Fitsum. T 🇪🇹 🇵🇸 🇮🇷

Finnish libraries have evolved far beyond traditional book lending, becoming vibrant community hubs that offer a wide range of practical services. Many public libraries across Finland now lend sewing machines, 3D printers, and other tools to the public at no cost. Helsinki’s iconic Central Library Oodi, for example, provides access to over 100,000 books alongside sewing machines, recording studios, and digital fabrication equipment. These services are fully funded by municipalities and protected by law, ensuring everyone, regardless of income, can use them. The initiative reflects Finland’s strong values of equality and sustainability. By lending sewing machines, libraries encourage people to repair their clothes instead of throwing them away, helping to reduce waste and promote a circular economy. This innovative model highlights how Finnish libraries are redefining themselves as modern centers of community support, creativity, and lifelong learning.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday night for a state visit to China: Xinhua (Video: CCTV)

The NYT article reveals that our military is telling President Trump what has been obvious from the onset of this war: there is no quick military solution in Iran and our early actions set the conditions for the stalemate we are in now. Trump’s best option is to declare victory and walk away now. Limit our exposure in the region, reduce the risk of Iran restarting the war on their terms, and reset negotiations with sanctions relief as both carrot and stick. The Iranians have adapted to our attacks. They can “win” simply by not losing. Future strikes will be less effective, cost us more in casualties, and further harden Iranian resolve. Killing the Supreme Leader rallied the Iranian people around the regime. By also eliminating many moderate leaders, we’ve left ourselves with mostly hardliners to negotiate with, who are unlikely to give Trump the concessions he’s demanding. Two lessons we should have learned in the GWOT: 1. If you stay within reach of the enemy, they will adapt and ultimately win the long war by grinding us down. Iran is doing this on a massive scale with ballistic missiles, air defenses, and drones—the same concept as IEDs, just more advanced. 2. Attacking a nation will rally the people around the regime we’re trying to overthrow, or around forces far worse. Regime change is a fool’s errand.

Jake Sullivan on Gaza: Too many innocent people died in Gaza as a result of Israel's military operations. I woke up every morning and went to sleep every night thinking about what we could do to try to alleviate the suffering. I have also said that genocide, from my perspective, requires actually an intent to do the destruction — and not to fight a terrorist foe while conducting operations in a way that killed too many civilians. Should we or could we have done more? I ask myself that question every day. And the answer must be yes, of course, because too many people died and suffered. I think about what opportunity here or what chance there or what move there, and I play that back in my head.