Netflix and Amazon Binged Wins at the Golden Globes
It’s Monday, which means it’s time for another installment of The Monitor, WIRED's roundup of the latest in the world of culture, from breakout trailers to box-office breakdowns. In today's installment: Netflix and Amazon stay Golden at last night's awards; Brad Bird embarks upon a new movie mission; and, for the third weekend in a…
The Atomic Theory of Origami
In 1970, an astrophysicist named Koryo Miura conceived what would become one of the most well-known and well-studied folds in origami: the Miura-ori. The pattern of creases forms a tessellation of parallelograms, and the whole structure collapses and unfolds in a single motion—providing an elegant way to fold a map. It also proved an efficient…
I Learned About Climate Change By Watching Fortnite on Twitch
I know very little about climate change. I know even less about Fortnite. And Twitch. (Yes, I know; I should be fired.) I'm aware that they’re all real things that exist, but videogames and global warming aren't my beat. Yet, I've been staring at this one Fortnite Twitch video for a good hour. No idea…
There's a New Ghostbusters Movie Coming in 2020
Another Thursday, another installment of The Monitor, WIRED's roundup of the latest in the world of culture. But this Thursday is much busier than most. Why? Well, there's a new Ghostbusters movie in the works from Jason Reitman (son of the original's director), Apple is adding some big names to its initiative to make original…
The Best Way to Test Students? Make Them Explain It On Video
As a physics professor, I have two jobs. The first, obviously, is to help students understand physics. That makes me something of a coach. But I want to talk about my second job: evaluating what students understand about physics. You might call this grading them. Evaluating a student's understanding of a topic is like taking…
Archaeologists Don't Always Need to Dig—They've Got Drones
On the morning of August 21—the day of the solar eclipse—five archaeologists and I piled into two SUVs and drove an hour northwest of Tucson, into the thick of the Sonoran Desert. Turning off-road, we reached a yellow expanse inside Ironwood Forest National Monument through a series of latched gates. We brought eclipse glasses, but…
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Is a Massive Monument to Itself
The greatest thing about the Super Smash Bros. series is its dedication to impact. Every time a punch, kick, slash, or blast lands, it has a high likelihood of sending the victim flying—like a good superhero movie, or an anime. Every strike resonates with invisible power; smoke plumes follow these cartoon characters as they careen…
The Way the World Ends: Not with a Bang But a Paperclip
Paperclips, a new game from designer Frank Lantz, starts simply. The top left of the screen gets a bit of text, probably in Times New Roman, and a couple of clickable buttons: Make a paperclip. You click, and a counter turns over. One. The game ends—big, significant spoiler here—with the destruction of the universe. In…
The Future of Work: Maximum Outflow, by Adam Rogers
“When normalized on a per 1,000-short-ton basis, the estimates indicate that 1,000 tons of recycled material attributes 1.57 jobs, $76,030 in wages, and $14,101 in tax revenues.” —“Recycling Economic Information Report,” Environmental Protection Agency (2016) Just move them, Iggy said. He and Jia were climbing down a ladder, her first. Now she’d stopped. Iggy had…
Chasing the Illegal Loggers Looting the Amazon Forest
The cargo ship Yacu Kallpa rode impatiently at anchor off Iquitos, Peru, a ramshackle city on a bend in the broad, turbulent waters of the Amazon River. She was a midsize ship, a tenth of a mile long, low-slung, with a seven-story superstructure in the stern and plumes of rust fanning down the hull from…