There is something creepy about mirrors, an otherworldly and fascinating quality that writers and thinkers have returned to repeatedly throughout the ages. When I was about four, my grandmother, a scientifically-minded type, took me into their master bathroom and directed my attention to the mirrors on the closet, which reflected
Humanity has long dreamed of being able to see everything around us. From the perspective of a bird. From the perspective of a god. From the perspective of a vast network of god-like eyes. Today, we have constructed tools, like drones and satellites and airplanes, that allow us to do
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, back when I was a mere dweeby child, there existed a tween-driven online social movement against the cruel practice of abusing pets. This movement was not about the abuse of living, flesh and blood pets (although I'm sure its proponents weren&
Whenever drones pop up in the news, whenever they buzz unnervingly again into popular perception, people ask me what I think about these latest developments on social media. Most of the time, and regardless of the precipitating drone-related event in the news, they're about the same questions, revolving
In modern times, we have democratized the formerly inhuman god's eye view. We have extended to everyone the steely gaze of a god peering down upon the activities of mortals from a celestial perch, or the exalted viewpoint of an emperor regarding his holdings from the vertical fastness
In the early morning hours of July 4th, as the Guadalupe River reached catastrophic heights, city officials in Kerr County, Texas turned to an all-too familiar mechanism for getting the word out to area residents: Facebook. While the National Weather Service had been issuing warnings across multiple platforms about the
We have a body. We have a soul. It is possible to separate the two. Usually, this happens when we die. But not always. Sometimes, the soul, and the ability to perceive that accompanies it, separates from our bodies for other, stranger reasons. Throughout history and across cultures, humans have,
Data is real, and it can hurt you. Conversely, data cannot hurt you if you do not pluck it from the ether and rudely force it into existence in the first place. Let's talk, briefly, about data minimization. Data minimization is a term that describes what is, on
Ukraine took out a bunch of Russian nuclear-capable strategic bomber aircraft last weekend, and they did it with small, cheap drones. As well as with over a year of intricate and incredibly stealthy planning, which is, if you ask me, the really important part. Keeping in mind that information on
To build new technology, we must imagine it first. Every technological marvel that humanity has ever come up with came into being by this process of imagination, of both individual and collective musing about things we’d like to do, and the tools we might be able to build to
When the pandemic began, back in those flopsweat days of March 2020, I came to a horrible realization. Due to necessary quarantines, lockdowns, travel restrictions, and general social disruption, the human race was going to be forced into a state of collective and sudden Onlineness totally unprecedented in history. Billions
Apple's engineers have figured out how to design a robot lamp so adorable that everyone I've shown the video to says they'd die for it. By studying how to translate human expression into the movements of an outwardly-normal looking appliance, Apple's team
I'm back in the USA. I haven't been here since December 16th. I spent the last month in Sulawesi, and then spent a few more days in Jakarta and Singapore before boarding a flight back to California, where I'm staying with my parents for
I went to Thailand in March because I needed to get some work done. Bangkok is a pretty ideal place if you're looking for somewhere easy to hunker down for a while to grind away on projects, proposals, and emails. There's excellent public transportation, great and
As I write this, America's mad king Donald Trump continues his cruel and needless attacks on Canada, from asinine tariffs to batshit insane threats to make the country the USA's 51st state. Entirely understandably, Canadians are outraged by this act of betrayal from a formerly staunch
Taipei: Week One I spent my first eight nights in Taiwan at the Riviera Hotel, a nicely renovated, mid-century built place near the Yuanshan Taipei MRT Station, in a green and pleasant neighborhood that used to be home to a lot of American GIs during the period when the US
Hi, I'm in Taiwan. It has come to my attention that the world may be ending. Well, kind of. For some of us, in a sense. I can't begin to catalog the horrors here since January 20th: a lot of people are working on that (like
We live in the era of too much news, but even by those already-low standards, there's been too much goddamned news over the last two weeks. Every time I try to sit down and write one of these, something else happens. It's kind of been like
In the middle of this terrible month - a month made to shamble through, a month which must be endured - I received a far smaller piece of bad news. Simon's Rock, the weird little college for weird kids where I spent a weird year and a half,
For the last year and a half, us Bluesky users have frequently reminded one another that we are merely posters on a niche microblogging website. It's intended as a warning about hubris. A protective against the ever-present danger of poster's madness. A nerd-ass version of the
In the course of fending off my gnawing existential dread about the election, I found myself looking at Lord Horatio Nelson's toilet - hero of Trafalgar, icon of British naval power - wedged at a curious oblong angle into the constantly under-refurbishment hulk of the HMS Victory. And
It's officially fall in the Boston area, which I both enjoy on its own merits and also dread as it presages the arrival of winter. In any case, I'll be spending part of this month in the UK, where I'm traveling for a conference.
My latest from Foreign Policy is out, and it's about a disturbing global uptick in attacks on civilians with small, cheap drones. Please read and share. I've got some more time on my hands nowadays, and I'm planning to start updating this newsletter more
Crete is big, weird, and magnificent - a lengthy, arid slash of an island that humans have been occupying, conquering, and visiting since at least 7000 BCE, with a highly distinctive culture that is somehow both very Greek and highly unique to itself. While the mysterious and aesthetically-gifted Bronze-Age culture