December 18, 2024

The Download: AI tracking birds, and a pig kidney transplant

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. AI is changing how we study bird migration In a warming world, migratory birds face many existential threats. Scientists rely on a combination of methods to track the timing and location of their…

Maybe you will be able to live past 122

August 26, 2024
The UK’s Office of National Statistics has an online life expectancy calculator. Enter your age and sex, and the website will, using national averages, spit out the age at which you can expect to pop your clogs. For me, that figure is coming out at 88 years old. That’s not too bad, I figure, given…

AI and the future of sex

August 26, 2024
The power of pornography doesn’t lie in arousal but in questions. What is obscene? What is ethical or safe to watch?  We don’t have to consume or even support it, but porn will still demand answers. The question now is: What is “real” porn?  Anti-porn crusades have been at the heart of the US culture…

Move over, text: Video is the new medium of our lives

August 24, 2024
The other day I idly opened TikTok to find a video of a young woman refinishing an old hollow-bodied electric guitar. It was a montage of close-up shots—looking over her shoulder as she sanded and scraped the wood, peeled away the frets, expertly patched the cracks with filler, and then spray-painted it a radiant purple.…