Drones, data, technological anxiety, and much, much more.
Lately, I've been spending a lot of time analyzing, reporting on, and researching the horrifying global uptick in the use of small, cheap, short-range drones to intentionally target and kill civilians - a a type of aerial violence that has become exponentially more common since early 2024. I
Over the last two weeks, I've made many improvements to my map of targeted small drone attacks on civilians from across the world. You should go look at them. These improvements include: Something like 2000+ new cases of small drone attacks on civilians from the Ukraine conflict, which
If I had to pick one overarching theme to describe our current global moment, it'd have to be "shamelessness." The concept of shame, or the lack thereof, comes up in a lot in the research work I've been doing on how combatants are increasingly
Around the world, armed groups are intentionally killing civilians with small, inexpensive drones. And they're committing these murders at totally unprecedented rates. The figures, when they're available, are sobering. Per data from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), 577 civilians were killed and
In 2025, many people don't just believe that Online is of equal importance to Offline. They believe that Online is the only place that really matters at all. I look into how the Internet and AI are encouraging more and more people to deny reality itself.
The USA has officially banned the import of all foreign made drones and "critical components." I explain what happened, and why this will only hurt American interests.
To get to drones, we needed to learn to fly first. And throughout the generations upon generations that were required to get humanity into the air, that process often involved a lot of very hands-on experimentation. Earlier in this series, I discussed the tragic fate of the French tailor
There is something deeply rooted in our psyche that is both appalled and fascinated by the prospect of a human being flying like a bird, by this act that is both deeply unnatural and has also become, over the course of about 120 years, totally pedestrian for us jaded residents
Staring into the mysterious depths of a sacred water-filled cup. Lighting a match in front of a mirror round' midnight. Pondering an orb at the top of a sweet-looking tower. These atmospheric activities all involve objects that humans have, at some point, believed could be used by
There is something creepy about mirrors, an otherworldly and fascinating quality that writers and thinkers have returned to repeatedly throughout the ages. When I was about four, my grandmother, a scientifically-minded type, took me into their master bathroom and directed my attention to the mirrors on the closet, which
Humanity has long dreamed of being able to see everything around us. From the perspective of a bird. From the perspective of a god. From the perspective of a vast network of god-like eyes. Today, we have constructed tools, like drones and satellites and airplanes, that allow us to
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, back when I was a mere dweeby child, there existed a tween-driven online social movement against the cruel practice of abusing pets. This movement was not about the abuse of living, flesh and blood pets (although I'm sure its proponents
Whenever drones pop up in the news, whenever they buzz unnervingly again into popular perception, people ask me what I think about these latest developments on social media. Most of the time, and regardless of the precipitating drone-related event in the news, they're about the same questions,
In modern times, we have democratized the formerly inhuman god's eye view. We have extended to everyone the steely gaze of a god peering down upon the activities of mortals from a celestial perch, or the exalted viewpoint of an emperor regarding his holdings from the vertical fastness
In the early morning hours of July 4th, as the Guadalupe River reached catastrophic heights, city officials in Kerr County, Texas turned to an all-too familiar mechanism for getting the word out to area residents: Facebook. While the National Weather Service had been issuing warnings across multiple platforms about