The moral universe in an era where truth is merely another opinion — Inspired by a question on Quora, I’ve been thinking about the idea of truth, and more specifically, the way societies seem to have an eccentric orbit around the truth — sometimes closer in, sometimes further away. The United States, at the moment, is definitely at an apogee in its extremely…

Statistical musings on connections in group sex — Organizing an orgy requires a lot more logistics than most people realize. You need to choose your guest list carefully: are these people all reasonably compatible? Comfortable being naked around each other? Have you vetted them all carefully? Do you have enough snacks, condoms, lube, and clean sheets? And yet…

You might not be as good as you think you are — It’s hard to see your heroes die. So James Cameron’s new Avatar movie is out, and the Internet is in a tizzy. This isn’t actually about the movie, or James Cameron, much as I love Aliens (I’ve seen it 167 times and it keeps getting more inspiring every single time…

Big things start small In 1170, King Henry II of England, fed up with his former BFF Thomas Becket (who started criticizing the Crown after becoming Archbishop of Canterbury), declared “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” And, of course, since he was the king, four knights (Reginald Fitz-Urse, Hugh de Morville…

Your Rage is a Commodity You do not love all humankind. This is a fact. It’s written into your biology. There is a limit, coded into the size and structure of your brain, on the number of people you can form close, personal connections to, or even remember as individuals…

It might be higher than you think — Every month, almost three billion people use Facebook. Those people upload photos and video and it all gets saved — about 4 petabytes, four billion gigabytes, of data every day. Those are abstract numbers. What does it mean? How Does Facebook not run out of space? Exactly how you think…

You know, that book written by a dude who isn’t me, though I feel I shouldn’t need to say this — Gather ’round, everyone, and let me tell you a story. It’s a story full of pornography, intrigue, rumor, innuendo, misplaced credit for a massive book, and kinky sex. Let’s go back to February of 2022, when British author and former BBC correspondent Jonathan Kent published a book on non-monogamy called…

And how having sex you don’t like can change your attitude — I am not a masochist. You might be forgiven for snickering a bit at that, if you’ve seen the sort of sex I have. I have at various times been spanked, flogged, caned, cropped, zapped with electricity, and used as a human pincushion by my lovers. …

On toxic behavior in the polyamory community — There’s a polyamory conference in London. It’s called PolyDay, it was founded in 2004, it’s non-profit, and it became one of Britain’s most popular and successful poly events. PolyDay 2020 and 2021 were canceled due to Covid. In 2021, a woman who runs a site called “PolyPages” announced that since…