The universe is unraveling, but Danny Arguetty is hardly concerned. To the contrary: when Arguetty is asked about strategies for overcoming challenges on the path to self-improvement in his capacity as manager of UW Recreation’s Mindfulness Program, he replies that first acknowledging, then embracing the universe’s disposition towards disarray can be a key step in [...]

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For the second day in a row, Julie Kientz blacked out at the sight of blood. When she came to, lifted from the floor of the veterinarian’s office where she was participating in a job-shadowing program, the eleventh grader from Ohio decided it might be time for a change of career plans. “I love computers,” [...]

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Amy Ko’s interest in coding and computer programming started early—six o’clock in the morning early. Growing up in the Portland suburb of West Linn, Oregon, Ko would set her alarm in order to make a 7 a.m. computer science class offered at her high school during “zero period.” While most of her crack-of-dawn classmates used [...]

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On May 17, 1999, nine members of the Makah tribal nation paddled a canoe into the waters off Cape Alava on the Olympic Peninsula in pursuit of a 30-foot gray whale. From the first harpoon strike to a finishing shot delivered by a specialized rifle, the hunt lasted no more than ten minutes, but kicked [...]

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When Katie Gallagher moved to Seattle from Rhode Island three years ago, she didn’t know what the future would hold, so she decided to activate a connection from her past. Near the end of her studies as an undergraduate at the University of Rhode Island, Gallagher had attended a feminist camp in New York City [...]

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As humans, we leave little room for tragedy in our lives. When tragic events do occur—invading the idyll of the everyday and shattering our confidence in common bonds—we all too often attempt to cope by burying associated memories deep beyond reach: suffering stifled, pain pent up, and the confusion sown by death, disease, and mental [...]

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Luke Tornabene hovers above the abyss, suspended somewhere between fathomless darkness and daylight 800 feet above. A thin layer of condensation has formed on the interior of the five-person submersible—the product of warm air within the cockpit reacting to increasingly cold water without as the research vessel slips ever deeper into the dusk-colored Caribbean waters [...]

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Alysun Deckert knows what it means to run fast. She always has, dating back to high school in Salinas, Kansas where she won nine state championships running cross-country and as a track athlete in the 1600m and 3200m. Turned marathoner after college, she also knows what it means to sustain performance at the highest levels—not [...]

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When Zhuou Li emigrated from China to Seattle in 1992, everything was new—everything, that is, except for the journey itself. It was a passage Li’s father had made twelve years before him and one his grandfather had completed some four decades before that. “They’d work here and then go back to China, marry, then apply [...]

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We can learn a lot from the world’s worst villains—that is, if we only spare some sympathy to take a moment to see things their way. If that strikes you as an inflammatory suggestion, it’s supposed to be. For Ellwood Wiggins, assistant professor of Germanics at the University of Washington, it’s an essential exercise in [...]

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Most computer scientists seek to empower machines. Pedro Domingos would rather empower people. “You may not be interested in technology, but technology is interested in you,” he says, using a witting corruption of Leon Trotsky’s famous quip about politics to underscore why he believes it’s increasingly important for people to take an active interest in how artificially intelligent technology is coming to influence everyday life. A professor [...]

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Few who undertake the transition from actor to activist manage to continue to do both well. Bethany Staelens, on the other hand, has always performed where it counts. By night, Staelens sings at the front a 19-piece big band, but once the footlights fade and the next day dawns, she can be found at the [...]

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