To communicate without words, humans use a host of gestures—whether a wave to wish someone goodbye, a thumbs-up to indicate approval or “flipping the bird” to suggest something far less polite. While
Explore When he can spare the time, Jan Mees is an exorcist of scientific ghosts. A marine biologist, Mees’s full-time job is directing the Flanders Marine Institute in Ostend, Belgium, but his side p
In July 1917, Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence, Rhode Island wrote a short story called ‘Dagon’. ‘If you don’t care for this,’ he wrote to one editor, ‘you won’t care for anything of mine.’ In
Literary Hub Craft and Criticism Literary Criticism Craft and Advice In Conversation On Translation Fiction and Poetry Short Story From the Novel Poem News and Culture History Science Politics Biograp
March 25, 2024 The Trans Rights Readathon is going on right now. Roughly a thousand people are reading trans stories and celebrating trans narratives, while raising money for trans causes. I highly en
Sea turtles were already navigating the oceans when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But these ancient creatures face an uncertain future. All seven sea turtle species are currently endangered or threatene
[tw warning: suicide ideation] Yesterday I had another episode where I spent hours crying. This actually feels embarrassing to write, but intellectually I think it is society that conditions us to thi
I wrote this time last year that I felt like I was coping better than the year before. This year I don’t feel like I have made much progress, and perhaps I feel like I have regressed – possibly a tren
They tell you that injustice is part of some grand plan. And that’s what keeps you from rising against it. —Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida Patient R was in a hurry. I signed int
Every spring when the weather turns warm and plants begin to bloom, people start flocking to Neelima Tummala’s ear, nose and throat clinic. They seek remedies for sinus infections, a scratchy throat a
Living World Diet played a key role in the evolution of the vast beetle family tree 04.03.2024 Support sound science and smart storiesHelp us make scientific knowledge accessible to all Donate today C
DAILY SCIENCE Researchers tried linking climate policy appealing to liberals with other policies popular with conservatives. The combination only lost support. April 2, 2024 Let the best of Anthropoce
The pandemic was supposed to be the death of the great American city. The rise of remote work unleashed an exodus to the Sun Belt and suburbs, leaving behind empty subway cars, abandoned offices, and
In this undated photo, a whale's tail breaches the surface of the Pacific Oregon off the Oregon Coast. Courtesy Oregon Parks and Recreation Department Spring Whale Watch Week kicks off Saturday along
On a Thursday morning in late March, a group of Wenatchi-P’squosa people and a few dozen supporters assembled amid patches of snow and mud atop Badger Mountain in central Washington. The foggy sagebru
One morning in 1999, while I sat at the office computer where I built corporate websites, a story popped up on Yahoo. An internet domain name, Business.com, had just sold for $7.5 million—a shocking s
“Big tech”—aka Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft—now outdoes the notorious trusts of the Gilded Age in their raw power. Much of it rests in the hands of some of the wealthiest men in the world. They
Explore We’ve all been there. In fact, I find myself there several times a day. A question emerges and my memory stumbles. Decades of education dematerialize into an expensive mist. I know I know this
Explore First come the sleeper sharks and the rattails and the hagfish, scruffily named scavengers of the sea, along with amphipods and crabs who pluck delicately at bits of flesh. Tiny worms, mollusk
Credits Nick Hunt is the author of three travel books about walking in different parts of Europe, two of which were finalists for the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year. The flight from Istanbul
E360 Digest April 12, 2024 Study Reveals Vast Networks of ‘Ghost Roads’ in Asian Rainforests A logging road in Sabah, Borneo. T. R. Shankar Raman via Wikipedia An extensive analysis of satellite image
View All Thoughts 2024March Why I write 31stAdrianna Tan 29thWriting about writing 25thGrowth is a mind cancer 23rdTaylor Troesh 22ndWhy I don’t write dev posts 21stA moment with a bunch of fun sheep
Sometimes when I am standing on the beach, staring out at the ocean, watching waves roll in, I will become moved with an inarticulate sense of the sublimity of it all, and then, if I have my phone wit
I bought my first smartphone in 2012. At the time I was an undergrad at the University of Leeds, halfway through a year abroad at UCLA. If you’ve never made a similar move, you can’t possibly imagine
artificial intelligence How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data? April 12, 2024 By apparently overtraining them, researchers have seen neural networks discover novel solutions to problems. Read Later Irene Pérez
Sam Russek In 1922, a pithy ad for Henry Ford’s automobiles proclaimed that “we shall solve the city problem by leaving the city.” From then on, it certainly seems like suburban developers took this t
The world’s most prominent verification program for corporate climate pledges is reportedly in turmoil following its board of trustees’ unilateral decision this week to allow carbon offsets to count t
An article that still haunts me is this Vice feature from 2021 about gamers who stream to no one—there are thousands on the platform who broadcast their gameplay to single digit audiences. The piece s
Credits Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine. Democracies across the West are so paralyzingly polarized today because the public square where competing propositions can be tested ag
Following my experiments with the ChatGPT-assisted AI Chair 1.0, I’ve been continuing experiments with a range of other LLMs. The below image is Chair 1.1, designed with the assistance of Mistral AI.
Many autistic people find accepting compliments and being kind to ourselves difficult, especially if our experience has been that other people lambast us if we dare to exist openly while autistic. Str
While the vendors pitched their latest voting machines in Concord, New Hampshire, this past August, the election officials in the room gasped. They whispered, “No way.” They nodded their heads and f
Some time ago, I embarked on a personal reading project: An informal survey of books that once had been widely read — so widely read, in fact, that they had earned their place in the literary lexicon.
Credits Laurence Pevsner is an inaugural Moynihan Public Scholar at the City College of New York. From 2021 to 2023, he was the director of speechwriting for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
What factors must a court consider when the National Labor Relations Board requests an order requiring an employer to rehire terminated workers before the completion of unfair labor practice proceedin
The ‘thick skin bias’ obscures the reality of hardship. We should check our assumptions about those who are struggling Imagine this upsetting scenario: two women are both suffering physical abuse from
I’ve been a little less online lately, but not to worry, I have just been living my life :) Several weeks ago, I gave notice at work and left. Some people in my life were surprised, because it was a g
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Usually when we talk about climate change, the focus is sq
Almost a year before the 1963 publication of The Feminine Mystique—the zeitgeist-shattering book that would launch second-wave feminism and change the life of millions of women—author Betty Friedan wr
Throughout history, human societies have relied on technological progress to solve their challenges. In technology’s early days, this worked well. It is hard to dispute, for example, the invention of