Will ChatGPT change the world? The new artificial intelligence chatbot, which has inspired both fear and awe with its power to do everything from write jokes and term papers to perhaps even make Google obsolete, would not be the first piece of computer code to fundamentally alter … | Continue reading
Every morning, I wake up in my home in a middle-class locality in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, and heave a sigh of relief. I do not have temperature; my | Continue reading
Japan loves cats. A quick glance at anything related to Japanese pop culture will show you this: Hello Kitty. Cat cafes. Wearable electronic cat ears that respond to | Continue reading
I Hope You Enjoy My Translations on Your TV Screen—Then Forget I Exist | Continue reading
Computers were supposed to reduce office labor. They accomplished the opposite | Continue reading
Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis | Continue reading
On May 14, 2018, I was led into a nondescript courtroom in Kew Gardens, Queens to testify at a murder trial. I am a historian who loves details, and the resources | Continue reading
Sarah Edelson had been pushed too far. The price of the kosher meat that she and most of the half million or so Jewish homemakers on Manhattan’s Lower East Side | Continue reading
On an unremarkable Wednesday evening in the spring of 1948, 15,561 spectators flocked to New York’s Madison Square Garden to watch two teams of World War II | Continue reading
When a Union soldier from upstate New York marched through Manhattan, Kansas, during the dismal Civil War summer of 1862, he was astounded: "All at once, as if | Continue reading
In March 1943, Kaye Kimura left the “Manzanar War Relocation Center” in California and boarded the same train that had brought her there in 1942 | Continue reading
Every civilization eventually faces a crisis that forces it to adapt or be destroyed. Few adapt. On July 10, 1520, Aztec forces vanquished the Spanish conquistador | Continue reading
The 'Real ID,' a New Federal Standard for Driver's Licenses, Threatens Our Basic Freedoms | Continue reading
The Lizzie Borden murder case abides as one of the most famous in American criminal history. New England’s crime of the Gilded Age, its seeming | Continue reading
Francis Gary Powers had his first polygraph experience right after signing up as a pilot for the CIA’s U-2 program in January 1956. In his memoir, Powers | Continue reading
Marion Thompson Wright is best known as the first female African-American to earn a doctorate in history. Her 1940 dissertation, defended at Teachers Colle | Continue reading
In 1971, three student-teachers in the Minneapolis public school system created the computer game The Oregon Trail for students in their American history c | Continue reading
The most prolific producer of the iconic 20th-century American travel postcard was a German-born printer, a man named Curt Teich, who immigrated to America | Continue reading
In the early 1900s, streetcars were the dominant mode of transit in the Los Angeles area. They ran from Pomona to the ocean, and from the San Fernando Vall | Continue reading
In 1025, two learned monks, Radolph of Liége and Ragimbold of Cologne, exchanged several letters on mathematical topics they had encountered while reading | Continue reading
Being a judge at a macaroni and cheese competition in San Francisco taught me a lot about American food. The competitors were mostly chefs, and the audienc | Continue reading