Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?
Well this is kind of funny and I mostly agree so TLDR:<p>> "I’m afraid all of this sounds rather negative. Well. There’s a reason I left particle physics. Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress or for progress in any other discipline of science. The only reason we still hear so much about it is that a lot of funding goes into it and so a lot of people still work on it, most of them don’t like me. But the disciplines where the foundations of physics currently make progress are cosmology and astrophysics, and everything quantum, quantum information, quantum computing, quantum metrology, and so on, which is why that’s what I mostly talk about these days."<p>The popular science literature is also full of string theory this and god particle that, and it's really not very satisfying or illuminating.  If people want to get into this general subject, I'd recommend instead Stephen Hawking's compendium of classic papers on quantum physics, with commentary, "The Dreams That Stuff is Made Of."