The Unshed Shell: Takaichi's Fiscal Standstill, Japan's DOGE and the Weakest Yen since 1986 NEW
The lobster is sometimes said to be immortal. It shows almost no sign of senescence: it does not weaken or lose fertility with age, and its cells keep dividing as though the years did not count (Smithsonian). But not ageing is not the same as not dying. The lobster dies. It dies not of old age but of the very mechanism of its growth. A lobster can grow only by shedding its whole shell in a moult, and each moult costs exponentially more energy as the animal gets larger. Between 10% and 15% of older lobsters die each year from a failed moult, and in time they stop moulting at all to conserve energy (Smithsonian, citing Maine’s Department of Marine Resources). The old shell then wears, bacteria get in, and scar tissue fixes the body to the shell. Trapped in the shell it will not shed, the animal rots. It dies because it stopped shedding, not because its time was up. ...