It’s Time For a New Kind of Power Fantasy Games can–and must–offer different definitions of fantasy, including fantasies of safety and peace.

    Beats: Space Space is where we project our dreams–and our nightmares–of the future.

    Beats: Disability “Disable” is an active verb, and disability describes the social and environmental barriers that prevent access just as much as an individual body’s physical reality.

    Sartorial: A Reading List A crash course in how science and technology is changing how we express ourselves through style.

    Scientists Like Me Are Studying Your Tweets–Are You OK With That? As researchers, we have a responsibility to acknowledge that factors like the type of data, the creator of that data, and our intended use for the data are important when it comes to using public information.

    Your Classroom Is Making You Fail Almost everyt traditional classroom design makes it harder to learn–yet the fixes are often simple.

    Fowl Plague

    Pandemics have threatened humanity in the past–and avian influenza may well be the next one due.
    Duncan Geere
    Aug 4, 2017
    A vast stack of containers on a ship

    Postcards From a Supply Chain

    A series that traces consumer goods back through the global shipping system to their source.
    Dan Williams
    Jan 21, 2015

    A Visual History of the Future

    Decades ago, artists’ imaginings formed high expectations about the world to come. Were these just fantasies–or was it the work of pioneers whose visions of the future actually helped to shape it?
    Darren Garrett
    May 30, 2018

    Beats: Space

    Space is where we project our dreams–and our nightmares–of the future.

    Beats: Food

    Food structures our day, and food systems shape our world

    Beats: Disability

    “Disable” is an active verb, and disability describes the social and environmental barriers that prevent access just as much as an individual body’s physical reality.

    Beats: Health

    Access to health care is as much a matter of public policy as it is the size of a person’s pocketbook; within a doctor’s office, many factors affect the quality of treatment.

    How to Smuggle Money into North Korea

    “It takes 20 minutes to get cash into the hands of a North Korean,” said Jieun Baek, a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Author of the forthcoming book North Korea’s Hidden Revolution, she estimates that somewhere between $12 to $20 million is transferred into the country annually from defectors […]
    Oliver Hotham
    Mar 23, 2016 5 min read

    In Praise of SETI@home

    The screen saver helped scientists search for extraterrestrial life-and made the early web feel like a more idealistic, collaborative space.
    Caroline Crampton
    Apr 5, 2019 3 min read

    I Tried Dieting With a Chatbot. I Hated It.

    “Here I am, inside a chat app, with no agency to ask the most basic questions about how the product works.”
    Abigail Hartstone
    May 18, 2016 10 min read