Brain Bugs

"It's not a flaw, it's a feature." The infamous software company excuse for annoying glitches might have been coined by God Himself after designing our brains. Actually, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano invokes Darwin, not the Deity, when explaining all the defects in our wetware, as he guides us through a primer on why our brains are often unable to cope with the artificial conditions that daily deceive us.

May 22: The video game Pac-Man, featuring "the most iconic character from the golden age of arcade video games," was released on this day in 1980. Over the next decade, gamers spent over $2.5 billion in quarters…

Ethan Rutherford and Matt Burgess (Dogfight: A Love Story) on the writing of Rutherford's surreal and fiercely funny story collection The Peripatetic Coffin

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