Democrats have spent months debating how and why they lost the 2024 election. But the full picture of what happened on Election Day is only now coming into view.The most authoritative election analyses draw on a variety of different data sources, including large sample polling, precinct-level returns, and voter file data that shows definitively who did and did not vote. And those last figures became available only recently. The Democratic firm Blue Rose Research recently synthesized such data into a unified account of Kamala Harriss defeat. Its analysis will command a lot of attention. Few pollsters boast a larger data set than Blue Rose the company conducted 26 million voter interviews in 2024. And the firms leader, David Shor, might be the most influential data scientist in the Democratic Party. I spoke with Shor about his autopsy of the Harris campaign. We discussed the problems with the popular theory that Democrats lost because of low turnout; why zoomers are more right-wing than millennials; how TikTok makes voters more Republican; where Donald Trumps administration is most vulnerable; what Democrats can do to win back working-class voters; and whether artificial intelligence is poised to turbo-charge Americas culture wars, among other things. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and concision. Key takeaways Democrats lost the most ground with politically disengaged voters, immigrants, and young people. If every registered voter had turned out, Democrats would have lost by more. TikTok appears to make its users more Republican. Nonwhite moderates and conservatives are voting more like their white counterparts. The gender gap among young voters was historically massive in 2024. Democrats lost voters trust on the economy and cost-of-living. Democrats most effective message in 2024 was an economically populist one. Donald Trump is leaning into the most unpopular parts of his agenda. Democratic constituencies are much more vulnerable than Republican ones to AI-induced unemployment.Before we get into why Democrats lost the 2024 election, lets talk about how they lost it: Which voting blocs shiftest the furthest right over the past four years?The most important thing is that we saw incredible polarization on political engagement itself. Theres a bunch of different ways to measure this: Theres how many elections you vote in, or how important politics is to your identity. Theres how closely you follow the news. But across all of these, theres a consistent story: The most engaged people swung toward Democrats between 2020 and 2024, despite the fact that Democrats did worse overall. Meanwhile, people who are the least politically engaged swung enormously against Democrats. Theyre a group that Biden either narrowly won or narrowly lost four years ago. But this time, they voted for Trump by double digits.And I think this is just analytically important. People have a lot of complaints about how the mainstream media covered things. But I think its important to note that the people who watch the news the most actually became more Democratic. And the problem was basically this large group of people who really dont follow the news at all becoming more conservative.If theyre not responding to mainstream media information, where are they getting their views on politics? Is this group reacting to the prices at the grocery store, or firsthand experience of changes in the economy, immigration, or culture?Most people have to balance their reaction to objective facts in the economy with their preexisting ideological beliefs. A strongly Democratic voter isnt going to switch to Trump just because theyre upset about high prices. So, it isnt too surprising that the people with the weakest political loyalties would be the most responsive to changes in economic conditions. And people who are politically disengaged like every other subgroup of people this election overwhelmingly listed the cost of living as the thing they were the most concerned about. But it cant just be inflation. Politically disengaged voters went from being a roughly neutral group in 2020 to favoring the Republicans by about 15 points in 2024. But during the Obama era, this was a solidly Democratic group, favoring us by between 10 and 15 points. So theres also this long-term trend that goes beyond inflation or social media. Our coalition has been transitioning from working-class people to college-educated people. To move beyond the why, this shift in the partisanship of politically disengaged voters has a really important implication: For most of the last 15 years, weve really lived in this world where the mantra was If everybody votes, we win. But were now at a point where the more people vote, the better Republicans do.If I understand you correctly, youre suggesting that Democrats cannot rebuild a national majority merely by juicing higher turnout, since registered voters as a whole were more pro-Trump in 2024 than those who actually showed up at the polls.Nevertheless, many progressives have attributed Harriss loss to depressed turnout among Democratic voters specifically. They point to the fact that, between 2020 and 2024, the Democratic presidential nominees vote total fell by significantly more than Trumps tally increased. And they also note that, according to AP Votecast, only 4 percent of Biden 2020 voters backed Trump last year while a roughly equal percentage of Trump 2020 voters switched to Kamala. So, in their telling, if defections roughly canceled out while a large number of voters went from supporting Biden to staying home, then clearly the problem was inadequate Democratic turnout. So if Harris had focused more on energizing the progressive base, she might have won. What do you think is wrong with that narrative?Well, the problem with the AP VoteCast data is that it was released the day after the election. There was just a lot of information that they didnt have at the time. At this point, voter file data has been released for enough states to account for an overwhelming majority of the 2024 vote. And whats really cool about having that data is that you can really decompose what fraction of the change in vote share was people changing their mind versus changes in who voted.And when you do that, you see that roughly 30 percent of the change in Democratic vote share from 2020 to 2024 was changes in who voted changes in turnout. But the other 70 percent was people changing their mind. And thats in line with the breakdown weve seen for most elections in the past 30 years. The reality is that these things always tend to move in the same direction parties that lose ground with swing voters tend to simultaneously see worse turnout. And for a simple reason. There were a lot of Democratic voters who were angry at their party last year. And they were mostly moderate and conservative Democrats angry about the cost of living and other issues. And even though they couldnt bring themselves to vote for a Republican, a lot of them stayed home. But basically, their complaints were very similar to those of Biden voters who flipped to Trump.The reality is if all registered voters had turned out, then Donald Trump wouldve won the popular vote by 5 points [instead of 1.7 points]. So, I think that a we need to turn up the temperature and mobilize everyone strategy wouldve made things worse.Courtesy of Blue Rose ResearchAccording to your data, voters who got their news from TikTok were much more likely to swing to the GOP than other voters, even after controlling for demographics. Why do you think that is?I think people can debate how much of this is the nature of the algorithm versus the strategic choices that the parties made. A lot of people argue that maybe TikTok just helps negative content get promoted, and thats naturally bad for whoevers the incumbent. But TikTok is also really different from social media that came before. Other social media sites are very dependent on what people call the follower graph. If you look on Instagram Reels, for example, the correlation between how many views a video gets and how many followers the creator has is extremely high. On TikTok, its quite a bit lower than any other platform. And the reason is TikTok uses machine learning to analyze a video and make a good guess about whether it will be appealing before they show it to anyone. So if your video is likely to be engaging, it can get wide distribution even if you dont have a following. And that has been genuinely democratizing.Courtesy of Blue Rose ResearchWe used to live in this world where in order to get your message out there, you had to get people who write really well to absorb your message and put it out. And now, were in a world where anyone can make a video and if that video is appealing, itll get out there. And this is naturally bad for the left, simply because the people who write really well are a lot more left-wing than the overall population. One of my favorite stats on this is something that Nate Cohn put out a couple years ago: Working-class white voters whove read a book in the last year are much more Democratic than working-class white voters who havent. So what other groups did Democrats lose ground with, beyond those who pay little attention to politics and TikTok enthusiasts?If you look at predominantly immigrant neighborhoods, whether theyre white or Hispanic or Asian or African, you really see these absolutely massive shifts against Democrats. Trump won Corona in Queens. Immigrants go from a D+27 group in 2020 to a potentially R+1 group in 2024.Im not sure why that happened. I think were still waiting for data to come back. But Id guess its the same stories about the cost of living and cultural issues and ideological polarization.Speaking of ideological polarization: One of the findings in your data is that nonwhite voters who identify as conservative or moderate have been voting more and more like their white ideological counterparts over the past few elections. So, the electorate is polarizing less on race and more on ideology.I feel like theres an argument that this was inevitable: Hispanic and Asian Americans were always likely to follow the political trajectory of other immigrant groups, many of which were tethered to the Democratic Party for the first couple of generations but then started to polarize ideologically as they became more affluent and assimilated. And you could perhaps tell a similar story about Black Americans, in which the easing of extreme racial oppression and segregation makes it easier for conservative African Americans to consider voting for the GOP.On the other hand, maybe Democrats just made some avoidable mistakes that alienated these constituencies. So Im wondering how you understand this development?If we look at 2016 to 2024 trends by race and ideology, you see this clear story where white voters really did not shift at all. Kamala Harris did exactly as well as Hillary Clinton did among white conservatives, white liberals, white moderates. But if you look among Hispanic and Asian voters, you see these enormous double-digit declines. To highlight one example: In 2016, Democrats got 81 percent of Hispanic moderates. Fast-forward to 2024, Democrats got only 57 percent of Hispanic moderates, which is really very similar to the 51 percent that Harris got among white moderates.You know, white people only really started to polarize heavily on ideology in the 1990s. Now, nonwhite voters are starting to polarize on ideology the same way that white voters did. If you look at African Americans, they did not swing nearly as much. But in our polling, before the Kamala switchover, Black voters were poised to swing 7 to 8 percentage points against us. As to whether this is inevitable, I would say that to some degree getting 94 percent of any ethnic group is unsustainable. But I think that the losses that were seeing among nonwhite voters and immigrants is symptomatic of this broader, ideological polarization that Democrats are suffering from. Fundamentally, 40 percent of the country identifies as conservative. Roughly 40 percent is moderate, 20 percent is liberal, though it depends exactly how you ask it. Sometimes its 25 percent liberal. But the reality is that, to the extent that Democrats try to polarize the electorate on self-described ideology, this is just something that plays into the hands of Republicans. This isnt necessarily as ideologically restrictive as people think. If you look at moderates and especially nonwhite moderates a bunch of them hold very progressive views on a variety of economic and social issues. A very large fraction of Trump voters identify as pro-choice. Weve seen populist economic messaging do very well in our testing with voters of all kinds. But I think that there are also some big cultural divides between highly educated people who live in cities and everybody else. And to the extent that we make the cultural signifiers of these highly educated people the face and the brand of our party, that is going to make everyone else turn against us.One surprising thingYoung people have been one of the most reliably Democratic constituencies for more than a decade. According to the Democratic data firm Catalist, Joe Biden won voters under 30 by 23 points in 2020. But Blue Rose Researchs data suggests that Trump narrowly won that demographic in 2024.How do young voters fit into this? In my understanding, young voters shifted significantly against Democrats in 2024.Yeah. So this is related to the other trends: Young people are more nonwhite than the overall electorate. Theyre more politically disengaged than the overall electorate. But the single biggest predictor of swing from 2020 to 2024 is age. Voters under 30 supported Biden by large margins. But Donald Trump probably narrowly won 18- to 29-year-olds. That isnt what the exit polls say. But if you look at our survey data, voter file data, and precinct-level data, thats the picture you get. And if you look at people under the age of 25, every single group white, nonwhite, male or female is considerably more conservative than their millennial counterparts. And it even seems that Donald Trump narrowly won nonwhite 18-year-old men, which is not something that has ever happened in Democratic politics before. So, young people are quite a bit more right-wing than they were four years ago. And a lot of that is replacement. Its a different set of young people. It turns out, people age. Whats your sense of why this generation of young people are more conservative than we were? Is it about each cohorts distinctive formative experiences? In my understanding, political events that transpire during your adolescence and early adulthood can shape your worldview in a durable way. So, maybe the millennial generation came of age during the disaster that was George W. Bushs second term, and then associated Democrats with an incredibly charismatic two-term president in Barack Obama while young zoomers associated Democrats with Covid and inflation under Biden? Or is something else at play? Yeah, I think some of that story is true. Yair Ghitza has an incredible paper that shows that people have formative political years. And you can predict a lot of how conservative someone will be from how popular the incumbent president was when they were teenagers or when they were in their 20s. And so I think thats definitely true and its definitely part of the story. But I think that theres more to the story than that. If you look at the millennials, the millennials were more left-wing in a bunch of countries Canada, the UK, and Europe. I think that theres a story you can tell: Baby boomers were an incredibly left-wing generation in most places in the world. And millennials were their kids. But Gen X was really quite a bit more conservative than the Boomers in most countries. And theres a lot of theories you can make about that response to the oil shocks, stagflation, neoliberalism. But whatever the reason, Gen X came out more conservative. So I think that part of the story is simply that the current crop of young people had Gen X parents. And in our surveys, if we ask people, How Democratic were your parents growing up? zoomers are something like 7 percent more likely to say they had Republican parents than millennials are. But isnt part of the Democrats problem with younger voters about men, specifically?Yeah. Theres also this enormous amount of gender polarization. If you look at the gender gap just what fraction of the vote Kamala Harris got versus what fraction of the vote Donald Trump got among men and women for voters over the age of 30, there was about a 10 percent gender gap between men and women. And thats roughly speaking where its been in American politics for most of the last 20 years. But if you look at voters under the age of 25, the gender gap has doubled in size. And if you look at 18-year-olds, specifically, 18-year-old men were 23 percentage points more likely to vote for Donald Trump than 18-year-old women. And gender polarization seems to be increasing in other countries as well. How it plays out varies from country to country. In Germany, for example, young women voted in very high numbers for Die Linke, the left-wing party there. Courtesy of Blue Rose ResearchA lot of different things could be causing this. But I think that if you look at non-political polling, you can really see evidence that there is wild, cultural change afoot here and basically everywhere else in the online world. In Norway, theres a poll of high school students where the fraction of young men saying, gender equality has gone too far spiked in recent years. I dont know necessarily what the answer to that is. But I think its important to resist nihilism. These young men who have terrible, retrograde views on politics and gender relations are still pro-choice. They still support universal health care. I think we need our politicians to focus on those fights. But its extremely important for other people who dont need to win elections to try to improve the online discourse around these more divisive issues. Earlier, you referenced the divide between cosmopolitan, college graduates who live in big cities and working-class voters. And you suggested that Democrats need to distance themselves from the sensibilities of highly educated urbanites. Im wondering if you could get more concrete. Do you think the party merely needs to increase the salience of its best issues by focusing on them rhetorically? Or are there areas where you believe Democrats need to become substantively more conservative?I think there are two very important things to understand about this election. The first thing is that the Biden administration was extremely unpopular. His approval ratings collapsed after Afghanistan and then continued to decline as prices went up and immigration happened. The budget fights in the fall of 2021 around the reconciliation package were particularly damaging. And then, his approval ratings never really recovered. And so, I think theres a substantive angle to that. The way that we like to track issues is that we look at 40 different issues and we ask people basically, How important are these issues? And then, What party do you trust more on these issues?In 2020, what people cared about the most was Covid and health care. And those were also the issues that people trusted us on the most. And so the thing we had to do was very straightforward: We just had to talk about Covid and health care. Thats what we did. And we won. But the situation this time was a lot harder. The issue that voters cared the most about was overwhelmingly the cost of living. I really cannot stress how much people cared about the cost of living. If you ask whats more important, the cost of living or some other issue picked at random, people picked the cost of living 91 percent of the time. Its really hard to get 91 percent of people to click on anything in a survey.After the cost of living, it was the size and scope of the federal government, the budget deficit, immigration, crime, and also health care. And people trusted Republicans on these issues by double-digits except for health care, where we had a 2-point advantage, which was much lower than our traditional advantage on that issue. Courtesy of Blue Rose ResearchI think theres this nihilism thats very popular in our industry that nothing we do, or that the side does, really matters. But in the wake of inflation, voters went from favoring Republicans by about 5 points on the economy to favoring them by 15 or 16. And after Dobbs, voters started trusting the Democrats much more on abortion. Education used to be the Democrats strongest issue. But our standing on that collapsed during Covid, and now its basically even. So, what people care about and trust us on really is responsive to concrete events that happen in the world. That isnt 100 percent of the story. There are a lot of other things going on. But what we do and what we say does matter.To directly answer your original question about how much of this is changing what our positions are versus messaging I think the exact details of that vary from issue to issue. But I think that we have to approach this from the position that we are in a deep trust hole. The people that were trying to persuade have very different values than we do and have a very different perception of reality. And a lot of these people are very poorly informed and literally do not consume the sources of information that we broadcast to. And so, there has to be some combination of messaging and outreach and changes in how we approach these platforms, and also probably some substantive changes that address what voters see as an error. It seems to me that the Democratic Partys biggest challenge is less how to win the presidency than how to win comfortable Senate majorities. The median US state is much more conservative than America as a whole, and this means that the Senate is heavily biased against Democrats. In 2018 and 2020, Democrats won really strong national victories and still ended up with just 50 Senate votes in 2021. So, how grim do you think the partys prospects of winning back the Senate are in the near term, and how can it go about improving those odds?I think we should start by recognizing how lucky we are. In 2020, we won basically every competitive Senate race. And in both 2022 and 2024, we saw something that I had never seen before, which is that we did a lot better in swing Senate races than we did nationally.But a lot of that was the other side running terrible candidates. And we cant count on that happening forever. And even despite that even despite historically well-run campaigns and historically weak opposition here we are four years later at 47 Senate seats and with a very difficult path to getting back to 50 even in a wave Democratic year.And I think that something has to change in order for us to have a majority thats capable of securing the Senate. But I dont want to overemphasize the ideological dimension of that. What we really need to do to win in places like Ohio and Iowa is change the brand.The candidate who outperformed the most in 2024 at the top of the ticket was Dan Osborn in Nebraska. And some of that was just because he ran as an independent. But a lot of it was that he ran an economically populist campaign that focused on issues that people cared about. I think that the moderate and left-wings of the party dont like each other very much, but they did both like Dan Osborn. To push back a little on that, Osborn definitely ran a populist campaign. But he also aired advertisements declaring himself the only real conservative in the race, attacked his Republican opponent for voting to fund the government, said that he would personally help build Trumps border wall, and didnt endorse Kamala Harris. And so, I feel like there definitely was an element of ideological moderation or at least, heterodoxy to his approach. More critically, Osborn refused to say which party he would caucus with once he got to the Senate. And yet, assuming he secretly did intend to caucus with the Democrats, thats a play you can only run a single time. After that first run, voters know which party you really favor. And it doesnt seem tenable for Democratic Senate candidates writ large to all pretend that they support Trump or might actually caucus with Republicans. So its not clear to me how the Osborn model scales. I think the main problem is that we tried this strategy in an incredibly red state. I think Trump won Nebraska statewide by 13 points. But there are a bunch of states he won by between 4 and 7 points. The degree of ideological compromise that is necessary to win in a state like Ohio is very different than the degree of ideological compromise thats necessary to win in a state like Nebraska. And the current status quo is that we have a very low chance of winning in these places at all using the current strategy. But that said, I think that both wings of the party have to make sacrifices in order for us to achieve the coalition that we want. Theres an interesting tension in your polling: Voters generally say that they would like the Democratic Party to be more moderate, while also saying they favor major change and a shock to the system because things in America are going poorly. I think many people would look at that and see a contradiction. After all, moderate Democrats generally have less enthusiasm for major policy change and feel more comfortable with the status quo than progressive Democrats do.Its tricky. On the one hand, voters say they thought that the Democratic candidate was too liberal. But on the other hand, in our randomized control trials, the best testing advertisements were more compatible with progressive critiques of the Harris campaign. The single best testing ad by the Kamala Harris campaign was one where she looked directly into the camera and said something like, I know the cost of living is too high, and Im going to fix that by building more housing and taking on landlords who are charging too much.And I think you can get into existential debates about what economic populism really is. But I think that the existing research really pointed clearly toward the idea that the electorate wanted economic change and cared more about that than preserving Americas institutions.Whatever you want to say about Trump, he has delivered a shock to the system though maybe not the one that voters were hoping for. In your polling, has there been a reduction in support for the president since he took office? If so, where do you see him as being most vulnerable? Yeah. Trumps approval rating has dropped since he took office. His ratings on his handling of the economy, which historically was a strong suit for him, have dropped the most, and his handling of cost of living has also gone down by quite a bit. And Elon Musk has become much more unpopular and is now the most unpopular member of his administration by a good deal. Trump and Elon have really spent the first part of their term diving into the biggest weaknesses of the Republican Party namely, theyre trying to pass tax cuts for billionaires, theyre cutting essential services and causing chaos for regular people left and right, while trying to slash social safety net programs. Its Paul Ryan-ism on steroids.I think we have a real opportunity to return to the politics of 2012, in terms of vigorously opposing these very unpopular economic changes that Trump is pushing through.The presentation that youve been giving to Democratic stakeholders takes a sharp turn at the very end. You warn that the party cannot get stuck fighting the last war, and argue that 1) AI is going to cause mass unemployment in the relatively near future, 2) this social and political shock is likely to exacerbate partisan tensions in the US, and 3) Democrats need to start preparing for this scenario. Can you explain your reasoning?Im not an AI expert by any means, but AI capabilities are increasing dramatically. And AI experts are very, very bullish on the extent to which AI systems are going to be able to replace some fraction of jobs. The prediction markets say this, too. And I think something thats really important is that regardless of whether its going to happen or not, the public believes it will happen.If you just ask, Do you believe that AI will be able to perform most peoples jobs better than humans can in the next 10 years? 65 percent of the population says yes and 35 percent says no. And then, when you ask, Do you think this will be good or bad? Something like 80 percent of the population believes that this is going to be bad. And so, I think this is something where voters are ahead of the political classes of both parties right now.I think when you try to speculate about something like this, its important to recognize that nothing like this has ever really happened before, so its hard to make predictions. But we worked with two economists, Jonathan Hersh and Daniel Rock, who have made fine-grained estimates of which jobs are going to be the most affected by AI and which the least. And their work indicates that this will impact college-educated people more than working-class people for the simple reason that LLMs are advancing more quickly than robotics is. And AI will also have a bigger impact on employment in cities and suburbs than in rural areas. And it will impact women more than men.Courtesy of Blue Rose ResearchAnd I really worry that this may accelerate these cultural divides that politics have been centered on in the last decade, in a way that could be unproductive and dark. In a lot of ways, this could be the biggest culture war fight of the century. And I dont pretend that I have the answer on what we should do. But with Covid, we had this sudden shock and our response just reinforced the dysfunctional cultural divides that had already opened up in 2016. And those effects have persisted and made it harder for us to win elections today. But unlike with Covid, we have a real chance of seeing this next shock a year or two ahead of time. And we really have to think about this proactively and not just dig our heads into the sand.See More:

Late last month, Warner Bros announced it was closing three of its game development studios in a strategic change of direction: WB Games San Diego, Player First Studios, and Monolith Productions. At a time when the games industry is racked with layoffs and studio closures, the barrage of dispiriting headlines can be numbing. But the shutdown of Monolith cut through the noise, sparking fresh shock and outrage at the industrys slash and burn approach to cost cutting. There are numerous reasons for this, but among them was a pervading belief that Monolith would be around forever. I dont think I ever really considered the possibility that it would shut down one day, says Garrett Price, one of Monoliths seven founding members.True to its name, Monolith was a singular presence. Founded in 1994, it was a prolific developer whose games displayed visual flair, mechanical inventiveness and a knack for synthesising pop-cultural themes. Most excitingly, you could never really predict what the studio would do next. While it primarily produced first-person shooters, there were forays into platformers, dungeon crawlers and open-world games. And even the core FPS titles differed wildly in theme and style, inspired by everything from 60s spy films to Japanese horror.Went toe-to-toe with Quake Blood. Photograph: Monolith Productions/GOGMonolith didnt really have a true identity, and we honestly didnt really care, Price explains. We pretty much just made whatever we wanted to make We didnt spend a lot of time trying to figure out what genre would sell the best or what theme would be the most accessible to the mass market. We just tried to make what we thought was cool.Monolith emerged from the edutainment software company Edmark, where several of the companys founders were previously employed. On my interview day, I remember this bald chap walking past me on the stairs wearing a Wolfenstein 3D T-shirt. I figured this would be a great place to work, says Toby Gladwell, Monolith co-founder and software engineer. He recalls that his co-founders were emboldened by the recent release of Doom, the demonic first-person shooter that catapulted its creators, id Software, to rockstar status and transformed perceptions of the PC as a gaming platform. We realised quickly that this was our calling. We simply had to make the best games of all time.However, Monoliths initial project bore little resemblance to id Softwares classic. Claw was a 2D, Mario-style platformer about a pirate cat. It was meant to be Monoliths debut title, but in a quirk of fate, the company acquired another developer in late 1996 Q Studios which was deep into production on a Doom-like first-person shooter called Blood. Monolith opted to prioritise Bloods completion over Claw a decision that would have huge ramifications.Released in March 1997, Blood puts players in the role of Caleb, a gunslinging servant to the demon Tchernobog who is is betrayed and murdered by his fiendish master. Those early games, especially Blood and Claw, have a very hand-crafted feel to them and were very much DIY endeavours, Price says. A 2.5D shooter released as games were pivoting hard into full 3D rendering, Blood was in some ways behind the times. But its gritty visual style, creative weapons such as flare guns and voodoo dolls, and innovative addition of alternate fire modes for weapons, helped it stand toe-to-toe with more technologically advanced games such as Quake.Anime-inspired Shogo: Mobile Armour Division. Photograph: Monolith ProductionsThe success of Blood sent Monolith into a frenzy of FPS development. Between 1998 and 2003, it designed seven new games in the genre including Blood 2; the anime-inspired shooter Shogo: Mobile Armour Division, which alternated between on-foot combat and city-flattening battles inside Gundam-style mechs; and two licensed tie-in games, Aliens Versus Predator 2, and Tron 2.0.Our studio culture was born from a deep-seated conviction that we could accomplish anything we put our minds to, Gladwell says. We talked games, we played games together, both competitively and to analyse. There werent significant boundaries, given that we were all new to building a company other than a strong desire to build games that would stand alongside the giants of the time.The lack of boundaries also applied to the practical side of game design. This was still a fledgling industry when we got started. The more specific roles you see today, such as world builder or environment artist were far more nebulous. Everyone pitched in. This helped give us a broader spread of opinion and feedback, because everyone was contributing to design, Gladwell says. Much of my own time at Monolith was spent in the energy vortex between design, art, audio and engineering.A gloriously colourful pastiche of 60s espionage fiction The Operative: No One Lives Forever. Photograph: Monolith ProductionsThe brightest star of Monoliths early years, The Operative: No One Lives Forever, or NOLF as it is affectionately known, saw players don the orange catsuit of Cate Archer in a gloriously colourful pastiche of 60s espionage fiction. Its wide-ranging adventure transported players to Morocco, Germany, the tropics and even into space, with each level introducing new ideas, weapons and gadgets. Released in 2000, It was also one of the only shooters of its time with a female protagonist and her portrayal holds up surprisingly well for a game that owes a significant debt to Austin Powers.Monoliths vintage year, however, came in 2005, during which it released three games. Alongside The Matrix Online, a massively multiplayer adaptation of the 1999 sci-fi action movie, Monolith released a second game partly inspired by the same film: Fear. The culmination of Monoliths mastery of the FPS, Fear combines the espionage themes of NOLF, the stylised ultraviolence of Blood and the Japanese borrowings of Shogo though this time it looked to J-horror films, particularly Ringu, for inspiration. It bound these elements together with dynamic slow-motion combat and state-of-the-art enemy AI design, pitching the player against an army of clones that could seemingly work together tactically to outfox the player. The result is one of the best first-person shooters ever made.Fear is arguably Monoliths best game. Yet despite its title, it isnt the scariest. One month after Fear launched, Monolith released Condemned: Criminal Origins. A dark and gritty detective thriller inspired by films such as Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs, Condemned likewise blended horror and battles against eerily human enemies. But the foes you face in Condemned are crazed vagrants who attack the player with steel pipes and wooden planks, these tooth-and-nail duels interspersed with grisly crime-scene investigations.Arguably Monoliths finest Alma from Fear. Photograph: Sierra GamesBy far Monoliths most unsettling game, Condemneds atmosphere of dread is thicker and more convincing than anything in Fear. A level set in a mannequin-filled department store has become infamous for its paranoia-inducing qualities. Their studio had a real talent for permanently altering your imagination by turning everyday locations into memorable levels, says Cameron Martin, senior producer at New Blood Interactive, publisher of retro shooters including Dusk, partly inspired by Monoliths work. After playing their games, youll never look at empty office buildings or crusty subway stations the same way again.Fear and Condemned would be the last truly original games the studio would make. By 2005, Monolith had been acquired by Warner Bros, and after providing Fear and Condemned with decent if lesser sequels, Monolith became a servant of Warner Bros media licences.Yet even in this role, Monoliths inventive, capricious personality shines through, as in 2012s bizarre multiplayer shooter Gotham City Imposters, where players assumed the roles of random Gotham citizens pretending to be Batman and the Joker. The highlight of the studios latter years, however, was Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. An open-world game in the Assassins Creed mould, Shadow of Mordor featured the remarkable Nemesis AI system, which reorganised Saurons faceless army of orcs into a scheming political hierarchy, filled with recognisable personalities players would repeatedly encounter in tit-for-tat blood feuds.Highlight of Monoliths later years Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. Photograph: Monolith ProductionsNemesis was a potentially genre-defining concept, an idea dozens of other games would borrow from and riff on. But we will never know what its influence could have been. Warner Bros patented the system in 2021, and the only game to feature it since is Monoliths final release, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. Monolith was working on a Wonder Woman game that would also have featured the system, but this project was cancelled alongside Monoliths closure.When a game studio closes, it can be difficult to gauge what is lost. Drive, perhaps, is what ultimately defines Monoliths legacy. Between its foundation in 1994 and Shadow of Wars publication in 2017, Monolith created 23 games, one for every year of its existence up to that point. Which makes it more shocking that Monolith closed with nothing to show for its last eight years of existence.That such a dependable studio failed to release another game in almost a decade should raise serious questions about modern industry practices and how studios are increasingly subject to the whims of executives, investors, and venture capitalists. The demand that every release be bigger and better looking, appealing to the widest audience, and poised to serve players for years, is transforming the industry into a zero-sum game a game that some studios arent allowed to finish, let alone win or lose.

By Margherita Bassi Published March 18, 2025 | Comments (0) | Team members preparing the tusk for transport. Devin Pettigrew/CBBS While hunting in West Texas, a deer hunter spotted a strange object in a creek bed. Suspecting it might be a fossil, he took a photo and showed it to a ranch manager. I was skeptical, O2 Ranch manager Will Juett said in a Sul Ross State University statement. I figured it was likely just an old stump, but imagined how great it would be if he was right. The deer hunter was right, and the discovery was more than great, because it wasnt just any fossil. An interdisciplinary team of researchers identified it as a mammoth tusk, an incredibly rare find for West Texas. After seeing the hunters photograph, Juett contacted Center for Big Bend Studies (CBBS) director Bryon Schroeder and archaeologist Erika Blecha. They, in turn, reached out to Haley Bjorklund, a CBBS collaborator and University of Kansas graduate student specializing in environmental archaeology. After two other anthropologists joined their efforts, the researchers met at the ranch to investigate what the hunter had found. The team quickly identified the specimen as a mammoth tusk. When they confirmed what they had uncovered, I couldnt believe it, Juett said. Unfortunately, the mammoth tusk was isolated, meaning the researchers didnt discover any other mammoth remains. Over the course of two days, the team wrapped the tusk in plaster-covered burlap and built a support frame to safely transport it to SRSU. Now the researchers plan on studying the tusk, including performing radiocarbon datinga standard technique used to determine the age of organic materialto estimate when the mammoth lived.A local who subsequently wrote his PhD dissertation on it found one [a mammoth tusk] in Fort Stockton in the 1960s, Schroeder said, adding that the specimen is currently the only mammoth tusk in Texas Trans-Pecos region to have been carbon-dated. There was a big range of error [in carbon dating] back then. Now we can get it down to a narrower range within 500 years. While the statement doesnt name a specific mammoth species, the tusk might have belonged to a Columbian mammoth, a distant cousin of the more familiar woolly mammoth. The shaggy elephantine animal could reach up to 13 feet in height (almost 4 meters) and weigh around 10 tons.Columbian mammoths inhabited regions of North America, including modern-day Texas, before going extinct around 11,700 years ago along with many other Ice Age mammals. Though the reason behind the disappearance of the Ice Ages iconic megafauna remains a hotly debated topic, scientists frequently cite climate change, and human hunting may have also played a role. Seeing that mammoth tusk just brings the ancient world to life, Juett said. Now, I cant help but imagine that huge animal wandering around the hills on the O2 Ranch. My next thought is always about the people that faced those huge tusks with only a stone tool in their hand!Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By Margherita Bassi Published March 9, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published February 19, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published February 13, 2025 By Isaac Schultz Published January 29, 2025 Robert A. Kopack, The Conversation Published January 29, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published January 17, 2025

The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale Explores the Paradoxes of Artificial Intelligence and SustainabilitySave this picture! Pseudonature, 2025, concept image.. Image Iassen MarkovThe Bulgarian contribution to the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale is an experimental installation titled Pseudonature, situated at the intersection of nature and technology, reality and simulation. Curated by architect and designer Iassen Markov, the project explores the future of sustainability in a world where natural processes are increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence and human intervention. The exhibition features an outdoor installation that exposes technological and climate paradoxes and an interior space designed as a reimagined traditional Bulgarian room. Outside, physical interventions disrupt natural balances, highlighting the fragile interplay between technology and the environment. Inside, the space shifts to a setting for contemplation, where restoring equilibrium becomes a collective and introspective challenge.Save this picture!Contradiction is at the core of the Bulgarian installation: a snow-covered courtyard at the height of summer in Venice, a solar-powered snow-making machine produces artificial snowfall, burying the panels that sustain it. The sun becomes both creator and destroyer, driving the system while simultaneously erasing it. This self-regulating cycle reveals the fragile equilibrium of so-called "sustainable technology": the stronger the sun, the more efficiently the system operates, yet as snow accumulates, energy production slows, requiring constant adaptation. The project ultimately raises the question: Do we control nature, or are we merely balancing on the edge of its ever-changing forces?Save this picture!The pavilion interior features an abstract interpretation of the traditional Bulgarian 'odaya' or living room, conceived as a space for collective thought. This symbol of the Bulgarian home is reimagined as a place for interaction, where natural, artificial, and collective intelligences shape future scenarios in response to the Biennale's curatorial theme. At the center of the room, a virtual fireplace generated by AI lacks warmth, exposing the artificiality of a reconstructed environment. A handcrafted carpet by artist Rosie Eisor weaves together tradition and digital aesthetics, introducing the dialogue between the organic and the synthetic. While the 'odaya' reflects the struggle to find harmony between different forms of intelligence, the exterior installation exposes the changing balance between sun, snow, and energy. Related Article AI and the Built Environment: Bridging Technology, Design, and Cultural Identity The exhibition catalog, titled Radical Recipes for a Better Climate, transforms Pseudonature into a collection of "recipes" contributed by architects, designers, and scientists. These speculative instructions on sustainable adaptation are synthesized into a collective recipe generated by artificial intelligence. The catalog blends speculative visuals and documentary fragments, evoking the potential of humanity's evolving relationship with nature and technology. Pseudonature, as conceived by Iassen Markov, serves as a call to rethink human agency in the face of paradox and contradiction, affirming that sustainability is no longer just about preservation but about adaptation, reinvention, and the dynamic interplay between human ingenuity, artificial intelligence, and the natural world.Save this picture!The Pavilion of the Republic of Bulgaria at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia is organized by the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria and commissioned by Alexander Staynov. It will be located in the Sala Tiziano, Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli. Other national exhibitions at this edition of the Biennale address similar themes: the Pakistani Pavilion examines the dual nature of resilience and vulnerability in the face of climate change, using Pakistan's rich geological and cultural heritage to address global environmental inequities. The Japanese Pavilion investigates the evolving role of artificial intelligence (AI) in architecture, focusing on the concept of the "in-between." Meanwhile, the Chilean Pavilion questions the impact of data centers on urban, territorial, material, and political landscapes through a multimedia exhibition.Image gallerySee allShow lessAbout this authorCite: Antonia Pieiro. "The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale Explores the Paradoxes of Artificial Intelligence and Sustainability" 18 Mar 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028059/the-bulgarian-pavilion-at-the-2025-venice-biennale-explores-the-paradoxes-of-artificial-intelligence-and-sustainability&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Bao Lam Retreat House / 6717 StudioSave this picture! Hiroyuki OkiArchitects: 6717 StudioAreaArea of this architecture projectArea:150 mYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2023 PhotographsPhotographs:Hiroyuki OkiManufacturersBrands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers: Dong Tam, Galaxy lighting, Jotun, Xinfa Lead Architects: Le Viet Hoi More SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. Nestled in the highlands of Di Linh, Vietnam, the Bao Lam Retreat is a sanctuary of tranquility where architecture seamlessly blends with nature. Surrounded by lush vegetation and embraced by the region's cool climate and breathtaking landscapes, this retreat is designed to offer a serene escape from the fast-paced urban life. More than just a retreat, this is a sanctuary for emotional renewal, where the homeowner can reconnect with themselves and nature.Save this picture!Save this picture!The design of the Bao Lam Retreat is rooted in the principles of respecting and maximizing the potential of the natural terrain. The structure adapts to the sloping topography, follows contour lines, and embraces a curvilinear form that optimizes panoramic views of the valleys and distant mountain ranges. Positioned near the pristine forest at its rear, the retreat benefits from a natural shield that not only enhances privacy and protection but also strengthens the deep connection between the dwelling and its surroundings.Save this picture!Save this picture!A defining feature of the retreat is its large sweeping curves, carefully sculpted with a balance of solid and void elements. This approach enhances natural ventilation and optimizes daylight penetration into the interiors. The red earth-toned faux stone walls serve both aesthetic and functional purposes not only reinforcing the structure against potential surface cracks caused by its expansive faade but also providing excellent waterproofing, essential for the region's heavy rainfall.Save this picture!Sustainability is at the heart of the Bao Lam Retreat, with carefully selected natural materials shaping its identity. Locally sourced Lam Dong stone forms the entrance steps, blending effortlessly with the warm red hues of the walls and the deep gray tones of the polished stone staircase. This contrast creates a striking yet cohesive aesthetic. The deep red stone of the kitchen countertops and the rich, dark wood elements further enhance the interior's warmth and sophistication.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!On the ground floor, an open layout fosters an airy and fluid living space. A central void subtly delineates the living room and kitchen while maintaining visual and spatial continuity between functional areas. A strategically placed skylight allows natural light to cascade in, enhancing the sense of depth and openness. Thoughtfully positioned large windows not only frame the surrounding scenery like living paintings but also establish a dynamic visual connection between the indoors and the breathtaking wilderness beyond. The bedrooms, situated on the upper level, offer sweeping views of the highlands and distant peaks. Expansive glass openings ensure a seamless dialogue between interior spaces and the outdoors, flooding every corner with natural light.Save this picture!Extending from the outdoor terrace, a secluded pathway leads to a serene Buddha statue, designed as a meditative journey. This contemplative walkway opens to panoramic views of tea hills and rolling forests, offering a moment of stillness and spiritual connection with nature.Save this picture!More than a retreat, the Bao Lam Retreat is a sanctuary a place of stillness amidst the vast, untamed wilderness. It is an oasis of calm, where architecture and nature intertwine to create a space for relaxation, reflection, and renewal. Bathed in natural light and open to the grandeur of the highlands, this retreat offers the perfect environment for mindfulness, inviting one to embrace the serenity and mystique of the mountains. Project gallerySee allShow lessAbout this office6717 StudioOfficeMaterialConcreteMaterials and TagsPublished on March 18, 2025Cite: "Bao Lam Retreat House / 6717 Studio" 18 Mar 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028011/bao-lam-retreat-house-6717-studio&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00797-7Why failing to control defunct satellites leaves everyone at risk from their impacts.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00821-wJapan needs a fresh approach to innovation

A novel genetic model suggests that the ancestors of modern humans came from two distinct populations that split and reconnected during our evolutionary history.

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