprietary Medicine
The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub published, at the end of May 2026, an atlas of more than one billion protein structures generated by the ESMFold2 model. Free. Downloadable. Without usage restrictions. It is the largest structural biology database ever made freely available, and it arrives at the precise
Book Review — "The Invisible Institutions" by Pierre Rosanvallon: The Unwritten Pillars of Democracy
Constitutions describe the rules of the game. They establish rights, organize powers, and provide remedies. But they say nothing about what makes these rules acceptable — the trust that citizens place in institutions, the legitimacy that distinguishes an accepted decision from a mere exercise of for
Half of the French Are No Longer Proud of Their Democracy
In 2026, 51% of French people believe there is nothing to be proud of in their democratic system. This is the figure from the CEVIPOF annual barometer, and it deserves careful attention. Not because it signals an imminent collapse, but because it says something precise about the nature of democratic
Value Sharing Remains Window Dressing for Many SMEs
Three years after the agreement that was supposed to generalize profit-sharing in all French small businesses, the CFDT qualifies the outcome as "globally catastrophic." This verdict does not invalidate the ambition of the 2023 national inter-professional agreement, but it says something essential a
AI Writes for Us and the Brain Goes on Standby
Measuring the brain activity of someone writing with the help of AI and someone writing alone produces results that should be troubling far beyond neuroscience. The study conducted in 2025 by Nataliya Kosmyna and her colleagues at the MIT Media Lab shows that regular users of AI writing assistants d
Germany Drills Its Coal Wastelands While France Lets 100 TWh Sleep
France is the second-largest producer of deep geothermal heat in the EU. It exploits less than 1% of it. Meanwhile, Germany—a country specialists readily describe as a latecomer in this field—is currently drilling beneath its abandoned coal basins. The Fraunhofer IEG institute recently published the
France Has Europe's Largest River Network and Does Almost Nothing With It
France possesses 8,500 kilometers of navigable waterways, the most extensive river network in Europe. On this network, freight represents only 2.4% of ton-kilometers transported. In the Netherlands, this figure reaches 43%. The gap is not geographical. It is not technical. It is political. - The mod
In the Depths of Clarion-Clipperton, the Riches of an Engulfed Continent
A study published in 2026 has just described 24 new species of amphipods in the abyssal plain of Clarion-Clipperton, as well as an entirely unknown superfamily to science, christened Mirabestioidea. Before this work, only a few species had been recorded in this zone. The known number has thus incr
Microsoft and Amazon Bind the Best AI Labs to Their Clouds Without Buying Them
Ten billion dollars. That's what Microsoft has injected into OpenAI since 2019. Amazon followed with four billion into Anthropic. These figures do not describe buyouts, nor even classical equity stakes. The FTC has documented something more subtle: these investments come with contractual obligations
Washington Advances Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration to 2030
The encryption that today protects medical records, government communications, and banking transactions relies on a mathematical problem that no computer can solve in reasonable time. This will change. The question is no longer if, but when. On June 22, 2026, President Trump signed Executive Order 1
American Tech Cuts Juniors and Pays Seniors More and More
Employment of developers aged 22 to 25 has declined by approximately 20% since 2024, according to the Stanford AI Index 2026. Not because of a recession. Not because of a trade war. Because of a deliberate recruitment choice that dozens of tech companies have made quietly, often without measuring th
The Biological Passport Catches Less Than 5% of Dopers
High-level sport accepts, in silence, a failure rate that would be intolerable in any other control domain: its primary doping detection tool lets between 95 and 98 dopers out of 100 slip through. This is not an activist estimate. It is the conclusion of a collective expert assessment by Inserm publ
Malaysia and Indonesia measure age by age who pays for whom
In Malaysia, nearly 70% of the population is today of working age. This is a demographic windfall that few countries have experienced at this scale. But data published in 2022 by the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) program shows something that the employment rate alone does not reveal: this generat
The Korean Miracle Facing Its Own Limits
South Korea navigated the 1997 Asian crisis with an IMF dictating reforms and a plummeting won. It weathered 2008 with a banking sector exposed to global turbulence. In both cases, it rebounded in less than two years. What has been happening since 2023 is different: very weak growth (~1.4-1.6%), pul
The Indian Version of the Tortoise and the Hare: The Factories of Gujarat and the Schools of Tamil Nadu
India has two states of comparable size, neighbors in growth rankings, separated by a choice made thirty years ago. Gujarat attracted factories, free trade zones, and major conglomerates. Tamil Nadu built schools, dispensaries, and trained engineers. Today, the higher education enrollment rate reach
Who Owns the Biometrics of Professional Athletes?
Sensors worn by athletes in the major American leagues generate terabytes of data every season: heart rate, muscle load, sleep quality, recovery level, fatigue markers. This data is worth millions of dollars in performance gains, injury prevention, and roster optimization. Nobody knows who owns it.
Europe Has Kelp All Along Its Coasts and Doesn't Know Who to Give the Rights To
Europe borders 68,000 kilometers of coastline and possesses some of the world's best seaweed deposits. Today it watches Asia capture approximately 97% of the global commercial seaweed cultivation market — while its own pilot farms struggle to obtain exploitation rights over their stretch of sea. The
Computing Power Becomes the Rare Resource of the Century
The five largest technology companies in the world invested over 400 billion dollars in 2025 in their infrastructure, driven almost entirely by demand for AI computing. In 2026, this figure is expected to grow by 75%. To understand what this means, it helps to know that NASA's annual investment at t
Iceland's Four-Day Week Did Not Stop GDP Growth
Nine out of ten Icelandic employees now work a reduced week. Six years after the system's generalization, the country's GDP per capita has not declined. This result, achieved in a country of 370,000 inhabitants that has conducted the world's most rigorously documented experiment on working time redu
Global Finance Knows Where the Needs Are. It Chooses Not to Go There.
In 2023, the OECD estimated the annual financing deficit for the Sustainable Development Goals at 4.2 trillion dollars. That same year, according to the OECD, private finance mobilized through official development interventions reached 70 billion dollars globally, and according to Convergence, track
Distrust is Not a Pathology of Peoples
Chloé Morin poses a diagnosis that many prefer not to hear: distrust is not a pathology of peoples. It is a signal, sometimes loud and clumsy, that says something true about the way elites have ceased to believe themselves accountable to those they govern. On the other side of the Atlantic, Francis