Elon Musk says he is actually going to fight Mark Zuckerberg; please forgive me

August 11, 2023
Elon Musk says his fight with Mark Zuckerberg is definitely happening, and I’m so, so sorry I have to write these words and present them in this article. To pull back the curtain, every time Musk does something asinine and moronic, we in the media wrestle with the anguish of whether or not we actually […]

Why is it so hard to create new types of pain relievers?

August 11, 2023
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. This week I’ve been thinking about America’s addiction to opioids. The statistics are staggering. Since 2010, opioid overdose deaths have nearly quadrupled. More than 80,000 people…

Next slide, please: A brief history of the corporate presentation

August 11, 2023
It’s 1948, and it isn’t a great year for alcohol. Prohibition has come and gone, and booze is a buyer’s market again. That much is obvious from Seagram’s annual sales meeting, an 11-city traveling extravaganza designed to drum up nationwide sales. No expense has been spared: there’s the two-hour, professionally acted stage play about the…

The US just invested more than $1 billion into carbon removal

August 11, 2023
The US Department of Energy announced today that it’s providing $1.2 billion to develop regional hubs that can draw down and store away at least one million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, as a means of combating climate change.  The move represents a major step forward in the effort to establish a market…

X, formerly Twitter, lowers requirements for its ad revenue sharing program

August 11, 2023
Elon Musk-owned social network X, formerly Twitter, said late Thursday that it is lowering requirements for its creator payout program. The company said that the creators who have garnered 5 million impressions in the last three months will be eligible for ad revenue sharing — a third of the previous 15 million impression requirement. Creators will […]