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Peter Godfrey-Smith on Alien Intelligences in Our Midst
In the two-thousands, the philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith began snorkelling off the coast of his native Sydney, where he became captivated by giant cuttlefish. The experience spurred him...
The Criminalization of Venezuelan Street Culture
On the morning of April 23, 2024, Claudio David Balcane González, a twenty-six-year-old musician from the state of Aragua, in Venezuela, arrived at the Texas border. In the previous...
Why Good Ideas Die Quietly and Bad Ideas Go Viral
The internet—it seemed like such a good idea at the time. Under conditions of informational poverty, our ancestors had no choice but to operate on a need-to-know basis. The...
Two Paths for A.I.
Last spring, Daniel Kokotajlo, an A.I.-safety researcher working at OpenAI, quit his job in protest. He’d become convinced that the company wasn’t prepared for the future of its own...
The Self-Taught Cook Who Mastered the Flour Tortilla
As a kid growing up in Hermosillo, the biggest city in the arid northern Mexican state of Sonora, Ruben Leal took the region’s signature flour tortillas for granted. You...
Returning to the Scene of My Brutal Rape
A woman is running. In the path, a man appears as if from nowhere. He is masked and he holds a knife. What are her choices? On one side...
William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Invention of American Conservatism
National Review embraced Goldwater. Bozell ghostwrote his campaign book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” a hit with college students. But Goldwater was crushed in the general election, winning just...
All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2025, Ranked from Best to Worst
When the competition program of the seventy-eighth Cannes Film Festival was announced several weeks ago, I wasn’t alone in predicting that the Iranian director Jafar Panahi would win the...
Three Ice-Cream Sundaes for the Start of Summer
I believe that the single best dessert a person can have after a satisfying restaurant meal involves walking five to eight city blocks to a nearby ice-cream shop, to...
Is “Thunderbolts*” Marvel’s Attempt to Salvage the Superhero Genre?
In the run-up to the première of “Thunderbolts*,” on May 2nd, Marvel earned some light mockery for the art-house vibe of one of its trailers. Over an edgy E.D.M....
