The Sound Of Icebergs Melting: My Journey Into The Antarctic
We were listening to air escaping up through water. We were so close to the ice that this ancient fizz was surprisingly loud. Though we humans never hear it above the surface, this is the sound the Antarctic makes every summer. And as the planet heats, the sound is getting louder.
‘It’s A Miracle’: Helsinki’s Radical Solution To Homelessness
Finland is the only country in the European Union where homelessness is falling. Its secret? Giving people homes as soon as they need them – unconditionally.
How Much Is A Human Life Actually Worth?
As a society we have historically been willing to incur costs to save lives. Government forces carmakers to reduce air pollution to help people with asthma, and the price of cars goes up. Laws prevent factories from polluting to save fisheries, and goods cost more. But that kind of tradeoff clearly has limits.
A Mother Journeys Through Grief Across Finland’s Many Islands
The beauty and calm of the Aland archipelago is deceptive. Aland is a Swedish-speaking autonomous region of Finland and consists of 16 municipalities. The island population is close to 30,000; around 12,000 live in Mariehamn. The smallest municipality, Sottunga, had 91 residents in 2018. Isolation encourages contemplation — but can it offer respite as well?
How TripAdvisor Changed Travel
The world’s biggest travel site has turned the industry upside down – but now it is struggling to deal with the same kinds of problems that are vexing other tech giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter. The future of TripAdvisor and similar enterprises seems less certain than it once did.
My Restaurant Was My Life For 20 Years. Does The World Need It Anymore?
Forced to shutter Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton has been revisiting her original dreams for it — and wondering if there will still be a place for it in the New York of the future.
What It’s Like to Live In A California Ghost Town
To be an off-season caretaker of Bodie, California (winter population: 5), you need a high tolerance for cold, solitude, and two-hour grocery runs.
Drone Photos Capture A Fresh Take On Tuscany’s Iconic Landscapes
Photographer Gabor Nagy took his new drone with him on an adventure to Tuscany, to see if he could capture this instantly-recognizable Italian landscape from a different perspective. The result was a beautiful series of eye-catching aerial photos called “Tuscany from Above.”
Will The Millennial Aesthetic Ever End?
In this era, you come to understand, design was the product. Whatever else you might be buying, you were buying design, and all the design looked the same.
How Air Conditioning Created The Modern City
The shopping mall would have been inconceivable without air conditioning, as would the deep-plan and glass-walled office block, as would computer servers. The expansion of tract housing in postwar suburban America relied on affordable domestic air conditioning units.
What It’s Like To Live Next To America’s Largest Coal Plant
By the late 1960s, Georgia Power had started planning to build the Robert W. Scherer Power Plant. Over a decade later, in 1982, its first unit opened in Juliette. Now, residents worry it’s contaminating their water.
Trump’s Art Of The Steal
How Donald Trump rode to power by parroting other people’s fringe ideas, got himself impeached for it—and might prevail anyway. Trump mines Twitter, plucking what he wants, “very comfortable with half thoughts,” “always looking for tidbits of information that he can use to his advantage.”
Lucie Rox’s New Zine Captures The Quiet, Soft Side Of Life In Japan
SIGNS, a new zine of pictures taken in Japan from Paris-born photographer Lucie Rox, is about the joy of exploring new places. It’s a series that encapsulates the feeling of traveling and “being taken by the novelty of the streets, objects and people living their everyday life in front you.”
The Desert Soil That Could Save Lives
Chile’s desiccated Atacama Desert was once considered a dead zone, but it hides great riches that could help us tackle a major threat to human health. “The premise was that since the conditions are so harsh in the Atacama Desert, organisms become adapted to those conditions.”
When Secret Mystery Planes Landed At The Air Bases Where I Was Stationed
Diego Garcia is a part of the British Indian Ocean Territories comprising the greater Chagos Archipelago. Its extreme isolation has made it a hotbed for unsubstantiated accusations of classified and even nefarious activity. The tent I lived in was supposedly part of a CIA “black site” for terrorist detainees.
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.
Kiribati: A Drowning Paradise In The South Pacific
UN estimates indicate that Kiribati could disappear in just 30 or 40 years. That’s because the average elevation is less than two meters above sea level. And some of the knock-on effects of climate change have made the situation more difficult.
The State Of Qatar’s Hack Of Democracies: A Global Cyber-Crime Operation
In one of the largest state-sponsored computer hacks ever detected, Qatar’s proxies cyberattacked more than 1,400 high-status and ordinary citizens who were exercising their free-speech rights in democracies across North America, the Middle East, Asia and Europe, according to U.S. court filings.
The Price Of Dominionist Theology
Because my father believed that debt was sinful, and believed God wanted him and my mom to have as many kids as possible, they were too broke to help me pay for college. Because of this anti-debt theology, I wasn’t allowed to take out student loans, and had to attend a really conservative Christian college because it was so cheap.
Three Years Of Misery Inside Google, The Happiest Company In Tech
In the first days of the Trump era, Google’s leaders were desperate to avoid confrontation with the new regime. The company’s history of close ties to the Obama administration left executives feeling especially vulnerable to the reactionary movement.
The Man With The Golden Airline Ticket
My dad was one of the only people with a good-for-life, go-anywhere American Airlines pass. Then they took it away. This is the true story of having—and losing—a superpower.