It was a book that drove me away from books. This wasn’t a trauma of distaste, or indulgence: not a literary bad mussel, not waking up on the floor of someone's house with a swimming head and the knowledge that I could never again be within smelling distance of their first editions. My aversion was […]
Time’s editor-in-chief praised its 2017 Person of the Year, the Silence Breakers, for speaking out about sexual harassment and assault and unleashing “one of the highest velocity shifts in our culture since the 1960s.” He joins a chorus calling the torrent of public allegations of sexual harassment or assault a “moment” for women in America. […]
What a game, right? Those Patriots. Those Eagles! TRICK PLAYS! That's a Super Bowl for you. And the action continued during the commercial breaks, especially if you were interested in what various companies thought was worth paying upwards of $5 million to parade in front of 110 million people. The answer, surprising no one, is […]
The biophysicist Jeremy England made waves in 2013 with a new theory that cast the origin of life as an inevitable outcome of thermodynamics. His equations suggested that under certain conditions, groups of atoms will naturally restructure themselves so as to burn more and more energy, facilitating the incessant dispersal of energy and the rise […]
With less than four weeks to go before the opening of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, everyone is getting very, very excited about the prospect of returning to the Resistance, the First Order, and the never-ending conflict between good and evil. But do you know just how never-ending that conflict is going to be? Perhaps […]
Prepping a satellite instrument for its journey into space can feel like getting ready to lift off yourself. The sensors on board are vulnerable to the slightest speck of contamination—so to get close, you have to suit up. Required clean room attire includes a hair net, face mask, paper suit, disposable boots, and surgical gloves. […]
The first episode of Extreme Meatpunks Forever, a new visual novel by Heather Robinson, begins in a bar, with two gay men chatting. Chatting, that is, until a fascist—the game refers to them in faceless terms, usually just as "fash"—interjects and begins shouting slurs. The shouting escalates into a fight. And that's when the mechs […]
A few days ago, I finally bought a pair of AirPods. Apple's funny-looking ear-computers have been available for about a year, provided you were willing to order them online and wait six weeks for delivery. But last week, they started appearing in brick-and-mortar shops. When I saw that I could snag a pair at my […]
When Kanye West issued his eighth studio album, ye, on Friday, he did so amid a tempest of fury and confusion. The weeks leading to its release were marked by brash, dangerous claims by the rapper on Twitter and a brief appearance on TMZ where he likened slavery to “a choice.” Overnight his presence on […]
“Is UR safe?” read a chalked message on a walkway on the University of Rochester’s campus on Sunday night, September 10. “Not for women. Not for us.” Pastel text gave the time and details of a protest scheduled for that Wednesday. By eight the next morning, the chalk was washed away, leaving wet, blank pavement. […]