A so-called “Lego bandit” was arrested last week after a high-speed pursuit through the streets of Nassau County, Florida, as police officers uncovered $20,000 worth of stolen Lego sets across the region in recent months.

Alongside the 12 expensive Lego sets that the Florida man had made off with in his latest toy heist last Monday, police also seized suspected methamphetamine, fentanyl, and crack cocaine from the alleged offender’s U-Haul van, suggesting that the suspect was perhaps interested in more than just block trading…

Stocks had a great start to the week, with the S&P 500 finishing Monday up about a point and a half.

Okinawa, a group of around 160 islands off the south coast of Japan with a population of ~1.5 million people, has long been established as one of the world’s major longevity hubs. 

The residents’ mostly plant-based diet; their strong sense of purpose, or “ikigai;” and a tendency to command strong social networks were all cited as key reasons behind the island group’s status as one of just five official global “blue zones” — areas where life expectancies far outlast international averages, with disproportionate swaths of the population reaching 100 years of age or older.

Zoom out a little further, though, and it becomes apparent that elements of Okinawa’s recipe for a long and healthy life have clearly been catching on across the mainland, too, as Japan’s centenarian population reaches yet another record high.

According to figures published by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare last week, the number of nationals who are 100 years old or above has risen to 107,677 as of September 1, 2026. For context, that’s up almost 8,000 from the year before, and the figure has risen almost nine times from the turn of the century, when Japan’s centenarian population sat at just ~13,000. 

Japanese women account for a staggering 88% of the 100+ cohort, mostly reflecting the impact of World War II on males of the generation, as well as the fact that they traditionally worked in more physically demanding fields, and tended to drink and smoke more than their female counterparts. 

Given that Japan’s overall population peaked in 2008, this latest demographic stat out of the land of the rising average age is another signifier that the nation’s top heavy population problem isn’t going anywhere fast. 

Indeed, while Kenichiro Ueno, the nation’s health minister, announced that he was “delighted that so many people are living long, healthy and active lives,” it also speaks to the “existential crisis” that authorities have outlined, with Prime Minister Sanae Takichi labeling the aging population combined with its declining birthrate as a “quiet emergency.” 

— Thomas Jones

Doomer discussions around AI and its potentially (likely?) grave consequences for the Future Of Humanity have grown louder of late, but as far as the rise of robots that look and act like us goes, humans might be able to rest slightly easier… for now, at least.

Last year, there were just 7,000 humanoid robot shipments around the world, per figures that the International Federation of Robotics shared with Reuters before publication. As Reuters noted, humanoid bots (those that are designed to resemble mankind and operate autonomously in human environments) represent a mere fraction of the overall robot population. 

Regardless of that fact, 7,000 still seems pretty low — it’s less than half of the 20,000 figure that BofA Global Research had forecasted for 2025. It’s also very far off the tallies that the BofA has predicted in the years to come, suggesting that the uprising of anthropomorphic robots might be a sprint, rather than a marathon. That might give anyone who’s seen any of the viral clips of their current running capabilities even more peace of mind.

That’s how many centenarians there were in the US at the latest official count in 2020 — that meant that just two in every 10,000 Americans had hit 100, per US Census Bureau data published in 2025. 

The figure had increased by 50% from when the bureau had run the numbers in 2010, when just 53,364 people in America had made it to the milestone birthday or further.

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