A story about Orcas and Humans.

“If you pen killer whales in a small steel tank, you are imposing an extreme level of sensory deprivation on them,” one longtime researcher says. “Humans who are subjected to those same conditions become mentally disturbed.”

This is the Muslim tradition of sci-fi and speculative fiction.

Western readers often overlook the Muslim world’s speculative fiction. I use the term quite broadly, to capture any story that imagines the implications of real or imagined cultural or scientific advances. Some of the first forays into the genre were the utopias dreamt up during the cultural flowering of the Golden Age. (…) We also have the Muslim world to thank for one of the first works of feminist science fiction. The short story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ (1905) by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, a Bengali writer and activist, takes place in the mythical realm of Ladyland.

Flashing together: when fireflies meet LEDs, the result is a beautiful lightshow.

Why a moratorium on microaggressions policies is needed.

Microaggression, like most and perhaps virtually all psychological constructs, such as intelligence, extraversion and schizophrenia, is what philosophers term an open concept, characterised by intrinsically fuzzy boundaries, an indeterminate list of indicators, and an unclear inner nature. Open concepts are not necessarily problematic. To the contrary, they often allow researchers to explore a poorly understood phenomenon in an open-ended way.

Douchebag: The White Racial Slur We’ve All Been Waiting For.

I am a white, middle class male professor at a big, public university, and every year I get up in front of a hundred and fifty to two hundred undergraduates in a class on the history of race in America and I ask them to shout white racial slurs at me.

The results are usually disappointing.

Farewell, we hardly knew ya.

Animals That Went Extinct In The 21st Century.

Testing for voter rigging in small polling stations.

We develop a statistical test to quantify the extent to which the results of a particular election display traces of voter rigging. Our key hypothesis is that small polling stations are more susceptible to voter rigging because it is easier to identify opposing individuals, there are fewer eyewitnesses, and interested parties might reasonably expect fewer visits from election observers.

The State of Pando 2017: Dropping the paywall on stories from the Silicon Valley Swamp.

As of today, we’re dropping our paywall on all stories that involve harassment, discrimination and any of the other swampy behavior plaguing Silicon Valley. Those stories will be available to anyone visiting Pando, without needing to pay a dime.

Women in Tech Speak Frankly on Culture of Harassment.

More than two dozen women in the technology start-up industry spoke to The Times in recent days about being sexually harassed. Ten of them named the investors involved, often providing corroborating messages and emails, and pointed to high-profile venture capitalists such as Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital and Dave McClure of 500 Startups.

25 Frauen, deren Erfindungen unser Leben verändern.

Die Gewinnerinnen des 25-Frauen-Awards von EDITION F stehen fest! Zum vierten Mal haben wir den Award verliehen. 2017 hat unsere Community gemeinsam mit der Expertenjury 25 Frauen ausgewählt, deren Erfindungen unsere Welt besser machen. Das sind sie!