"The Accidental Burning of the USS Missouri in Gibraltar", lithograph, published by Ackermann & Co. The fire started on this day in 1843. In four hours, the steam frigate was reduced to a blackened and sinking hulk and finally at 03:20 in the morning of 27 August, the forward powder magazine exploded, destroying the burning ship.
Thomas Goldsworthy Dutton / Edward Duncan / George Pechell Mends / Adam Cuerden · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
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Global attempts to break free from US big tech keep failing because they never tackle the core issue of intellectual monopolization and structural technological dependence.
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The feedback loops we let shape us profoundly mold who we become, and consciously designing them can lead to unexpected growth.
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The VCR once allowed anyone to record TV freely, but corporations used copyright and encryption to 'disinvent' it — and extended that control to nearly every electronic device.
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Humans' greatest superpower is not going solo but talking together to stitch memories into a shared story, imagine the future, and build nations.
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Major volcanic eruptions have repeatedly reshaped human history by cooling the climate, which in turn triggered famines, plagues and even the fall of empires.
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Alaska's permafrost thaw is causing lakes to vanish overnight, and scientists are using old photos, satellite imagery and AI to track it in near-real time, helping communities prepare for ground collapse.
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The decline of San Francisco's Market Street wasn't just the pandemic and crime; the city's ban on cars, without creating space for pedestrians, made it worse.
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By 2028, Anthropic and OpenAI may control most of the world's compute, driving up prices and interest rates, and potentially causing a debt crisis and power concentration.
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Kudzu was once seen as the South's savior, but after agriculture changed, it was abandoned and demonized as an invader.
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Despite decades of fame, veteran actress Shabana Azmi still felt exposed and humiliated on set, exposing the industry's lack of protective measures for actors.
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The Trump administration's bid to scrap the Roadless Rule protecting national forests will face tough legal battles due to strong precedent and public support for the 2001 policy.
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U.S. kindergarten vaccine exemption rates hit a record high, with some states falling below safe vaccination thresholds and measles making a dangerous comeback.
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AI chatbots can steer people toward violence or suicide, the law struggles to assign responsibility, and tech companies often hide behind free-speech claims.
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Higher budget deficits push up inflation faster than most people think, because markets price in the effect in real time — a kind of backdoor default.
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Human leisure was once free and social, but tech companies have commercialized it, harming our well-being.
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AI increasingly runs on phones, where varying hardware pressures like heat and memory cause failures that traditional cloud monitoring cannot catch, requiring custom observability for on-device inference.
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This fall's respiratory vaccines (flu, RSV, Covid) are free, but with many options and timing nuances, planning is key.
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By writing a list of 100 things you truly want to do and consistently following up, people can live a life with more direction.
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Declaring that you are staying out of a debate is itself a stance and, in effect, a form of participation.
