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.

Experts analyze why Covid severity has declined, who still benefits from booster shots, and if a once-feared virus is now more like plain old colds or flu.

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

Five Italian divers died in a cave at 55 m. Before anyone delivers a verdict, here are the questions Just Culture demands we ask first — and why their sequence matters.

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

The photographer who snapped the photos of the Artemis II crew’s return to Earth spent years honing his craft on a Navy aircraft carrier.

This week (and probably next) I want to talk a bit more Tolkien, but in a somewhat different vein from normal. Rather than discussing the historicity of Tolkien's world or adaptations of it, I want to take a moment to discuss some of the themes of Tolkien's work, which express themselves in the metaphysical architecture…

A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers.

I am glad not to be a Greenland shark; I don’t have enough thoughts to fill five hundred years. But I find the very...

On irony poisoning and the importance of being earnest.

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…

Woke 2 is Woke 1 with an honest relation to power.