Zeros

God Save the Scene The House of Windsor has been America's favorite soap opera for forty years. Somewhere along the way, nobody asked us if we wanted a refund. Let us pause, for just a moment, and register appropriate astonishment. The British Royal Family — that ancient institution of hereditary ceremony, chinaware, and corgi photographs — has managed to become genuinely confusing to the American public in a way that no war, no Brexit  backstop, and no number of Downton Abbey seasons ever quite accomplished. We are not confused because the story is complicated. We are confused because we cannot figure out whose side we are supposed to be on , and nobody in Buckingham Palace seems interested in helping us work that out. Cast your mind back, if you will, to the early 1980s. Charles and Diana. The wedding dress with the preposterous train. A billion people are watching on television. The entire Western world was invited to believe that something genuinely fairytale ...

Are stablecoins truly ready for wholesale markets? And what about the potential of smart contracts?  Let's explore these exciting developments together! Recently, an argument has been pushed forward that stablecoins fall short of the standards required for wholesale financial market transactions— the kind of large-value, institution-to-institution settlements that underpin the global banking system . The main argument, grounded in post-2008 regulatory frameworks , is that settlement assets must carry demonstrated  zero credit or liquidity risk . Central bank reserves are the gold standard, and stablecoins aren't . But the argument largely sidesteps something worth contemplating: the role smart contracts play in changing the settlement equation entirely .  Pulling the Thread The critique rests on real regulatory architecture. Financial Market Infrastructures , the entities that handle wholesale settlement , operate under 24 inter...

If you’ve been even half-paying attention to the softer corners of the internet lately, you already know: the world has quietly, collectively adopted one tiny, wide-eyed soul. His name is Punch , and at just about nine months old now , he may be the most heartbreakingly adorable toddler you’ll ever see. Punch—the baby Japanese macaque at the Ichikawa City Zoo — was born in July 2025 and almost immediately had to figure life out on his own after being abandoned by his mother . And yet, if you’ve seen the videos ( and let’s be honest, you have ), what stays with you isn’t the sadness—it’s the astonishing, almost uncanny sweetness of how he moves through the world. Because Punch doesn’t just act like a baby monkey. He acts like a baby. He studies his hands with the seriousness of a tiny philosopher, flexing his fingers as if he’s counting them— one, two, three —like he’s just discovered math and is pretty pleased about it. He toddles, yes toddles , upright across the enclo...