"Experimentation is, quite literally, life’s secret to success." www.forkingpaths.co/p/experiment...
The Garden of Forking Paths | Brian Klaas | Substack
Wandering around an infinitely complex, ever-changing world. Click to read The Garden of Forking Paths, by Brian Klaas, a Substack publication.
forkingpaths.co
In December 1945, Dr. Leighton entered Hiroshima as the research leader of the Morale Division team from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. A year later, The Atlantic published his personal account of what he saw and of what the Japanese survivors reported. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
That Day at Hiroshima
“If there are such things as ghosts, why don’t they haunt the Americans?”
theatlantic.com
"Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well." Raymond Chandler www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
The Simple Art of Murder
“Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer … competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well....
theatlantic.com
"In my corner of the world, which is journalism and academia and writing in general, Pangram has become nothing less than a cultural force. A meme, even." www.derekthompson.org/p/the-intern...
We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internet
An interview with Pangram founder and CEO Max Spero on how AI writing has flooded the internet, why it matters, and why it’s worth cleaning up
derekthompson.org
On New Year’s Eve 1973, the year he turned 40, Cormac McCarthy suddenly announced that it was time for a change. As a friend put it, “He just walked off and left everything except his boots and his typewriter.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
Cormac McCarthy’s Midlife Crisis
Heading west at 40 transformed his writing—and American literature.
theatlantic.com
“It seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr Stalin” In 1934, HG Wells arrived in Moscow to meet a group of Soviet writers. While there Stalin granted him an interview. www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/1...
HG Wells: “It seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr Stalin”
In 1934, Wells arrived in Moscow to meet a group of Soviet writers. While there Stalin granted him an interview.
newstatesman.com
Beauty standards are always shaped by cultural movements, which rest on the slow, grinding tectonics of politics and economics. The muscular male ideal we recognize today wasn’t always the pinnacle of male attractiveness. www.bloomberg.com/features/202...
Why So Many MAGA Men Look Like Joe Rogan
The slim-fit uniform of grindset entrepreneurs and right wing podcasters can be traced back decades.
bloomberg.com
Many of Musk's ideas about governance and economics resemble those championed by his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a leader of the political movement known as technocracy. Technocrats proposed replacing democratically government with an army of scientists and engineers www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/o...
Opinion | The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk (Gift Article)
His belief that liberal democracy has failed and that technologists should lead can be traced to the unusual life of his grandfather.
nytimes.com
Our brains do not just passively perceive the world—they construct it. Research shows that imagined and real experiences can produce strikingly similar neural activity, raising deep questions about the nature of reality itself. iai.tv/articles/the...
The reality gap | Nadine Dijkstra, Omari Edwards
iai.tv
Crowds reach a critical point where individual movement is overtaken by a collective dynamic, causing the mass to adhere to Newton’s third law. english.elpais.com/science-tech...
How the physic laws of the San Fermín crowds could prevent stampedes
Crowds reach a critical point where individual movement is overtaken by a collective dynamic, causing the mass to adhere to Newton’s third law
english.elpais.com
Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan—the UAE’s chess-obsessed, jiujitsu-loving intelligence chief—controls vast sums of sovereign wealth. America’s AI giants are scrambling for a piece of it. www.wired.com/story/uae-in...
A Spymaster Sheikh Controls a $1.5 Trillion Fortune. He Wants to Use It to Dominate AI
Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan—the UAE’s chess-obsessed, jiujitsu-loving intelligence chief—controls vast sums of sovereign wealth. America’s AI giants are scrambling for a piece of it.
wired.com
From overreliance on China to the growing involvement of civilians, the extensive use of drones in the Ukraine war offers crucial lessons for future conflicts ecfr.eu/article/dron...
Drones in Ukraine: Four lessons for the West
From overreliance on China to the growing involvement of civilians, the extensive use of drones in the Ukraine war offers crucial lessons for future conflicts
ecfr.eu
One of the Most Dangerous Routes in the World: The Darién Gap Migrant Highway, Courtesy of the Mafia www.spiegel.de/internationa...
One of the Most Dangerous Routes in the World: The Darién Gap Migrant Highway, Courtesy of the Mafia
The Darién Gap between South and Central America is exceedingly dangerous, but hundreds of thousands of migrants try their luck every year in an effort to reach the U.S. Now, a drug cartel has turned ...
spiegel.de
We asked New Scientist writers to pick their favourite sci-fi short story. From H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine to Octavia E. Butler’s Bloodchild, via stories from George R. R. Martin and Ursula K. Le Guin, here are the results: www.newscientist.com/article/2460...
Our writers pick the 26 best science fiction short stories of all time
We asked New Scientist writers to pick their favourite sci-fi short story. From H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine to Octavia E. Butler’s Bloodchild, via stories from George R. R. Martin and Ursula K. Le G...
newscientist.com
Of all the geological periods, the Triassic was the most fabulous. In 50m years it spawned dinosaurs, seafood, geopolitics—and our distant ancestors. www.economist.com/christmas-sp...
Of all the geological periods, the Triassic was the most fabulous
In 50m years it spawned dinosaurs, seafood, geopolitics—and our distant ancestors
economist.com
To appreciate the Cold War setting of Star Trek, you need only to understand that the Earth-led United Federation of Planets was NATO. The bad guys, standing in for the Soviet Union, were the Klingons, whose empire was a brutal and aggressive dictatorship. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
Star Trek’s Cold War
While America was fighting on the ground, the Federation was fighting in space.
theatlantic.com
Machine translation is almost a solved problem. But interpreting meanings, rather than just words and sentences, will be a daunting task. www.economist.com/science-and-...
Machine translation is almost a solved problem
But interpreting meanings, rather than just words and sentences, will be a daunting task
economist.com
Russia’s years-long effort to position itself as an alternative security guarantor has unraveled in just a matter of days. nationalinterest.org/feature/assa...
Assad’s Collapse Is A Blow To Russia’s Middle East Strategy
Putin made three crucial miscalculations that could rupture Russia’s web of regional influence.
nationalinterest.org
It’s not the first time a criminal has stirred public fascination, but the unique combination of factors in this case has transformed the young man arrested for murdering an American insurance magnate into an antihero. english.elpais.com/usa/2024-12-...
In love with a killer: How the internet became obsessed with Luigi Mangione
It’s not the first time a criminal has stirred public fascination, but the unique combination of factors in this case has transformed the young man arrested for murdering an American insurance magnate...
english.elpais.com
Daughter of Iranian Activist Jamshid Sharmahd: "It Is a Terrorist Regime, Not a State" www.spiegel.de/internationa...
Daughter of Iranian Activist Jamshid Sharmahd: "It Is a Terrorist Regime, Not a State"
The German-Iranian regime critic Jamshid Sharmahd was kidnapped in Dubai and sentenced to death in Tehran. He died in late October. In an interview, his daughter Gazelle, 41, expresses sharp criticism...
spiegel.de
How the AfD Became the Long Arm of Russia and China www.spiegel.de/internationa...
Alternative for Germany (AfD): How the far-right party became the Long Arm of Russia and China
The far-right AfD presents itself as a patriotic party, but revelations about possible monetary payments from Russia and a suspected Chinese spy have exposed its members as traitors to their country. ...
spiegel.de
Elon Musk's Grok AI Is Pushing Misinformation and Legitimizing Conspiracies www.vice.com/en/article/7...
Elon Musk's Grok AI Is Pushing Misinformation and Legitimizing Conspiracies
Grok's selling point is real-time access to news, but Motherboard found that it generated inaccurate information about Israel-Palestine and lent credence to conspiracy theories.
vice.com
Why psychedelics produce some of the most meaningful experiences in people’s lives www.vox.com/future-perfe...
Why psychedelics produce some of the most meaningful experiences in people’s lives
Everything seems profound on psychedelics. Scientists are starting to ask why.
vox.com
How Murdoch Hacked Our Politics bylinetimes.com/2023/12/05/n...
OpenAI’s board fired its CEO Sam Altman. Days later, Altman effectively fired OpenAI’s board. To comprehend this bizarre corporate farce, you must understand that many of America’s top AI researchers believe that their work will plausibly kill us all. nymag.com/intelligence...
OpenAI Was Never Going to Save Us From the Robot Apocalypse
The idea that a single nonprofit could ensure that AI was developed at a “safe” speed never made any sense.
nymag.com
Since the 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been more stable than Kosovo. But the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the imminent presidential elections in Serbia have all contributed to an atmosphere of mounting ethnic tension in the country. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bosn...
How Gaza and Ukraine are fuelling border tensions in Bosnia
The recent conflicts have reinforced opposing loyalties in a country already scarred by conflict
thetimes.co.uk
Further escalations in Kosovo will also invite chaos in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In October, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik even emphasized that Serbs should “form a single state,” consisting of Serbia, Republika Srpska, and Montenegro. www.foreignaffairs.com/eastern-euro...
Russia’s Second Front in Europe
The West must stop Putin from provoking conflict in the Balkans.
foreignaffairs.com
Weibo and other major social platforms in China now require popular users to reveal their real names to the public. Some influencers are culling their followers to remain under the radar, while others say they'll quit social media. restofworld.org/2023/weibo-l...
The end of anonymity on Chinese social media
Forced to use real names on platforms like Weibo, Chinese influencers quit social media instead.
restofworld.org
