year in review

Reasonable people can debate whether or not a social VR application is meaningfully different enough from, say, a video game to earn an entirely new moniker. What reasonable people cannot disagree about is that the majority of people simply…

In Blue Twelve Studios’ postapocalypse, humans are gone and cats are left to roam the neon-lit ruins. Stray, a puzzle platformer where players control an orange tabby traversing a cyberpunk world, is straightforward in its approach: You are…

Blockbusters are back, baby! Between the early returns on Avatar: The Way of Water and the $1.5 billion that Top Gun: Maverick brought in globally, everything old is new again (again) in Hollywood. That could be a very good thing for…

Some people would rather invest these resources in solving global problems, not launching astronauts to other worlds. People in the 1960s questioned the Apollo program for similar reasons—it was also a time of systemic inequality and fears…

Let’s start with the obvious here: Between networks, streamers, and whatever else, there is absolutely too much TV to consume these days. It’s impossible to keep up with the zeitgeist and you shouldn’t even try. The flipside of that,…

  It is here that the wish-fulfillment of A League of Their Own and Interview With the Vampire converge and diverge. The League movie, based on a real-life league founded in 1943, erased just how prevalent queer women were in that space.…

The day before the July release of Renaissance, Beyoncé’s seventh studio album, her management team announced in a press statement that the record would not include visuals as part of its rollout. “It is a chance again to be listeners and…

All creative industries are bound by trends. Hollywood has its superhero blockbuster. The fashion world its seasonal wunderkind. Silicon Valley loves a disruptor. Before streaming’s age of excess, prestige dramas were all the rage in…

Starting in the 1960s, doctors attempted transplants of kidneys, hearts, and livers from baboons and chimpanzees—humans’ closest genetic relatives—into people. But the organs failed within weeks, if not days, due to rejection or infection.…

Chaos reigned this year. Russia invaded Ukraine, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, Elon Musk remade Twitter in his erratic image, mass shooters continued to terrorize the United…