Democracy's Neoliberal Glow, Russian Drones Deep Inside Poland, and an LSD Trip to Treat Anxiety

Good morning! It's Friday, September 12, 2025, and this week we're plunging into Europe's tangled snarl of left-wing stonewalling and right-wing fury—a bizarre standoff where both sides, for all their venom, are secretly synced on one craving: freedom.

We're sharpening our knives on the far-right's wild economic blueprints, while staring down the real monster: a teetering world so out of whack it's choking prosperity at the throat.

And we're raising a glass to Poland, that Eastern juggernaut just smashing past the $1 trillion GDP mark—proof that real progress doesn't steamroll history; it buffs it to a fierce, gleaming edge.

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Tear gas clouds curling like bad karma over Paris cobblestones, where furious farmers and fed-up workers torch tires and barricade boulevards in a primal scream against a world that's left them choking on exhaust fumes and empty promises. Meanwhile, Germany's AfD rides a venomous wave of polls, whispering sweet isolationist nothings to a nation haunted by ghosts of division.

Europe's stage is a powder keg mosh pit, with populists crowd-surfing on the rage of the rust-belted and the rootless. But wait: cue the unlikely riff from a Slovenian study, cranking the volume on a truth that's been buried under the distortion.

Neoliberalism and globalization are not the villains torching democracy's house—they're the hidden roadies rigging the lights for a freer encore. In this inferno of protests and protectionism, the data drops a mic: open markets and borders aren't assassins of the people; they're the slow-burn saviors, weaving inequality's knots into the fabric of resilient liberty.

As barricades burn and ballots swing right, Europe's crossroads isn't a dead end—it's a pivot to reclaim the beat, blending free trade's fire with safety nets' groove, to remix a continent from cacophony back to harmony. Read the full story.

On the walls of London's Royal Courts of Justice, a Banksy art piece emerged: a bewigged judge, gavel raised like a weapon, pounding a bloodied protester into submission.

Banksy's latest guerrilla strike, unveiled on the Queen's Building wall, screamed silent fury at the system's boot on dissent—only for the very guardians of law to drape it in black plastic, barricade it like a crime scene, and schedule its erasure under the banner of "preserving character."

The ultimate irony? A masterpiece decrying censorship, silenced by the censors themselves, proving once more that street art's rebellion can't be washed off forever. Read the full story.

NATO-member warplanes shot down several Russian drones over Poland, marking the first time the alliance engaged Russian drones over a member’s territory, following 19 incursions into Polish airspace, which led to the closure of major Polish airports for the first time since the Ukraine war began. Polish authorities described the incident as a test of NATO's defenses by Moscow, with the Polish prime minister stating it was the closest the region has been to open conflict since World War II. Read the full story.

In Europe's parliaments, a storm is brewing—not of thunder, but of ballot boxes and bond yields. The hard right stands poised to seize its levers in Britain, France, Germany, and beyond. By 2027, they could command economies representing nearly half the continent's GDP, promising a radical rewrite of the rules: walls against the world, tax breaks for the faithful, and a nostalgic grip on a fading past.

But beneath the populist roar lies an economic peril—one that could drag Europe from stagnation into outright catastrophe, with bond markets trembling and the euro's fragile unity tested to breaking. Read the full story.

As the clock ticks down to COP30 in Brazil, the European Union is fracturing from within. A leaked draft negotiating text, obtained by the Guardian, reveals gaping voids where bold emission targets should be: square brackets and placeholders mocking the urgency of the crisis. With just weeks before a UN deadline, only 28 of 196 countries have submitted their updated nationally determined contributions, and the EU's internal bickering over 2035 goals threatens to stall global momentum.

Experts like Niklas Höhne of the New Climate Institute warn that this dithering could embolden foot-draggers from petrostates to a Trump-led U.S. retreat, while leaders like Macron, Meloni, and Orbán play political poker with the planet's future. Europe's hesitation isn't just a diplomatic fumble—it's a betrayal of the Paris promise, risking everything at the summit's edge. Read the full story.

Poland is scripting a comeback story that's equal parts economic thunderbolt and cultural renaissance. Crossing the $1 trillion GDP threshold this year—vaulting into the world's top 20 economies—Prime Minister Donald Tusk is now eyeing a seat at the G20 table, a fitting capstone to three decades of the EU's blistering growth, clocking over 4% annually since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Poland's true alchemy lies in balancing the ledger with legacy: the Europeana 2025 conference in June spotlighted digital and physical heritage preservation, while tourism to revitalized gems like Wrocław, Gdańsk, and the capital exploded 15% last year, proving that in this Eastern powerhouse, progress doesn't bulldoze the past—it polishes it to a shine. Read the full story.

OpenAI is throwing its weight—and its cutting-edge tech—behind Critterz, the world's first animated feature film cooked up almost entirely by artificial intelligence. Set to strut its digital stuff at the Cannes Film Festival before hitting theaters worldwide next year, this furry frenzy promises to slash production times and costs, blending the raw creativity of generative AI with the magic of moviemaking. Forget the painstaking frame-by-frame grind; the future of cinema is here, and it's powered by code. Read the full story.

The Arc de Triomphe looms like a stone sentinel over Paris's infamous Place de l'Étoile, where eight lanes of traffic whirl in a mad, unmarked ballet of honks and near-misses. It's pure Sartrean hell—drivers dodging fate in a roundabout roulette that somehow spits most cars out alive, if a little more existentially bruised.

But what if the wheel-spinners were machines? In San Francisco and Shanghai, robotaxis are already gliding through the chaos, ferrying millions without a single human hand on the yoke. Yet in Europe, this sci-fi dream idles in the slow lane, a glaring symbol of a continent that's mastered the art of romantic decline but forgotten how to innovate. Read the full story.

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will decide in November whether President Trump can impose tariffs, setting up a major test of one of the pillars of the president's economic agenda. Read the full story.

Swedish startup Lovable, focused on "vibe coding" for innovative software development, is positioning itself as a potential frontrunner to achieve trillion-dollar status in Europe, highlighting ambitions in the tech sector amid growing interest in AI and creative coding tools. Read the full story.

Nebius Group just landed a knockout punch: a massive multi-year deal with Microsoft worth up to $19.4 billion to fuel the software giant's AI ambitions with cutting-edge cloud infrastructure. Shares of the Amsterdam-based upstart—spun from Russian roots and backed by heavyweights like Nvidia—skyrocketed nearly 50% on the news, signaling that the AI gold rush is far from over, even as whispers of a bubble echo through Silicon Valley. Read the full story.

Arini, a hedge fund founded four years ago, has emerged as a key player in restructuring the debt of struggling European companies, dominating the competitive distressed debt market through strategic investments and positioning itself as a force in corporate turnarounds. Read the full story.

Germany's exports sputtered to a halt this summer: a surprise 0.6% drop in shipments, hammered by a 7.9% plunge to the United States, where fresh 15% tariffs from the Trump administration are turning the Atlantic into an economic minefield. For a nation whose factories fuel the world, it's a reminder that even Europe's powerhouse isn't immune to the whims of Washington. Read the full story.

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The Trump family launched World Liberty Financial, reportedly raising $5 billion, which has been labeled as corruption, prompting the introduction of the End Crypto Corruption Act to prevent elected officials and their families from profiting from such schemes. Read the full story.

In the Wall Street poker game Robinhood just drew an ace, sliding into the S&P 500's exclusive lineup while Michael Saylor's audacious Bitcoin empire at Strategy Inc. got folded out at the last hand. Announced amid the after-hours on September 5, 2025, the reshuffle crowned Robinhood with a 7% stock surge, validating its slick fusion of stocks, crypto wallets, and millennial swagger.

But for Saylor—the visionary evangelist who's stashed over 636,000 Bitcoins in his corporate vault, the snub stung like a market crash, sending shares dipping 3% and igniting whispers of index gatekeepers' crypto caution.

As Robinhood basks in the glow of trillions in passive fund inflows, Saylor's treasury play raises a question: Is Bitcoin's corporate revolution ready for prime time, or will it forever chase the establishment's shadow? Read the full story.

El Salvador marked the fourth anniversary of adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, highlighting its ongoing commitment to cryptocurrency integration in national finance. This week, the central American country announced plans to launch the world's first Bitcoin bank in 2025, advancing its Bitcoin adoption strategy.

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Most enduring and biggest iceberg breaks apart.

Watch this toddler hear his mother’s voice for the first time.

In the underbelly of academia, where the pursuit of knowledge collides with the grind for prestige, a Ukrainian network has allegedly spun a web of deception on an epic scale—churning out 1,500 fabricated research papers that infiltrated Europe's scientific journals like a ghost in the machine.

As watchdogs Abalkina, Bishop, and Matusz pull back the curtain on what could be the continent's biggest "paper mill," the scandal exposes a chilling vulnerability in the ivory tower, threatening the very foundations of trust in global research. Read the full story.

Moleculin Biotech has initiated treatment for the first European Union patient in its Phase 3 MIRACLE trial, testing Annamycin in combination with cytarabine for adults with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia, with ongoing recruitment across sites in Spain, Ukraine, Georgia, and Romania to evaluate efficacy and safety in this pivotal study. Read the full story.

In a Mannheim clinic, where the weight of endless antidepressants had crushed spirits for years, a single dose of psilocybin—magic mushrooms reimagined as medicine—ignited a spark of remission that lingered for two full years.

This isn't some underground trip from the '60s; it's the dawn of Europe's leap into psychedelic therapy, with Germany's regulators just green-lighting access programs that could unlock relief for hundreds battling treatment-resistant depression.

As clinics in Berlin and beyond gear up to administer the once-forbidden fungus under strict medical eyes, a continent long shackled by stigma edges toward a revolution in mental health—one trip at a time. Read the full story.

Imagine tripping through the corridors of your own mind, not in the haze of Hippie counterculture, but in a crisp clinical trial that's rewriting the rules of mental health. Researchers at MindMed have zeroed in on a single, precisely dosed hit of LSD—100 micrograms of a sleek, dissolvable tablet called MM120—that could banish the grip of generalized anxiety disorder for up to three months.

In a phase 2b study published in JAMA, nearly 200 patients, from jittery 18-year-olds to seasoned 74-year-olds, saw their anxiety plummet from "markedly ill" to barely a whisper, outpacing placebos with effects lingering weeks after the initial psychedelic wave.

Sure, there were fleeting hallucinations on dosing day, but they faded fast, leaving behind a clarity that traditional SSRIs and therapy sessions often chase in vain. As psychiatrist Maurizio Fava hails it a "turning point" for psychiatry, this isn't just science—it's a psychedelic renaissance, poised to flood phase 3 trials across the US and Europe, potentially unlocking relief for millions trapped in endless worry. Read the full story.

On September 12, 1683, the Battle of Vienna concluded with a decisive victory for the Holy League forces led by Polish King John III Sobieski over the Ottoman Empire, halting Turkish expansion into Central Europe and marking a turning point in the continent's defense against Ottoman incursions.

On September 13, 1515, French forces under King Francis I clashed with the Swiss mercenaries at the Battle of Marignano near Milan, resulting in a French victory that solidified control over northern Italy and shifted the balance of power among European monarchies during the Italian Wars.

On September 14, 1812, the Great Fire of Moscow ignited as Napoleon's Grande Armée occupied the city during the invasion of Russia, destroying much of the capital and contributing to the French retreat, which weakened Napoleon's empire and reshaped European alliances in the Napoleonic Wars.

On September 15, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden, where Hitler demanded the annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, initiating the appeasement crisis that failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II in Europe the following year.

On September 16, 1941, German troops completed the encirclement of Kyiv during Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front of World War II, leading to the capture of hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers in one of the war's largest battles and intensifying the brutal conflict across Europe.

On September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland in accordance with the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, partitioning the country with Nazi Germany and accelerating the spread of World War II throughout Europe.

On September 18, 324, Roman Emperor Constantine the Great defeated his rival Licinius at the Battle of Chrysopolis near modern-day Istanbul, unifying the Roman Empire under his rule and facilitating the rise of Christianity, which transformed religious and cultural landscapes across Europe for centuries.

In the face of crumbling Roman frontiers and fading barbarian kingdoms, a quiet revolution swept across Central and Eastern Europe starting in the 6th century—a tide of Slavic families, not conquerors on horseback, but resilient communities carrying their egalitarian ways from the steppes between the Dniester and Don rivers.

Ancient DNA tells the tale: over 80% of the genetic makeup in places like Eastern Germany and Poland flipped overnight, as these newcomers mingled, adapted, and overwrote the old order with their languages, customs, and bloodlines.

As geneticist Joscha Gretzinger puts it, it's the first hard proof of Slavic origins, a demic diffusion that didn't just redraw maps but rewired Europe's soul. And in Southern Moravia, where saints like Cyril and Methodius later scripted the Slavic alphabet, we see the seeds of enduring polities rising from this fertile upheaval.

This migration wasn't mere movement; it was the last great continental reshuffle, etching Slavic resilience into the DNA of nations that stand resilient still. Read the full story.

In a world teetering on the edge of seismic shifts—where empires crumble not with a bang but through the slow grind of debt, division, and daring rivals—billionaire investor Ray Dalio pulls back the curtain on history's grandest rerun.

Drawing from five centuries of power plays, from the Dutch golden age to America's postwar dominance, his animated deep dive into the "Big Cycle" reveals why the U.S. is staring down a familiar decline, with China rising fast in the rearview.

It's a wake-up call wrapped in wisdom: understand the patterns of the past, or get swept away by the future. Watch the video.

In Argentina, where politicians have long danced the line between graft and glory—"They steal, but they get it done," the old fatalistic shrug goes—Javier Milei's anarcho-libertarian revolution was supposed to shatter the rhythm. The chainsaw-wielding economist, with his wild mane and outsider snarl, stormed into the Casa Rosada vowing to eviscerate "the caste": that bloated, bribe-hungry elite whose decades of Peronist excess had cratered Argentina's peso and pride.

But now, as Milei's fiscal austerity bites deep into the nation's bones—slashing pensions, vetoing disability aid in a country where one in five souls scrapes by on the edge—a leaked audio inferno has erupted, singeing his own inner circle. At its molten core: Karina Milei, the president's tarot-reading, Instagram-cake-baking sister turned gatekeeping "boss," accused in shadowy recordings of pocketing 3-4% kickbacks on pharma deals worth millions, funneled through a disability agency meant to cradle the vulnerable.

What started as whispers of betrayal has ballooned into a pre-midterm maelstrom, complete with sacked aides, media raids, and a viral nightclub ditty branding Karina "big bribe-taker." In a nation wearied by scandal, this one stings deepest: the anti-corruption crusader, it seems, may have imported the very rot he swore to excise. Read the full story.

In an era where cryptocurrencies make headlines, remote work has shattered traditional borders, and AI is reshaping economies, few books feel as eerily prophetic as The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg.

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🇬🇧 English Copy | 🇩🇪 German Copy