What can we do about the human impulse to destroy? — You probably don’t think about Madagascar’s biodiversity very much. I don’t, either, really, but I ran across an article the other day that I can’t stop thinking about. Madagascar is one of the crown jewels of global biodiversity. More than 90% of the plants and animals there exist nowhere else…

A journey into the heart of GOP weirdness — The state I live in, Ohio, used to be the king of the purple states, a finely poised battleground in presidential elections. It seemed like TV election pundits were contractually obligated to utter the cliche “as Ohio goes, so goes the nation” as often as possible. But things have changed…

We use technology, but it uses us back — Writing is something we all take for granted, but it’s worth noting that there’s something magical about it. Silvia Ferarra put it this way in her book The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts: Writing is sound made visible and tangible, and as such it…

It’s classic shithousery! — There’s a term in soccer (or football, if you’re European) that I love: shithousery. It’s kind of a vague concept, but here’s a definition from The Guardian’s John Ashdown: Shithousery is a fairly nebulous term, taking in as it does pretty much all the dark arts employed on a football…

How to reclaim freedom of choice from the bots — If I ask you what you want to make for dinner, your mind will probably cycle through a bunch of factors before you make a decision. You might consider, among other things: What tastes good to you; What you’re in the mood for right now; How tired you are; How…

What we can learn from Kevin McCarthy’s long road to the speakership — Well, the dust has settled from the chaotic selection process that finally resulted in Kevin McCarthy becoming a very weak Speaker of the House. The process that put McCarthy in charge — and the promises he had to make to get there — may have enormous consequences for the country…

Stupid culture wars kill Republicans — Apparently, America’s next dumb culture war will be over gas stoves. Republicans have decided that the Biden administration is going to take away your stove (they aren’t; more on this later). All of the culture-grievance forces are aligning to yell about this issue. We’ve got unhinged GOP congressmen acting like…

An early environmental movement gives new meaning to the word — The khejri tree — also known as Prosopis cineraria — isn’t a particularly majestic species. It’s not huge like the redwoods or otherworldy like the baobab. It’s pretty common; it grows all over the Middle East and South Asia. It grows to about 30 feet, blooms with little yellow flowers…

It always does, in the end — Let me tell you about a time when democracy seemed to be faltering — when authoritarian governments looked like they had far more promise than messy representative ones. At the time, a number of democracies around the world had failed to deal well with the aftermaths of war, pandemic, and…