“Sunscreen—one of the only products scientifically proven to reduce the risk of skin cancer—is in the middle of a PR crisis, with skeptics claiming it’s hazardous to your health. Experts dismiss the claims as misinformation, but has the damage already been done?”
data
Posted inEditor's Pick
When Your Digital Life Vanishes
“A broken phone or corrupted drive can mean the loss of work, evidence, art, or the last traces of the dead. But sometimes data-recovery experts can summon lost files from the void.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
You Could Be Next
“Laid-off lawyers, history PhDs, and scientists are now part of a miserable gig economy in which they’re teaching AI how to do their old jobs.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
When I’m 125?
“What it means to live an optimized life and why Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint just doesn’t get it.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Century-Scale Storage
“If you had to store something for 100 years, how would you do it?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Your Data’s Strange Undersea Voyage
“The internet is a series of tubes. In the ocean.”
Posted inCuration
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories from Josh Dzieza, Mark Krotov, Wendy Brenner, Paul Brown, and Andrew Normal Wilson.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Memory Machines
“Data centers have proliferated across Ireland, at great cost.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How the AI Industry Profits from Catastrophe
The demand for data labeling in the artificial intelligence industry — tagging videos, sorting photos, and transcribing audio in order to train AI — has created a massive need for cheap labor, leading data-labeling platforms such as Appen to hire low-pay workers in countries like Venezuela, the Philippines, and Kenya to do these tasks. In […]
Posted inCulture, Nonfiction, Reading List, Story
What We Remember: A Reading List on Archives
Why do we keep what we keep — and who decides? An archivist digs and collects longreads on how objects and materials shape public memory.