Ideas
100 Years After Einstein's Relativity, We're Still Just Figuring Gravity Out
The most apparent of forces is still far and away the most mysterious of them.
Bikram Yoga Can’t Be Copyrighted. Neither Should APIs.
“Interoperability” isn’t quite the right word for why other yoga studies used the Bikram yoga Sequence, but the reasoning is similar.
Weapons of Mass Persuasion
Online advertising has allowed governments and political entities to weaponize the marketplace of ideas. Is there anything we can do about it?
Google Tone Builds Data Networks from Coded Audio Signals
This is either a totally great idea or a terrible one.
Welcome to Nick Bostrom's Paper-Clip Factory Dystopia
The AI doomsayer and philosopher sees risk in the most benign machine learning tasks.
Fundamental Innovation Peaked in 1870 and Why That's a Good Thing
A new report from the Sante Fe Institute explains.
Eduardo Galeano and the Art of the Elegant Fact
Eduardo Galeano wrote passionately, perceptively, and lucidly about a great many topics. But no one has ever written about soccer quite like he did.
NASA Wants to Tether Spacecraft to Comets to Hitch ‘Free Rides’ to Deep Space
The development would halve the amount of time it'd take to get to Pluto.