In June, Facebook revealed plans for Libra, a cryptocurrency it hopes will shake up the global payments industry.

WIRED • 1668 words • 8 minute read

Not long ago in Manhattan, I attended a fancy, invitation-only panel discussion concerning a certain new luxury urban development.

2341 words • 11 minute read

Vaclav Smil is a distinguished professor emeritus in the faculty of environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Over more than 40 years, his books on the environment, population, food and energy have steadily grown in influence.

The Guardian • 2367 words • 11 minute read

For the past two decades, Cormac McCarthy — whose ten novels include The Road, No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian — has provided extensive editing to numerous faculty members and postdocs at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in New Mexico.

Nature Publishing Group • 1115 words • 5 minute read

I’m not doing a very good job of following my dreams. When I was 16, I wanted to be a writer. I really, really wanted it.

Aeon • 2062 words • 9 minute read

Value is created through innovation, but how much of that value accrues to the innovator depends partly on how quickly their competitors imitate the innovation. Innovators must deter competition to get some of the value they created.

5601 words • 25 minute read

Every once in a while you come across a fact that is so sumptuous it begs to be considered a metaphor. And then, there are other facts that are so perfectly just-so that they need to be viewed as apocryphal.

287 words • 2 minute read

In the run-up to the 1964 World’s Fair, the great science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov was asked what that same event might look like 50 years later.

Scientific American • 1340 words • 6 minute read

London has been shaped by its railways, ever since the Metropolitan opened as the world’s first underground line in 1863. As the network grew, old stations, tunnels, entrances, passageways and shafts were left behind

The Guardian • Word count / reading time unavailable

Looking back at Sega’s influential console, which revolutionized video game graphics and internet connectivity, as it turns 20 Twenty years ago this week, Sega’s last console launched in North America, inaugurating a new generation of video game hardware and a new era of internet-connected conso

The Ringer • 3300 words • 15 minute read