What America's earliest restaurants can teach us about America: "A History of Menus is a Menu of History" @luriethereal.bsky.social and @pudding.cool (Plus- Wolfgang Puck) Dig in: roughlydaily.com/2026/07/08/f...

100 years ago, we were obsessed with technology, immigration, women, work, and money. Sound familiar? "America, 1926: What a Forgotten 100-Year-Old Report Says About Who We Are" @dkthomp.bsky.social (Plus- sliced bread) Hear the echo: roughlydaily.com/2026/07/07/t...

How the fossil fuel industry turned the plan to solve climate change into a plan to save itself: "Carbon Captured" @propublica.org @drilledmedia.bsky.social (Plus- Raspberry Beret) Face facts: roughlydaily.com/2026/07/06/y...

We've been underestimating fungi: "Earth’s Underground Fungus Network Is So Gigantic That If You Stretched It Out, It Would Reach to Other Star Systems" @futurism.com (Plus- Spam) Muse on the mycorrhizal: roughlydaily.com/2026/07/05/i...

On the 250th birthday of the USA: "The Stars and Stripes In Found Photos" roughlydaily.com/2026/07/04/i...

When parties go way wrong: "America’s 150th Birthday Celebration Was Deemed the Nation’s ‘Greatest Flop.’ What Went Wrong With the Sesquicentennial?" @smithsonianmag.bsky.social (Plus- the Second Atlanta International Pop Festival) Rethinking recreation: roughlydaily.com/2026/07/03/i...

On what Trump could-- and should-- learn from Marcus Aurelius: "Of Stoicism and Stupor" @timothysnyder.bsky.social (Plus- "Don't Be Cruel") Back to basics: roughlydaily.com/2026/07/02/i...

The bane of unintended consequences: "New Ways to Poison an Entire Planet: The Legacy of Thomas Midgley, Jr." (Plus- the Tunguska Event) Interrogate inadvertent implications: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/30/m...

Diagnosing the disease that threatens us: "Corruption, Defined" @ericries.bsky.social (Plus- Arthur Andersen) Grappling with graft: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/28/o...

On a particular kind of commonplace book and staying centered: "How not to forget what matters" @henrikkarlsson.bsky.social (Plus- Captain Video and His Video Rangers) Contemplate contemplation: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/27/p...

All of the uncertainties we face notwithstanding, we already know much of what's coming in the 2030s: "The Futures We Can’t Avoid" @artkleiner.bsky.social (Plus- The Cyclone) Buckle up: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/26/t...

Nostalgia for the new isn't new: "Is the Twenty-First Century a Creative Void?" @yalereview.bsky.social (Plus- Bo Diddley) Rethinking repetition: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/25/s...

Revisiting Neil Postman's painfully prophetic 1992 "Technopoly": "A society that wants to understand itself probably wouldn't act like this" @mattdpearce.com (Plus- Ambrose Bierce) Introspect: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/24/t...

A natural response to antibiotic resistance: "New Type of Maggot Cleared by FDA as Medical Treatment" @medpagetoday.com (Plus- Alice Stewart) Rethinking remedies: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/23/s...

Not natural, not quite unnatural, the strange new rocks of the Anthropocene stretch the boundaries of geology: "What is this rock?" @aeon.co (Plus- William Logan) Ruminate on rocks: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/22/s...

Pending federal bills would fundamentally change the internet as we know it: "Trump Moves to Deeply Censor the Entire Internet" @joeonhere.bsky.social @futurism.com (Plus- the Constitution) Seek sanity: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/21/t...

Alan Jacobs and Erik Larson on Freeman Dyson: will our future be Napoleonic or Tolstoyan? @ayjay.bsky.social @erikjlarson.bsky.social (Plus- Jack Kilby) Contemplating culture: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/20/t...

As we approach the 250th "birthday" of the U.S., one of almost 200 nations, a consideration of "The State of the State" (Plus- Juneteenth) Contemplate "countries": roughlydaily.com/2026/06/19/a...

(Trying to) hold power to account: "It's 1381 and the peasants are revolting" (Plus- hot dogs for the KIng and Queen) Politics by other means: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/11/i...

Fun for the whole family! "'Descartes Against Humanity' and Other Games Designed by Famous Philosophers" @mcsweeneys.net (Plus- Bernard Williams) Play: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/10/w...

A few years ago, AI-as-we've-come-to-know-it was still just an idea. Today, it's everywhere. And it has moved into kids' lives faster than anyone at the time imagined. A sober look at the state of play: www.commonsensemedia.org/research/a-c...

An elegantly-illustrated celebration of the engineering around us: "Mechanical Pencil" (Plus- the Automat) Muse on the mechanical: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/09/s...

Awareness of the relationality of all being is a response to the planet in crisis: "What Might The Next Axial Age Look Like?" @noemamag.com (Plus- Gustavo Gutiérrez) Speculate on sea change: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/08/t...

The mysteries of the massive: "The Mind-Boggling Science of Enormous Numbers" @danfalk.bsky.social @richardelwes.bsky.social @undark.org (Plus- Alan Turing) Enumerating enormity: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/07/t...

Solar flares could wreak havoc on Earth; scientists are speculating on a defense: "Radical proposal would block solar storms with orbital ‘airbag’" @science.org (Plus- Godfried Wendelen) Apply sunscreen: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/06/h...

After the rise, the fall: "The Quintessential Old-School Las Vegas Buffet Bids Farewell" @bloomberg.com (Plus- Edwin Traisman) Go back for seconds: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/05/t...

The latest World Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders is, to put it mildly, concerning: "Mapped: Press Freedom Around the World in 2026," @voronoiapp.bsky.social (Plus- The Pulitzer Prizes) Challenge censorship in all of its configurations: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/04/a...

Thinking-- and preparing for-- the unthinkable: "What to Do As the World Falls Apart: A Framework for Action" @natehagens.bsky.social @inevernu.bsky.social (Plus- the Academy of the Distrustful) Facing up to it: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/03/b...

The history of city planning and how urban design intertwines with a society’s prognostications and projections: "Where Did the Future Go?" @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social (Plus- Rome, sacked) Understanding the urban: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/02/a...

Fooling around with figures of speech- the simile: "Comparisons as Predictable as the Sunrise" @pudding.cool (Plus- Kirwan, phlogiston, and bugs) Analyze the analogical: roughlydaily.com/2026/06/01/a...

The Enlightenment is under attack by both the Right and the Left. If it can be "saved" it's through its greatest legacy- permanent critique: "Flickering Enlightenment" @elianeglaser.bsky.social @aeon.co (Plus- Haydn) Reclaiming reason: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/31/c...

Colin McGinn on why we ask "what if things had been different?": "Counterfactuals" (Plus- Krypton) Dive into differences and the differences they might make: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/30/c...

Climate change is, of course, here. While we must continue to mitigate, we must also adapt: "The near-term future of climate adaptation: emerging trends" (Plus- White Christmas") Preparing and responding: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/29/a...

Revered in the world of math; outside of it, known for his unusual life, if at all: "How Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics," @kkakaes.bsky.social @quantamagazine.bsky.social (Plus- Frank Drake) Studying shape: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/28/p...

On the (maybe surprisingly) quick-- and quickening-- pace of progress: "How Long Do We Wait for New Inventions?" @constructionphysics.skystack.xyz (Plus- W. W. Hansen) Analyzing advance: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/27/g...

For a century, they were crucial to computing-- and a regular part of everyday life: "Punch Cards for Data Processing" (Plus- Gerald Hawkins and Stonehenge) Contemplate chads: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/26/d...

A physicist argues that our universe is more than the sum of its particles: "Reality Emerges" @aeon.co (Plus- Jack Steinberger) Musing on materialization: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/25/r...

Amidst the flimflam of early drug markets, Shakers stood for purity- a brand others were eager to exploit: "A Trusted Name in a Dubious Drug Market" from @jstordaily.bsky.social (Plus- Manhattan) Heating history rhyme: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/24/i...

On the quintessentially-American fowl: "Turkey" @swordsjew.bsky.social (Plus- the actual first Thanksgiving) Gobble: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/13/t...

A classic "mirror of princes" and what it offers us today: "The Epic of the Fear of Death" @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social (Plus- the world's oldest seat of learning) Reach back: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/12/s...

The future of Western forests depends on professionals slowly being starved out of existence: "The plight of the pinecone cowboy" @highcountrynews.org (Plus- Glacier National Park) Treasure trees: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/11/t...

Fewer and fewer winners take more and more of the pot. The new mechanics of concentration: "AI is Eating Markets" @paulkedrosky.com (Plus- Mother's Day: the rest of the story) Contemplating concentration: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/10/g...

On gray literature, Webster’s Timeline History books, and computerized curation: "The First Tomato to Know Everything" @sosallyo.bsky.social @cabinetmagazine.bsky.social (Plus- Mother's Day proclaimed) Hold on to the human: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/09/e...

The Socratic Method and the importance of recognizing and responding to the times in which we live: "Socrates is Mortal" (Plus- David Hume) Inhabiting our moment: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/07/i...

How does one become a person? "We" before "I": "To be is to participate" @aeon.co (Plus- Kenneth Spence) Get together: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/06/t...

An optimistic look at what AI could mean: "Hooray! Post-Fordism Is Finally Here!" (Plus- Andrew Meikle) Resolving to remain rosy: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/05/a...

"Ultrafinitism" rejects the infinite. Long dismissed as mathematical heresy, it nonetheless produces new insights: "What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?" @gregbarber.bsky.social @quantamagazine.bsky.social (Plus- Isaac Barrow) Engaging the endless: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/04/s...

Mapping real-world scenarios to the science fiction stories that explored them first: the Extrapolated Futures Archive (Plus- Charles Fort) Ponder prescience: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/03/t...

Learning from "The Ignorant Art Historian" (Plus- The Second of May 1808) Appreciate art: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/02/t...

What is it like to be an idea? "Ideas are Alive and You are Dead," @theseedsofscience.skystack.xyz via @mastroianni.bsky.social (Plus- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) Pondering panpsychism: roughlydaily.com/2026/05/01/b...