It is a matter of necessity or a choice freely made; a burdensome condition or a vintage-Polaroid fantasy: to live in a van.

We will never know how many died during the Butlerian Jihad. Was it millions? Billions? Trillions, perhaps? It was a fantastic rage, a great revolt that spread like wildfire, consuming everything in ...

Oil spills from the Iran War can be seen from space, with one spill spanning more than five miles across the Persian Gulf; the U.S. president said Iran has “not yet paid a big enough price” during his ...

How has the experience of siblinghood been transposed into literature? In three famous examples, through the dramatic surrender of one’s life (Antigone), through species transformation (The ...

Last year, a Japanese sumo wrestler named Onosato became the seventy-fifth athlete to be awarded the sport’s highest honor: the title of yokozuna, or grand champion. His achievement was a particular ...

Much of the conversation regarding AI to date has concerned its potential for unleashing cosmic dangers or its nebulous promises of global salvation. In practice, however, plenty of the young people ...

Let’s start with a wicked little paragraph. Guy Debord chose to kill himself the old-fashioned way; Jean-Luc Godard—“the dumbest Swiss Maoist of them all,” in the words of the amusing ...

From the book When We Cease to Understand the World. The book, a fictionalized retelling of a series of scientific and mathematical discoveries, was published last month by New York Review Books.

The word “relevant,” I was recently surprised to discover, shares an etymology with the word “relieve.” This seems obvious enough once you know it—only a few letters separate the words—but their ...

is a writer and bell ringer who lives in England.

In May 2019, the German Bundestag passed a resolution declaring the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement anti-Semitic. According to the text, the movement’s call to withhold economic support ...

Writing about “Woke” has at least two pitfalls. One is that any criticism of its excesses provokes accusations of racism, xenophobia, transphobia, misogyny, or white supremacy. The other problem is ...