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 S36The Race to Put Brain Implants in People Is Heating Up   In September, Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink announced the much-anticipated news that it would start recruiting volunteers for a clinical trial to test its device. Known as a brain-computer interface, or BCI, it collects electrical activity from neurons and interprets those signals into commands to control an external device. While Musk has said he ultimately wants to merge humans with artificial intelligence, Neuralink’s initial aim is to enable paralyzed people to control a cursor or keyboard with just their thoughts.Rival efforts to connect people’s brains to computers are also moving forward. This year, Neuralink competitor Synchron demonstrated the long-term safety of its implant in patients. Other startups tested novel devices in human subjects, while new ventures came on the scene.
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S49A Christmas-in-July-in-December Party  Lizzie: The Yuletide Blues are a real thing. Elvis had them. Charlie Brown had them. Tim Allen had them in Christmas With the Kranks and in The Santa Clause (during his custody battle). And that’s why we host holiday parties: to shoo away the blues until New Year’s, at which point we party again.When we last left you, I mentioned that I was planning a tiki-inspired holiday party. The whole thing came to fruition last weekend, minus the fruit tower and the shrimp luge. (It was really quite difficult, veering on impossible, to find a full-body pineapple in Brooklyn in December). Maybe this festive update, for you, is highly anticipated. Perhaps you’ve been waiting, breath bated, to hear how it all turned out. Well, you can unbate.
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S30Why British chocolate tastes the way it does  Imagine a taste test with identical-looking squares of milk chocolate, each from a different country. If you tasted them like a sweets-sommelier, swishing your mouth out with water before each to cleanse your palate, would you be able to tell which was British?Online forums are littered with people insisting that there is a unique flavor to chocolate made in the UK. There are plenty of click-bait news stories as well. People love to weigh in – and blanket condemnations of certain other nations' chocolates are hurled with glee.
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S50Fast Car: Why a 35-year-old folk anthem became one of the songs of 2023  This year's most ubiquitous hits include Miley Cyrus's Flowers, a disco-tinged ode to self-care, and SZA's Tarantino-inspired revenge anthem Kill Bill. Meanwhile, Morgan Wallen's liquor-soaked love song Last Night spent an astonishing 16 weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100. However, one of 2023's defining tunes isn't a freshly minted hit by a Gen Z or millennial superstar, but a country cover of a 35-year-old folk anthem. "I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone," Luke Combs sings yearningly on Fast Car, a song about escaping from poverty that was first made famous by its writer, Tracy Chapman, in 1988. Led by a finger-picked guitar intro that instantly evokes memories of Chapman's original, Combs' faithful but fuller-sounding version climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in July. When it was named song of the year by the Country Music Association in November, Chapman became the first black woman ever to receive this prestigious songwriting prize. Combs has been lauded, too, with a Grammy nomination for best country solo performance.
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S5825 Years Ago, the Most Underrated Sci-Fi Thriller Redefined an Entire Genre  A high school is the perfect setting for a horror movie. With so many different people on the verge of becoming adults, a few bad seeds going rogue is believable. Scream, The Craft, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Carrie have all become classics within this ready-made ensemble scenario. One movie deserves to stand alongside those heavy hitters, but it’s been besmirched by its sci-fi crossover tone and nebulous title. Twenty-five years later, it’s clear that between its all-star ‘90s ensemble cast and paranoid alien impersonator threat, it may as well have been called That “Thing” You Do.
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S35Poem: 'Baby Crocodile'  Tender bones, tiny soul: it could escapein death in an instant. Itself death-dealer—mouth of teeth, tyrannosaurin miniature, an apparently exact copyof its dozen nestmates—it repeats, too, time.Yet over its life lurks the great oversoul:the mother. She hulks. Seems to sleep. Slitty eyes,creaking limbs, so freightedwith scales and bulk as to appear unmovable,she tolerates our whispering observation
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S51How AI could dramatically improve cancer patients' prognosis  Professeur de marketing à ESCP Business School, professeur vacataire, ESCP Business School With 1.2 million deaths in the 2020, or 23% of the total number of deaths, cancer is the second biggest killer in the European Union. The figure is all the more tragic given 40% of these cancers could be prevented through early detection and lifestyle change such as not smoking or regular exercise.
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S54S48The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Authoritarianism  The forces of Christian nationalism are now ascendant both inside the Church and inside the Republican Party. This Christmas season, I have been reflecting on the words of my favorite author, C. S. Lewis, who once observed: “I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”
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S52The Christmas when all the sodomites died  There is an obscure medieval legend that says once upon a time in Bethlehem, a child was born whose holiness was so great it required the slaughter of all the “sodomites” in the world. Sodomites, the legend says, are so impure God did not want to share His humanity with them. So, He killed them all before He became human.
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S32Why Does Fruitcake Last So Long?  The humble fruitcake has stood the test of time—both culturally and scientifically. One of the earliest references to the dessert dates to the Ancient Romans, who used it like an energy bar and filled it with pomegranate seeds, raisins, honey and wine. Soldiers in World War I also fancied a version of the baked treat: wrapped in wax paper, this small fruitcake provided some morsel of nutrients when many other foods would spoil during long stretches in barren battle trenches.Nowadays fruitcakes are a holiday delicacy still prized for their long-lasting freshness. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, these seemingly indestructible pastries typically stay fresh for six months in the pantry and up to a year when refrigerated. But anecdotally we know that they can last for decades; some of the oldest have been preserved for more than a century. In 2017 a then 106-year-old fruitcake left behind by members of a 1910 Antarctic expedition was unearthed from one of the continent’s first buildings. And in 2019 the Detroit News reported that a Michigan family treasured a then 141-year-old fruitcake as an heirloom. And you could theoretically still eat these century-old cakes without harm—if you can get past the nauseating, rancid smell.
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S44The Return of the Pagans  Take a close look at Donald Trump—the lavishness of his homes, the buildings emblazoned with his name and adorned with gold accoutrements, his insistent ego, even the degree of obeisance he evokes among his followers—and, despite the fervent support he receives from many evangelical Christians, it’s hard to avoid concluding that there’s something a little pagan about the man. Or consider Elon Musk. With his drive to conquer space to expand the human empire, his flirtation with anti-Semitic tropes, his 10 children with three different women, Musk embodies the wealth worship and ideological imperialism of ego that are more than a little pagan too.Most ancient pagan belief systems were built around ritual and magic, coercive practices intended to achieve a beneficial result. They centered the self. The revolutionary contribution of monotheism was its insistence that the principal concern of God is, instead, how people treat one another.
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S41Film Technica: Our favorite movies of 2023  It's been an odd couple of years for film as the industry struggles to regain its footing in the wake of a devastating global pandemic, but there are reasons to be optimistic about its future, both from a box office and variety standpoint. This was the year that the blockbuster superhero franchises that have dominated for more than a decade finally showed signs of faltering; the Marvel and DC Universe releases this year were mostly fine, but only one (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) made our 2023 year-end list. There were just so many of them, one after the other, adding up to serious superhero fatigue.
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S6115 Years Later, a Forgotten Star Wars Artifact Could Bring Back a Fan-Favorite Jedi  Star Wars canon keeps getting more and more expansive, but the timeline is firm. In movies and television, Star Wars as we know it begins with the discovery of Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace, and ends with Palpatine’s return and defeat in The Rise of Skywalker. However, that’s set to change with 2024’s The Acolyte, Leslye Headland’s Disney+ series about Sith shenanigans set a century before the prequels. The Acolyte’s timeframe makes it seem like it’s completely separate from others like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ahsoka, but an ancient object from an old comic book could actually tie the shows together perfectly, bring back a beloved character, and introduce a popular comic book character or two to the current canon.
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S46Dear Therapist: How Do I Talk to My Boyfriend About His Ex?  I’m in a new long-distance relationship with a man I was with in our early 20s (we are now 38 and 40). I plan to move out of state to be with him in a few months. Things have gotten very intense very quickly—something we have both been aware of and are okay with.However, he has an ex whom he broke up with about a year and a half ago. Their breakup was tumultuous. When she came up in conversation about a month ago, I asked, “If things had gone differently that night, do you think you’d still be together?” He answered with a pretty confident-sounding “Yes.” Just “yes.” He also described her as having been a “mother figure” to his 10-year-old son, and described her children as being “like siblings” to his son. They were together for three years, although during this time they did break up and get back together. She also cheated on him, but he was adamant about making things work after that.
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S59This Out-Of-This-World Tool To Fight Climate Change Might Actually Work  It’s becoming increasingly clear that we will fail to meet our climate goals. We were already warming at 1.26°C in 2022 and are on track to blow through 1.5°C in the mid-2030s. Research even suggests that current climate policy will lead to more than 2.5°C of warming by the end of this century.Warming of this magnitude would devastate vulnerable communities and ecosystems around the world. It’s time we consider something radically new that could stop climate change in its tracks.
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S29S40Earth's magnetic field supports biblical stories of destruction of ancient cities  A vast city of 10,000 once stood within the grounds of Tel Zafit National Park. Now it is an archaeological dig, nothing but burned mud bricks, a crumbling break in the city’s defenses, and weapons cobbled together at the last minute from animal bones. What happened here? What force brought this great city to its end? According to the Bible, Gath was one of the main Philistine cities and the home of Goliath the Giant. Its destruction is glossed over, described in less than one verse of the Bible, in the book of 2 Kings.
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S47The New 'The Color Purple' Finds Its Own Rhythm  The movie musical is a tear-jerking and exultant epic that also works as a companion piece to the 1985 original.Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Color Purple, was a serious-minded prestige drama. The film simplified the story but faithfully rendered the book’s emotional weight through Spielberg’s vibrant direction, Quincy Jones’s sweeping score, and a strong ensemble cast. The movie became a classic that, despite notoriously failing to win any of the 11 Oscars it was nominated for, made more than five times its budget at the box office, inspired a Tony-winning Broadway musical, and made stars of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.
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S37The Hollywood Strikes Stopped AI From Taking Your Job. But for How Long?  Revolt against the machines began at Swingers. And at Bob’s Big Boy, where for weeks Drew Carey picked up the tab. Members of the Writers Guild of America, or WGA, met at both Los Angeles-area diners frequently during their 148-day strike, which hinged on protecting Hollywood’s scribes from being overrun by the march of artificial intelligence.Members of the WGA were just a small part of the resistance. There were others. The Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, soon joined them on the picket lines, together forming a formidable uprising against the perceived threat of AI.
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S63'Doctor Who' Revives an Old Tradition -- And Starts a Historic New Era  The Doctor Who 60th anniversary celebration has come and gone, but there’s still time for a new episode — and a new Doctor — before we ring in 2024. The 2023 Christmas special “The Church on Ruby Road” will see Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor crossing paths with his soon-to-be companion, Ruby Sunday, one Christmas Eve. But just when can you watch this? This episode will arrive on its new streaming home of Disney+ at an unusual time to coincide with its original BBC air time, so here’s everything you need to know about streaming the episode as soon as possible.
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S7S39Unusual boxes and 7,000-year-old trove found locked in ice  Northern Canada is known for its blustery weather, dramatic landscape, and plentiful ice. But with an unprecedented thaw in Canada’s Mount Edziza Provincial Park the past few years, objects began emerging from the ice.Some of the manmade possessions are 7,000 years old, and they belonged to the Tahltan First Nations. Mount Edziza, a volcano located in northwestern British Columbia, has remained a significant hunting ground for the Tahltan nation for thousands of years. With this discovery, archaeologists are now able to gain more insight into what life was like for people here since around 5,000 B.C.
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S20Psilocybin Could Significantly Help This Much-Understudied Condition  Psychedelic research has surged in recent years, sparking enthusiasm among clinicians, investors, and the general public. Clinical trials are indicating transformative outcomes for people struggling with mental illnesses like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and end-of-life anxiety.Recently, the spotlight is turning to eating disorders (ED), a group of severe and difficult-to-treat conditions. A survey revealed that 70 percent of people view psychedelic medicine as a promising avenue for EDs, and numerous reports depict positive results.
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S43People can tell what you want to know when you shake wrapped Christmas gifts  Christmas Day is a time for opening presents and finally ending the suspense of what one is receiving this year, but chances are some of us may have already guessed what's under the wrapping—perhaps by strategically shaking the boxes for clues about its contents. According to a November paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, if someone happened to see you shaking a wrapped gift, they would be able to tell from those motions what you were trying to learn by doing so.
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S53S27S38Supercomputer Frontier sets new record with 9.95 quintillion calculations per second  Give people a barrier, and at some point they are bound to smash through. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947. Yuri Gagarin burst into orbit for the first manned spaceflight in 1961. The Human Genome Project finished cracking the genetic code in 2003. And we can add one more barrier to humanity’s trophy case: the exascale barrier.The exascale barrier represents the challenge of achieving exascale-level computing, which has long been considered the benchmark for high performance. To reach that level, however, a computer needs to perform a quintillion calculations per second. You can think of a quintillion as a million trillion, a billion billion, or a million million millions. Whichever you choose, it’s an incomprehensibly large number of calculations.
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S62An Enduring Mystery About Mars' Smallest Moons Could Finally Be Solved  The two small moons of Mars, Phobos (about 22km in diameter) and Deimos (about 13km in diameter), have puzzled scientists for decades, with their origin remaining a matter of debate. Some have proposed that they may be made up of residual debris produced from a planet or large asteroid smashing into the surface of Mars (#TeamImpact).An opposing hypothesis (#TeamCapture), however, suggests the moons are asteroids that were captured by Mars’s gravitational pull and were trapped in orbit.
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S57The Mysterious And Wild Spoke Season On Saturn Is Here!  Saturn is a lot like Santa: They’ll both deliver an exciting gift during a special season, but their logistics are a puzzle.More than four decades ago, astronomers beheld the first photos of Saturn. When they peered at these images from NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, they noticed fuzzy stripes radiating outwards along the planet’s famous rings. They look like spoke-shaped stains. Since then, astronomers have seen the spokes time and time again. Their visual contrasts vary, as do their numbers. Plus, they don’t show up consistently. But, they’re abundant now. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) published a new image of these spokes on Thursday, because ‘tis the season.
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S26S64This Bizarre Idea For A Supplement Reveals An Enduring Truth About Endurance Sports  Ketchup packets won’t enhance performance, and consuming enough beneficial compounds from ketchup seems impractical.In the world of endurance sports, how athletes fuel themselves can be the difference between success and struggle. Traditionally, athletes have relied on specialized energy gels for a quick and easily digestible source of carbohydrates during extended workouts. But now a surprising contender has emerged: Heinz ketchup packets, thanks to a new ad featuring runners using them as their supplement of choice.
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S1530 Years Later, Mark Hamill Says 'Mask of the Phantasm' Is "One of the Best Batman Movies Ever Made"  Here’s a sentence that will instantly date me as a millennial: I watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm so many times as a kid that I wore out the VHS tape.Released in theaters on Christmas Day 1993, Mask of the Phantasm represents the pinnacle of Batman storytelling. Starring Kevin Conroy as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker, it’s a beautifully crafted tale of crime, corruption, and doomed romance that manages to squeeze in a Joker subplot and a retelling of the Dark Knight’s origin story in just 76 minutes. It was also a total flop, making just $5.6 million at the box office on a budget of $6 million, before finding success in the form of VHS and, eventually, DVD and Blu-ray.
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S42The 20 most-read stories of 2023  Every so often, you live through a year that you know you're going to remember. Sometimes it's because of a personal milestone. Other times it's because of noteworthy events that affected all of us in one way or another. And in some years, it's because we were all surprised by unanticipated and rapid technological advances.
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S60The Best In-Car Tech of 2023  It’s not just about what’s “under the hood” anymore — cars are just as much about computing as they are about getting from A to B.It’s no secret — cars are computers. And just like computers, we’re not buying for the wrapper necessarily, but the goodness inside. That seems apparent to the folks responsible for filling new cars with tech, because 2023 saw some exciting breakthroughs in that arena.
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S45The Nine Breakthroughs of the Year  This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here.The theme of my second-annual Breakthroughs of the Year is the long road of progress. My top breakthrough is Casgevy, a gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell anemia. In the 1980s and early 1990s, scientists in Spain and Japan found strange, repeating patterns in the DNA of certain bacteria. Researchers eventually linked these sequences to an immune defense system that they named “clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats”—or CRISPR. In the following decades, scientists found clever ways to build on CRISPR to edit genes in plants, animals, and even humans. CRISPR is this year’s top breakthrough not only because of heroic work done in the past 12 months, but also because of a long thread of heroes whose work spans decades.
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S705 books you probably haven't read (and how to pretend you have)  For one reason or another, you sometimes have to talk about a book you haven’t read. It might be that you want to impress your boss or appear intellectual on a first date. It might be that you’ve got a selection of books on your shelves that one looks suspiciously new, with its pristine spine and unthumbed pages. So, what do you do if someone asks you about those books? How do you respond if someone presses you for more than a blurb’s worth of information?To help you on your way to Blagville, we’ve compiled five of the most common books people pretend to read and explain how to bluff your way through a conversation about them.
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S33EV Batteries Are Dangerous to Repair. Here's Why Mechanics Are Doing So Anyway  Fixing car and e-bike batteries saves money and resources, but challenges are holding back the industryAbout three times a day, Rich Benoit gets a call to his auto shop, The Electrified Garage, from the owner of an older Tesla Model S whose car battery has begun to fail. The battery, which used to provide several hundred miles of range, might suddenly only last 50 miles on a single charge. These cars are often out of warranty, and the cost of replacing the battery can exceed $15,000.
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S56As Aussie as vanilla slice: how the delicate European dessert became the snot block of Aussie bakeries  In 1998, Victorian premier Jeff Kennett visited a town in regional Victoria and said he had discovered, in his opinion, the best vanilla slice in Australia at the local bakery. He was so inspired by his slice experience that he established a new competition to determine, conclusively, Australia’s best vanilla slice. The inaugural “Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph” was held in Ouyen, Victoria on October 23 that year. Kennett’s press release promoting the event declared this “important Australian culinary delicacy has tantalised Australians since white settlement” and “the pursuit of the best vanilla slice and the best vanilla slice baker in Australia should be of great national interest”.
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