She Rides Shotgun will soon be a movie. The book that it’s based on tells of Nate McCluskey and his daughter, Polly, attempting to escape an Aryan Nation branch in Southern California. Jordan Harper writes a taut, propulsive story with hard boiled lyricism, mixing violence and pathos. Definitely recommended as a quick, engaging, easy read.
-
Jordan Harper – She Rides Shotgun
She Rides Shotgun will soon be a movie. The book that it’s based on tells of Nate McCluskey and his daughter, Polly, attempting to escape an Aryan Nation branch in Southern California. Jordan Harper writes a taut, propulsive story with hard boiled lyricism, mixing violence and pathos. Definitely recommended as a quick, engaging, easy read.
-
Deleting a second brain
Joan Westenberg writes: For years, I had been building what technologists and lifehackers call a “second brain.” The premise: capture everything, forget nothing. Store your thinking in a networked archive so vast and recursive it can answer questions before you know to ask them. It promises clarity. Control. Mental leverage. But over time, my second…
-
Solar Sponges: Turning Sunlight Into Freshwater
Scientists have developed a new type of solar sponge that can turn salt water into freshwater. Reporting in ACS Energy Letters, a team of scientists created a sponge-like structure filled with long, microscopic air channels that harness sunlight to turn saltwater into fresh, clean water. In an outdoor test, this simple system—just the sponge and…
-
Praise for the expert generalist
Reading about the expert generalist explains my career: attaining a broad set of skills and connecting them as needed. So over the last year or so we have started to resist this industry-wide push for narrow skills, by calling out this quality, which we call an Expert Generalist. Why did we use the word “expert”?…
-
Have AI attend that meeting for you
AI bots are attending meetings in people’s stead. Some of the AI helpers were assisting a person who was also present on the call — others represented humans who had declined to show up but sent a bot that listens but can’t talk in their place. The human-machine imbalance made Sellers concerned that the modern…
-
Glastonbury 2025 photos
Photographer David Levene put a camera on a monopod and capured Glastonbury from a unique perspective.
-
Coolness qualified
Science can now identify traits that make someone cool. A new study suggests that there are six specific traits that these people tend to have in common: Cool people are largely perceived to be extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous.
-
Acid tripping with ChatGPT
People are using AI to ‘sit’ with them while they trip on psychedelics. Peter—who asked to have his last name omitted from this story for privacy reasons—is far from alone. A growing number of people are using AI chatbots as “trip sitters”—a phrase that traditionally refers to a sober person tasked with monitoring someone who’s…
-
Cassette players roll back into popularity
While I don’t think they ever truly went away, cassette players are making a comeback of sorts with a thriving underground and indie tape scene. Maxell is making a new one with bluetooth and USB-C.
-
Lesser known but significant Revolutionary War figures
Mental Floss wrote about eight lesser known but significant Revolutionary War figures