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The Clone of My Hometown in China
I grew up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which many locals will tell you is the most beautiful place on earth. The best place. The only place to be. In fact, when I announced several years ago that I was...
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Moby Dick in 50,000 Meows and Other Tales That Computers Tell
A novel, if stripped of plot, characters, or details, is simply a collection of organized words. Which means anyone can "write" a novel by stringing words together—even if that novel focuses only on...
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Japan and the Art of Asteroid Hunting
Armed with a high-speed explosive bullet and powered by an ion engine, a Japanese space explorer blasted off Wednesday on a six-year hunt for an asteroid. Launched by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration...
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How 'Gangnam Style' Broke YouTube
You might not still be watching the "Gangnam Style" video, but there are people out there who are still watching the "Gangnam Style" video. Because of them, if not because of you, "Gangnam Style" has...
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NASA's Mission to Mars Starts Here
Cue the Rocky theme song. Because come Thursday morning, an American spacecraft will undergo a rigorous training gauntlet not seen since the Apollo moon-landing era. “Thursday is a huge day for us,”...
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Seen It All Before: 10 Predictions About Police Body Cameras
A strange coalition has formed around the police officer-worn body camera. Their ubiquitous adoption is the sole policy change requested by the family of Michael Brown, the teenager who was fatally...
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The Twitter Account That Unravels Time
In the same way that dissecting a joke can render it unfunny, fixating too closely on time can stretch the minutes beyond their usefulness. That's part of what makes the project All The Minutes, and...
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The Power in Writing About Yourself
"This is not a replacement for people or human contact," said the designer Albert Lee of his new creation, an app called Emojiary. I wanted to believe him. Every day you get a text from the Emojiary...
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How One Small Idaho City Has Embraced Body Cameras
In most big American cities, body-worn cameras are new and fledgling additions to police officers' toolkits. New York City planned to outfit 50 cops with the devices over the weekend. Chicago hopes to...
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Welcome to the Grumpy Cat Industrial Complex
The 2-year-old Grumpy Cat, née Tardar Sauce, was born with a feline dwarfism that gives her, among other things, a severe underbite. As a result of this, Tardar sports a permanent scowl. In September...
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The Year in Drone Videos
Drone photography came into its own this year. Quadcopters with cameras got better and cheaper, turning more people into drone hobbyists and professional aerial videographers. Drones were used for...
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Return of the Rhythm Method
Every morning when she wakes up, Becca, a college student in Pennsylvania, puts a teardrop-shaped thermometer called the Daysy under her tongue. If it lights up green, she knows that day she and her...
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When the Computer Mouse Was New
If it had been up to Douglas Engelbart, his invention would have been called the "X-Y position indicator for a display system.” That's how the man who designed the mouse described what he'd made in his...
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What It's Like to Hallucinate Voices
Adam has a voice with a unique name and identity. Jacqui hears hundreds of different voices. Dolly’s voices led her to believe she was Jesus. The voices John experienced drove him to the edge. Voice...
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People Feel Better About Pornography When It's Educational
There are all kinds of theories about what watching pornography might do to a person. Some of those theories are positive, some are less so. But there’s one thing that studies agree on: People are more...
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Facebook No Longer Likes the Word 'Users'
Every so often, someone points out that user—the software industry’s term for “the people who use our products”—may not be a perfect one. Doesn’t it reveal a shallow, reductive view of the humanity? Or...
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The Most Bragged-About Places of 2014
If social media is the narcissist's tool, then a social media company's year-in-review is the narcissist's thinkpiece. We, the users, like to brag about what we discussed, where we went, who we...
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It's Too Hard to Manage Music Now: Why It's Okay to Miss the Old iPod
Recently I had a fairly pedestrian thought, a thought I've been having on and off for 10 years: "I want to put some music onto my portable music listening device." This used to be a relative cinch: I'd...
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The Story Behind AOL's Iconic Yellow Running Man
This is the first in an occasional series about abandoned Internet icons. It was spring of 1997. "Mmmbop" was the pop song of the moment and unlimited access to AOL cost $19.95 a month. Dial-up...
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What Maps Can Hide
Too often, I find myself looking at this or that new map on the happiest places to live in the United States, the states with the most craft beer, or, more importantly, the least social mobility. I...
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