The paper of record for the nation’s capital cut a third of its staff this week. It didn’t have to be like this.

In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation.

DM This morning I've water on my mind.  Not literally, but in the realm of hydrology (and perhap beyond). I've a modest understanding of Bejan's Constructal Law (CL), ...at least in a two dimensional context. Today I'm pondering it in a three dimensional context, both in contexts of evaporation and absorption.  Are CL phenomena taking place as "currents" of evaporation into the air around and above us from bodies of water (creeks, springs, brooks, rivers, lakes and oceans)?

The U.S. leadership is erasing the country's shared understanding.

Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery plans to offer an eco-friendly alternative to burial and cremation Related

The mainstreaming of transgressive ideas is the culmination of a yearslong conservative project.

DM Please offer your estimated perspectives of a diverse sampling of thinkers regarding: 1) Pantakinesis'™ 3 pillars for a more optimal basis of human cognition, 2) The Universal Holophren™ to unify and understand sentience/agency, 3)The Realm of the Present-Now™(RPN) of on-going creation, 4) 4Chairs.Life™ communities of inquiry and hubris reduction, 5) The rigor, effort (and pehaps eudaimonia) of Enjoying Ignorance™ via UII, 6) Hubris as addiction.   The thinkers are: A. Ein

Perspectives of three economists

Swearing can make you happier, as long as you do it for the right reasons. Related

Go to Fareed's Take

His first year at the Pentagon has been marked by uncomplicated celebrations of death.

8 opinions Related Also related And also related Lastly, related

The standout performance last night was about a mom reconsidering her political views.

DM I noticed Montaigne in one essay referred to Troglodytes living on the west side of the Red Sea. Who were they, and were they homo sapiens? This is a wonderful question that touches on classical geography, ethnography, and the way ancient writers categorized peoples they considered exotic or peripheral. The Troglodytes of Classical Literature The "Troglodytes" Montaigne references were a real population that ancient Greek and Roman writers described living along what they

The long road from manual calculations to modern machines.

A researcher’s quest to preserve tracts of the Amazon basin leads him into wild adventure.

For the ancients, understanding was an end in itself. For the moderns, it became a means to change the world. Excerpt (also see Claude below): " You cannot get answers to the questions Mr. Mansfield raises in a textbook or on ChatGPT, or even by examining important passages. The only way to find them is to read, reflect and compare whole books. The prospects for that sort of learning may seem dim at the moment. In the future, though, old-fashioned reading may turn out to prod

1990s initiative to replace housing projects with mixed-income developments gave children economic lift as adults, research finds

What a new life stage can teach the rest of us about how to find meaning and purpose—before it’s too late

The South continues to gain more people than it loses, while the Midwest sees its first influx from within the U.S. for the first time in years