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…

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

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

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

Criticism of public schools is not entirely wrong – but by ignoring unequal conditions, it misdiagnoses the problem and misplaces responsibility.

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…

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

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.

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

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

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

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

Seven years after his explosive HBO doc, Dan Reed watches Hollywood cash in on a man he calls 'worse than Jeffrey Epstein.'

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

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.

NFTs, the metaverse and AI are the most recent Silicon Valley enthusiasms. Does anyone remember how to build a consumer product?

<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?

Artemis II astronauts updated the iconic 1968 image during their 2026 loop around the Moon.