Color e-readers have been a thing for a while, but until now, the biggest companies with the most extensive book ecosystems—Amazon, mainly, but also Barnes & Noble and Rakuten Kobo—have only sold trad
Nebraska state Senator John Fredrickson is the first out gay man elected to the state legislature. Now, he has another feather in his cap. After an impassioned speech in opposition to a bill that targ
It’s going to be a couple of weeks until the identity of Portland’s $1.326 billion Powerball winner is announced. But someone came forward Monday and authorities are now verifying their identity. THAN
It’s the 90s again, and our favorite mutants are back in a new animated series, X-Men ’97. The X-Men are back on TV! But this isn’t a detailed review of the new series, as much as it me recounting how
Subscriber Only Sign in or Subscribe Now for audio version A new tech ideology is ascendant online. “Introducing effective accelerationism,” the pseudonymous user Beff Jezos tweeted, rather grandly, i
There’s a line in The Great Gatsby that took me by surprise when I first read it in high school, and I’ve been puzzling over it ever since. Early on, the fictional narrator Nick Carraway is thinking a
One can undergo a sublime experience even in the face of a life-threatening force. Residents watch the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. Arnold Genthe, photographer. Courtesy of Genthe
It is a familiar story: a small group of animals living in a wooded grassland begin, against all odds, to populate Earth. At first, they occupy a specific ecological place in the landscape, kept in ch
Shrimp Jesus Who among us will cast the first stone at shrimp Jesus? I hesitate to talk about him because I believe that AI-generated content is categorically no better or worse than other clickbait,
Nothing maps This Cartography of Generative AI, produced by the Estampa collective, presents a clarifying exposition in a series of numbered paragraphs of both the material infrastructure (mining, ene
The regional government Metro has long overseen a grab bag of public services for the three counties in the Portland area. Taking a couch to the dump? Metro runs waste management. Catching a show at t
We've known of Europa’s existence for more than four centuries, but for most of that time, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon was just a pinprick of light in our telescopes—a bright and curious companion t
Someone approaching the shores of Utah’s bleached-out and odiferous Great Salt Lake for the first time might be inclined to call it dead. This is not the case. Only half of it is at death’s door. The
Credits Oliver Milman is a New York-based environment correspondent for Guardian US. The foundational story of the modern American West is riven with tales of animals slaughtered or plundered: bison g
This story contains mild spoilers for Netflix’s 3 Body Problem. In Cixin Liu’s novel The Three-Body Problem, a scientist being manipulated by an extraterrestrial force is told to look up at the sky on
Writer Jenny Odell is an Oakland-based artist, writer, and educator. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Paris Review, The Believer, McSweeney’s, and Sierra Magazine
In August of 2021, rain fell atop the 10,551-foot summit of the Greenland ice cap, triggering an epic meltdown and a more-than-2,000-foot retreat of the snowline. The unprecedented event reminded Joel
In the summer of 1991, the neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese was studying how movement is represented in the brain when he noticed something odd. He and his research adviser, Giacomo Rizzolatti, at the
In the wild, octopods are solitary animals that roam freely in the sea. They spend their days and nights catching prey with their eight arms. With their big eyes, they observe closely what’s going on
The broad band of opalescent light and dark shadow that crosses the night sky has long fascinated humanity. Today it is known, variously, as the Milky Way, the Silver River, the Birds’ Path. We see it
In the summer of 2022, several researchers with USDA Wildlife Services held their breath as a drone pilot flew a large drone, equipped with a camera, toward a wolf standing in a pasture in southwester
Explore There were no eyes to see it, but the sun shone more dimly in the sky, casting its languid rays on the ground below. A thick methane atmosphere enshrouded the planet. The sea gleamed a metalli
Enlarge / Artistic rendition of a black hole merging with a neutron star. LIGO/VIRGO/KAGRA detected a merger involving a neutron star and what might be a very light black hole falling within the "mass
The first mule deer to become famous was named Jet, after the University of Wyoming graduate student who MacGyvered her tracking collar. The name fit an animal that walked, bounded and sometimes ran 1
Explore Behind most every tech billionaire is a sci-fi novel they read as a teenager. For Bill Gates it was Stranger in a Strange Land, the 1960s epic detailing the culture clashes that arise when a M
Clayton Aldern Senior Data Reporter Published Apr 08, 2024 Topic Climate + Science Share/Republish Grist thanks its sponsors. Become one. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please cons
This is undefended / undefeated, a newsletter by Sara Hendren on design, education, disability, technology, and related ideas. At some point you signed up for it; to unsubscribe, head to the bottom of
Explore Arseny Moskvichev dreams of the day he can have a meaningful conversation with artificial intelligence. “By meaningful, I mean a conversation that has the power to change you,” says the cognit
At the Bestival music festival in Dorset, England in July 2008. Photo by Gideon Mendel/Getty i The psychology of impatience could make waiting more tolerable At the Bestival music festival in Dorset,
In the summer of 2017, when communication professor Jeffery Gentry moved from Oklahoma to accept a position at Eastern New Mexico University, he was pleasantly surprised to find it easier to get up in
On the morning of 16 July 1945, at exactly 05:29:21, an unparalleled bomb was detonated in a United States desert and the world entered the ‘atomic age’. No other period in human history has dawned so
Explore From our small, terrestrial vantage points, we sometimes struggle to imagine the ocean’s impact on our lives. We often think of the ocean as a flat expanse of blue, with currents as orderly, i
Welcome to Healing is My Special Interest, the newsletter at the intersection of late-diagnosed neurodivergence and healing from high control environments. Today’s guest post is definitely about both
I grew up a creationist in the rural southeastern U.S. I am now a scientist, educator, wife, mother and person of faith. Regardless of whether you practice religion, you should fight to prohibit the t
Another of NASA’s “Great Observatories” is facing its end. Between 1990 and 2003 the space agency launched four magnificent machines into Earth orbit to observe the universe with different eyes, givin
I spend my days surrounded by thousands of written words, and sometimes I feel as though there’s no escape. That may not seem particularly unusual. Plenty of people have similar feelings. But no, I’m
Explore The underwater mountains of the Nazca and Salas y Gómez ridges are a world unto themselves. Running for 1,800 miles off the coast of Peru, they are isolated by a vast low-oxygen zone, the dept
Enlarge NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Mars has a history of liquid water on its surface, including lakes like the one that used to occupy Jezero Crater, which have long since dried up. Ancien
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by AP Photo/Dave Pickoff and Netflix. In May 1961, Lisa Lane was a contestant on the long-running CBS game show What’s My Line? Wearing a dark A-line dress and no j
My first job in media was as an assistant at The American Prospect, a small political magazine in Washington, D.C., that offered a promising foothold in journalism. I helped with the print order, mail