by Nick Kolakowski | Mar 3, 2022 | Pop Culture
The fishing village on Japan’s northeastern coast existed until a few minutes past 8 p.m. on June 15, 1896, when the people inside their wooden houses opened their eyes to darkness — and a rumbling noise drowned out the sound of dogs barking, the crackle of fires...
by Nick Kolakowski | Feb 1, 2022 | Pop Culture
So I decided to kill someone with a drone. In fiction, I mean. It was a crucial moment in the writing of my novel “Love & Bullets.” One of the protagonists, an Elvis-loving assassin with a penchant for fast food and navel-gazing, had to wipe out a...
by Nick Kolakowski | Jan 11, 2022 | Pop Culture
As a writer and editor who focuses largely on tech, I was instantly intrigued a few years back when OpenAI, the nonprofit ostensibly designed to prevent A.I. from being used in terrible ways, announced that it had created a “large-scale unsupervised language model”...
by Nick Kolakowski | Jan 9, 2022 | Pop Culture
The speculative-fiction writer Philip K. Dick used amphetamines and other stimulants to transform himself into a 24/7 writing machine. Powered by chemicals, he churned out 28 novels and more than 132 short stories (many of which used drugs as subject matter, including...
by Nick Kolakowski | Jan 8, 2022 | Pop Culture
The story of Napoleon in Egypt remains noteworthy for several reasons. First, it is a key examine of how, even if its tactical system is superb enough to decisively win battles, an army can still lose a campaign if its grand strategy is fatally flawed. If you want...
by Nick Kolakowski | Jan 6, 2022 | Pop Culture
The animals could feel it coming. The early hours of April 18, 1906 reportedly filled with the frightened barking of dogs and horses’ panicked neighs. But people have duller senses, and San Francisco, with its half-million residents, slept on until the huge earthquake...