Progress is great except when it traps you. Which is how an interesting theory about the origins of agriculture begins.
The Occasional Letter
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Things Read, Seen or Heard Elsewhere
Progress is great except when it traps you. Which is how an interesting theory about the origins of agriculture begins.
Ugly online mobs have a beautiful real-world analog, flocks of birds.
The life advice from which all other life advice flows.
On second thought, San Francisco decides killer robots aren’t a good idea. Crazy that it got so far.
No one really know how AI works. Too bad it’s going to control more and more of our lives.
So you have an opinion. Good for you. That doesn’t mean anyone needs to take it seriously.
Our relationship with shit – our shit – is creating a toxic environment. What to do about it?
Pantone owns colors. This is weird.
“We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.”
Ghost’s canine bots are the scary older brother of every other dog robot you’ve ever seen, and a good reminder that we’re getting increasingly efficient at finding ways to kill ourselves.
“This virus has humbled me as a professional and a person,” said Michelle Odden, associate professor of epidemiology at Stanford. “I did not think this level of failure in a federal response was possible in the United States.”
For all its unknowns, the glorious constant of space is its surprises. For instance, when astronomers discovered what color it is.
A technical glitch on a Chinese video streaming platform reveals a young, popular vlogger is actually a much older woman.
An architect creates a seesaw at the US-Mexico border to show what happens on one side affects what happens on the other… Oh, and kids have fun.
A spacecraft not much bigger than a loaf of bread is demonstrating that sailing the cosmos is a possibility.
A letter sent fifty years ago from Charles Schulz to a ten-year-old boy shows how much hasn’t changed in American society and politics.
A brain implant that transmits video directory to the visual cortex is allowing some formerly blind patients to see.
As Los Angeles its green future, here’s a look at the light rail system it had over a 100 years ago.
And now for something beautiful: the International Space Station crosses the sun.
Welcome to the current state of deepfake videos where you could ask yourself how much more screwed could we be? And the answer would be, none, none more screwed.
Those food shots you see on Instagram aren’t about eating what’s in the photo. Instead, they showcase the privilege of being somewhere where such food exists to begin with.
“Men and women of the United States, this is a momentous hour in world history. This is the invasion of Hitler’s Europe—the zero hour.”
Meet the space-weather forecaster leading the charge to help us understand solar flares and geomagnetic storms before it’s too late.
Three decades after Jian Liu shot 60 roles of film of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, he finally has them developed and released to the world.
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