The Tech Elite’s Quest to Reinvent School in Its Own Image
The creator of online education juggernaut Khan Academy has started a brick-and-mortar school in Silicon Valley. But can tech’s disruption culture create a stable learning environment?
Get Up, Stand Up
Stephen writes about how the Black Lives Matter movement uses social media to organize, along with technology’s role in the civil rights movement of the ’60s.
For the Love of Duke
A West Virginia woman falls in love with a mysterious man online, then gets roped into a global scam.
Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters
Controversy at the Hugo Awards, which has been plagued by accusations by a faction of mostly white male authors who argue that storytelling has taken a backseat to identity politics.
An Alternative-Medicine Believer’s Journey Back to Science
How the parents of two autistic sons found—and lost—faith in the alternative medicine movement.
Disney’s $1 Billion Bet on a Magical Wristband
Disney has spent a billion dollars engineering, testing and implementing the MagicBand at Disney World. The deceptively simple looking rubber wristbands connect wearers to a vast and powerful system of sensors throughout the park. Their aim is to remove all the friction from the theme park experience: you can swipe onto rides, avoid long lines, and even purchase a soda, all with a flick of the wrist. Is this the future?
The Rise and Fall of Redbook
Why the shutdown of myRedBook.com—a Bay Area site that catered to sex workers and their clients—actually made sex workers less safe.
Young, Attractive, and Totally Not Into Having Sex
Demisexuals, gray-asexuals, and other sexual identities on the spectrum.
Nerd Cruise
An essay about what 800 nerds on a fan cruise taught the writer about life, the universe and snorkeling.
The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed
Adrian Chen travels to the Philippines, where he meets the employees who work for content moderation companies that scrub objectionable content from social media sites.