Society

Vulkan engineers have worked for Russian military and intelligence agencies to support hacking operations, prepare for attacks on infrastructure and spread disinformation

Some state lawmakers see the bitcoin industry’s growth as a good thing. Others, not so much.

Microsoft's Leslie Miley opens QCon London reflecting on rapid innovation and how biases baked into generative AI may be the most transformative yet.

Seven in 10 people globally are grappling with their mental health. Fortunately, there are steps managers can take to respond to this human energy crisis.

In the early 1990s, two Russian artists named Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid hired a market research firm to survey the public on what they wanted in a work of art. Across 11 countries they then set about painting a piece that reflected the results. Each piece was intended to be a unique a colla

Tech giants want to build massive, “hyperscale” data centers in the Netherlands. A popular political movement wants them stopped.

14 votes and 95 comments so far on Reddit

Eastern Europe is in the driver’s seat. The West should buckle up.

Today on TAP: There is far more corporate crime than crimes by unions. But corrupt labor officials are prosecuted and jailed, while executive thugs walk.

In the Netherlands, about an hour and a half south of Amsterdam, there’s a city called Breda. Like many Dutch towns, it has cozy narrow streets, canals and plenty of bicycles. But there’s one historic building – right in the middle of town that really stands out from the rest. It’s a big, cylindrical structure,

Yeah, yeah, as Allen Iverson once put it, “We talking about practice!” But new tech can make athletes more valuable in the game. It could even impact your job.

The New Deal program that rebuilt Washington parks is remembered as boldly progressive. But early attempts to rid it of discrimination unraveled.

You exist now, with some health, wealth, and connections, and you therefore have some influence. You might use this influence for immediate personal gain, or you might try to influence a wider universe, including a distant future. And to the extent that you influence a wider universe, your actions will tend to favor some types and groups over others, and will often be seen as so favoring. So, who should you favor?

Steven Rattner and the senior executives he's talked to want to see workers "go hard" again. Easy for them to say.

Your data helped build ChatGPT. Where's your payout?

Industrial policy and subsidies are nothing new and can be useful. But shutting off from the world will have consequences.

School sports can have some valuable outputs: Learning teamwork A lifetime habit of fitness Giving non-academically-focused kids a chance to shine Offering leadership opportunities Valuing persiste…

Sci-fi author Lavanya Lakshminarayan explains how cyberpunk continues to thrive in South East Asian literature.

The work-from-home revolution is hurting the downtown economy of many cities, lowering the tax revenues they collect.

Steven Rattner and the senior executives he's talked to want to see workers "go hard" again. Easy for them to say.

Kirby Ferguson has released the final and "definitive" full-length version of his fantastic Everything is a Remix vide

A grand, brilliantly written work of American history. We think we know the story of American religion: the Puritans were cold, austere, and pious, and Christianity continued pure and uncorrupted until the industrial revolution got in the way. In The…

The “protestant work ethic” is invoked for any number of political reasons – foreign policy and developmental aid, the spiritual justification for reducing one’s life to capitalist time, and as a w…

The idea that a Universal Basic Income fuels inflation makes no economic sense. We live in an age of crisis. The Global Financial Crisis, austerity measures, climate change, Covid-19 and war have all reduced people’s standard of living, wellbeing and even predicted lifespan. It’s a dire outlook, made worse by a fast-evolving cost of living […]

In The Civilizing Process (1939), sociologist Norbert Elias traces the emergence of the idea of “civility” to a single book by Erasmus of Rotterdam, De civilitate morum puerilium (1530), which itself underwent numerous editions and was subject to a “multitude of translations, imitations and sequels.” The book, Elias writes, “is about something very simple: the behavior of people in society — above all, bur not solely, ‘outward bodily propriety.’” It gives advice on how one should dress, how one should stand, how to eat, and how to behave in public places, going into nitty-gritty details about what to do with greasy fingers, how to deal with snot, when you should and shouldn’t fart and vomit, and so on. “Much of what he says, Elias notes delicately, “oversteps our threshold of repugnance.”

Getting back to my series of posts on understanding economics when scarcity is removed from some goods, I wanted to address the ridiculousness of the “can’t compete with free” sta…