Political Query: Who Should I Give Money To?

A question for the more politically plugged-in folks out there: If I want to donate money this election cycle, who should I be looking at giving it to? OK, that probably needs some unpacking, but given Internet attention spans, I wanted to get the basic question right up front before a passing Pokemon draws people […]

Why Physicists Disparage Philosophers, In Three Paragraphs

Periodically, some scientific celebrity from the physical sciences– Neil deGrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking, say– will say something dismissive about philosophy, and kick off a big rush of articles about how dumb their remarks are, how important philosophy is, and so on. Given that this happens on a regular basis, you might wonder why it […]

Instagram Culture and the Democratization of Pretension

When I was going through the huge collection of photos I have from the Forum in Rome, I kept running across pictures containing two young Asian women (neither of them Kate). This isn’t because I was stalking them, but because they were everywhere, stopping for long periods in front of virtually every significant ruin and […]