EveAim

We sat in a circle, clutching paper cups full of steaming coffee and tea. First, I said my name. "Hi, I'm Lexi." What came next wasn't an admission of addiction, but a statement about what I feared most about death. "I fear the unknown," I began, but paused. That didn't quite sum it up. My…

Like with jetpacks and flying cars, the Power Loader from Aliens is a robot we’ve been promised for a long time. That’d be the exoskeleton that Sigourney Weaver donned to beat the tar out of the movie’s eponymous alien Queen, of course. Jetpacks are kinda here, flying cars … almost, and now a real-life Power…

At the end of Shrill’s second episode, Annie, played by Aidy Bryant, scrolls down to the comments section of her first article and finds a photo of a pig. The pig is very dead. It lies prone on muddy ground, its grubby skin blackening under the blue flame of a torch. “THIS IS ANNIE,” screams…

A little bit of booze, the conventional wisdom goes, can be good for you. But the evidence for that claim—beyond anecdotal accounts that a nip of whiskey can nip a cold in the bud—is surprisingly thin. Alcohol studies usually look backwards, comparing participants’ historical drinking habits with their health problems. But it’s hard to prove…

Twenty years ago I called Carl Sagan to ask him why people believed crazy stuff. Sagan—astronomer, creator of the “golden record” messages to any aliens who might find the Voyager space probes, creator and host of Cosmos, novelist, arguably one of the best-known scientists of the 20th century—would’ve been 83 years old today. Me, I…

By any measure, the fires that tore through Northern California were a major disaster. Forty-two people are dead, and 100,000 are displaced. More than 8,400 homes and other buildings were destroyed, more than 160,000 acres burned—and the fires aren’t all out yet. That devastation leaves behind another potential disaster: ash. No one knows how much.…

When I take the Xbox gamepad to start playing Halo: Master Chief Collection, I say something I’ve said approximately 17,000 times in my life: “Let me just invert the Y-axis.” I always think of the right thumbstick, which controls the game view, like a pilot's yoke, so when I want to look down, I push…

Update: On November 13, 2017, the FDA approved the Abilify "digital pill," the first time the agency has accepted a medication embedded with a sensor. Getting people to take their pills is hard, especially with mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But to use the language of techno-optimism: “There’s an app for that!” No,…

Maria Streshinsky: When I was really young, I went to the New Games Tournament. Stewart Brand: Oh my gosh, in Marin County? That’s amazing. Streshinsky: I’ve been thinking about all the different things that you’ve helped create. Brand: Do you remember the New Games at all? Streshinsky: I remember the Earthball. Brand: Ah, good. Well,…

This week, a car-sized scale model of the International Space Station is hanging from the ceiling of the Regency Ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. It’s positioned toward the back of the room, so it doesn’t block the view of a bank of six TV cameras. Bathed in purple lights, the grayish behemoth…