The nasty thing you said to a close relative who passed soon after. The career-altering mistake you made. The one that got away — or rather, left because you messed up. Why are these the thoughts that bounce off the inside of your skull when you wake...
Thank God for next-day shipping. I get paid on Thursdays and my wife’s birthday was this past Friday — I’d planned to head out to the mall on Thursday and get some new sneakers that she was excited about. I’d had this figured out for weeks, but I...
A brief note: The May print issue was written before the coronavirus pandemic took hold and turned all of our lives upside down. We hope all of these stories will be relevant again before too long, but meanwhile, stay safe, stay sane, and above all, stay away from...
Got stuck? No problem. Here’s the answers to this month’s puzzle:
Becoming a cyborg could have been liberating. In 1985, scholar Donna Haraway posited that as the categories of human, animal and machine became blurred, the rigid boundaries of gender, labor and other symbolic oppressors could collapse. In some ways, the smartphone has made progress toward this end: In cyborg fashion,...
In early January, as hordes of people were reminding themselves that working out sucks, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan released a promising study proposing what could someday become a miraculous pill that mimics the effects of exercise. Naturally, much of the media heard “exercise pill” and...
The debate has raged on for more than half a century now — is pineapple an acceptable topping on pizza? It’s an ongoing, multi-thread argument on Reddit, a persistently insulting meme and I even got some hate for it when I ordered it as part of my investigation into a pizza delivery tracker. But I’m...
As I’m writing this, I’ve been in self-quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic for a few weeks. I am, of course, worried about getting the virus. Or maybe more so about it being dormant inside of me and passing it to someone else. But as I spend more...
Like a new cohort of workers affected by the coronavirus, I work remotely from my apartment. On a daily basis, my colleagues cooperate with my bulging head, projected like the Wizard of Oz on an enormous flat screen in our faraway headquarters. The same corkboard where I keep...
When it comes to staying on your feet while drinking, size is pretty much the only thing that matters. “The less you weigh, the more the water in your body will be affected by a given amount of alcohol,” explains Nachman Brautbar, a forensic toxicologist in L.A....
There is endless medical misinformation being dispensed in this pandemic moment. “Don’t take ibuprofen” or “hold your breath for 10 seconds to see if you have the coronavirus” or “drink some colloidal silver” are just a few among them (with potentially even worse suggestions coming from even more dubious...
Unloading your dishwasher, you’re faced with two threats: pipin’ hot ceramic dinner plates and Tupperware containers containing a splash-in-the-face quantity of dishwater. The dinner plate thing is fine and normal — hateful, but fine and normal — but what’s the freaking deal with all these wet plastics?...
