Society

Ars chats with Dinosaur Comics' Ryan North about his new book How to Take Over the World.

An abiding memory for a teen fascinated by electronics and radio in the 1970s and 1980s is the proliferation of propaganda stations that covered the shortwave spectrum. Some of them were slightly s…

Amazon’s ad business is bigger than YouTube and more profitable than AWS. Shein is the biggest fast-fashion retailer in the US, with no stores. US pay TV subscribers have fallen by a third. Where do ad budgets go, where does rent go, and how many brands will there be?

Brighter winter evenings would come at the expense of darker mornings.

The creators of Uxn.

The White House just announced on March 16 that it will provide 6,000 older AT4 anti-armor weapons to Ukraine.

Posted on Wednesday 16 Mar 2022. 690 words, 5 links. By Matt Webb.

UTEC doesn't just help the environment, it rescues at-risk youth

Now home to the world’s largest single nuclear stockpile, the state has a tangled history with the unthinkable.

Seizures can be further complicated by the fact that ownership of most if not all of the Russian oligarchs’ properties is shielded by shell companies.

I had the title of this post sitting in “Drafts” for a couple months now, but Kris and Paul have given me good reason to actually write about it. These thoughts are largely off the cuff…

Working toward a taxonomy of the different types of game difficulty.

Why games are a great way to talk about the pleasures of difficulty

A call to reconsider how we talk about difficulty in games.

When someone tells you that a particular video game (like Elden Ring) is hard, it can be tough to figure out what they might mean

Interview with Jane McGonigal on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast

They’re fixing internet in bombed-out buildings, finding rogue operators providing Russians with mobile connections and thwarting hackers. The telecom companies of Ukraine and their employees are being hailed as heroes in the war with Russia.

Just when you think a battle is well and truly over, history has a habit of turning around to tweak your nose. One of the common big ideas of the moment in IT is that computing is becoming a utility. One of the key arguments underpinning this thinking comes from industrial history, calling out electricity as a model for […]

Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore manages to see through Musk’s mystique, explain his worldview, and decipher his visions of the future.

Posted on Monday 14 Mar 2022. 726 words, 5 links. By Matt Webb.

The dividing line between firm and sect is often thin. How to tell them apart

47% of U.S. adults say single women raising children on their own is generally a bad thing for society, an increase of 7 points since 2018.

After Russia invaded the country, Ukraine's post office (Ukrposhta) decided to hold a contest to design a stamp that illustrated &

After two years of largely containing coronavirus outbreaks, China’s “Covid zero” policies are being tested by the highly transmissible variant.