Animals made no noise for 90% of the planet’s life. Now industrial noise threatens the “biophony” — We often think of the natural world as noisy — beautifully so. When I used to camp in Ontario as a Boy Scout, the night was alive with crickets, and when we were up further north, the occasional howl of a wolf or scream of a fox. When I talk…

I bring you the finest collection of online reading, every week — You made it past Wednesday. The week’s 3/5ths of the way through! You can stop pretending to work. Instead, read my weekly Linkfest, in which I harvest the finest fruits of the Internet! Let’s begin … 1) 🖼️ The whimsical plants and animals of Bill Mayer’s art Bill Mayers is a prolific illustrator, including for some magazines I write for, like…

I hate these words so much — I’ve been a professional writer for over 25 years, and a blogger for almost twenty years. I’ve written millions and millions of words. So you’d think I’d be very good at spelling, yes? Mostly, I am! Generally, when I’m writing I blast along at 100 WPM without giving much thought…

It’s easy for scammers to impersonate real companies — because real companies often behave like scam artists — Two days ago I received an email that appeared to be from Norton, the makers of antivirus software. The email said they’d just charged me a ton of money on autopay. A screenshot …

I bring you the finest reading on the Internet in my Linkfest — You got through Tuesday. Be proud. And kick back with my weekly Linkfest — a collection of the finest material I could hunt down on the Intertubes. Let’s begin … 1) 📷 The stark, hyperreal photos of Rickard Grönkvist Rickard Grönkvist is a photographer who specializes in taking photos of everyday objects and transforming them with stark contrast and…

It’s good thing, too! Collective intelligence FTW — Back in 2010, the game designer Matt Wood was working on a sequel to the hit title Portal, when he ran into a really interesting problem: The awesome power of two brains working as one. And that, as it turns out, may be related to the mystery of why our…

Experience the zen-like flow-state of almost never touching your trackpad — Hey, all you Gmail users? I’m about to make your lives every so slightly more delightful. Read on! (Impatient? Just wanna see the key commands? Skip to the cheat sheet halfway down this piece. But for those with time to kill, I have a few thoughts about typing and its…

Staring zebras, deadpan cyborg women, and an awful lot of eyeballs — When I was a kid in the 80s, I loved OMNI magazine. It was a mind-bending read for nerds of my vintage. In the early years they published some truly pioneering science and tech reporting — you’d read a long interview with Jonas Salk, a report on the frontiers of…

I grew up with maps showing how cities would be obliterated by a nuke. They’re back — It’s never a great time to be a teenager, but the 1980s had their own particular challenges. One of the main ones? Wondering — on a daily basis — if you were going to die, without much warning, in a nuclear strike. I’m not really exaggerating how frequently I and…