A large-scale study tracking more than 27,500 middle-aged and elderly people over roughly nine years has found that poor sleep quality is associated with accelerated brain aging, and chronic inflammation appears to be one of the key mechanisms driving this effect. Researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute assessed participants' sleep across five dimensions -- chronotype, duration, insomnia, snoring and daytime sleepiness -- and later scanned their brains using MRI to estimate biological brain age through machine learning models. The results? For every point decrease in healthy sleep score, the gap between brain age and chronological age widened by approximately six months. Those in the poorest sleep category had brains that appeared roughly one year older than their actual age. Night-owl tendencies, sleep duration outside the 7-8 hour sweet spot and snoring were particularly strongly linked to brain aging. The researchers measured low-grade inflammation using biomarkers including C-reactive protein levels and white blood cell counts. Inflammation accounted for more than 10% of the association between poor sleep patterns and brain aging. The glymphatic system, which clears waste from the brain primarily during sleep, may also play a role, the research added.

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Determining how "successful" Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) truly was depends on who you ask, but it's increasingly hard to claim that DOGE made any sizable dent in federal spending, which was its primary goal.

Just two weeks ago, Musk himself notably downplayed DOGE as only being "a little bit successful" on a podcast, marking one of the first times that Musk admitted DOGE didn't live up to its promise. Then, more recently, on Monday, Musk revived evidence-free claims he made while campaigning for Donald Trump, insisting that government fraud remained vast and unchecked, seemingly despite DOGE's efforts. On X, he estimated that "my lower bound guess for how much fraud there is nationally is [about 20 percent] of the Federal budget, which would mean $1.5 trillion per year. Probably much higher."

Musk loudly left DOGE in May after clashing with Trump, complaining that a Trump budget bill threatened to undermine DOGE's work. These days, Musk does not appear confident that DOGE was worth the trouble of wading into government. Although he said on the December podcast that he considered DOGE to be his "best side quest" ever, the billionaire confirmed that if given the chance to go back in time, he probably would not have helmed the agency as a special government employee.

"I mean, no, I don’t think so," Musk said. "Would I do it? I mean, I probably … I don’t know."

On another recent podcast, Musk suggested that he learned his lesson after trying and failing to make the US government run like a business, The Guardian reported. “Best to avoid politics where possible,” Musk said.

As Musk simultaneously fans the flames with fraud claims while de-emphasizing DOGE's ability to address them, Musk's allies in government, in Silicon Valley, and on X continue to tout DOGE as the wrecking ball government needed.

But while Musk continues warning of fraud that can supposedly be easily found, critics are raising questions about whether DOGE cuts might have inflicted lasting damage by chasing Musk's fraud fantasies.

Estimates vs. reality

When Musk first proposed DOGE, he was on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, vowing to help end government waste and fraud. At an October 2024 rally, Musk claimed DOGE could save the federal government "at least $2 trillion," The Guardian reported. But immediately after Trump's inauguration, he slashed his goal in half, vowing to cut $1 trillion in government waste from the federal budget. Later, as DOGE efforts faced immediate backlash, the goal was reduced again, this time to a much more modest $150 billion, the Cato Institute reported.

In reality, The Guardian reported, "much of what the agency has done remains a mystery." Although Musk promised DOGE would be transparent, the government has impeded lawsuits seeking discovery documents to create paper trails on DOGE cuts. And DOGE's cost-cutting tracker on its website can't be trusted, The Guardian reported, as it contains "egregious errors" and DOGE's accounting methods are unreliable.

Even setting aside that the tracker and "wall of receipts" are likely "overblown," The Guardian noted, DOGE claims to have cut about $214 billion in government spending and saved about $61 billion in cancelled contracts—far from reaching Musk's extreme waste estimates. Meanwhile, Democrats investigating DOGE reported in July that the agency "may have caused around $21.7 billion in waste." As to DOGE slashing about nine percent of the federal workforce, the Cato Institute estimated that it may have triggered more costly federal contracts, perhaps increasing costs and possibly degrading services down the road.

The bottom line is that government spending increased under DOGE, and there was no noticeable impact on the month-to-month budget after DOGE cuts began, the Cato Institute reported. "The federal government spent $7.6 trillion in the first 11 months of calendar year 2025, approximately $248 billion higher by November of 2025 compared to the same month in 2024," its report said.

Over time, more will be learned about how DOGE operated and what impact DOGE had. But it seems likely that even Musk would agree that DOGE failed to uncover the vast fraud he continues to predict exists in government.

DOGE supposedly served "higher purpose"

While Musk continues to fixate on fraud in the federal budget, his allies in government and Silicon Valley have begun spinning anyone criticizing DOGE's failure to hit the promised target as missing the "higher purpose" of DOGE, The Guardian reported.

Five allies granted anonymity to discuss DOGE's goals told The Guardian that the point of DOGE was to "fundamentally" reform government by eradicating "taboos" around hiring and firing, "expanding the use of untested technologies, and lowering resistance to boundary-pushing start-ups seeking federal contracts." Now, the federal government can operate more like a company, Musk's allies said.

The libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, did celebrate DOGE for producing "the largest peacetime workforce cut on record," even while acknowledging that DOGE had little impact on federal spending.

"It is important to note that DOGE’s target was to reduce the budget in absolute real terms without reference to a baseline projection. DOGE did not cut spending by either standard," the Cato Institute reported.

Currently, DOGE still exists as a decentralized entity, with DOGE staffers appointed to various agencies to continue cutting alleged waste and finding alleged fraud. While some fear that the White House may choose to "re-empower" DOGE to make more government-wide cuts in the future, Musk has maintained that he would never helm a DOGE-like government effort again and the Cato Institute said that "the evidence supports Musk’s judgment."

"DOGE had no noticeable effect on the trajectory of spending, but it reduced federal employment at the fastest pace since President Carter, and likely even before," the Institute reported. "The only possible analogies are demobilization after World War II and the Korean War. Reducing spending is more important, but cutting the federal workforce is nothing to sneeze at, and Musk should look more positively on DOGE’s impact."

Although the Cato Institute joined allies praising DOGE's dramatic shrinking of the federal workforce, the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, Elaine Kamarck, told Ars in November that DOGE "cut muscle, not fat" because “they didn’t really know what they were doing.”

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On Tuesday, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued a now familiar order: because of a supposed energy emergency, a coal plant scheduled for closure would be forced to remain open. This time, the order targeted one of the three units present at Craig Station in Colorado, which was scheduled to close at the end of this year. The remaining two units were expected to shut in 2028.

The supposed reason for this order is an emergency caused by a shortage of generating capacity. "The reliable supply of power from the coal plant is essential for keeping the region’s electric grid stable," according to a statement issued by the Department of Energy. Yet the Colorado Sun notes that Colorado's Public Utilities Commission had already analyzed the impact of its potential closure, and determined, "Craig Unit 1 is not required for reliability or resource adequacy purposes."

The order does not require the plant to actually produce electricity; instead, it is ordered to be available in case a shortfall in production occurs. As noted in the Colorado Sun article, actual operation of the plant would potentially violate Colorado laws, which regulate airborne pollution and set limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The cost of maintaining the plant is likely to fall on the local ratepayers, who had already adjusted to the closure plans.

The use of emergency powers by the DOE is authorized under the Federal Power Act, which allows it to order the temporary connection of generation or infrastructure when the US is at war or when "an emergency exists by reason of a sudden increase in the demand for electric energy, or a shortage of electric energy." It is not at all clear whether "we expect demand to go up in the future," the DOE's current rationale, is consistent with that definition of emergency. It is also hard to see how using coal plants complies with other limits placed on the use of these emergency orders:

The Commission shall ensure that such order requires generation, delivery, interchange, or transmission of electric energy only during hours necessary to meet the emergency and serve the public interest, and, to the maximum extent practicable, is consistent with any applicable Federal, State, or local environmental law or regulation and minimizes any adverse environmental impacts.

At the moment, coal-fueled generation is more expensive than anything other than nuclear power, and is far and away the dirtiest form of generation. Its airborne pollution is responsible for a significant number of deaths in the US, and it leaves behind solid waste that is rich in toxic metals. It's difficult to square those financial and health costs with serving the public interest.

Yet the Trump Administration has relied heavily on declaring energy emergencies in its attempt to keep coal afloat despite the economics. A check of the use of similar emergency orders shows that, in the past year, the Administration has declared 16 energy emergencies—more than the entire total declared between 2008 and 2024.

The Administration's reliance on this sort of emergency declaration is in the process of being challenged in court, though. Several states and a collection of environmental organizations recently filed a suit that argues that the administration is misusing what's meant to be a response to temporary emergencies by simply renewing the orders indefinitely, as it has with a coal plant in Michigan that has been forced to remain open well past the summer demand surge that the DOE initially used as its justification.

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The consulting firm CVL Economics estimated last year that AI would disrupt more than 200,000 entertainment-industry jobs in the United States by 2026, but writer Nick Geisler argues in The Atlantic that the most consequential casualties may be the humble entry-level positions where aspiring artists have traditionally paid dues and learned their craft. Geisler, a screenwriter and WGA member who started out writing copy for a how-to website in the mid-2010s, notes that ChatGPT can now handle the kind of articles he once produced. This pattern is visible today across creative industries: the AI software Eddie launched an update in September capable of producing first edits of films, and LinkedIn job listings increasingly seek people to train AI models rather than write original copy. The story adds: The problem is that entry-level creative jobs are much more than grunt work. Working within established formulas and routines is how young artists develop their skills. The historical record suggests those early rungs matter. Hunter S. Thompson began as a copy boy for Time magazine; Joan Didion was a research assistant at Vogue; directors Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, and Francis Ford Coppola shot cheap B movies for Roger Corman before their breakthrough work. Geisler himself landed his first Netflix screenplay commission through a producer he met while making rough cuts for a YouTube channel. The story adds: Beyond the money, which is usually modest, low-level creative jobs offer practice time and pathways for mentorship that side gigs such as waiting tables and tending bar do not. Further reading: Hollow at the Base.

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Imran Ahmed's biggest thorn in his side used to be Elon Musk, who made the hate speech researcher one of his earliest legal foes during his Twitter takeover.

Now, it's the Trump administration, which planned to deport Ahmed, a legal permanent resident, just before Christmas. It would then ban him from returning to the United States, where he lives with his wife and young child, both US citizens.

After suing US officials to block any attempted arrest or deportation, Ahmed was quickly granted a temporary restraining order on Christmas Day. Ahmed had successfully argued that he risked irreparable harm without the order, alleging that Trump officials continue "to abuse the immigration system to punish and punitively detain noncitizens for protected speech and silence viewpoints with which it disagrees" and confirming that his speech had been chilled.

US officials are attempting to sanction Ahmed seemingly due to his work as the founder of a British-American non-governmental organization, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

"An egregious act of government censorship"

In a shocking announcement last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that five individuals—described as "radical activists" and leaders of "weaponized NGOs"—would face US visa bans since "their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" for the US.

Nobody was named in that release, but Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, later identified the targets in an X post she currently has pinned to the top of her feed.

Alongside Ahmed, sanctioned individuals included former European commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton; the leader of UK-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI), Clare Melford; and co-leaders of Germany-based HateAid, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon. A GDI spokesperson told The Guardian that the visa bans are "an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship."

While all targets were scrutinized for supporting some of the European Union's strictest tech regulations, including the Digital Services Act (DSA), Ahmed was further accused of serving as a "key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against US citizens." As evidence of Ahmed's supposed threat to US foreign policy, Rogers cited a CCDH report flagging Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. among the so-called "disinformation dozen" driving the most vaccine hoaxes on social media.

Neither official has really made it clear what exact threat these individuals pose if operating from within the US, as opposed to from anywhere else in the world. Echoing Rubio's press release, Rogers wrote that the sanctions would reinforce a "red line," supposedly ending "extraterritorial censorship of Americans" by targeting the "censorship-NGO ecosystem."

For Ahmed's group, specifically, she pointed to Musk's failed lawsuit, which accused CCDH of illegally scraping Twitter—supposedly, it offered evidence of extraterritorial censorship. That lawsuit surfaced "leaked documents" allegedly showing that CCDH planned to "kill Twitter" by sharing research that could be used to justify big fines under the DSA or the UK's Online Safety Act. Following that logic, seemingly any group monitoring misinformation or sharing research that lawmakers weigh when implementing new policies could be maligned as seeking mechanisms to censor platforms.

Notably, CCDH won its legal fight with Musk after a judge mocked X's legal argument as "vapid" and dismissed the lawsuit as an obvious attempt to punish CCDH for exercising free speech that Musk didn't like.

In his complaint last week, Ahmed alleged that US officials were similarly encroaching on his First Amendment rights by unconstitutionally wielding immigration law as "a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express views disfavored by the current administration."

Both Rubio and Rogers are named as defendants in the suit, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Acting Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons. In a loss, officials would potentially not only be forced to vacate Rubio's actions implementing visa bans, but also possibly stop furthering a larger alleged Trump administration pattern of "targeting noncitizens for removal based on First Amendment protected speech."

Lawsuit may force Rubio to justify visa bans

For Ahmed, securing the temporary restraining order was urgent, as he was apparently the only target currently located in the US when Rubio's announcement dropped. In a statement provided to Ars, Ahmed's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, suggested that the order was granted "so quickly because it is so obvious that Marco Rubio and the other defendants’ actions were blatantly unconstitutional."

Ahmed founded CCDH in 2019, hoping to "call attention to the enormous problem of digitally driven disinformation and hate online." According to the suit, he became particularly concerned about antisemitism online while living in the United Kingdom in 2016, having watched "the far-right party, Britain First," launching "the dangerous conspiracy theory that the EU was attempting to import Muslims and Black people to 'destroy' white citizens." That year, a Member of Parliament and Ahmed’s colleague, Jo Cox, was “shot and stabbed in a brutal politically motivated murder, committed by a man who screamed ‘Britain First’” during the attack. That tragedy motivated Ahmed to start CCDH.

He moved to the US in 2021 and was granted a green card in 2024, starting his family and continuing to lead CCDH efforts monitoring not just Twitter/X, but also Meta platforms, TikTok, and, more recently, AI chatbots. In addition to supporting the DSA and UK's Online Safety Act, his group has supported US online safety laws and Section 230 reforms intended to protect kids online.

"Mr. Ahmed studies and engages in civic discourse about the content moderation policies of major social media companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union," his lawsuit said. "There is no conceivable foreign policy impact from his speech acts whatsoever."

In his complaint, Ahmed alleged that Rubio has so far provided no evidence that Ahmed poses such a great threat that he must be removed. He argued that "applicable statutes expressly prohibit removal based on a noncitizen’s 'past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations.'"

According to DHS guidance from 2021 cited in the suit, "A noncitizen' s exercise of their First Amendment rights … should never be a factor in deciding to take enforcement action."

To prevent deportation based solely on viewpoints, Rubio was supposed to notify chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations, and House and Senate Judiciary Committees, to explain what "compelling US foreign policy interest" would be compromised if Ahmed or others targeted with visa bans were to enter the US. But there's no evidence Rubio took those steps, Ahmed alleged.

"The government has no power to punish Mr. Ahmed for his research, protected speech, and advocacy, and Defendants cannot evade those constitutional limitations by simply claiming that Mr. Ahmed’s presence or activities have 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,'" a press release from his legal team said. "There is no credible argument for Mr. Ahmed’s immigration detention, away from his wife and young child."

X lawsuit offers clues to Trump officials' defense

To some critics, it looks like the Trump administration is going after CCDH in order to take up the fight that Musk already lost. In his lawsuit against CCDH, Musk's X echoed US Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) by suggesting that CCDH was a "foreign dark money group" that allowed "foreign interests" to attempt to "influence American democracy.” It seems likely that US officials will put forward similar arguments in their CCDH fight.

Rogers' X post offers some clues that the State Department will be mining Musk's failed litigation to support claims of what it calls a "global censorship-industrial complex." What she detailed suggested that the Trump administration plans to argue that NGOs like CCDH support strict tech laws, then conduct research bent on using said laws to censor platforms. That logic seems to ignore the reality that NGOs cannot control what laws get passed or enforced, Breton suggested in his first TV interview after his visa ban was announced.

Breton, whom Rogers villainized as the "mastermind" behind the DSA, urged EU officials to do more now defend their tough tech regulations—which Le Monde noted passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and very little far-right resistance—and fight the visa bans, Bloomberg reported.

"They cannot force us to change laws that we voted for democratically just to please [US tech companies]," Breton said. "No, we must stand up."

While EU officials seemingly drag their feet, Ahmed is hoping that a judge will declare that all the visa bans that Rubio announced are unconstitutional. The temporary restraining order indicates there will be a court hearing Monday at which Ahmed will learn precisely "what steps Defendants have taken to impose visa restrictions and initiate removal proceedings against" him and any others. Until then, Ahmed remains in the dark on why Rubio deemed him as having "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" if he stayed in the US.

Ahmed, who argued that X's lawsuit sought to chill CCDH's research and alleged that the US attack seeks to do the same, seems confident that he can beat the visa bans.

“America is a great nation built on laws, with checks and balances to ensure power can never attain the unfettered primacy that leads to tyranny," Ahmed said. "The law, clear-eyed in understanding right and wrong, will stand in the way of those who seek to silence the truth and empower the bold who stand up to power. I believe in this system, and I am proud to call this country my home. I will not be bullied away from my life’s work of fighting to keep children safe from social media’s harm and stopping antisemitism online. Onward.”

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SIM cards, the small slips of plastic that have held your mobile subscriber information since time immemorial, are on the verge of extinction. In an effort to save space for other components, device makers are finally dropping the SIM slot, and Google is the latest to move to embedded SIMs with the Pixel 10 series. After long avoiding eSIM, I had no choice but to take the plunge when the time came to review Google's new phones. And boy, do I regret it.

The journey to eSIM

SIM cards have existed in some form since the '90s. Back then, they were credit card-sized chunks of plastic that occupied a lot of space inside the clunky phones of the era. They slimmed down over time, going through the miniSIM, microSIM, and finally nanoSIM eras. A modern nanoSIM is about the size of your pinky nail, but space is at a premium inside smartphones. Enter, eSIM.

The eSIM standard was introduced in 2016, slowly gaining support as a secondary option in smartphones. Rather than holding your phone number on a removable card, an eSIM is a programmable, non-removable component soldered to the circuit board. This allows you to store multiple SIMs and swap between them in software, and no one can swipe your SIM card from the phone. They also take up half as much space compared to a removable card, which is why OEMs have begun dropping the physical slot.

Apple was the first major smartphone maker to force the use of eSIM with the release of the iPhone 14, and it makes use of that space. The international iPhone 17 with a SIM card slot has a smaller battery than the eSIM-only version, but the difference is only about 8 percent. Google didn't make the jump until this year with the Pixel 10 series—the US models are eSIM-only, but they unfortunately don't have more of anything compared to the international versions.

In advance of the shift, Android got system-level support for downloading and transferring eSIMs. But whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and it's extremely annoying when eSIM goes wrong.

Please hold for support

There have been times when I swapped between phones on an almost daily basis—such was the nature of reviewing phones back when there were a dozen of them coming out every month. Never once in all those countless device swaps did I have a problem with my SIM card. As such, I managed to avoid contacting carrier support for years at a time.

In the three months since Google forced me to give up my physical SIM card, I've only needed to move my eSIM occasionally. Still, my phone number has ended up stuck in limbo on two occasions. Android's built-in tools work better than they used to, and I can't say what is responsible for the eSIM corruption. However, carriers bear the responsibility for how annoying this is to fix.

The first time, I was logged in to the mobile app for my carrier (T-Mobile). After a few minutes of back and forth with support, I was able to use the app to authenticate and get a new eSIM pushed to the phone. It was annoying but relatively painless. The second time a SIM transfer went sideways, I was not logged in to the app, and that was a problem.

When a mobile carrier needs to verify your identity for an account change, they all do the same thing: send a text message. And what happens if you don't have a working SIM? That's right—nothing. Without access to my account or phone number, I was stuck with no way to download a new eSIM. The only course of action was to go to a physical store to download an electronic SIM card. What should have been 30 seconds of fiddling with a piece of plastic turned into an hour standing around a retail storefront.

Maybe this isn't a good idea

Many people have had the same phone number for years—even decades at this point. These numbers aren't just a way for people to get in touch because, stupidly, we have also settled on phone numbers as a means of authentication. Banks, messaging apps, crypto exchanges, this very website's publishing platform, and even the carriers managing your number rely on SMS multifactor codes. And those codes aren't even very secure.

So losing access to your phone number doesn't just lock you out of your phone. Key parts of your digital life can also become inaccessible, and that could happen more often now due to the fungible nature of eSIMs.

Most people won't need to move their phone number very often, but the risk that your eSIM goes up in smoke when you do is very real. Compare that to a physical SIM card, which will virtually never fail unless you damage the card. Swapping that tiny bit of plastic takes a few seconds, and it never requires you to sit on hold with your carrier's support agents or drive to a store. In short, a physical SIM is essentially foolproof, and eSIM is not.

Obviously, the solution is not to remove multifactor authentication—your phone number is, unfortunately, too important to be unguarded. However, carriers' use of SMS to control account access is self-defeating and virtually guarantees people are going to have bad experiences in the era of eSIM. Enshittification has truly come for SIM cards.

If this future is inevitable, there ought to be a better way to confirm account ownership when your eSIM glitches. It doesn't matter what that is as long as SMS isn't the default. Google actually gets this right with Fi. You can download an eSIM at any time via the Fi app, and it's secured with the same settings as your Google account. That's really as good as it gets for consumer security. Between Google Authenticator, passkeys, and push notifications, it's pretty hard to get locked out of Google, even if you take advantage of advanced security features.

We gave up the headphone jack. We gave up the microSD card. Is all this worthwhile to boost battery capacity by 8 percent? That's a tough sell.

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