"Show don't tell." "Kill your darlings." Writers love rules, even when rules can't solve their problems

Why Young Britons Don’t Know Their History

The rules neurons follow to make sense of what we see

These Tiny Flies Survive, Even Thrive on Snow

Use This One Weird Trick to Keep Your Name Out of an Upcoming Sexual Assault Lawsuit Against You

He was imprisoned by the Nazis; she was sent to a sanitorium. For Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst, love was not a luxury they could afford

How Do We Know What We Want: Milan Kundera on the Central Ambivalences of Life and Love

MIT students study plasma physics beneath Alaska’s aurora

Nationalizing the Ten Commandments?

MIT affiliates elected to National Academy of Sciences for 2026

The Young Oikophobes

On Substack, young “writers” jockey for status, but virtually none are writing about anything other than the world of writers itself

The “Pipeline” Problem That Medical Schools Don’t Want to Discuss

Coffee Is Good for Your Brain

The Anarchists Who Thought Mao Was on Their Side

Plaintiff's Immigration Concerns Don't Justify Pseudonymity

Josh Hawley's Pro-Union Bill Would Let Washington Write Your Contract

More Than Half of L.A.’s Homeless Are Not from L.A.

The canine gaze. Dogs in Western art are surrogate viewers and compositional anchors

Open Thread

The Haystack 37m Telescope: A new era of astrophysical research