Hands and Fins and Feet
What a dead goliath grouper, killed by an industrial spill, tells us about cerebrocentrism and our denied kinship with other species.
Science & Technology
"The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not." — Gertrude Stein
Lone Geniuses in Political Worlds
Comparing Andy Weir’s and Jules Verne’s political visions of science.
Why Didn’t India Build Its Own Silicon Valley?
Dwaipayan Banerjee’s new book investigates India’s role in the history of 20th-century tech development, and what caused it always to seem a step behind the West.
The Last of the Great Butterfly Collectors
‘Papilio nobilis, male.’
The Other Asimov
Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics have influenced AI’s development, but to what end?
The Moths
Reflecting on a grandfather’s time as a thoracic surgeon treating tuberculosis patients in wartime Germany.
Correctional Facility: A Response to Jonathan Basile’s ‘Natural Election’
How could a UC Irvine anthropology professor and his fellow science studies scholar have such different responses to Kathryn Paige Harden’s recent book?
Empire of Signs
Exploring the links between the history of semiotics and the creation of LLMs.
Dancing in Shackles
Two new books about internet control in China and North Korea address the potent question of what it means to be free online.
AI’s Blank Space
Exploring how AI’s prediction paradigm becomes embedded in the social infrastructure of everyday life.
Fakes of the Future
Literary credibility in the age of AI.
The Revolution Will Not Be Digitized
How employees in the tech sector see the world, themselves, and the (im)possibility of change.
