Each week, we close out our newsletter with One Last Thing. These short essays cover the intersections of science, technology, and culture. We publish them here, but to get them directly in your inbox first:
Online Shopping For More Than Just Good Value
From small talk to sustainability, we both win and lose as the internet reshapes how we browse and buy
Watch: The Ideal Workweek, According to Science
Many of history’s greatest minds worked less than four hours per day — and so should the rest of us
In Praise of SETI@home
The screen saver helped search for extraterrestrial life — and made the early web feel like a more idealistic, collaborative space
The Questionable Compromises of Privately-Owned Cities
When you live in a town built and run by a billionaire, you might have to choose — reliable amenities, or public accountability?
Astrology Doesn’t Have To Be Real To Make You Happy
Horoscopes aren’t supposed to give you all the answers — but they can help you treat yourself with compassion
The Forgotten Woman Who Unlocked the Greenhouse Effect
Why did Eunice Foote vanish from the history of climate science?
Millennials Are Right to Kill the American Car
Many of us don’t want cars; let’s create a world where we don’t need them, either
Zero Waste Shouldn’t Be A Privilege
We’re trying to sell each other more in order to use less
Playing Games with Life
Don’t hate the player, hate the game‘s technocratic blindness to its own ideological biases
The Aesthetics of Feeling Safe
The lifestyle marketing of self-defense products for women puts the onus of preventing sexual violence on its victims
Dismantling the Myths of PMS
New research is challenging the old idea that hormones have a uniquely powerful grip over human agency
NASA Turns to Games For A New Generation of Space Art
Developers are combining art and science to simulate how living on Mars might look a century from now
The Great Dying
How does a person live on this warming planet, at the end of 2018?
Science Is a Liar Sometimes
An incomplete list
Hollywood’s Digital Worlds Head Deeper Into the Uncanny Valley
From live-action animation to “de-aging” actors, moviemakers’ pursuit of “realism” kills authenticity
Violence Spreads Like A Disease. It Can Be Stopped Like One, Too
Homicides and assaults can be prevented with public health policies, but “tough on crime” politicians still prefer punishment
War-Gaming for Peace
From hurricane preparation to elections, tabletop simulations can make understanding the world easier
Pests? Pets? How Language Changes Our Perception of Animals
In a world of declining biodiversity, dismissing creatures as nuisances is becoming unsustainable
Noise Pollution Is Making the Oceans Unbearable for Underwater Life
Constant loud sounds aren’t just bad for humans — they’re making fish and other animals sick as well
Meet Your iPhone’s Grandparent
How the calculator morphed into the pocket computer — the predecessor of today’s smartphones
Body Hacking Has a Place in Hospitals
Forget magnetic sensors or antennae — augmentation with flexible circuitry is already improving patient care
Why Designers Are Making Real Versions of Imaginary Objects
Design fiction doesn’t predict how things will be — it starts a discussion on what might be
Apps Are Helping Keep Indigenous Languages Alive Online
A multilingual web means finding digital homes for as many of the world’s 7,000 languages as possible
The Media Can’t Sell Climate Change
Readers are asking news outlets why they aren’t hitting harder on climate change. But who are they hoping to convince?
Moving Beyond the “Radio Voice”
Humans can learn to understand a huge variety of accents and dialects. So why do we usually hear the same sorts of voices?
Losing the Night Sky
Energy-efficient technologies let us keep the lights on longer — but our health is suffering
The Tacky Cities of Tomorrow
Which cities get to be “the future”?
Is Your Fertility Data For Sale?
The information held by contraceptive apps like Natural Cycles has historically been used to repress and control women
WhatsApp Wants You To Stop Sharing Fake Stories
How can the messaging app balance privacy with stopping the spread of misinformation?
Ringtones and Playstations: The Tools of Grime’s Low-Fidelity Allstars
How 21st-century London’s homegrown music genre was shaped by the technology used to compose it
Guano, Guano, Gone
What we can learn from the 19th century’s race for bird droppings
Stargazing With Whale Sharks
Anyone can help to save marine life, with the help of a NASA algorithm and a snorkel
Quality Over Quantity: Bioethics at the Vatican
How is the Church approaching topics like gene editing, life extension, and stem cell research?
Action Replays for Human Rights Violations
What would hyperreal sports broadcasting look like if we acknowledged the political context of these events?
Humanizing Data: Highlights from EYEO 2018
The conference explores the interface between technology and culture — and how they shape each other
How We (Don’t) Talk About Climate Change
It’s hard to spur people to climate change action when nothing dramatic is happening — but it’s equally hard to do so during natural disasters.
Measuring Global Health with the DALY
How statisticians compare diseases to work out which is the “worst”
Scientists Don’t Have a Monopoly On Objective Thinking
Teaching students to draw informed conclusions from objective data is vital — but it’s never been exclusive to science
When Charts Go Weird: The Joy of Xenographics
Fun alternatives to the classic bar, line, and pie chart trio can also be more effective for certain kinds of data
Let’s Not (Accidentally) Build Depressed Robots
Would you feel OK about sending a bomb disposal robot out into the field, knowing that its code somehow “felt” fear?
Your Great-Grandson’s Genetic Privacy
Are you willing to expose your descendants’ genetic information?
The Future of International Scientific Collaboration
Cooperation is important — but it should include countries which have not historically had a voice in global conversations
Archiving the Infinite Stream
What we keep — and what we are allowed to keep — writes the shape of our history
Disappearing Languages and Tooltips
Our latest visualization had to work equally well for both desktop and mobile users, and for both big dots and small dots.
Please YouTubers, Don’t Make Us Pay To Interview You
The disintegration of journalism-as-media-gatekeeper has also eroded that old incentive to speak to a journalist for access to a platform.
The Day After the Day After Tomorrow
Climate change isn’t a movie villain — and it’s not something that’s going to show up in a distant, hazy future
The Real Villains of the Tech Industry
“Bugs are created by people, and can be fixed by people.”
Solving the Global Address Problem
Four billion people around the globe don’t have a way to refer to their home
Barbra Streisand’s Clone Dog Army
Consumer-grade genetic testing — and cloning — has gone from speculative to mundane.
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