This is your brain on the word “actually”

If you’re familiar with the internet, you know there’s a problem with the word “actually”. After initially gaining recognition in 2012 as “the worst word on the planet”, it quickly rose to an unpopularity stratospheric enough to justify think pieces in The New Republic and The Atlantic. Its ill repute transcends the English language: last year, […]

Neurowars

Last week, someone posted a notice for a new meetup on Twitter. A bit of news. A few of us have decided to do a Queer Neurodiversiry meet-up for coffee in San Francisco next Saturday, October 6th. Please join us and share with interested friends. Info in the FB event link. 🌈☕️ FB Event Link: […]

Redux: Hidden in this picture

This is a picture of an old timey cash register, and thanks to the weirdness of tech and the weirdness of money, there could be actual money in it. Literal money that you can take out of the picture and spend. Thanks to an app launched last month, you can now furtively smuggle money inside […]

Fiction, part 2: Multiverse in the balance

Read Part 1 of this story Eventually, Milon Tusk escaped the smart home of the unhappily deceased Dieter Peel. This process had not been straightforward. Everything inside the fortified compound was voice-controlled, including windows and doors. He had tried imitating Peel’s voice, jimmying the locks, and at one low point, throwing a chair at the […]

Redux: Who’s afraid of Roko’s Basilisk?

It looks like the Basilisk definitely got him, so it’s worth resurfacing the explainer I wrote earlier this year.   If you’re like most people, you haven’t heard of Roko’s Basilisk. If you’re like most of the people who have heard of Roko’s Basilisk, there’s a good chance you started to look into it, encountered […]

Snark Week: The cat that jumped the shark

Welcome to Snark Week 2018! Not all cute-but-scary animals are biological. Allow me to expand the remit of Snark Week to include the dreaded CryptoKitty. Adorable and fluffy? Absolutely. Existentially dangerous? Most certainly. This creature packs a triple punch. Once critically endangered, it is now trying to claw its way out of jeopardy – on […]

A Bitcoin Dummy Has Questions

Even if you develop hives at the sight of the words “bitcoin” and “blockchain”, you probably couldn’t help noticing the shouty news the past week. Bitcoin is down! Bitcoin is slightly up! Way down! Little bit up again. As LWON went to press, Bitcoin was either on the verge of another runaway valuation that would climb […]

The last word

May 28 – June 1 2018 This week, LWON guest contributor Robin Meija takes a look under the hood of the Puerto Rico death toll numbers – and finds something disturbing in the statistics  On a lighter note, do you like insane apocryphal philosophy and AI? Then you’ll love my story about Descartes’ robot daughter. […]