A cosmic siren just screamed on our doorstep: a one-minute “cow flare” gamma-ray burst unleashed more energy than the Sun emits in 10,000 years—only a few hundred million miles past Pluto. While telescopes scramble for answers, the Sun itself opens a coronal hole the size of 30 Earths, flinging a geomagnetic fastball that could rattle satellites, drag the ISS, and push auroras toward Madrid. 

Down on terra firma, India and Pakistan trade shells and drone accusations under nuclear shadow, Europe rewires its energy map while hackers eye the switches, and stainless-steel monoliths keep popping up like cosmic Easter eggs.

We tunnel beneath Vancouver Island in search of Gold-Rush escape routes, track China’s sprint to home-grown AI chips narrowing Nvidia’s lead, and ask whether a rowdy Solar Cycle 25 can fry a transformer before regulators finish their paperwork.

Art Grindstone stitches it all together: cosmic alarms, geopolitical fault lines, and the nuts-and-bolts fixes—blocking capacitors, microgrids, and policy muscle—that could keep the lights on when the sky decides otherwise.

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