Brian Phillips

Author Archive

  • May 7, 2026
    You don’t hire bouncers in the hope that they’ll smash up your bar, and you don’t hire bank guards in the hope that they’ll break into your vault. But in...
  • Apr 9, 2026
    On Monday, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission traveled deeper into space than humans have ever gone before. Integrity, their Orion-class spacecraft, reached a...
  • Apr 2, 2026
    Let’s say you’re a wildly unpopular president facing record disapproval and a shrinking base of support even within your own party. Let’s say that you’ve led...
  • Feb 26, 2026
    In the First Age, the Elves of Valinor, in the Uttermost West, made several magic orbs. Whoever gazed into one of these crystals could see what was happening in other places, and...
  • Feb 17, 2026
    Maybe the most startling thing about the news that Robert Duvall died on Sunday at the age of 95 is that Robert Duvall was 95. On screen, he was middle-aged for so long—like...
  • Jan 15, 2026
    Want to learn about the hottest thing in gambling? Do you enjoy obsessing over regulatory frameworks, contemplating the finer points of derivatives markets, and keeping track of the...
  • Jan 5, 2026
    There are traitors, and then there’s Wu Sangui. In 1644, a Manchu army gathered outside the Great Wall of China at the Shanhai Pass, the choke point on the only traversable...