📚 Essays worth your time

The primaries are heating up

Crypto, AIPAC, and Republican maps are stoking the midterms.

See Saturn Like You’ve Never Seen it Before

The ringed planet stuns in old photos The post See Saturn Like You’ve Never Seen it Before appeared first on Nautilus.

2026 Protocol Symposium: New Nature

Call for abstracts open, due June 14, 2026

Why Wildfire Experts Are So Worried About This Year’s...

Why Wildfire Experts Are So Worried About This Year’s Fire Season. “Key environmental indicators show that the nation is a tinderbox, gripped by widespread drought and with a light snowpack in the mou

NYC Socialists Are Trying to Expand Their Electoral Wins

When I arrive at the new headquarters for ’s socialist campaign for state assembly, a small crew is hard at work painting the space, a storefront on a lively block of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Tompkins Ave

How the “Perfectionism Pandemic” Is Crushing Young People

Our current achievement economy may deserve the blame The post How the “Perfectionism Pandemic” Is Crushing Young People appeared first on Nautilus.

MIKE BEGGS: Zombie Marx: (PARTIAL) READING

Ah. Now I remember this! Mike Beggs rejecting the arguments of those jeering leftist morons who claimed Keynesian policies would not work in 2008-2010 but keeping the jeer. Still, I do want to have...

Biggest Mysteries in Physics

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Should Democrats panic about Platner?

Maine polls have a recent history of underrating Susan Collins and other Republicans.

Re: The Truly Abominable Kevin Hassett: Steve Durlauf Does the Work of the LORD: LIFE IN THE 2000s

How a bad book, a bogus formula, and a hunger for favor led Kevin Hassett to discover that he could lie his way up the ladder as a career, and it would pay. Republican politicians and journalists...

What Happened When the First Animals Started to Move

Life on Earth wasn’t always mobile The post What Happened When the First Animals Started to Move appeared first on Nautilus.

I've probably featured this before but always worth...

I’ve probably featured this before but always worth a re-up: “A Books Unbanned library card gives teens across the United States free digital access to ebooks and digital resources, including banned a

Nobody Taught Them to Adult — So They’re Teaching Each Other

Across the world, 18th birthdays are a time for celebration. But in India, an estimated 30,000 teens reach this threshold in childcare institutions (places that offer shelter and protection to vulnera

Ten New Albums I'm Recommending Right Now

Warning: strange soul-stirring sounds ahead!

When Median Take-Home Pay Packets Only Rise Once a Generation for a Half-Decade Span: CHART OF THE DAY

We have built an economic régime where GDP climbs, markets soar, and the typical worker stands still unless the labor market is white‑hot. And if inflation fears keep us from ever running the...

The Streams Underfoot

Taras Grescoe at the Long Now: The principle behind the qanat is simple. A horizontal tunnel, up to ten feet in height and four feet in width, is dug by hand through bedrock or subsoil, until it reach

Star Wars Influences: Dam Busters

The original Star Wars movie was a mashup. George Lucas and his collaborators pulled from everywhere: westerns, samurai movies, Flash Gordon, and a 1955 war film called The Dam Busters. This video sho

After the Black Death, Italy’s Oak Trees Came Back

Turns out getting rid of large swaths of humanity benefits nature The post After the Black Death, Italy’s Oak Trees Came Back appeared first on Nautilus.

‘Debate me!’ doesn’t work. Here are better ways to disagree – and maybe change minds

Lisa Pavia-Higel at The Conversation: Spend time on social media and you will see debates with titles like “I destroy MAGA mom on vaccines” or “Conservative philosopher owns feminist student.” These p

The Revolutionary Life of George Forster

Peter Moore at Literary Review: An exemplary tour of the High Enlightenment might go something like this. You’d begin in the streets of 1760s London to feel the pulse of Georgian commerce. You’d then

"Hackers say that they used Meta’s AI support...

“Hackers say that they used Meta’s AI support chatbot to break into a host of high-profile Instagram profiles by asking the support bot to change the email address associated with the target account.”

Coffee Break: Dem Centrists Pick Their Side, Stand With ICE and Israel, Not Mamdani

The dividing lines in the Democratic party came into sharp focus at New York's Israel Day Parade, an anti-ICE protest in New Jersey, and the pages of the New York Times and social media.

In Post-War Japan, the US Used Quiz Culture to Help...

In Post-War Japan, the US Used Quiz Culture to Help Democratize the Country. TV quiz shows “normalized participation, merit-based competition, and equal opportunity — values that contrasted sharply wi

Anthropic has been consulting theologians and ethicists on Claude’s behavior, raising questions about who gets to shape a chatbot’s values

Chris Stokel-Walker at Scientific American: In late March around 15 religious thinkers met with the artificial intelligence company Anthropic to discuss one of the strangest and most consequential que

Monday links: a captured agency

The fight to protect pollinators and people from the ‘pesticides that are everywhere’

Neonics are contaminating ecosystems and communities.

What if instead of more, what we need is less?

I like and subscribe to Becca Farsace’s videos because she combines understanding technology, being pragmatic and tapping into joy. This video about the Ricoh GR IV Monochome is a great example of thi

Meet the Ukrainian Stunt Pilot Who Shoots Down Russian Drones

Timur Fatkullin is a Ukrainian flying ace who uses his acrobatic flying skills honed before the war to shoot down Russian drones. When I fly close to the target, I can’t engage because there’s houses

Could a pill prevent the world’s deadliest cancer?

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Can ChatGPT Forecast Stock Price Movements?

Large language models have transformed how we interact with information.

Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World ....

Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World. “A collection of the greatest political maps in history and how these images have an unmatched power to influence our thinking — and our world.”

Editing the Pesky Bones Out of a Popular Farmed Fish

Genetic modification could make carp more accessible for millions The post Editing the Pesky Bones Out of a Popular Farmed Fish appeared first on Nautilus.

In Turkey, Criticizing a Corporation Can Land You in Jail

“In this country, laws don’t apply to the rich.” These words are the reason why Mehmet Türkmen, president of the United Textile, Weaving and Leather Workers’ Union (BİRTEK-SEN), spent two months behin

" Serena Williams has announced her sensational...

“Serena Williams has announced her sensational return to professional tennis at 44 years old next week at the Queen’s Club in London.” Yessss.

The Only AI Skill That Actually Matters

You want to bookmark this one

The UN’s special rapporteurs are experts charged with a singular mandate: to monitor the world’s worst human rights abuses

Alvina Hoffmann at Aeon: On 9 July 2025, the government of the United States imposed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine. Earlier in the spring, Albanese had writte

Adviser links: inordinate time

Mondays are all about financial adviser-related links here at Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s links including a look at...

The Illuminated Windows of NYC

For his project Windows, Dave Krugman took photos of hundreds of NYC apartment windows at night and stitched them together into ever-shifting typologies. What’s going on in each of those apartments?

A different game

On football’s extreme commercialization

EAG London 2026

The weaving of a beautiful thing