I don’t know when “war gaming” stopped being a Pentagon basement thing and became a university ethics department warning label — maybe right after someone decided “defensive shots” was a better phrase than “we killed a guy” — but here we are anyway. In October 2024, the Center for Ethics…
Category: Culture
Culture
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The Coast Guard Did Its Job Perfectly — Rescuing Someone From a Completely Avoidable Situation
Recently, the Coast Guard released a press release about a rescue 1,100 nautical miles east of Puerto Rico — which is already so far from land that “east” becomes theoretical — and I had to reread the part about what this guy was doing out there. Benoit Bourguet, 47, from…
Consumers
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The Stationery Shop That Needs a Bouncer
A stationery shop in Chicago now requires a bouncer — not for crowd control at a nightclub, but to manage the line of people desperate to buy fountain pens and planners. Paper & Pencil, a 400-square-foot Andersonville store, has customers wrapping around multiple blocks. Some waited four hours to shop…
Culture
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Measles Is Back — Because We Decided Vaccines Were Optional
A kid at Clemson has measles. Let that land. One of the most contagious viruses on earth—something we eliminated from the U.S. in 2000—is back. Not in a remote, rural pocket. Not overseas. Right in the middle of a 30,000-person university. The university confirmed the case. They’re contact tracing. The…
Culture
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Lunar Hotel Reservations Are Here — And They Cost More Than Your House
Recently, a startup began accepting lunar hotel reservations — not for a property that exists, but for one that might exist, orbiting the Moon sometime in the unspecified future. The deposit? A quarter of a million dollars. Galactic Resource Utilization Space (GRU Space) is the company behind this. They’re asking…
Culture
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The Dog Poop Business Is Real — And Making $30K a Year
I was reading about a guy in Derbyshire, England — you know, the place where sheep outnumber humans and the hills look like a screensaver — and his name is Kyle Newby. He’s 39. And he makes over $30,000 a year scooping dog poop out of people’s yards. Not as…
Culture
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The Super Bowl Halftime Show Has a Height Requirement
The news, such as it is, is that there’s a height requirement for people who want to be part of the Super Bowl halftime show. Not the headliner. Not the star whose name goes on the announcement graphic. The field cast. The dancers, performers, and bodies whose job it is…
Culture
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Safety, Solitude, and the Strange Popularity of “Are You Dead?”
This week, an app with a name most of us wouldn’t put on a greeting card topped the paid iPhone charts in China — Are You Dead? — and it’s worth stopping to watch what that says about this moment we’re in. You scroll through the story, and it’s almost…
Culture
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Sometimes the Ground Really Does Give You Money
A man in Neuville-sur-Saône, France was digging a hole for a swimming pool and hit something solid. Not rock. Not a pipe. Something else. What came up were five gold bars and a pile of gold coins, wrapped in plastic bags and buried in his own backyard. Once the local…
Culture
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7 Guinness World Records You Can Aim to Set in 2026
Guinness World Records has published a list called “The seven records you should set in 2026.” Not could. Should. Which already tells you something about where we are. The institution built on documenting extremes is now pointing at blank spaces and saying, please, someone occupy these. What follows isn’t a…