Amidst the millions of social media users is a sizable chunk well-acquainted with what I’ll call “post-post anxiety.” It’s a dreadful malady, really; with symptoms that come on after you’ve fired off a tweet or pic that is, on second-thought, offensive or unflattering. Once this anxiety has taken hold, even your most haphazardly created content…
In the United States it’s easy to take cell reception for granted. With few exceptions, you can use your phone to text, call, and get online from pretty much anywhere in the country. Yet about 2 billion people around the world live in areas that lack mobile coverage, mostly far from major cities, which makes…
On the internet of the future, nothing appears on your screen without approval. Scavenging Wikipedia, you’ll learn about pizza farms and the insane circumstances surrounding King Edmund II’s death (he died while taking a shit). At one point, you’ll likely tweet about that strange period in 2019 when Pete Buttigieg wore Obama drag during his…
Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood gets its name from the Gowanus Canal, the notoriously polluted waterway snaking through it. Intensive cleanup efforts began over a decade ago, after the Environmental Protection Agency declared the canal a Superfund site, and real estate developers began sniffing around the area. As the waters changed from extremely gross to just gross,…
Alice Collins Plebuch, or Grandma Nerd, as her grandkids call her, is good at solving puzzles. She was among the first wave of computer programmers—when that term meant punching information on cards to be fed into mainframes. She has an analytical mind and is at ease with technology. Years ago, she began digging into her…
In 1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying his CallAir A-2 between Chehalis and Yakima, Washington, when he took a detour to search for a downed Marine Corps aircraft. There was a reward for anyone who could find the plane, and who couldn’t use $5,000?Arnold flew around searching for a while, and accidentally found something else—something much…
Remember Apple’s “Batterygate,” back in 2017? It’s understandable if more imminent news stories, like Covid-19 and the US presidential election, have pushed old iPhone controversies to the far corners of your brain. But if you happened to own an iPhone 6, 7, or SE, and at some point you updated those phones to specific version…
Bots are adoring and scientists are imploring, but first: a cartoon about the reality of “catfishing”.Here’s the news you need to know, in two minutes or less.Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here!Today’s NewsWelcome to Botnet, where everyone’s an influencerEver wondered what it’s like to be a celebrity…
It feels as if the Democratic primary has been going on forever. Ten debates. Twenty-eight campaigns launched, 23 folded. Hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising. And yet, despite all that, only 149 pledged delegates—of an eventual 3,979—have been awarded so far. Nothing has actually been decided.With strong showings in the first three states, Vermont…
On Thursday, 18 stories above the streets of Manhattan, the rooftop bar of one of the more than a dozen Marriott hotels in Midtown played host to an unusual crowd. Some were Airbnb hosts, others repped the burgeoning homesharing startup scene, most were wannabe rental empire titans—all were members of New York City’s booming short-term…
