Look, for my money the absolute game changer technologies right now are batteries and biosciences, not statistically modeling a mid conversation, but you do you.

Two hooded figures with lamps approach a moonlit, isolated cottage. A woman answers the door. We have come for the child, says the hooded figure So soon? she asks It is time, says the hooded figure. The woman is distraught. We should never have got him a library card! What is done cannot be undone, says the hooded figure We couldn’t see the harm! We just wanted him to enjoy reading! For most, it ends there, says the hooded figure, turning away and walking into the wilderness Oh lord, What have I done! says the woman, the child walks past her and out into the darkness with them. Do not cry mother. I am a writer now.

my latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

Co-signing on this — I am not a parent (and don’t live in NYC!) but one of my great civic joys is lending a hand to strangers with strollers or heavy bags to help them with the stairs in the subway.

Yup, I just went through this with my snowboarding pants when I finally got out in March — fully decomposed since the last time I wore them and no longer water-resistant. (I laundered and then tumble-dried them on low to get all the flakes out so at least they’re not shedding everywhere.)

The Warehouse, in Plain Sight That concrete box off the freeway wasn’t designed for storage so much as capture. It’s a disappearing machine. We need to see it clearly.

Why is ICE buying so many warehouses, and what does this have to do with the warehouse's shifting place in the US economy? In Places Journal, I chronicle the long arc of Warehousing's carceral geography and the speculative building boom that ICE is absorbing. placesjournal.org/article/the-...

What is Prospect-Refuge Theory? The prospect and refuge theory proposes that humans are naturally drawn to spaces that give them opportunities to respond to their needs....

Do you know about prospect-refuge theory? www.archpsych.co.uk/post/prospec...

If you paid taxes for 2025, you likely paid:

$124 — school lunch & nutrition programs
$49 — diplomacy to prevent wars
$19 — USPS
$19 — Federal Aviation Administration
$18 — national parks

and

$4,049 — weapons and war.

These priorities are hurting us all. We need change. #TaxDay

In the footsteps of Linnaeus: scientists share their passion for species from tiny wasps to hairy plants – in pictures For his project ‘De Oförtrutna’ (The Relentless), photographer Christer Björkman pictured Swedish scientists working in the spirit of Carl Linneaus, the botanist who created the modern taxonomic syste...

All these people are great. But that one person whose specialism is dandelion reproduction? Reading that, I shook my head and sighed with fretful awe. It's a bonkers subject. A mycologist once told me that dandelion taxonomy genuinely frightened him.

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Here’s an idea:

Windfall tax from current price spike earmarked for cleanup of orphan and likely to be orphaned wells.

That pairs nicely with “not my circus, not my monkeys”.

How South Korea plans to use the Iran crisis to spur a renewables revolution Energy crisis unfolding in Middle East has added political urgency, and more funding, to transform the solar industry in particular

This village uses its solar income on free communal lunches, buses and other communal efforts.“If you divide money as individual income, people feel disconnected. People who didn’t know each other for years now get to know each other within days”

I love everything about this.

Oooh I want to hear what you find out! My (historically situated — we love our public infrastructure! — and well informed) intuition is that a significant component of the objection, esp NIMBY/aesthetic (eg offshore wind) is because the groups seeing the harms have no ownership and won’t benefit.

Organized Abandonment | Sarah Jaffe In a time of escalating climate catastrophe, we need something other than paeans to resilience.

On the topic of “organized abandonment”, this great piece by Sarah Jaffe — people are expected to be ‘resilient’ after disasters (instead of getting organized support, incl resilient *systems*). Infrastructure, climate change, and natural disasters are inextricable. thebaffler.com/latest/organ...

I understand that lack of support for transportation infrastructure as a key example of what abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmour calls the “organized abandonment” of communities (ie the exact opposite of the idea that our infrastructural systems are how we take care of each other at scale).

Organized Abandonment | Sarah Jaffe In a time of escalating climate catastrophe, we need something other than paeans to resilience.

On the topic of “organized abandonment”, this great piece by Sarah Jaffe — people are expected to be ‘resilient’ after disasters (instead of getting organized support, incl resilient *systems*). Infrastructure, climate change, and natural disasters are inextricable. thebaffler.com/latest/organ...

I understand that lack of support for transportation infrastructure as a key example of what abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmour calls the “organized abandonment” of communities (ie the exact opposite of the idea that our infrastructural systems are how we take care of each other at scale).

Opinion | The Affordable Car Is Dead. What Happened? (Gift Article) This is how cars got so ridiculously, forbiddingly expensive.

As someone who loves small cars, this was so satisfying! Long live the Econobox www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Re-upping this Scratch interview for anyone feeling bad about taxes/themselves today, especially freelancers. I hope it finds those who need it most.

This essay is fascinating, horrifying, and educational. Fascorrificational. A sordid tale well worth the read.

I'm not going to link to the original thread here but I will say this about economic vibes vs. data in 2026: what a lot of people are feeling is *precarity* - fear that if they lose their jobs, they won't find other work, or work that pays as well.

Cornershop - Brimful of Asha - Official Music Video (Original) (Tjinder Singh) YouTube video by Cornershop

RIP Asha Bhosle, subject of one of the greatest ever songs (about fandom)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM7H...

Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman broke NASA protocol to save the mission's moon mascot: 'It's hard not to love this little guy. I can't let Rise out of my sight' "I stuffed that little guy in a dry bag we had in our survival kit, and hooked the bag onto my pressure suit."

I genuinely love this. Astronauts, like kids, know that you do not leave your stuffies behind.

otaheita oranges, painted by bertha heiges, 1905

otaheita oranges, painted by bertha heiges, 1905

Its not a business! It’s a public good! And it’s not “running out of money,” either. Republicans deliberately created this illusion by requiring USPS to prefund pensions *75 years* into the future. Literally no other agency (or business, lol) requires this.

Per that interview, the very first thing he did when he got a terminal prognosis was go camp on the doorsteps of the scientists running experimental clinical trials until he got into one. I’m not sure that response is consistent with the sincere faith that you describe.

So many! One is how “buckaroo” and “cowboy” both come from the Spanish “vaquero” [“vaca” (= cow) + “ero”] — the first is a pretty straightforward transcription and the second a pretty literal translation.

Humanity did that. Science did that. Publicly-funded research did that. Excellent universities did that. Diversity did that. International cooperation did that.

Artemis II is a perfect example of what we can do at our best.

Welcome home, Integrity crew!

A helicopter hovering low over the “front porch” raft to pick up an astronaut. The propeller is making huge circular waves radiating out from the raft

An astronaut and a crew recovery person dangling over the ocean from the helicopter hoist

There are certainly good reasons for every step in the crew recovery process but at this point it feels like they’re just putting the astronauts through as many of the most dramatic methods of transportation they can think of in one day

The Video NASA’s Laser Communications Experiment Streamed From Deep Space YouTube video by JPLraw

Reminder: All the amazing high quality video you’re seeing from the Artemis II mission is being transmitted back to Earth using a laser communications system first tested with a video of a cat named Taters

youtu.be/GvJtVOmFs5Q?...