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The New York Public Library's Remarkable New Digital Collection
A still photograph from "The Merry Widow," 1964 NYPLOh, hello, my new favorite Internet rabbit hole. The New York Public library has digitized more than 187,000 images, all in the public domain—meaning...
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The Best Email Sign-Off Ever
The subject of salutations and sign-offs has been a question of email etiquette for almost as long as email has existed. What’s the best way to greet someone? There’s “dear,” and “hi,” and “hello,” and...
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The Puddle
Periscope“It’s spring when the world is puddle-wonderful.” e. e. cummingsLess than a week into the new year, the same day Netflix announced that it was now available in more than 190 countries, more...
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The Trouble With Pluralizing Emoji
Today I tried to answer a grammar question that has long vexed us here at The Atlantic: What’s the plural of emoji?In other words, if you have three of the symbolic characters lined up next to each...
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I Went Back to a Dumbphone
The flip phone is now considerably less exciting than it was in 2006, when the RAZR debuted. Fabrizio Bensch / ReutersA couple of months ago, I disrupted my household by going on a treasure hunt....
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Advice From the Man Who Sent the First Email
David McNew / ReutersThe man who sent the first email is not overwhelmed by email.In our culture, it seems, this is unusual. While everyone else is lifehacking, streamlining, Slacking, and...
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Predictive Policing Comes to Restaurants
Matt Marton / APThethree dozen inspectors at the Chicago Department of Public Health scrutinize 16,000 eating establishments to protect diners from gut-bombing food sickness. Some of those pose more of...
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Don't Fear the #10kTwitter
Jack Dorsey soon after stepping in as interim Twitter CEO in July 2015. His job was made permanent in October. Mike Blake / ReutersIs Twitter abandoning its trademark 140-character limit?That was the...
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Why Amazon's Data Centers Are Hidden in Spy Country
Ingrid BurringtonOnce in a while—not quite often enough to be a crisis, but just often enough to be a trope—people in the United States will freak out because a huge number of highly popular websites...
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OkCupid Adds a Feature for the Polyamorous
Kirn Vintage Stock / Corbis / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticOnline-dating behemoth OkCupid is adding a feature tailor-made for polyamorous people. The new setting, which became available for some beta users...
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Happy Incept Day, Roy Batty!
Way back on October 21, 2015, people all over the world celebrated Back to the Future Day: The date when Marty McFly travels to the future in 1989’s Back to the Future II to save his children. It was a...
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How to Write a Golden Globe-Nominated Song With Google
Fox SearchlightThe film Youth turns on a song. Released last month and starring Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, and Harvey Keitel, the movie begins as a royal messenger asks the aging composer Fred...
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How a Controller Sounds When Trying to Save an Airplane
.audiojs .time strong { font-family: monospace !important; }Yesterday the ceilings were low and the weather was bad across the southeastern United States. In these circumstances, a Cirrus SR-22...
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Inside the Lab Where Invisibility Cloaks Are Made
Chinese artist Liu Bolin blends himself into a shelf full of comic books. Jorge Silva / ReutersJust before Christmas I finally got to see an invisibility cloak. I’ve written a whole book about...
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How ‘Gun Control’ Became a Taboo Phrase
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz fires his shotgun at a pheasant near Akron, Iowa. Mark Kauzlarich / ReutersHere are some phrases President Barack Obama uttered in a speech at...
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The Long and Winding History of Encryption
Eighteenth century mural in Tamil Nadu, India. One of the earliest references to encryption appears in the Kama Sutra. Dinodia / CorbisNever in history have more people had access to advanced...
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The 3-D-Printed Gun Is Retro, Not Futuristic
Seized plastic handguns, which were created using 3-D printing technology, are displayed at a police station south of Tokyo in May 2014. ReutersYou don’t need 3-D-printing technology to make your own...
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A Police Department's Secret Formula for Judging Danger
Carlo Allegri / ReutersWhen Tamir Rice was killed by police officers in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2014, some observers assigned a portion of the blame to a 911 dispatcher. She relayed a citizen’s concern...
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The Convenience-Surveillance Tradeoff
A security camera hangs from the roof of the Secretariat Building at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Mike Segar / ReutersPeople love free stuff. That’s the principle that helps explain the...
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Will More Newspapers Go Nonprofit?
The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News in fatter times Tim Shaffer / ReutersOn Tuesday, three of Philadelphia’s most important journalistic resources—its legendary daily newspaper, the Inquirer;its...
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