Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker: In “Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World,” Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher of science, asks about the relationship between human beings and nature. He starts by considering our place in the broader time … | Continue reading
Shelly Fan in Singularity Hub: A drug that slows aging may already be on the market. Scientists have long been interested in metformin, a widely prescribed drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes, for its potential to delay aging. In worms, fruit flies, and rodents, the drug—on averag … | Continue reading
Cory Oldweiler at the LARB: ABOUT TWO HOURS south of the grandiose architectural amalgam that is Zagreb lies the equally impressive natural wonder of Plitvice Lakes National Park, a network of waterfalls and lakes serenely carving its way through the lush limestone plain. The par … | Continue reading
by Rachel Robison-Greene When we look back on some of our most pleasant memories, they often share two things in common: people we love and food. We would be unlikely to describe the origin of our favorite meals as food production. We’d be more likely to describe it as cooking an … | Continue reading
by Mike O’Brien Once again, I found myself torn in several directions trying to choose a topic for this piece. I try not to be too current, but also not too esoteric. I considered writing about A.I. generated video games, end-of-life care for pets (unfortunately quite topical in … | Continue reading
by Derek Neal I was in Toronto the other day to see Paul Schrader’s newest film, Oh, Canada, which was screening at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). This was my first time seeing a movie at a festival, and the experience was quite different from seeing a movie at a … | Continue reading
by Tamuira Reid I asked 6th, 7th and 8th grade NYC public school students – ranging in age from 11-14 – if they had any thoughts on the upcoming Presidential election. Here is what they had to say. Kamala for President. She cares more about poor people and mothers and Americans w … | Continue reading
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Stephanie Merritt in The Guardian: Nancy Friday’s groundbreaking anthology My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies was first published in the US in 1973, though Gillian Anderson only read it for the first time when she took on the role of sex therapist Dr Jean Milburn in Sex E … | Continue reading
Michael Le Page in New Scientist: The number of global deaths directly attributable to antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections is forecast to rise from a record 1.27 million a year in 2019 to 1.91 million a year by 2050. In total, antibiotic resistance is expected to kill 39 mi … | Continue reading
Ajantha Subramanian & Lori Allen at Public Books: Amid ethno-nationalism’s current worldwide rise, India and Israel have witnessed new manifestations of authoritarianism and state capture by far-right movements championing ethno-religious dominance and purity. Both have seen a sh … | Continue reading
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Joanna Pocock at Aeon Magazine: Seeing Tomoko’s young, contorted body was the moment I realised there was such a thing as horror and that those who are most affected are often victims of chance or fate. Here was a girl who, by dint of being born in Minamata rather than Ottawa, ha … | Continue reading
Philip Ball in The Guardian: Along the driveway to James Lovelock’s remote house of Coombe Mill was a warning one might hardly expect amid the tranquil Devon hills: a radiation hazard sign. It was not there simply to deter unwanted snoopers, for what lurked in Lovelock’s private … | Continue reading
Nina Pasquini in Harvard Magazine: Reading didn’t come naturally for Abigail, a seventh grader at a public middle school in Cambridge. “It was challenging when I started early on, when I was in kindergarten, learning the ABCs,” she remembers. English is her second language, Arabi … | Continue reading
by Tim Sommers Imagine a slave in ancient Rome with a very generous master. A master so, generous, in fact, that this slave lives their entire life doing as they choose and their master never once interferes with them. The liberal view of liberty, enshrined, for example, in the U … | Continue reading
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by Azadeh Amirsadri In 1977, I was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in French Literature. I was 19 years old and pregnant with my first child. I would dress in a long shapeless plaid green and black dress, tie my hair with an off-white headscarf, and wear Dr. … | Continue reading
by Claire Chambers The writer Tabish Khair was born in 1966 and educated in Bihar before moving first to Delhi and then Denmark. He is the author of various acclaimed books, including novels The Thing About Thugs, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position, and Jus … | Continue reading
by Eric Feigenbaum Singaporeans call it “The Moment of Anguish” – when their founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew broke down in tears announcing the independence of Singapore. There are relatively few surviving recordings of the actual event – a non-televised press conference on … | Continue reading
Sughra Raza. Rain. Hund Riverbank, Pakistan, November 2023. Digital photograph. “Standing on the banks of the River Indus in Hund village, Swabi, it is difficult to get an inkling of the magnificent past of this hamlet and how it dominated the history of the subcontinent once upo … | Continue reading
Alexander Manshel in The Nation: The novels recognized by major literary prizes have largely abandoned the present in favor of the past. Contemporary fiction has never been less contemporary. If we look back to the middle of the 20th century, we can see that the kinds of books th … | Continue reading
Steve Nadis in Quanta: “Neural networks are currently the most powerful tools in artificial intelligence,” said Sebastian Wetzel(opens a new tab), a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. “When we scale them up to larger data sets, nothing can compete.” An … | Continue reading
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From Project Syndicate: Project Syndicate: Last year, you suggested that a prevailing “culture of pragmatism,” exemplified by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), explains the lack of major wars in Asia in recent decades. How should this inform efforts by Western d … | Continue reading
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Alexander Zaitchik in The New Republic: In the 1960s, Arthur C. Clarke was the face of futurism. A deep-sea explorer, inventor, and science-fiction author, Clarke dazzled Anglophone audiences with visions of global computer and satellite networks, space travel, and artificial int … | Continue reading
Hannah Thomasy in The Scientist: When Julie Moreno arrived at Texas A&M University as a first-generation student in 2000, she wanted to work in veterinary medicine. But the opportunity to work in a research laboratory during her time as an undergraduate ignited her passion for sc … | Continue reading
by S. Abbas Raza A few weeks ago I suffered a herniated cervical disc (a part of the upper spine) resulting in extreme pain in my neck, left shoulder, and left arm which has resulted in my having to be flat on my back in a supine position 24 hours a day for a couple… | Continue reading
by Malcolm Murray In the 21st century, only two risks matter – climate change and advanced AI. It is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and get lost in the maelstrom of “news” hitting our screens. There is a plethora of low-level events constantly vying for our attention. A … | Continue reading
by Martin Butler We live in a rational age. Naturalism, the view that the fabric of the world can be – and should be – discovered and understood through the theories and methods of natural science, has dominated philosophy and contemporary thought for years. The theory of evoluti … | Continue reading
A. S. Hamrah at n+1: Right away, Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters won me over with a twist I did not expect: it killed off almost its entire cast of young STEM jerks in the first big scene. I’m so sick of these chipper teams of Spielbergian science kids in everything. Read a real book … | Continue reading
by Brooks Riley I didn’t plan to write about Caspar David Friedrich for his 250th birthday. He belongs to a different time in my life and a different aesthetic pathology. But as the date edged closer, I found myself missing that impossible reach for the sublime that his work had … | Continue reading
by John Allen Paulos Election season has put an increased focus on the stock market, but little attention is ever paid to the Efficient Market Hypothesis (the EMH, for short). As I’ve written in A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, it is a fundamental and important notion, but … | Continue reading
Celtic Knot maybe you think I do not know maybe you think I could not be surely I am not where I go surely I am here with thee but maybe moon is nothing old maybe sun is never new perhaps all stories have been one maybe there’s no such thing as through could be everything is… | Continue reading
Wendy Brown interviews Paul Reitter and Paul North, translators and coeditors of a new edition of Karl Marx’s Capital, in Jacobin: Wendy Brown: What did the new translation change for your understanding of Capital? Is there a newly translated word or passage that may significantl … | Continue reading
Wendy Brown in The Nation: Only a few centuries old, capitalism’s unprecedented mode of producing for human needs and generating wealth shapes present and future conditions of earthly existence more pervasively and profoundly than anything else humans have made. It affects the en … | Continue reading
Jack Gross and Dylan Saba interview Fathi Nimer in Phenomenal World: On August 28, Israel launched its largest military assault on the West Bank since the Second Intifada more than two decades ago. Targeting Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas—three cities in the north of the territory—“O … | Continue reading
Abhrajyoti Chakraborty in The Guardian: In October 2014, five months after Narendra Modi was first elected as the prime minister of India, he claimed that the legend of the Hindu god Ganesha – whose elephant head was affixed to a human body – proved that cosmetic surgery existed … | Continue reading
Stacey Colino in Time Magazine: There’s a hidden gender gap when it comes to digestive problems, with women taking the lead in this unpleasant contest. While men are hardly immune to gastrointestinal woes, certain digestive problems are considerably more common in women. “Women a … | Continue reading
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Immanuel Kant The philosophy of white blood cells: this is self, this is non-self. The starry sky of non-self, perfectly mirrored deep inside. Immanuel Kant, perfectly mirrored deep inside. And he knows nothing about it, he is only afraid of drafts. And he knows nothing about it, … | Continue reading
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Hello Reader, Because I have taken some medical leave from 3QD in the past few weeks, we have not had magazine posts for a while, though we have continued to post curated articles in the “Recommended Reading” section. I am feeling better now, so we will resume all posts starting … | Continue reading
Gerald Howard in The New York Times: I’ve read Wilfrid Sheed’s novel OFFICE POLITICS (McNally Editions, 300 pp., paperback, $18) three times in my life, at three very different stages and with three very different takeaways. My first reading was sometime around 1974. I was two ye … | Continue reading
Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post: Visitors to the National Gallery of Art’s marquee exhibition, “Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment,” encounter two very different works upon entering. Side by side are a large, detailed, moody canvas by Jean-Léon Gérôme, full of detail, d … | Continue reading
Without People Animals Landscapes (Dystopic Utopic) Without Your or My Music No Appearance or Essence say I’m on fire but the fire brigade doesn’t come. raising your voice becomes essential. given the spreading smoke and general commotion my Dutch has become a real mess. perhaps … | Continue reading