After “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HAL…

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Food

The BBC’s latest food stories from around the world

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Eclipses do odd things to radio waves. An army of amateur broadcasters wants to find out why

It's the huge tower in his back yard that gives Todd Baker's hobby away. Bristling with antennae, the 30m (100ft) structure is taller than many of the mature trees nearby. Baker, an industrial conveyor belt salesman from Indiana, goes not just by his name, but also his call-sign, the short sequence of letters and numbers that he uses to identify himself over the air: W1TOD. He is a member of the amateur radio, or ham radio, community."You name it, I've been in it," he says, referring to different radio systems, including citizens band, or CB radio, that he has dabbled with over the years. "Communications were just plain-o cool to me."

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Traditional multinationals are making their mark on Latin American tech

Latin American tech isn’t really known for innovation; what it’s good at is spotting trends that have worked overseas and bringing them to the region. It’s why Latin America has such a vibrant startup ecosystem, full of proven ideas (albeit proven elsewhere).It’s been so successful that even Latin America’s most traditional and innovation-weary companies have started to pay attention. As the startup ecosystem steadies itself after the collapse of SVB and the funding winter, bigger and more established local corporations have looked to fill the breach. These corporate innovators fall under three main categories.

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TikTok users are chasing easy money by reposting viral videos from China

Since June, 27-year-old Li Na has spent at least two hours a day on her new side job: TikTok. She posts up to three makeup videos on her account daily — they share tips and showcase dramatic before-and-after transformations. ButLi doesn’t create any of the videos. Instead, she finds viral clips on Chinese social media platforms like Douyin, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu, and after a round of light edits, reposts them to TikTok. Li and many others like her post these videos in the hope that they too will go viral on TikTok, earning them an income through the app’s Creator Fund or from affiliate marketing.The practice is known as banyun in Chinese, which translates to “moving” or “smuggling.” It has attracted a lot of attention in the country over the past year, with “gurus” and influencers selling guides and training sessions on making money through banyun. Once trained, they promise, anyone can gather a massive TikTok following and make money by promoting products for a few hours of work per day.

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The Sky Is Full of Stars—and Exoplanets, Too

Of the thousands of stars visible to the eye, only a few hundred are known to have planets. But that number may be far higher in realityThat was the case on the first day of 1992, but scarcely a week later, everything changed. On January 9 of that year astronomers announced the discovery of the very first exoplanets—worlds orbiting stars other than our own. These new planets are so weird that it was difficult to grasp how profoundly they changed our cosmic context: they orbit a pulsar, a rapidly spinning, ultradense, city-sized stellar remnant left behind after a massive star exploded as a supernova. Although that’s extremely interesting, it’s not entirely satisfying. A pulsar is the least sunlike kind of star out there, and we, as irredeemably self-centered human beings, prefer to find places more like home—planets around stars more like our own.

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Millions of Mosquitoes Will Rain Down on Hawaii to Save an Iconic Bird

Hawaii’s brightly colored honeycreepers are at imminent risk of extinction, and bacteria could be the key to saving themMillions of mosquitoes dropped from helicopters could be the greatest hope for Hawaii’s iconic honeycreepers. At least four species of the brightly colored birds could go extinct within the year if no action is taken to save them. “We’re seriously in a race against time at the moment,” says Hanna Mounce, program manager of the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project.

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Know Yourself Better by Writing What Pops into Your Head

For decades, physician and author Silke Heimes has been leading groups in therapeutic exercises to put thoughts and feelings down on paper. Heimes, a professor of journalism at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, points to abundant evidence that writing for five to 20 minutes a day can improve health, diminish stress, increase self-confidence and even kindle the imagination. A writing routine, she argues, is a form of mental hygiene that almost anyone can benefit from.So how do you start? What happens if—as every writer fears—the page remains blank? And how do you get rid of an overcritical inner censor? Heimes, director of the Institute for Creative and Therapeutic Writing in Darmstadt, explains how to overcome inhibitions and open up your inner world.

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Journey to the Thawing Edge of Climate Change

What is a permafrost thaw slump? Just imagine a massive hole with an area the size of more than nine football fields—and growing—where ice-cold ground once stood.Steve Kokelj: Yeah. No, I’m just looking around where everyone is. I have to do that once in a while. We had a bear almost walk into us the other day because we were, like, staring at a thaw slump. And we turn around, and we’re like, “Oh, that, that’d be a grizzly bear there.”

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‘Morning After' Antibiotic Could Reduce STIs

Draft CDC guidelines recommend doxycycline for the prevention of sexually transmitted infections in some populationsA commonly used antibiotic could become a standard way to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea.

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Climate Disasters Displaced 43 Million Children in Just Six Years

The Philippines, India and China have seen the greatest total number of children displaced by disasters—some 23 million—in recent yearsCLIMATEWIRE | Extreme weather events and climate disasters displaced more than 43 million children around the globe between 2016 and 2021, according to a new report from UNICEF. And the United Nations says tens of millions more children will suffer a similar fate as climate change worsens extreme weather worldwide.

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Managing Risks Around M&A Deals: Why Do They Fail?

Wharton management professor Emilie Feldman explains why most M&A deals fail and how companies can prepare for success.©2023 Knowledge at Wharton. All rights reserved. Knowledge at Wharton is an affiliate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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Ram

Fifteen years ago, Uruguay was experiencing an energy crisis brought on by its reliance on fossil fuels; today, the nation produces 98 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (and even exports extra energy to neighboring countries). How did they turn things around so quickly? Uruguay's former secretary of energy, Ramón Méndez Galain, explains how they pulled off this unprecedented shift -- and shares how any other country can do the same.

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How to fix fashion and protect the planet

From the field to your closet, your clothes go on a long journey before they enter your life. Designer Amy Powney explores the fashion industry's brutal impact on the environment and human health, modeling what ethical, planet-friendly clothing can look like — and inviting us all to think beyond the label.

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Which Amazon Echo or Alexa Speaker Is Best for You?

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDAmazon’s family of Alexa-enabled devices is vast. From the spherical Echo to the swiveling Echo Show 10, you can get Alexa into your home in many ways. These devices can answer your questions, help you order essentials, set timers, play all sorts of audio content, and even function as the control hub for your growing smart home. These are our favorite Echo- and Alexa-compatible speakers for every home and budget.

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Our 11 Favorite Electric Kettles to Get the Water Going

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDIf you don't have an electric kettle in your kitchen, you're missing out. Not only are these appliances slightly more energy-efficient than using a stovetop, but they're portable and boil water more quickly. These days, electric kettles come in various sizes with different kinds of spouts, and you'll often find models with customizable temperature settings too—allowing you to set the perfect brew temp for your pour-over coffee or loose-leaf tea.

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Meet the Next Generation of Doctors--and Their Surgical Robots

When medical student Alyssa Murillo stepped into surgery, she was met with something most wouldn't expect to find in an operating room: a towering surgical robot. She wasn't there to observe the kind of surgeries she was used to seeing; instead she was getting an in-depth view inside the patient's body through the robot's video console."It was incredible," says Murillo, who is now a forth-year general surgery resident at the University of California, San Francisco. "You have a full 3D view, which is different from any other minimally invasive surgery technique."

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The Best Early October Prime Day Deals

Amazon will launch a shopping event called Prime Big Deal Days on October 10 and 11, aka Prime Day Part II. As usual, many of these Prime Day deals will require a Prime membership, though you can take advantage of a 30-day trial. In the run-up to the October Prime Big Deal Days event, we've rounded up some early deals worth your time and money. Right now, there are already deals on Amazon hardware like Echo speakers and Eero routers, but we've also found discounts on work-from-home gear, headphones, and plenty more.Updated October 7, 2023: We've added a handful of early deals, including more Amazon devices, weighted blankets, and an electric scooter.

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'A Galactic Embarrassment': The Crypto World Is Already Sick of SBF's Trial

The trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, now coming to the end of its first week, is far bigger than just crypto. Reporters from the largest media outlets (including WIRED) have flocked to New York to cover it, TV stations are airing feature-length documentaries on the fall of the crypto exchange, and X (formerly Twitter) is ablaze with armchair analysis. But members of the crypto industry are tired of the circus before it has really even begun."I'm not the only one that thinks this is all just one very big distraction," says crypto analyst Noelle Acheson, formerly of crypto brokerage Genesis. The sooner the industry is able to move beyond the "galactic embarrassment of FTX," she says, the better. "It's about starting again once [the trial] is done."

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'Blindsight' Is the Epitome of Science Fiction Horror

Visit WIRED Photo for our unfiltered take on photography, photographers, and photographic journalism wrd.cm/1IEnjUHSlide: 1 / of 1.Caption: Mario Laporta/Getty Images

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The Las Vegas Sphere Makes Virtual Reality a Full-Body Experience

The best virtual reality experience I’ve had this year was not with the $500 Quest 3 or the $3,500 Apple VisionPro, and it didn’t even require a headset. Sure, it cost $2.3 billion. But it came with a live soundtrack from an iconic rock band.I am talking, of course, about last weekend’s U2 concert in the Sphere, the giant installation sitting just off the Las Vegas strip. It’s like something out of a Jordan Peele movie come to life. Or a modern Kafkaesque short story where a concert arena awakes one day and finds that it has transmogrified into a giant eyeball, which advertisers exploit to promote stuff like YouTube TV's NFL Sunday Ticket on its 580,000-square-foot skin. The brainchild of Madison Square Garden Entertainment CEO James Dolan—not a popular figure in New York City—the Sphere lustily promotes itself as the future of entertainment. It’s not a ridiculous claim.

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U2's The Edge on The Sphere's Opening Night: 'This Is Definitely Working'

On September 29, the iconic Irish rock band U2 played the first concert in the Sphere, Las Vegas' other-worldly $2.3 billion immersive concert hall. Years in the making, the performance ushered in a new era of rock and roll spectacle as the band's familiar music was augmentedâand some might argue, eclipsedâby the virtual-reality-like immersiveness of the 160,000-square-foot 16K-by-16K LED display. They also took advantage of the Sphere's spacial sound, which is powered by 168,000 speakers.U2's set included a full airing of their Achtung Baby album and other hits. But while the band was in fine form, managing a show without regular drummer Larry Mullen Jr. for the first time in decades, the real noise was directed at the eye. Was this "the future of live shows?" as one headline asked. Or was it "the greatest show on Earth?" One that "will change live entertainment forever?" From my seat in section 104, I found these questions worth asking.

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