The big idea: do our political opponents really hate us?
The Guardian -

Not half as much as we think, according to the evidence – and there are ways to break the cycle of mutual mistrustPolitics is a firestorm, sometimes literally. In 2023 in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts, someone threw petrol on a pro-Trump sign nailed to a tree and set light to it. Three years earlier in the same area, a 49-year-old Trump supporter started a huge blaze after igniting some hay bales that were emblazoned with a pro-Biden sign. This bucolic area of Massachusetts is not...

In related news

  • Big Tech: After long peace, Big Tech faces US antitrust reckoning

    After more than a decade of leaving Big Tech largely to itself, US antitrust enforcers have cranked up the heat, with several high-profile cases underway that could radically change the way the industry's giants do business.Launched under both the Trump and Biden administrations, five major cases from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are moving forward against major US technology companies -- including two against Google that could see the company split...

  • Brian Cox really hated Napoleon

    If Brian Cox were the one launching cannonballs at the pyramids with Ridley Scott, it wouldn’t have gone down like it did. This revelation comes from Brian Cox himself, who launched into a veritable tirade against the director’s Napoleon at a history event panel in London this week, with some extra, seemingly unprompted vitriol towards the film’s leading man. “Terrible. It’s terrible. A truly terrible performance by Joaquin Phoenix. It really is appalling,” he said (via British outlet The...

  • The big idea of Grand Unified Theories of physics

    Whenever we think about the Universe at a fundamental level, there’s always the temptation to wonder if reality might somehow be simpler than we perceive it to be. As complex and diverse as the natural world is, it’s humbling to recognize that everything we see, perceive, and interact with is made of the same building blocks. Matter is made of atoms, which are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons; protons and neutrons are further made of quarks and gluons. There are other particles as well:...