The decision to allow the Word Science Fiction Convention (commonly known as the Hugos) to be hosted in Chengdu has two major risks. Firstly, to launder the reputation of a barbaric dictatorship currently engaged in genocide against an ethnic and …
Once a radical idea, Universal Basic Income has entered the mainstream. Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang spoke about it during his campaign, it has become a key policy proposal in sections of the progressive left, and more recently, some of the …
Want to understand the surveillance-state dystopia our world has descended into? Need a primer on our cyberpunk present? Desperate to know what comes after the plague?
Well friends, you’ve come to the right place. I doubt there are many humans …
The capacity to daydream and an urge to seek out the new are at the heart of an artistic life. Social media kills both.
A mind that wanders is a creative mind. A wandering mind activates the part of the …
Two years ago I wrote about Dungeons and Dragons as a radically social response to autism. The idea – proven by peer-reviewed study – was that D&D had a therapeutic benefit for people living with autism. Back then, I …
What if they never develop a vaccine for the Coronavirus?
I pose this question not as a doomsayer. Life is trying enough as it is, right now, without my throwing more muck into this quagmire we’re in. I ask this …
I’m going to talk about how my family is dealing with isolation, and the vague approximation of home-schooling we’re attempting. But before I go any further, this needs to be said: we’re all just trying to manage here, when it …
I have a dumb phone. Text messages, phone calls, that’s it. No apps, no touchscreen, no nothing. If people try to send emojis with their messages, a black square comes up, like part of the text is redacted (wouldn’t the …
Tribalism goes to the core of who we are as human beings, and what we need to feel human. Yet modern society, by design, is anti-tribal. As Sebastian Junger argues in his excellent book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging: …
The premise of John Wyndham’s 1957 science fiction novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, is this: a species of parasitic aliens infect all the women of Midwich, Winshine. The women become pregnant, simultaneously, and give birth to children who seem normal in …
