Bored With Your Fitbit? These Cancer Researchers Aren't
If you’re trying to get in shape and you want a tiny, wrist-bound computer to help you do it, you have more options than ever before. Fitness trackers come in all shapes, colors, and price tags, with newfangled sensors and features to stand out to customers. But for doctors and scientists studying how exercise can…
How Searching Nails Our Online Anxieties
One of the more charming slices of ‘90s-era web-culture ephemera is Pizza.net, the fake pie-delivery site frequented by Sandra Bullock’s hacker in 1995’s The Net. Though glimpsed only briefly in the movie, Pizza.net was clearly among the chillest faux-online services of the Clinton era. Check out its easy-clicking interface, its friction-free payment plan! The experience…
Container Ships Use Super-Dirty Fuel. That Needs to Change
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The platform overlooking the Panama Canal’s Pacific exit is buzzing with energy on a muggy October afternoon. Tourists cram together, jostling for the best views of the blue container ship gliding by in the gray-green water below. The ship’s crewmembers wave from aboard the 690-foot-long…
8 Sci-Fi Writers Imagine the Bold and New Future of Work
“In the early 21st century, perhaps the most important artistic genre is science fiction … [It shapes] how people understand the most important technological, social, and economic developments of our time.” —Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Half of being human, give or take, is the work we do. Pick up a…
Google’s Academic Influence Campaign: It's Complicated
Update: Google's Transparency Project has posted an addendum to its Academics Inc. report. Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published a detailed investigation showing that Google has been systematically paying academics to publish research favorable to the company’s policy and business positions—often without disclosure of the financial relationship. Concurrently, an organization called the Campaign…
The First Captain Marvel Trailer Will Pummel You with '90s Nostalgia
Hello, fellow kids, do you remember the '90s? Flannel? Riot grrrls? Pulp Fiction? Lacing up the ol' Doc Martens and going to the comics shop? Don't worry if you don't; Marvel is here to remind you. Yes, the long-awaited first trailer for the MCU's long-awaited Captain Marvel is finally here, and it's full—nearly too full—with…
High-Res Satellites Want to Track Human Activity From Space
Hopkinsville, Kentucky, is normally a mid-size town, home to 32,000 people and a big bowling ball manufacturer. But on August 21, its human density more than tripled, as around 100,000 people swarmed toward the total solar eclipse. Hundreds of miles above the crowd, high-resolution satellites stared down, snapping images of the sprawl. These satellites belong…
For Scientists Predicting Sea Level Rise, Wind Is the Biggest Unknown
From the air, the largest glacier on the biggest ice sheet in the world looks the same as it has for centuries; massive, stable, blindingly white. But beneath the surface it’s a totally different story. East Antarctica’s Totten Glacier is melting, fast, from below. Thanks to warm ocean upwellings flowing into the glacier—in some places…
American Horror Story: Apocalypse Is Ryan Murphy’s Infinity War—Here's a Primer
Young, passionate men in form-fitting costumes; folks who go by the name "witch"; monsters gleefully planning the end of civilization. No, this isn't the Marvel Cinematic Universe—it's the weird, twisted world of American Horror Story. It may not be as intricately plotted and intertwined as the MCU, but the world of Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology…
Cantina Talk: Here's a Buttload of Information About the New Star Wars Streaming Show
For those keeping a close eye on everything coming out of the galaxy far, far away, it's been a busy few weeks. Star Wars Resistance has launched, and is offering some background information on the political landscape of the galaxy. Meanwhile, the Marvel comic series filled in a missing piece of lore from the original…