Early in the morning of March 14, famed technologist Elon Musk made waves on Twitter by posting his Ukrainian-themed “I support the current thing” meme. As controversial memes are wont to do, off it happily galloped into the land of virality. Memes are fascinating vessels of comic content but what…

When Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau announced the imminent sweep of his government’s Emergency Act on February 14, he stood before Parliament — several stone-faced, mask-clad public officials fidgeting behind him and in soft, schoolmarm tones he proceeded to spin webs of language silk to frame a story of unprovoked…

I have waxed lyrical in the past on the hypnotically dreamy childhood experience, in which hungry curiosity mingled with innocent delight. As children we encountered the world with fresh eyes, a thin slate of preconceptions, and shameless pleasure. As adults it is easy to to lose this somatic consciousness, this…

The tech revolution that has bowed our heads to our smartphones and unfurled reality onto the virtual plane is imbued with all the mythic dualism of good and evil. One side is a light-dappled frontier of beautiful freedom; the other side an inky, rigidified specter of enslavement and exploitation. Sound…

Battling uncertainty, inefficiency, and non-alignment — We know what biological inflammation is — flare-ups of pain and swelling running the gamut from quotidian activities like skinning your knee to hospital-plopping ailments like pneumonia. The word ‘inflammation’ surfaces in medical offices with doctors scrunching up their faces in benevolent concern as they catalog its dangers to their…

Ever since Benjamin Franklin’s infamous 1754 “Join or Die” debut, political cartoons have remained an American pastime, ironically serving as both welcome diffusers of political tension and galvanizers of activist sentiment. The historical luckiness of our ability to poke fun (and holes of irrationality!) in the regimes of our day…

I have long suspected that the sheer endurance of religion through millennia is a powerful stamp of validation to the idea of God. In this time-lapse view of humanity, the collective-unconscious shines through. Put aside your rhetorical arsenal for a moment, that lawyer-like impulse to pipe up with some sharp-edged…

One of the intellectually enjoyable questions of the free society is how it must mediate the competing demands of order and liberty. The democratic state has long made these complicated trade-offs between freedom and security that end up shaping culture, psychology, and generations of political thought. To entertain this age-old…

It’s that time of the year again: A fresh calendar awaits us, the clean sweep of unlived months. Many of us eye the new year with a fusion of excitement and relief. Why? It is a container of hope. It is a placeholder for all that we wish to be…