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Crypto and Cannabis Are the Perfect Post-Crisis Bubbles  Robo-traders and index funds may have taken over most of the stock market, but the psychology of bubbles is still strong. Why Alibaba is betting big on AI chips and quantum computing Meet the man behind Alibaba’s gamble on emerging tech. These are the world’s biggest property…

Internet Giants: Who Owns Who on the Web This ongoing consolidation has created a vast web of subsidiaries, providing each parent organization with additional insurance in maintaining their position at the top of the digital food chain. The currency of the future is personal data The line between data and money is dissolving. It’s too…

Prisons are switching to ebooks—but that’s not a good thing Books that are donated by nonprofits or sent by families are free for inmates. Ebooks are not. How tech jobs helped Rust Belt become house-flipping hotspot Today, old industrial cities such as Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Cleveland are among those offering the greatest returns. They have…

Scientists Gave MDMA to Octopuses—and What Happened Was Profound Despite our vastly different brains, social behavior is built into the very molecules coded by our DNA, Dölen explained. An octopus doesn’t have a cortex, and doesn’t have a reward circuit, and yet it’s able to respond to MDMA and produce the same effects, in an…

Burning Man’s Mathematical Underbelly Burning Man began in 1986, when a group of people (who would argue endlessly over any finite list of their names) decided to assemble annually on a San Francisco beach and burn a wooden human effigy. I went inside the NYC napping lounge where people are paying up to $250 a…

The power of cataloging your creative influences Committing to writing a list of influences and inspirations can help us clarify our pasts and show us potential paths for the future. Why Seclusion Is the Enemy of Creativity Leadership can be similarly isolating. Pontoromo let the consequences of self-imposed solitude undermine his legacy, and if leaders…

Japan is about to start testing the feasibility of a space elevator — starting with a small model in orbit On September 11, a team from Shizuoka University’s Faculty of Engineering will be launching a scale model of a space elevator into Earth orbit. She made the discovery, but a man got the Nobel. A…

Reinventing Museums for the Digital Generation Museums are reinventing themselves to keep abreast with the times and stay relevant in a digital world. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, known as the Penn Museum, is no exception. The rise of machine learning in astronomy When mapping the universe, it pays to have some…

Crypto Nomads Seek Proof of Nipple in Thailand So it’s no surprise that the city is a natural fit for cryptocurrencies and blockchain. WHY CURIOSITY MATTERS When our curiosity is triggered, we think more deeply and rationally about decisions and come up with more-creative solutions. Commute Discrimination Is a Thing A recent study finds that…

Not enough people are paying attention to this economic trend The idea today that anyone would need to be pitched on why software is a legitimate investment seems unimaginable, but a lot has changed since the 1980s. It’s time the way we think about the economy does, too. A Brief History and Evolution of Electric…