A blog series in which I reread LOTR 50 years after I first read it, age 10, over the winter of 1975-76. Pippin and Merry come as a double act (not exactly ‘dumb and dumber’, but not a million miles from that either) in the Jackson film version of LOTR, providing both light relief and…

Deciphering Glyph, the blog of Glyph Lefkowitz.

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

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

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

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

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

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…

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

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

Mark Zuckerberg built a future that nobody wanted. Tech bosses are repeating his mistake