When I first mount the bicycle—a sturdy Rocky Mountain Blizzard with 4.8-inch-wide tires—and push, I barely move. I grit my teeth, throw my weight onto the pedal, and the bike ekes forward. We power our way along Polar Bear Point among glistening, 6-foot-thick ice caps and sunning ringed seals. After a short time, my legs…
Batman has been a hero for decades, constantly saving Gotham City from mad men and murderers. But take away the cape and noble purpose and he's actually a terror—someone capable of causing as much damage as he prevents. And seen through the lens of the 21st century, a time when it's understood that vigilante justice…
“You think poop is funny?” asks one of the countless truth-seekers in the second season of Netflix’s American Vandal. It’s a question you’ll likely want to ask yourself before diving into the new installment of this crime-doc spoof, which is utterly, disgustingly, full o’ feces: Splattered on walls, plopped onto floors, even hanging in the…
Like a lot of children of the 1950s, William Gibson grew up haunted by the specter of the atomic bomb, and enthralled by science fiction stories. His latest project combines his two childhood preoccupations by imagining a very different outcome to World War II—one in which America bombed its allies in the Soviet Union as…
Emoji are more than a millennial messaging fad. Think of them more like a primitive language. The tiny, emotive characters—from ? to ? to ?—represent the first language born of the digital world, designed to add emotional nuance to otherwise flat text. Emoji have been popular since they first appeared on Japanese mobile phones in…
Click:hdpe geomembrane manufacturers Director Steven Soderbergh—the man behind Magic Mike, The Knick, and this summer’s Logan Lucky—just released the trailer for his latest project. He made it with the help of HBO, but it’s not a movie or TV show. Instead, Mosaic is an interactive narrative app that will be available for free download in…
In anticipation of Sunday's Emmy Awards, this week WIRED staffers are looking back at some of their favorite shows from the past year. One scene from Westworld replays in my head again and again, a little like (I imagine) one of the poor, doomed robots on the show who start noticing and remembering the programmatic…
Happy Valentine's Day and welcome to The Monitor, WIRED's look at all that's new and news in the world of pop culture, from casting rumors to the current state of the streaming wars. This week: Breaking Bad is coming to Netflix (again), Apple's streaming service is coming (soon?), and Thanos is coming to Dune. A…
I’m from the internet myself, so when we started out, I wanted to believe that the architects of my home would make things better if they just knew how. After nearly two years of working closely with tech companies, that illusion has been shattered. I’m gambling many of my relationships revealing this, but I believe…
There are certain seminal moments in history, and July 9, 1981, should surely stand among them. That was the day Nintendo officially began selling Donkey Kong to arcades—and introduced the world to a mustachioed little fellow named Jumpman. Jumpman was a simple soul with a simple talent: jumping. He jumped over barrels thrown at him…