Ten years after Wall Street’s doomsday, how the financial meltdown broke the modern world and left us living in this one.

High-profile figures on both side of the debate now say a no-deal Brexit is more likely than not. By Olivia Goldhill.

The Carol Burnett Show

It's common among a certain group of historians to call the 20th century "the American century," named for the political superpower that dominated it. Americans especially revel in the phrase... By Gaius Publius.

MaryLinda Moss took on the role of lead hostage negotiator inside the Silver Lake Trader Joe's when a gunman entered the store wounded. By Robin Abcarian.

My conclusion is that in a colonized universe the probability of the annihilation of the human race could actually rise rather than fall. By Phil Torres.

People are now placing bets on whether public figures will be assassinated on decentralized prediction market Augur. By David Floyd.

A few of them have already tested positive for a specific, deadly virus. By Josie Rhodes Cook.

The increasingly direct road to ruin. By Andrew Cockburn.

Artificial intelligence isn’t sexy. I would know. By Lt. Richard Kuzma.

A longtime U.S. postal worker was found dead in her mail truck in Woodland Hills on Friday afternoon amid blistering summer temperatures, authorities confirmed Monday. By Brenda Gazzar.

Fire tsunamis? Those aren’t normal. By Eric Holthaus.

Cooling system isn’t cooling, knocking key sensors offline. By Scott K. Johnson.

US pair's private chat sent to coworker by AI bug. By Kieren McCarthy.

Real Engineering

It is a cannibalistic, fist-sized frog covered in a noxious mucous secretion that burns your eyes. Its affinity for human structures leads it to clog drains and short-out the utility switches in which they lurk. They are spreading through the U.S. and we can’t stop them. Several message board commenters report that this proliferation is part of a communist invasion. By Michael Isaac Stein.

Humans can get chipped, too — just like their dogs. By Victor Tangermann.

"Do the same math as we did above with the floodplains, in precisely the same way, and we see a 37% chance that any American of average life expectancy will experience at least one nationwide violent revolution." By BJ Campbell.

Everyone agrees inequality is on the rise. Here are proposals to curb it. By Jeff Stein.

A fire at a small-town magnesium supplier is rippling disruption across the North American auto industry. By Phoebe Wall Howard.