- Abe Lincoln didn’t appear on Between Two Ferns, but he officiated cockfights.
- Old Print Articles: A South Pacific settlement based on nudity and coconuts fails (1905) + A struggling carpenter becomes a Manhattan “messiah” (1892) + Americans try to cure diseases by snapping their fingers (1896).
- Featured Videos: Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks we may be too stupid to answer the hard questions + Art Linkletter and Timothy Leary argue on TV (1977) + Public-access cable ad for erstwhile sex club Plato’s Retreat (1977) + William Shockley brings his quackery about IQ to William F. Buckley (1974) + The complete version of The World of Buckminster Fuller (1974) + Continental Airlines offers passengers Electronic Pub Pong (1970s) + Gore Vidal taunts President Carer and demonstrates a waterless toilet on the Tonight Show (1977).
- Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: Stoner found physics textbook + Did someone in your family, or perhaps a pet, die recently? + No, I hadn’t heard anything about a missing airplane.
- Composer Robert Ashley was Andy Williams’ Martian doppelganger.
- We may be the first species on Earth to extinct ourselves.
- Two great Aeon essays: Robots become automated and prison becomes infinite.
- Older technologies made us passive, while newer ones make us active.
- 25 years after creating the Web, Tim Berners-Lee does an Ask Me Anything.
- Is an economic output tax an answer to an automated society?
- The Pew Research Center released its “Digital Life in 2025” report.
- In the unlikely event that the Mars One blasts off, moral questions abound.
- The Grinder subculture isn’t waiting for science to meld human and machine.
- News disseminated by algorithms might be concerning, perhaps.
- Oil boomtown Williston, North Dakota, isn’t Deadwood, but it has problems.
- David Remnick disagrees with Seymour Hersh’s view of the bin Laden raid.
- Disney theme parks are using electronic wrist bands to track visitors.
- Smart vending machines want more than just your coins.
- Robert Duvall states opinions about America’s political landscape.
- Baseball’s next-level analytics are always evolving.
- A surfeit of information may be infusing us with a sense of ennui.
- Has the era of the Great American Novel permanently passed?
- The Birth Control Pill has changed America in a myriad ways.
- Steve Jobs wanted the new Apple Campus to resemble old California.
- A brief note from 1898 about a lucky man.
- A brief note from 1899 about a severe toothache.
- A brief note from 1856 about a double talker.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.