Few animal sounds are as instantly recognizable as a cat’s purr. A hand reaches toward a warm patch of fur, the cat closes its eyes, and a low vibration begins somewhere inside its body. To humans, the message seems obvious: contentment.Exc...
Read article
You may already have yawned simply because you read the word. If not, there is a reasonable chance that a photograph or video of someone opening their mouth in a long yawn would do the job....
Read
Ice presents a small everyday mystery. A cold pavement can be dangerously slippery even when the air temperature is far below freezing, while many other crystalline solids are perfectly easy...
Read
The first message sent across the network that would become a crucial ancestor of the modern Internet was not profound, poetic or even complete. It consisted of two lowercase letters: lo.Tha...
Read
A dashboard can be perfectly accurate and still tell the wrong story. Traffic rises 28 percent, engagement improves, impressions reach a record high and the chart turns reassuringly green —...
Read
A setting exists on your phone but vanishes on your laptop. An onboarding screen refuses to advance even though every field appears complete. An organization account opens a dashboard that a...
Read
Look down at a computer keyboard and you are looking at a museum whose exhibits still work. Some keys preserve decisions made by nineteenth-century typewriter manufacturers. Others carry sym...
Read
There is a peculiar kind of certainty that appears around traditional food. A grandmother made a dish one way, a restaurant in its supposed birthplace serves it another, and suddenly one ver...
Read
Few subjects can turn an ordinary Italian lunch into a tribunal quite as quickly as a traditional recipe. Put cream in carbonara, use pancetta instead of guanciale, add garlic where somebody...
Read
Was wine invented in Georgia or by the Romans? The answer isn't as simple as one might think. While Georgia holds the title for the oldest wine, Rome may be the birthplace of modern wine cul...
Read