The Taiwan Opening
POLITICS · ECONOMY · TECH · REGIONAL
May 20, 2026
More than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips are made
in Taiwan.¹
That sentence should stop any government that reads it. It should
stop the U.S. It should stop Canada.
The chips that run phones, hospitals, vehicles, data centers,
communications networks, artificial intelligence systems, and
advanced weapons depend on manufacturing capacity concentrated on…
The Bag First Opened
LAW · SOCIETY
May 20, 2026
The knife went into the seam of
the suitcase, and the wall gave
way. Inside was not clothing,
not books, not the harmless
clutter of travel, but…
The Software Layer of the
State
POLITICS · TECHNOLOGY
May 19, 2026
By the time he saw the paper,
the government had already
finished the hard part.
It had found him.
No officer stood at the door.
No badge flashed. No machine
announced itself. There was
only a sheet of paper on a…
The Machine Can Write. Can We
Still Read?
EDUCATION · TECH
May 18, 2026
AI did not create America’s
literacy problem. It changed
the penalty for it.
The boy was not reading the
word. He was circling it.
He looked at the picture, then
at the teacher’s face, then…
Bad Assumptions
LOCAL · WEATHER
May 16, 2026
El Niño begins in the Pacific.
In New England, it shows up
where the region thinks it is
safe.
The water won’t ask permission
before it enters the house…
The Doctor Who Remembered
ECONOMY · HEALTH
May 14, 2026
American medicine did not lose
the family doctor by accident.
It built a system that pays
more for movement than memory.
The waiting room at 7:15 on a
Tuesday morning used to sound…
Nuclear to Mars
TECHNOLOGY
May 13, 2026
The checklist sits on a second
monitor, half-hidden behind a
telemetry window, while Alvarez
leans back just far enough to
see both without moving his…
The Wrong Kind of Winter
CLIMATE · LOCAL
May 13, 2026
The tide doesn’t have to roar
into Portsmouth to make its
point.
Some mornings it just arrives a
little too high, stays a little…

