Headlines

How The Heck Does Shazam Work? “By throwing away...

How The Heck Does Shazam Work? “By throwing away almost everything and keeping only a handful of landmark peaks, a noisy 5-second clip from a coffee shop becomes a set of coordinates precise enough to pinpoint one song out of millions.” Fascinating!

When Your Digital Life Vanishes

"A broken phone or corrupted drive can mean the loss of work, evidence, art, or the last traces of the dead. But sometimes data-recovery experts can summon lost files from the void."

It’s Friday, Let’s Do an Open Thread

What’s on your mind lately? What’s going on in your life? Witnessed anything amazing? Anything you’d like to share with the rest of the class? Here in Vermont, it’s barely spring (which means it’ll probably snow at least one more time before I need to start mowing the lawn).

Does reading do us any good?

Stripped of easy moralising, literature makes us relish the search for truth in an age when many believe truth to be dead - by Flora Champy Read on Aeon

Courage vs. excuses

There are more available excuses now than ever before. In just two letters, “AI” is a simple, brand-new, all-purpose excuse for laying people off, averaging things down, closing things up and generally finding an easier/quicker path. Courage, on the other hand, is the

Required Reading

This week, a museum as a site of motherhood, the amazing and terrible ways writers make their livings, Nara Smith as a performance artist? And more.

Eye Contact With a Humpback Whale

I’ve never seen anything like these photos before. In October 2024, Rachel Moore had a close encounter with a humpback whale in French Polynesia and took these photos of the whale’s eye. Moore wrote of the experience: This moment of eye contact was beyond my wildest dreams.