Friday, September 18, 2026
ArchiveResearchers Say They’ve Found the Truth About Thomas Jefferson
A lock of hair cut three hours after Jefferson died in 1826 has sat in archives for two centuries. A covert Smithsonian genomics project just used it to settle the Sally Hemings question for good.
Slovenia's 1992 erasure: How a government turned 25,000 citizens into illegal immigrants
In 1992, Slovenia deleted 25,000 citizens from its databases. Overnight, legal residents became illegal immigrants — losing jobs, homes, children. Mazzini argues this is the blueprint Europe's far right is already following.
The last IMO problem AI could not solve
Every other IMO problem fell to AI this year. Grant Sanderson spends 52 minutes building the geometric intuition behind the one that didn't — and the result is a love letter to the kind of thinking machines can't fake.
How SpaceX Streamlined the Raptor Engine
Three photos of the Raptor engine went viral. Brian Potter explains what actually changed — eliminated plumbing, integrated components, radical manufacturing shifts — in the most satisfying engineering deep dive you'll read this month.
An Israeli documentary about Gaza is sweeping the world – and Israelis are furious
An Israeli documentary about Gaza got a 25-minute standing ovation at Venice, but back home it's become this massive controversy that most Israelis haven't even watched yet.