Economics for the Age of TikTok
Rachel Dec in LA Review of Books: IN 2022, AS THE labor market thrived, a noticeable gap emerged between traditional economic indicators (which seemed good) and the lived experiences of
A Gentleman in Moscow Has a Little Bit of Everything
Bill Gates in Gates Notes: Melinda and I sometimes read the same book at the same time. It’s usually a lot of fun, but it can get us in trouble when
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Monday Poem: Morning of Drunkenness
O my good! O my beautiful!Atrocious fanfare where I won’t stumble!enchanted rack whereon I am stretched!Hurrah for the amazing work andthe marvelous body, for the first time! It began amid
Inside Project 2025
James Goodwin in the Boston Review: The week after taking office in 2017, Donald Trump announced his administration’s signature policy on the administrative state—the constellation of agencies, institutions, and procedures
If Energy Becomes Free in the Future, How Will That Affect Our Lives?
By Vanessa Bates Ramirez at Singularity Hub: Things we used to have to pay a lot for are now cheap or even free—think about how much it costs to buy
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Great Thinkers and Their Clutter
Samira Ahmed in New Humanist: There is a painting of the late Peter Higgs, the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist, that hangs in a science building at the University of Edinburgh. It
One Memorable Speech Can Turn Around a Faltering Campaign − How Nixon Did it With His ‘Checkers’ Talk
W. Joseph Campbell at The Conversation: Twenty years before Watergate, then-Sen. Richard Nixon’s national political ambitions were in peril. He was accused of dipping into a private, $18,000 slush fund
Can a Word have an Existential Crisis?
By Edwin L. Battistella at OUP: A while back, a philosopher friend of mine was fretting about the adjective “existential.” She was irked by people using it to refer to
80 Bicycles and the Poor Clerk
by Habib Khan, Quetta: Within the first couple of years of my joining the Cadbury’s at Hub, the factory manager retired, and the company decided not to replace him. Instead,
Sunday Poem: Hundred Flowers Blossom
I went to the woodsbirds talked with musictheir marriagesand a tree laceratedits trunk, offered me seatas I stood in a labyrinth. The wind laughed the leavesoff the treetill saliva poured
Are We Living in ‘Late Soviet America’?
From The Free Press: A few weeks ago, fresh from being knighted by King Charles, historian Sir Niall Ferguson officially joined The Free Press as a columnist. His first piece
Tackling the Riddle of Free Will
Emily Cataneo in Undark: IT’S 1922. You’re a scientist presented with a hundred youths who, you’re told, will grow up to lead conventional adult lives — with one exception. In 40 years,