Articles 2026
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Virtual Worlds
Works in Progress, September 08, 2026
10 Mins The massively multiplayer online game was created in the 1980s.
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How Amsterdam invented the fire department
Works in Progresss, July 01, 2026
Two Dutch brothers invented a system that transformed a city previously ravaged by fires,
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Engineering the Disposable Diaper
Works in Progress, April 24, 2026
Benjamin Spock told mothers in the mid-twentieth century to buy six dozen cloth diapers and a covered pail. Within a decade, both were obsolete.
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How TV learned to sell itself
Sports solved a problem that nearly killed television.
Works in Progress, March 11, 2026
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The Renaissance book that heralded growth
9 Mins Long before modern science, Europeans learned to see their own time as an age of invention rather than decline.
Works in Progress, December 23, 2025
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Lawn-Sign Liberalism vs. Supply-Side Progressivism
Review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Reason, March 18, 2025
"Supply-side progressives" like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are ultimately technocrats, not libertarians. But they recognize that more is better than less and that a good society is not zero-sum.
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The World of Tomorrow
Works in Progress, December 2024
When the future arrived, it felt… ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?
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We Still Live in the Physical World
Review of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, by Christine Rosen
Reason, September 10, 2024
The digital world has not effaced our humanity, no matter what social critics like Christine Rosen say.
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Libraries of Matter
Works in Progress, August 29, 2024
Libraries contain books, yes. But they also contain latex rubber, carbon fiber fabrics, and graphene aerogel. And in some materials libraries you can cut, cast, drill, sand, scrape, and sculpt too.
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Tipping culture is out of control. Trump and Harris would make it worse
Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2024
American tipping culture is poised to get even more intense. In a rare case of bipartisan agreement, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both advocate exempting tips from federal income taxes.