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Pinterest's Data-Driven Approach to Improving Diversity
A few locations of Pinterest offices in the U.S. Jeff Chiu / APIn October 2013, Pinterest became one of the first tech companies to share hard data on the demographic breakdown of its employees. In a...
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Is There Such a Thing as a Safe Gun?
Flames exit the barrel of a gun as a man fires a Sig P320 at a Utah gun range in December 2015. George Frey / ReutersThere’s that old line, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” How absurd is...
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The Traveling Salesmen of the Nuclear-Industrial Complex
The Center for Land Use Interpretation / Los Alamos Rolodex: Doing Business with the National Lab, 1967-1978How do you tell the story of nuclear weapons?One way is to focus on the vast system that...
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How to Not Fly an Airplane
David Moir / ReutersEight out of nine passengers, and the flight attendant, were throwing up—whether from the turbulence itself or from fear, I couldn’t tell. We’d already been thrashing around for an...
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Obama's Big New Move on Coal
Coal mines in Wyoming, like this one in Point of the Rocks, will be most affected by the change. Jim Urquhart / ReutersIn his second term, President Obama has taken increasingly forceful steps to fight...
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Obama Answers the Great Dog Pants Question
Charlie Spiering / TwitterWhich dog sweater do you prefer? Perhaps the oddest question Obama has ever been asked #youtubeasksobama -> pic.twitter.com/EzsLDSRns1— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering)...
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Close, but No Rocket Landing
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is seen straight chillin' at a California air force base this weekend before launching off into space. Bill Ingalls / NASA via APUpdated on January 18 at 2:13 p.m. ESTIf at...
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Dissolvable Brain Sensors Disintegrate Once Their Job Is Done
John Rogers“I just took out a bullet from the back of a guy’s head an hour ago,” says Rory Murphy.As a neurosurgeon at the Washington University School of Medicine, Murphy “deals with brain trauma all...
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Why Google Quit China—and Why It’s Heading Back
Andy Wong / APWhen Google shut down its Chinese search engine in 2010, it gave up access to an enormous market. There are more than twice as many people on the Internet in China as there are residents...
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Building an Impossible Clock
Heinz von Heydenaber /dpa /CorbisAs a rule, Donald Saff doesn’t collect clocks he can’t see inside of. It’s the harmonic entanglement of gears—and the skill needed to craft them—that first lured him to...
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Why Twitter Doesn't Work with Sarcasm, Chap. 823
Here’s an illustration of something I understood in principle but have been reminded of in specific.In the wee hours of last Friday night, I finally finally finally said adieu to a long story that will...
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Robots Could Make the Supreme Court More Transparent
U.S. Supreme Court Justices stand in the House chamber before the State of the Union address in January 2016. Evan Vucci / ReutersPredicting the outcome of Supreme Court decisions has long been a...
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More on Twitter's Tin Ear
Yesterday I mentioned my adventure in Tweeting what I thought was an obviously sarcastic post (that I was boosting the Trump/Cruz platform of keeping foreigners and their wicked ways out of the...
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The Facebook-Loving Farmers of Myanmar
Craig ModFor six weeks last October and November, just before Myanmar held its landmark elections, I joined a team of design ethnographers in the countryside interviewing forty farmers about...
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Why Haven't Gunmakers Improved Safety Technology the Way Automakers Did?
A sign at Chris' Indoor Shooting Range in Guilford, Connecticut Michelle McLoughlin / ReutersGuns and automobiles are curiously linked in American culture. They’re both outsized symbols of the nation’s...
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Planet Nine May Help Us Slingshot Our Way to Interstellar Space
CaltechIn his famous sonnet, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, John Keats describes the moment he first came to appreciate some of the great works of classical antiquity. He says he had been told...
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I Tried to Send a Telegram in 2016
A Western Union telegram photographed in 1923 Library of CongressI’ve never received a telegram. This realization, when it occurred to me recently, made me feel inexplicably nostalgic.There are, after...
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A New Way to Appreciate Those Awkward Jeopardy! Interviews
CBSIn 2007, in an attempt to take the contestants’ minds off their nerves, Alex Trebek opened a Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions sans pants.“I was informed backstage a few minutes ago that our three...
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The Decline of the Driver's License
Toby Talbot / APRemember how, in Clueless, Alicia Silverstone’s character Cher fails her driver’s test after nearly killing a biker and scraping her car alongside several parked cars? And then how she...
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Why Are Government Weather Forecasts So Shouty?
Dylan Martinez / ReutersPERHAPS AS THIS WEEK’S HISTORIC STORM HAS LOOMED OVER YOUR REGION … YOU’VE TURNED TO FORECAST DISCUSSIONS … LOOKING FOR WISDOM … CONTEXT … AND CLARITY.FORECAST DISCUSSIONS ARE...
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