Ephrat Livni

A mindfulness method for straight shooters, created by an outlaw novelist.

Som Vilaysack is an artsy engineer who has perhaps accidentally stumbled upon his greatest creation yet. He made an updatable map of the art world that shows the global scene at a glance.

About 100 years ago, when countries began considering the whole cosmos legal territory, the rules seemed simple. In 1919, an international law provision extended state air rights vertically, all the way to outer space, and that sufficed for a while.

You know when someone’s on your wavelength. Conversations go great. You get them, and they get you. It’s groovy. Now science is proving this concept’s more than metaphorical.

There’s no escaping profanity, which is why dictionaries can’t be precious. Editors have to include slurs, curses, and other offensive words in linguistic compilations because they’re responsible for keeping a cultural record that contains the good, the bad, and the ugly.

US Supreme Court justices are secular clerics of the highest order. The Constitution is their guiding document—a set of basic commandments—and textual analysis is their practice, used to dissect thorny moral issues. All share a reverence for the law: It would be impossible to get the gig without a religious devotion to its rule.

Tomasz Stepinski used to be focused on Mars, mapping its craters algorithmically. Now the astrophysicist and mathematician is into his home planet, Earth. His latest project is an incredibly detailed map of the US that shows shifting racial diversity down to the neighborhood.

At least two classic American novels illuminate Buddhism via the highway. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance both travel through the US with eastern influences. But Kerouac’s work represents Zen in action and Pirsig’s is more like a guide with Buddhist tips on life tinkering.

Listing, whether for practical or creative purposes, is liberating. When we write things down, our minds get organized, information solidifies, and from the murky depths of the unconscious emerges order.

What if you sat on a jury that wrongly convicted an innocent person of murder—all because of color crime-scene photos?

Picture the US president camping under the stars, huddled in blankets, sitting around a fire as a naturalist waxes poetic, explaining that Americans need the wilderness to retain their wonder and humility. But imagine this scene in black and white, or in sepia tone, because it happened long ago.

Rastafarianism is a religion, an idea, a sociopolitical movement, and an international pop culture phenomenon. For adherents, it’s a black-power Abrahamic faith with a reverence for ganja inspired by reefer houses of 1920s Harlem.

Legal pot businesses are still something of an oxymoron in the US. They exist, and are authorized in states where marijuana has been legalized medicinally or recreationally. But they are still not legal in the eyes of the US government’s purposes. Weird, right?

Nature is fine and all—you’re not against it. But you dig civilization and the finer things and don’t leave the city unless there’s some guarantee that everyone and everything you enjoy in your metropolis will be available on your exodus.

For all that can be said about this remarkable chapter of history, one thing is certain: we are living in a golden age of protest signs.

It’s great to talk straight. But life is complex, and logical articulations can often be inadequate, failing to express existence’s vastness, mysteries, and possibilities.

Posts of violent crimes have become an unfortunately common online phenomenon. The latest example was a video of the murder of 74-year-old Cleveland, Ohio resident Robert Godwin Sr., which was shared with the whole world via Facebook by Steve Stephens; he claimed the killing was a communication to his girlfriend.

This week was going to be huge for the new US Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch. He’s starting on the bench after contentious confirmation hearings and was expected to face a controversial church-and-state case immediately. But it looks like he could get a break, thanks to Missouri’s governor.

Plants are tuned in to acoustic vibrations, and they can hear when the vibes are good. The roots listen for signals of water to drink, according to scientists.

Donald Trump is a tweeter. Typically, he likes short, aggressive statements with no context. So it’s fitting that the first-ever political protest from space aimed a mean message at the US president in the form of a truncated quote.

Dear Friend,

US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not a pushover. She’s powerful and popular—the only judge known to Americans by a hip-hop moniker—and the Notorious RBG stands up for what she believes in.

Becoming a US Supreme Court justice is the highest honor in American law, a job that few lawyers would dare dream of, much less actually aspire to. Yet new junior justices have some very humble duties to fulfill.

Until the myth of the fountain of youth proves true, regenerative medicine is the best hope we’ve got for fixing failed body parts and, as a result, living longer. Scientists won’t be able to bottle forever. They are, however, working on engineering human cells, tissues, and organs that can repair themselves.