China's Foreign Minister To Rubio: Taiwan Is 'Biggest Risk Factor' In US-China Relations

The Barbell Economy: Why The Middle Is Vanishing Authored by Tamuz Itai via The Epoch Times, There’s a pattern quietly reshaping daily life, work, and society itself. Economists now call it the “barbell economy.” Value, growth, and opportunity concentrate at the two extremes—ultra-cheap utility on one end, premium experience and status on the other—while the broad, reasonable middle thins out. Once you start noticing it, you can’t unsee it. And the data show it isn’t a fleeting trend. Start with something as ordinary as dinner. Fast-food drive-throughs, delivery apps, and value menus...

Elites And Their Contempt Authored by Reverend John F. Naugle via The Brownstone Institute, Last week, I was unexpectedly hit with a post-lockdown trauma response. While driving to a baseball game days before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, I passed a digital highway sign instructing me to avoid nonessential travel. Suddenly, memories of empty highways with signs instructing drivers to “Stay Safe and Stay Home” came flooding back to me. As the week developed, it began to occur to me that the parallels were deeper than my subjective emotional response. Road closures intensified, rendering...

Vitalik Buterin Envisions 'One-Click' Ether-Staking For Institutions Authored by Martin Young via CoinTelegraph.com, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the Ethereum Foundation used simplified distributed validator technology, or “DVT-lite,” to stake 72,000 Ether in February. “My hope for this project is that in the process, we can make it maximally easy and one-click to do distributed staking for institutions,” said Buterin on X on Monday. Buterin explained that with DVT-lite, users can “choose which computers run their nodes, make a config file where they all have the same key, and then from there everything gets set...