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AddThis 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…
I work in a sector that speaks out on racism and human rights, yet on this issue I have felt the boundaries of acceptable speech narrow around me
OpenAI has some big questions. It doesn’t have unique tech. It has a big user base, but with limited engagement and stickiness and no network effect. The incumbents have matched the tech and are leveraging their product and distribution. And a lot of the value and leverage will come from new experiences that haven’t been invented yet, and it can’t invent all of those itself. What’s the plan?
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • HUGO AWARD FINALIST • In this poignant, heartfelt novella from the New York Times bestselling author of Spinning Silver...
Ava Kofman reports on Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang, the Los Angeles couple who ran Mark Surrogacy, an agency that they used to hire more than a dozen women to carry their children.
Milano Cortina has cutting‑edge replays, chase‑cam drones and exuberant commentary bringing a wave of unexpected nostalgia for anyone who grew up on 90s extreme‑sports games
The massive $5.4tn intergenerational asset shift looming over the next two decades is one of the biggest challenges the country faces. What will it mean?
In July 2023, in the quiet Gippsland town of Leongatha, Erin Patterson—stay-at-home mother and true-crime devotee—invited her husband’s devoutly Christian family to lunch. Within days, three of her guests were dead and the fourth was in a coma. They had all been poisoned by death cap mushrooms.Two
<strong>Exclusive: </strong>The strange and lonely death of Bikram Lama exposes a glaring gap in homelessness services. What hopes and dreams brought him to Australia, and what went wrong?
On war and what we have to choke down.
The Fourth Age under the dominion of men isn’t going too well, is it? Did the free peoples of Middle-earth really combine to overthrow Sauron so that the world would be delivered on a plate to the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk? I think not. But how might things have worked out differently? One alternative not discussed at the Council of Elrond is that Galadriel might take the ring. While Elrond does say, ‘If any of the Wise should with this Ring overthrow the Lord of Mordor using his own arts, he would set himself on Sauron’s throne, and yet another Dark Lord would appear’,[1] Galadriel is not a ‘he’. Moreover, she is not even from the same type of story as Gandalf, Aragorn and Faramir, male characters who demonstrate their goodness by refusing to take the ring when they have the opportunity. For Galadriel is clearly a figuration of the Fairy Queen in the same way that Lórien, the enchanted realm she rules in which time passes in a different manner to outside its borders, is a figuration of fairy land or Faery, as it is sometimes known.[2]
Like Imperial Japan before us, the United States has substituted tactical and operational planning for strategic thinking.
World War II has faded into movies, anecdotes, and archives that nobody cares about anymore. Are we finally losing the war?