Real utopias (Psyche)
by William Paris
To many political thinkers, there’s no worse insult than “utopian.” But placing utopia in opposition to realism misses the point of imagining a better world: to seek out the limits of what’s possible.

The true horrors of the British Empire (The New Yorker)
by Sunil Khilnani
The British Empire cloaked brutality and torture in the language of liberal democracy. That ideology also fueled resistance from the colonized—and paved the way for both democratic governments and atrocities in the post-colonial era.

About those bugs in your candy (Knowable Magazine)
by Brittney J. Miller
Maybe you’ve heard that red food dyes are made from bugs. That’s often true. But now scientists are working to engineer new biological sources of long-treasured cochineal dye.

What can be saved from climate change? (GQ)
by Emily Atkin and Caitlin Looby
We know climate change is coming. The question is: how much? For people and other life around the world, from urban Pakistan to North America’s Inuit lands, the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees of warming could be immeasurable.

Is technology really making us depressed? (Wired)
by Manvir Singh
Does sitting on the couch scrolling social media make us sad, lonely, and lethargic? Maybe. But studies of people from the villages of the Amazon to the cities of Japan tell a more complicated story.

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