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…
Game of Thrones' Final Season Might Be … Funny?
Happy Monday, and welcome to another edition of The Monitor, WIRED's look at all that's happening in the world of pop culture. Hollywood is in a bit of a post-Oscars lull, but that doesn't mean all's quiet—hey, Steven Spielberg and Netflix have already gone a few rounds since last week. What else? Well, Edge of…
Hurricane Irma: A Practically Impossible Storm
Hurricane Harvey, which killed 60 people and may end up costing $150 billion, parked over Houston and dumped four feet of rain. The water overwhelmed the sprawling city’s flood control systems. Meteorologists and atmospheric scientists used up their superlatives describing the storm’s size and impact. They should have saved some. Hurricane Irma has become the…
Now Particle Physics Is Getting in on the Archaeology Game
In December 2015, a group of scientists carried tools into a chamber inside of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Usually, the room was sealed from the public. But with the blessing of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, they used laser tools to carefully align several bathroom-tile sized panels on the floor of the last intact Wonder…
Cantina Talk: Here's What One Dude Has Seen of Episode IX
You're not alone if you're thinking that the Star Wars franchise is seeming just a little bit … more compressed lately. The animated series Star Wars Resistance just brought its first season to an end by stepping into the shadow (and runtime) of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and in doing so left only the…
These Mice Stopped Eating Carbs So You (Maybe) Don't Have To
In the ever-more masochistic world of wellness-boosting, pound-shedding diets, the latest trend involves putting your body into a controlled state of starvation known as “ketogenesis,” by cutting out nearly all carbs. If that doesn’t sound like your particular brand of torture, guess what? You’re already on it. Well, at least while you’re sleeping. Two independent…
The Hunt for the Brain-Eating Amoebas of Yellowstone
It was a lovely September day in Yellowstone’s Boiling River, which was not, in fact, boiling. Tourists trundled through the shallow water and dipped in where it was deeper. A herd of elk even waded through unconcerned. And among it all, a team of researchers in waders sampled the water for a brain-eating amoeba that…