Infinite Scroll: Life Under Instagram
The speed of machine learning is startling, often creepy. It is hard to tell what is creepier: the feeling that someone is somewhere out there, following your every step, or the fact that no one is, just the tracking device you carry with you in your pocket.
Catholic Leaders Promised Transparency About Child Abuse. They Haven’t Delivered.
After decades of shielding the identities of accused child abusers from the public, many Catholic leaders are now releasing lists of their names. But the lists are inconsistent, incomplete and omit key details.
Ari Emanuel, WME, And The Great Hollywood IPO That Wasn’t
The entertainment industry’s reigning super-agent planned to put his firm—and the very power structure of Hollywood—on the line with an audacious, now scuttled public offering. With that future on hold and the likes of Netflix and Disney commanding more ground by the day, what’s an ambitious modern macher to do?
Treasure Fever
Cape Canaveral contains one of the greatest concentrations of colonial shipwrecks in the world. The discovery of a legendary, lost shipwreck in North America has pitted treasure hunters and archaeologists against each other, raising questions about who should control sunken riches.
The End Of Babies
Fertility rates have been dropping precipitously around the world for decades — in middle-income countries, in some low-income countries, but perhaps most markedly, in rich ones. Something is stopping us from creating the families we claim to desire. But what?
Death On Demand: Has Euthanasia Gone Too Far?
Countries around the world are making it easier to choose the time and manner of your death. As the world’s pioneer, the Netherlands has also discovered that although legalizing euthanasia might resolve one ethical conundrum, it opens a can of others – most importantly, where the limits of the practice should be drawn.
We Asked An AI To Write A Column For Us. The Results Were Wild
We’ve been testing weekly short fiction pieces scribed by GPT-2, a text-generating artificial intelligence algorithm originally built by OpenAI. We give the algorithm a sentence from a real article, and the algorithm iteratively generates what it thinks the next word should be.
Digital Technology Is Not To Blame For Our Hyperfast Lives
Life in the 21st century, we are told, is faster than ever. Time is scarce, the pace of everyday life is accelerating, and everyone complains about how busy they are. For all the smart tech, we still feel pressed for time. Are digital services the problem, or are we humans to blame?
The People’s NSA
Meet the hackers who are working with investigative journalists to expose organized crime and corruption by some of the world’s most sinister governments. Those governments are going to great lengths to shut down investigative reporting through cyber attacks and other intimidation tactics.
The Convert: Life With A Jihadist
Tania Joya had been married to a jihadist from Texas for ten years, but she was tired of living like a nomad and unnerved by his increasingly extreme ideology. When he dragged their family to war-torn Syria, she knew it was time to get out.
The Tech Giants Are Coming For Our Homes
The likes of Amazon, Google, Samsung, Apple and others are all competing for smart home dominance – but what drove so many of us to invite these multinational corporations into the highly personal spaces where we live?
Welcome To The Monkey House
Between the end of the Korean War and the early 1990s, more than one million Korean women were caught up in a state-controlled prostitution industry that was blessed at the highest levels by the U.S. military. They worked in special zones surrounding U.S. bases—areas licensed by the South Korean government.
Total Recall: The People Who Never Forget
Around 60 people in the world share a condition called “highly superior autobiographical memory”. They remember absolutely everything. The extremely rare condition may transform our understanding of memory.
Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong
Nearly half of 3- to 6- year old girls say they worry about being fat. For decades, the medical community has ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and futile war on fat people, poisoning public perception and ruining millions of lives. It’s time for a new paradigm.
The My Generation: An Oral History Of Myspace Music
At Myspace’s height, the website changed the way artists and fans found each other and how record labels and buzz-seeking blogs found fresh meat. Artists like Panic! At The Disco, Arctic Monkeys, Soulja Boy, Lily Allen, and Colbie Caillat would become pop stars in part because of their presence on the site.
Studies Shoot Down Tech’s Harmful Effects on Kids—So Now What?
It looks like grownups can disregard the fear-mongering about the ill effects of digital media on kids. A 2017 study in Child Development found “little or no support for harmful links between digital screen use and young people’s psychological well-being.”
The Man Who Runs 365 Marathons A Year
One day, Michael Shattuck started to run. He liked it, so he ran longer, sometimes for as many as 65 hours each week. He never wanted to stop. What was he running from?
Britain’s Secret War With Russia
From the attempted assassination of a double agent in a sleepy English city to the expulsion of scores of Russian diplomats from Western capitals, this fight would grow and morph, drawing in a chemical-weapons attack in Syria and rolling scandals about Russian sports doping.
The Diabolical Genius Of The Baby Advice Industry
Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer. While there might indeed be one right way to do things, you will never get to find out what it is.
The Race To Develop The Moon
For science, profit, and pride, China, the U.S., and private companies are hunting for resources on the lunar surface. It’s not difficult to imagine moon development, like all development, proceeding less than peacefully, and less than equitably.
Lives Adrift In A Warming World
If the Earth’s average temperature increases 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100, humankind will see catastrophic changes. For millions of people, this extreme warming is already reality, in places like Qatar, Colorado and Angola. And Aaliyah, at the age of 9, has become a climate refugee in Newtok, Alaska.