Daniel Rourke /stream

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Various disciplinary “archival turns” over the course of the past few decades have resulted in a tendency towards the over-casual use of the word “archive” as a shorthand to refer to,…

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In 1860, Fukuzawa Yukichi, a young Japanese student still learning English himself, accompanied the first ever Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States as its English interpreter.

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Wisdom is the ability to discern inner qualities and subtle relationships, then translate them into what others recognise as good judgment. If it comes to us at all, wisdom is the…

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Who are you, and what are you doing here? You, there in the mirror, there in the lens of your phone: What do you see? In the eyes of us poor…

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Humanity’s transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is one of the most important developments in human and Earth history. Human societies, plant and animal populations, the makeup of the atmosphere,…

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Is Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” this generation’s “end of history thesis”? For nearly thirty years Francis Fukuyama’s contention that “Western liberal democracy” represents “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” has…

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As the decade began, there were rea­sons to be optimistic: America had elected its first black president, and despite a global recession just two years earlier, the world hadn’t cascaded into…

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Calculating the patterns and cycles of the past could lead us to a better understanding of history. Could it also help us prevent a looming crisis? By In its first issue…

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In the awful, wearying months in which Harvey Weinstein’s ritualistic mistreatment of women was being recounted daily in the media, I found myself, like so many others, wondering and talking about…

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If, on a certain evening about sixty-­six million years ago, you had stood somewhere in North America and looked up at the sky, you would have soon made out what appeared…

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In 2003, a team of scientists in China managed to create embryos containing a mix of rabbit and human DNA. Most of the biological matter was human, while the rabbit DNA…

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I logged into "Second Life" in the year 2018 A.D. It still exists, sort of. Residents and businesses began fleeing for more popular social networks long ago. Vast acres of land…

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It brought riches to Britain and many other European nations; played a major role in enslaving more than 10 million Africans; and created the first global markets in cotton, tobacco and…

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Newly-released oil industry documents push back the start date of the world’s most successful disinformation campaign to the 1960s, if not earlier.

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Archaeology was institutionalized by a reification of the past into governmental branding, such as through images of Palmyra on the national currency, or school textbooks. Although Palmyrans wrote and probably spoke…

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In the 19th century, changes in knowledge were facilitated not only by large quantities of new information pouring in from around the world but by shifts in the production, processing and…

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H.P. Lovecraft is universally acknowledged as one of the most important horror writers of the 20th century, and references to his Cthulhu Mythos abound in contemporary culture. But Lovecraft was also…

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Various disciplinary “archival turns” over the course of the past few decades have resulted in a tendency towards the over-casual use of the word “archive” as a shorthand to refer to,…

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In 1860, Fukuzawa Yukichi, a young Japanese student still learning English himself, accompanied the first ever Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States as its English interpreter.

Bookmark

Computer-generated imagery is supposed to be one of the success stories of computer science. Starting in the 1970s, the algorithms for realistically depicting digital worlds were developed in a monumental joint…

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Who are you, and what are you doing here? You, there in the mirror, there in the lens of your phone: What do you see? In the eyes of us poor…

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Is Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” this generation’s “end of history thesis”? For nearly thirty years Francis Fukuyama’s contention that “Western liberal democracy” represents “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” has…

Bookmark

As the decade began, there were rea­sons to be optimistic: America had elected its first black president, and despite a global recession just two years earlier, the world hadn’t cascaded into…

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Video games are often blamed for unemployment, violence in society and addiction – including by partisan politicians raising moral concerns. Blaming video games for social or moral decline might feel like…

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If, on a certain evening about sixty-­six million years ago, you had stood somewhere in North America and looked up at the sky, you would have soon made out what appeared…

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Colonisation of the Americas at the end of the 15th Century killed so many people, it disturbed Earth's climate. That's the conclusion of scientists from University College London, UK.

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I logged into "Second Life" in the year 2018 A.D. It still exists, sort of. Residents and businesses began fleeing for more popular social networks long ago. Vast acres of land…

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It brought riches to Britain and many other European nations; played a major role in enslaving more than 10 million Africans; and created the first global markets in cotton, tobacco and…

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Newly-released oil industry documents push back the start date of the world’s most successful disinformation campaign to the 1960s, if not earlier.

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Outraged headlines erupted when students launched a campaign to challenge the great western philosophers. We went to the source of dissent – London’s School of Oriental and African Studies – to…

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In the 19th century, changes in knowledge were facilitated not only by large quantities of new information pouring in from around the world but by shifts in the production, processing and…

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Humans invented it—and not that long ago. How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Many bookshelves are full of learned tomes by historians, economists, political philosophers…