Current Events

Burj Al Babas may one day be full of wealthy vacationers, but for now it’s a ghost town in the center of Turkey.

Unmasking a “convenient untruth” in U.S. politics.

Modern robotics are creating a kind of cultural paradox, where the best religion is the one that eventually involves no humans at all.

Nevada has the fewest number of native-born citizens.

Estonia has long been seen as a pioneer in digitizing the democratic process.

Instead of giving the 239 suffering families and the public a true story, Netflix exploited a horrifying tragedy to push conspiracy theories.

Social media has made yelling past each other all the easier.

The restoration of public confidence is crucial for strong democratic governance around the world.

Are anti-workers the lazy children of privilege or the brave vanguard of a utopic upheaval?

The state of global democracy is relatively strong — but there are clear signs of recent erosion.

An innovation’s value is found between the technophile’s promises and the Luddite’s doomsday scenarios.

The typical car is parked 95% of the time.

How to separate the reality from the conspiracy theory.

Telegrams were the “Twitter of the 1850s and 1860s” — and they elicited the exact same overblown fears as Twitter does today.

ChatGPT doesn’t understand physics, but it memorizes very well and puts in extra effort.

If you lost your religion, it might be because the internet and social media are having a secularizing effect on American society.

The danger posed by conversational AI isn’t that it can say weird or dark things; it’s personalized manipulation for nefarious purposes.

Even if a balloon flies directly overhead, attempting to shoot it down with a conventional firearm is stupid, ineffective, and dangerous.

Spying is not usually done these days with balloons because they’re an easy target and are not completely controllable.

Was it the enormous magnitude of the quake, or is the problem with the buildings?

Whether in Russia or China, the secret police are defined by their unquestioning loyalty — as well as by their poor career prospects.

Smoke taint from wildfires is gross, even to wine amateurs.

Some Europeans really don’t want to use the internet.

Close to 70% of drugs advertised on TV offer little to no benefit over other cheaper drugs.

Rogue Putin is the biggest risk of 2023. Here are the other nine, explained by global political expert Ian Bremmer.

There is a strong case to be made that the China has moved too slowly to reverse the effects of its one-child policy.

It is estimated that as many as 488 million people worldwide were exposed to dangerously long working hours in 2016.

In just a few seconds, a gamma-ray burst blasts out the same amount of energy that the Sun will radiate throughout its entire life.

Computerized, job-focused learning undercuts the true value of higher education. Liberal arts should be our model for the future.

From COVID and cancer vaccines to a steady drop in the number of people living in extreme poverty, there are reasons for optimism in 2023.