Curious Loop

In the last major interview before Miles Davis's death, Jennifer Lee plays both sides of the late trumpet player's complicated genius.

Signs and symbols on the sides of ships tell stories about an industry few outsiders understand.

The earth contains a lot of titanium - it’s the ninth most abundant element in the earth’s crust. By mass, there’s more titanium in the earth’s crust than carbon by a factor of nearly 30, and more titanium than copper by a factor of nearly 100. But despite its abundance, it's only recently that civilization has been able to use titanium as a metal (titanium dioxide has been in use somewhat longer as a paint pigment). Because titanium so readily bonds with oxygen and other elements, it doesn’t occur at all in metallic form in nature.

The big question about Artificial Intelligence, other than whether it will destroy human civilization, is the effect it will have on employment. Large language models already seem poised to automate large fractions of the work in certain industries, and the technology is only getting more capable.

Intelligent individuals are better at understanding the reputational consequences of their beliefs

Hisako Hasegawa lived for decades in a New York City hotel, and was a mystery to those around her. And all through the years, she would return small favors with extreme kindness.

Developers planned for California City to be the next LA. Nobody came.

The long read: Andrew Wylie is agent to an extraordinary number of the planet’s biggest authors. His knack for making highbrow writers very rich helped to define a literary era – but is his reign now coming to an end?

Alongside the return of Steve Jobs and the advent of the iMac and iPod, Apple's first online store played a crucial role in the company's survival and resurgence. It officially opened for business on November 10, 1997 and has been online ever since — except when Apple takes it offline to promote the launch of new products.

In “The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived,” Ralph Watson McElvenny and Marc Wortman show how Oedipal battles fueled the company’s technological triumphs in the 1960s and beyond.

A university researcher says he has identified the man on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV.

The development of cities in Spain has been upwards. Map of the evolution of urban planning in Spain, with data from the Cadastre — and why Spaniards live in apartments.

The structural reasons why banks sometimes behave bizarrely in interactions with customers, like forgetting things which customers tell them.

If you Google someone who recently died, you might see a flood of near-identical videos of men reading obits. Here’s why.

The man who allegedly killed the former prime minister says he was aiming for something larger: the Unification Church—the Moonies—and its political influence in Japan.

When writing in public, there is a common idea that you should make it accessible. This is a left over from mass media.

T.S. Eliot asks in the opening stanzas of his Choruses from the Rock, “where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” The passage has been called a pointed question for our time, in which we seem to have lost the ability to learn, to make meaningful connections and contextualize events.

by Katie Zakrzewski “To your grave there’s no use taking any gold,You cannot use it when it’s time for hands to fold,When you leave this earth for a better home someday,The only thing y…

Edison's cast-in-place concrete houses were a failure, but way ahead of their time.

Karikó won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her past research into mRNA technology, which was critical in the development of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines.

Submarines are an integral part of the U.S. Navy’s future force design, and rightly so. The United States needs more submarines if it is to deter China in

Bill Watterson’s return to print, after nearly three decades, comes in the form of a fable called “The Mysteries,” which shares with his famous comic strip a sense of enchantment.

An Interview with Filipe Cruz on the Influential but Obscure Art Form

Navigating content overload — Curate to create

Discover the groundbreaking 1924 Mikiphone, the world's inaugural pocket record player. Uncover its fascinating history and impact on music.

One of our favorite obscure facts about NYC: It once had a pneumatic tube mail system that stretched for 27 miles, moving mail at 30 MPH!

The buildup of layers of corporate management has resulted in a sclerotic environment that is weighing on frontline tech employees.

[caption id="attachment_78757" align="alignnone" width="618"] George Fullerton (left) testing a Stratocaster in the Fender factory, sometime in the mid-to...

In the 1920s, auto groups redefined who owned the city streets.