The Mopeds Are Coming
Shared, electric motor scooters are racing to catch up with Bird, Lime, and other kick-scooter brands, as tech companies attempt to reinvent urban mobility. But can these vehicles ever find a place in America?
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Projects
Metropolis Now
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Jonathan Bachman / Reuters The Hurricane in My Backyard
An environmental philosopher reflects on his experience enduring Hurricane Harvey, and what it teaches cities and their citizens about living with global warming.
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Mega Pixel / Stas Malyarevsky / Shutterstock / ... How Silicon Valley Has Disrupted Philanthropy
Local nonprofits are having trouble attracting money from tech donors. The solution? Talk like a start-up.
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Reuters/Christian Hartmann Were We Destined to Live in Facebook’s World?
The author of a new book, Antisocial Media, discusses whether the rise of Facebook was inevitable.
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Sorry to Bother You/Annapurna Pictures What Sorry to Bother You Gets Right About Memes
They are powerful but politically meaningless.
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JR Cabansag Are Universities Training Socially Minded Programmers?
Four Stanford engineers started a club for students interested in using their skills for social good. But then came job-recruiting season.
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Dan Cretu / Getty / Katie Martin / ... Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular
“I lose sleep at night on this.”
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George Frey / AP Microfilm Lasts Half a Millennium
Millions of publications—not to mention spy documents—can be read on microfilm machines. But people still see these devices as outmoded and unappealing. An Object Lesson.
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Kiichiro Sato / AP The Elon Musk Impersonators of the Internet
For cryptocurrency scammers, imitation is the sincerest form of fraud.
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Tsering Topgyal / AP The Authors Who Love Amazon
The e-commerce giant has finally made self-publishing lucrative. But does its dominance come at a cost?
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Reuters / Mariana Bazo Why Facebook Wants to Give You the Benefit of the Doubt
Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks about Holocaust denial once again showed Facebook’s optimism about human nature.
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Leah Millis / Reuters Mark Zuckerberg Is Doubly Wrong About Holocaust Denial
Facebook fails to comprehend the nature of Holocaust denial and other forms of bigotry—and so it's aiding their spread, instead of combatting them.
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Dado Ruvic / Reuters Europe’s Smack to Google May Only Be the Beginning
The European Commission’s record-breaking fines for Google foreshadow a larger regulatory invasion of the U.S. technology industry.
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Taylor Lorenz / The Atlantic via Instagram Why Instagram Questions Became So Annoying
There’s a better use for the social platform’s new tool than spamming your friends.
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Jenny Kane / AP Despite the Glitches, Shoppers Can’t Quit Amazon
The company’s website continually crashed during its much-touted Prime Day event, but sales were still higher than ever.
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Andy Kropa / Invision / AP / The ... Not Everyone Can Afford a Job They Love
Why the founder of Girls Who Code stayed in a role she hated before leaving the private sector
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Mario Armas / Reuters Hot-Air Balloons Are Useless
When they were invented, the vessels promised to revolutionize travel and industry. But they soon settled into life as an entertaining diversion. An Object Lesson.
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John Hersey AI Could Make Detecting Autism Easier
Machine learning might speed up screening, but it also risks missing nuances a human clinician could catch.
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Frèdèric Scheiber / AP Unidentified Plane-Bae Woman’s Statement Confirms the Worst
This is “not a romance” but “a digital-age cautionary tale about privacy, identity, ethics and consent.”
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Reuters / Mark Blinch How Twitter Became The Number One Social Network For Nudists
As platforms like Facebook and Instagram crack down on explicit content, Twitter has allowed nudity to thrive.
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Wisa Thananimit / Shutterstock / Thanh Do / ... Why Some of Instagram's Biggest Memers Are Locking Their Accounts
More meme accounts are going private. Their owners say it’s a new way to gain followers on a crowded platform.
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Adrian Dennis / Getty Soccer Has No Interest in Fairness
The sport is finally embracing video-replay technology—but that doesn’t mean it’s going to change.
