This is newsletter №30 for Shift happens, an upcoming book about keyboards. There are some exciting The soul of an old solenoid By Shift Happens book updates • Issue #30 • View online This is newslett

America’s first-ever reformulated COVID-19 vaccines are coming, very ahead of schedule, and in some ways, the timing couldn’t be better. Pfizer’s version of the shot, which combines the original recip

Affirmative Action Was Banned at Two Top Universities. They Say They Need It. As a Supreme Court case on college admissions nears, the California and Michigan university systems say their efforts to b

This article was originally published in Knowable Magazine . As governments drag their feet in responding to climate change, many concerned people are looking for actions that they can take as individ

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. It is no exaggeration to say that his signature immediately severed the history of climate change in America into two eras.

B y now you’ve surely heard : Reports of the Democrats’ inevitable defeat this November (might) have been exaggerated . The party infamous for its disarray is suddenly passing legislation left and rig

The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, at the University of British Columbia, showing off some timber. CIRS Architects, builders, and sustainability advocates are all abuzz over a new

Every few years, American politics astonishes you. Yesterday was one of those days. In the late afternoon, Senator Joe Manchin announced that he had reached a compromise with Senate Majority Leader Ch

developmental biology Embryo Cells Set Patterns for Growth by Pushing and Pulling July 12, 2022 Patterns that guide the development of feathers and other features can be set by mechanical forces in th

Bicycling Why Cities Are So Bad at Counting Bicyclists — And Why it Matters 12:08 AM EDT on July 27, 2022 Automatic cyclist and pedestrian counters aren’t common in U.S. cities — but they should be. P

Biden Administration Plans to Offer Updated Booster Shots in September With reformulated shots from Pfizer and Moderna on the horizon, the F.D.A. has decided that Americans under 50 should wait to rec

Elizabeth and James Weller at their home in Houston two months after losing their baby girl due to a premature rupture of membranes. Elizabeth could not receive the medical care she needed until sever

Part of the July 2022 issue of The Highlight , our home for ambitious stories that explain our world. The Covid era has produced a number of mixed narratives about housing, land use, and migration pat

It’s an emerging technology that climate experts say can prevent billions of tons of greenhouse gases from entering Earth’s atmosphere. By capturing carbon dioxide as it spews from oil refineries, pow

Astronomy can be, in some ways, a bit like the classic board game Clue. Scientists explore a sprawling but ultimately contained world, collecting pieces of information and testing out theories about a

The M2 MacBook Air marks the second generation of Apple silicon Macs. But it still seems hard for us, collectively, to wrap our heads around the sea change these chips have enabled. When I reviewed on

There are some product designs that it’s a cardinal sin to mess with. Omega will never redo the Speedmaster because it’s the watch that first went to the moon. The colour of Heinz’s Baked Beans cans i

About six months have elapsed since the most powerful space telescope in history bid farewell to Earth and took off into the darkness . In that time, the James Webb Space Telescope has deployed its go

The definitive Mac of the last decade was the 13-inch MacBook Air , introduced in 2010 and featuring a wedge-shaped design. It influenced all the Apple laptops (and let’s face it, a lot of PC laptops)

Today, in a ruling on a nonexistent plan with nonexistent harms to the people who brought the suit, the Supreme Court took an opportunity to curb the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic , Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. Tatiana Caicedo’s j

I come here not to bury the iPhone mini but to praise it. If reports are true, the iPhone 13 mini will be the last of its line, replaced by a larger iPhone 14 Max this fall. And as someone who owns an

Paige was having a great start to 2021. Her health was the best it had ever been. She loved her job and the people she worked with as a communications manager for a conservation nonprofit. She could g

The Omicron sub-variant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen. It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility, wel

Guest Essay Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith: We’ve Seen What Will Happen Next to America’s Women June 25, 2022 Credit... Michael McCoy/Reuters By Elizabeth Warren and Ms. Warren is a Democratic senato

Denis Novikov/Getty Images Allie Volpe is a senior reporter at Vox covering mental health, relationships, wellness, money, home life, and work through the lens of meaningful self-improvement. Living w

Though the iPad was a huge hit from the beginning based on its user-friendly interface and single-application focus, it had begun feeling a bit stale for those who hunger for more depth. Long one of t

Two and a half years and billions of estimated infections into this pandemic, SARS-CoV-2’s visit has clearly turned into a permanent stay. Experts knew from early on that, for almost everyone, infecti

The leap of a frog is a quintessential evolutionary feat. The critter’s girthy gams thrust from behind to springboard the body up and out; a pair of acrobatic arms stretch forward to seamlessly break

Melatonin poisoning in kids is on the rise, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . From 2012 to 2021, there was a 530 percent increase in the annual number of children taking me

The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro is coming soon , with preorders beginning Friday and models shipping June 24. It’s a notable product for a bunch of conflicting reasons. First and foremost, it’s the first M

To some residents of Southern California, the golf course is a detested symbol of social privilege and water profligacy — a lush playground for the wealthy that can drink more than 100 million gallons

“The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” These are not the words of the teenager who walked into a supermarket

At the entrance to my lab’s clean room, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror: I look like a clown. I’m drowning in a disposable coverall that hangs off of me in droopy folds, and my size 7½ feet

In mid-March, I began to notice a theme within my social circle in New York, where I live: COVID—it finally got me! At that point, I didn’t think much of it. Only a few of my friends seemed to be affe

The new M2 MacBook Air isn’t going to be on sale until next month, but I was fortunate enough to spend some time with several of them on Monday at Apple Park. Unlike the M1 MacBook Air , which was abo

Wishing doesn’t make it so. When Apple makes its announcements at the WWDC keynote on Monday—Dan and I will both be there, in person, to cover it!—it will be revealing stuff that’s been in the works f

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic , Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. A pair of exercise

See more headlines from our Daily Covid Briefing Over 75 Percent of Long Covid Patients Were Not Hospitalized for Initial Illness, Study Finds Researchers analyzed the largest database of private insu

Up until recently, USB-C was more of a fluke in my household—a strange visitor from a possible future, in which we all used small, reversible plugs. Sure, my iMac had a couple of Thunderbolt ports tha