On a near-daily basis, data is being used to narrate our lives. Categorizing algorithms drawn from amassed personal data to assign narrative destinies to individuals at crucial junctures, simultaneously predicting and shaping the paths of our lives. Data is commonly assumed to bring us closer to objectivity, but the narrative paths these algorithms assign seem, more often than not, to replicate…
At the end of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born Australian citizen. Resettling in America, they swore eternal fidelity, but also (each a survivor of a divorce, Enough said) swore never, ever, to get married. But when providence intervened in the form of the US government, they faced a stark choice: either marry, or Felipe could never return to the US. …
I have no sort of objection now to telling the whole story. The subscribers, of course, have a right to know what became of their money. The astronomers may as well know all about it, before they announce any more asteroids with an enormous movement in declination. And experimenters on the longitude may as well know, so that they may act advisedly in attempting another brick moon or in re…