Henry Sokolski at Persuasion: America’s most curious endeavors: Atoms for Peace and its policy that spread dangerous nuclear technology world-wide. This program’s continued endurance is difficult to understand. Its historical genesis, though, is clear enough. Early in 1953, J. Ro … | Continue reading
Yo Zushi at The New Statesman: Though it’s true that sadness in its many forms was one of Smith’s central preoccupations, neither he nor his music were defined by it. The spare waltz that defeats Tiny Rick appears on Smith’s third solo album, 1997’s Either/Or. It’s played acousti … | Continue reading
Griffin Oleynick and Anthony Domestico at Commonweal: We’re publishing these exchanges just about every two weeks—a compressed timeline that somehow seems like an eternity amid this summer’s news cycles. Thankfully, art offers its own distinct time signature. When we look at a pa … | Continue reading
Melissa Afshar in Newsweek: With persistent, fast-moving advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) cornering most of us every day, even the most technology-shy have begun to accept that AI now infiltrates nearly every aspect of our lives. However, while AI may be useful for re … | Continue reading
Shelly Fan in Singularity Hub: The first time I heard nematode worms can teach us something about human longevity, I balked at the idea. How the hell can a worm with an average lifespan of only 15 days have much in common with a human who lives decades? The answer is in their gen … | Continue reading
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by Rachel Robison-Greene When people think about what it is to live a successful life, they often think about finding a good job that pays a respectable salary, meeting and making a commitment to a life partner, having children, buying a house, and affording the luxuries that fin … | Continue reading
by Malcolm Murray The battle lines are drawn. AI safety is fighting a battle on three fronts. The figure shows how the AI safety viewpoint is opposed to three others, on two dimensions. First, let’s define the axes. The debate over advanced AI and its risks and benefits has many … | Continue reading
Getting to Know You I’m getting to know you. You who came with the first Archaeon’s spark Everything was new then, even you, you parenthetical tail of vital events, you old telegraphic protoplasmic stop, you callous caboose bringing up the ends of trains of eloquent clauses, smal … | Continue reading
Grant Wong interviews Tejas Parasher in the Journal of the History of Ideas: Grant Wong: In your article, you argue for a reading of twentieth-century Indian political thought that emphasizes conflict over consensus. You criticize the literature’s embrace of a “parliamentary read … | Continue reading
Sanoja Bhaumik interviews Rahul Verma in Phenomenal World: SANOJA BHAUMIK: It’s been two months since India’s Lok Sabha election, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi must now govern as part of the NDA coalition with other parties. What are the implications of the new NDA coalition f … | Continue reading
Darel E. Paul in Compact Magazine: The possibility of communal violence depends, of course, on the coexistence of distinct communities. In the 21st-century United Kingdom outside Northern Ireland, this condition is a product of the country’s post-1997 mass immigration. Before Ton … | Continue reading
Richard Seymour in Sidecar: What just happened? For almost a week, towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland were in the grip of pogromist reaction. In Hull, Sunderland, Rotherham, Liverpool, Aldershot, Leeds, Middlesborough, Tamworth, Belfast, Bolton, Stoke-on-Trent, … | Continue reading
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Shalinee Sharma in Time Magazine: Across the nation, kids are heading back to school. It’s an exciting time. I remember both the joy and the nervousness that came with my now twin 13-year-olds’ first starting school. In fact, one day in particular stands out. I was rushing to the … | Continue reading
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by David Winner Is it like that first moment when you touch certain parts of yourself as a child and find pleasure in it? Or that first drink, that first cigarette? When I opened Facebook the morning after Trump got shot in Pennsylvania, several Facebook friends who share my basi … | Continue reading
by William Benzon In the first part of this series on Affective Technology, I talked about Poems and Stories, using Coleridge’s “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” as one example and a passage from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer as the other. Coleridge’s poem talks about an injured poet ha … | Continue reading
Having Come This Far I’ve been through what my through was to be I did what I could and couldn’t I was never sure how I would get there I nourished an ardor for thresholds for stepping stones and for ladders I discovered detour and ditch I swam in the high tides of greed I… | Continue reading
Brian J. A. Boyd in The New Atlantis: In America today, we are bad at conscious decisionmaking about technology. Our best efforts lately leave much to be desired: a decade of zero-sum argument about whose speech norms will prevail on social media, a long-delayed and fragmented de … | Continue reading
Dan Levitt at Big Think: In 1918, the citizens of Moscow, the new capital of Communist Russia, struggled to maintain a semblance of normal life. It wasn’t easy. A brutal civil war between the White and Red Russian armies was raging. The West had imposed a trade war. The capital w … | Continue reading
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Tazreena Sajjad in The Conversation: The protests stem from long-running resentment over a quota system that saw 56% of government positions in Bangladesh reserved for various groups, including 30% for the descendants of freedom fighters who fought in the 1971 War of Independence … | Continue reading
Mirror I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful — The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with spec … | Continue reading
Jay Garfield at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: A final idea that frames Harris’ interpretation of Śāntideva—one that is clearly correct, and unappreciated—is that the universal altruism and the attitudes of kindness, care, impartiality, and joy in the accomplishments of others … | Continue reading
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Julian Nowogrodzki in Nature: At least one-quarter of people who have severe brain injuries and cannot respond physically to commands are actually conscious, according to the first international study of its kind1. Although these people could not, say, give a thumbs-up when promp … | Continue reading
Ed Simon at Lit Hub: I imagine the ideal way in which to read Giovanni Boccaccio’s profane and earthy 14th-century classic The Decameron is to be ensconced for a sweltering summer at the Villa Schifanoia. There you would have a small but elegant room overlooking the Tuscan hillsi … | Continue reading
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by Eric Feigenbaum I noticed around the time I turned 30, conversations at parties and get-togethers inevitably turned toward real estate: how much homes cost in which neighborhood, who people know who had bought a house – and how. There was an innate understanding that financial … | Continue reading
by Marie Snyder Many of us live in a punitive, carceral type of society that can make it difficult to have compassion for ourselves or others. It’s an era of the glorification of the individual over the group, leading to perfectionism and narcissism and so, so much loneliness. We … | Continue reading
Jane Ciabattari at Literary Hub: May Webb sees her first hum standing at a bus stop, and mistakes it for a sculpture. One year later, in the anxious “now” of Helen Phillips’ new novel Hum, AI-based robots called “hums” have taken over many jobs, or rendered them obsolete (May’s j … | Continue reading
Grace Wade in New Scientist: Roughly one year ago, thousands of people gathered in Denver, Colorado, for the largest psychedelic conference in history. The mood was electric, with most attendees confident that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was on the verge of approvin … | Continue reading
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Ben Orlin in Math with Bad Drawings: A few days into these Olympics, my friend Ryan lobbed me an alley-oop question via email: Which brings to the next point, what is the ideal medal count ranking to your estimation? I figure this is something you probably have the correct answer … | Continue reading
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Ashley Couto at JSTOR Daily: Although art historical writing had flourished since Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, art consumers of the nineteenth century were particularly reliant on the expertise of the artists and art enthusiasts who published and became authorities on s … | Continue reading
Jeffrey Kluger in Time Magazine: Heman Bekele whipped up the most dangerous of what he called his “potions” when he was just over 7 years old. He’d been conducting his own science experiments for about three years by that point, mixing up whatever he could get his hands on at hom … | Continue reading
Allison Futterman in Discovery: In the mid-1960s, a Scottish man named Angus Barbieri fasted for more than a year. For a total of 382 days, he survived on liquids, vitamins, and some yeast, ultimately losing 276 pounds. He undertook the fast (under medical supervision) to lose we … | Continue reading
A Man Said to the Universe A man said to the Universe “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.” by Stephen Crane from Literature and the Writing Process Prentice Hall, 1996 | Continue reading
Isaac Ariail Reed at The Hedgehog Review: On their surface, the stories in Store of the Worlds operate in new ways with an old conceit: The beings possessed of superior technology turn out to be less mature and developed in their social sensibilities and cultural commitments than … | Continue reading
by Rafaël Newman Around ten years ago—before the physical and cognitive decline that began during the pandemic; before his removal from autonomy to a care home in the north end of Montreal; before his death there at the beginning of this month—my father entrusted me with his pers … | Continue reading
by Akim Reinhardt Here’s what a bubble looks like. I walk into the local convenience store, and next to the two ATMs is a third machine selling Bitcoin. You can slide a bank card into the ATMs and get cash. You can slide your credit or debit card into the third machine and buy a… | Continue reading
Wall with trees painted on it with a window showing real trees in Kausen, South Tyrol. Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now. | Continue reading
Tony Morley at The Up Wing: In 1667 John Rose, the royal gardener, took a knee at the foot of Charles II, the King of England, and presented him with a pineapple. This wasn’t the $3.00 discount pineapple from your local grocer, but rather the single most expensive fruit in the We … | Continue reading