While reading something on Wikipedia’s app the other day, I noticed a little box in the top right corner with the number 173 in it. Curious, I clicked on it, and was presented with 173 Wikipedia pages that I’d viewed since installing the app.

I casually flicked through them — Jake LaMotta, the Regency Era, Troy Newman, Somebody Feed Phil — and wondered how much information I could remember from them. I chose the Regency Era and tried to recall its defining characteristic — nope. I tried to remember why Troy Newman was famous enough to have his own Wikipedia…

In the aftermath of the Capitol Building being stormed by frenzied, fanatical Trump supporters—an act not seen since the British breach over 200 years ago—empathising with them seems impossible. How can a sane, ethical person put themselves in the shoes of someone so batty and immoral; so dangerously flammable; so maddeningly illogical? And should we even bother?

America has never been so divided. Before the internet, extreme political views were spread through pamphlets, newspapers, radio and television shows, and the occasional book. Today, we can access them wherever we go. They’re the subtle lie in a humorous meme, shared by…

Put the word “routine” into a thesaurus, and you’ll be presented with dreary synonyms such as unremarkable, plain, and conventional. You might personally conjure adjectives such as ordinary, monotonous, and tedious, and happen to be someone who considers routine as appealing as a turd baguette.

And yet, routine could also be a synonym for human existence. We’re obliged to repeat the same processes day in day out, whether it’s the repetitive tasks of our job, emptying the infernal dishwasher, or mindlessly scrolling through Netflix like a member of the undead. …

If I catch sight of a dark cloud, I usually check the weather radar for incoming rain. I’m rarely going anywhere — umbrellas and waterproof jackets aren’t a concern, I just really want to know whether it’ll rain, and check the radar with the frequency of an addict. Such is my desire to know whether the clouds on the horizon will wet my local area.

There isn’t a person on earth who could tear me away from my beloved radar. It’s one of countless services that the Internet has bombarded me with, instantly accessible, and satisfying my craving for information…

When you’re listening to a song, do you skip the middle part because you’re desperate to hear the end? Or when you’re eating a meal, do you wolf it down because you can’t wait to reach the final bite?

Me neither. It’s sacrificing the joy of the experience. Living with the end in mind. But according to British philosopher Alan Watts, this is exactly how many of us live.

In 1951, while Watts was teaching comparative philosophy and psychology in San Francisco, he published a short 150-page book called The Wisdom of Insecurity, which was a distillation of his philosophical…

The internet has allowed anyone with a computer to publish their ideas online, many lacking the expertise, research skills, or objectivity to produce quality information. The result is a deluge of blogs, “news,” social posts, videos, and podcasts, impeccably designed and posted on authoritative-looking websites, tricking us into believing that the ideas are credible.

Information quality has never been so important. The rise of dangerous ideas such as climate change denial, anti-vaxxing, and the authenticity of COVID-19 are a result of people believing misinformation, and as it becomes harder to separate the wheat from the chaff, it also becomes harder…

A man is wrongfully imprisoned for murder, and as he descends into his cot for the first time, with the clang of steel echoing in his ears, he hopes.

He hopes that his lawyer will be able to get a retrial. He hopes that his wife will remain faithful to him, and that his daughter will forgive him for leaving. He hopes that he won’t get shanked in the prison yard. Closed in by walls on every side, hope becomes his guiding light—his escape from the horror of a new and unjust reality. But does it do him good?

Camus…

Lolita is old enough and infamous enough to be known as a story of unhinged peadophilia. But it’s also a beautiful and depressing love story, with a tortured antagonist who despite his crimes, and due to the skill of the book’s author Vladimir Nabokov, we can eventually empathise with.

The plot focuses on peadophile Humbert Humbert — a handsome, French-born intellectual on the one hand, and unapologetic sexual predator on the other. His double name reflects his double life. He lies so much that you can’t tell front from back, allowing him to disguise his perversion behind a robust facade…