“So what happens here is that we have a normative understanding that we should treat [the web] like public space—that you should have rights to speak, that no one should constrain your rights—but then you discover that, basically, you’re holding a political rally in a shopping mall. This is commercial speech, controlled by commercial rules.”

Is it no longer possible for technology companies to be politically neutral?

Nabokov once wrote “Genius is an African who dreams up snow.” Now, about 40 years after he dreamed up an evolutionary history for a species of butterflies, gene sequencing has proved the author right.

So, check out this interactive map of factory farms in the U.S.

It shows the population density of farm animals by county. …more

There are a number of reasons to enjoy stupid criminal stories.

There is guilt-free shadenfruede. There is evidence on which to tell yourself that you were right not to take certain risks, that if you had actually flipped your second grade teacher the bird or snapped Judy Gagnon’s bra, this is the life you would eventually have had. There is a comfort of the regular order of things feeling right—the powerful are good, the weak are bad, and they were stupid to transgress. I have to assume that even a criminal would find dumb criminal stories vindicating.

So here are a few recent ones: …more

Piero Manzoni once canned his own shit, called it art, and sold it for its weight in gold. It was part of an early sixties backlash against the art market. …more

There are many theories about how man is separate from the animals. The most recent one is that fire was the difference—not in a Ringo Starr fights the other tribe way, but in a new way: cooked food. Cooking let man absorb more calories from the same amount of food, giving him free time to think and energy to develop a new organ. It follows similar theories about using tools and opposable thumbs, both of which fail the “but don’t other animals do that too?” test.

For the best account I’ve ever read on human evolution, read Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines. It’s a great piece of writing, and it addresses evolution obliquely, while studying nomads.

Bonus evolutionary fact: some turtles breathe throught their butts.

It is -7º F outside. In his kitchen, Harry makes me tea. He is a broad-shouldered man with a prominent chin and a deep, smooth voice. He has been remodeling this house for the better part of a decade, after expanding the house where his children grew up and his first wife still lives, less than a block away from here. …more