Exploring bleeding edge experiments, oddities, new and bizarre dicoveries, and fact-checking conspiracy theories since 2008. No question is out of bounds and no topic is too strange for a deep dive.
# space
NASA appears to be sick and tired of having to wait until the mid-2020s to return to the Moon on a future rocket that will be inferior to the private ones already flying, and easily lapped by ones currently being built.
# tech
We need a blockchain for ethical, friendly artificial intelligence about as much as a fish needs an umbrella. But in true Singularitarian fashion, one is being proposed.
# space
It may be tempting to use our nuclear warheads to save the planet from rogue space rocks instead of pointing them at each other, it would be a waste of perfectly good nukes.
# tech
It’s not your imagination, social media and product rankings are being gamed with very obvious tricks tech companies are refusing to stop.
# podcast
Social media and computers didn’t create a world filled with fake news and confirmation bias. We did. But the technology definitely helped...
# health
Perhaps the worst thing about Theranos is not the lies, the fraud, or the failure. It’s that the company and its portable lab could have been salvaged and improved lives if its CEO didn’t drown in her own hype.
# tech
Another month, another case to remind us that investing in the economic Wild West has real consequences for thousands of people.
# evolution
Intelligent life on Earth may owe its existence to an ancient virus which inserted its genetic code and machinery into early tetrapods and now helps their neurons talk to each other.
# tech
Experts are worried we’re ceding too many decisions to recommendation algorithms and are on a slippery slope to exploitation and learned helplessness. In reality, we’d be lost and very frustrated without them.
# space
Now that Opportunity’s mission is complete, many wistfully lament about “bringing our robot home.” There’s just one problem: it’s already home.