The Stage Where Dragons and Humanity Meet

As Game of Thrones heads to the theater, it marks a thrilling convergence of fantasy and reality.

Frisbees and Futures: Lessons from Off-Grid Villages

The best technology stories aren't about technology at all, they're about kids on swings. In September 2024, a playground opened at Kao La Amani Children's Village in Boma Ng'ombe, Tanzania, and while Silicon Valley was busy teaching chatbots to generate increasingly unhinged

Digital Lamentations: What Steam Deck Shortages Tell Us About Human Grief Rituals

The ancient Mesopotamians had professional mourners. These weren't people who showed up to funerals with tissues, they were artists who transformed grief into performance, turning loss into something the community could share. They wailed, they tore their clothes, they made suffering visible and audible. Today, we have Twitter

Architecture That Admits to Emotion: Love Hotels and Love Through a Prism

The first time I encountered a love hotel was not in Tokyo but in a photograph, Kyoichi Tsuzuki's image of a room decorated like a spaceship, complete with control panels that did nothing and a bed shaped like a UFO. I found myself fascinated not by the eroticism

When Kids Redesign Playgrounds, Everyone Wins

The adults arrived at Rotterdam's Driehoeksplein with clipboards and architectural renderings, ready to transform a tired urban square into something sensible. The children arrived with different plans. By the time the renovation opened, the renamed Driehoekspark featured spaces for play, education, encounters, and cooling, designed in ways that

Bad Bunny Spiked the Football. Trump Lost His Mind.

The NFL wanted sixty years of Super Bowl glory celebrated. What they got was a full-throated reminder that rock and roll and reggaeton don't bow to corporate pageantry. On February 8th, 2026, at Levi's Stadium, Green Day opened the 60th Super Bowl with what was supposed

Big Tobacco 2.0: Inside the First Trial Against Addictive Apps

The courtroom looks nothing like the Crypto.com Arena where Tyler, the Creator threw himself to the floor in a cloud of smoke at the 2026 Grammys. No pyrotechnics here, no bright green soldier uniforms, no explosive performances of "Thought I Was Dead." Lawyers, laptops, and the kind

Hardcore Grit Meets Cosmic Dreams: Draümar and Sepultura's Raw Connection

The best music in 2026 isn't coming from some corporate playlist machine. It bleeds out of Oslo basements and Brazilian farewell stages where humans still plug guitars into amps and scream like they mean it. This week brought proof in stereo: Norwegian hardcore punks Draümar announced their self-titled

AI Prescription Refills: The Ethical Dilemma of Autonomy in Medicine

Utah has launched a first-in-the-nation pilot allowing an AI system to renew existing prescriptions, often without requiring a physician to sign off, though safeguards include escalation pathways and human review. As of January 2026, Utah residents can use Doctronic to request renewals for about 190–200 eligible, non-controlled maintenance medications,

The Growing Shadow of Voice Assistants

The $68 Million Whisper The $68 million settlement Google agreed to pay last week for allegedly spying on users through its voice assistant feels both shocking and inevitable. Shocking because the sum represents millions of private conversations potentially transmitted without consent. Inevitable because, well, haven't we all suspected

From Drag Queens to Metal Kings: A Lesson in Authenticity

The best art happens when the mask slips. Whether it's mascara running down a queen's face or a vocalist's voice cracking on a high scream, the moment performance fails is the moment it becomes real. I've been chewing on this since stumbling

Starfleet Academy: A Space for New Narratives

Meta Killed Its Metaverse. Star Trek Knew Better All Along. Meta killed Horizon Workrooms, and the timing couldn't be more perfect. While Mark Zuckerberg's virtual office fades into the digital void, Paramount+ drops Star Trek: Starfleet Academy into our laps like the universe saying "maybe

~Technology

Wooden Gadgets and the Art of Slow Tech

We've entered the era where the ultimate status symbol is a device that refuses to bother you. This tells you everything you need to know about where we went wrong. The mui Board exemplifies this absurdity perfectly. When inactive, it's wood grain. Touch it, and subtle

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AI, Military, and the Dance of Power

There's something distinctly American about treating caution as inefficiency. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that xAI’s Grok will join Google’s AI engine inside Defense Department networks, and that Grok is expected to go live later this month. Watching this unfold feels like observing a national

~Music

Vinyl's Secret Comeback on the Streaming Circuit

The kid from Oklahoma dropped a bomb on the music industry's glass jaw. Zach Bryan, that gravelly-voiced prophet of the working class, released an acoustic version of his entire new album With Heaven on Top shortly after the original dropped, and his reasoning cuts deeper than any Nashville

~Technology

The Rise and Fall of TiVo: A Love Story With an Unexpected Ending

Remember when skipping commercials felt like sticking it to The Man? When pausing live TV made you feel like a time-bending wizard? That was TiVo's gift to humanity. A brief, shining moment when we thought we'd outsmarted television itself. Now, in October 2025, TiVo has stopped

~Technology

Does Meta's Nuclear Move Signal a New Age of Clean Energy Skepticism?

Remember when nuclear power was the boogeyman of the energy world? The thing that made environmentalists chain themselves to fences and inspired a thousand disaster movies? Well, plot twist: Big Tech just swiped right on atomic energy, and Meta's leading the charge with enough nuclear deals to power

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The Art of a Digital Renaissance: Sketching the Evolution of Creativity

The first time I saw a digital tribute to art history, I was sitting in a café, watching an American tourist photograph her latte art. She spent more time arranging the foam than drinking the coffee, and I thought about how we've always been creatures who make meaning

~Technology

Why LEGO's New Smart Bricks Are More Than Just Play

The greatest trick LEGO ever pulled was convincing the world that plastic bricks were about architecture when they were really about possibility. Now, at CES 2026, they've done it again, embedding a computer smaller than a single LEGO stud inside what looks like an ordinary 2x4 brick. The

~Art

Unlocking Pompeii: How Ancient Graffiti Teaches Us About Digital Imprints

The walls of Pompeii hold over 11,000 messages that nobody meant to preserve forever. These weren't monuments or official inscriptions—just everyday Romans scribbling their thoughts, jokes, and frustrations on whatever surface was handy. Sexual boasts, political complaints, simple declarations of daily activities—all mixed together in

The Unseen Guardians of Digital Integrity

In a small office in Costa Rica, a phone buzzes at 3 AM. A journalist in Myanmar has discovered suspicious activity on their devices—the kind that makes their sources vulnerable and their work impossible. Within minutes, a digital security expert is analyzing the threat, guiding them through immediate protective

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When Drones Compete in Firefighting, Who's the Real Hero?

The University of Maryland’s Crossfire team recently tested a drone-based suppression system on controlled fires at a training facility as part of its entry in the XPRIZE Wildfire competition, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about the absurdity of our timeline. We've gone

~Music

Deftones and Space: Crafting Humanity’s Cosmic Friendship

Deftones recently partnered with GOAL Projects to support youth soccer in Sacramento, releasing special jerseys for the Los Jaguares team. Meanwhile, NASA's preparing to send humans back to the moon with their upcoming Artemis III mission. Two stories that hit the news cycle recently, seemingly unrelated except for

The Quiet Power of Missteps: Redaction and Reuse in Data Failures

The Department of Justice's recent release of Jeffrey Epstein documents offers an unexpected lesson in how institutions handle failure. Beginning December 19, 2025, what should have been a straightforward disclosure became a cascade of technical mishaps: files vanishing from public servers, a fake video briefly appearing among legitimate