I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Sherwood News: "Last year, observers detected an anomaly on the daily balance sheet of the US Treasury Department: a $7 billion estate- and gift-tax payment. John Ricco, now an analyst at Yale University’s Budget Lab, first spotted the huge receipt. “The degree by which this payment exceeds
From The Warzone: "Details about the weapons in America’s nuclear arsenal, especially regarding their warheads, remain some of the most secretive elements America’s nuclear weapons enterprise. There is no better example of this than a material that the US Department of Energy has used to build thermonuclear
From LitHub: "Not only was Mark Twain (née Samuel Langhorne Clemens on this day in 1835) an inventor of good stories and witty rejoinders, he was a literal inventor—of both successful and not-so-successful items. Over the course of his life, he registered three patents: the first, in 1871,
From The Guardian: "A fugitive father and his three children have been spotted together for the first time in nearly three years, along the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Just before Christmas 2021, Tom Phillips fled into the Waikato wilderness with his children Ember, now 8,
From the FT: "There was nothing to suggest that October 22 1966 would be anything other than a typically dismal Saturday at Wormwood Scrubs, a dingy Victorian prison in north-west London. Late that afternoon, inmate 455 told a guard that the idea of spending his free time watching TV
From Amusing Planet: "Joseph Pujol was born in Marseille, on the Cote d'Azur in 1857. The son of a stonemason and sculptor, Pujol discovered his unique talent when he was only ten years old. Pujol soon found that by adjusting the force with which he expelled this
From the Sunday Times: "At 18, he graduates from high school with excellent grades but is unemployable. He moves into an annexe, is looked after by a rotating team of carers and spends much of his time deeply absorbed in World of Warcraft, his right hand resting awkwardly on
From Science.org: "In 2016, when the U.S. Congress unleashed a flood of new funding for Alzheimer’s disease research, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) tapped veteran brain researcher Eliezer Masliah as a key leader for the effort. He took the helm at the agency’s Division
From Nautilus: "If we ever contact extraterrestrials, we’ll have to find a way to understand them. Who are they? What are their intentions? What have they discovered that we haven’t? Olaf Witkowski thinks the only way to begin that dialogue is to try and kill them. Clearly,
From the BBC: "The world’s longest treasure hunt appears to have come to an end, after an announcement in France that a buried statuette of a golden owl has finally been unearthed - after 31 years. The message was posted by Michel Becker, who illustrated the original Chouette
From The Smithsonian: "In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “Wild Bill” Donovan, the leader of the Office of Strategic Services told his scientists to find a way to outfox the Axis enemies. In response, the scientists produced a number of dirty tricks, including explosive pancake
From MIT Tech Review: "Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov hates going to the front line. The risks terrify him. But to perform his particular self-appointed role in the Russia-Ukraine war, he believes it’s critical to exchange the relative safety of his suburban home north of the capital for places where