Reading

As a longtime gym-goer, I am the target audience for all manner of protein-packed bullshit. Protein coffee? Can’t start the day without it. Protein salsa? Pass the chips. At the height of my weightlifting fixation, there were years when the friendly snake-oil salesmen at GNC got about half of my disposable income, which I happily traded for products with names like “Dr. Humongo’s Bicep Elixir.”

I am a world-class mark for the magic-bean vendors of the supplement industry. Ninety-nine out of one hundred people, when presented with a bottle of mysterious powder called “Gorilla Boost MAX” that claims to “supercharge your T levels,” will simply roll their eyes and walk away. I am the hundredth person. I will buy a year’s supply. And if you can pack ten grams of extra protein into a pretzel, a vinaigrette, or a glass of orange juice? Buddy, I’m reaching for my wallet.

“In a series of Situation Room meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts [about going to war with Iran] against the deep concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment. Here’s the inside story of how he made the fateful decision.”
— An excerpt from New York Times White House reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman’s forthcoming book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.

In recent hours, several unserious actors across the political and media spectrum have raised what they believe to be a profound question—namely, whether it is appropriate for a journalist to possess explosive information concerning presidential decision-making, the possible manufacture of consent for war in Iran, and internal assessments from the national security apparatus reportedly describing regime-change scenarios as “farcical,” and then allow that information to emerge in close temporal proximity to a preorder campaign.

For fifteen years or so, I’d been kicking around the idea of resurrecting the artist-apprentice model that reigned in the art world for hundreds of years.

Again and again, I’d heard from young people who lamented the astronomical and ever-rising cost of art school. For many college-level art programs, the total cost to undergraduates is now over $100,000 a year. I hope we can all agree that charging students $400,000 for a four-year degree in visual art is objectively absurd. And this prohibitive cost has priced tens of thousands of potential students out of even considering undertaking such an education.

For years, I mentioned this issue to friends in and out of the art world, and everyone, without exception, agreed that the system was broken. Even friends I know who teach at art schools agreed that the cost was out of control, and these spiraling costs were contributing to the implosion of many undergraduate and postgraduate art programs.

Whether you are a newcomer or you’ve lived there for years, learn to look closer and deepen your connection

- by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani

Read on Psyche

This Easter, 200 tech workers at DXC Technology struck across Australia. In an industry wracked with fear and layoffs, the strike is a much-needed antidote.

The post Big bank tech workers strike to reboot pay deal first appeared on Solidarity Online.

Where it is, and how it got there

The post The Mystery of Water on the Moon appeared first on Nautilus.

An interview with a loneliness researcher about the varieties of social isolation

The post The Costs of Feeling Lonely in a Crowd appeared first on Nautilus.

These scientists are proposing a new law of nature

The post Time Brings Order to the Universe appeared first on Nautilus.

We’ve come a long way since then

The post How Video Calling Worked Almost 100 Years Ago appeared first on Nautilus.

Calm down. I don’t necessarily see what all the fuss is about. In all honesty, I also read the Dread Lord Nyarlathotep’s post this morning and was surprised by it, same as you. We all know he’s the Crawling Chaos, and that title implies a certain degree of unpredictability. But even for him, his vow to “gorge on the carcass of humanity itself” unless his latest (albeit nebulous) demands are met is pretty intense. I can’t remember the last time that an elected US official said something so unconscionable and nightmarish.

Didn’t Nixon say something similar? No? Hmm.

Anyway. I’m not endorsing what the Dread Lord uttered in a series of cacophonous, guttural snarls and clicking noises at the press pool yesterday. I don’t think “wholesale existential negation” is a particularly effective geopolitical strategy under even the most normal circumstances.

After a top reporter at the BBC drew outrage for publishing a quote demanding Iran be nuked, she’s been revealed as a dedicated regime change activist whose career was launched by a CIA-founded propaganda network. Serious questions remain about the BBC’s editorial process.  On April 6, 2026, horrified social media users began drawing attention to an extraordinary statement allegedly provided to the BBC by a twenty-something Iranian: “About them hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or leveling Iran – […]

The post Senior BBC Iran reporter exposed as opposition activist first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Senior BBC Iran reporter exposed as opposition activist appeared first on The Grayzone.

McSweeney’s contributor Johanna Gohmann channels the chaos and charm of life with a toddler into All Toddlers Are Scorpios a hilarious astrology guide illustrated by cartoonist (and McSweeney’s contributor) Emily Flake.

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt today from the book’s opening chapter. All Toddlers Are Scorpios is out now and available at your nearest bookseller.

When my country attacked my country, I cheered with enthusiasm and gasped in horror. “Now they’d get what they deserved, those bastards,” I said in the angry tone of the men I’d watched in black-and-white movies about World War II. Then I beat my chest and wailed and tried to pull out my own hair like I’d seen my grandmother do when my grandfather died. Of two minds, two hearts, and two stomachs, I walked around the house in a frenzy until I settled in the kitchen to make a breakfast of hot black tea and Lucky Charms.

If you are not a pilot or a drone operator or a person having their house blown up, there is not a lot to do in a war. I refused to give up my routines, even as bombs destroyed everything around my aunt’s house and then everything around my uncle’s house and then everything around my niece’s house, empires of rubble spilling out where there used to be hospitals, playgrounds, schools. Rubble rubble rubble.

The struggle is real when word retrieval goes wrong: see what’s happening in the brain during tip-of-the-tongue moments

- Video by TED-Ed

Watch on Psyche

Our culture valorises the big, coherent self: reading Robert Musil helps me embrace the beauty of my no-self existence

- by Mette Leonard Høeg

Read on Aeon

The Crime and Policing Bill, which seeks to reinforce sections of the Public Order Act 1986, has had its third reading in the House of Lords and will soon become law. One crucial aspect of the legislation is policing the ostensible ‘cumulative disruption’ of protest. While not yet codified in law, forms of ‘cumulative disruption’ […]