Distorts

In last week’s inaugural Swift Notes, I wrote about how in the past year Taylor Swift has been popping up in unexpected places, from crafting to debates about grammar. I was surprised to find her in a recent newsletter from the wonderful songwriter Phil Elverum, AKA Mount Eerie (and previously the Microphones), about his frustrating attempts to be heard in a Washington State government hearing on a bill proposing regulation of the ticketing market. (Sign up here – he writes really beautiful missives.)Ticketing has been an…

Columbia University in New York City.Photo: Mark Lennihan (AP)Journalists like me often seek out academics for comment and insight on stories related to the energy transition, since these professors have often done in-depth research into various fuel sources and their impacts. The hope is that these sources are relatively unbiased; their loyalty is to the data. But a study published Thursday in Nature Climate Change found that prominent energy policy centers at top-tier universities that are funded by the fossil fuel…

Since time immemorial, humans have looked to the heavens above to make sense of life below, right here on Earth. What else is out there among all the countless galaxies, stars and planets? Are we truly alone in the universe? Such questions are crucial for establishing humanity’s cosmic context and have inspired a variety of speculative answers from a wide range of philosophical and scientific traditions. Buddhists believe in different Buddhas living in different worlds. The Greek atomists also believed in the plurality of…