~hackernews | Bookmarks (61)
-
The Heart of Low
Last winter, I flew to Minneapolis to hear a funk quartet play at a bar. The...
-
Are Flying Cars Here?
At Wisk’s offices, Schrinner told me that air taxis could one day connect remote Indigenous communities...
-
The Archeologists of Athens (2023)
In Don DeLillo’s 1982 novel “The Names,” an American businessman living in Athens can’t quite bring...
-
The dumbphone boom is real
Will Stults spent too much time on his iPhone, doom-scrolling the site formerly known as Twitter...
-
How Chinese Students Experience America
I asked whether they would serve in the Chinese military if there were a war.“They wouldn’t...
-
The Brazilian Special-Forces Unit Fighting to Save the Amazon
As we watched the fire spread, a small plane buzzed away over the trees. It belonged...
-
Black Holes Are Even Weirder Than You Imagined
Black holes are, of course, awesome. But, for scientists, they are more awesome. If a rainbow...
-
Can We Get Kids Off Smartphones?
The exact causes of the Gen Z mental-health emergency will be parsed for years to come,...
-
Online Gambling Is Changing Sports for the Worse
For the past twenty or so years, my friend Chad and I have gone to Las...
-
Houdini and the Art of Escape (2020)
In 1908, Harry Houdini—“The World’s Handcuff King and Prison Breaker”—needed a new act. He was thirty-four...
-
The Crime Rings Stealing Everything from Purses to Power Tools
The law, authored by a Democrat, applies to two or more people working together to steal...
-
"3 Body Problem" Is a Rare Species of Sci-Fi Epic
Early in “3 Body Problem,” the new Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s acclaimed science-fiction trilogy, intelligent...
-
America's Last Top Models
The U.S. system was also unique in that no other country required a model to accompany...
-
Why Is the Sea So Hot?
In early 2023, climate scientists—and anyone else paying attention to the data—started to notice something strange....
-
Arnold Schoenberg Changed Hollywood
Of the thousands of German-speaking Jews who fled from Nazi-occupied Europe to the comparative paradise of...
-
The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On
If Abraham Lincoln had leaned back in his rocking chair that night at Ford’s Theatre and...
-
Among the A.I. Doomsayers
Katja Grace’s apartment, in West Berkeley, is in an old machinist’s factory, with pitched roofs and...
-
The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I
In 2016, Alex de Vries read somewhere that a single bitcoin transaction consumes as much energy...
-
The Terrifying A.I. Scam That Uses Your Loved One's Voice
On a recent night, a woman named Robin was asleep next to her husband, Steve, in...
-
Carl Newport on his PhD experience at MIT: How I learn to concentrate
I arrived at M.I.T. in the fall of 2004. I had just turned twenty-two, and was...
-
The Magic of Bird Brains
At around 9 A.M. every weekday, a crow caws in the Jardin des Plantes, the oldest...
-
The Deep Sea Is Filled with Treasure, but It Comes at a Price
The International Seabed Authority is headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica, in a building that looks a bit...
-
"Dune" and the Delicate Art of Making Fictional Languages
A trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” features the boy prophet Paul Atreides, played by...
-
What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet
You are probably familiar with the Earth’s magnetic field, which makes all life here possible by...