What James Damore Got Wrong About Gender Bias in Computer Science
In August Google employee James Damore made the news and even Wikipedia by publishing his speculation that female software engineers are underrepresented due to inherent biological differences. Although he admitted that implicit bias and explicit bias may exist, Damore wrote, “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ…
How Do Viral Videos Make Money? YouTubers Share Their Secrets
For anyone who doesn't work in the vast world of online videos, the idea of "YouTube stars" is baffling. What's even more astounding is that so many of those YouTubers can make a living simply from viral videos. An entire career just based on posting funny things on the internet, where so many people do…
Your Brain Doesn't Contain Memories. It Is Memories
Recall your favorite memory: the big game you won; the moment you first saw your child's face; the day you realized you had fallen in love. It's not a single memory, though, is it? Reconstructing it, you remember the smells, the colors, the funny thing some other person said, and the way it all made…
While You Were Offline: 2019 Is Just the Runway for 2020
Finally, we've made it to 2019—a year that will bring events better than any that came in the last 12 months simply because they won't be happening in 2018. Almost immediately, it’s obvious that things are better, because … the US national debt is higher than ever? No, that's not right. Maybe it's because Apple's…
More Evidence Exxon Misled the Public About Climate Change
This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Two years ago, Inside Climate News and Los Angeles Times investigations found that while Exxon Mobil internally acknowledged that climate change is man-made and serious, it publicly manufactured doubt about the science. Exxon has been trying unsuccessfully to smother this slow-burning PR crisis ever…
Teen Pregnancy Researchers Regroup After Trump's HHS Pulls Funding
Back in May, when Jennifer Hettema first saw the Trump administration’s proposed budget, it took her a while to find the bad news. But buried in a Health and Human Services appendix, there it was: a $100 million line through the nation’s teen pregnancy prevention program. A psychologist and public health researcher at the University…
Looks Like Google Bought Favorable Research to Lobby With
Officially, the online search giant Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” According to two new reports—one from The Wall Street Journal and one from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Campaign for Accountability’s Google Transparency Project, the company doesn’t just organize. When Google wishes it had information that’d maybe…
The Streaming Service Trying to Take Queer Content Global
Revry's "office" in Glendale, California feels an awful lot like off-campus college housing. There's a fireplace that looks like it hasn't seen a flame in decades. There's a slightly tattered leather couch, some pillows featuring Wonder Woman, Star Wars, and Steve Jobs. A copy of the club-kid makeup portrait book Getting Into Face sits the…
The Crazy-Ambitious Effort to Catalogue Every Microbe on Earth
The microbes living on Earth are so plentiful as to be innumerable. Untold. Countless. Not in the hyperbolic sense, but the literal, gobsmacking sense. "It's estimated there are 100 million times as many bacteria as there are stars in the universe," says microbiologist Rob Knight, director of UC San Diego's Center for Microbiome Innovation. "And…
Telemedicine Is Forcing Doctors to Learn 'Webside' Manner
No one knew exactly when the girl would die, but everyone knew it would be soon. A 12-year-old with end stage cancer, the child's parents had recently moved her from the hospital to her home in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Some days later the girl's breath quickened, and her father phoned the family's hospice…