📚 Essays worth your time

The humanities spent decades decentering the human. Now Big Tech is doing it better

The humanities spent decades decentering the human. Now Big Tech is doing it better

Imagine a metastasizing heap of incalculable, forgotten junk. That’s what we’re all storing away in “The Cloud”

Imagine a metastasizing heap of incalculable, forgotten junk. That’s what we’re all storing away in “The Cloud”

To anyone in love with the precious, fleeting things of this world, resistance to disappearance seems only natural and proper. And yet

To anyone in love with the precious, fleeting things of this world, resistance to disappearance seems only natural and proper. And yet

The housing regulator is now also the spymaster

Plus a $6.8 billion bet on homebuilding, $70,000 in Chicago grants, and what sex toy data tells us about the affordability crisis

Einstein and the Eagle: How Relativity Is Saving Earth’s Rarest Raptor

At the hazy dawn of the twentieth century, through the byways of mental meandering and mathematical play, Albert Einstein arrived at a revelation about the nature of the universe while working as a cl

Can you go 82-0? "The objective of 82-0 is to...

Can you go 82-0? “The objective of 82-0 is to construct a historical NBA roster capable of achieving a perfect undefeated season.” You get to “draft” 5 players from randomly chosen teams & decades, th

Stupid in the Land of Oz

We’re not in Kansas anymore, but you knew that The post Stupid in the Land of Oz appeared first on Nautilus.

Strook

The premise is simple and beautifully executed. Each week, Ruben Bos shares something he’s drawn, read, and listened to. Been following along and enjoying since catching this tip by Luis Mendo. Added

Book Club Recap: The Odyssey

Introduction & Telemachy (Session 1 of 3)

Early Live Performance by Talking Heads (1976)

In March 1976, Talking Heads played a show at The Kitchen in NYC; you can watch the entire show recorded from two angles in this video. The band had formed the year before and was more than a year awa

Fonts In Use: The Philadelphia Museum of Art

A recent rebrand caused a tizzy as the Philadelphia Museum of Art rolled out a change of their name to Philadelphia Art Museum (or PhAM for short) along with a fresh identity. The name didn’t stick, b

Choose Book Review Finalists 2026

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Maintaining Everything That Matters

Matthew McDowell-Sweet and Mike Travers discuss Stewart Brand’s recently-published book ‘Maintenance: Of Everything’

Paul Giamatti appears on The Tommy Tiernan Show ....

Paul Giamatti appears on The Tommy Tiernan Show. Here’s the catch: “Each episode Tommy welcomes mystery guests and interviews them without any preparation or knowledge of who will be joining him until

Food Noise Goes Quiet with GLP-1s

But there’s a lot we still don’t know about these intrusive thoughts of food The post Food Noise Goes Quiet with GLP-1s appeared first on Nautilus.

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Mario Vittone at his own website: The new captain jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the

We Must Change How We Source Morality

Consider three sources of opinions or habits:

Haiku is a generative music album for MacOS....

Haiku is a generative music album for MacOS. “Haiku is a work of generative music that builds its own sound from nothing each time you open it, and never plays the same way twice — a record that exist

Coffee Break: Centrist Win in California, AIPAC Loss in New Jersey, Platner Under Seige

Centrist Dems likely won in California, but Trump and Schumer both lost in Iowa and Dem hacks turn on Graham Platner.

The Iceman’s Microbiome

Ötzi commensal microorganisms included a surprisingly cold-tolerant yeast The post The Iceman’s Microbiome appeared first on Nautilus.

Wednesday links: the returns to being rich

The Average Guys Outsmarting Wall Street on Prediction Markets

Adam Iscoe at the New York Times: The joke among young men these days is that everybody’s got a little money riding on something: football games, foreign elections, the odds of a U.S. military strike.

A Child of the Weather Underground Looks Back

A middle-aged Bill Ayers once asked his then-teenage son, Zayd Ayers Dohrn, to accompany him on a trip to Mississippi for his eighteenth birthday. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, two prominent,

Tony Gilroy Accepts Award for Andor: “Fuck the Empire!"

Now that Andor has been out for a while, showrunner Tony Gilroy is free to speak his mind on what the show was all about. I mean, it was pretty clear to the audience, but now he can say his piece. And

The California Pension Chief Fighting Fossil Fuel Divestment

The top investment officer of the nation’s largest teachers’ pension fund actively dissuaded state workers from divesting from underperforming and ecologically devastating fossil fuel investments — th

2026 World Cup Predictions

Who will win the 2026 World Cup? Odds for all 48 teams and 104 matches, powered by 100,000 simulations from PELE, Silver Bulletin's new soccer model.

Conan O’Brien’s 2026 Harvard Commencement Address

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"As far as artist signatures go, Jan van...

“As far as artist signatures go, Jan van Kessel’s seventeenth-century painting in which he spells out his own name with caterpillars and snakes must be up there with the best of them.”

Shining a Light on Private Credit

Building a Benchmark from the Shadows

A Socialist Is Taking on the Dem Establishment in Syracuse

New York City is increasingly known as a stronghold of democratic socialism, thanks in no small part to high-profile elected officials like Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as w

The Most Important Decision For Animals in American History

The factory farms are trying to keep pigs in cages so they don't have to feed them as much. It's up to us to stop them.

Good news! As of June 1, a transmission line is...

Good news! As of June 1, a transmission line is delivering hydro-generated electricity into NYC: “1,250 megawatts of clean energy directly into New York City’s power grid”. That’s around 20% of the ci

Congresswoman Lori Trahan: Congress must act now on AI

Lori Trahan at the Commonwealth Beacon: Earlier this year, Anthropic unveiled Mythos, an AI model capable of identifying thousands of vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browse

The lost art of building cities

Episode 18 is about Victorian urbanism

Spider-Noir Is Just Another Night in Noirtown

I wish that was better. Nobody could be more invested in film noir than I am, so I always see the latest effort to revive or rework the genre with naive hopes, thinking maybe, just they’ll pull it o

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Ancient DNA Illuminates the Uniqueness of the Extinct Cave Lion

Although it had a habit of interbreeding with modern lions The post Ancient DNA Illuminates the Uniqueness of the Extinct Cave Lion appeared first on Nautilus.

The Three Ways to Make a Living

Well, this is kinda depressing, courtesy of Jason Zweig’s father: There are three ways to make a living: 1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich. 2) Tell the truth to those who wa

Is parenthood selfish or selfless? It’s both.

Guest post by Darby Saxbe