Posted on February 27, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi Author Gourav Mohanty is here today not only to tell you about his newest novel, but also to let you in on some of India’s most interesting mythology. Take a look at the Big Idea for Dance of Shadows, and see what these forgotten legends are all…

On a bright, hot day in mid-September 2011, Marine biologist named Christine Pergent-Martini was hunkered down inside the cabin of a small research vessel, a 97-foot-long catamaran, cruising through the Mediterranean Sea about 12 miles off the coast of Corsica. Outside the ship’s windows, the sun…

Tails are a common feature across the animal kingdom. Nearly every class of vertebrate has them. Reptiles use them for self-defense and attacking prey. Tails help with balance and communication in dogs and cats and aid navigation in birds. Humans’ primate ancestors had them, too. Our forebears used…

Evolution is a master recycler. It often uses old structures (or ancient genes) for new jobs. The mammalian ear is a perfect example. Over the eons, the jawbones of our fish ancestors became three separate small bones that transmit sound waves from the eardrum to the inner ear. Now a new study shows…

To be human is to sleep. You spend roughly a third of your life in slumber—but your body doesn’t simply flip an “off” switch for all these hours. Your brain, in particular, carries out a long housekeeping list when the lights go out. One of these tasks is known as “brainwashing,” in which your…

Update January 24, 2022: After an initial launch in China and the United States, Beats Fit Pro are now expanding to new countries. These new countries include Belgium, the UK, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, France, and more. You can check the Apple Online Store in your…

I like to tell my undergraduates that hormones predispose organisms, including people, to shift their energy among different life goals. When we become parents, hormones help redirect energy from mating to parenting. That being said, most male mammals don’t get involved in parenting, but there are…

Culture / February 10, 2025 The Philadelphia Eagles and Kendrick Lamar’s collective of geniuses made this the Super Bowl we needed. Copy Link Facebook X (Twitter) Bluesky Pocket Email Kendrick Lamar performs during halftime of Super Bowl LIX between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia…

Deep inside Cobra Cave, in the remote mountains of northeastern Laos, the beam from Eric Suzzoni’s headlamp bounced across barren rock until it flashed on something unusual: dozens of bones and teeth protruding from a layer of sediment and rock. Suzzoni, a tall, 50-year-old caving specialist with a…

Black-owned brands got a foot in the door through accelerator programs at big retailers like Target and Amazon. Now they worry the door might be closing. Listen to this article · 9:58 min Learn more Pernell Cezar, who sells his coffee in 1,500 Target locations, said he was disappointed by the…

Subscriber-only Newsletter The Ethicist The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on self-pleasuring secrets and the pressures of living up to one’s sexual orientation. Credit...Illustration by Tomi Um By Feb. 7, 2025, 6:50 a.m. ET This is the fifth and last installment in a series for this column,…

When I was unexpectedly diagnosed with ADHD last year, it turned my entire identity upside down. At 37, I’d tamed my restlessness and fiery temper, my obsessive reorganization of my mental to-do list, and my tendency to write and rewrite the same sentence for hours. Being this way was exhausting,…

Posted on February 2, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi First, here’s the cover to the Korean edition of Starter Villain, and I have to say, I like it a lot. I’ve been impressed at how many of my overseas publishers have done their own take on the US version’s now-iconic cover, and how good most of them…

First word of the Trump administration’s since-rescinded order to freeze spending on federal loans and grants came not from a major news organization, but from a woman working alone in her Brooklyn apartment. Marisa Kabas’ scoop this past week was a key moment for a growing cadre of journalists who…

In a radical break with tradition, the National Science Foundation (NSF) this week began to search through billions of dollars of grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing…

Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Ariz., is managed by a consortium of universities and the National Science Foundation. VisionsofAmerica/Joe Sohm/Getty Images/Photodisc Julia Van Etten suddenly cannot pay her bills this week. The biologist at Rutgers University won a postdoctoral research…

Existing in my weird in-between status as a tech journalist and an author, I was intrigued by the announcement this week from Bookshop.org that it would now be selling ebooks. I like Bookshop.org; while I haven’t worked with them directly, most of my books are available through them, and I’ve…

Two office views from 2014. Left: My final docked work setup at IDG. Right: My first setup in my garage. When I started Six Colors more than a decade ago, I maintained continuity with my corporate job in a bunch of ways. I had been using a MacBook Air as my primary computer, taking it back and forth…

Should America just get rid of health insurers? Americans don’t seem to like insurance companies much, even if they’re happy with their health coverage itself. Several Democratic health-care proposals would end private health insurance entirely, an idea that some Americans seem to applaud, until you…

You can always count on Nintendo for a surprise. This is the company that followed the Game Boy with a strange dual-screened handheld and broke out of its GameCube slump with a console focused on motion controls. It’s the company that lost its lead with the Wii U and then gambled on another…

The former vice president’s first acts as a nonelected official for the first time in decades could be a sign of what comes next. Former Vice President Kamala Harris fulfilled her obligations to welcome the new administration to Washington on Monday.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times By…

An upward trajectory in relations is “almost inevitable,” the U.S. ambassador, Eric Garcetti, said in an interview before leaving his post. Listen to this article · 8:44 min Learn more Cutouts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Donald J. Trump in Ahmedabad, India, ahead of Mr. Trump’s presidential…

I.M.F. Raises U.S. ForecastChina’s 2024 G.D.P.Canada Prepares for TrumpReviving Germany’s Economy Canadian officials are preparing retaliatory measures if the new U.S. administration imposes tariffs on Canadian imports. Listen to this article · 6:53 min Learn more Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in…

Jamelle Bouie Jan. 15, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET Credit...Jamie Lee Taete for The New York Times Listen to this article · 7:30 min Learn more By Opinion Columnist For nearly 10 years Donald Trump has promised to Make America Great Again, and for nearly 10 years the former and soon-to-be president has…

The growth of homes in areas primed to burn played a major role in the disaster. By Mira Rojanasakul and Jan. 14, 2025 Fierce winds and months of drought set the conditions for the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles this month. But the growth of housing in and around the city’s fire-prone hills…

Photo: Guerin Blask/August Editor’s note: This story contains content that readers may find disturbing, including graphic allegations of sexual assault. Scarlett Pavlovich was a 22-year-old drama student when she met the performer Amanda Palmer by chance on the streets of Auckland. It was a gray,…

Mark Zuckerberg is sick of the woke politics governing his social feeds. He’s tired of the censorship and social-media referees meddling in free speech. We’re in a “new era” now, he said in a video today, announcing that he plans to replace Facebook and Instagram fact-checkers with a system of…

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. In pizza heaven, it is always 950 degrees. The temperature required to make an authentic Neapolitan pizza is stupidly, unbelievably hot—more blast furnace than broiler. My backyard pizza oven can get all the…

Foxconn is halting new work rotations for its Chinese employees at its Apple iPhone factories in India, and sending Taiwanese workers instead, according to five people familiar with Foxconn’s operations in India. Shipments of specialized manufacturing equipment meant for India have also been held up…

Guest Essay Jan. 10, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET Credit...Thalía Gochez Listen to this article · 5:44 min Learn more By Dr. Kalmus is a climate scientist in Chapel Hill, N. C., studying future extreme heat impacts on human health and ecosystems. I am utterly devastated by the Los Angeles wildfires, shaking…

Illustration: Rob Vargas In the summer of 1979, the New York Times reported that a 16-year-old student at Michigan State University named James Dallas Egbert III had gone missing while playing a “bizarre intellectual game.” In his dorm room, campus police had discovered a suicide note as well as a…

Southern California is facing a rare and dangerous juxtaposition of extreme winds and midwinter drought on Tuesday and Wednesday, a worrying example of the state’s expanding wildfire threat as climate change worsens. advertisement At least 10 new fires had started across Los Angeles County as of…

Posted on January 8, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi There’s a lot of a to-do about Mark Zuckerberg announcing that moderation teams on Meta’s social media properties are being largely phased out and replaced by a system similar to X’s “community notes,” and that Meta will now basically allow people to…

What is the H5N1 bird flu? Will it cause the next big pandemic? If so, how bad would that pandemic be? Wait, What Even Is Flu? Flu is a disease caused by a family of related influenza viruses. Pandemic flu is always caused by the influenza A virus. Influenza A has two surface antigen proteins,…

In the days after Donald Trump inspired a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, it felt like his days in politics were numbered. Republican leaders trashed him. He was banned from every social media platform. Television networks stopped covering his remarks live for fear that he would incite another…

Twenty-five years ago, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld Expo in San Francisco and unveiled Mac OS X, ushering in a new era for the Mac and the world of desktop computing at large. That sounds like hyperbole, but after watching the keynote for a second time—the first time was from the front row,…

Ann Telnaes, a giant of the editorial cartoonist world who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, has resigned from The Washington Post after the paper killed a cartoon she submitted depicting Post owner Jeff Bezos (among others) negatively. Telnaes explains: I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who…

The question has been hurtling through think pieces, op-eds, and ominous headlines over the past few years: Have American men stopped reading? Specifically, have they stopped reading fiction? And is that why the world is so bad now? The most recent entry in this genre came in December, when David J.…