Welcome to the 5th Annual Last Word On Nothing Holiday Reading Guide, where people of LWON share their book recommendations for that stretch between Christmas and New Year when you finally have a solid hour to yourself. Jessa: An Ocean of Minutes, by Thea Lim, is an alternate recent-history novel in which poor migrants are […]
Miscellaneous
Would you trust an AI assistant? This is a question you’re going to have to answer sooner than later. And here’s a weird little story I wrote a while back about it. In case you missed it, enjoy now! __ We live with machines. And our machines are getting smarter. They’re still very dumb, they […]
I attended a repatriation of artifacts and bones under Native American claim recently. The remains of 41 people and the artifacts buried with them, retrieved from an archaeological collection, went back in the ground. There’s not a lot I can write in detail. Returning the dead of a millennia-old village is an involved procedure and […]
A few weeks ago I published a story in Hakai about the hidden story of the ancient maritime Maya. It’s not the first time I’ve written about the Maya – in fact, for a while there it was a bit of an obsession. I’ve always found ancient Mesoamerican history fascinating. Partly, I just love history. […]
I was going to write this post Sunday evening. I was going to write it yesterday. I was going to write it this morning. I was going to write it this afternoon.
My aunt is standing in front of the book shelf scrutinizing two rows of photos. It’s 1 a.m., and a little while ago I was dead asleep. But now here I am, awake, because here she is, standing in her pajamas with her hands pressed into her back, looking hard at faces in the frames. […]
It’s the end of the year, which is a time that I generally spiral into complete crisis. Did I do enough this year? Did I produce enough? Did I spend too much time on Twitter? Did I meet my goals? What the hell did I even do for the last 11 months? What do I have […]
