Daniel Rourke /stream

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In May, a video appeared on the internet of Donald Trump offering advice to the people of Belgium on the issue of climate change. “As you know, I had the balls…

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Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession. These should be boom times for sex.

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“On the evenings that we stay in Palo Alto, we walk down the tree-lined University Avenue, reflecting upon our key wins and challenges and preparing for the adventures of the next…

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Veganism has rocketed in the UK over the past couple of years – from an estimated half a million people in 2016 to more than 3.5 million – 5% of our…

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Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk has a vision for colonising Mars, based on a big rocket, nuclear explosions and an infrastructure to transport millions of people there. This was…

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Researchers in Sweden examined the possible steps that people can take to help tackle the climate crisis. Although a lot of resulting news coverage focused on the most effective action (having…

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Irony can be a difficult concept to grasp, but some hypothetical examples can illustrate it clearly. It would be ironic, for instance, if people who claimed their free speech was being…

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After Google was criticised in 2015 for an image-recognition algorithm that auto-tagged pictures of black people as “gorillas”, the company promised “immediate action” to prevent any repetition of the error.

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As a kid, I saw the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes. As a future primatologist, I was mesmerized. Years later I discovered an anecdote about its filming: At lunchtime,…

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When you are the first person to arrive in a meeting room, do you think of it as being empty or full? If you were raised in the West, a meeting…

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Some of the first people to be called “engineers” operated siege engines. A siege engine is a very old device used to tear down the walls of an enemy city.

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A few days ago, I came across an old post on the Web site Bored Panda called “10+ Times People Accidentally Found Their Doppelgängers in Museums and Couldn’t Believe Their Eyes.”…

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Computer algorithms have gotten much better at recognizing patterns, like specific animals or people's faces, allowing software to automatically categorize large image collections. But we've come to rely on some things…

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There are good reasons to worry about the future of humanity. Do we have a future, and if so, how much and what kind? For most people, it’s easier to feel…

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People think that they sell oil, but in fact they are becoming oil. —Victor Pelevin

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At the end of June, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had hit a new level: two billion monthly active users. That number, the company’s preferred ‘metric’ when measuring its own size,…

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The job of clearing out her father’s house after his death led Jo Cooke to discover more about his childhood in Poland and strange behaviour – a process that helped her…

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IF YOU’RE a typical westerner, you ate nearly 100 kilograms of meat last year. This was almost certainly the costliest part of your diet, especially in environmental terms. The clamour for…

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What do the most powerful people in the world read? For Donald Trump, the depressing but familiar answer is nothing beyond tweets and headlines.

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1.Perkowitz S (2004) Digital people: from bionic humans to androids. Joseph Henry Press, WashingtonGoogle Scholar2.Lars and the Real Girl (2007) Directed by Craig Gillespie. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer & Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, USAGoogle Scholar3.

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On Sept. 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy addressed an audience of 35,000 people at Rice University in Houston and put forth his vision for sending an American to the moon…

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In May, a video appeared on the internet of Donald Trump offering advice to the people of Belgium on the issue of climate change. “As you know, I had the balls…

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Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession. These should be boom times for sex.

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Society’s winners can seem so generous, until you consider what they’re really selling. “Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been…

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Veganism has rocketed in the UK over the past couple of years – from an estimated half a million people in 2016 to more than 3.5 million – 5% of our…

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Researchers in Sweden examined the possible steps that people can take to help tackle the climate crisis. Although a lot of resulting news coverage focused on the most effective action (having…

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Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet. The world’s 7.6…

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After Google was criticised in 2015 for an image-recognition algorithm that auto-tagged pictures of black people as “gorillas”, the company promised “immediate action” to prevent any repetition of the error.

Bookmark

As a kid, I saw the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes. As a future primatologist, I was mesmerized. Years later I discovered an anecdote about its filming: At lunchtime,…

Bookmark

When you are the first person to arrive in a meeting room, do you think of it as being empty or full? If you were raised in the West, a meeting…

Bookmark

Some of the first people to be called “engineers” operated siege engines. A siege engine is a very old device used to tear down the walls of an enemy city.

Bookmark

Second Life was supposed to be the future of the internet, but then Facebook came along. Yet many people still spend hours each day inhabiting this virtual realm. Their stories—and the…

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Computer algorithms have gotten much better at recognizing patterns, like specific animals or people's faces, allowing software to automatically categorize large image collections. But we've come to rely on some things…

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People think that they sell oil, but in fact they are becoming oil. —Victor Pelevin

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On 22 February 2014, I published a post on my blog. I titled it “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race”. It read: “I’m no longer engaging with…

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The job of clearing out her father’s house after his death led Jo Cooke to discover more about his childhood in Poland and strange behaviour – a process that helped her…

Bookmark

IF YOU’RE a typical westerner, you ate nearly 100 kilograms of meat last year. This was almost certainly the costliest part of your diet, especially in environmental terms. The clamour for…

Bookmark

What do the most powerful people in the world read? For Donald Trump, the depressing but familiar answer is nothing beyond tweets and headlines.

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Digital technologies make it easier for people to copy the work of other artists—yet the same tools make it more likely for them to get caught. The messages began rolling in…

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On Sept. 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy addressed an audience of 35,000 people at Rice University in Houston and put forth his vision for sending an American to the moon…

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The technology isn’t the moral game-changer that some make it out to be. There is considerable enthusiasm for technologies that allow people to simulate an engagement with a physical world.