A top drone pilot in the Ukrainian Army describes his job I joined the army on the day of the Russian invasion. I’d studied computer science and only recently landed a great internship at a game company. But I saw the news and knew my options were to sit and wait for them to come and kill me or go…

What makes our minds different and where does it come from? It’s easy to dismiss talk of AI models becoming conscious as science fiction or delusion, but the reality is that we don’t even understand what consciousness is or how it works on any kind of fundamental level, or who has it — or where it…

What makes our minds different and where does it come from? It’s easy to dismiss talk of AI models becoming conscious as science fiction or delusion, but the reality is that we don’t even understand what consciousness is or how it works on any kind of fundamental level, or who has it — or where it…

Pittsburgh has an annual Parallel Parking Championship For six years, the Parallel Parking Championship in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has (for some of us) been motorsport’s crown jewel, a thrilling contest pitting man and machine against time and a 20 foot parking space. The event was first…

This top litigator had a secret life playing ultra high-stakes poker Thomas Goldstein did not look at his cards. He shoved his chips forward — all of them — and told the table, “Let’s find out together.” This was the Bellagio poker room in July 2008, then the closest thing the gambling world had…

Japanese monks mummified themselves while still alive Hidden in remote mountain temples across Yamagata and Fukushima prefectures, you’ll find Japan’s mysterious Sokushinbutsu — self-mummified monks who underwent an extreme ritual to achieve enlightenment. Sokushinbutsu is the ancient practice of…

How do we regulate something we can’t even understand? Everyone agrees we need to find ways to keep AIs from going "rogue," but we already can't plumb the depths of what these models are doing, and their "thinking" is getting even more opaque

Letters written by medieval students mostly ask for money As one medieval Italian father puts its: “a student’s first song is a demand for money, and there will never be a letter which does not ask for cash.” Here is a typical example from the 1220s: "B. to his venerable master A., greeting This…

How do we regulate something we can’t even understand? Everyone agrees we need to find ways to keep AIs from going "rogue," but we already can't plumb the depths of what these models are doing, and their "thinking" is getting even more opaque

The true story of the actual first shot ever fired in the Civil War It was the autumn of 1865 — a quiet, bitter autumn after four hollowing years of war — when James Gilmore received a manuscript from a ghost. Well, not a ghost exactly. There’d been rumors, of course, about what had become of…

He was an art forger but he became a national hero In July of 1945, Han van Meegeren picked up his badger-hair brush and began to paint his last forgery. Over a decade, the wiry Dutchman had surreptitiously become Europe’s premier conman — a disgruntled artist-turned-forger who’d sold his works…

Golden hour IMAGE

Foggy morning

How Lady Gaga’s biggest fan wound up in prison On Tuesday, Kirill Nguyen shared a rare personal dispatch from the @GagaDaily X account: “Sorry about the lack of updates, I was literally in prison 😭”. The profile, an outgrowth of the eminent Lady Gaga fan site Nguyen, now 32, founded nearly two…

AI doomers may be wrong but the skeptics seem even wronger The argument that repeated statements of concern about AI from multiple experts -- some of whom have quit their jobs over it -- is just marketing hype or regulatory capture appears increasingly deluded