Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.

Long Reads

Stories that take a bit longer to get through.

  • Six Figure Checks? Seriously?

    Looks like Matthew Inman, the guy behind one of my favorite webcomic sites, The Oatmeal, has started whining about content aggregators. You know, those sites that compulsively gobble whatever they can find on the internet and spew it back with all kinds of advertising. I used to run into these all the time when googling…


  • Inside the PhD Program

    Somehow I managed to sleep for twelve hours last night. I thought I’d take a “short nap” at around 8 PM, and basically ended up waking at 8 AM this morning. Huh. Oh, also it’s Rapture Day. Having made a similar mistake more than a hundred years ago, Seventh-Day Adventists know what to do. Anyway,…


  • By the Corporations, For the Corporations

    Remember how Comcast and NBC were merging, and there was all kinds of controversy about it? I’m still not entirely sure what I think the deal itself, except that Comcast has a maddening monopoly on internet access in some areas (including where we used to live in Baltimore) and NBC is one of the hemorrhaging…