Transformative Studies Institute

08/05/2026

08/02/2026

The DOGE team was acting like “a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were doing, with ideas of how government should run — thinking it should work like a McDonald’s or a bank — screaming all the time,” former SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek said.

Read the full story (published Sept. 2025): https://propub.li/4z5IAa6

07/30/2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV7aTNFImj0

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

07/30/2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwHJdiF8i5A

► Iranian Film The Need | فیلم ایرانی نیاز📽Synopsis: Set in Tehran...

07/25/2026

: Seven new opportunities have been brought to our attention. They consist of job positions, fellowships, and postdocs in various disciplines. Below you will find the appropriate links and applications.

07/01/2026

These autonomous UV robots offer an alternative to the billion pounds of annual chemical pesticides used in the U.S. every year.

American farming is entering a high-tech era as TRIC Robotics deploys autonomous, tractor-scale robots to eliminate crop pests using ultraviolet light instead of toxic chemical sprays.

Founded by CEO Adam Stager, the company is tackling the agricultural industry's heavy reliance on chemical agents—which currently accounts for roughly one billion pounds of pesticide use in the United States every year.

By navigating fields autonomously overnight, these massive robots target and destroy pests and diseases without leaving harmful chemical residues, starting first with commercial strawberry fields before expanding to other crops.

While automation often sparks concerns over agricultural job losses, TRIC Robotics argues that the technology actually enhances the workforce by unlocking a highly productive, previously underutilized night shift.

source: Djordjevic, P. (2026, June 25). American company uses robots to remove pesticides from crops. NewsNation.

06/30/2026

On April 7, 2026, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum signed a presidential decree creating the Universal Health Service (Servicio Universal de Salud), marking one of the country's most significant healthcare reforms in decades. The initiative is designed to unify Mexico's previously fragmented public healthcare system by allowing citizens to receive treatment through IMSS, ISSSTE, and IMSS-Bienestar regardless of their original affiliation. By treating healthcare as a fundamental public right, the reform seeks to remove many of the institutional barriers that have historically limited access to medical care.

Rather than taking effect all at once, the program is being introduced in phases. A nationwide registration campaign for the new Universal Health Credential began in April 2026, while the first stage of integrated healthcare services is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2027. Initially, the system will prioritize emergency care, hospitalizations, high-risk pregnancies, major chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, and continuity of treatment across public institutions. Additional services, including broader specialty care, digital medical records, and expanded interoperability, will continue to roll out through 2028.

Although the reform has received widespread public attention, healthcare experts note that significant challenges remain. Public hospitals continue to face shortages of medications, staffing constraints, and infrastructure limitations that will need to be addressed for the new system to reach its full potential. The decree establishes the legal framework for universal access, but its long-term success will depend on how effectively these operational challenges are resolved during implementation.

Source: Presidencia de la República. (2026). Presidenta anuncia decreto para crear el Servicio Universal de Salud. Gobierno de México. Expansión Política. (2026). Por decreto, Sheinbaum va por Sistema Universal de Salud a partir del 1 de enero de 2027.

Image: NPR

06/30/2026

The new director of the Center for Intellectual Freedom at University of Iowa (one of many right-wing funded "intellectual diversity" centers popping up on campuses nationwide) will make up to $450K and have "sole and exclusive authority" over every hiring/firing decision at the Center.

“Unfortunately, the combination of the legislature’s ideologically-driven attacks on DEI and CRT, combined with the overblown rhetoric used by many of the Center’s champions, has left the impression that [the] Center is the pet project of a few partisan politicians rather than a serious scholarly enterprise.”

—Hope Metcalf, University of Iowa AAUP Co-President

Link to article in comments.

04/20/2026

AI consumes as much water as the world’s bottled water industry.

A new analysis of artificial intelligence’s environmental footprint suggests that training and running models such as ChatGPT may already consume more water each year than humans drink from bottled water worldwide.

After combining estimated data center cooling needs with the largely opaque water-use data big tech companies choose to disclose, de Vries-Gao concludes that AI operations likely consume between 312.5 billion and 764.6 billion liters of water per year—bracketing and potentially surpassing the 446 billion liters of bottled water people drink globally.

These figures exclude the substantial “embodied” water required to manufacture AI chips and hardware, prompting UC Riverside researcher Shaolei Ren to argue that the real total is even higher and that earlier projections were too conservative.

References (APA style)

De Vries-Gao, A. (2025). Environmental impacts of artificial intelligence: Energy use, emissions, and water consumption. Patterns.
Wolverton, T. (2025, December 19). Study: Artificial intelligence models might be more thirsty than thought. San Francisco Examiner.