The MIT Press

"I’ve always loved the clown—for its abjection and patheticness, to be honest. Being q***r in the ’90s, clowns were a symbol of putting on the brave face, putting on the smile. They’re on the fringes of so many subcultures."

Great Q&A with Michelle Tea of Dopamine Books:

Clowns Are Everywhere. Is It a Sign of the Apocalypse? Why has the culturati developed such an appetite for the oft-maligned performance mode? A new anthology from Michelle Tea might have the answer.

Today, the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and MIT Press announce a new joint mathematics book series, POLYMATH, which will present readers with rich, accessible, and irresistible mathematics books for a general audience.

The first book in the series will be Double-Take: A Field Guide to Optical Illusions, Magic, and Movie Tricks Arising from Perspective Geometry by acclaimed mathematician Annalisa Crannell, publishing in fall 2027. In her Double-Take, Crannell investigates how artists, magicians, and Hollywood cinematographers exploit the geometry of perspective to baffle, tease, and hoodwink the viewer.






Read more. Link in comments.

We do a lot of sneering at “virtue signaling.” It’s time to rethink our approach, argue Michael Brownstein and Alex Madva, authors of "Somebody Should Do Something."

We Do a Lot of Sneering at “Virtue Signaling.” It May Be Time to Rethink Our Approach. Yes, it's good to do good things. It may be even more effective to tell people you're doing them.

During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy built a vast underwater listening system to detect enemy submarines. But its hydrophones picked up something unexpected: whale songs traveling across enormous distances. As David Rothenberg recounts, a military surveillance project accidentally became an archive of ocean life, revealing a hidden world of moans, clicks, pulses, and acoustic connection beneath the sea. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-cold-wars-accidental-whale-observatory/