NATIONAL BESTSELLER • HUGO AWARD FINALIST • In this poignant, heartfelt novella from the New York Times bestselling author of Spinning Silver...

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

World War II has faded into movies, anecdotes, and archives that nobody cares about anymore. Are we finally losing the war?

Brainstorm - Richard Scolyer

The H5N1 virus has now reached every continent on the planet. What does it mean for some of the world’s unique species?

By Lee Vinsel

I'm reposting this essay I wrote in 2021 because the online blogging platform Medium has apparently changed its policies and people are having trouble accessing the original. Hopefully, I'll find a better, more durable solution soon. I'm reposting it unaltered, even though I would unsurprisingly do some

Mismanagement and political campaigning have sucked the joy out of an event meant to bring people together

Hey folks! I am working on finishing up some things this week, so I thought I would post the text of the keynote I gave at the Prancing Pony Podcast Moot earlier this December. I've made some minor edits to conform a bit more to the form of a blog post, but this remains very…

Talkspace has amassed “one of the largest mental health data banks in the world,” according to reports to investors, containing 140 million message exchanges.

To HIV researchers, I am an ‘elite controller’ – someone whose immune system has enabled them to live for decades without symptoms or medication. I hope that one day science will understand this tiny but lucky minority

This blog post takes us back to 2010, retracing and incident where a statistical anomaly led to the discovery of a subtle flaw in the way we were using a security-critical library.

Like Imperial Japan before us, the United States has substituted tactical and operational planning for strategic thinking.