A browsable archive of all book and non-book reviews from the annual Astral Codex Ten review contest. This archive is maintained by Rob Ennals and is not officially endorsed by either Astral Codex Ten or the authors of the reviews.
The Tupinambá people ate their enemies. This fact scared Hans Staden, a German explorer who was captured by Tupinambá warriors in 1554, when they caught him by surprise during a hunting expedition....
> “Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” - Winston Churchill > > “There exists in such a case a certain institution or...
As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, he’d won World War II. His proximity fuse intercepted hundreds of V-1s and destroyed thousands of tanks, carving a path for Allied...
If you’ve been following this blog for long, you probably know at least a bit about pharmaceutical research. You might know a bit about the sort of subtle measures pharmaceutical companies take to...
Ollantay is a three-act play written in Quechua, an indigenous language of the South American Andes. It was first performed in Peru around 1775. Since the mid-1800s it’s been performed more often,...
As a child I hated mashed potatoes, despite his evangelization of them. I too was a picky eater growing up, but I would occasionally attempt to see what he saw in his beloved spuds. Whenever I tried...
> “The scientific paper is a ‘fraud’ that creates “a totally misleading narrative of the processes of thought that go into the making of scientific discoveries.”
 Commentariat is defined as the 24,485 individuals other than Scott who have contributed to the corpus of work of Scott’s blog posts, chiefly by leaving comments at the...
— Arthur Steinberg, American Federation of Teachers‑PA, reacting to Alpha’s cyber‑charter bid, January 2025
When the prefect of Alexandria’s daughter converted to Christianity, nothing in particular happened - it wasn’t as though the laws outlawing the cult would be enforced against her. She was smart, she...
Relevant context: I play jazz saxophone at a high level.
In February of 1978, the sad young man went away. The algorithm that replaced him could pass for human, when it wanted to. It gave occasional interviews and was the subject of a documentary; by all...
We will complete our series on Joanna Newsom’s music with the analysis of a single sentence from the last track of her last album. Heretofore our study has consisted of describing the emotions,...
So I thought I’d do a little Dylan outreach, some very gentle proselytizing. I’m going to take a rather short and straightforward song, as Dylan songs go, and lay its majesty out before you.
Every few weeks I go to a public space, lay on the ground with strangers, and let crystal singing bowls carry me off into bliss.
When I was a little kid, I had some recordings of the Dr. Demento Show that I listened to a great many times. Dr. Demento is a radio (and in recent years, internet) DJ who specialized in parody and...
that played in the arena during a timeout in the second quarter of a historically sad professional basketball game.
Changeling: I know. The entire burden of the Earth is weighing you down…