The 89 people who work at Buffer, a company that makes social-media management tools, are used to having an unconventional employer. Everyone’s salary, including the CEO’s, is public. All employees work remotely; their only office closed down six years ago. And as a perk, Buffer pays for any books employees want to buy for themselves.

Following my bleating about the ethical complexities of milk, I have been experimenting with plant-based options, prompted by many helpful suggestions from non-dairy evangelists. This has involved numerous sacrifices to the dark lord Tetra Pak, and the kind of side-effects you see on medicine packaging: nausea, dysphagia and vomiting. I’m ultra-sensitive to tannin, but addicted to tea, and plant milks do not seem to neutralise its nausea-inducing effect the way cow’s milk does.

The security guru Bruce Schneier once famously observed that “surveillance is the business model of the internet”. Like all striking generalisations it was slightly too general: it was strictly true only if by “the internet” you meant the services of a certain number of giant tech companies, notably those of Facebook (including WhatsApp and Instagram), Google (including YouTube), Twitter and Amazon.

In our apartment in central Beijing, we fight a daily rearguard action against entropy. The mirror on my wardrobe came off its hinges six months ago and is now propped up against the wall, one of many furnishing casualties. Each of our light fittings takes a different bulb, and a quarter of them are permanently broken. In the bedroom, the ceiling-high air-conditioning unit runs its moisture through a hole knocked in the wall, stuffed with an old cloth to avoid leakage, while the balcony door, its sealant rotted, has a towel handy to block the rain when it pours through.

Whatever the UFO report says, it’s time to set some rules for talking to extraterrestrials

I believe colonial revolutionary Thomas Paine was mistaken in believing himself a godly man. Most of what he wrote reads like pure atheism to me.

Former hedge fund manager, host of CNBC’s "Mad Money" and investment guru Jim Cramer declared in January of last year he was “done with fossil fuels… we’re in the death knell phase. They’re tobacco.” Not everyone was so sure about this at that time — but now there’s no disputing it. Fossil fuels are definitively the new tobacco, and we are witnessing a historic moment in real-time: The end of the fossil fuel age. Here are the latest markers of the fossil fuel industry’s accelerating implosion.

Commentary: The Pentagon's upcoming UFO report has people excited about alien spacecraft, but don't expect to meet extraterrestrials anytime soon. We've been Naruto-running headfirst into an extraterrestrial epidemic. A much-anticipated unclassified report, expected to be delivered to the US Congress later this month, has sparked renewed interest in UFOs, alien visitation and government cover-ups. The report, written by a crack team of experts from the Pentagon, the FBI and the Office of Naval Intelligence, is expected to feature evidence of "unidentified aerial phenomena," or UAP.

Phil Mickelson just won the P.G.A. Championship at age 50. Tom Brady won the Super Bowl at 43. Serena Williams is a top tennis star at 39. Joe Biden entered the presidency at 78. Last year Bob Dylan released an excellent album at 79.

The COVID-19 pandemic is shifting the shape of population in countries around the world, both in lives lost and in babies not born. We are becoming fewer even faster than before. More than a year after governments closed borders, shut down businesses and ordered people to stay home, the latest data show significant declines in fertility in some countries – declines that could become permanent. At the other end of life, so many people have died prematurely that life expectancy has gone down in some countries. This pandemic will influence the demographic makeup of countries, including Canada, for years to come.

Search online “work too much” and you’ll get screenfuls of information about the harmful medical, mental and social consequences of spending too much time on the job, going all the way back to that old saw first recorded in the 17th century, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Life as depicted in George Orwell’s 1984 “could come to pass in 2024” if lawmakers don’t protect the public against artificial intelligence, Microsoft’s president has warned. Speaking to BBC's Panorama, Brad Smith said it will be "difficult to catch up” with the rapidly advancing technology. The programme explores China’s increasing use of AI to monitor its citizens.

American capitalism is premised on many lies. None is more pernicious than the lie that it’s possible to deserve great wealth. This lie is the most necessary one — if people stop believing it, the entire system will crumble. This is ​“The Big Lie,” and it makes a lie about a single presidential election look like a minor gripe in comparison.

A few weeks ago, Apple dropped its long-promised bombshell on the data-tracking industry. The latest version (14.5) of iOS – the operating system of the iPhone – included a provision that required app users explicitly to confirm that they wished to be tracked across the internet in their online activities. At the heart of the switch is a code known as “the identifier for advertisers” or IDFA.

Of the three kinds of people that exist in 2021, two - people who wear masks properly and people who don't wear them at all, are not very interesting. The former are doing what everyone should be and the latter will win their very own Darwin Awards someday. However, the third kind are rather perplexing. They wear masks on their face but don't bother to cover their noses and/or mouths with it. What's unique about these folks?

The UK creates clean energy systems at home, while shackling poorer nations with dirty fossil fuels – now is the time for rich countries to support Africa’s clean energy transition, writes Mohamed Adow.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX just won a $2.9bn Nasa contract to land astronauts on the moon, beating out Jeff Bezos. The money isn’t a big deal for either of them. Musk is worth $179.7bn. Bezos, $197.8bn. Together, that’s almost as much as the bottom 40% of Americans combined.

Should humans care whether all creatures live good lives, even in the forests or jungles? A group of philosophers and scientists has an unorthodox answer.

As low-orbit satellite internet providers, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink, begin testing their services, security analysts recognize the potential disruption these systems could cause to authoritarian regimes as people start accessing an open and uncensored internet. In countries like Russia, China, and North Korea, where information dominance and control are essential to the regime’s survival, low-orbit internet satellites could pose a significant challenge.

Life expectancy at birth in the United States today is 78.6 years. Life expectancy at birth in Japan today is 84.5; in Singapore, 85.1; in Switzerland, 84.3; France, 83.1; in Germany, 80.9. U.S. life expectancy is on a par with Poland, Tunisia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Albania; below Peru, Colombia, Chile, Jordan, and Sri Lanka; and only a year greater than China.