Puzzles for Fun and Profit

A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How a Forgotten Medieval Woman Gave Groups of Birds Their Strange Names, with Wondrous Vintage Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith

Is Reading Really All That?

New qubit architecture enables faster, more accurate operations

From MIT to IBM, expediting AI and quantum deployment

Why the Recent Total Eclipse Looked Unusual

New Species of Giant Armadillo Has Convoluted History

The Creative Power of Uncertainty: Polish Poet Wisława Szymborska’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

The Love of Art Heists

Georgia Cop Claimed Petting Zoo Donkey Was Charging at His Team When He Shot It

The Extinct Tasmanian Tiger’s Bite Was Unlike Any Other Predatory Mammal’s

Open Thread

Wilderness, Solitude, and Creativity: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent’s Century-Old Meditations on Art and Life During Seven Months on a Small Alaskan Island

Extreme Heat Comes for the Red Chile Capital of Pakistan

RFK Jr. Wants More FDA Oversight of Food Ingredients. It Could End Up Costing $210 Million.

Before puritanism and personality cults made it boring, affect theory brimmed with real intellectual potential. Laura Kipnis explains

The End of Oak Street Is a Nasty, Effective Exercise in Dino Terror

The ominous ‘fire clouds’ or ‘pyrocumulonimbus’ seen in France for the first time

How Art Invented Humanity

Almost three-quarters of England is now in drought conditions

Looking beyond natural sequences