A consortium of tech industry titans with links to the Trump administration took a significant step toward the creation of a new cryptocurrency-focused bank last week, after the White House on Wednesday gave conditional approval to charter the group’s planned financial institution. Named for J.R.R. Tolkien’s mountain of treasure in “The Hobbit,” Erebor Bank will focus on “technology companies and ultra-high-net-worth individuals that utilize virtual currencies,” the Treasury Department said in its approval letter. But Erebor is already raising eyebrows before it’s even fully up and running.

‘Palmer’s political network will get this done’
Cofounded by defense-tech magnate Palmer Luckey and investor Joe Lonsdale, whose Palantir data analytics firm was launched with billionaire Peter Thiel (another Erebor backer), this new bank will join a “growing list” of institutions “seeking to serve as financial linchpins for a boom in nascent industries including crypto,” said Bloomberg. Erebor was granted its “preliminary and conditional” charter by the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency “just four months” after applying, said the Financial Times. 

That's a “sign of the Trump administration’s initiative to lower regulatory hurdles” around digital currencies, said FT. The fast-track can also be viewed in the context of the Trump administration’s “‘pay to play’ Washington,” where “loyalty to MAGA and a demonstrated willingness to provide money when needed are the only keys needed for government approvals,” said financial services expert Todd Baker on Substack.

The speedy federal chartering process is a deliberate feature of the bank’s founders. Palmer’s “political network will get this done,” said an Erebor fundraising memo obtained by Business Insider in August. Luckey, a brother-in-law of former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, is a major Republican donor, alongside Thiel and Lonsdale. A bank like Erebor could “prove beneficial to the Trump family,” given the family’s “ongoing investments in cryptocurrencies,” said Ja’han Jones at MSNBC.

Political heat and regulatory hurdles
Erebor still needs to meet several “conditions set by the OCC” before it can fully “open its virtual doors,” said Axios. Its expedited timeline has earned the attention of consumer protection advocate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). In a “free market, credit flows fairly to businesses because they can use the money productively,” she said in a statement. “Not to the president’s cronies because of their political connections.”

“We are about to have an internet of animals,” said Martin Wikelski, of Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, on the space-based tracking program Icarus he’s pioneering. And “that’s super exciting.” The International Co-operation for Animal Research Using Space is launching the first of a series of satellites into space this month to monitor 100,000 animals worldwide. Data on their movements will help to inform conservationists about habitat loss and climate change and hopefully anticipate natural disasters and zoonotic diseases. 

How does it work? 
The Icarus initiative uses “affordable and lightweight GPS sensors that could be worn by animals as small as songbirds,” said the MIT Technology Review. These “Fitbits for wild creatures” could offer “live location data accurate to a few meters” and the monitoring of heart rate, body heat, ambient temperature and air pressure. 

This is possible due to the development of large wireless networks — the so-called Internet of Things — which made “two-way digital communications with small devices viable” while smartphones made low-cost GPS “increasingly available” and lithium batteries “shrunk to sizes that more animals can carry.” The Icarus tags will send the information to receivers on tiny satellites that beam the data back to Earth, where it will be shared via Movebank, a freely accessible database established 25 years ago that Wikelski describes as a “permanent digital museum” of animal data. 

What is Icarus hoping to achieve? 
This is the “most ambitious wildlife-tracking project that has ever been attempted,” said BBC Science Focus. For researchers, the applications are "almost endless,” including tracking changes in animal behavior, predicting events such as volcanic eruptions, and monitoring species that have played a part in epidemics, such as bats. 

The Icarus founder hopes that enabling people to “follow their favorite bird, tortoise or fish” on the database, via a smartphone app, could help “build support for conservation,” said The New York Times. If people “hear Cecil the lion died, it’s very real to them,” Wikelski said to the outlet. But if you “say 3,000 lions died, nobody cares.”

Nepalese army personnel shower service dogs with marigold flowers as a sign of devotion during Kukur Tihar, a festival dedicated to dogs. The Hindu celebration falls on the second day of Tihar, the five-day festival of lights.
Prakash Mathema / AFP / Getty Images

If the online world has a stronger hold on you than the offline one, there are tools and techniques that might help. “Conscious slowdowns or additional steps before one can use certain apps” serve as a “mindful pause, forcing users to rethink spontaneous digital engagement,” said UX designer Sarah Zaheer in a research paper.

Too much time online wears the body out. “You are feeding your brain a continual stream of cortisol, also known as the stress hormone,” said Dr. Susan Albers to Cleveland Clinic’s Health Essentials. This may lead to “inflammation that can cause a variety of mental and physical health issues.”  

Beat technology at its own game
It might seem counterintuitive to enlist an application to help you use your applications less, yet apps that track and obstruct your time online can be effective. The app One Sec aims to “break the habit” of mindless scrolling, said Android Police. You choose what distracting apps you want it to interact with, then when you open them, a prompt appears, noting how many times you have done so in 24 hours. If you use the app, you receive timed notifications so you are not spending too long on it. 

Out of sight
If you are steadfast enough to diminish your online minutes sans apps, start by “localizing,” said Albers, or “limiting a behavior to a specific time or place.” That might mean leaving your phone outside the bedroom when you go to sleep and “putting your phone on the other side of the room or in another room entirely” during the day.